***************************************************************** 08/06/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.200 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: NRC Proposes Rule to Bankrupt Watchdog Groups 2 KEDO celebrates next phase of nuclear project in N. Korea 3 US: Opinion - Another View: Common sense loses out in U.S. foreign 4 Officials to Lay N.Korea Atom Reactor Foundations NUCLEAR REACTORS 5 US: Nuclear plants are safe, power company says 6 Russia to Load Fuel in Iran Nuclear Plant in December 2003 NUCLEAR SAFETY 7 US: In case of nuclear crisis ... 8 US: Nuke panel adds Ohio, Ky. members 9 US: Paducahan among advocates named to board on sick workers -- 10 US: Officials announce anti-radiation pill plan NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 11 (en) Nukes Ahoy - Resistance #14 (Ireland) 12 US: YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Company loses lawsuit against DOE 13 US: Court OKs Sending Plutonium to S.C. 14 US: Lawyers lose try for work on Yucca 15 US: N-waste: Utah Asked for It 16 US: Area fuel rods total 2,550 17 US: Energy Department wins lawsuit on Yucca Mountain legal contract 18 US: Yucca not too likely to erupt volcanically NUCLEAR WEAPONS 19 Weapons of Mass Destruction: * Iraq * Hiroshima 20 Hiroshima hits "Pax Americana" at A-bomb memorial* 21 Hiroshima mayor faults 'unilateralism' of U.S. foreign policy 22 Nuclear special: The new nukes 23 Stepping back from the brink 24 How to make a dirty bomb 25 US: Remembering Hiroshima* 26 Could terrorists build the bomb? 27 Nuclear stance roadblock on path to free trade* 28 Hiroshima commemorating 57th anniversary of atomic bombing 29 Japan PM reaffirms anti-nuclear policy * 30 Hiroshima mayor calls on the U.S. to 'sever the chain of hatred'* 31 Pakinstan: Uranium deposits found in Kirthar range 32 US: *22 arrests at nuclear base protest* 33 UK: Nuclear special: The genie is out of the bottle 34 UK: George Monbiot: The logic of empire 35 Hiroshima's mayor hits out at Bush 36 Emergency with a Russian nuclear submarine 37 Hiroshima hits "Pax Americana" at A-bomb memorial 38 Nuclear Role Models 39 US: Resuscitate the Test Ban 40 Nuclear special: The art-history of the mushroom cloud 41 Hiroshima Marks 57th Anniversary of Atomic-bombing 42 Servicemen recall visiting Hiroshima weeks after atomic bomb dropped 43 Hiroshima mayor sends nuclear alert to Bush - 44 'One hell of a big bang' 45 Nuclear special: A survivor's tale US DEPT. OF ENERGY 46 [generalnews] 14 Arrested at Tenn. Nuke Plant 47 INEEL: Work begins on nuke waste pit* 48 DOE Celebrating End of Weldon Spring Clean Up 49 New CH2M Hill Hanford executive begins Aug. 19 50 Radioactive site is opened to tourists 51 A revered tradition -- 52 Anti-nuclear groups plan to tour SRS 08/06/02 53 DOE recognizes cleanup at Weldon Spring Site; New Interpretive 54 2 waste plants secured by anti-terrorism bill - 55 Plutonium cleanup slated at Rocky Flats OTHER NUCLEAR ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 NRC Proposes Rule to Bankrupt Watchdog Groups On July 25, 2002, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released Cost Recovery for Contested Hearings Involving U. S. National Security Initiatives. These new rules have the potential to bankrupt small nuclear watchdog groups across the county. The effect of the rules would be to make petitioners pay all of the NRC's costs resulting from any contested action that involves "national security initiatives." And, as the proposal states, "In the future, the Commission plans to consider a similar approach for recovering NRC’s costs for other activities involving U. S. Government national security-related programs, such as allegations and 10 CFR 2.206 petitions, through part 170 fees assessed to the applicant or licensee." I spoke with Robert Carlson, the NRC staffer who wrote the proposed changes. I posed the following question, "If we files a 2.206 petition on a security issue and the NRC accepted the petition and subsequently one of the giant nuclear comapnies, Enttergy, for example, decided to contest the issue, would we be laible for all of NRC's costs for the contest?" His answer was, "Unfortunately, yes." The proposed rule lists examples of the types of issues that would come under the rule: (emphasis added) Examples of special projects include, but are not limited to, contested hearings on licensing actions directly related to Presidentially directed national security programs, topical report reviews, early site reviews, waste solidification facilities, route approvals for shipment of radioactive materials, services provided to certify licensee, vendor, or other private industry personnel as instructors for part 55 reactor operators, reviews of financial assurance submittals that do not require a license amendment, reviews of responses to Confirmatory Action Letters, reviews of uranium recovery licensees’ land-use survey reports, and reviews of 10 CFR 50.71 final safety analysis reports. Other examples listed include: "In addition to the contested hearing on the MOX fuel fabrication facility application, any potential contested hearing on the TVA license amendments to produce tritium at the Watts Bar and Sequoyah reactors for the Nation’s nuclear weapons program would be another example of a contested hearing on a licensing action directly involving a U. S. Government " The rule was published in Federal Register: July 31, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 147)[Page 49623-49627]. The comment period for this rulemaking is short and will be end on August 30, 2002. Here is a link to the proposed rule. This link is to a copy of the ruls posted on the NECNP web site. The document posted on the NRC site is corrupted. The proposed rule can also be downloaded fro the Federal Register web site. It is impertaive that you write comments on this rule, either as groups or as individuals. Dave Pyles NECNP ***************************************************************** 2 KEDO celebrates next phase of nuclear project in N. Korea Korea Herald!!_National http://www.koreaherald.com The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) holds a ceremony in North Korea today to celebrate the first pouring of concrete in the construction of nuclear reactors in the North's east coastal village of Kumho. Jack Pritchard, Washington's point man for negotiations with Pyongyang, attends the event in his capacity as a KEDO executive board member. Experts said the ceremony marks a new phase in the international consortium's project, in which the main buildings for the two light-water reactors will start going up. The event comes at a time when the North has extended an olive branch to the United States and Japan by agreeing to restart dialogue with both countries. On the Korean Peninsula the atmosphere is reconciliatory, as the North promised to hold an inter-Korean ministerial meeting in Seoul next week and participate in the Busan Asian Games hosted by the South in September and October. The event in North Korea brings together 100 delegates including officials from KEDO and construction companies as well as three other KEDO executive board members - Chang Sun-sup from the South, Katsunari Suzuki from Japan and Jean-Pierre Leng from the European Union. The delegation will inspect the construction site after the ceremony and hold a news conference there. KEDO's executive board held a meeting in Seoul on Monday to assess the progress of the power plant construction and discuss future directions for the project. KEDO, led by the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union, is building two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors in the North under the 1994 Agreed Framework, in return for the North's freeze of its alleged nuclear weapons development program. The delegation left for the North Korean port of Kumho aboard a cruise ship yesterday. They will head to the South tonight and arrive in Seoul tomorrow. (shj@koreaherald.co.kr) 2002.08.07 (C) Copyright 2000 Digital Korea Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 3 Opinion - Another View: Common sense loses out in U.S. foreign policy The Oak Ridger Online - Tuesday, August 6, 2002 The (Maryville) Daily Times, today Common sense, a trait that is often referred to colloquially as "horse sense," is scarce, especially when one gets involved in politics whether party politics or world politics. Americans, like many of both our friends and our foes around the world, often stop and scratch their heads when they take a look at U.S. foreign policy. The blame is neither Democrat or Republican. Both are equally to blame. Some of the things we do just don't make sense. Our policy toward Cuba is unrealistic. Other than for some of the Cuban children being denied a better opportunity at life, our policy is probably hurting our nation more than Cuba. It certainly is hindering trade that would be very beneficial to both countries with little or no loss to the U.S. We don't trade with Cuba but we do trade with Communist China. Why? Probably because we can buy so many items from China for a much lower price than any where else in the world. Certainly China is a much bigger threat to the American way of life than Cuba. And in all probability Cuba would be a better market for American goods than China on a per person basis. The U.S. is putting heavy pressure on Russia because it is selling nuclear reactors to Iran, one of the "evil" nations of the world. In the meantime, President Bill Clinton agreed to give nuclear reactors to North Korea, also one of the "evil" nations according to President George W. Bush. However, Bush is proceeding full speed ahead to give nuclear reactors to North Korea, doing nothing to even slow it down. Not only is our foreign policy speaking out of both sides of our mouth, American taxpayers are paying for the reactors going to North Korea. At least the Russians are smart enough to sell them to Iran. It has been widely reported that the only reason Russia is reluctant to support a U.S. war against Iraq is that Iraq owes the Russians many millions that they would have no opportunity to collect if there is a war. This brings the observation again that we may have taught capitalism too well to the Russians. They are using it far better in some instances than the United States. [http://www.oakridger.com/dailydouble] [http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 4 Officials to Lay N.Korea Atom Reactor Foundations ABCNEWS.com : August 6, 2002 [Reuters] — By Martin Nesirky SOKCHO, South Korea (Reuters) - A multi-national team from the agency overseeing a key nuclear pact with Pyongyang sets sail for North Korea later on Tuesday for a landmark nuclear reactor project. The concrete-pouring on Wednesday has symbolism well beyond the remote construction site at Kumho, on North Korea's east coast, where the internationally funded Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) is building two reactors. The event is sandwiched between two rounds of talks between the two Koreas and amid an unexpected flurry of diplomatic activity on the peninsula, which has been bitterly divided since the 1950-53 Korean War. There is the additional factor of uncertain North Korean economic reforms and the unspoken irony of a U.S.-based organization building nuclear reactors in a country President Bush has called part of "axis of evil." KEDO is a consortium set up to implement a $4.6 billion reactor project under the Agreed Framework, a 1994 U.S.-North Korea deal which froze the North's suspected nuclear weapons program in exchange for annual supplies of fuel oil and two western-built nuclear reactors. The deal was struck under the Clinton administration but Bush has continued to allow funding despite his reservations about North Korea's Communist leadership. KEDO officials met in Seoul on Monday ahead of their trip to the North to discuss progress on the project, which is several years behind schedule. They will travel there and back aboard a South Korean ferry. Delegates will watch the first pouring of concrete for the foundations of the main power plant buildings, KEDO said in a statement. It described the planned event as an important milestone in the construction of the light-water reactor project. South Korea, which produces some 40 percent of its electricity using nuclear reactors, is the source of the reactor technology. Seoul's state-run Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) is KEDO's prime contractor. KEDO's executive board has representatives from the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Board representatives will be on hand at Kumho as well as other countries contributing to the project. Workers pour concrete at a construction site to build nuclear reactors in the North Korean village of Kumho August 7, 2002. Officials of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, a consortium of members from the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea, gathered in the isolated village on North Korea's eastern coast for the ceremony marking the start of work on the $4.8 billion nuclear reactors being built under a 1994 pact which suspended the North's suspected nuclear weapons program. Photo by Lee Jae Won/Reuters Copyright 2002 Reuters News Service. ***************************************************************** 5 Nuclear plants are safe, power company says HAMPTON ROADS - Business By MICHAEL DAVIS, The Virginian-Pilot © August 6, 2002 Meanwhile, representatives of the utility and its striking workers were called back to the bargaining table Monday afternoon and encouraged to return to contract talks if either side has anything to say. A federal mediator overseeing negotiations ``wanted to make sure that the lines of communication are open,'' said Jim Norvelle, a spokesman for Richmond-based Dominion. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has dispatched additional inspectors to monitor Dominion plants at Surry and North Anna during the walkout, which started at noon Friday. The facilities are being operated by the book, according to the agency. ... Read more in The Virginian-Pilot or at PilotOnline.com ThinkIn--> Federal regulators are taking a closer look at Dominion Virginia Power's two nuclear plants in the state as unionized employees of the company remain off the job. Meanwhile, representatives of the utility and its striking workers were called back to the bargaining table Monday afternoon and encouraged to return to contract talks if either side has anything to say. A federal mediator overseeing negotiations ``wanted to make sure that the lines of communication are open,'' said Jim Norvelle, a spokesman for Richmond-based Dominion. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has dispatched additional inspectors to monitor Dominion plants at Surry and North Anna during the walkout, which started at noon Friday. The facilities are being operated by the book, according to the agency. ``Thus far, our technical staff has made the determination that they are able to run the plants safely with the workers they have there,'' said Ken Clark, a spokesman at the NRC's regional office in Atlanta. Striking Dominion workers had warned that the company could not keep the plants online reliably without the union employees, which include electricians, operators and other technicians. Surry and North Anna each employ about 800 workers, one-third of whom are covered by the union contract. ``The people who run this place are out on the picket line,'' said Rusty Tanner, the shop steward at Surry for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 50. The NRC normally employs two full-time resident inspectors at Surry and North Anna. The agency has added an undisclosed number to watch each facility's control room nonstop during the walkout. The additional NRC staffers will remain ``as long as necessary,'' Clark said. Surry's two reactors are 17 miles northwest of Newport News. North Anna, which also has two reactors, is 40 miles northwest of Richmond. About 1,000 unionized Dominion employees across Hampton Roads walked out Friday over retirement and health-care benefits after more than six months of talks on a new contract. It is the first labor strike against Dominion -- Virginia's biggest utility -- since 1964. Workers manned picket lines through the weekend, as the company reassured consumers that it could keep the lights on using managers, nonunionized workers and temporary help. ``The union leadership, our supervisors and employees are to be commended for an orderly transition at our offices and power stations,'' said Thomas F. Farrell II, chief executive of Dominion Energy, the electric generating subsidiary of Dominion. ``The workers who left their jobs are valued employees and we want them to return to work soon. We regret they felt it was necessary to take this action.'' The IBEW represents about 3,700 Dominion employees in Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia. Locally, the union includes employees of the Surry plant, the company's Chesapeake and Yorktown coal- and oil-fueled plants, and field workers such as line technicians and meter readers. On Monday, representatives of Dominion and the IBEW met for less than an hour. A federal mediator, who has been involved in contract talks since mid-July, arranged the sit-down in case either side had reconsidered negotiations over the weekend. While both parties insist they are ready to return to the bargaining table, no further talks are scheduled. Violent thunderstorms slashed through Northern Virginia Friday night and Saturday, interrupting power to tens of thousands of households in the region. At the storms' peak, about 18,000 Dominion customers lost service. The power was turned back on by late Sunday. ``We've restored power in very good time, maybe a little slower than usual,'' Norvelle said. ``We're running very well. That said, we want this done.'' The only forecast for precipitation in Hampton Roads this week is a 30 percent chance of showers this morning. Temperatures are expected to be seasonal, with highs in the middle to upper 80s through next weekend. Reach Michael Davis at 446-2599 or midavis@pilotonline.com [http://www.hamptonroads.com ***************************************************************** 6 Russia to Load Fuel in Iran Nuclear Plant in December 2003 Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, August 06, 2002 Russian experts are planning to load fuel in the first unit of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, which is under construction with Russia's help, in December 2003, Russian Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Andrei Malyshev said Monday. Russian experts are planning to load fuel in the first unit of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, which is under construction with Russia's help, in December 2003, Russian Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Andrei Malyshev said Monday. Malyshev said Russia had always regarded the Bushehr plant, which is due to start operation in June 2004, as a purely civilianfacility. Russia signed an agreement of 800 million U.S. dollars with Iran in 1995 on building a nuclear plant at Bushehr on the Gulf coast. This plan has infuriated Washington, which makes the Iran issuea sore point in bilateral relation. Moscow defends its cooperationwith Iran by reiterating that its aid only serves civilian purpose. Malyshev said the building of the first unit of the Bushehr plant had passed several checks, including that by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and no violations of international agreements have been revealed. As for the possible construction of a second unit at the Bushehr plant, Malyshev said no such project has been agreed on sofar. If such an agreement was reached, the reactor would likely besimilar to the first unit, he added. Despite the U.S. opposition, Russia in last month approved a long-term program to boost cooperation with Iran and build severalnuclear reactors in the country. Under the 10-year program, Russia will help Iran construct up to six reactors, expand conventional power station and develop oiland gas deposits. Iran, Russia Voice Continuation of Nuclear Cooperation Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 7 In case of nuclear crisis ... - York Daily Record Tue., Aug. 6, 2002 State officials explained how people can obtain free potassium iodide pills. By SEAN ADKINS Daily Record staff Dan Carney catches a glimpse of Three Mile Island as he travels to work each day. The owner of Mid State Trailer Repair in Newberry Township still recalls being told to close all the windows as word came on March 28, 1979, that something had gone wrong at the nuclear power plant. But Carney will have more than a pane of glass separating him from harmful radiation if another accident should befall the plant. He’ll also have a pill no bigger than a pencil-tip eraser. On Monday, state officials from the Emergency Management Agency and the departments of Health and Environmental Protection released plans to distribute more than 1 million 130-milligram potassium iodide pills to people who live or work within 10 miles of the state’s five nuclear power plants. Those plants include Exelon Generation Co.’s Three Mile Island Unit 1 near northern York County and Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station’s Unit 2 and Unit 3 reactors in southern York County. Pennsylvania is one of 13 states distributing potassium iodide pills provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said state Health Secretary Robert S. Zimmerman Jr. After Sept. 11, concerns of a terrorist attack at a nuclear plant rose, prompting renewed discussion on the value of the pills. In Pennsylvania, each resident in the zones will receive two pills. For those ages 3 to 18, pills should be broken in half to cut the dosage to 65 milligrams, said Dr. John Bart, state public health physician. Children under the age of 3 should take half a pill, but only if it has been crushed, he said. If a reactor were severely damaged, radioactive iodine might be released into the air. Those particles, byproducts of nuclear power generation, can cause thyroid cancer. When taken prior to radioactive exposure, potassium iodide soaks the thyroid gland with non-radioactive iodine, temporarily blocking the gland from absorbing harmful iodine for about 24 hours. Radioactive material released from either Three Mile Island or Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station would not extend past a 10-mile area once it drops from the atmosphere, said Eric Conrad, Environmental Protection Deputy Secretary for Field Operations. Residents and people who work within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant can obtain the pills from Aug. 15 to Aug. 21, Zimmerman said. Officials with the state Health Department will notify all businesses within those areas. Each employer and staff member can get at least one potassium iodide pill. Pills will be available to each of Mid State Trailer Repair’s nine employees, Carney said. “You never know what is going to happen,” he said. “It’s like wearing a seat belt. It’s good to have one to increase your chances of survival.” But state officials warned that while the pills can reduce the risk of thyroid cancer in the event of a radioactive iodine release, the medication does little to protect the rest of the body. “This is just another layer of protection,” Zimmerman said. “Evacuation of the area is the best course of action. The pills do not take the place of evacuation.” School districts within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant are urged to integrate the use of potassium iodide pills within their evacuation plans, he said. Residents who want the pills are asked to bring identification, but people may get pills for those who are unable to get to the distribution center. Each resident will be asked to sign for the pills and addresses will be checked from an annual Exelon Generation special needs survey. “This is just because we don’t want people asking for 500 pills and then turning around and selling them,” Zimmerman said. Rick Bates of Lower Chanceford Township lives within eight miles of Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station and plans to get the pills. “It’s better to be safe than sorry,” he said. “It can’t provide all the protection, but it’s worthwhile to have around.” THE PLAN WHEN: Potassium iodide will be given out Aug. 15 to 21. The sites will be open weekdays 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and weekends 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. WHERE: Kennard-Dale High School, 393 Main St., in Fawn Grove and Crossroads Middle School, 535 Fishing Creek Road, in Lewisberry. ALTERNATIVE: Residents may also acquire the medication at the Department of Health, Southcentral District Office, 30 Kline Plaza in Harrisburg. SHELF LIFE: The pills will remain effective for about five years. DETAILS: 1-877-PA-HEALTH. SIDE EFFECTS Side effects of taking potassium iodide include: + Skin rashes + Salivary gland swelling + Metallic taste in the mouth + A burning sensation in the mouth and throat + Sore teeth and gums + Symptoms of a head cold + Upset stomach + Diarrhea Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration Reach Sean Adkins at 771-2047 or sadkins@ydr.com. © York Daily Record 2002 ***************************************************************** 8 Nuke panel adds Ohio, Ky. members [enquirer.com] [http://cincinnati.com Tuesday, August 06, 2002 The Associated Press WASHINGTON - Responding to concerns about the makeup of a panel advising the government on compensating sick nuclear weapons workers, the White House on Monday added worker advocates from Kentucky and Ohio to the group. Leon Owens, president of a local workers' union at the Energy Department's uranium plant in Paducah, Ky., was added. And the administration appointed Mike Gibson, president of the union at the department's Mound nuclear weapons plant in Miamisburg, Ohio. Labor advocates had complained that they wanted more representatives on the panel, which will now have 13 members. A law enacted by Congress two years ago required the White House to appoint an advisory board that reflected “a balance of scientific, medical and worker perspectives.” Just one rank-and-file worker had previously been named. He is Richard Espinosa, a metal shop steward at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico. After decades of denials, the government acknowledged in 1999 that workers who helped the Energy Department and its vendors build nuclear weapons during the Cold War probably got sick because of on-the-job exposure. “I think the additional appointments today went a good ways toward leveling the playing field on the board.” [http://cincinnati.com/copyright] 1995-2002. [http://enquirer.com] , a ***************************************************************** 9 Paducahan among advocates named to board on sick workers -- Ohio also will be represented on the advisory panel by the president of a nuclear workers' union. WASHINGTON--Responding to concerns about the makeup of a panel advising the government on compensating sick nuclear weapons workers, the White House on Monday added worker advocates from Kentucky and Ohio to the group. @@EOM:End of Marker Required -- The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Tuesday, August 06, 2002 By Nancy Zuckerbrod, Associated Press WASHINGTON--Responding to concerns about the makeup of a panel advising the government on compensating sick nuclear weapons workers, the White House on Monday added worker advocates from Kentucky and Ohio to the group. Leon Owens, president of a local workers’ union at the Energy Department’s uranium plant in Paducah, Ky., was added. And the administration appointed Mike Gibson, president of the union at the department’s Mound nuclear weapons plant in Miamisburg, Ohio. Labor advocates had complained that they wanted more representatives on the panel, which will now have 13 members. A law passed by Congress two years ago required the White House to appoint an advisory board that reflected ‘‘a balance of scientific, medical and worker perspectives.’’ Just one rank-and-file worker had previously been named. He is Richard Espinosa, a metal shop steward at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico. ‘‘I think the additional appointments today went a good ways toward leveling the playing field on the board,’’ said Gibson, who previously worked as an electrician at the Mound facility. Owens, a former production worker at the Paducah plant, agreed. ‘‘I think that the workers deserve to have a voice,’’ Owens said. After decades of denials, the government acknowledged in 1999 that workers who helped the Energy Department and its vendors build nuclear weapons during the Cold War probably got sick because of on-the-job exposure. Congress subsequently passed a law providing medical care and payments of $150,000 to sick workers or their families for exposure to cancer-causing radiation, or silica and beryllium, which cause lung disease. Many medical records are missing or incomplete, so the advisory board’s primary task is to help determine how much radiation workers were exposed to on the job. If doses can’t be estimated, the panel will help decide whether certain workers should be given the benefit of the doubt. Congress previously determined that many workers at the Paducah plant and uranium facilities in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Piketon, Ohio, should be given the benefit of the doubt. ***************************************************************** 10 Officials announce anti-radiation pill plan PittsburghLIVE.com - By Martha Raffaele THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Tuesday, August 6, 2002 HARRISBURG — People who live or work near one of Pennsylvania's five nuclear power plants will be able to obtain free anti-radiation pills at area schools and other sites beginning Aug. 15, state health officials said Monday. The potassium iodide pills, better known by their chemical symbol KI, are meant to prevent thyroid cancer or other thyroid problems related to radiation exposure in the event of a nuclear accident. But officials warned that the pill's effects are temporary, and it cannot ward off any other radiation-related illnesses, so residents should still follow any evacuation orders issued by the governor. "Potassium iodide only supplements evacuation, and if people can't find their pills, it's more important that they leave than spend the time looking for them," state Health Secretary Robert S. Zimmerman said. "There's going to be plenty of KI available at reception centers, the sites where people will be directed during an evacuation emergency." Pennsylvania has received 2 million of the pills to distribute to 964,000 people who live within the so-called "emergency planning zones" around the plants. They include 640,000 residents, 182,000 students and school staff, and 142,000 employees. Residents who want the pills can go to one of 15 distribution sites near the five plants: Limerick in Montgomery County, Susquehanna Steam in Luzerne County, Peach Bottom in York County, and Beaver Valley in Beaver County, and one at Three Mile Island in Dauphin County. Residents will have to sign for the pills before receiving them, Zimmerman said. The recommended dose is one tablet for adults and half a tablet for children, said Dr. John Bart, a state public health physician who has worked on the distribution plan. Possible side effects include swelling of the salivary glands, a metallic taste in the mouth, upset stomach and diarrhea. The centers will be open through Aug. 21. Residents who are unable to pick up the tablets during the seven-day distribution period, or who decide after that time they would like to have the pills, can go to their local health department offices during regular business hours. Forty-four school districts near plants can also request their own supplies of the tablet and develop their own distribution plans, Zimmerman said. Additionally, amusement parks, sports stadiums and other facilities that draw large crowds will be able to obtain pills. The pills are being provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which offered them to any of the 33 states that have nuclear plants. Pennsylvania is among 16 that have accepted the offer, NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said; others include Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Maryland. Gagner said the agency has not kept track of how many residents nationwide have received the pills, or of whether any states have encountered any distribution problems. Pennsylvania is also continuing its efforts to monitor the safety of nuclear plants, state Homeland Security Director Earl Freilino said. National Guard troops and state police units that Gov. Mark Schweiker has ordered to patrol the plants are expected to remain on duty at least through the end of the year. "Even though we're going to make these pills available, we aren't going to be any less diligent in how we train people to respond to a nuclear emergency or defend our nuclear plants," Freilino said. Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This copyright © 2002 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 11 (en) Nukes Ahoy - Resistance #14 (Ireland) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 23:38:10 -0500 (CDT) ________________________________________________ A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E http://www.ainfos.ca/ ________________________________________________ ON APRIL 26TH, 2 armed British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) freighters left Barrow-in-Furness, northern England en route for Takahama, Japan. Their mission? To transport enough plutonium-uranium oxide (MOX) back to Sellafield to build 50 nuclear bombs: each bomb vastly more devastating than the 2 dropped on the citiesof Hiroshima and Nagasaki over 50 years before. But the date, April 26th is also a significant one. It was then, 16 years ago, that the worst disaster in the history of the nuclear industry occurred at Chernobyl, Russia. When the nuclear reactor on the site blew, more than 100 emergency workers suffered radiation sickness and 41 died. Since then, there has been a dramatic increase in childhood thyroid cancer in the area, normally a very rare disease. According to Greenpeace International Nuclear Campaigner Shaun Burnie ?they could not have chosen a more fitting date to remind the international community of the arrogance and dangerous risk-taking of the nuclear industry?. But this is not the first time this particular cargo of nuclear material has been on the high seas. Back in 1999, it was shipped as fuel to Japan, only for the Japanese to discover that BNFL, the manufacturer, had falsified critical quality control data during its production. Japan has been sitting on the load ever since, but now wants BNFL to take it back. Under international law the shipment couldn?t go ahead unless authorised by the US. The US duly gave its approval on the basis that the plutonium was to be recovered and returned to Japan in the form of fresh MOX fuel assemblies. Yet the UK Government has told Parliament that the faulty MOX is to be imported and stored at Sellafield while BNFL decides what to do with it. Not only that but the UK has promised the Irish Government and the International Law of the Sea (ITLOS), that there would be no transports associated with theoperation of the Sellafield MOX plant before October 2002. So, the import must be in breach either of the US authorisation or the undertakings given to ITLOS. ?The industry is creating a floating terrorist target and a dangerous hazard simply in order for BNFL to be able to get new contracts with its Japanese customers. This would result in yet more shipments of plutonium fuel, perhaps as many as 80 over the next decade,? Mr Burnie said. There are also serious concerns about the safety of the shipment, which should also have prevented the BNFL vessel leaving back in April. The cask in which the plutonium is being transported has not yet been licensed by the Japanese authorities. An earlier licence was revoked when it was discovered that levels of the single largest source of radioactivity in the cask, the radioisotope Plutonium-241, will be up to twice as high as originally estimated. However, the two vessels, the Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal, one acting as an armed escort, the other carrying the plutonium, are currently facing a barrage of international opposition as they make their return journey back from Japan via the Pacific-Tasman Sea-South Africa route. ?The nuclear shipping nations of Japan, UK and France arrogantly view the Pacific as the route of least resistance,? said Greenpeace Pacific Nuclear Campaigner Ang Heffernan. ?There is no justification for this rejected plutonium MOX shipment. It is only occurring because BNFL, which originally shipped this material from the UK through the Pacific to Japan in 1999, deliberately falsified vital quality control safety data during its manufacture.? At the moment, the ships are still in the South Pacific, and face opposition from all the governments in the area including Fiji and the Federated States of Micronesia. A more direct approach has come from the ?Nuclear Free Seas? flotilla movement (nuclearfreeflotilla.org)against plutonium transports which was launched last year in the South Pacific with protests in the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia, as well as in Fiji. This year it has now spread to South America?s Cape Horn, and the Irish Sea. On July 7th the Greenpeace yacht, the Tiama, joined the Nuclear Free Pacific Flotilla as yachts left Australia and New Zealand to protest against the shipment of plutonium through the Pacific and Tasman Sea. They will join the seven ships from New Zealand and two from Vanuatu, and will gather in the northern Tasman Sea to wait for the two ships carrying the reject plutonium mixed oxide (MOX). While we in the AF support the use of direct action tactics in all our struggles against capital, we don?t think the struggle against the MOX project should be the preserve of those fortunate enough to own a boat. What about the rest of us landlovers? What we need is a long campaign of committed and consistent direct action with enough longevity to last until the MOX plant and Sellafield are closed down for good. Irish activists are planning a protest at Barrow-on-Furness (BNFL?s home port). Contact Barry O?Donovan at: fgod@hotpop.com or at: 087-232-0437 ****************************************************** >From the pages of Resistance#14, regular monthly bulletin of the Anarchist Federation Ireland, now available in text and PDF format at: http://www.afireland.cjb.net http://flag.blackened.net/af ******* ******** ****** The A-Infos News Service ****** News about and of interest to anarchists ****** COMMANDS: lists@ainfos.ca REPLIES: a-infos-d@ainfos.ca HELP: a-infos-org@ainfos.ca WWW: http://www.ainfos.ca/ INFO: http://www.ainfos.ca/org -To receive a-infos in one language only mail lists@ainfos.ca the message: unsubscribe a-infos subscribe a-infos-X where X = en, ca, de, fr, etc. (i.e. the language code) ***************************************************************** 12 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Company loses lawsuit against DOE Tuesday, August 06, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Law firm charged contract to ready license application improperly awarded to rival By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department has won a long-standing lawsuit pressed by a company that was passed over for a multimillion dollar Yucca Mountain Project contract. The New York-based law firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene &MacRae had charged DOE improperly awarded rival Winston &Strawn a $16.5 million job to help prepare a license application for the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository. The Energy Department responded the 1999 contract award was fair. DOE also argued the lawsuit became moot after Winston &Strawn withdrew from the Yucca program last November. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina issued an order Wednesday granting judgment to DOE. His reasoning was in a sealed opinion. "We are pleased the court found DOE's decision-making to be sound," department spokesman Joe Davis said Monday. LeBoeuf, Lamb contended it should have won the contract. It charged Winston &Strawn had a conflict that should have disqualified it from the beginning. The Chicago-based Winston had previously worked on the Yucca program as a legal services subcontractor, putting it in a position to pass judgment on its own work, the lawsuit charged. Government attorneys countered in a filing that "DOE explicitly found that Winston had no organizational conflict of interest and that it was qualified to perform the contract." While both bidders scored perfect on a qualifications test, Winston &Strawn underbid LeBoeuf, Lamb by $3.7 million, DOE said. The case has been closely watched by Nevada officials who also have been critical of Winston &Strawn. The state plans to attack the firm's involvement when it challenges DOE's repository license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Two years into the job, Winston &Strawn withdrew last November, following fresh conflict allegations that it was a registered lobbyist for the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute at the same time it was working for the government. The firm also was involved in a probe last fall into whether NRC staff had improperly leaked a preliminary license document that ended up in the hands of DOE officials. After Winston's contract was terminated, LeBoeuf, Lamb demanded it be hired as a replacement. But DOE attorneys told Urbina the department had decided to do the work in-house instead. With the lawsuit now finished, Davis said DOE has not decided whether to keep the legal work in-house or seek bids for a new outside licensing contractor. "When or if we do, then we will proceed through the appropriate process," he said. At a National Academy of Sciences board meeting last week, Yucca Mountain Project director Margaret Chu said she was "looking around for help" to boost staff expertise on licensing, but declined to say whether she would seek to hire new outside attorneys. Industry and government officials who watch the Yucca program say there's a general belief that DOE could use outside help to defend its license application against an expected Nevada challenge. Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said he is interested to see DOE's next move. "Since they represented to the court that they weren't going (to rebid the job), it's going to be very difficult for them to turn around and engage someone else," Loux said. "LeBoeuf would go crazy and refile another lawsuit." Nevada leaders have signed a $2.5 million contract with a Washington-based legal team to handle the state's legal and NRC licensing challenges. "From our perspective it seems to me there's probably not a lot of people in DOE's general counsel's office who have licensing experience," Loux said. "If DOE wants to represent themselves, that's to our benefit." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 13 Court OKs Sending Plutonium to S.C. Las Vegas SUN: August 06, 2002 By AMY GEIER EDGAR ASSOCIATED PRESS COLUMBIA, S.C.- A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected South Carolina's request to stop the federal government from shipping surplus plutonium into the state. Gov. Jim Hodges, who has fought with the Department of Energy over the shipments for more than a year, said he plans to appeal the ruling by the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court. "The weapons-grade plutonium is a threat to the health and safety of our state," Hodges said. "Our final hope lies with the Supreme Court." Hodges once vowed to use state troopers to turn back the shipments at the border unless he was given legally enforceable assurances that his state would not permanently house the waste. The Energy Department is moving six tons of plutonium from Rocky Flats, a former weapons plant near Denver, to the Savannah River Site near the Georgia line. The department plans to eventually convert the material into commercial nuclear fuel. The appeals court rejected Hodges' contentions that federal officials needed more environmental studies and failed to fully consider the risks of long-term storage. The appeals court upheld a lower court decision allowing the shipments. Hodges was rebuked by a federal judge when he tried to ban shipments from the state after the earlier ruling. On Friday, Energy Department officials told Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., that the department had begun shipping the plutonium from Colorado to the site near Aiken, said Allard's spokesman Sean Conway. DOE spokesman Joe Davis would not confirm the status of the shipments. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 14 Lawyers lose try for work on Yucca Las Vegas SUN: August 06, 2002 By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- A federal judge here has ruled in favor of the Energy Department in a dispute with an international law firm over Yucca Mountain legal work. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina last week quietly threw out a 2-year-old case brought by LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene and MacRae in its attempt to force the department to hire the firm. "We are pleased the court found DOE's decision-making in this matter to be sound," Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said in a written statement. The ruling was sealed until legal wording is finalized, so the firm does not know exactly why the judge ruled against the firm, LeBoeuf lawyer Michael McBride said. The ruling caught the firm by surprise; its lawyers had been optimistic in recent weeks. "We're extremely disappointed," McBride said. The dispute arose in 1999 when the Energy Department awarded a $16.5 million contract to low bidder Chicago-based Winston &Strawn, passing over its top rival LeBoeuf. The firms had been competing for the massive job of helping the department assemble a complex application for a license to construct the high-level nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The department plans to submit the application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by December 2004. LeBoeuf sued to obtain the job in March 2000, arguing that Winston had a conflict of interest. LeBoeuf argued Winston had done legal work for a department subcontractor on the Yucca project, which put the firm in the position of reviewing its own work. Department lawyers have fought the suit. The suit dragged on even after Winston quit the job in 2001 after other conflict-of-interest charges surfaced. Nevada officials said Winston had been a registered lobbyist for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a pro-Yucca lobby group. The department, which by law was supposed to be an impartial Yucca manager, should not have hired a pro-Yucca firm, Nevada officials said. Winston lawyers denied they ever had a conflict of interest. But LeBoeuf lawyers were emboldened. "We thought we had a good case, especially after Winston resigned, which indicated there were conflicts of interest and that the firm should not have been selected in the first place," McBride said. LeBoeuf is pondering its next move, McBride said. So is the Energy Department. The department never hired another firm to handle its Yucca license application. In-house Energy Department lawyers had argued that LeBoeuf had no claim to the job because they took over the work themselves when Winston left. Department officials have been mum about whether they ever planned to hire another firm. At a July 30 presentation to the National Academy of Sciences, department Yucca chief Margaret Chu said acquiring "licensing expertise" was among her top goals. She did not elaborate. McBride declined to say whether LeBoeuf would apply for the job if the department sought a law firm again. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 15 N-waste: Utah Asked for It The Salt Lake Tribune -- Tuesday, August 6, 2002 The recent decision by federal Judge Tena Campbell should be no surprise (although upsetting) to informed Utahns. Campbell ordered the state of Utah to "stop meddling" . . . in the plans to store high-level nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation ("Judge Rebuffs State on N-Storage," Tribune, July 31). Utah's west desert, which includes Tooele County, sold out many years ago to the highest polluting bidder and took the slippery slope to storing the nation's most toxic waste. Rep. Jim Hansen and the Tooele County Commission have, over the years, promoted and paved the dusty road with some of the most toxic waste known to humankind. Is it any wonder the Goshute Tribe saw the storage of spent nuclear fuel rods, from our nation's nuclear power plants, as an opportunity for great financial gain? This tribal land has been surrounded by explosive weapons and chemical, biological and radioactive waste for years. Jim Hansen and the Tooele County Commission have always been willing to promote Utah to the military for testing and training, to corporate polluters and to the waste storage industry. Providing toxic jobs in economically depressed communities often gets people re-elected to official positions (Jim Hansen, re-elected 11 times). Private Fuel Storage (PFS) approaching the Goshute Tribe to store high-level nuclear waste is business as usual for opportunist corporations. PFS may soon get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's blessing because the U.S. government "has to put the hot stuff somewhere." Why not Utah and then Nevada? If we Utahns ultimately end up storing the nation's nuclear waste, it will be an important reminder to each of us: pay attention to the responsibility of voting. Otherwise, our elected officials may take us down the road of no return and whom should we blame but ourselves. ROSEMARY A. HOLT Salt Lake City © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on Utah OnLine is ***************************************************************** 16 Area fuel rods total 2,550 Waste at the Lakeshore’s nuclear plants await removal Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter - Posted Aug. 04, 2002 HTR Correspondent BY DAN SATRAN TOWN OF TWO CREEKS — Now that Yucca Mountain has been approved by Congress as the nation's repository for permanent storage of radioactive waste, a sizeable backlog of spent fuel rods stored at Two Creeks and Kewaunee must be removed. The demanding task of removing hundreds of radioactive spent fuel rods from the two nuclear power plants will be partially under the direction of Jim Becka, a Manitowoc resident and former U. S. Navy nuclear submarine officer. Now a captain in the Navy Reserve, he is the supervisory engineer of dry fuel storage for the plants. Becka said the cask shipments will be safe because they are subjected to a number of grueling tests. The United States Department of Energy owns all the spent fuel in the country. The way is cleared for their orders to move it to the spacious tunnels and caverns of Yucca Mountain, not far from Las Vegas, Nev. The painstaking job of moving 2,550 spent fuel cells will involve Becka and a team of 50. As the plants continue to operate, they will create additional spent fuel rods. There are public safety concerns, as critics cite the dangers of proposed overland shipments. Anti-nuclear forces claim shipments would present a deadly target. Some maintain it is conceivable that a terrorist could launch a shoulder-mounted missile that would pierce the wall of a container hauling spent radioactive fuel. Becka will head a team that will move spent, but still radioactive, fuel cells from storage in pools of water within the plants. They will place them in heavily shielded containers, lids welded shut, to be shipped by trains or trucks. They will pass through communities in this part of the state, where there have been expressions of fear by some residents. Becka said the fear is unwarranted, based upon government mandated safety procedures in place for more than 40 years. "There have already been 3,000 shipments of containers of radioactive waste, without a single incident of a release of radioactive material," he said. Becka added the containers are virtually indestructible and provide three tons of shielding for every ton of spent fuel. The containers have survived the most extreme tests, according to Doug Day, communications manager for the two plants. They have been placed on a flat car and smashed into a concrete wall at 80 miles an hour. They have been doused with aviation fuel blazing at 2,000 degrees. A 120-ton locomotive was crashed into a truck carrying a container. The containers have been dropped on a pad with huge spikes. All these violent tests failed to damage the containers. Spent fuel cells are stored in pools of water at both Kewaunee and Point Beach. Because they have exceeded that pool storage capacity, some have already been moved to on-site, dry storage and placed in the heavily shielded containers. Purified water provides the perfect shield against radiation from the fuel rods, Becka said. There are 1,700 fuel rods at Point Beach and 850 at Kewaunee. Fuel assemblies are 13 feet tall. They are grouped in nine-inch squares, and consist of rods containing small uranium pellets. The rods are in the lower half of an Olympic-sized pool of water. The handling and movement of the spent fuel rods, under Becka's direction, utilizes a crew including welders, crane operators and radiation protection experts. Water in which the rods have been stored does not pick up any radioactivity. "If anyone would fall into the pool with the rods they would be checked for very small particles of impurities in the water, likely to have a very low level of radioactivity,” Becka said. “The emission from that is far below safety standards. Nevertheless, workers would be thoroughly cleaned off.” Day said scuba divers routinely enter the pool water for inspections, further indicating the lack of risk. Workers wear a small device recording accumulated radiation, which is checked every three months. They also carry a self-reading dosimeter, about the size of a pen, for checking each day. [http://www.gannett.com/map/propmap.htm] ***************************************************************** 17 Energy Department wins lawsuit on Yucca Mountain legal contract Las Vegas SUN August 06, 2002 ASSOCIATED PRESS LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Energy Department has won a lawsuit brought by a law firm passed over for a multimillion dollar Yucca Mountain project contract. The New York-based law firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene &MacRae accused DOE of improperly awarding Chicago-based rival Winston &Strawn a $16.5 million job to help prepare a license application for the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository. The Energy Department said the 1999 contract award was fair, and that the lawsuit became moot after Winston &Strawn withdrew from the Yucca program last November. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina issued a sealed order last week siding with the Energy Department, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Tuesday. "We are pleased the court found DOE's decision-making to be sound," department spokesman Joe Davis said. LeBoeuf, Lamb contended it should have won the contract and that Winston &Strawn had a conflict of interest that should have disqualified it from the beginning. Winston &Strawn had worked on the Yucca program as a legal services subcontractor, putting it in a position to pass judgment on its own work, the lawsuit charged. Government attorneys countered that the Energy Department "explicitly found that Winston had no organizational conflict of interest and that it was qualified to perform the contract." While both bidders scored perfect on a qualifications test, the Energy Department said Winston &Strawn's bid was $3.7 million less than LeBoeuf, Lamb. The case has been closely watched by Nevada officials who intend to attack the firm's involvement in the repository licensing application process when the state challenges the Energy Department's license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Winston &Strawn withdrew from the contract last November after two years, following allegations that it was a registered lobbyist for the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute at the same time it was working for the government. The firm also was involved last fall in an investigation of whether Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff improperly leaked a preliminary license document that ended up in the hands of Energy Department administrators. After Winston's contract was terminated, LeBoeuf, Lamb demanded to be hired as a replacement. But Energy Department attorneys told the judge that the federal agency would do the legal work in-house instead. Davis said the Energy Department hasn't decided whether to keep the legal work in-house or seek bids for a new outside licensing contractor. Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 18 Yucca not too likely to erupt volcanically [deseretnews.com] Monday, August 5, 2002 By Joe Bauman Deseret News staff writer Scientists have calculated the likelihood that the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository, which Congress authorized for Utah's neighboring state to the west, may erupt in radioactive fury. The view from the summit ridge of the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository near Mercury, Nev., looking toward California. Joe Cavaretta, Associated Press Here's the unnerving possibility: the federal government deposits 70,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste deep below Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Thousands of years pass, and everyone forgets about the repository. Meanwhile, the residue of nuclear-weapons production and power-plant operation remains exceptionally deadly. Then, possibly while our descendants are still living in Utah, volcanic magma begins rising through the earth. It reaches the repository, 1,000 feet below ground. It punches into the corridors, surges through the facility, melts casks of radioactive waste and erupts onto the surface. Would that affect future Utahns? Actually, Utah is outside the scope of the present study. The scientists' attention was focused on whether a volcano could erupt at the repository and damage the storage casks. One scientist the Deseret News interviewed refused to speculate about radioactive material drifting to Utah. But it takes little imagination to assume that for future Utahns, a repository volcano could be an unprecedented catastrophe. If fallout exposure from the Nevada Test Site is any guide, residents could be scorched by a radioactive cloud of unbelievable toxicity. Yucca Mountain is on the Nevada Test Site, the same base that unleashed killer waves of fallout onto Utah during above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and early '60s. Then, fallout drifted to St. George, 150 miles to the northeast, and other parts of the state. Putting aside consequences for Utah, what are the chances that a volcano will form near the repository? "The odds are kind of a tricky thing. In terms of our lifetimes, the odds are pretty small," said Brittain E. Hill, a geologist and senior research scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. He and others from the institute, England and the Netherlands published a study on the issue last month. The report's title is "Modeling magma-drift interaction at the proposed high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, USA." It appears in Geophysical Research Letters, printed by the American Geophysical Union. However unlikely a volcano may be at Yucca Mountain in the next century, this is the first attempt to quantify the chances of an eruption within 10,000 years. Even then, the waste will be extremely hazardous. The best model shows that the odds of a volcano forming in the general area are between one in 1,000 and one in 10,000, Hill said. Federal law says planners must consider any possibility more likely than one chance in 10,000. "A volcano is a low-probability event, but we need to consider a low-probability event . . . in order to assure we're making the right decisions for future public health and safety," he said. Why a volcano? According to the report, Yucca Mountain is within a geologically active basaltic volcanic field. Six volcanoes erupted there within the past 600,000 years or so. These were not the gigantic, explosive Mount St. Helens-type, but volcanoes nevertheless. The danger is that magma would compromise the canisters holding nuclear waste. Hill explained, "We're dealing with a pressurized fluid that's coming up from deep in the earth's crust." Its flow is checked by the strength of the surrounding rock. When it hits the repository's tunnels, that will be like taking the cap off a pop bottle. Gas bubbles in the molten rock "will expand and accelerate the flow." To quote from the study, models show that the repository's intersecting excavations would quickly fill with molten rock. These drifts could provide access to the surface. The magma could "affect a large number of waste canisters," says the report. For now, the study hasn't derailed the repository. The project has been approved by Congress and the president but not yet approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "This is part of the information that will need to be considered during the licensing phase of the project," Hill said. As a member of the NRC he will be among those examining its significance. "You have to weigh these factors." E-MAIL: bau@desnews.com [bau@desnews.com] © 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 19 Weapons of Mass Destruction: * Iraq * Hiroshima Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 23:53:10 -0500 (CDT) Institute for Public Accuracy 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org ___________________________________________________ Tuesday, August 6, 2002 Interviews Available on Weapons of Mass Destruction * Iraq * Hiroshima SCOTT RITTER, wsritter@aol.com Ritter, who was a chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, is available for limited interviews. When asked by the Institute for Public Accuracy if he would be willing to go to Iraq with members of Congress, Ritter said he would consider such an option. He said today: "The offer by Iraq for members of Congress to go to Iraq is a positive one. Certainly, Congress doesn't do inspections, but there should be a dialogue between members of Congress and the Iraqis. The U.S. government response highlights the fact that it isn't interested in disarmament; it openly states that ousting Saddam Hussein is more important than ensuring that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqis are making it clear they want to play ball. The U.S. is currently president of the UN Security Council; but rather than pursuing the proposals from Iraq, it has sabotaged them...." (On CNN on Sunday, former UNSCOM head Richard Butler claimed: "When they [the Iraqis] threw UNSCOM out, we furnished a final report..." But Ritter said today: "UNSCOM was not thrown out in the end, rather Butler withdrew it to make way for the bombing campaign Desert Fox.") Ritter is the author of "Endgame: Solving the Iraqi Problem Once and For All." PHYLLIS BENNIS, pbennis@compuserve.com, http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/newinternat.htm Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-editor of "Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader." She accompanied the first and only Congressional staff delegation to Iraq in 1999. KATHY KELLY, kkelly@igc.org, http://www.iraqpeaceteam.org, http://www.vitw.org Coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness, which challenges the economic sanctions against Iraq, Kelly is one of seven people who have begun a 40-day fast, across from the U.S. mission to the UN, which will end on Sept. 11. Today marks the 57th anniversary of the U.S. atomic attack on Hiroshima and 12 years of the U.S.-led embargo on Iraq. The anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki is on Friday. HOWARD ZINN, hzinn@bu.edu, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/HZinn_page.html, http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=97 A widely noted historian who has authored numerous books including "A People's History of the United States" and the recent "Terrorism and War," Zinn was a bombardier during World War II. He said today: "The administration talks about hitting 'military targets' but that phrase is so loose that President Truman, after an atomic bomb obliterated the population of Hiroshima, said: 'The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base.'.... The bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not forestall an invasion of Japan, because no invasion was necessary. The Japanese were on the verge of surrender, and American military leaders knew that.... The administration is now planning for a massive bombing campaign on Iraq and we know that this will mean that more Iraqi children, women and men will die...." PHILIP NOBILE, cdshapiro@aol.com, http://hnn.us/articles/172.html Nobile is the editor of the book "Judgment at the Smithsonian," which reprinted the banned script of the Smithsonian's 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay. For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 ***************************************************************** 20 Hiroshima hits "Pax Americana" at A-bomb memorial* (08/06/2002) (Agencies) The mayor of Hiroshima marked the anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing with a sharp rebuke for what critics charge is US President George W. Bush's unilateral diplomacy -- and an invitation to Bush to visit the city destroyed in a nuclear inferno 57 years ago. In an annual ritual of remembrance for the more than 220,000 people who ultimately died from the blast, a crowd including survivors, children and dignitaries gathered at Hiroshima's Peace Park, near ground zero where the bomb was dropped. The anniversary comes days after a reminder that Japan -- which has made much of its status as the only nation to suffer a nuclear attack -- was researching an atomic bomb during World War Two, and just months after a top politician hinted Tokyo might someday abandon its decades-old ban on nuclear weapons. The Peace Bell tolled at 8:15 a.m. -- the precise moment the Enola Gay B-29 warplane dropped the bomb on August 6, 1945 -- as the crowd stood and bowed their heads for a minute of silence in the still summer heat. The United States dropped a second atomic bomb on the southern city of Nagasaki on August 9. Six days later, Japan surrendered. Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba lamented the world's growing tendency to forget the horrors of the atomic bomb and warned his audience that the dangers of nuclear war were rising. "For the victims of the atomic bomb...once again, a hot and bitter summer has returned," Akiba said. "With the return of the heat, the memories of that misery also return. "What is even more bitter is that those memories are fading from the world," he said. He added that the possibility of history's repeating itself had grown since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Akiba invited Bush to Hiroshima "to confirm with his own eyes what nuclear weapons can do to human beings" and lashed out at Washington's go-it-alone stance. "America has not been given the right to impose a 'Pax Americana' and to decide the fate of the world," Akiba said. "Rather, we, the people of the world, have the right to insist that we have not given you the authority to destroy the world." JAPAN'S NUCLEAR STANCE While Japan each year solemnly mourns its own war dead, less attention is paid to the victims of its military aggression and hardly any to the fact that its own military was engaged in research on an atomic bomb during World War Two. In a small but timely reminder of that research, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said at the weekend that secret documents on Japan's nuclear efforts, taken out of the country in 1949, had been returned to the institute in charge of the research. Historians have long known about the research, although how much progress was made is a subject of debate. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged at the memorial to keep Japan's decades-old ban on nuclear weapons -- a stance which was called into question earlier this year when one of his key cabinet ministers suggested the policy might change someday. "Resolved not to repeat the calamities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our nation -- the only one to experience an atomic bombing -- has obeyed our peace constitution and preserved its three non-nuclear principles not to have, make or import nuclear weapons," Koizumi said. "There is no change in that stance." Conservative politicians, however, have become more outspoken in challenging Japan's postwar pacifism and recent legislation has tested the limits on the ban on war imposed by the US-drafted constitution. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, a close Koizumi aide, came under fire in June for hinting Japan might revise its "three non-nuclear principles" adopted in 1971. Fears over domestic and diplomatic fallout have usually meant that politicians are forced to retract any suggestion Japan should arm itself with nuclear weapons. Fukuda later said his remarks had been blown out of proportion. ***************************************************************** 21 Hiroshima mayor faults 'unilateralism' of U.S. foreign policy Buffalo News - By MICHAEL ZIELENZIGER 8/6/2002 TOKYO - In an unusually severe protest against U.S. foreign policy, the mayor of Hiroshima used today's anniversary of the atomic bombing of his city during World War II to denounce the "unilateralism" of the Bush administration. "The United States government has no right to force Pax Americana on the rest of us or to unilaterally determine the fate of the world," Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said during a solemn ceremony marking the 57th anniversary of the nuclear destruction of his southern Japanese city. "On the contrary, we, the people of the world, have the right to demand "no annihilation without representation,' " the mayor said, urging the Japanese government to protest U.S. military policy. The mayor's statement comes as many of America's allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia are openly criticizing reports that the Bush administration is preparing to launch a military offensive against Iraq. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has said he would like Japan to support the American fight against terrorism, but last weekend leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party indicated that it would be difficult for the nation to cooperate with the United States if it attacks Iraq. Taku Yamasaki, secretary general of the party, said the "harsh reality" was that a new Japanese law designed to give logistical support to U.S. forces in the war on terrorism could not be invoked to help a new American offensive unless certain conditions were met. Specifically, he said any attack would have to be sanctioned by the United Nations or be "deeply connected" to the fight against terrorism. "These are the minimum conditions," Yamasaki said. "Even so, it's difficult (to cooperate)." Koizumi and other national dignitaries sat in the audience today as Akiba, 59, a former associate professor of mathematics at Tufts University near Boston, made his remarks, which were televised across the nation. Traditionally, Japanese observe a moment of silence at 8:15 a.m. Aug. 6 to mark the moment the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the city. The blast vaporized the central city and killed as many as 350,000 people within days. An additional 90,000 died later from radiation sickness. A second atomic bomb was dropped three days later on Nagasaki, hastening the end of World War II. An estimated 80,000 survivors of the attacks still suffer from radiation-related illnesses. Every year on Aug. 6, Hiroshima releases a peace declaration, urging the world's governments to abandon nuclear weapons and work toward peace. But it is rare for the city to specifically criticize U.S. foreign policy. Akiba, in an interview, said he was not "anti-American," having worked and reared a son in the United States. But he said the Bush administration had diverged from a policy of "mutual tolerance" first enunciated by President John F. Kennedy. "I am reminding Americans what the American tradition is," Akiba said, adding that he thought "a majority of the world" was worried about what he called America's "increasing unilateralism." Copyright © 1999 - 2002 The Buffalo NewsTM ***************************************************************** 22 Nuclear special: The new nukes Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | [http://talk.guardian.co.uk] Chatroom of the week The US is developing a range of handy, 'low-yield' bombs - and it's prepared to use them. Richard Norton-Taylor reports Tuesday August 6, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] For the first time since the height of the cold war, the US is seriously contemplating the use of nuclear weapons. But this time they would not be used, as they would have been then, against another nuclear power. The proposal is that they would be used against countries developing weapons of mass destruction - chemical and biological as well as nuclear weapons. Last week the Pentagon, for the first time, secured funds from Congress to develop "mini-nukes", low-yield nuclear weapons designed in particular to destroy underground bunkers. The plan to build a new generation of nuclear weapons, military analysts say, is behind the growing pressure on the White House to withdraw from the comprehensive test-ban treaty. American nuclear scientists last week also secured an agreement whereby tests on new warheads could start within a year of any request, rather than the existing mandatory delay of three years. They have been instructed to drill new boreholes in the test grounds of the Nevada desert. "Part of American thinking is that some tasks cannot be achieved without using nuclear weapons," says Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford. All this was foreshadowed by the leaking, in March, of the Pentagon's "nuclear posture review". The classified document blurs the long-accepted distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons. It foresees the use of nuclear weapons in three scenarios: against targets able to withstand attacks by non-nuclear weapons (such as underground bunkers); in retaliation for an attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; and "in the event of surprising military developments", such as an "Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbours, or a North Korean attack on South Korea or a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan". "North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya are among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies," it says. The review shows how the Pentagon unashamedly seeks to claim some kind of moral high ground: new kinds of nuclear warheads, it says, could actually reduce "collateral damage". What it is saying is that small nuclear weapons might kill fewer civilians than conventional weapons. Such an assertion contradicts scientific studies about the short- and long-term consequences of radiation resulting from a nuclear blast - even from a low-yield weapon striking a deep-underground bunker. According to William Peden, a Greenpeace expert, even a small nuclear weapon would kill thousands, and thousands more would suffer from burns, radiation sickness, blindness and other injuries leading to genetic deformities - as happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A weapon of five kilotons or even one kiloton - the Hiroshima bomb, regarded today as tiny, was 15 kilotons - would be extremely dangerous, precisely because the military would regard it as "usable", Peden says. The Washington-based Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), which campaigns for nuclear disarmament, says that an attack on Saddam Hussein's presidential bunker in Baghdad with a B61-11 bomb, for example, "could cause upwards of 20,000 deaths". Even Nato admits that "any nuclear weapons use would be absolutely catastrophic in human and environmental terms... Such human cost would ensure an enormous political cost for any nation that chose to use nuclear weapons, particularly in a first strike." But, of course, not everyone agrees, or at least not everyone is listening. One keen advocate of small, precision-guided, low-yield nuclear weapons is Stephen Younger, a former director of the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory and now head of America's Defence Threat Reduction Agency, responsible for "counter-proliferation" programmes. " Nuclear weapons pack an incredible destructive force into a small, deliverable package," Younger wrote last year in a paper entitled Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century. A report published last year by America's National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative thinktank, declared that "nuclear weapons can... be used in counter-force attacks that are intended to neutralise enemy military capabilities". The authors of the report include Stephen Cambone, now a senior Pentagon policy-making official; Stephen Hadley, George Bush's deputy national security adviser; Robert Joseph, a member of the national security council, and William Schneider, one of Bush's defence advisers. "The old doctrine was that nuclear weapons were far too big and nasty to use, and now they've moved towards developing nuclear weapons they can actually use," says Peden. And, as the defence analyst Dan Plesch puts it, by developing a missile-defence system in combination with new nuclear weapons, the Bush administration is "extending the notion of casualty-free war to nuclear war". Washington's new policy directly contradicts the so-called "negative security assurances", the official policy of the US, whereby Washington has pledged not to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear-armed state "unless that state attacks the US or its allies in association with a nuclear-weapons state". Meanwhile, the British government, which abandoned Labour's traditional "no first use" policy after the 1997 general election, appears to have adopted the emerging US nuclear doctrine allowing for pre-emptive strikes against a state that has no weapons of mass destruction, if it is perceived to be a threat. Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, told MPs earlier this year: "I am absolutely confident, in the right conditions, we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons." However, he also said he was less confident that they would deter "states of concern" - a reference to Iraq in particular - from threatening or attacking Britain with weapons of mass destruction. He later insisted that the government "reserved the right" to use nuclear weapons if Britain or British troops deployed abroad were threatened by chemical or biological weapons. The government has declined to enter into any debate about nuclear weapons policy, refusing to explain what it meant when it referred to the Trident missile's "sub-strategic" role in its 1998 strategic defence review. (The smallest nuclear weapon that Britain's Trident could deliver now would be 100 kilotons, which is a "city destroyer".) The government is also investing more than £2bn in the atomic weapons establishment at Aldermaston, where nuclear warheads are designed. Scientists from the centre have been stepping up their visits to nuclear laboratories in the US. Defenders of nuclear weapons have always insisted that they are needed as a deterrent. Britain and the US appear to be admitting that this is no longer the case. Useful links British Nuclear Fuels Ltd [http://www.bnfl.co.uk/website.nsf/default.htm] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament [http://www.cnduk.org/] HSE nuclear glossary [http://www.hse.gov.uk/nsd/ilrwglos.htm] UK atomic energy authority [http://www.ukaea.org.uk/] National Radiological Protection Board [http://www.nrpb.org.uk/] World Nuclear Association [http://www.uilondon.org/] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 23 Stepping back from the brink Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Nuclear special The democratisation of Pakistan is our best chance of avoiding a nuclear war over Kashmir Benazir Bhutto Tuesday August 6, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] At CIA headquarters on the banks of Washington's Potomac river, analysts review intelligence from vast human and technological sources. Each day, working with sister agencies including Britain's MI6 and Israel's Mossad, it determines possible sources of international conflict that could include weapons of mass destruction. For 15 years, the unanimous consensus has been that the place most likely to trigger a nuclear confrontation, and spark Armageddon, is south Asia. The issue is Kashmir. Nuclear deterrence - the centrepiece of military strategy for both of south Asia's nuclear powers - was designed to prevent conflict. Yet since India detonated nuclear devices in 1998, and Pakistan responded in kind, south Asia has thrice come to the brink of war. Deterrence value was replaced with an intoxicating sense of power and glory. That emotion churns the street and excites the barracks. I call it the Hijacker Atta Syndrome: "I may die but I will take more down with me." Intelligence estimates, backed by published reports, suggest that a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, even if limited to five or six primary targets on each side, would cause millions of immediate deaths, and millions more after long and dreadful suffering from ensuing cancer on both sides of the border for decades to come. Unfortunately, in both Islamabad and Delhi the foxes may be in charge of the chicken coops. With the military in Pakistan and Hindu nationalist hardliners in Delhi firmly in control, the options for dialogue and confidence-building appear remote. When two sides believe they can both gain from a military conflict, it makes the world a much more dangerous place. The danger to the region increases with a military dictatorship in Pakistan unaccountable to the people. History teaches us that democracies don't start wars, especially nuclear wars. With a military junta in Islamabad, and the world distracted by the US-led war against terrorism, the "public check" on political decision-making in the country has ceased to exist. I believe the people of south Asia deserve a future that is better than the recent past. If India and Pakistan disagree on the territorial nature of Kashmir, we can still move ahead without prejudice to our long-held beliefs. The nuclear war threat can recede if the leadership on both sides of the divide has the courage to promote safe and open borders to socially unite the Kashmiri people. The Kashmiri people are central to the dispute and it is the responsibility of the leadership on both sides of the divide to put these people first. If China and India can have a border dispute and still trade, India and Pakistan can do the same. In the absence of an elected civilian leadership in Pakistan that is accountable to the people, however, the possibility of such a dialogue is remote. The worry is that the pattern of militant acts provoking a near-nuclear confrontation will continue at regular intervals until it erupts into a full-fledged nuclear war. In the post-nuclear-detonation region that south Asia has been since 1998, those who live there can ill afford a military conflict. In the post-September 11 world, the Kashmiri people can ill afford a world community where terrorism and armed conflict by an occupied people is still to be distinguished. Catastrophe could also be triggered by accident: with artillery shells whizzing over the line of control when tension rises, hundreds of thousands of troops poised to strike, and elements on both sides willing to throw a match on to the fire, the situation is precarious. Press reports indicate that nuclear weapons could be given to individual commanders with independent launch control. It is not clear whether these reports are accurate, but if so, the probability of an accidental launch jumps sharply. And with tension so high, an accident could never possibly be explained away and controlled. The genie would be out of the jar for the first time in 57 years. With the doomsday scenarios in front of us, what can be done to prevent the insanity? To return to an earlier point, democracies don't start wars; democracies don't provoke wars. Each of the three wars between India and Pakistan was fought under military dictators in Pakistan. The last three major incidents that brought the world to the precipice of nuclear war surfaced after my democratic government was overthrown and the military established ascendancy in the political arena. The best prospect for peace in south Asia is to support the democratisation process in Pakistan. The past three years have seen three nuclear crises. The next three years could see even more. Each month of military dictatorship brings us closer to Armageddon. Political power must be transferred legally, peacefully and subject to the will of the people. Commentators believe that my party and I would be re-elected if transparent elections were held in Pakistan in October. The international community could use its full resources to guarantee a fair and transparent electoral process by pressuring the military regime to implement opposition proposals for such a process. The alternative is for the world community to be repeatedly sucked back into the region. The world walked away from democratising Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviets in 1989. That departure led directly to the Talibanisation of the country and the September 11 atrocities. Walking away from democratisation of nuclear-armed Pakistan could lead to even more horrific results. The ball is in the international community's court. The stakes are nothing less than saving the world from nuclear war. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 24 How to make a dirty bomb Guardian Unlimited | They say it's easy to build your own atomic weapon. Is it? Jon Ronson takes a crash course Tuesday August 6, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] It is a Monday in July and I have been commanded by the Guardian to attempt to purchase the materials needed to build a nuclear bomb. The enduring rumour is that anyone with a fanatical resolve can build one in their "garage or basement". Is this true? Actually, I can report that it is not proving to be chillingly easy, which is good news for humanity, but bad news for me personally as I was hoping this article would provide a shocking insight. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists writes: "Producing either uranium-235 or plutonium-239 in the quantities needed to make nuclear weapons is extraordinarily difficult and expensive. [Nuclear-bomb makers] must be prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, or even billions." I consequently downgrade my ambition to building a dirty bomb - a conventional bomb mixed with radioactive material - instead. I am a novice in this matter. Not only is my knowledge of the necessary physics sketchy at best (I got 9% in my mock physics O-level) but my resources are extremely limited. The Guardian has told me not to go crazy with the expenses. I don't even have a garage or a basement; those things are pricey in north London. Nor do I have good contacts with the keepers of already established nuclear arsenals. In short, my position is presumably akin to that of a fledgling, eager-to-impress al-Qaida operative. Admittedly I do not possess a fanatical resolve, but my determination to make this article a dramatic revelation is fanaticism of a sort. When I call Matthew Bunn, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative thinktank in Washington DC, he says he is a little worried about this idea. "One does not want to provide a cookbook for terrorists," he says. None the less, he recommends that I try Russia. "If I was building a dirty bomb," he says, "that's what I would do. In the nuclear age, they were building nuclear airplanes and nuclear rocket-ships. They were digging canals using nuclear bombs. There was a great deal of nuclear enthusiasm, and now loads of these big, hulking, nasty radioactive sources are scattered around all over. Those are the absolute worst. And loads are still missing in breakaway republics." He tells me about the Georgian woodcutters who were scouting around the forests of Lja last Christmas. "They saw this thing - the snow was melted all around it - and thought, hey, we'll take it back to our camp site and keep ourselves warm. Whoops." The thing was a thermonuclear generator. The woodcutters were in intensive care for months. "A lot of the smugglers in Russia," he adds, "are guys who don't know shit from Shinola. We're talking about some guy who works in a power plant hiding some stuff in his pocket and wandering around aimlessly, chatting people up. One guy had an insulated glove filled with uranium in his freezer for months." I call Imogen Edwards-Jones, author of the chick-lit novel about the London party circuit, My Canapé Hell. Edwards-Jones is also - unlike many chick-lit novelists - a long-standing chronicler of the Russian mafia. I ask her to put me in touch with a uranium smuggler. She seems a little reluctant. "The uranium guys are fucking frightening," she says, but she eventually agrees to try. A few days later she calls me back. "Well, I spoke to my mafia contacts," she says. "And?" I ask. "They laughed," she says. "They laughed and said, 'Oh shut up.'" She pauses. "The uranium people are the absolute top level of criminality. One guy I know ended up being skinned alive in the back of his car. Another guy I know was beheaded in his office." "OK," I say. "Another guy's girlfriend was found chopped up in Sainsbury bags in Greece," she adds. "They keep going after you." She tells me that if I persevere, I should watch out for men wearing good suits. "The smarter someone's suit, the dirtier their soul," she says. I resign myself to the task of heading to Chechnya to scout around the forests and make contact with frightening men. Then it dawns on me - I really don't need to go to all that trouble. A dirty-bomb maker who wants an easy life could get radioactive material in a far simpler way. A few years ago, a nuclear burial ground was raided by Chechen militants. Nobody knows how much was stolen because the Russian authorities can't find anyone willing to dig the rest of it up to see what was missing. When castigated for their hamfistedness, the authorities responded by saying that the west should not feel too superior because, since 1996, US businesses have misplaced some 1,500 pieces of equipment that include radioactive parts. I call the National Nuclear Security Administration in Las Vegas, which is in charge of getting them back. Its surveillance teams are apparently patrolling cities with unmarked vans containing gamma-ray and neutron detectors on a daily basis. "We have the wherewithal to search for these things," says Darwin Morgan, its public affairs spokesman, "and if we find them, we also have the resources to render them safe. We're a team made up of scientists. Eggheads, if you will." "What kind of stuff has gone missing?" I ask. "Density gauges," he says. "Local departments of transportation have a commonly used piece of equipment called a density gauge. It's used to test the compaction of recently compacted roads. It contains nuclear material." "Do lots of density gauges go missing?" I ask. "Quite a few," says Darwin. "There was one in Florida recently. They called on us." "Did you find it?" I ask. "No," says Darwin. "How many density gauges would one need to make a dirty bomb?" I ask. "I don't know," he says. "You'd have to ask someone who knows how to make bombs." "Like who?" I ask. "Well," he sniffs. "There are some 'thinktanks' in Washington who claim to have knowledge of such things." I've never heard the phrase 'thinktanks' uttered with such disdain. I call Matthew Bunn back. "Is one density gauge enough to make a dirty bomb?" I ask him. "It depends on your goal," he says. "Do you want to scare a lot of people?" "I haven't really thought about it," I say. "OK. Yes." I think both of us are uncomfortable about me adopting the terrorist persona. "At what level do you want to scare them?" he says. "A lot," I say. "Well," he says, "at any detectable level of radioactivity, people would get scared. So milligrams of the stuff would be sufficient. Just put it in a box with some Semtex and boom. Billions on clean-up, but hardly anybody dead, and life goes on. In a realistic dirty-bomb scenario, you'll have more people killed in traffic accidents fleeing from the scene than dying of cancer. You and I have a 20% chance of dying of cancer - although I can hear you smoking a cigarette, so your chances are substantially higher. With a dirty bomb, the chances rise to approximately 21%." "And a density gauge?" I ask. "Yes," says Matthew. "That would be enough to cause moderate annoyance. You'd have many city blocks evacuated." I decide to try and buy some radioactive material on the internet. I learn of two auction houses based in Great Neck, New York - Uranium-Online and NukeAuction.com. Both are managed by something called the New York Nuclear Corporation (NYNC). It specialises, somewhat unnervingly, in real-time nuclear material online auctions. I get the corporation's number from directory enquiries. I expect to be transferred from department to department within some giant conglomerate, but when I call, it sounds as if the NYNC is actually a couple of men sitting in a room. The chief executive officer picks up the telephone himself. He says his name is Joe. "We're just a few people," confirms Joe. "My partner is an attorney. I'm a nuclear engineer. We saw that other commodities were being auctioned online and we figured we could try the same thing with nuclear fuel." I offer Joe the scenario that I am a fanatic with a nefarious intent, and I sternly explain that it is important for him to answer my questions candidly because my readers are concerned. He agrees. "Can I, a fanatic, bid for uranium in one of your auctions?" I ask him. "The auction is passworded and by invitation only," he replies. "I guess your scenario is theoretically possible if you managed to get yourself a password. But the buyers and sellers all know each other, it's a very private industry, and when the winner is selected, they talk to each other. They deal directly. So you could ruin the auction, but you could never take possession of the uranium." I log on to Ask Jeeves and type, 'Where can I buy some uranium?' Jeeves responds, 'You can find anything at eBay. eBay has everything you're looking for. Find it all at eBay.' So I type uranium into the eBay search box, and discover that by happy chance - I guess - there will be a uranium auction in exactly two hours and 46 minutes. The description of the item being auctioned reads: "This is uranium-238. The vile [sic] and the uranium weighs 22 grams. I wouldn't breathe the stuff or use it as seasoning on food but other than that you shouldn't have any trouble. I'm moving to the Philippines next year and I know they would frown on this coming into their country. I am 73. I sold my .38 revolver because the only people allowed to have lethal weapons in the Philippines are terrorists. I got this vile [sic] as a going-away present when I worked at the Texas-Zinc Minerals Corporation in Mexican Hat, Utah." There have already been three bidders, the top bid being $18.41. I call Matthew Bunn and ask him if 22g of uranium-238 would suffice for a dirty bomb. "Not very interesting," he says. "It's used for ballast in ships. The US has thousands of tonnes of it that it is desperate to get rid of. I haven't even thought about uranium-238. If I was building a dirty bomb, you know what I'd get my hands on?" "What?" I ask. "One of those machines they use to kill bacteria in meat in a food-processing plant. It contains cobalt-60. If you burst one successfully, blam! That would be a really big disaster. Although they emit shards as opposed to inhalable particles. But there are clever things you can do to turn shards into inhalable particles." I call the McDonald's corporation. "I'm from the Guardian," I say, "and we're doing a special issue commemorating the horrific destruction in Hiroshima, so I'm calling McDonald's because..." "Hmm?" says the press officer, a little defensively. She is clearly wondering in what way the Guardian is about to blame McDonald's for Hiroshima. I ask her if any of their meat processing plants use cobalt-60 and she says she will get back to me. She does, with unmistakable joy and relief in her voice. "McDonald's does not use irradiated meat," she says. "And anyway, it's illegal in this country." The Food Commission confirms this, although - it says - there is one plant in England that uses cobalt-60 to irradiate herbs and spices. The US, however, routinely zaps red meat with cobalt-60, and the Australian wool industry also zaps in bulk for export. The US alone has 40 food sterilisation centres, and there are 120 more worldwide. Thousands of cobalt-60 rods are used. The Organic Consumers Association reports that food- irradiation facilities are "poorly guarded", but Neil Sheehan of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission contends that "an individual physically handling an unshielded single-source rod would receive a lethal (death within weeks) dose in about a minute". I have now upgraded myself to a suicide dirty-bomb maker, so that's no longer an issue. I call Matthew Bunn. "OK," I say. "Let's say I've got some cobalt-60. How do I cleverly turn the shards into inhalable particles?" There is a short silence. "I'm not going to tell you," he says. Is this reticence due to his earlier warning that I ought not provide a "cookbook for terrorists," or is it something more embarrassing? Has it just crossed his mind that I am an actual terrorist pretending to be a Guardian journalist? Maybe, in the end, the best way for a terrorist to make a dirty bomb is to pretend to be a Guardian journalist and phone a bunch of scientists and academics for excellent insider tips. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 25 Remembering Hiroshima* deseretnews.com Tuesday, August 6, 2002 /Shizuo Kambayahsi, Associated Press/ A couple offers prayers during a ceremony at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park Tuesday morning to mark the moment on Aug. 6, 1945, when a bomb, dropped from a U.S. B-29 plane, enshrouded the city in a mushroom cloud. Emi Iwasawa, right, makes a sketch of the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima. The world's first atomic bomb attack killed about 140,000 people and sickened thousands more in Hiroshima. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, ending World War II. More than 30,000 survivors, residents and dignitaries from around the world gathered in the memorial park to mark the 57th anniversary of the attack. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reaffirmed Japan's policy against building or possessing nuclear weapons. Nine-year-old Emi Iwasawa, right, makes a sketch of the Atomic-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2002 as the western Japanese city marked the 57th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack. /Shizuo Kambayahsi, Associated Press/ © 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 26 Could terrorists build the bomb? Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies, University of Bradford Tuesday August 6, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] There are two issues to consider when dealing with the possibility of paramilitary groups getting hold of weapons-grade nuclear material. The first is motivation. There are few groups that are interested in causing mass casualties; it is often counter-productive to their interests. The only groups which would be interested in mass casualties are the Tamil Tigers, al-Qaida and, possibly, rightwing groups in the US. There are also some very competent groups, such as the Provisional IRA, which could get hold of nuclear material to produce dirty bombs. However, nuclear material is not easy stuff to handle. The second problem is technical. The efforts by the western states to control former Soviet stock have been too little, too late. The foreign states who were meant to be putting a lot of money into this became bound up with bureaucracy. The Germans were quite good, the Americans nominally so, but there is still a huge question over the security of weapons-grade nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. Radioactive material that could be used to build a contaminating bomb may have already found its way into the hands of paramilitary groups. There is a strong probability that a well-organised, properly funded international group, especially one linked to Russian criminal factions, could get hold of material to make bombs that could contaminate a city centre - they might not kill anybody, but they would contaminate the city for weeks, months or years. That's the most likely risk. Finally, tens of thousands of containers come into Europe or north America every day, so there is a huge amount of material in which illicit bombs could be hidden. An excellent intelligence network is needed, but conventional intelligence doesn't work with covert groups such as al-Qaida. Goods can only be monitored by thorough customs inspections, but commercial factors dictate against that. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 27 Nuclear stance roadblock on path to free trade* Thursday August 08, 2002 06.08.2002 By NICK PERRY and BRIAN FALLOW New Zealand's nuclear-free stance has again arisen as a threat to a free-trade agreement with the United States. Even as the Senate approved legislation on Friday that gives President George W. Bush fast-track authority to negotiate trade deals with foreign nations, power players in Washington said long-simmering tensions over the nuclear issue had resurfaced and could prove a major, perhaps insurmountable, barrier to a deal. Fred Benson, president of the US-NZ Council in Washington, said US officials who were involved in embarrassing blunders in the 1980s, including sending a ship that was refused entry to a New Zealand port, now held key positions in the Bush Administration. "They are very senior people now," Benson said. "They still carry a little grudge about being involved in that." Benson said he rated the nuclear issue a 10 out of 10 on a scale of hurdles to a trade deal. Concerns over pharmaceutical sales rated about a five on that scale, he said, and agricultural issues even lower. Benson said he was surprised how quickly the nuclear issue had resurfaced. "A year ago it did not seem to be something that would become that significant." Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn, a Republican from the Seattle area who has long championed a trade deal with New Zealand, said Bush's Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told her recently that the nuclear stance was a problem. "Right now it does cause some folks in Congress some concern," Dunn said. "It could be used by opponents to a point where it is a real problem. It could be exploited." Dunn said there was a real buzz around Congress about the prospects of a deal with Australia, which would probably come after mid-term elections in November. But nobody was talking about a deal with New Zealand. "People haven't focused on a New Zealand agreement," she said. "I tend to be the one who brings it up." Zoellick and others had referred to concerns about the nuclear issue in public and semi-public statements, said the New Zealand Ambassador in Washington, John Wood, although nothing had been raised formally. The nuclear issue had been an issue with the US since 1985, he said. "Representatives of this Administration have always been concerned about the anti-nuclear stance and continue to be concerned." In the past, both countries had been careful not to let the nuclear issue spill over into trade talks, Wood said. He said he supported an Australia-US trade deal, which he hoped would pave the way for a similar deal with New Zealand. But should the Australian deal go ahead while New Zealand was left in the cold, it would be a real concern. On Saturday, Zoellick's spokesman, Richard Mills, declined to comment on whether any progress was being made toward a US-New Zealand free trade agreement. Zoellick himself said: "With Trade Promotion Authority, we will be able to complete free trade agreements with Chile and Singapore in short order. "With TPA, we are able to consider free trade agreements with other nations, such as Australia and in Southern Africa." Asked if New Zealand should re-think its nuclear-free stance, Benson said the issue might be moot, as US naval ships no longer carried nuclear weapons. Ships propelled by nuclear power had proven safe, he said. Fonterra chief executive Craig Norgate, who chairs the New Zealand-US council, has called for concerted political support for a US-New Zealand free trade agreement. "We cannot afford trade to become a political football," Norgate said. "When I was in Washington last week it became very apparent to me that our cause would not be advanced without strong political backing in New Zealand. "I call on political parties which are pro-growth and recognise the importance of a closer economic partnership with the US to declare their support for this key national objective." National's trade spokesman, Lockwood Smith, wants a commission of inquiry into the issues causing the US to remain silent on the prospects of a bilateral deal. "The very action of doing that could break the impasse," he said. "As well as the defence relationship, I'm advised there are a range of issues involved, from the labelling of biotech products, through agriculture and phytosanitary matters, parallel importing, as well as the activities of Pharmac and the way it handles the importation of pharmaceuticals." Trade Minister Jim Sutton said: "We have made sure that New Zealand's interest in a bilateral agreement with the United States is known at the highest levels of the Administration. "The Prime Minister raised New Zealand's interest in an agreement with President Bush in Washington in March. She also discussed the issue with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Trade Representative Bob Zoellick." New Zealand officials were continuing to build support, he said. *Trade * Nuclear stance roadblock on path to free trade ©Copyright 2002, New Zealand Herald ***************************************************************** 28 Hiroshima commemorating 57th anniversary of atomic bombing japantoday Tuesday, August 6, 2002 at 09:20 JST HIROSHIMA ? The city of Hiroshima on Tuesday commemorates the 57th anniversary of its atomic bombing in 1945 by reiterating its pledge to continue to promote peace and expressing concern at the threat of nuclear war. Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba will deliver an annual peace declaration in which he is expected to vow to do his utmost "to create a 'century of peace and humanity'." At the same time, however, Akiba will say, "The probabilities that nuclear weapons will be used and the danger of nuclear war are increasing." Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will attend the ceremony in the Peace Memorial Park in Naka Ward, his second attendance at the event. The 50-minute ceremony will start with Akiba and two representatives of A-bomb victims' family putting two books under an arch-shaped cenotaph in the park which list the names of 4,977 more people recognized as A-bomb victims by the city government since Aug 6 last year. In a speech, Koizumi is expected to reiterate his pledge to maintain Japan's three avowed principles of not producing, not possessing and not allowing nuclear arms on its soil. About 2,000 people from across Japan prayed in an event Monday evening at Peace Memorial Park for the atomic bomb victims. During the "Peace Candle" event, about 2,000 people surrounded the A-bomb dome in the park and after silent prayers lit up the dome with green penlights. The number of victims from the atomic bombing of the city totaled 226,870 as of Monday. The blast and its aftereffects killed an estimated 140,000 people by the end of 1945. Japan Today Discussion ***************************************************************** 29 Japan PM reaffirms anti-nuclear policy * /online.ie 06 Aug 2002/ As thousands assembled in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park to mark the 57th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack today, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reaffirmed Japan's policy against building or possessing nuclear weapons. In April, Koizumi's Cabinet spokesman sparked controversy when he said that Japan is not legally prohibited from having nuclear arms - an assertion interpreted by some as a major shift in the country's long-standing anti-nuclear policy. Koizumi has repeatedly tried to quell the controversy and again stressed Japan's no-nuclear policy at his second appearance at the annual Hiroshima event. "As the only country in history to have experienced atomic bombings, I would like to underline Japan's unwavering commitment to its war-renouncing constitution and its three principles: non-possession, non-production and non-entry of nuclear weapons," Koizumi said. At the ceremony, a lone bell rang out to mark the day 57 years ago when Hiroshima city was flattened by the world's first atomic bomb attack. More than 30,000 survivors, residents and dignitaries from around the world bowed their heads for 60 seconds of silence at 8.15am local time (12.15am Irish time) - the moment on August 6, 1945, when the bomb was dropped from a US B-29 plane and enshrouded the city in a mushroom cloud. Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba urged countries to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, even as nuclear-armed India and Pakistan remain on the brink of war in the hotly contested region of Kashmir. "The probability that nuclear weapons will be used again and the danger of nuclear war are increasing," Akiba said in the annual peace declaration. "Today, we vow to do our utmost to create a century of peace and humanity." The bomb killed about 140,000 people and sickened hundreds of thousands more in Hiroshima, 430 miles southwest of Tokyo. Three days later, a US bomber dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing 70,000 people. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, ending World War II. During the ceremony, 1,500 white doves were released into the sky. Five hundred children sang a song of peace to an orchestral accompaniment. The memorial in Hiroshima includes the names of more than 200,000 people who were in the city on the day of the bombing. Every year, the names of those who have died since the previous year's anniversary are added to the cenotaph. On Thursday, ceremonies are to be held to mark the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, on the southernmost main island of Kyushu. online.ie ***************************************************************** 30 Hiroshima mayor calls on the U.S. to 'sever the chain of hatred'* By TAKUYA ASAKURA Staff writer HIROSHIMA -- On the 57th anniversary of the first atomic bombing, the view from this reborn city was of a world that since Sept. 11 has turned its back on the message of the bomb's survivors. During the anniversary ceremony on Tuesday, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba strongly criticized what he described as the unilateral approach of the United States administration of George W. Bush in dealing with global problems. "The United States government has no right to force Pax Americana on the rest of us, or unilaterally determine the fate of the world," Akiba said in the city's annual peace declaration at Peace Memorial Park in Naka Ward. "The probability that nuclear weapons will be used and the danger of nuclear war are increasing," especially in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., to which the Bush administration responded with its war on terrorism. "The path of reconciliation, severing the chain of hatred, violence and retaliation, so long advocated by the survivors (of the 1945 atomic bombing) has been abandoned," Akiba said. The annual memorial was the first for atomic-bomb victims since the Sept. 11 attacks on Washington and New York and the start of the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan. Delivering the declaration, Akiba urged Bush to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to "confirm with his own eyes what nuclear weapons hold in store for us all." Akiba also demanded that the Japanese government preserve its war-renouncing Constitution and not make Japan "a 'normal country' capable of making war like all other nations." Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who also attended the ceremony, said in his speech that there will be no change in Japan's three avowed principles of not producing, not possessing and not allowing nuclear arms on its soil. Koizumi also said that Tokyo will continue its efforts to call on other countries to join the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and have the pact enforced in the near future. Other participants included Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi, whose ministry deals with assistance for atomic-bomb survivors, House of Councilors President Hiroyuki Kurata, Hiroshima Gov. Yuzan Fujita, Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito and Ramesh Thakur, vice rector of the United Nations University. Among the estimated 45,000 other people present was Rita Lasar, a retired businesswoman from New York who lost her brother in the terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center. She has criticized the Bush administration for justifying U.S. bombing in Afghanistan in the names of the victims of the terrorist attacks, including her brother. The Hiroshima Municipal Government has invited ambassadors of seven countries that possess nuclear arms to attend the ceremony since 1998, but only representatives from the Russian and Indian embassies attended. No U.S. government representatives were present. The 50-minute ceremony started at 8 a.m. with citizens presenting offerings of pure water taken from springs around the city to the arch-shaped cenotaph, in memory of the victims who died in desperate need of water. The mayor and two citizens then placed two books listing 4,977 people whom the city recognized as victims of the attack over the past year in the cenotaph. Koizumi, Akiba, other guests and representatives of survivors and local residents then placed flowers in front of the cenotaph. As the peace bell resounded through the park, the participants at 8:15 observed a minute of silence in memory of the victims. It was at that time 57 years ago that the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb. As of Monday, the number of victims of the blast confirmed by the city totaled 226,870, including an estimated 140,000 who had died by the end of 1945. An 80-year-old Hiroshima woman attending the service said she can still recall the mushroom cloud she saw from the suburbs of the city. "I feel pain to see people keep fighting in Palestine or children in Africa suffering in poverty," she said. While memories of the tragedy seem to have faded gradually as survivors have grown older, hibakusha still have problems that are yet to be resolved by the government. Last month, 76 hibakusha nationwide filed applications with prefectural governments across the country demanding official recognition as sufferers of radiation sickness. Although the government provides officially recognized patients of radiation-caused illnesses with 140,000 yen in medical benefits each month, it has so far granted official status to only about 0.7 percent of the estimated 285,000 people who were recognized as having been exposed to atomic bomb radiation. Groups of hibakusha have criticized the government, saying the system to recognize illnesses caused by radiation is too rigid. Hibakusha living outside Japan are also demanding that the government provide them with the same level of assistance granted to those who reside in Japan. Koizumi nuclear pledge HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged on Tuesday, the 57th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, to pursue a world free of nuclear weapons and to maintain Japan's no-nuclear-arms principles. "Now that the danger of terrorism is real, we (Japanese) need to make efforts to abolish nuclear arsenals, as the only nation in the world to have been attacked with the weapon," Koizumi told reporters at Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. Japan must tell the world how terrible an atomic bomb attack can be, he said. The prime minister also said his Cabinet will adhere to Japan's three principles of not producing, possessing or allowing the entry of nuclear weapons into the country. Concern has arisen, particularly in neighboring parts of Asia, that Japan may revise its no-nuclear-weapons policy, following remarks earlier this year by key members of the Cabinet. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told reporters in late May, asking them not to name him, that Japan could possibly revise its no-nuclear policy in the future, depending on the global security situation. Fukuda told reporters Tuesday in Tokyo that Japan will strive to create an international environment in which no nuclear weapons would be used. He said he believes the world has come to share the view that such arms must be abolished. Koizumi, commenting on his absence from a Hiroshima meeting with atomic bomb survivors Tuesday, said he is always trying to understand the reality of the bomb survivors' plight, even though he did not meet them in Hiroshima this year. "I listened to them last year," Koizumi said. Koizumi skipped the annual meeting, in which the survivors usually tell prime ministers what they expect in the way of governmental measures to help them. The meetings began in 1976. Koizumi is the first prime minister to attend the Hiroshima peace ceremony without attending the survivors' gathering. Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi attended that meeting. Later on Tuesday, Koizumi visited Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims to attend its inauguration ceremony. He offered flowers and a golden paper crane he folded in memory of the victims. *The Japan Times: Aug. 7, 2002* (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 31 Pakinstan: Uranium deposits found in Kirthar range / Updated on 2002-08-06 14:02:52/ *KARACHI, August 06 (PNS): Oxidised uranium mineralisation has been found in the Manchar Formation (Kirthar Range) in Sindh for the first time which, along with other favourable indicators, is 'a significant development'' making it a prime target for uranium exploration. * Assay of selected samples showed uranium values up to 4.5 per cent U3O8. This followed detailed geological studies carried out by Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) scientists in the area. Manchar Formation attracted little attention due to inhospitable working conditions and failure of earlier aero-radiometric surveys to detect anomalous radioactivity. Approximately 200-kilometre area was foot prospected, which revealed six major uranium showings in lower Manchar Formation in the Wahi Pandi, Karunuk (Sehwan) and Rehman Dhora (Aamri) areas. Anomalies were recorded in lower Manchar Formation in a strike length of over 25kms. Four anomaly sites at Sori, Kukrani, Gaji Kumb and Haleli in Wahi Pandi were found to be 'very promising.' Uraniferrous zones in sandstone extend from 200-1000m in length. Radioactivity of up to 15,000c-s is encountered in the freshly cut trenches. Chemical uranium values range from 200ppm to 4.5 per cent U3O8. Uranium minerals have been recognised as carnotite, curienite, phurcalite and saleite. Five geological sections (four in Wahi Pandi and one in Karanuk- Sehwan area) were measured. Data on sedimentological and lithological characteristics of the uranium, host and country rocks was gathered. A total of 185 rock samples were analysed for chemical values and mineralogical studies. Thus another favourable formation in Sindh has now been added for future uranium exploration. Meanwhile, preliminary exploratory drilling has indicated a sizeable uranium ore deposit at Shanawah near Karak in the NWFP, where continuity of uranium ore was proved over a strike length of 2kms. A total of 32 boreholes to an accumulative 9,329-meter depth were drilled. Ore deposits as thick as 17 metres had been intercepted. The average thickness is 10 metres while average ore grade is 0.05 per cent U3O8. Carnotite mineral is found in the oxidised (above the water table) zone whereas Uraninite has been identified (through XRD studies) as the dominant mineral in the below water table zone. ***************************************************************** 32 *22 arrests at nuclear base protest* * Ananova: * Police have made 22 arrests in Stratchclyde during a peace protest commemorating the anniversary of the nuclear bomb attack on Hiroshima. The campaigners were arrested outside the Faslane naval base on the River Clyde on the second day of peaceful demonstrations. Stratchclyde Police said 10 men and 12 women were taken away for various public order offences. Demonstrators chained themselves to a main gate for an hour, but the base suffered minimal disruption, according to the Ministry of Defence. Yesterday police arrested six people following a similar protest outside the base of the UK's nuclear submarine fleet. Police said reports would be going to the procurator fiscal in connection with the alleged offences. Anti-nuclear campaigners were using the protest to mark the 57th anniversary of the bombing of the Japanese city during the Second World War. Story filed: 11:06 Tuesday 6th August 2002 /Copyright © 2002 Ananova Ltd/ ***************************************************************** 33 UK: Nuclear special: The genie is out of the bottle Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | No matter how far down the road of disarmament we proceed, the knowledge will always be there. Pulitzer prize-winning writer Richard Rhodes on how the nuclear dilemma must be managed Tuesday August 6, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] If the two atomic bombs that exploded over Japan in 1945 forced an end to a bitter and destructive world war, they also began a dangerous nuclear-arms race. To some, the futility of that race was evident from the outset. Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist, defined the essential nuclear dilemma in a single lucid sentence: "We are in a completely new situation that cannot be resolved by war." We have lived with nuclear weapons, and with the hovering spectre of nuclear annihilation, for so long now that they and it have come to seem immutable. However, the character of the nuclear-arms race has changed significantly since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, and largely for the better. Today there are many thousands fewer nuclear weapons in the world than there were a decade ago. Russia has reduced its operational nuclear arsenal to about 8,400 warheads, the US to about 8,000, down from about 35,000 and 25,000 respectively. Another 8,000 to 10,000 from each arsenal are stored in reserve but not quickly deployable. In May this year, Presidents Bush and Putin agreed to reduce their operational arsenals further, to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads each by 2012. They did not agree to destroy the warheads that will be removed from service, which made some arms-control experts unhappy, but given the pressure on the Bush administration from the US rightwing to maintain and even expand the US arsenal (and the administration's own bellicosity), the Bush-Putin agreement was a step in the right direction. Nuclear abolition has to advance by just such small steps. The US-Russian "Megatons to Megawatts" initiative, begun in 1993, carries arms reductions further, converting bomb-grade uranium from old Russian warheads into low-enriched fuel for nuclear power stations; this year it will pass the 6,000-warhead mark. About half of the US's 103 nuclear power stations are fuelled with converted Russian weapons' uranium. The converted warhead materials are essentially unrecoverable. In the long run, diluting weapons' uranium and plutonium and using it as fuel for nuclear reactors is the only way to render it unusable. Short of the destruction of civilisation, it is inconceivable that humans will lose the knowledge of how to release nuclear energy, which means the nuclear dilemma has to be managed, not wished away. Last April, the leader of the Japanese Liberal party, Ichiro Ozawa, noted that it would be easy for Japan to make nuclear weapons from its stockpile of recycled power-reactor plutonium, which it accumulates as a reserve for power production. In this sense, Japan has been a nuclear power for decades, as are most other advanced industrial nations. But it is curious and promising that only a few countries have chosen to develop nuclear weapons. In 1992, John Deutsch, whom Bill Clinton would later appoint director of the CIA, estimated that some 20 to 25 nations had explored the acquisition of a nuclear-weapons capability and could begin building such weapons within a relatively short time - perhaps six months or less - but had decided not to do so. Deutsch named no names, but any list of 25 would have to include Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Germany and Taiwan. Deutsch's estimate implies that the fears of those who believe that nuclear-weapons acquisition is driven primarily by technology are unfounded. In short, it's not lack of technical know-how that stops people building bombs. What does make a country go nuclear? Historically, only a perception of a fundamental threat to a nation's survival. The Anglo-American Manhattan Project was driven by fear that Nazi Germany would beat the Allies to the bomb and reverse the outcome of the war. The USSR raced to build the bomb after 1945 to counter the US nuclear monopoly. The UK and France sought independent deterrents against the Soviets, China against the US and the USSR, India against China and Pakistan, Pakistan against India. Israel feared engulfment by Arab conventional forces. In the 1970s, South Korea and Taiwan halted weapons programmes intended to deter China in return for US nuclear guarantees. South Africa, an odder case, built a small nuclear arsenal in the 1980s as a defence against engulfment by black Africa and pointedly dismantled its seven uranium bombs before relinquishing the reins of government to its black majority. Iran and Iraq fought a terrible, eight-year trench war in the 1980s that produced millions of casualties and even involved the use of poison gas; it was this that led both countries to begin nuclear development - Iraq at that point was still aligned with the US. Considerations of national prestige - of becoming an international "player" - figure in the calculations in most cases, of course, as India recently made clear, but evidently have not been decisive in the absence of a perceived threat to national survival. Going nuclear has major disadvantages. It's expensive, and if it scares off your worst enemy, it also invites the well-armed scrutiny of the major nuclear powers. After the fact, South Africa claimed it had only gone nuclear to encourage US and European intervention if it were attacked. Nuclear experts widely dismissed the claim at the time as bogus. India has now offered the same rationale for challenging Pakistan over Kashmir in the midst of the US war on the Taliban. A similar logic - forcing the US to pay attention - seems to have motivated the North Korean feint in the direction of bomb-building in the early 1990s that encouraged the US to come to its aid, trading a moratorium for building two nuclear power stations that the Soviet collapse had stalled. Small, desperate nations have thus learned from the nuclear superpowers that nuclear weapons make sterling bargaining chips. No nuclear weapons have been fired in anger since 1945. Surely nuclear deterrence deserves most of the credit for preventing a third world war in the second half of the 20th century. As the London-based Scottish writer Gil Elliot has emphasised, however, it would be technological hubris to believe that what prevented large-scale war in the decades of the US-Soviet standoff will necessarily protect us in the post-cold war years. Sooner or later, by accident or deliberately, weapons that are held in national arsenals will be used. The recent very frightening confrontation between India and Pakistan gives urgency to this point. In the long run, we will not be safe, and the world will not be safe, from devastation and horror on a scale far beyond the Holocaust, far beyond the two world wars, unless nuclear we apons arsenals are abolished. The end of the cold war opened up a millennial opportunity to move in that direction, and arms reductions and dilution of weapons materials deserve respect. And yet: India and Pakistan have become full nuclear powers. Iran may soon follow. The major nuclear powers have only themselves to blame when they insist that nuclear weapons are vital to their security but that other nations should forego them. But let us suppose the world was free of nuclear weapons; what happens, then, if someone cheats? Even if an appropriate enforcement authority proved unable to dominate an outlaw entity; even if the conventional military forces of nations threatened by such an outlaw came to stalemate as well; the act of moving to build a clandestine nuclear arsenal would be an act of war. And since knowledge of how to release nuclear energy will always be with us, such an act of war could always be countered - deterred - by reverting to nuclear weapons production. So it comes down to a question of delivery time. Think of it this way: early in the nuclear arms race, when the only delivery system available was intercontinental bombers, the time from base to target was perhaps 20 hours. Today, delivery time by Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile is 30 minutes, by forward-positioned nuclear submarine perhaps 15 minutes, meaning national leaders have at best 10 minutes during which to assess intelligence about a possible attack and decide to respond. In a world without nuclear weapons, delivery time from factory to target would be perhaps three months, greatly extending the grace period available to make a decision, to negotiate, to intervene. This way of conceiving nuclear abolition - not as resolving the nuclear dilemma (because it cannot be resolved short of ending human civilisation) but rather as extending delivery times to give nonviolent means of resolution time to do their work - moves abolition from the realm of the utopian into the realm of the real. The many virtual nuclear powers already operate within such a regime. Fifty-seven years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the knowledge that 20th-century science extracted from the silence of the inanimate is part of our scientific and technological heritage. Which means that nuclear deterrence will continue to influence international relations and restrain large-scale war even when there are no longer any actual nuclear weapons in the world. · Richard Rhodes received the Pulitzer prize for nonfiction for his book The Making of the Atomic Bomb. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 34 UK: George Monbiot: The logic of empire Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | The US is now a threat to the rest of the world. The sensible response is non-cooperation George Monbiot Tuesday August 6, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] There is something almost comical about the prospect of George Bush waging war on another nation because that nation has defied international law. Since Bush came to office, the United States government has torn up more international treaties and disregarded more UN conventions than the rest of the world has in 20 years. It has scuppered the biological weapons convention while experimenting, illegally, with biological weapons of its own. It has refused to grant chemical weapons inspectors full access to its laboratories, and has destroyed attempts to launch chemical inspections in Iraq. It has ripped up the anti-ballistic missile treaty, and appears to be ready to violate the nuclear test ban treaty. It has permitted CIA hit squads to recommence covert operations of the kind that included, in the past, the assassination of foreign heads of state. It has sabotaged the small arms treaty, undermined the international criminal court, refused to sign the climate change protocol and, last month, sought to immobilise the UN convention against torture so that it could keep foreign observers out of its prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. Even its preparedness to go to war with Iraq without a mandate from the UN security council is a defiance of international law far graver than Saddam Hussein's non-compliance with UN weapons inspectors. But the US government's declaration of impending war has, in truth, nothing to do with weapons inspections. On Saturday John Bolton, the US official charged, hilariously, with "arms control", told the Today programme that "our policy ... insists on regime change in Baghdad and that policy will not be altered, whether inspectors go in or not". The US government's justification for whupping Saddam has now changed twice. At first, Iraq was named as a potential target because it was "assisting al-Qaida". This turned out to be untrue. Then the US government claimed that Iraq had to be attacked because it could be developing weapons of mass destruction, and was refusing to allow the weapons inspectors to find out if this were so. Now, as the promised evidence has failed to materialise, the weapons issue has been dropped. The new reason for war is Saddam Hussein's very existence. This, at least, has the advantage of being verifiable. It should surely be obvious by now that the decision to wage war on Iraq came first, and the justification later. Other than the age-old issue of oil supply, this is a war without strategic purpose. The US government is not afraid of Saddam Hussein, however hard it tries to scare its own people. There is no evidence that Iraq is sponsoring terrorism against America. Saddam is well aware that if he attacks another nation with weapons of mass destruction, he can expect to be nuked. He presents no more of a threat to the world now than he has done for the past 10 years. But the US government has several pressing domestic reasons for going to war. The first is that attacking Iraq gives the impression that the flagging "war on terror" is going somewhere. The second is that the people of all super-dominant nations love war. As Bush found in Afghanistan, whacking foreigners wins votes. Allied to this concern is the need to distract attention from the financial scandals in which both the president and vice-president are enmeshed. Already, in this respect, the impending war seems to be working rather well. The United States also possesses a vast military-industrial complex that is in constant need of conflict in order to justify its staggeringly expensive existence. Perhaps more importantly than any of these factors, the hawks who control the White House perceive that perpetual war results in the perpetual demand for their services. And there is scarcely a better formula for perpetual war, with both terrorists and other Arab nations, than the invasion of Iraq. The hawks know that they will win, whoever loses. In other words, if the US were not preparing to attack Iraq, it would be preparing to attack another nation. The US will go to war with that country because it needs a country with which to go to war. Tony Blair also has several pressing reasons for supporting an invasion. By appeasing George Bush, he placates Britain's rightwing press. Standing on Bush's shoulders, he can assert a claim to global leadership more credible than that of other European leaders, while defending Britain's anomalous position as a permanent member of the UN security council. Within Europe, his relationship with the president grants him the eminent role of broker and interpreter of power. By invoking the "special relationship", Blair also avoids the greatest challenge any prime minister has faced since the second world war. This challenge is to recognise and act upon the conclusion of any objective analysis of global power: namely that the greatest threat to world peace is not Saddam Hussein, but George Bush. The nation that in the past has been our firmest friend is becoming instead our foremost enemy. As the US government discovers that it can threaten and attack other nations with impunity, it will surely soon begin to threaten countries that have numbered among its allies. As its insatiable demand for resources prompts ever bolder colonial adventures, it will come to interfere directly with the strategic interests of other quasi-imperial states. As it refuses to take responsibility for the consequences of the use of those resources, it threatens the rest of the world with environmental disaster. It has become openly contemptuous of other governments and prepared to dispose of any treaty or agreement that impedes its strategic objectives. It is starting to construct a new generation of nuclear weapons, and appears to be ready to use them pre-emptively. It could be about to ignite an inferno in the Middle East, into which the rest of the world would be sucked. The United States, in other words, behaves like any other imperial power. Imperial powers expand their empires until they meet with overwhelming resistance. For Britain to abandon the special relationship would be to accept that this is happening. To accept that the US presents a danger to the rest of the world would be to acknowledge the need to resist it. Resisting the United States would be the most daring reversal of policy a British government has undertaken for over 60 years. We can resist the US neither by military nor economic means, but we can resist it diplomatically. The only safe and sensible response to American power is a policy of non-cooperation. Britain and the rest of Europe should impede, at the diplomatic level, all US attempts to act unilaterally. We should launch independent efforts to resolve the Iraq crisis and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. And we should cross our fingers and hope that a combination of economic mismanagement, gangster capitalism and excessive military spending will reduce America's power to the extent that it ceases to use the rest of the world as its doormat. Only when the US can accept its role as a nation whose interests must be balanced with those of all other nations can we resume a friendship that was once, if briefly, founded upon the principles of justice. www.monbiot.com [http://www.monbiot.com] [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 35 Hiroshima's mayor hits out at Bush BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Tuesday, 6 August, 2002, Japan has vowed never to become a nuclear power Japan's mayor of Hiroshima has warned US President George W Bush on the 57th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on the city not to expose the world to the risk of nuclear war. I strongly urge President Bush to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki... to see for himself what nuclear arms do to humankind Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba Speaking at a ceremony in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park on Tuesday to commemorate the attack, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said that following the events of 11 September the threat of nuclear war had increased. "Just like the phrase 'history repeats itself,' threats and possibilities of nuclear wars and use of nuclear weapons are growing as the memory of Hiroshima starts to fade," he said. "I strongly urge President Bush to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki... to see for himself what nuclear arms do to humankind." Pledge More than 200,000 people died in Hiroshima when, at 0815 local time on 6 August 1945, the US B-29 bomber aircraft Enola Gay dropped a nuclear bomb on the city. Three days later another was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people. [Hiroshima in ruins following the US attack, 1945] More than 200,000 people were killed in the Hiroshima attack Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was also present at the ceremony, along with 45,000 people, and he used the opportunity to reiterate Japan's promise that it would never become a nuclear power. "As the only nation to suffer nuclear bombing in the human history, we resolve not to repeat the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to strictly abide by our peace constitution," he told those gathered at the ceremony. Speculation Mr Akiba also warned the US Government that it was not the world's peacekeeper and that it did not have the right to determine how countries governed themselves. He said that in the event of a potential nuclear attack it would only be the innocent that suffered. "The US Government has not been given the right to impose a 'Pax Americana' and to decide the fate of the world" he said. "In this environment, only the weak become victims, many of them women, children and the elderly." There has been much speculation in recent weeks that the US may be about to launch an attack on Iraq, whom it accuses of attempting to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. See also: © MMII | News Sources | Privacy ***************************************************************** 36 Emergency with a Russian nuclear submarine Pravda.RU The details have been kept secret for a month The details of the accident, which happened with a Russian nuclear submarine, which is currently being repaired in the Murmansk region, have just been unveiled. The accident happened on June 29, 2002 at about 5 a.m., in the town of Polyarny "> + The details have been kept secret for a month The details of the accident, which happened with a Russian nuclear submarine, which is currently being repaired in the Murmansk region, have just been unveiled. The accident happened on June 29, 2002 at about 5 a.m., in the town of Polyarny --> Aug, 06 2002 The details have been kept secret for a month The details of the accident, which happened with a Russian nuclear submarine, which is currently being repaired in the Murmansk region, have just been unveiled. The accident happened on June 29, 2002 at about 5 a.m., in the town of Polyarny (35 kilometers from Murmansk). The contingency happened during the docking procedure, when the submarine K-104 lied over the port side. The hull of the sub thrust its weight upon the building's berth. According to eyewitnesses, everything happened in a blink of an eye, but the workers of the factory who were involved in the docking operation managed to leave the dangerous area, and nobody was hurt. The floating dock was slightly damaged because of the fact that the superstructure was cut off` on the sub due to repairs. Emergency services arrived at the site of the accident; they examined the radioactive situation and the water area of the factory. Everything was normal. The administration of the dock did not make any official statements at that time, having believed that it was simply a small technical accident. The superstructure was cut off during work to remove the active zone of nuclear reactors in the spring of 2002. There were some 15 tons of combustive and lubricating materials left inside the strong hull of the submarine. The submarine allegedly “fell down” because of a miscalculation of the centers of gravity. There is nothing dangerous for the floating dock at the moment, as the damaged parts of the hull were sealed in and the hull was propped up with wooden keel-blocks. It is dangerous to repeat the docking operation in such situation, which is why it has been decided to continue the dismantling works according to schedule. It should be added that this accident was the first of its kind in the history of Russian docking. It has happened before, but only with diesel subs. Vitaly Bratkov PRAVDA.Ru Murmansk Translated by Dmitry Sudakov Related links: PRAVDA.Ru Norway Keeps Fingers Crossed For Russian Sub Lift PRAVDA.Ru Russian Nuke Sub Mourned At Naval Base Washington Post : Putin Fires Naval Chiefs, Denies Link To Sunken Sub USA Today : Sunken Russian subs fate as murky as the Barents Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/08/06/45255.html [http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/08/06/45255.html] Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU [http://www.pravda.ru/] ***************************************************************** 37 Hiroshima hits "Pax Americana" at A-bomb memorial (08/06/2002) (Agencies) The mayor of Hiroshima marked the anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing with a sharp rebuke for what critics charge is US President George W. Bush's unilateral diplomacy -- and an invitation to Bush to visit the city destroyed in a nuclear inferno 57 years ago. In an annual ritual of remembrance for the more than 220,000 people who ultimately died from the blast, a crowd including survivors, children and dignitaries gathered at Hiroshima's Peace Park, near ground zero where the bomb was dropped. The anniversary comes days after a reminder that Japan -- which has made much of its status as the only nation to suffer a nuclear attack -- was researching an atomic bomb during World War Two, and just months after a top politician hinted Tokyo might someday abandon its decades-old ban on nuclear weapons. The Peace Bell tolled at 8:15 a.m. -- the precise moment the Enola Gay B-29 warplane dropped the bomb on August 6, 1945 -- as the crowd stood and bowed their heads for a minute of silence in the still summer heat. The United States dropped a second atomic bomb on the southern city of Nagasaki on August 9. Six days later, Japan surrendered. Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba lamented the world's growing tendency to forget the horrors of the atomic bomb and warned his audience that the dangers of nuclear war were rising. "For the victims of the atomic bomb...once again, a hot and bitter summer has returned," Akiba said. "With the return of the heat, the memories of that misery also return. "What is even more bitter is that those memories are fading from the world," he said. He added that the possibility of history's repeating itself had grown since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Akiba invited Bush to Hiroshima "to confirm with his own eyes what nuclear weapons can do to human beings" and lashed out at Washington's go-it-alone stance. "America has not been given the right to impose a 'Pax Americana' and to decide the fate of the world," Akiba said. "Rather, we, the people of the world, have the right to insist that we have not given you the authority to destroy the world." JAPAN'S NUCLEAR STANCE While Japan each year solemnly mourns its own war dead, less attention is paid to the victims of its military aggression and hardly any to the fact that its own military was engaged in research on an atomic bomb during World War Two. In a small but timely reminder of that research, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said at the weekend that secret documents on Japan's nuclear efforts, taken out of the country in 1949, had been returned to the institute in charge of the research. Historians have long known about the research, although how much progress was made is a subject of debate. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged at the memorial to keep Japan's decades-old ban on nuclear weapons -- a stance which was called into question earlier this year when one of his key cabinet ministers suggested the policy might change someday. "Resolved not to repeat the calamities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our nation -- the only one to experience an atomic bombing -- has obeyed our peace constitution and preserved its three non-nuclear principles not to have, make or import nuclear weapons," Koizumi said. "There is no change in that stance." Conservative politicians, however, have become more outspoken in challenging Japan's postwar pacifism and recent legislation has tested the limits on the ban on war imposed by the US-drafted constitution. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, a close Koizumi aide, came under fire in June for hinting Japan might revise its "three non-nuclear principles" adopted in 1971. Fears over domestic and diplomatic fallout have usually meant that politicians are forced to retract any suggestion Japan should arm itself with nuclear weapons. Fukuda later said his remarks had been blown out of proportion. Copyright 2002 By chinadaily.com.cn. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 38 Nuclear Role Models (washingtonpost.com) By Zia Mian, R. Rajaraman and Frank von Hippel Tuesday, August 6, 2002; Page A15 Although the current South Asian crisis seems to have ebbed, the underlying dynamic remains. The next flare-up will be even more dangerous if the region's nuclear confrontation develops in the same direction as the U.S.-Russian standoff -- with nuclear missiles on alert, aimed at each other and ready to launch on warning. As Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, has said, it was "no thanks to deterrence, but only by the grace of God" that the United States and the Soviet Union survived their crises. Will South Asia be so fortunate? India and Pakistan are using the U.S. and Russian postures as blueprints. India's Draft Nuclear Doctrine calls for everything the superpowers have -- although on a more modest scale -- including a "triad" of bombers and land- and sea-based missiles. It also envisages an "assured capability to shift from peacetime deployment to fully employable forces in the shortest possible time." Finally, it calls for "space based and other assets . . . to provide early warning." Pakistan has from the beginning been determined to obtain matching nuclear capabilities. Early warning systems don't have much point unless a retaliatory launch can be ordered in the time before the attacking weapons arrive. Pakistan's Shaheen missiles and the latest version of India's Agni missile use solid fuel. The United States used solid fuel in its Minuteman intercontinental missiles so that they were launch-ready at all times. A launch-on-warning posture would be far more dangerous in South Asia than for the United States and Russia. The time it takes for a missile to travel from the United States to Russia is a frighteningly short 30 minutes but it still allows at least a little time to figure out whether the warning of incoming missiles that one is receiving is real or a human or hardware problem. In South Asia, available decision time is vanishingly small; the total missile flight time between India and Pakistan is only about 10 minutes. Neither country is believed to keep its nuclear weapons deployed on missiles or aircraft on a regular peacetime basis today. But such non-deployment characterized the early U.S. and Soviet nuclear postures as well. As the recent South Asian crisis abates, it is not clear to what extent the various steps taken in the past few months toward nuclear deployment will be reversed. Once elements of South Asia's nuclear arsenal begin to be permanently deployed on high alert, U.S.-Russian experience shows, bureaucratic and political forces will come into play, resisting any attempt to roll back a hair-trigger posture. If we are to help prevent launch-ready weapons from becoming a dangerous reality in South Asia, the nuclear superpowers will have to become more responsible role models. The United States and Russia could, for example, take off alert now the nuclear weapons that are, under the Bush-Putin agreement, scheduled to be downloaded over a decade. They could also open talks on options for de-alerting the rest in a mutually transparent manner that would not make their nuclear forces vulnerable to surprise attack. The United States could, for example, keep its ballistic-missile subs out of range of Russia instead of sending them forward with their missiles launch-ready as today. These steps would clear the way to take up India's suggestion for an international conference to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers. It would be hard for India and Pakistan to say no. India has proposed this each year since 1998 in a U.N. resolution on reducing nuclear danger. The goal should be a global zero alert for nuclear forces. As the nuclear superpowers unwind their Cold War hair-trigger postures, they should do nothing to encourage or assist India and Pakistan to move toward nuclear deployment. Political leaders and military planners in South Asia have sought U.S. command and control technology, citing concerns about nuclear weapons safety. Such technology also could provide them the confidence to deploy the weapons and, in a crisis, adopt more threatening and dangerous postures. Down that path lies disaster. Zia Mian is a Pakistani physicist on the research staff of Princeton University. R. Rajaraman is a professor of physics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Frank von Hippel is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 39 Resuscitate the Test Ban (washingtonpost.com) Tuesday, August 6, 2002; Page A14 WHEN SENATE Republicans refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in October 1999 they had both some political and some substantive arguments. The political motives -- to embarrass President Clinton or express distaste for treaties of any kind -- are obsolete or deserve to become so. Now the substantive arguments have been addressed by a committee of unquestioned experts and have been found meritless. This treaty, once near-dead, ought to be revived. The treaty is simple in concept. It would prohibit nuclear test explosions anywhere -- underground, in oceans, on land, in space. By banning tests, it would make life far more difficult for non-nuclear countries that want to go nuclear; for that reason alone it is in America's national security interest. It would enter into force after all 44 nations that have nuclear weapons or reactors ratify it; so far, 31 have, including Russia, France and Britain. But it took 38 years -- to 1996 -- to negotiate a pact after President Eisenhower initiated talks, and three years after that, the Senate refused to ratify it. Several technical objections to the treaty have now been examined by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences chaired by Harvard professor John P. Holdren and including as members former directors of the national weapons laboratories. One objection was that other nations might cheat undetected; the committee found that the United States could reliably detect all but the smallest clandestine explosions. Such small explosions would likely be beyond the technical competence of all but the most experienced nuclear nations and, in any event, would be of little practical use. Opponents also worried that the United States would lose confidence in the reliability of its own stockpile if not permitted to test warheads from time to time. But the panel found that a "rigorous stockpile surveillance program," adequately funded, could ensure both safety and reliability. What the United States might not be able to do is come up with radical new designs. President Bush has said that he does not intend to end the nuclear testing moratorium that the United States has observed since 1992 but also that he opposes the treaty and does not intend to seek its ratification. This report is an opportunity to rethink that position. It offers the United States a double win: a way to strengthen national security while winning points abroad for multilateral cooperation. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 40 Nuclear special: The art-history of the mushroom cloud Guardian Unlimited | Arts | Magic mushrooms Dali was inspired by it, Pollock tried to compete with it - and Gregory Green builds his own. Jonathan Jones on how artists have exploited the bomb Tuesday August 6, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Gregory Green's Nuclear Device #2 Gregory Green is an artist who constructs nuclear bombs. Not sculptures, actual bombs. He has done seven to date, based on the design of the earliest atomic weapons including Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. "Two were looked at by nuclear physicists," says Green, "and they've said they would work. My experience is that it is certainly possible for someone with a little talent and time to do something that would work. Even if you didn't get a nuclear explosion, you'd certainly get a monstrously big 'dirty' bomb." Green lives and works in New York City. Six weeks after the destruction of the World Trade Centre he was woken by a seismic tremor - New York was hit by a mild earthquake: "My first reaction was that someone had set off a home-made nuclear bomb, but then I realised there were no fires. Do I think it will happen? I see no reason why a non-state group should not put together a nuclear bomb. In the 1960s some students built an almost functional one. The only problem is accessing the plutonium." Sceptics should be warned that Green told a newspaper several years ago he believed terrorists would eventually destroy the Twin Towers. His own intentions are more conceptual; he shows his bombs in galleries as part of a larger project to explore "the real potential for chaos that is out there - the more we ignore the disenfranchised, the more the possibility of horror exists". Of course, to make anything takes care and attention, and in a sense Green's art loves the bomb. But then, for more than a half a century, artists have been half in love with nuclear megadeath. Even before Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, the atom bomb was celebrated as visual spectacle. The language of the US war department's press release on the first successful nuclear test explosion in the New Mexico desert, July 16 1945, is of revelation and awe at the sight. Observers of the test, including Robert Oppenheimer and General Groves, lay down with their feet facing the blast and then rolled over to watch through dark glasses. "At the appointed time there was a blinding flash lighting up the whole area brighter than the brightest daylight. A mountain range three miles from the observation point stood out in high relief... a huge multi-coloured surging cloud boiled to an altitude of over 40,000 feet." The light was so powerful that a blind girl in a nearby New Mexico village reportedly asked, before the blast was felt: "What was that?" This is the beginning of the curious art-history of the mushroom cloud. When Enola Gay's tail-gunner George Caron photographed the Hiroshima bomb, he too spoke of what he saw from his gun turret in ecstatic visual terms: "The mushroom cloud itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke - and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside." The atom bomb is a staggering visual phenomenon. When Caron looked back from Enola Gay, he could not see the dead and dying, any more than we can in his black-and-white photograph. But where once the end of the world was represented by Satan swallowing up the damned armies of skeletons massacring the sinful, demons whipping them, herding them into burning pits after Hiroshima we have a new image of apocalypse: a blinding light followed by a vast mushroom cloud. Salvador Dali thought he had seen it all. But this exceeded surrealism. "The atomic explosion of August 6 1945 shook me seismically," he says in The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali. "Thenceforth, the atom was my favourite food for thought. Many of the landscapes painted in this period express the great fear inspired in me by the announcement of that explosion." Dali may be the first artist to have exhibited a nuclear artwork. In December 1945 he displayed the painting Atomic and Uranian Melancholic Idyll, a response to Hiroshima featuring molten, decaying objects, a mournful floating face, and an uncomfortable juxtaposition of two American images - a baseball player and a bomber. The bomb, intuits Dali, burns the mind and scars the imagination. Visual spectacle is underestimated as a weapon in the cold war. Between 1945 and 1963 - when overground nuclear tests were banned - the US and the Soviet Union released picture after picture of nuclear test explosions; every year, more mushroom cloud pictures were circulated round the world. The third world war had not yet happened, but it was seen, in photographs and films of explosions in deserts, in the south Pacific - images that still define our experience of a nuclear war that has not yet happened. They are landscape photographs, with the mushroom cloud each time set off against various terrains and surroundings. Test-explosion Mike took place in the Pacific, making palm trees bow in the blast; the Baker explosion consumed Bikini Atoll. The first hydrogen bomb is seen from the sky, in clouds that it illuminates with eerie beauty in a disturbingly well-organised and pleasing colour photograph - the last sunset. In 1950 Jackson Pollock told an interviewer that "the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture". Pollock felt obliged to compete with the bomb, to create art that had an equally mind-blowing effect. In his paintings massive potential energy is released in an instant, a nuclear explosion; he characterised his art as "energy and motion made visible". Other abstract expressionist painters - Barnett Newman and Willem de Kooning - spoke out against Hiroshima. Their paintings can easily be read, in their apocalyptic intensity, as evocations of the terror of the nuclear age. So - most of all - can Mark Rothko's floating clouds of colour, vertical layerings of sickly hues that make you think of a photograph of a nuclear explosion. Rothko's paintings are beautiful, but lure the eye into ultimate darkness, a void of eternal night. It was the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 that made artists focus on nuclear weapons in a more immediate way. This was the moment of pop art, and the atom bomb became one of the classic pop images, as instantly iconic as Coca-Cola and Marilyn Monroe. The kitsch immediacy of images of the bomb was what the pop artists tried to evoke - the fact that you opened your morning paper and saw a mushroom cloud next to an advert for shoes or gossip about Elizabeth Taylor. In James Rosenquist's 1965 anti-war painting The F-111, a mushroom cloud is superimposed upon a colourful umbrella next to a little girl having her hair blow-dried. Robert Rauschenberg made a peace poster inviting the viewer to include their own choice of newspaper cutting, British pop artists such as Richard Hamilton were active in CND, and London-based artist and activist Gustav Metzger invented a new movement for the nuclear age, "auto-destructive art", which he claimed mimicked the destructiveness of an age committed to potential mass destruction. But in the end the most powerful art of the nuclear age was made by artists who were not quite so clear where they stood. Andy Warhol's 1965 painting Atomic Bomb is not a protest so much as a description - it is the constant repetition of the same terrible sight that Warhol comments on. Atomic Bomb has the blasted pathology of a mind bombarded by images of apocalypse, pictures so widely diffused they have become routine. He has silkscreened a photograph of a mushroom cloud in black, surrounded by a deep dull red. Red and black are the only colours left. The only sight is the cloud - repeated, multiplied, as if hundreds of missiles are striking. At the bottom of the painting everything turns black. It is a vision of the moment when all the bombs fall, a recognition of what is promised in every photograph of a mushroom cloud. And who will watch the final display of mushroom clouds? Who will be left to see it? The nuclear apocalypse is banal, repetitive, mass-produced. We already know its details. We have already seen it. A similarly chilling spectacle of massed explosions is orchestrated at the end of Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove, set to Vera Lynn singing We'll Meet Again. Kubrick's montage of mushroom clouds assembles many of the test explosions photographed and filmed in the 1950s and early 1960s. Like Warhol, he implies that we already have seen the end, that that we walk around with film of the world's destruction running in our heads. Strangely, the end of the cold war brought a certain nostalgia for its technologies, its material remains, the silos and warheads that for so long dominated our imaginations. Jane and Louise Wilson's 1999 film installation Gamma preserves images of the abandoned silos and control centre at Greenham Common Airbase. Stranger still is the career of American artist James L Acord, who spent much of the 1980s and 1990s trying to secure nuclear material with which to make sculptures. At one point he was attached to an American nuclear facility, and even obtained a licence to transport nuclear materials across international borders. Acord, however, found it harder than expected to make nuclear art commercially viable or even legal, and his activities seem to be in abeyance. "I don't take any clear moral stance," says Gregory Green of his homemade nuclear weapons. "If you look at terrorism in a cold way, it is a media spectacle that is strong enough to give the terrorist a platform. My work has been a kind of conceptual terrorism giving me a platform." Green is in a tradition of art that has been deeply impressed by the power of the bomb, which recognised that the world was remade by the nuclear bomb. The world the bomb created is one where a certain image of catastrophe is universally shared, diffused, reproduced - a constant of our visual world, where, in 1995, the US Post Office planned to issue a commemorative stamp with an image of a mushroom cloud, where an image of mass death is recycled without cease. Useful links British Nuclear Fuels Ltd [http://www.bnfl.co.uk/website.nsf/default.htm] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament [http://www.cnduk.org/] HSE nuclear glossary [http://www.hse.gov.uk/nsd/ilrwglos.htm] UK atomic energy authority [http://www.ukaea.org.uk/] National Radiological Protection Board [http://www.nrpb.org.uk/] World Nuclear Association [http://www.uilondon.org/] [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 41 Hiroshima Marks 57th Anniversary of Atomic-bombing Tuesday, August 06, 2002 Japanese city of Hiroshima Tuesday commemorated the 57th anniversary of its atomic bombing with a pledge to promoting peace and renouncing war, Japan's Kyodo News reported. Japanese city of Hiroshima Tuesday commemorated the 57th anniversary of its atomic bombing with a pledge to promoting peace and renouncing war, Japan's Kyodo News reported. In an annual peace declaration, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akibavowed to do his utmost to "create a century of peace and humanity." He also warned that the probabilities that nuclear weapons willbe used and the danger of nuclear war are increasing, the report said. Akiba urged the Japanese government to reject nuclear arms and renounce war, as well as assist all atomic-bomb victims, especially survivors living overseas. The mayor also urged U.S. President George W. Bush to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and "confirm with his own eyes what nuclear weapons hold in store for us all." It was the first annual memorial for A-bomb victims since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and subsequent U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi attended the ceremony in the Peace Memorial Park in Naka Ward, his second attendance at the annual event. Koizumi renewed his pledge to maintain Japan's three avowed principles of not producing, not possessing and not allowing nuclear arms on Japan's soil. "This position will not change," he was quoted as saying. "Japan will continue efforts to ask other countries to join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty for its early enforcement," he added. The 50-minute ceremony started at 8 a.m. (local time) with Akiba and two representatives of A-bomb victims' family put two books under an arch-shaped cenotaph in the park which lists names of 4,977 people newly recognized as A-bomb victims by the city government since Aug. 6 last year. As the peace bell resounded through the park, some 45,000 participants observed a minute's silence for the bomb victims from8:15 a.m. (local time), the time when the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the first nuclear weapon on the western Japan city 57 years ago. The blast and its aftereffects killed an estimated 140,000 people by the end of 1945. The number of victims from the atomic bombing in the city totaled 226,870 as of Monday, according to Kyodo. Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 42 Servicemen recall visiting Hiroshima weeks after atomic bomb dropped [http://www.news-record.com] [Greensboro] 8-6-02 By ALLISON PERKINS, Staff Writer News & Record GREENSBORO -- Francis Marbert needed to glide through the skies above the war in the Pacific just three more times and he would earn a ticket home from battle. But the B-29 Superfortress he served aboard as a flight engineer, named "Jus' One Mo' Time," only needed to fly once more to set in motion the end of World War II for Marbert and the rest of the world. Marbert was in the sky above Japan on Aug. 6, 1945, when the Enola Gay, another B-29, dropped an atomic bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," on Hiroshima. His plane, part of the 411th Bombardment Squadron, 502nd Bombardment Group, of the Army Air Corps had the task of drawing enemy fire away from the approaching Enola Gay. Though flying nearly 20 miles away from the target, Marbert said he could see and feel the explosion. "We saw the bomb. It was as you see it on TV, just a cone coming up," Marbert said. "When it got up to the height we were flying, we could feel the vibration. "I thought the wings were going to shake off," he said. Today marks the 57th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the first time nuclear weapons were used in warfare. An estimated 70,000 to 100,000 people were killed in the explosion, five square miles were flattened and thousands more people died later from the effects of radiation. Three days later, the United States dropped a second bomb, "Fat Man," on Nagasaki, killing 35,000. Another 40,000 died in the days after from radiation and other injuries. Each target was hit with a release of nuclear energy equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT. The Japanese surrendered Aug. 14 as more than 1,000 B-29s bombed the island nation with conventional bombs. A surrender ceremony was held aboard the USS Missouri on Sept. 2 in Tokyo Bay. Three weeks later, Marbert was standing at ground zero in Hiroshima, for a firsthand look at the damage. "There was not much of nothing," said Marbert of Greensboro, now 79. "It was all blown away." There were few people there, and those who were left didn't associate with the Americans. "They knew we were responsible," he said, adding that despite the destruction, he did not regret the attack. "I would have, but the way I felt about Japan at the time ... I saw Pearl Harbor after it was bombed and how they came in there," Marbert said. "Frankly, I hate to meet a Japanese person on the street now. I try to get that out of my mind, but it's hard to do." Charlie Mendenhall, 81, of Greensboro, also visited Hiroshima, two months after the attack. The Navy was running ships to Hiroshima for sailors to make liberty call for a day off duty. "We knew we had dropped a bomb ... nobody said anything about radiation, but nobody said anything about anything then," said Mendenhall, who was a Navy officer. Neither Marbert nor Mendenhall said they have had any medical problems associated with exposure to radiation during their visits. In Hiroshima, Mendenhall found buildings leveled and much of the debris already carted away, leaving a maze of roads that led nowhere. They were images he captured on film and brought home, even though carrying cameras was a practice outlawed by the Navy. Mendenhall developed negatives in the ship's restroom at night and sent them to his wife to make prints. "It was not legal, but it was effective," he said. "We didn't mess around with Navy regs if we didn't have to. We were sort of the hooligan Navy." Like Marbert, Mendenhall said he saw few residents in Hiroshima. Several young boys sitting by a road spoke to Mendenhall in English. The oldest, about nine, had a sore covering much of his face. He told the sailor that he had been burned "in the big fire." Elsewhere in the demolished city, Mendenhall came across American sailors trying to steal a microscope from a hospital. He and another officer stopped the sailors and made them return the equipment. Mendenhall spent only half a day in the city, a few hours, he said. The historical significance was lost on the young sailor at the time. "I hate to tell you it was just a day off the ship, but it was," Mendenhall said. "Hate to say I really didn't say, 'We were dirty birds, we shouldn't have done that.' "But we didn't know then as much about what was going on as we do watching the History Channel today," Mendenhall said. Contact Allison Perkins at 373-7157 or aperkins@news-record.com [aperkins@news-record.com] © News &Record 2002 ***************************************************************** 43 Hiroshima mayor sends nuclear alert to Bush - CNN.com - August 6, 2002 Doves released as part of Tuesday's memorial ceremony fly above the Hiroshima Peace Park HIROSHIMA, Japan -- The mayor of the Japanese city of Hiroshima has delivered a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration on the 57th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on his city in 1945. Speaking at a ceremony to commemorate the victims of the bombing, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba condemned what critics have called U.S. unilateralism in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks and said the risks of nuclear war were increasing. In his speech at the city's peace park, close to ground zero, Akiba urged U.S. President George W. Bush to visit both his city and Nagasaki -- targeted by a second atomic bomb three days after Hiroshima -- to see the destructive power of nuclear weapons. "America has not been given the right to impose a 'Pax Americana' and to decide the fate of the world," he said, condemning what some see as America's go-it-alone stance. "Rather, we, the people of the world, have the right to insist that we have not given you the authority to destroy the world." "I strongly urge President Bush to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki... to see for himself what nuclear arms do to humankind," he added. "Just like the phrase 'history repeats itself', the threat and possibility of nuclear wars and the use of nuclear weapons are growing as the memory of Hiroshima starts to fade." Fallout More than 220,000 people were killed as a result of the Hiroshima bombing. Over half of those killed died in the initial explosion, whilst tens of thousands died later as a result of cancers and other illnesses attributed to the atomic fallout. During Tuesday's ceremony two books listing the names of 4,977 people recognized over the past year as victims of the Hiroshima attack were placed into a small room underneath the arch-shaped cenotaph commemorating the bombing. Shortly beforehand, at 8:15 am exactly local time, a solitary bell rang out marking the time the U.S. bomber Enola Gay released its deadly payload over the city. [More than 220,000 people died as a result of the bombing] More than 220,000 people died as a result of the bombing Some 50,000 survivors and dignitaries attending the event then held a minute's silence in honor of the victims. Also attending the ceremony was Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. In his address he reaffirmed that Japan, the only country in the world to have suffered nuclear attack, would not develop nuclear weapons. "As the only country in history to have experienced atomic bombings, I would like to underline Japan's unwavering commitment to its war-renouncing constitution and its three principles: non-possession, non-production and non-entry of nuclear weapons," he said. In May Koizumi struggled to ease himself away from controversial comments by his cabinet spokesman who said that Japan faced no legal bar to its owning of nuclear weapons. The comments were seen by many as a sign that Japan might one day consider developing nuclear weapons -- an interpretation the prime minister has repeatedly denied. The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report. © 2002 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. ***************************************************************** 44 'One hell of a big bang' Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Today is Hiroshima Day, the anniversary of the first use of a bomb so powerful that it would come to threaten the existence of the human race. Only two such devices have ever been used, but now, a decade after the end of the cold war, the world faces new dangers of nuclear attack - from India, Pakistan, Iraq, al-Qaida, and even the US. Launching a special investigation into nuclear weapons, Paul Tibbets, the man who piloted the Enola Gay on its mission to Japan, tells Studs Terkel why he has no regrets - and why he wouldn't hesitate to use it again Tuesday August 6, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Studs Terkel: We're seated here, two old gaffers. Me and Paul Tibbets, 89 years old, brigadier-general retired, in his home town of Columbus, Ohio, where has lived for many years. Paul Tibbets: Hey, you've got to correct that. I'm only 87. You said 89. ST: I know. See, I'm 90. So I got you beat by three years. Now we've had a nice lunch, you and I and your companion. I noticed as we sat in that restaurant, people passed by. They didn't know who you were. But once upon a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of Hiroshima, in Japan, on a Sunday morning - August 6 1945 - and a bomb fell. It was the atomic bomb, the first ever. And that particular moment changed the whole world around. You were the pilot of that plane. PT: Yes, I was the pilot. ST: And the Enola Gay was named after... PT: My mother. She was Enola Gay Haggard before she married my dad, and my dad never supported me with the flying - he hated airplanes and motorcycles. When I told them I was going to leave college and go fly planes in the army air corps, my dad said, "Well, I've sent you through school, bought you automobiles, given you money to run around with the girls, but from here on, you're on your own. If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don't give a damn." Then Mom just quietly said, "Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you're going to be all right." And that was that. ST: Where was that? PT: Well, that was Miami, Florida. My dad had been in the real estate business down there for years, and at that time he was retired. And I was going to school at Gaysville, Florida, but I had to leave after two years and go to Cincinnati because Florida had no medical school. ST: You were thinking of being a doctor? PT: I didn't think that, my father thought it. He said, "You're going to be a doctor," and I just nodded my head and that was it. And I started out that way; but about a year before, I was able to get into an airplane, fly it - I soloed - and I knew then that I had to go fly airplanes. ST: Now by 1944 you were a pilot - a test pilot on the programme to develop the B-29 bomber. When did you get word that you had a special assignment? PT: One day [in September 1944] I'm running a test on a B-29, I land, a man meets me. He says he just got a call from General Uzal Ent [commander of the second air force] at Colorado Springs, he wants me in his office the next morning at nine o'clock. He said, "Bring your clothing - your B4 bag - because you're not coming back." Well, I didn't know what it was and didn't pay any attention to it - it was just another assignment. I got to Colorado Springs the next morning perfectly on time. A man named Lansdale met me, walked me to General Ent's office and closed the door behind me. With him was a man wearing a blue suit, a US Navy captain - that was William Parsons, who flew with me to Hiroshima - and Dr Norman Ramsey, Columbia University professor in nuclear physics. And Norman said: "OK, we've got what we call the Manhattan Project. What we're doing is trying to develop an atomic bomb. We've gotten to the point now where we can't go much further till we have airplanes to work with." He gave me an explanation which probably lasted 45, 50 minutes, and they left. General Ent looked at me and said, "The other day, General Arnold [commander general of the army air corps] offered me three names." Both of the others were full colonels; I was lieutenant-colonel. He said that when General Arnold asked which of them could do this atomic weapons deal, he replied without hesitation, "Paul Tibbets is the man to do it." I said, "Well, thank you, sir." Then he laid out what was going on and it was up to me now to put together an organisation and train them to drop atomic weapons on both Europe and the Pacific - Tokyo. ST: Interesting that they would have dropped it on Europe as well. We didn't know that. PT: My edict was as clear as could be. Drop simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific because of the secrecy problem - you couldn't drop it in one part of the world without dropping it in the other. And so he said, "I don't know what to tell you, but I know you happen to have B-29s to start with. I've got a squadron in training in Nebraska - they have the best record so far of anybody we've got. I want you to go visit them, look at them, talk to them, do whatever you want. If they don't suit you, we'll get you some more." He said: "There's nobody could tell you what you have to do because nobody knows. If we can do anything to help you, ask me." I said thank you very much. He said, "Paul, be careful how you treat this responsibility, because if you're successful you'll probably be called a hero. And if you're unsuccessful, you might wind up in prison." ST: Did you know the power of an atomic bomb? Were you told about that? PT: No, I didn't know anything at that time. But I knew how to put an organisation together. He said, "Go take a look at the bases, and call me back and tell me which one you want." I wanted to get back to Grand Island Nebraska, that's where my wife and two kids were, where my laundry was done and all that stuff. But I thought, "Well, I'll go to Wendover [army airfield, in Utah] first and see what they've got." As I came in over the hills I saw it was a beautiful spot. It had been a final staging place for units that were going through combat crew training, and the guys ahead of me were the last P-47 fighter outfit. This lieutenant-colonel in charge said, "We've just been advised to stop here and I don't know what you want to do... but if it has anything to do with this base it's the most perfect base I've ever been on. You've got full machine shops, everybody's qualified, they know what they want to do. It's a good place." ST: And now you chose your own crew. PT: Well, I had mentally done it before that. I knew right away I was going to get Tom Ferebee [the Enola Gay's bombardier] and Theodore "Dutch" van Kirk [navigator] and Wyatt Duzenbury [flight engineer]. ST: Guys you had flown with in Europe? PT: Yeah. ST: And now you're training. And you're also talking to physicists like Robert Oppenheimer [senior scientist on the Manhattan project]. PT: I think I went to Los Alamos [the Manhattan project HQ] three times, and each time I got to see Dr Oppenheimer working in his own environment. Later, thinking about it, here's a young man, a brilliant person. And he's a chain smoker and he drinks cocktails. And he hates fat men. And General Leslie Groves [the general in charge of the Manhattan project], he's a fat man, and he hates people who smoke and drink. The two of them are the first, original odd couple. ST: They had a feud, Groves and Oppenheimer? PT: Yeah, but neither one of them showed it. Each one of them had a job to do. ST: Did Oppenheimer tell you about the destructive nature of the bomb? PT: No. ST: How did you know about that? PT: From Dr Ramsey. He said the only thing we can tell you about it is, it's going to explode with the force of 20,000 tons of TNT. I'd never seen 1lb of TNT blow up. I'd never heard of anybody who'd seen 100lbs of TNT blow up. All I felt was that this was gonna be one hell of a big bang. ST: Twenty thousand tons - that's equivalent to how many planes full of bombs? PT: Well, I think the two bombs that we used [at Hiroshima and Nagasaki] had more power than all the bombs the air force had used during the war on Europe. ST: So Ramsey told you about the possibilities. PT: Even though it was still theory, whatever those guys told me, that's what happened. So I was ready to say I wanted to go to war, but I wanted to ask Oppenheimer how to get away from the bomb after we dropped it. I told him that when we had dropped bombs in Europe and North Africa, we'd flown straight ahead after dropping them - which is also the trajectory of the bomb. But what should we do this time? He said, "You can't fly straight ahead because you'd be right over the top when it blows up and nobody would ever know you were there." He said I had to turn tangent to the expanding shockwave. I said, "Well, I've had some trigonometry, some physics. What is tangency in this case?" He said it was 159 degrees in either direction. "Turn 159 degrees as fast as you can and you'll be able to put yourself the greatest distance from where the bomb exploded." ST: How many seconds did you have to make that turn? PT: I had dropped enough practice bombs to realise that the charges would blow around 1,500ft in the air, so I would have 40 to 42 seconds to turn 159 degrees. I went back to Wendover as quick as I could and took the airplane up. I got myself to 25,000ft, and I practised turning, steeper, steeper, steeper and I got it where I could pull it round in 40 seconds. The tail was shaking dramatically and I was afraid of it breaking off, but I didn't quit. That was my goal. And I practised and practised until, without even thinking about it, I could do it in between 40 and 42, all the time. So, when that day came... ST: You got the go-ahead on August 5. PT: Yeah. We were in Tinian [the US island base in the Pacific] at the time we got the OK. They had sent this Norwegian to the weather station out on Guam [the US's westernmost territory] and I had a copy of his report. We said that, based on his forecast, the sixth day of August would be the best day that we could get over Honshu [the island on which Hiroshima stands]. So we did everything that had to be done to get the crews ready to go: airplane loaded, crews briefed, all of the things checked that you have to check before you can fly over enemy territory. General Groves had a brigadier-general who was connected back to Washington DC by a special teletype machine. He stayed close to that thing all the time, notifying people back there, all by code, that we were preparing these airplanes to go any time after midnight on the sixth. And that's the way it worked out. We were ready to go at about four o'clock in the afternoon on the fifth and we got word from the president that we were free to go: "Use 'em as you wish." They give you a time you're supposed to drop your bomb on target and that was 9.15 in the morning , but that was Tinian time, one hour later than Japanese time. I told Dutch, "You figure it out what time we have to start after midnight to be over the target at 9am." ST: That'd be Sunday morning. PT: Well, we got going down the runway at right about 2.15am and we took off, we met our rendezvous guys, we made our flight up to what we call the initial point, that would be a geographic position that you could not mistake. Well, of course we had the best one in the world with the rivers and bridges and that big shrine. There was no mistaking what it was. ST: So you had to have the right navigator to get it on the button. PT: The airplane has a bomb sight connected to the autopilot and the bombardier puts figures in there for where he wants to be when he drops the weapon, and that's transmitted to the airplane. We always took into account what would happen if we had a failure and the bomb bay doors didn't open: we had a manual release put in each airplane so it was right down by the bombardier and he could pull on that. And the guys in the airplanes that followed us to drop the instruments needed to know when it was going to go. We were told not to use the radio, but, hell, I had to. I told them I would say, "One minute out," "Thirty seconds out," "Twenty seconds" and "Ten" and then I'd count, "Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four seconds", which would give them a time to drop their cargo. They knew what was going on because they knew where we were. And that's exactly the way it worked, it was absolutely perfect. After we got the airplanes in formation I crawled into the tunnel and went back to tell the men, I said, "You know what we're doing today?" They said, "Well, yeah, we're going on a bombing mission." I said, "Yeah, we're going on a bombing mission, but it's a little bit special." My tailgunner, Bob Caron, was pretty alert. He said, "Colonel, we wouldn't be playing with atoms today, would we?" I said, "Bob, you've got it just exactly right." So I went back up in the front end and I told the navigator, bombardier, flight engineer, in turn. I said, "OK, this is an atom bomb we're dropping." They listened intently but I didn't see any change in their faces or anything else. Those guys were no idiots. We'd been fiddling round with the most peculiar-shaped things we'd ever seen. So we're coming down. We get to that point where I say "one second" and by the time I'd got that second out of my mouth the airplane had lurched, because 10,000lbs had come out of the front. I'm in this turn now, tight as I can get it, that helps me hold my altitude and helps me hold my airspeed and everything else all the way round. When I level out, the nose is a little bit high and as I look up there the whole sky is lit up in the prettiest blues and pinks I've ever seen in my life. It was just great. I tell people I tasted it. "Well," they say, "what do you mean?" When I was a child, if you had a cavity in your tooth the dentist put some mixture of some cotton or whatever it was and lead into your teeth and pounded them in with a hammer. I learned that if I had a spoon of ice-cream and touched one of those teeth I got this electrolysis and I got the taste of lead out of it. And I knew right away what it was. OK, we're all going. We had been briefed to stay off the radios: "Don't say a damn word, what we do is we make this turn, we're going to get out of here as fast as we can." I want to get out over the sea of Japan because I know they can't find me over there. With that done we're home free. Then Tom Ferebee has to fill out his bombardier's report and Dutch, the navigator, has to fill out a log. Tom is working on his log and says, "Dutch, what time were we over the target?" And Dutch says, "Nine-fifteen plus 15 seconds." Ferebee says: "What lousy navigating. Fifteen seconds off!" ST: Did you hear an explosion? PT: Oh yeah. The shockwave was coming up at us after we turned. And the tailgunner said, "Here it comes." About the time he said that, we got this kick in the ass. I had accelerometers installed in all airplanes to record the magnitude of the bomb. It hit us with two and a half G. Next day, when we got figures from the scientists on what they had learned from all the things, they said, "When that bomb exploded, your airplane was 10 and half miles away from it." ST: Did you see that mushroom cloud? PT: You see all kinds of mushroom clouds, but they were made with different types of bombs. The Hiroshima bomb did not make a mushroom. It was what I call a stringer. It just came up. It was black as hell, and it had light and colours and white in it and grey colour in it and the top was like a folded-up Christmas tree. ST: Do you have any idea what happened down below? PT: Pandemonium! I think it's best stated by one of the historians, who said: "In one micro-second, the city of Hiroshima didn't exist." ST: You came back, and you visited President Truman. PT: We're talking 1948 now. I'm back in the Pentagon and I get notice from the chief of staff, Carl Spaatz, the first chief of staff of the air force. When we got to General Spaatz's office, General Doolittle was there, and a colonel named Dave Shillen. Spaatz said, "Gentlemen, I just got word from the president he wants us to go over to his office immediately." On the way over, Doolittle and Spaatz were doing some talking; I wasn't saying very much. When we got out of the car we were escorted right quick to the Oval Office. There was a black man there who always took care of Truman's needs and he said, "General Spaatz, will you please be facing the desk?" And now, facing the desk, Spaatz is on the right, Doolittle and Shillen. Of course, militarily speaking, that's the correct order: because Spaatz is senior, Doolittle has to sit to his left. Then I was taken by this man and put in the chair that was right beside the president's desk, beside his left hand. Anyway, we got a cup of coffee and we got most of it consumed when Truman walked in and everybody stood on their feet. He said, "Sit down, please," and he had a big smile on his face and he said, "General Spaatz, I want to congratulate you on being first chief of the air force," because it was no longer the air corps. Spaatz said, "Thank you, sir, it's a great honour and I appreciate it." And he said to Doolittle: "That was a magnificent thing you pulled flying off of that carrier," and Doolittle said, "All in a day's work, Mr President." And he looked at Dave Shillen and said, "Colonel Shillen, I want to congratulate you on having the foresight to recognise the potential in aerial refuelling. We're gonna need it bad some day." And he said thank you very much. Then he looked at me for 10 seconds and he didn't say anything. And when he finally did, he said, "What do you think?" I said, "Mr President, I think I did what I was told." He slapped his hand on the table and said: "You're damn right you did, and I'm the guy who sent you. If anybody gives you a hard time about it, refer them to me." ST: Anybody ever give you a hard time? PT: Nobody gave me a hard time. ST: Do you ever have any second thoughts about the bomb? PT: Second thoughts? No. Studs, look. Number one, I got into the air corps to defend the United States to the best of my ability. That's what I believe in and that's what I work for. Number two, I'd had so much experience with airplanes... I'd had jobs where there was no particular direction about how you do it and then of course I put this thing together with my own thoughts on how it should be because when I got the directive I was to be self-supporting at all times. On the way to the target I was thinking: I can't think of any mistakes I've made. Maybe I did make a mistake: maybe I was too damned assured. At 29 years of age I was so shot in the ass with confidence I didn't think there was anything I couldn't do. Of course, that applied to airplanes and people. So, no, I had no problem with it. I knew we did the right thing because when I knew we'd be doing that I thought, yes, we're going to kill a lot of people, but by God we're going to save a lot of lives. We won't have to invade [Japan]. ST: Why did they drop the second one, the Bockscar [bomb] on Nagasaki? PT: Unknown to anybody else - I knew it, but nobody else knew - there was a third one. See, the first bomb went off and they didn't hear anything out of the Japanese for two or three days. The second bomb was dropped and again they were silent for another couple of days. Then I got a phone call from General Curtis LeMay [chief of staff of the strategic air forces in the Pacific]. He said, "You got another one of those damn things?" I said, "Yessir." He said, "Where is it?" I said, "Over in Utah." He said, "Get it out here. You and your crew are going to fly it." I said, "Yessir." I sent word back and the crew loaded it on an airplane and we headed back to bring it right on out to Trinian and when they got it to California debarkation point, the war was over. ST: What did General LeMay have in mind with the third one? PT: Nobody knows. ST: One big question. Since September 11, what are your thoughts? People talk about nukes, the hydrogen bomb. PT: Let's put it this way. I don't know any more about these terrorists than you do, I know nothing. When they bombed the Trade Centre I couldn't believe what was going on. We've fought many enemies at different times. But we knew who they were and where they were. These people, we don't know who they are or where they are. That's the point that bothers me. Because they're gonna strike again, I'll put money on it. And it's going to be damned dramatic. But they're gonna do it in their own sweet time. We've got to get into a position where we can kill the bastards. None of this business of taking them to court, the hell with that. I wouldn't waste five seconds on them. ST: What about the bomb? Einstein said the world has changed since the atom was split. PT: That's right. It has changed. ST: And Oppenheimer knew that. PT: Oppenheimer is dead. He did something for the world and people don't understand. And it is a free world. ST: One last thing, when you hear people say, "Let's nuke 'em," "Let's nuke these people," what do you think? PT: Oh, I wouldn't hesitate if I had the choice. I'd wipe 'em out. You're gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we've never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn't kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: "You've killed so many civilians." That's their tough luck for being there. ST: By the way, I forgot to say Enola Gay was originally called number 82. How did your mother feel about having her name on it? PT: Well, I can only tell you what my dad said. My mother never changed her expression very much about anything, whether it was serious or light, but when she'd get tickled, her stomach would jiggle. My dad said to me that when the telephone in Miami rang, my mother was quiet first. Then, when it was announced on the radio, he said: "You should have seen the old gal's belly jiggle on that one." · Further information on the Enola Gay can be found at www.theenolagay.com [http://www.theenolagay.com] . [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 45 Nuclear special: A survivor's tale Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | The bomb dropped on Nagasaki killed 74,000 people, injured as many again and left millions homeless. Poet Fumiko Miura, who was then a 16-year-old resident of the city, remembers that apocalyptic day Tuesday August 6, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] August 9 approaches, and I am reminded again of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki 57 years ago, when I was a 16-year-old schoolgirl. I'm 73 now, and even now I seem to hear screams for help. That one plutonium bomb killed 74,000 people and heavily injured 75,000. It had the explosive power of 21,000 tons of TNT, and the temperature of the ground at the hypocentre of the explosion rose in a flash to 3,000-4,000 degrees. Almost everyone within four kilometres of the explosion was burned and killed, or received external injuries. The 240,000 citizens of Nagasaki were quite unprepared for the attack. I remember the air-raid warning sounded early that morning, but a few hours later it was cancelled - I don't remember exactly when, but probably before eight o'clock. It was a scorchingly hot day; from daybreak, cicadas were singing loudly. In the air-raid shelter, we were sweating profusely in our padded hoods and long-sleeved jackets, which were supposed to protect us against burns and injuries. So it was a relief when the warning was cancelled, and we removed our padded hoods and returned to our duties. Following a government order issued in February 1944, middle- and high-school students throughout Japan were recruited to work at weapons manufacturing plants or at places related to the military. The Japanese people, regardless of age and sex, worked, offering their precious lives in "a heroic sacrifice" to carry out the seisen or sacred war. We were taught to become faithful shiko no mitate - humble shields for the Emperor. I was doing some clerical work for the Japanese imperial army. At about 11 o'clock, I thought I heard the throbs of a B-29 circling over the two-storey army headquarters building. I wondered why an American bomber was flying around above us when we had been given the all-clear. There was no noise of anti-aircraft fire. We were working in our shirt sleeves; and all the windows and doors were wide open because it was so stiflingly hot and humid in our two-storey building. At that moment, a horrible flash, thousands of times as powerful as lightning, hit me. I felt that it almost rooted out my eyes. Thinking that a huge bomb had exploded above our building, I jumped up from my seat and was hit by a tremendous wind, which smashed down windows, doors, ceilings and walls, and shook the whole building. I remember trying to run for the stairs before being knocked to the floor and losing consciousness. It was a hot blast, carrying splinters of glass and concrete debris. But it did not have that burning heat of the hypocentre, where everyone and everything was melted in an instant by the heat flash. I learned later that the heat decreased with distance. I was 2,800m away from the hypocentre. When I came to, it was evening. I was lying in the front yard of the headquarters - I still do not know how I got there - covered with countless splinters of glass, wood and concrete, and losing blood from both arms. I felt dull pains all over my body. My white short-sleeved blouse and mompe (the authorities ordered women, young and old, to wear these Japanese-style loose trousers) were torn and bloody. I felt strangely calm. I looked down at my wrist watch; it was completely broken. I sat in a field of rubble watching the sun set. I thought this was the end of Nagasaki, and of Japan. I prayed that my family might have escaped injuries and be alive. I had been taught to believe that the kamikaze (divine wind) would blow some day to save Japan from crisis, leading us to a decisive victory, but realised that there was no divine wind to attack the American plane; instead, a bomb of huge power had exploded over us, when we were totally unprepared. Blessed by fate, I was allowed to survive. But my normal wartime routine had suddenly been interrupted by death and horror. I felt guilty for being alive. I learned later that the primary target for this second bomb had been Kokura, the largest industrial city in northern Kyushu; Nagasaki, which was a shipbuilding centre, was the secondary target. On that morning of August 9, when the bomber named Bockscar reached the sky over Kokura, clouds hung heavily over the city, and the plane, nowrunning low on fuel, turned towards Nagasaki. When it reached the centre of Nagasaki city, visibility was still poor. So it moved 3,300m north-west, and found a hole in the cloud large enough to drop a bomb through. It exploded at 11:02. Many people were trapped under fallen debris; some who survived the blast were burned to death when subsequent fires raged through the city. Charred bodies lay scattered on the red wasteland. I wrote some poems about this inhuman attack: "Blown out by the bomb/A horse's intestines are/Scattered all around;/A half-immolated cat,/Crazed with hunger, attacks them." "A half-naked woman/ Her throat and mouth blasted by/The heat rays, holding/A baby that keeps seeking/Milk from her mother's breast." With no detailed information about the "new type of bomb" issued by the government, we did not know for about a week that it was actually the atomic bomb. We learned that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan on the day of the Nagasaki atomic bombing. I was infuriated at our government, which still urged us to fight against the allied forces. We were injured, and suffering from a strange weakness with no adequate treatment. Food, clothes, information: everything was in shortage. Yet the government still shouted its slogan: "Ichioku gyokusai!" ("100 million people should meet honourable deaths; never surrender!") Who did the Japanese government exist for, I wondered? Shortly after the explosion, many survivors noticed in themselves a strange illness: vomiting, loss of appetite, diarrhoea, high fever, weakness, purple spots on various parts of the body, bleeding from the mouth, gums, and throat, the falling-out of hair, and a very low white blood cell count. We called the illness "atomic bomb disease", and many of those who were only superficially injured died soon or months after. The lack of medical supplies and information about the after-effects of atomic radiation made it impossible to provide us with adequate treatment. First aid was all we could get. Decades afterwards, I had a series of operations for cancer, which may be attributable to my having been exposed to radiation. However, I am not yet destroyed. With the blessing of gods and Buddha, I have been allowed to live. For the sake of those who were killed without mercy during and after the Nagasaki atomic bombing, and also for myself, I want to be able to survive for many more years. My physical being may be transient, but I believe that my spiritual being can remain undefeated. I wish sincerely that human beings will become wise enough to abandon all forms of nuclear weapons in the near future. · Fumiko Miura is professor emeritus at Keio University, Tokyo. She is the author of two collections of tanka poems: Pinku no Kobara and Pages from the Seasons. The extracts above are from Pages from the Seasons, translated by James Kirkup. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 46 [generalnews] 14 Arrested at Tenn. Nuke Plant Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 23:50:13 -0500 (CDT) ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/09Lw8C/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/7gSolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-brf-protest-arrests0805aug05.story 14 Arrested at Tenn. Nuke Plant By Associated Press August 5, 2002, 8:19 AM EDT OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- Fourteen protesters were arrested at an annual demonstration outside the Y-12 nuclear plant to commemorate the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II. One person was charged with federal trespassing and the other 13 with state misdemeanor charges of blocking a road and refusing police commands to move. An estimated 550 demonstrators participated in the protest Sunday, organized by the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. Y-12 is a semiannual protest target for groups commemorating the Hiroshima bombing because the plant produces uranium used to fuel nuclear bombs such as the one dropped on Hiroshima. Demonstrators protest at the plant each April and August. They have said in the past one of their goals is to be arrested. Copyright ) 2002, The Associated Press ________________________________________________ Grassroots International News Association (GINA) 4909 El Molino Ave Riverside CA 92504 media@ccsi.com http://www.geocities.com/rootmedia *Articles forwarded by GINA are for informational purposes only. Any views expressed in any article is that of the interviewer or/ and person being interviewed and not the views of GINA or any of it's members. Join our news lists for daily news articles: To subscribe: Send a message to media@ccsi.com with your name, and e-mail address and the name of the list(s) you would like to be added to. General News News for general broadcast and distribution. 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Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 47 INEEL: Work begins on nuke waste pit* *Wednesday, August 7, 2002* *Twin Falls, Idaho* The Times-News 8/5/2002 12:19:37 PM *(KSDK)* -- Today, the Department of Energy is celebrating the end of the Weldon Spring clean up. The Weldon Spring Ordnance Plant was used to produce explosives during World War II. Uranium and thorium were also produced there in following decades. The clean up of radioactive and chemical waste took 16 years and cost $900 million. A celebration marking the end of the clean up is planned for this afternoon. *NEWS TIPS * ***************************************************************** 49 New CH2M Hill Hanford executive begins Aug. 19 This story was published Tue, Aug 6, 2002 By the Herald staff David Amerine will become CH2M Hill Hanford Group's new executive vice president Aug. 19. Amerine has been executive vice president of Westinghouse Savannah River Co., the Washington Group International subsidiary that manages the Department of Energy's site at Savannah River, S.C. He has held that position since August 2001. Before that, he was executive vice president of the government business unit of Washington Group International. A former Navy submarine officer, Amerine began his civilian career working on the Fast Flux Test Facility in the 1970s with Westinghouse Hanford Co. "With his experience, record of success and proven leadership, (Amerine) rounds out the management team we have been putting together to move forward in accomplishing our mission of accelerated cleanup of the Hanford tank wastes," Ed Aromi, CH2M Hill Hanford Group's president, said in a news release. Through much of the 1980s, Amerine worked in the commercial nuclear industry. Amerine spent most of the 1990s with Westinghouse Savannah River. He worked on that site's tank waste glassification project, on its tritium replacement facility, and as deputy vice president for the company's high-level waste management division. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 50 Radioactive site is opened to tourists *****************************************************************