***************************************************************** 04/07/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.88 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: Abrams Claims no quid pro quo 2 UK: Labour plan for a nuclear future 3 Armenian energy official warns against closing Soviet-built 4 AU: Women protest against Lucas Heights reactor NUCLEAR REACTORS 5 US: Indian Point casts nuclear shadow over North Jersey 6 US: Laxity cited in corrosion of reactor head at Davis-Besse power p 7 Bulgaria: Prime minister transforms ruling movement into party, 8 Armenian energy official warns against closing Soviet-built nuclear 9 US: FirstEnergy blamed for reactor damage 10 US: Conn. prepares for terrorist attack on nuclear plant 11 US: NRC: Nuclear Plant Leak Started 4 Years Ago 12 US: Targeting nuclear plants NUCLEAR SAFETY 13 US: Talk fails to draw atomic arms workers 14 US: Terror jitters lead to new nuclear security measures 15 US: Safety in radiation release may require keen sense of the wind NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 16 US: Industry, government frantic to hide radioactive waste monster 17 US: Colorado Governor inks bill to collar N-waste 18 US: Opponents Lobby Congress on Waste Plan 19 US: Nevada ready to begin campaign in Congress to kill nuclear dump 20 US: Nuclear waste could be boon for researchers 21 US: Dump lobbyist says Nevada has been dealt opportunity 22 US: Getting comfortable with nukes 23 US: Yucca: Cycle goes on and on and on ... 24 US: Yucca: Car dealer expects boost in his casino business 25 US: Can't we just talk out the Yucca Mountain issue? 26 US: Yucca: Developer: Real estate won't be affected 27 US: Columnist Jon Ralston: Few moves left in Yucca fight 28 US: The Goshutes Can't Handle A Nuclear Site 29 US: Families Deserve More Protection Than Nuclear Power Industry 30 US: N-Waste Hearings to Begin 31 US: Yucca: 'West Wing' View 32 US: Prime Time for Yucca Controversy Gives Wing to Opponents' Messag 33 US: Rocketdyne: Valley dump got nuclear waste 34 US: Put nuclear waste at Yucca 35 US: Review Ordered of Landfill (dumped N-waste) 36 US: Maywood Colo. foiled again on hot soil NUCLEAR WEAPONS 37 Politician says Japanese nukes could counter China 38 Reports: Opposition leader says Japan could easily go nuclear 39 US: Henderson TN. almost became atomic town in early 1950s 40 US: Plutonium in Erwin related to fallout from bomb tests? 41 US: Sirens headed for Cold War scrapheap 42 US: READINESS REPORT: Nuclear testing speculation rises 43 Musharraf 'prepared' to use nuclear bomb 44 South Korea scores diplomatic coup by leading North back to the 45 Concern over US plans for war on terror dominate Jiang tour 46 Politician says Japanese nukes could counter China 47 Reports: Opposition leader says Japan could easily go nuclear 48 Pakistan would use nuclear weapons if there is no other option ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Abrams Claims no quid pro quo No unseemly conduct here Don Van Natta Jr.'s article, "Cheney report touts firm's nuclear technology" (reprinted from The New York Times, March 24), tries to link contributions from the nuclear industry to a mention of the next-generation pebble-bed reactor in the president's National Energy Plan. » More From The Oregonian Letters No unseemly conduct here Don Van Natta Jr.'s article, "Cheney report touts firm's nuclear technology" (reprinted from The New York Times, March 24), tries to link contributions from the nuclear industry to a mention of the next-generation pebble-bed reactor in the president's National Energy Plan. 04/06/02 First, for anyone slightly versed in discussions of future nuclear reactor technology, the idea that a brief discussion of pebble-bed technology wouldn't be included would be odd. This is one of a handful of future technologies that is frequently discussed by nuclear experts. Second, instead of trying to link unconnected events in a vain attempt to insinuate unseemly conduct, Van Natta had only to read press releases from the last few months in which we make very clear our policies with regard to the future of nuclear reactor technology. Van Natta states that one could only figure out why certain energy policies were included in the president's National Energy Plan by knowing which industry leaders met with the Energy Task Force. This is silly. The Department of Energy and the National Laboratories that are part of the department have some of the finest minds on the planet, particularly when it comes to nuclear reactor technologies. It is more often the case that industry comes to us for help in thinking through future technologies than the reverse. SPENCER ABRAHAM United States Secretary of Energy Washington, D.C. © 2002 OregonLive.com. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 2 UK: Labour plan for a nuclear future Independent News © 2002 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd Union prepares to back DTI report as Government seeks CBI's 'business edge' By Clayton Hirst 07 April 2002 The Government is to raise the spectre of building new nuclear power stations in Britain, in a policy document to be published next month. The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is to push the controversial issue back onto the agenda after it was effectively sidelined in the much-hyped Downing Street energy review, completed earlier this year. Under Energy minister, Brian Wilson, officials are putting the finishing touches to an energy consultation paper that will form the foundations of a White Paper to be published before the year's end. In its section on nuclear power, the consultation paper is expected to pose three questions that will be weighted towards the industry. It will ask what are the realistic lead times to develop nuclear power stations; the impact on carbon emissions; and the measures needed to combat nuclear waste. Privately, the DTI is worried that the energy review, carried out by the Cabinet Office's Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU), lacked a hard business edge. Officials now hope that the Confederation of British Industry will play a lead role in the consultation process. There have been consistent rumours that the nuclear section of the PIU report was toned down before it reached Tony Blair in February. As a result the main thrust of the report was to set renewable energy targets. Separately, it is understood that Amicus, Britain's second largest union, is preparing to give its backing to the expansion of the nuclear industry. The union was formed through the merger of the AEEU and the MSF. Sir Ken Jackson, joint general secretary of Amicus, is also chairman of nuclear waste body, Nirex. News of the consultation document will delight Britain's nuclear industry, which complained that the PIU review failed to tackle the industry's fundamental issues, such as planning delays. British Energy has led the charge by revealing Britain's crop of nuclear power stations will expire between 2011 and 2025. The ace in the industry's pack is that the Government wants to see a massive reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, but many renewable generators will take decades to come on-stream. This point was raised last month by David King, the Government's chief scientific advisor. He warned that if nuclear power stations were not replaced over the next 20 yearsBritain would still be heavily reliant on fossil fuel sources. As well as using the PIU's work, the DTI consultation document will draw on recent reports produced by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the Trade and Industry and House of Lords Select Committees. The consultation document will also address growing concerns over security of electricity supply, following last summer's California energy crisis. The DTI will ask for the first time whether in five years this could be an issue for Britain. ***************************************************************** 3 Armenian energy official warns against closing Soviet-built nuclear power plant AP Sat Apr 6,11:28 AM ET YEREVAN, Armenia - A top Armenian energy official warned Saturday that the country could find itself in an energy crisis if it heeds pressure from foreign governments to close its sole nuclear power plant. The Soviet-built plant at Medzamor, located 32 kilometers (20 miles) west of the Armenian capital Yerevan and 11 kilometers (7 miles) from the Turkish border, provides about 45 percent of the country's electricity. Vardan Movsisian, chairman of Armenia's energy commission, said the European Union's expectation that the plant be closed by 2004 because of safety concerns is unrealistic. "The 100 million euros (dlrs 87 million) provided by the European Union for the mothballing of the plant and the creation of alternative sources of electric energy are not enough," Movsisian said. He said the Medzamor plant could operate until 2016. Like Movsisian, most Armenians are wary of closing the plant. They well remember the country's energy crisis of 1992-1995, when electricity was available only two hours a day. (ad/sk) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. ***************************************************************** 4 AU: Women protest against Lucas Heights reactor . 7/04/2002. ABC News Online [Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online] About 70 women from across the country have staged a protest at the Lucas Heights nuclear facility in Sydney to demonstrate against the construction of a second reactor at the site. The Commonwealth nuclear regulator, ARPANSA, last week granted final approval to the Argentinian construction company, INVAP, to build a new research reactor at the site. Delegates from the Women and Earth Conference gathered at Lucas Heights, accusing the state and federal governments and public health authorities of a reluctance to recognise the long-term health effects of the radioactive industry. Sutherland Shire Councillor Genevieve Rankin says women in particular have an important role to play in the debate. "I think the unique thing that women have to offer is talking about the next generation," she said. "And women are in some ways very much in touch with that because they bear children and the reality is that we don't want to have the next generation of children come into a world that is polluted by the most toxic substance known to mankind." [http://www.abc.net.au] © 2002 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 5 Indian Point casts nuclear shadow over North Jersey NorthJersey.com - North Jersey News Sunday, April 07, 2002 By BOB IVRY AND ALEX NUSSBAUM Staff Writers Roaring south along the Hudson River on Sept. 11, American Airlines Flight 11 passed over the twin domes of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. Forty-six miles and seven minutes later, the hijacked plane slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Within hours, all 103 U.S. nuclear plants were on high alert. And when American troops in Afghanistan found diagrams of U.S. nuclear facilities abandoned in enemy hide-outs, the perceived threat became real. With almost 17 million people, 6 percent of the U.S. population, living within 50 miles of Indian Point, the plant suddenly seemed a prime target for terrorists - especially since the planes that brought down the trade center were big enough and traveling fast enough to crack open the plant's concrete containment domes, if past research is a guide. Since Sept. 11, New Yorkers up and down the Hudson Valley have intensified the clamor for the Westchester County plant's closure. The terrorist threat, coupled with the plant's spotty safety record and its location just north of the nation's largest city, critics say, make it too dangerous to operate. In New Jersey, however, which has no evacuation plan and few measures in place to deal with a major release, public officials and private citizens behave as if the state border were an invisible shield against a threat just 15 miles away. "I think because we live in a different state, we're not getting involved," says Karen Ranzi, a Ramsey resident who, at the urging of friends, attended Westchester County forums on Indian Point. "I used to listen to people talk about what might happen and think, 'How terrible.' But then I realized that we could be affected, and that scared me." If the worst happened, people living closest to Indian Point would suffer the most. Thousands would be doomed to severe burns and radiation sickness. But if enough radiation escaped, and if the winds were blowing strong from the north, New Jersey, too, could face disaster. An odorless, invisible cloud of irradiated particles could drift south. A heavy rain could wash this "hot" dust out of the air and onto homes in Montvale, gardens in Ringwood, or playgrounds in Paramus. For most, the health effects might be undetectable at first, but they could show up years later in spikes of thyroid cancer or leukemia. Many scientists insist the plant is safe from attack. Yet consider reactions in the two states: Thirteen municipalities in Westchester County, seven in Rockland County, and seven members of New York's congressional delegation have demanded a shutdown. In New Jersey, which receives no power from Indian Point, Edgewater is the only municipality to call for a shutdown. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson, alone among his colleagues, has suggested a temporary closure until Indian Point's security can be reviewed New York Gov. George Pataki has questioned evacuation plans around Indian Point, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wants the 10-mile-radius evacuation zone expanded to 50 miles. That would cover Bergen and Passaic counties and increase the number of potential evacuees from 247,000 to 16.8 million. New Jersey, with 3.8 million people living 50 miles or less from Indian Point, has no emergency evacuation plans, except to shelter fleeing Rockland County residents. No coordinated response plans in case of a radiation release. No regular contact with New York. Tim Keenan, assistant superintendent of the state's Radiological Emergency Response Technical Unit, insists, however, that "more than adequate'' contacts are in place between New York and New Jersey "on the local level." That would come as a surprise to Joseph Forbes, Passaic County's emergency management coordinator. He says his office would look to the state for guidance in the event of an Indian Point emergency. "At this point, I don't think there's anything in place'' in terms of nuclear disaster planning, says Dolores Choteborsky, a county spokeswoman. In one aspect of emergency preparedness, both states have a jump. They're stockpiling doses of potassium iodide, a drug that protects the vulnerable thyroid gland from cancer-causing radiation. The states are limiting the drug, however, to people living within 10 miles of nuclear reactors. That means North Jersey - at least 15 miles from Indian Point and roughly 70 miles from Oyster Creek, the nearest New Jersey reactor - would be out of luck. Possible scenario|for nuclear disaster The terrorist threat to Indian Point could come in many forms - a truck bomb, a sustained power outage, an artillery attack. But after Sept. 11, the most obvious, and ominous, fear is of a hijacked airplane. In 1982, federal researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois determined that a dive-bombing, 336,000-pound Boeing 707 traveling at 460 mph could pierce the 3˝-foot-thick walls of a containment dome, with the resultant explosion compromising the shield that protects the reactor. The Boeing 767s that brought down the trade center towers each weighed 412,000 pounds. Flight 175, the one that sliced into the south tower, was traveling at an estimated 586 mph. No one has yet looked at the impact of a larger plane on a dome. After Sept. 11, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it would. "That's the dilemma," says Gordon Wren Jr., head of Rockland County's Office of Emergency Management. "[The containment dome] is one of the strongest structures in the world by design. But what if you get [400,000] to 500,000 pounds of plane loaded with fuel?" Even more vulnerable than the reactors - Indian Point 2 and Indian Point 3 - is 40 years' worth of nuclear waste outside the steel-reinforced concrete of the containment domes. Spent fuel rods, no longer powerful enough to run a reactor but still highly radioactive, must cool down for decades. At Indian Point, at least 600 tons of them are submerged in 23 feet of water in tanks built into the side of a hill. If the tanks' roofs or walls were damaged and the water drained away, the rods could ignite and spew radioactivity. A 2000 NRC study calculated that a large commercial aircraft had a 50-50 chance of breaking through a spent fuel tank's 5-foot-thick concrete walls. At Indian Point, the tanks' walls are 4 feet thick. "The spent fuel pools are not the easiest target, but they could be hit," says David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group. No one knows for sure exactly what would happen next. But assuming that a catastrophe would release substantial amounts of radiation, interviews with experts and a review of private and government research provide a grim scenario: Tens of thousands living within 17˝ miles of the Buchanan, N.Y., plant would get hit with enough radiation to die within one year. A 1982 analysis by Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, using 1980 census numbers, put that potential death toll at 50,000. The invisible plume would contain iodine gas and particles of strontium-90, tritium, and cesium-137, the deadly isotope that so poisoned a 20-mile area around the ravaged Chernobyl nuclear plant that the land remains uninhabitable 16 years later. Cesium-137 is "a risk to all organs," says Arthur Upton, former director of the National Cancer Institute and professor emeritus at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. "It's a source of acute radiation sickness, which is contracted by a large exposure, which means damage has been done to the bone marrow. In the long term, there's the risk of leukemia.'' As the plume traveled, it would disperse and weaken, but radioactive particles could still be inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through the skin. They could sit on blades of grass, dissolve in water, coat car tops and roofs, enter homes through drafty windows or air conditioning ducts, or be carried on the fur of pets. For New Jersey, questions of life and death could depend on whims of the weather. Radioactive particles would have to ride a wind out of the north. Most of the year, the wind in the New York City area blows toward the east. But for three months - January, March, and April - it comes from the north more often than during the rest of the year, 10 percent of the time instead of an average of 6 percent. Whichever way the wind blows, panicked residents seeking safety would likely snarl the Hudson Valley's highways and winding two-lane roads. Emergency evacuation plans for New York's Westchester, Putnam, Orange, and Rockland counties have been widely criticized as inadequate; one Putnam County legislator dismisses them as "make-believe." And what authorities call "shadow evacuation" - the fleeing of thousands of people outside the official evacuation zone - could clog highways in Bergen and Passaic counties, which have no coordinated evacuation plans. Radioactive particles that float as far as New Jersey would, in most cases, kill slowly. Mahwah, for example, 18 miles from Indian Point, would receive a peak radiation dose of 100,000 millirems, enough to increase a person's likelihood of getting cancer by 10 percent, according to Edwin Lyman, scientific director at the Nuclear Control Institute, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C., that examines risks of nuclear terrorism. In Ridgewood, 27 miles from Indian Point, the anticipated peak dose of 50,000 millirems would mean a 5 percent increase in cancer probability. By comparison, the typical American is exposed to about 360 millirems a year. The dose from a chest X-ray is 10 millirems, a mammogram, 30. The human body contains natural radioactive elements that emit 39 millirems annually. The risk would be far greater for children, who are up to 10 times more susceptible to radiation-caused cancers than adults. "Their cells divide faster, and damage to their DNA from radiation exposure gets more widely distributed in their tissues," Lyman says. Radioactivity would poison land and the food grown on it as far as 40 miles away. Irradiated water could be dangerous for decades - no fishing, no bathing, no drinking. Reservoirs might have to be condemned. Homeowners would face costly cleanups. Simply hosing off the car, the house, or the dog might wash away radioactive particles, but the water would then have to be disposed of properly. The Sandia analysis, now 20 years old, estimated that property damage around Indian Point after a significant radiation release would cost $314 billion. Accounting for inflation, but not for rising property values, that comes to $580 billion in today's dollars. Insurance companies, however, don't pay for damagefrom nuclear events, and Congress has absolved all nuclear plant owners of liability in excess of $200 million. In the event of an accident that causes greater damage, Congress requires plant owners to pay into a fund, with each plant contributing $80 million to cover the damage caused by one. Assuming all owners paid up, that fund would contain $9.2 billion. How vulnerable|is Indian Point? Some experts maintain this nightmare scenario is exaggerated. They point to the industry's solid 40-year safety record and stepped-up security since Sept. 11. They argue that the plant's 1,500 jobs and the 2,000 megawatts it supplies to New York City and Westchester - enough to power 2 million homes - are worth what they consider a small risk. "Indian Point and most nuclear power plants in general are designed with multiple safeguards and redundancies to prevent any kind of emergency," says Elizabeth Benjamin, environmental health specialist at the Rockland County Health Department. Nonetheless, changes are being made. Entergy, the New Orleans-based company that owns and operates Indian Point, already had metal and explosive detectors at the plant and added road barriers and armed National Guard sentries after the attacks. "Since Sept. 11 and before Sept. 11, we were one of the best-defended non-military industrial facilities in the country," says Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman. The plant is also defended from the air, but Steets says he doesn't know details because they're classified. "If I knew what air support was being provided, I probably couldn't tell you," he says. It's been Steets' job since Sept. 11 to counter swelling anti-Indian Point sentiment. Entergy is running radio commercials touting the favorable safety records of the seven other nuclear reactors it owns and newspaper ads for Indian Point proclaiming it "Safe. Secure. Vital." In addition, Entergy dropped "nuclear" from the plant's name after Sept. 11. It's now the Indian Point Energy Center. Steets particularly objects to any comparisons between Indian Point and Chernobyl, the Ukrainian reactor that on April 26, 1986, became a notorious symbol of the perils of nuclear energy. "There are people going from town to town telling people that we're all going to die," Steets says. "That's just not right." At Chernobyl, a design flaw caused power to ramp up while an emergency shutdown was in progress, resulting in disaster. Ironically, plant operators had disabled the backup safety system in order to run tests. At Indian Point, by contrast, power cuts off immediately when the reactor shuts down. That can be triggered by any number of factors, including changes in temperature or air pressure stemming from a breach in the containment dome. "The structures [at Indian Point] are designed to be impenetrable," Steets says. "Are they absolutely impervious? You can always come up with a bigger bomb." Many scientists agree with Steets that the risk posed by nuclear plants is minuscule. But even a slim chance of disaster is too much for growing numbers of New Yorkers, who are ratcheting up anti-Indian Point pressure through forums, rallies, and television and radio call-in shows. "People who are against nuclear power are using Sept. 11 as a pretense to shut down the plants," says Jeff Binder, director of the International Nuclear Safety Center at the Argonne National Laboratory. But jitters over Indian Point emerged long before Sept. 11, fueled over the years by two main concerns. One is the plant's proximity to so many people. No other nuclear plant in the United States has as many neighbors. The second is Indian Point's safety record. No other plant in the United States has been cited as often for violations. Activists frequently refer to Indian Point as the least-safe nuclear plant in the nation. While Indian Point 3 has kept a clean safety record since the NRC began a new oversight program in April 2000, Indian Point 2 is the only reactor slapped with a "red finding," requiring the agency's highest level of scrutiny. "The Indian Point 2 plant has shortcomings in a number of areas we're very concerned about," says Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman. "Until they get certain things straightened out, they'll be under greater scrutiny.'' The red finding followed a February 2000 generator leak that spilled 19,197 gallons of radioactive water into the containment building and released radioactive steam into the air. Nobody was injured or exposed to radiation, but the plant was closed for 11 months while Consolidated Edison, the owner at the time, installed four new steam generators. Entergy purchased Indian Point 2 from Con Ed on Sept. 6, 2001. "Con Edison had some problems making corrections in a timely fashion," Sheehan says. "Time will tell if Entergy can improve on that." The NRC has slapped Indian Point 2 with two other reprimands since 2000, each resulting in a "yellow finding," requiring the second-strictest level of oversight. The first was based on human error. Four of seven crews failed their plant operators' recertification exams in October, the NRC says. The second came when NRC inspectors found a backlog in equipment maintenance. Indian Point's next NRC evaluation is scheduled for June. In the months until then, activists pushing for a shutdown will try to gather more steam. The city of Hoboken plans to consider a shutdown resolution April 17, and the Sierra Club's North Jersey chapter will debate the issue May 9. But simply closing Indian Point poses its own set of problems. In its absence, utilities would have to buy power from other sources, boosting electricity bills up to 30 percent and increasing the likelihood of summer blackouts in New York City, says Gavin J. Donohue, executive director of the Independent Power Producers of New York, an industry group. "There's nothing to indicate the plant is a danger," Donohue says. "This is politics. Are we just going to succumb to terrorist threats? We can't subject ourselves to that. In fact, shutting down Indian Point doesn't make it any less of a terrorist threat." Donohue's point is this: Even if the plant no longer generated power, the spent fuel remains behind. "Shutting down the plant would make it about 80 to 85 percent safer, but not completely safe," says Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Some scientists promote dry cask storage as a solution to the spent fuel problem. This involves sealing the spent rods in lead-lined concrete coffins. About a dozen nuclear facilities store their waste this way. Entergy recently unveiled plans to move its waste into onsite dry casks, starting in 2004. Before Sept. 11, the company planned to shift only Indian Point 2's spent fuel because that reactor's pools are filling up, Steets says. Public pressure prompted the decision to encase Indian Point 3's spent fuel as well, Steets acknowledges. "We feel the spent fuel is safe where it is," he says. "In all honesty, we have supporters who'd feel better with the fuel in dry cask storage." North Jersey's |emergency plans Driving north along the east bank of the Hudson River toward the Bear Mountain Bridge, most people notice hawks soaring, kayakers paddling, and anglers casting lines. When Andrew Spano drives that winding stretch of Route 9, he envisions emergency evacuation. "The evacuation plan we have right now is not the best plan," says Spano, the Westchester county executive. "But we're working at making it better." Spano is candid about Indian Point. He wishes it had never been built. But he takes a pragmatist's view. "We're stuck with it. We can't close it," he says. "The only ones who can close it are Entergy, which just invested millions in it, and the NRC. And the NRC will close it only if they think it's dangerous, and they don't. So my job is to make sure we have the best emergency plan we can." In Rockland County, emergency managers turn stoic when asked about the location of their office, which is within Indian Point's 10-mile emergency planning zone. "That poses some interesting problems for us," says Nick Longo, the county's radiological emergency planning coordinator. In the event of a radioactive release, Rockland students will be evacuated to schools in Bergen County. The fact that none of the emergency bus drivers had Bergen County maps until recently highlights only some of the little things that can go wrong. "I have no idea how my school got on Rockland County's list," says Gregory Walters, principal of Bergen County Vocational Technical High School in Paramus, which is slated to take in children from 11 Rockland schools. "I've never been approached by anyone about this." Walters says he discovered this only when he received an emergency preparedness booklet in the mail - on April 3. It was sent not by Bergen or Rockland officials, but by the administrator of a nursery school whose students would be evacuated to Walters' school. "It's a nice brochure," Walters adds. "It's the first time I've seen it." Other host sites include Bergen County Police and Fire Academy in Mahwah, Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell, Don Bosco Prep in Ramsey, Paramus Catholic High School, St. Joseph's High School in Montvale, and Bergen County Academies in Hackensack. Bergen County emergency officials seem better prepared for other aspects of a Rockland evacuation.The county's radiological response team - some two-dozen specially trained police and health department employees - would scan buses and passengers with hand-held radiation detectors. In the event of a larger emergency, more than 200 local volunteers trained in radiation detection would be pressed into service. But if a North Jersey evacuation were needed, county officials plan to rely on local municipalities, according to Dwane Razzetti of the Bergen County Emergency Management Office. Bob Greenlaw, director of emergency services for Ridgewood, is confident such an evacuation could be accomplished in an orderly manner - given adequate time. "If we had two or three days, we could do that," Greenlaw says. "But if we had to get everybody out within a short period of time, who knows? How many cars fit on how many highways? It gets to a point where it's physically impossible. Take a look at Labor Day weekend traffic." Spano, the Westchester county executive, says regardless of whether radiation reaches New Jersey, officials should be concerned about shadow evacuation - the panicked flight of people well outside the 10-mile emergency planning zone. History bears him out. When Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant experienced a partial meltdown in 1979, the state ordered a limited evacuation of 3,400 pregnant women and preschool children living within five miles. Instead, 144,000 people fled, some living up to 40 miles from the plant. Today, 60 percent of people living within 50 miles of Indian Point say they'd flee in the event of a major accident, according to a poll taken last month by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion and commissioned by Riverkeeper, a Putnam County environmental group. "The minute people in New Jersey hear about an incident at Indian Point, they'll do something," Spano says. "They'll get in their cars and go. These kinds of things need to be taken into account. "There should be concern in New Jersey. We're all inextricably linked, now." * Milestones and safety problems at the Indian Point Energy Center: 1962: Station's first nuclear reactor, Indian Point 1, goes on-line, operated by Consolidated Edison for 12 years. 1974: Indian Point 1 closes down; Indian Point 2, also run by Con Ed, opens. Indian Point 3 is under construction, but the utility, losing money from the Middle East oil embargo, agrees to sell it to the New York Power Authority. 1976: Indian Point 3 goes on-line. Oct. 17, 1980: Indian Point 2 closes for eight months after spill of 100,000 gallons of non-radioactive water goes undetected for two weeks. 1992: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission fines the Power Authority $463,000 for multiple management and equipment failures; the NRC also reports 25 to 30 operators admitted "occasionally" falsifying records. 1993: Indian Point 3 is taken off-line in February due to management problems and safety violations; the shutdown lasts 2˝ years. Later, the NRC fines the Power Authority $300,000 for 17 safety violations disclosed in April. November-December 1993: Rushing to replace two valves at the still-closed Indian Point 3 reactor before inspection, engineers install them backward, blocking cooling systems and disabling backup generators. "The NRC's view is that we are a risk to ourselves and to those around us," plant newsletter reports. May 1994: After NRC orders inspection of spent fuel pool at Indian Point 1, Con Ed announces that up to 150 gallons of radioactive water have been leaking every day for four years. July 19, 1995: Indian Point 3 restarted. After replacing 19 of the top 27 managers, the Power Authority asserts that "nuclear religion" instituted at plant will insure safe operations. Sept. 14, 1995: Power Authority shuts Indian Point 3 again after NRC finds more safety problems; a predicted three-month shutdown stretches to seven. June 1996: Three months after Indian Point 3 reopens, hydrogen gas from a cooling system leaks onto electrical wiring and causes small explosion in a non-nuclear part of the complex. Feb. 15, 2000: Radioactive steam leaks from Indian Point 2 after faulty tubes send 19,197 gallons of radioactive water into containment building; NRC issues "red finding," requiring highest level of monitoring in the nation; plant is closed for 11 months. Nov. 21, 2000: Entergy, a New Orleans-based corporation with $10 billion annual revenues, buys Indian Point 3. March 2, 2001: Indian Point 2 earns "yellow finding" - second-most-severe warning - for backlogged repairs. Sept. 6, 2001: Entergy buys Indian Point 2. Sept. 11, 2001: Within hours of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, an NRC spokeswoman says U.S nuclear reactors were designed to withstand the crash of a fully loaded jumbo jet. Sept. 22, 2001: NRC backtracks, acknowledging containment domes were not designed for the type of jets used on Sept. 11. October 2001: Four of Indian Point 2's seven control-room teams flunk recertification exams; three of them subsequently pass a retest. Feb. 14, 2002: Entergy says ongoing leak of radioactive water - about 4 ounces a day - into "clean" water of one steam generator is too small to be considered dangerous. March 2002: Indian Point 2 guard is fired for allegedly pulling a gun on a colleague as a joke; his supervisor is fired for not immediately reporting the incident. Copyright © 2002 North Jersey Media Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 6 Laxity cited in corrosion of reactor head at Davis-Besse power plant » More From The Plain Dealer 04/06/02 John Funk Plain Dealer Reporter Oak Harbor, Ohio - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday sharply criticized FirstEnergy Corp. officials for overlooking evidence of corrosion that ultimately crippled the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant. "Davis-Besse had several opportunities [in the last decade] to clean and inspect the reactor head and did not do it," Jack Grobe, director of reactor safety in the NRC's Midwest region, told an audience of 500 from the auditorium stage at Oak Harbor High School. Davis-Besse's top management listened from the other side of the dais. The corrosion created a large hole in the reactor's head that left only three-eighths of an inch of stainless steel between the inside of the reactor and the containment vessel it sits in - "an unacceptable margin of safety," said Jim Dyer, the NRC's regional administrator. FirstEnergy officials have emphasized that the corrosion did not lead to radiation leaks or pose a health hazard. "We could have and should have found [the problems] earlier," Howard Bergendahl, FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. vice president at Davis-Besse, said in response. "We were mistaken. Our job is to expect the unexpected. We did not do this." NRC officials, addressing the public meeting held to disclose preliminary results of their investigation, said this is only the fact-finding phase. They left open the possibility that FirstEnergy could face sanctions. Davis-Besse, which is on Lake Erie about 22 miles east of Toledo, has been shut down since Feb. 16 for refueling and an inspection ordered by the NRC after similar plants developed cracks in critical control-rod mechanisms. The 45-minute report detailed what the NRC's special inspection team found last month - both in Davis-Besse's records and on the heavily damaged reactor head. The federal team agreed with company's findings on the corrosion's cause: Boric acid leaked from the reactor through the cracks and ate a 4-to-5-inch-by-7-inch hole nearly through the 6˝-inch-thick solid steel reactor cap. The cap, or head, measures 17 feet in diameter and weighs 150 tons. It is lined with stainless steel, which is impervious to boric acid. But the corrosion, going on at least since 1999, rusted out about 35 pounds of the head's carbon steel, the NRC team calculated. After the Davis-Besse corrosion was found, the NRC asked the operators of all 68 reactors of similar design to submit inspection records. So far, the Davis-Besse "wastage" is the only case of significant corrosion. FirstEnergy officials are proposing that the hole be sealed with a stainless steel plug and that the plant be restarted by July while it waits as much as two years for a new head it has ordered from overseas. Some groups want the plant to stay closed until the new head arrives. Others are calling for the plant's permanent closure. The NRC must approve any changes. Brian Sheron, NRC associate director of licensing, said that if the commission had known what it knows now about Davis-Besse's past inspections it would not have allowed Davis-Besse to operate six weeks beyond a Dec. 31 inspection deadline. FirstEnergy last fall persuaded the NRC that the plant could safely operate until Feb. 16. The company wanted to run the reactor until April 1, but the NRC wanted the control-rod mechanisms inspected for cracks. The NRC special team's findings include: In 1990, Davis-Besse engineers proposed modifying the insulation and service structure that hangs above the domed reactor head to give workers room to clean and inspect the top of the reactor head. The company never made the modifications. The structure, with insulation on its bottom, is two inches from the head at its center - making cleaning and inspecting difficult. The Davis-Besse reactor was leaking boric acid for years. Acid crystals were not removed from the very top of the head in a 1996 inspection because of the closeness of the insulation and service structure. By 1998, boric acid crystals covered the head and had turned from white to brown, indicating rust. Boric acid crystals and ferrous oxide (rust) dust were so thick in the reactor's containment building by May 1999 that the company installed filters on its radioactive monitoring equipment. By November 1999, the filters had to be changed every other day, and cooling coils on air-conditioning equipment had to be cleaned frequently. In 2000, workers had to use crowbars and hot water to clean the hardened "lava-like," rusty boric acid from the reactor top. Because of the closeness of the insulation and service structure, they did not clean the center of the head- where several sleeves for control-rod drive mechanism were cracked and leaking. "The delay in the modifications of the service structure played a key role" in the corrosion, said Grobe. "Davis-Besse staff assumed the extra boric acid was due to flange leakage [a harmless leak high above the reactor head] and the color due to the age of the deposits on the air coolers," he said. "The NRC believes it was a sign of corrosion to the head." FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said the modifications to the service structure and insulation were on the company's work list at several refueling outages but were pushed back because other work had to be done and because no one in the industry at the time believed such acid leaks were a safety problem. "Looking back, it [the modification] might have helped us prevent today's problems," he said. Many in the audience were critical of the company and the agency. "Why should we have any confidence in either FirstEnergy or the NRC?" asked former NRC inspector Howard Whitcomb. He said the NRC should not accept FirstEnergy's proposal to fix the corrosion with a stainless steel patch. Instead, he said, it should idle the plant for two years until a new reactor lid is made. FirstEnergy has said it would cost $10 million to $15 million a month to buy power during the outage. Others spoke in defense of the company. "Nuclear energy is the most efficient and the cleanest," said Elizabeth Wharry, who lives 3˝ miles from the plant. "If you listen to this hysteria and try to close the plant, you'll be throwing the baby out with the bathwater." © 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. © 2001 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 7 Bulgaria: Prime minister transforms ruling movement into party, says construction of nuclear power plant will resume Sat Apr 6, 2:24 PM ET By VESELIN ZHELEV, Associated Press Writer SOFIA, Bulgaria - Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski on Saturday transformed his civic movement into a political party in an apparent attempt to strengthen his grip on power. Some 1,000 members of the National Movement Simeon II voted unanimously to create a party that keeps the movement's name. "This is not a technical formality but the beginning of the renovation of our country, which I aim at," said Saxcoburggotski, a former Bulgarian king. "Only a party with units all over the country and open to as many members as possible will guarantee the success of the National Movement values." Saxcoburggotski also announced the government would resume the construction of Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant. The construction was frozen in 1990 after pressure from environmentalists. The pledge to finish the plant, located near the Danube port of Belene, 250 kilometers (156 miles) northeast of Sofia, aimed to alleviate fears that Bulgaria may face power shortages and electricity price increases after it later this year closes two of six Soviet-designed reactors at its only nuclear plant in Kozlodui, 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Sofia. Bulgaria agreed to shut down the units under pressure from the European Union (news - web sites), which considers them unsafe. "I shall not betray the national interests in the field of nuclear power," Saxcoburggotski said. "The government intends to continue the construction of the Belene nuclear plant, which will be in conformity with all modern requirements for reliability and safety." The members also elected Saxcoburggotski as leader of the new party. He was the only candidate running for the post. The transformation of the movement appeared to be an attempt to tighten discipline among Saxcoburggotski's lawmakers. Five of them recently criticized the government of defaulting on its promises of quick economic improvement. The movement expelled all five dissenters. "The commitment you must make today must be equal to my commitment," Saxcoburggotski told the meeting. "We are not here today to create a new political class, but to convince those who doubt." The new party will be close to European center right parties, he said, indicating the party won't change the movement's politics. Since sweeping to power in last June's general elections, Saxcoburggotski's government has lost popularity mainly due to its failure to fulfill election promises of substantial improvement of dismal living standards. Bulgarians on average earn 275 leva (dlrs 125) per month. The unemployment rate is close to 18 percent. But Saxcoburggotski argued his reforms already have produced positive results — there were 35,000 more jobs in March this year as compared to a year ago, and crime dropped 16 percent in the first quarter this year as compared to the same time period 2001. (vz/sl) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 8 Armenian energy official warns against closing Soviet-built nuclear power plant Sat Apr 6,11:28 AM ET YEREVAN, Armenia - A top Armenian energy official warned Saturday that the country could find itself in an energy crisis if it heeds pressure from foreign governments to close its sole nuclear power plant. The Soviet-built plant at Medzamor, located 32 kilometers (20 miles) west of the Armenian capital Yerevan and 11 kilometers (7 miles) from the Turkish border, provides about 45 percent of the country's electricity. Vardan Movsisian, chairman of Armenia's energy commission, said the European Union (news - web sites)'s expectation that the plant be closed by 2004 because of safety concerns is unrealistic. "The 100 million euros (dlrs 87 million) provided by the European Union for the mothballing of the plant and the creation of alternative sources of electric energy are not enough," Movsisian said. He said the Medzamor plant could operate until 2016. Like Movsisian, most Armenians are wary of closing the plant. They well remember the country's energy crisis of 1992-1995, when electricity was available only two hours a day. (ad/sk) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 9 FirstEnergy blamed for reactor damage Beacon Journal | 04/06/2002 | Posted on Sat, Apr. 06, 2002 [story:PUB_DESC] NRC faults Akron utility for Davis-Besse problems By Jim Mackinnon Beacon Journal business writer OAK HARBOR - FirstEnergy Corp. and its predecessors failed to take proper steps years ago to stop boric acid leaks that led to significant damage and a nearly devastating accident at theDavis-Besse nuclear power plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission bluntly told more than 200 people here yesterday. One step included failing to notify federal regulators about significant levels of rust clogging filters inside the plant. The rust was caused by boric acid corrosion of the reactor vessel head, which covers the radioactive fuel core. In addition, regulators said they recommended as early as 1990 that the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head be modified to allow for easier inspection and cleaning, but the modifications were never performed. While the NRC's preliminary report from its own independent inspection team at the Lake Erie shoreline plant put much of the blame on FirstEnergy, the commission members said they shared blame as well. Audience members also pointed fingers at federal regulators for what they said was lax oversight that jeopardized public safety. NRC officials said they couldn't say if their own two on-site inspectors at Davis-Besse failed to take note of signs or review reports that could have tipped them off early that the reactor was developing a problem. The NRC inspectors work at the plant full time. The Oak Harbor High School auditorium, built in large part with tax revenue from the nearby nuclear power plant, was more than halfway filled for the three-hour meeting that concluded shortly before noon. The NRC called the community meeting to release its initial findings on what created two cavities in the reactor vessel head at the plant. Protesters carried signs that read ``Mothballs Yes Band Aids No,'' ``Doh!'' ``Blah Blah Blah,'' ``Davis Besse exp. date: February 2002'' and more. Plant supporters also sat in the audience, along with a handful of financial analysts and a large number of reporters and photographers. Sheriffs, state and local police provided security. Disaster averted Officials said just a 3/16 -inch-thick lining of stainless steel inside the reactor vessel head prevented a nearly devastating ``loss of coolant'' accident. That's a scenario under which radioactive coolant, at 600 degrees Fahrenheit and at 2,200 pounds of pressure per square inch, jets into the massive containment chamber that encloses the reactor. The Davis-Besse stainless-steel cladding bent but didn't break under the intense pressure, investigators found. ``There was an unacceptable reduction in the margin of safety at the Davis-Besse plant,'' said Jim Dyer, regional administrator for the NRC's Chicago office that oversees Ohio nuclear plants. ``The cladding wasn't designed to be pressure containing. But it did. That was fortunate.'' If the stainless-steel cladding had failed, fail-safe systems would have prevented any radioactivity from getting into the environment, he said. ``It still would have been a radiological mess inside the containment (chamber).'' ``This is a big deal,'' NRC spokesman Jan Strasma said. ``Had they followed the corrosion and boric acid programs in '88 and their own (corrosion control program), they would have found the problem sooner.... When you have filter changes going from monthly to every other day, you have something major going on.'' Had the NRC been aware of the increased filter changes, it never would have agreed to allow the plant to continue operating past Dec. 31 last year, said Brian Sheron, the NRC's associate director for project licensing and technical. All nuclear power plants were supposed to conduct safety inspections by Dec. 31 to look for evidence of cracking in devices called nozzles on top of the reactor vessel head; FirstEnergy got an extension through mid-February to shut the plant down and do the inspection. Sheron said the NRC did know about dry boric acid deposits on top of the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head. Those boric acid deposits did not necessarily indicate a corrosion problem, he said. The NRC plans to step up its inspections at Davis-Besse, and officials said they could not rule out sanctions against FirstEnergy, depending on findings. While the NRC placed much of the blame on the Akron utility, its findings mirrored almost exactly FirstEnergy's own preliminary analysis of the reactor damage that was released more than a week ago. The plant has been closed since mid-February, following a scheduled refueling outage and safety inspection. That inspection turned up the acid-created damage in March. Apologies yesterday from FirstEnergy executives, which included statements that the company planned to learn from the experience, were laughed at by some audience members. ``We have been open, honest and truthful,'' said Bob Saunders, president of FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. ``We are responsible to you, the public, and the NRC. We are clearly responsible for the condition of the reactor head. We will learn from this.'' ``We were mistaken. It was our responsibility to expect the unexpected and we did not do so in this case. We will learn from this,'' said Howard Bergendahl, vice president of the Davis-Besse plant for FirstEnergy. Proper precautions Jack Grobe, director of the division of reactor safety for the NRC region III, said the damage could have been prevented if the utility had implemented a proper maintenance program. ``It should have been prevented,'' Grobe said. He said he isn't concerned about similar safety issues at the 68 other similar pressurized water reactors in the nation. ``Boric acid corrosion is not a new issue. You discover boric acid and you clean it up, take action to prevent future leaks. You have to identify problems and you have to fix problems. It's that simple.'' But Grobe also said properly identifying potential problems at complex nuclear power plants isn't easy. The NRC's resident inspectors cannot be aware of all maintenance activities at the plants, he said. The NRC largely depends on information supplied by the plant operators. There is no requirement that Davis-Besse had to notify the NRC about the increased change in filters, one of the signs that could have tipped off the plant that there was a boric acid corrosion problem, he said. Joyce Pryke, 57, who said she lives about 20 miles away from Davis-Besse, pressed Grobe in a related afternoon meeting about whether the in-house NRC inspectors knew about the increased filter changes. He said he didn't know. The two NRC inspectors, who were at the meeting, didn't comment. ``In any case, we should have recognized it,'' FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said. NRC-recommended modifications weren't done to the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head in large part because that would have meant exposing plant workers to significant amounts of radiation, plant spokesman Richard Wilkins said. The cost of making the modifications was not a factor, he said. Nuclear opponent Paul Gunter of the Washington-based Nuclear Information &Resource Service said both Davis-Besse management and the NRC are to blame for the plant's problems. ``Clearly the utility violated rudimentary safety margins,'' he said. ``What we're trying to say is there is more than technical issues here. They need to look at gross systematic mismanagement of this facility.'' A coalition of Ohio environmental and consumer groups appeared at the Oak Harbor hearing, vowing to oppose any repairs or restart of Davis-Besse. The coalition said it would act as a watchdog for the plant and regulators. The group's statement called for a comprehensive inspection of the plant and the appointment of an independent team of scientists and engineers who are not employed by utilities or the NRC. The team would inspect the plant and review all documents and recommendations, the group said. Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or [jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com] ***************************************************************** 10 Conn. prepares for terrorist attack on nuclear plant Worcester Telegram &Gazette Online [http://www.eworcester.com] Sunday, April 7, 2002 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WATERFORD, Conn.-- The state has stockpiled 450,000 doses of a chemical that protects against radiation poisoning, for use in the event of an attack on the Millstone Power Station. Although there has been no direct threat against the nuclear power complex, emergency planning in the event of an attack or an accident has changed dramatically and subtly since Sept. 11. First Selectman Paul B. Eccard told The Day of New London that the possibility of a terrorist attack on Millstone caused officials to take a top-to-bottom look at their emergency plans. Eccard said Connecticut notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February that it wanted 450,000 tablets of potassium iodide. It is one of 11 states to make such a request since Sept. 11. The pills have since arrived and are being stored at the State Armory in Hartford. They are ready for distribution as needed, but the fact that the population swells with tourists in the summer adds to the challenge, said Eccard. “At the end of the process, when we establish the protocols, we have to cover all these issues, and it will not be easy,” Eccard said. In addition, Waterford officials have begun stationing buses at schools closest to the nuclear plant to facilitate a smooth evacuation. Town officials have also changed the destination for evacuees, from Wethersfield to East Hartford. The switch in destination in case an evacuation is ordered has been approved by the state Office of Emergency Management. Eccard said East Hartford offers easier highway access, better medical and radiological monitoring resources and has the facilities to handle more people. While East Hartford would be the primary reception center for evacuees, some residents could still be diverted from there to emergency shelters in Wethersfield, Eccard said. Reid Burdick, director of Civil Preparedness in neighboring New London, said school bus transportation remains a major challenge. School systems do not have enough buses to move every child at once, he said. “Our issue is getting people out of harm's way,” Burdick said. “We are all thinking a bit more about the potential for something happening than we were before Sept. 11, but that doesn't change our basic approach to planning.” ***************************************************************** 11 NRC: Nuclear Plant Leak Started 4 Years Ago newsnet5.com - News - Acid Leak Ate Through Steel Cap POSTED: 1:37 p.m. EST April 5, 2002 OAK HARBOR, Ohio -- A Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector said workers at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant should have recognized clogging in an air cooler and radiation monitor filter as signs of corrosion. An NRC report released Friday said an acid leak that ate through a steel cap at the plant should have been spotted as long as four years ago. Inspector Mel Holmberg said workers also failed to clear several inches of rust-colored boric acid that was building up on the reactor head. A FirstEnergy executive in charge of the plant acknowledges the problem should have been discovered earlier. The NRC report said corrosion caused by cracked nozzles began at least four years ago. The commission has said it's the most extensive corrosion ever found on top of a U.S. nuclear plant reactor but that it didn't pose a safety threat. Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. ***************************************************************** 12 Targeting nuclear plants NorthJersey.com - Opinion Columns Sunday, April 07, 2002 INTO EVERY WAR, maybe a little chaos must fall. OK, it wasn't total chaos that stirred up state anti-terrorism officials last week. But something is definitely confusing here. This story will not make you feel confident about New Jersey's role in the war on terrorism. It begins with a trip by some members of the state Assembly Homeland Security and State Preparedness Committee to a South Jersey nuclear power plant. It was last Tuesday, the day after April Fool's Day, but this was no time to joke around. Two committee Democrats, Joan Quigley of Jersey City and Gary Guear of Hamilton, visited the Salem nuclear power plant on the Delaware River. First, they dropped in on a National Guard outfit assigned to the plant. The soldiers of Troop C of the 117th Cavalry of Woodstown apparently were quite impressive. They told of guarding Salem for almost 180 straight days - a long deployment for these part-time civilian warriors. They demonstrated communications equipment, took legislators on a ride in a Humvee, and even pointed out how they think Salem might be vulnerable to attack. But things got confusing when the soldiers put on a computerized slide show. Interviews with Quigley, Guear, the National Guard, and others say the problem began with one slide, one question, and one sergeant's answer. The slide, listing reasons for Troop C's deployment at Salem, mentioned that maps of U.S. nuclear power plants had been found among al-Qaeda terrorist documents in Afghanistan. This prompted a question: Were Salem's maps among those found? Yes, said a sergeant. This is serious news - if true. Those in the room point out that the sergeant said there were no plans by al-Qaeda to attack Salem. But the fact that potential suicide bombers might be studying maps of Salem's nuclear reactors - well, this surely had to be scary. Incredibly, say those interviewed, the sergeant's remark did not cause anyone to stop the meeting and ask for an explanation. Quigley and Guear said it didn't occur to them to pose any questions. They went on to tour the Salem plant where - incredibly - they did not ask security officials whether al-Qaeda might have targeted Salem. Quigley and Guear are at a loss to explain why they didn't press the issue at Salem and with the National Guard. But they did call a press conference back in Trenton. And there they mentioned the news about al-Qaeda possibly having Salem's maps. You guessed it: This definitely caught the attention of the news media. Hey, it should. If state officials say terrorists have maps of a nuclear power plant in New Jersey, the public ought to know - if only to hold officials accountable for security or truth. What happened next was a deluge of denials. In a conference call to Guear, the sergeant reportedly backed off his earlier statement. Salem officials, in turn, announced they had received no warning about al-Queda maps. The next day, Kathryn Flicker, the assistant attorney general in charge of New Jersey's counter-terrorism office, wrote a searing two-page letter to Quigley and Guear "to correct erroneous information" in the "off-hand remark" by the sergeant. Flicker said she checked with the National Guard, the FBI, as well as security officials at Salem and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on whether Salem's maps were in Afghanistan. "I can say categorically," she wrote, "that no such plans were found, and I consider the comment to have been not only incorrect but irresponsible as well." In an interview, the NRC head of security for Northeast nuclear plants, Wayne Lanning, told me that "no such documents had been found." He added: "If such documents existed, we would know about it." The story might have ended right there. But Assemblyman Guear claims he was phoned by a "reliable source - one that I don't question." This source, says Guear, told him that Salem's maps definitely were in Afghanistan. Guear, by the way, is a former Trenton city police detective. "I don't go off half-cocked," he insists. So whose story is correct? The National Guard has not allowed the sergeant to publicly explain his remark. A guard spokesman, Col. John Dwyer, says the sergeant will be "re-educated in some way." Another person on the Salem tour contends that Guear is "grandstanding." Guear promises to try to persuade his source to come forward in the near future. "I'm allowing a little time," says Guear. Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Quigley asks a good question: "Whose source do you believe?" The question cuts to the heart of why so many feel so uneasy in these days after Sept. 11. Is America ready for this new war? Is New Jersey? Whose source do you trust? Record Columnist Mike Kelly can be contacted at kellym@northjersey.com. Copyright © 2002 North Jersey Media Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 13 Talk fails to draw atomic arms workers By Jonathan Bloom, Globe Correspondent, 4/7/2002 [I]t's getting harder and harder to give away money. At least, that's the lesson learned from a recent attempt by the US Department of Labor to compensate former nuclear weapons workers. The agency came to the Holiday Inn in Somerville recently to help people apply for the Federal Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, which pays up to $150,000 and medical payments to workers who became ill due to exposure to radioactive materials. The act, which became effective last July, also compensates surviving spouses and children. Massachusetts ranks sixth in the nation in the number of atomic workplaces listed by the Department of Energy. Over 20 such sites are in the Bay State, including The Franklin Institute, M.I.T., National Research Corporation, and Edgerton, Germeshausen &Grier, Inc. But the turnout for the sessions, which ran March 19-21 was, ''the lowest turnout of any session we've had since we started running these'' last October, said Larry Hoss, the Labor Department's Resource Center manager. According to Hoss, only six people showed up. Of the three who filed claims, two worked at Indian Orchard's Chapman Valve and one worked at Worcester's Norton Company. ''Normally, when we get less than 100 claims in a three-day session, we don't believe we've had a good turnout,'' said Hoss. So are Bay Staters more resistant to illness? That's not it, says Hoss. ''The people there are just like anywhere else - they do get sick,'' he said, interviewed by phone from Washington. ''Even with that cold weather.'' Hoss isn't sure what to blame. ''I don't know whether we were in a bad location or what. I don't know what other means we can use to get the word out.'' Those who missed the sessions can still apply for compensation. This story ran on page 9 of the Boston Globe's City Weekly section on 4/7/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. [ ***************************************************************** 14 Terror jitters lead to new nuclear security measures Greenwich Time - By Vesna Jaksic Staff Writer April 6, 2002 Greenwich Hospital's doctors are among a select group of physicians trying to determine if a lung cancer screening procedure is effective in diagnosing the nation's leading cancer killer in its earliest and most curable stage. The hospital recently joined 12 other centers worldwide in the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program, which will aim to determine if low-dose advanced computed tomography, or CT, is more effective in detecting lung cancer than ordinary X-rays for people at high risk for lung cancer. "It's a very exciting project because if we're able to prove this works, we can have a very significant impact on lung cancer deaths, or if we are able to prove it's a waste of time, we'd be able to stop something that has become very widespread," said Dr. David Mullen, the hospital's director of radiology and the study's principal investigator. CT screening, which costs about $425 at Greenwich Hospital, has become a common procedure since 1999, when the British medical journal Lancet published a report about its success in detecting lung cancer. "Preliminary results are promising, at least very interesting, but it needs to be studied in a complete and scientific fashion," said Dr. Christopher Fey, a radiologist at the hospital who also is an investigator in the study. "We're trying to see if using a CAT scan to screen for lung cancer can save lives and we're studying that in a comprehensive and scientific fashion." Eighty-five percent of lung cancer cases are lethal because they are diagnosed too late, Mullen said. Of the 15 percent of cases diagnosed early, 80 percent are curable with surgery, he said. While CT scanning is safe, it is important to determine if it helps reduce lung cancer deaths through early detection without producing a significant number of "false positives," which may lead to unnecessary follow-up procedures, Mullen said. The procedure is typically not covered by insurance. Lung cancer is the leading type of cancer deaths in the country, according to the American Cancer Society. It affected 169,500 Americans last year, killing 157,400 of them. Cigarette smoking is by far the biggest risk factor leading to lung cancer, according to the society. The hospital has been using CT screening for three years. Ten patients have been tested as part of the trial, which began Feb. 20, said Diane Perry, a registered nurse at the hospital who is coordinating the study. The participants, who must pay for the procedure, must complete a questionnaire about their smoking history and come back in a year for another screening, she said. The trial is ongoing and does not have a patient limit, Perry said. While there are no age requirements, most participants are in their 40s and 50s and are either heavy smokers or have recently quit, she said. CT screening produces a cross-sectional, three-dimensional image of the lungs by using low-dose radiation to scan a patient's chest and lungs. The patient lies on a table, which slides under a doughnut-shaped machine. An image of the scan, which is painless and takes about 20 seconds to complete, is later read by radiologists. The procedure uses a stronger dose of radiation than chest X-rays, which only takes a one-dimensional photograph of the chest. The Lancet report, which was published in July 1999, showed that chest X-rays failed to detect about 85 percent of early-stage lung cancers found by the CT procedure. Ninety-six percent of those cases were found early enough that the tumors were successfully removed with surgery. That study was led by Dr. Claudia Henschke, professor of radiology at the Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, in New York City, which is heading the current study. Copyright © 2002, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc. ***************************************************************** 15 Safety in radiation release may require keen sense of the wind NorthJersey.com - Sunday, April 07, 2002 By BOB IVRY Staff Writers The best advice in case of a major radiation release from Indian Point is plain common sense: If you can, get out of the way. Officials in Bergen County and New York's Rockland County say the likelihood of a radioactive plume reaching New Jersey is remote. The plant's multiple safety systems make a significant release all but unthinkable, they insist, and in any event prevailing winds blow to the east rather than the south. But airborne radiation is invisible and odorless, so if something serious does go wrong, precautions are advised. "It's better to be two miles upwind than 20 miles downwind," says David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group. Experts add one caveat to their "getaway" advice - try to stay calm and make the best decisions about where to go, or even if you should go. "The natural inclination is to get in a car," Lochbaum says, "but sitting in a plume in traffic, or driving into it, is not a good idea." Calculating the risk is tricky, however, whether you're on the move or staying put. Danger depends on a host of variables, including length of exposure to radiation, the type of irradiated material, wind speed and direction, and the type of shelter available. Any shielding is better than none, say Bergen and Rockland emergency officials. Sealing off outside air would be key. Close windows and doors, and shut off air conditioners. Cars provide inferior protection because they're not airtight, experts say. A plume from Indian Point would emit a variety of irradiated particles. Some could be blocked by something as slight as a piece of paper; others could penetrate virtually anything except lead. After the plume passes, the concern is with what stays behind. "Particles settle out and remain in the environment - on roofs, on cars, in gardens, on your skin, your hair, your clothes. They continue to emit radiation," says Gordon Thompson, director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, a Boston think tank. Officials draw a distinction, however, between exposure and actual contamination, which can mean the difference between momentary risk and serious danger. Dwane Razzetti, deputy coordinator of Bergen's emergency management office, explains, using an image popular among emergency workers - taking a dog for a walk: "He poops on the lawn. You smell it, you're exposed. You step in it, you're contaminated. Contamination is actually carrying the stuff with you." If you think you've been exposed, get yourself "counted'' - scanned by a radiation monitor called a dosimeter that is carried by county emergency workers. Wash off, just as if you'd spilled gasoline on yourself, Razzetti counsels. Remove contaminated clothing. Don't eat anything or touch your mouth. Then call 911 for advice. For most exposures, that's probably all the protection needed, he insists. Radiation can be more dangerous if ingested. In that case, a laxative could help the contamination pass out of the body as rapidly as possible, says Arthur Upton, former director of the National Cancer Institute. Another line of defense is potassium iodide. The pills saturate the vulnerable thyroid gland with a safe form of iodine, preventing it from absorbing radioactive iodine gas, another material released in a leak or accident. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster caused 2,000 thyroid cancers, and as many as 10,000 more are expected to develop in coming years, the United Nations says. Potassium iodide can be particularly beneficial for children, who are more sensitive to radiation, Upton says. The experts caution, however, that the drug provides no protection to other organs or against other forms of cancer. New Jersey announced last month that it would stockpile potassium iodide pills for people who live within 10 miles of the state's four nuclear plants, all in South Jersey: Oyster Creek in Ocean County, and the Salem 1, Salem 2, and Hope Creek reactors in Salem County. The supply does not extend to North Jersey residents, however, because they live outside the 10-mile evacuation zone set by the federal government for Indian Point. Copyright © 2002 North Jersey Media Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 16 Industry, government frantic to hide radioactive waste monster New Haven Register Letter to the EditorApril 04, 2002 The editorial calling for spent fuel from nuclear power plants be moved to Yucca Mountain, Nev., fails to address the enormity of the problems. Yucca Mountain, designated by the White House as the repository for the nation's high level radioactive waste, is far from a done deal. Challenges to the project on scientific, technical, environmental and legal grounds have to be considered. Opposition includes the majority of people in Nevada and the Western Shoshone Nation, on whose land the repository is to be located. Assuming resistance is overcome, it will be 10 to 20 years before it is ready to accept waste. If terrorist attack is a major concern, as the editorial states, then continued operation of Millstone 1 and 2 in Waterford will ensure the ongoing vulnerability of these reactors and their spent fuel. Transportation will involve thousands of shipments nationwide over many years to move the anticipated 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel that will accumulate if reactors continue to operate at their present level. These shipments will carry lethal cargo past some 50 million people who live within a mile of the projected routes. Logic demands that the first step is to shut the nuclear plants down. The standards call for isolation of the waste for 10,000 years, but the plutonium content of the fuel rods will require at least 240,000 years to decay to a so-called "safe" level. The nuclear industry and the Department of Energy are frantically attempting to unload themselves of the radioactive monster they created with little regard for public health and safety. Peter Bowman New Haven ©New Haven Register 2002 ***************************************************************** 17 Colorado Governor inks bill to collar N-waste Rocky Mountain News: Legislature Outcry in Canon City sparked legislation By John Sanko, News Capitol Bureau April 6, 2002 Gov. Bill Owens wasted no time Friday in signing into law legislation giving the public more warning and the state a stronger voice in determining when low-level radioactive wastes can be shipped into Colorado. Less than four hours after the Senate and the House gave final approval to the measure, it was on the governor's desk. The bill stemmed from a public outcry in Canon City after residents there learned that the Cotter Corp. planned to dispose of 470,000 tons of radioactive tailings from a Superfund site in Maywood, N.J. "The bill is very simple," Owens said. "It starts from a presumption that public involvement is essential in cases like this -- that the public's involvement is a part of the good public policy revolving around whether radioactive waste ought to be stored in the neighborhoods of Colorado." HB 1408 requires published notification before such wastes can be brought into an area, at least two public hearings with local citizens, an environmental impact study and formal approval from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Cotter Corp. President Richard Cherry testified against the legislation during committee hearings, arguing it wasn't needed and could cost the company 15 new jobs. But the bill's sponsors, House Republican Majority Leader Lola Spradley and Senate Democratic Majority Leader Bill Thiebaut, said it was carefully crafted to make sure other work at the facility wasn't affected. "The public wants to know what's going to be in the neighborhood next to them, and I believe they have a right to know," Spradley said. "They need to know what kind of neighbors they have and what they're going to be storing on that property." The Senate also gave initial approval to SB 187 requiring teachers and other school personnel to report instances of sexual assault. ***************************************************************** 18 Opponents Lobby Congress on Waste Plan Las Vegas SUN April 07, 2002 WASHINGTON- Opponents of burying America's nuclear waste in Nevada will give the public a crash course in the dangers of hauling radioactive materials across the country, part of a long-shot lobbying campaign to kill the plan in Congress. Two former White House chiefs of staff - Democrat John Podesta, who worked for President Clinton, and Republican Kenneth Duberstein, who worked for President Reagan - are directing the effort. The lobbying campaign is to include television ads targeting lawmakers in races that could swing on votes from environmentalists. The campaign was getting under way Monday, when Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn planned to veto President Bush's endorsement of Yucca Mountain as the place to hold up to 77,000 tons of nuclear waste that will remain radioactive for 10,000 years. Guinn's veto is allowed under rules Congress wrote for finding a national nuclear waste dump. Congress will have the final say, however, and a vote on whether to override is expected before August. Spent nuclear fuel from power plants and defense facilities in 34 states has accumulated at those sites for decades as lawmakers grappled with the questions of whether and where to establish a national repository. Yucca Mountain, a volcanic ridge on the edge of the Nevada Test Site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been under consideration for at least 25 years. In February, Bush recommended it be chosen. Former White House chief of staff John Sununu, a Republican, and former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro are working on behalf of Yucca Mountain supporters. They include energy companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and at least 13 governors whose states have nuclear power plants. Opponents, led by environmentalists and Nevada's congressional delegation, already have sued. They are focusing their lobbying effort on the Senate, considering it almost certain the Republican-controlled House will side with Bush. Their hope rests on several factors. The Senate's top two Democrats - Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Nevada's Harry Reid - are staunch opponents, a half-dozen Democrats have replaced pro-Yucca Mountain Republicans since 2000 and re-election battles in states with strong environmental movements could cause some incumbents to reconsider supporting the project. The campaign will focus on lingering questions about the safety of the Nevada site and fears that the thousands of truck, train and barge trips it will take to transport the material across the country will lead to accidents and potential radioactive fallout. Reid is handing out miniature toy trucks to make the point that full-scale models of the containers that will hold the waste in transit have not been tested. Opponents concede they face long odds. Most Americans are only vaguely aware of the debate over nuclear waste disposal, polls have shown. The site would open in 2010 at the earliest, making it hard to create a sense of urgency. Yucca Mountain opponents have so far failed to raise the $10 million they say they need to mount an effective television advertising campaign that makes the point, particularly in states where incumbents seeking re-election are undecided or have not said how they will vote. In earlier votes, Senate majorities have voted for the Yucca Mountain site, although there has never been a clear up-or-down vote such as the one expected this summer. "We have had bipartisan support in the past and we think it will be there in the future," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the nuclear power industry. While Daschle opposes the project, he has said the special rules for this issue diminish the vast power he usually has to control what reaches the Senate floor. Privately, advisers on both sides say Daschle could prevent the vote, if he wished. But Daschle has to consider the November midterm elections in which Democrats will try to preserve their fragile Senate majority. Asking Democrats from states with nuclear reactors to "stand with us on this might put their seat in jeopardy in the future," said Reid spokesman Nathan Naylor. On the Net: Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov [http://www.ymp.gov] Pro-Yucca Mountain site: http://www.nei.org [http://www.nei.org] Anti-Yucca Mountain site: http://www.nirs.org [http://www.nirs.org] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 19 Nevada ready to begin campaign in Congress to kill nuclear dump Las Vegas SUN April 07, 2002 WASHINGTON (AP) - Opponents of burying nuclear waste in Nevada will give Americans a crash course in the dangers of hauling radioactive materials across the country - part of a longshot lobbying campaign to kill the plan in Congress. Two former White House chiefs of staff, Democrat John Podesta and Republican Kenneth Duberstein, are directing the effort, which organizers say will include campaign-style TV ads targeting lawmakers in races that could swing on votes from environmentalists. The campaign begins Monday when Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn plans to veto President Bush's endorsement of Yucca Mountain as the place to hold up to 77,000 tons of nuclear waste that will remain radioactive for 10,000 years. Guinn will fly to Washington to personally begin the lobbying campaign. Guinn's veto is allowed under special rules Congress wrote for finding a national nuclear waste dump. Congress can overrule Guinn, however, with a simple majority in both the House and the Senate. Votes are expected before August. Spent nuclear fuel from power plants and defense facilities in 34 states has accumulated at those sites for decades as lawmakers grappled with the questions of whether and where to establish a national repository. Yucca Mountain, a volcanic ridge on the edge of the Nevada Test Site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been under consideration for at least 25 years. In February, Bush recommended it be chosen. Former White House chief of staff John Sununu, a Republican, and former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro are working on behalf of Yucca Mountain supporters, which include energy companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and at least 13 governors whose states have nuclear power plants. Opponents, led by environmentalists and Nevada's congressional delegation, already have sued. They are focusing their lobbying effort on the Senate, considering it almost certain that the Republican-controlled House will side with Bush. Their hope rests on several factors. The Senate's top two Democrats - Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Nevada's Harry Reid - are staunch opponents, a half-dozen Democrats have replaced pro-Yucca Mountain Republicans since 2000 and looming re-election battles in states with strong environmental movements could cause some incumbents to reconsider. The campaign will focus on lingering questions about the safety of the Nevada site and fears that the thousands of truck, train and barge trips it will take to transport the material across the country will lead to accidents and potential radioactive fallout. Reid is handing out miniature toy trucks to make the point that full-scale models of the containers that will hold the waste in transit have not been tested. But opponents concede they face long odds. The logic for some senators seems inescapable, just as it is for governors in the South and Northeast who are on record supporting the Yucca Mountain project: Better there than here. Most Americans are only vaguely aware of the debate over nuclear waste disposal, polls have shown. The site would open in 2010 at the earliest, making it hard to create a sense of urgency. Yucca Mountain opponents have so far failed to raise the $10 million they say they need to mount an effective television advertising campaign, particularly in states where incumbents seeking re-election are undecided or have not said how they will vote. In prior votes, Senate majorities have favored the Yucca Mountain site, although there has never been a clear up-or-down vote such as the one expected this summer. "We have had bipartisan support in the past and we think it will be there in the future," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the nuclear power industry. While Daschle opposes the project, he has said the specially crafted rules for this issue diminish the vast power he usually has to control what reaches the Senate floor. Privately, advisers on both sides say Daschle could prevent the vote, if he wished. But Daschle has to consider the November midterm elections in which Democrats will try to preserve their fragile Senate majority. Asking Democrats from states with nuclear reactors to "stand with us on this might put their seat in jeopardy in the future," said Reid spokesman Nathan Naylor. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has the unenviable job of lobbying his Republican colleagues to oppose Bush on this issue. He met individually with Republican senators before Congress went on its Easter break and will address them as a group soon. So far, Ensign and Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., are the only Republicans on record to oppose the Nevada site. On the Net: Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov [http://www.ymp.gov] Pro-Yucca Mountain site: http://www.nei.org [http://www.nei.org] Anti-Yucca Mountain site: http://www.nirs.org [http://www.nirs.org] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 20 Nuclear waste could be boon for researchers Denis Beller says nuclear waste earmarked for Yucca Mountain could help put Las Vegas on the map of world-class research. Photo by Jeff Scheid. Sunday, April 07, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Denis Beller, Programs coordinator, UNLV Advanced Accelerator Applications Program Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman sees a time when Las Vegas has its own world-class facility for academic research, a place where the finest minds will come to investigate scientific questions that perplex humankind. Cancer. Hunger. Mental illness. Any and all could be tackled at a research center that generates high-paying jobs while drawing millions in research dollars from the federal government and private entities. Denis Beller agrees, and says he believes the 77,000 tons of nuclear waste earmarked for Yucca Mountain would provide the perfect opportunity to place the desert city on the map of world-class research. "It's definitely an energy source," said Beller, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force who was a nuclear research officer and is now intercollegiate programs coordinator for the Advanced Accelerator Applications Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "The question is can we make it an economical and safe energy source? We think we can." One emerging process is known as transmutation, a form of technology that could see highly radioactive waste transformed into a usable, nonlife-threatening generator of power. The deadly material would first have to be processed before it could be removed from Yucca for wide-spread use. "I could see Vegas becoming a center for energy research and not just nuclear," he said. "We have bright sunshine all the time. Maybe we can develop an economical use of wind energy. "It's a place where we're going to learn how to manage and use nuclear fuel better than we do today. I think that's what it's going to evolve to be." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 21 Dump lobbyist says Nevada has been dealt opportunity Former Nevada Gov. Bob List sits Monday in his Las Vegas office. List is a paid lobbyist for the nuclear energy industry that favors a repository at Yucca Mountain. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Polls show Nevadans overwhelmingly oppose the opening of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, but some Las Vegas-area residents believe the proposed multibillion-dollar project would create thousands of well-paying jobs for the region while pumping tens of millions of dollars annually into the area economy. -- Stories by DAVE BERNS / GAMING WIRE Sunday, April 07, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Friends of Yucca By DAVE BERNS GAMING WIRE Bob List has heard the taunts and snide comments since signing on as a pro-Yucca Mountain advocate for the high-powered Nuclear Energy Institute. Top Nevada political and business leaders have ripped the former Republican governor and state attorney general from the 1970s, implying that he is a traitor to his state, a sellout seeking a quick buck from the Capitol Hill lobbying group. List pauses when asked whether he's bothered by the verbal vitriol. "I can't say that it's nice to hear those kinds of words," List reflects, "but I was in public office long enough to know that name-calling is childish, that's what kids do, and so I just put it in that category." The Las Vegas-based lobbyist and political consultant says he wishes his home state wasn't President Bush's selection to bury an estimated 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste. "As a Nevadan I love this state," List said. "My family is all over Nevada. My children, my brother, kids and family are all over Nevada. The easy answer, the answer I would prefer with everybody else, is that this project would go someplace else." But he says he's also a political realist. List can do the electoral math and recognizes that Nevada with its two House lawmakers and two Senate seats has little clout in defeating the plan despite the political talents of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. And that the task becomes especially difficult when powerful Eastern interests are seeking to rid their states of nuclear waste. Gov. Kenny Guinn is expected as early as Monday to veto the Bush proposal, forcing Congress to accept or reject the governor's decision. Just last week Guinn decided against convening a special session of the state Legislature to raise $10 million for a grass-roots push to fight the repository. Guinn cited a lack of business and political support in the state for the appropriation of the money, which would have been added to a $6 million government fund already set up for the effort. So there sits List, watching the anti-Yucca machinations, believing that while they might be well-intentioned, many Nevada political leaders are politically and economically shortsighted when it comes to the issue. Q: What do you hear from people when you're out in the community? A: I tell you what I'm finding out there, increasingly the people of Nevada see this project as a likelihood. If you were to go ahead with me for two or three days I think you'd be amazed at the encouragement and support I'm finding out there of people who say you're the one guy who's being realistic about it, out front, in public talking about Plan B. Plan A is we drive it away, but the question then for us becomes what if we're not successful in that? Q: Are (Nevadans) in danger of marginalizing (themselves) if (they) adopt only Plan A in this debate? A: I think you do. I think that you also set yourself up. If you ignore Plan B and don't lay contingency plans, then you don't position yourself to capture the benefits and you lose your leverage. Q: A recent Review-Journal poll found that 80 percent of Nevadans oppose the Yucca project. A: Yes, a substantial majority of Nevadans would prefer that it not come here, 70 percent plus, but 70 percent plus think it's going to come here. And approximately 70 percent believe we should negotiate benefits for the state of Nevada. There are differences whether we do it now or whether we wait until later. Nearly three-fourths of the people think Nevada deserves to be compensated for taking on this responsibility, and that's what I'm hearing when I'm out there. And let me make this clear: I have never advocated Yucca Mountain. If I had my druthers it would go somewhere else, but I think the likelihood is it's not going to go somewhere else. It's going to come here, and we owe it to ourselves to deal with the opportunity. Q: So what's in it for Nevadans? A: State officials project a $1.1 billion state tax revenue shortfall. Clark County schools are projecting a $15 million shortfall next year. The business community for years, the Nevada Development Authority, the Chamber of Commerce, have all been striving for diversification, a broader tax base, the needed variety of jobs and opportunities, the necessity of expanding the scope of our university programs. All of those things, to some extent, can surely be addressed to a large extent by the Yucca Mountain project. Q: There's such a gut-level opposition on the part of people. Is that a response we're going to have to grow out of? A: I would simply say we have to deal with reality. We have the world's largest public works project about to be, in all likelihood, right here in Nevada. Some say $50 billion to $60 billion. That's equivalent to 50 Venetian hotels. It's huge. It's more money than all the Strip hotels combined that would be invested. Q: How many direct jobs would be created? A: Around 2,000. Q: Indirect? A: I can't give you a figure on that. But the ripple effect would be enormous. If you start spending a billion dollars a year on a project in Nevada, that's huge. The jobs right now, there are currently 1,300 jobs in Southern Nevada related to the Yucca Mountain project. The average wage on those jobs is around $65,000 a year. It's twice what the average wage is in either Clark County or the state of Nevada as a whole. Most of it is Bechtel, the prime contractor. Forty-two percent of the DOE people have bachelor's, 24 percent have master's and 12 percent have doctorates. Q: Would folks be living here and taken up there or would we see a Boulder City almost 70 years later pop up next to Yucca? A: I think most of it would be based right here. I can't say with real authority, but I think it would be a Las Vegas core-driven work force. We want to see the jobs go to Nevada. Q: Mayor Oscar Goodman regularly talks about redeveloping downtown. Why isn't this on the table as an option? Is it political death? Populist rhetoric? Why aren't he and others talking about it? A: We've got a 900-pound gorilla that really nobody's talking about. It's huge. I think it's politically unpopular. There are various reasons for various individuals. Some people hold out hope against hope that it won't happen. Q: What about the argument that there are still 293 tests that remain to be done? A: They do need to be done. There are a number of scientific answers and design features yet to be resolved. Those must be addressed and answered satisfactorily during the course of the licensing process. First, there is the site suitability. Can it work? Can it be made to work? Then, once that's answered and it's been answered subject to the governor and Congress and we get past that stage, then the question is how we make it work. And that is the specific design criteria. That is the subject of an exhaustive application that DOE has to file with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that will encompass thousands of pages of new scientific data addressing among other things those 293 issues. Q: Is it fair, as Senator Reid argued, to say that the president and the vice president misled Nevadans? A: Not at all. I think that's a very unfair statement. I have the highest regard for (President) George Bush's and (Vice President) Dick Cheney's integrity. That's not valid. Q: What's the accurate statement? A: I don't think (President) George Bush had much choice. He was faced with a thorough, exhaustive report from his secretary of energy. It was not just (Energy Secretary) Spencer Abraham's product. The report that was put on President Bush's desk was the product of four presidents, eight secretaries of energy and $7 billion or $8 billion and 20 years of work, and it just happened to fall on his watch. Q: Why now? What's the significance of making the decision now as opposed to a year from now? Five years from now? A: I suppose you could study it forever and ever, but the longer it goes on the greater the problem goes on elsewhere in the country. We're dealing not just with the issue of what Nevada wants and would like to have. We're dealing with America's energy challenges. webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 22 Getting comfortable with nukes John Spann, a telecommunications consultant for local businesses, sits Wednesday in his Henderson office. Spann says anyone who has lived in Southern Nevada for more than a few years is comfortable with nuclear power. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Sunday, April 07, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal John Spann, Phone consultant for local businesses He remembers working a pair of summer jobs at the Nevada Test Site in the early 1960s. The teen-age John Spann marveled as mushroom clouds rose high above the flats. Fast forward 40 years and he's convinced that anyone who has lived in Southern Nevada for more than a few years is comfortable with nuclear power. "The longer a person's been here the more positive they are toward the project," said Spann, a 57-year-old phone consultant for local businesses. "I think it's a reflection of the experience of being around the test site." The Henderson resident is convinced that hundreds of highly radioactive shipments have quietly passed through the region in recent decades without any trouble. "I've got to believe that the majority of the fissionable material to ignite those bombs went by truck right through Las Vegas, and I haven't heard anybody contradict that statement," he said. "I'm also convinced there are nuclear weapons stored at Nellis, and they've either been flown in over our heads or trucked in, but they've been out there a long time." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 23 Yucca: Cycle goes on and on and on ... Troy Wade, photographed Tuesday in his Las Vegas office, is the current leader of the pro-Yucca Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Sunday, April 07, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Troy Wade, Assistant secretary of energy for defense programs, Reagan administration Label it a classic case of the chicken-and-egg syndrome, the Yucca Mountain version. The tone of local news coverage opposes the planned repository so politicians join in so the tone of the local news coverage opposes the plan so politicians join in. And on and on the cycle goes, thinks Troy Wade, a one-time assistant secretary of Energy for defense programs in the Reagan administration. "The favored position in the state of Nevada is to oppose Yucca," Wade said. "I think that influences the population. I think that influences the media." Wade now heads the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business, a trade group for business contractors and suppliers who do business at the nuclear test site and Nellis range. Big-time California-based contractor Bechtel, which stands to make billions of dollars from the proposed repository, is a key player in Wade's group. "People in Nevada make a lot of protests about this safety issue," Wade said. "Long ago the University of Nevada system should have been involved in the oversight of this ... and we haven't done that. You can't deal with the problem if you refuse to engage in dialogue." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 24 Yucca: Car dealer expects boost in his casino business Jim Marsh stands Tuesday in one of his automobile dealerships. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Sunday, April 07, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Jim Marsh, Owner of three Southern Nevada car dealerships You would think a car dealer whose face regularly appears on local TV commercials would be nervous about aligning himself with a visible political position that could alienate potential customers. Not Jim Marsh. The owner of three Southern Nevada car dealerships thinks a nuclear waste repository would be a boon for the state and local economies. It would create jobs for an educated, well-paid work force, he argues. It would generate tax dollars for the state's hungry collection bin, he says. And it would be a boost for his Longstreet Inn and Casino, which sits about 20 miles south of the proposed repository and could see its 60 hotel rooms, 85 slot machines and two blackjack tables filled with Yucca workers. "If it comes in I'm sure we'd have a lot of guests staying there, engineers working out of it," Marsh said. "We already do get some business from people coming in, the scientists." When asked what advice he would give Yucca-wary politicos, Marsh has a ready answer. "I'm sure I would be the last person they'd ask, but I would recommend they take a look at the options for what it could do for the state rather than be so outspoken against it," Marsh said. "I think we could probably reduce our taxes substantially. It would be kind of equivalent to the Alaska oil field." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 25 Can't we just talk out the Yucca Mountain issue? Political consultant Jack Jeffrey stands Wednesday in his Henderson home office. Jeffrey says a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain is inevitable. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Sunday, April 07, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Jack Jeffrey, Retired secretary-treasurer, Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council Talk. Debate. Argue. Choose any of the three, but whatever the action verb, Jack Jeffrey thinks any of those most basic acts of political democracy has been missing from the 20-year saga that has become Yucca Mountain. "I think that a lot of the fears that exist locally ... could be taken care of if people talked about the issue," said the recently retired secretary-treasurer for the Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council. In the early 1980s, the local building trade union came out in favor of the project. Construction creates jobs, and a massive construction project could mean lots of jobs. "That was the primary reason," Jeffrey said of the pro-Yucca stance by the organization that represents carpenters, laborers and operating engineers among others. Does that still hold? "Probably not quite as much as it used to," he said. "A lot of the work ... has been done. Of course, there are still jobs out there, just not as many as there had been and not as many as were anticipated." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 26 Yucca: Developer: Real estate won't be affected Home builder Jack Libby sits Wednesday in his Las Vegas office. Libby says he believes a repository won't hurt real estate values. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Sunday, April 07, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Jack Libby, Las Vegas home builder At 79, Jack Libby is a Las Vegas real estate developer who has built 7,000 homes during the past three decades. He says he believes a waste repository at Yucca Mountain won't hurt local real estate values. It's too far away. The waste won't be shipped through town. Besides, he argues, Americans have short memories. There aren't a lot of vacationers who will base their travel plans on the proximity of Las Vegas to the waste site, he said. "I think most of this is people creating a problem and scaring the people," said Libby, whose Libby Construction is building two westside apartment complexes. "Next thing you know (Yucca) will be an everyday occurrence, just like buses going down the street." Sounding much like an adept pork-barrel politician, Libby is convinced that with every passing day Nevadans are blowing the chance to negotiate a deal with federal officials who want to store nuclear waste here. At the top of his list of quids for someone else's quo is the proposed high-speed train linking the Las Vegas area with Southern California. "The train, the train would do so many things for us," said Libby, who is a past chairman of the California-Nevada Super-Speed Train Commission. "It could relieve air congestion, bring people in at the same cost, the same speed with the least amount of worries." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 27 Columnist Jon Ralston: Few moves left in Yucca fight Las Vegas SUN April 05, 2002 Jon Ralston hosts the public affairs program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the Ralston Report. Ralston can be reached at ralston@vegas.com [ralston@vegas.com] or (702) 870-7997. WHEN GOV. KENNY GUINN announces his veto on Monday of President Bush's designation of Yucca Mountain, it will be as if he has punched one of those chess clocks. And as the timer starts ticking down from 90 days, the pieces arrayed on the nuclear industry's side of the Capitol Hill board will far outnumber those on the Nevada side. And before checkmate is declared sometime this summer, we will discover whether the state's king (also known in this version of the game as a whip) can maneuver out of a position that even Bobby Fischer probably could not escape. Having raised expectations for a feckless West Wing gambit so soon after the Bush defense was shown to be a sham, Team Nevada now must hope for a deus ex machina move that is nowhere to be found in any chess handbook. As the notion of resignation -- a k a The Inevitability Strategy -- gains resonance with a growing number of pessimistic voters who don't see the game as winnable, Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid and his friends only have three months to prove they have not just been treating their constituents like easily moved and easily sacrificed pawns. The endgame has revealed a cynicism within the state's political corps that has been latent for years: There is a reluctance to spend money on an eleventh-hour public relations campaign to scare voters elsewhere about nuclear waste transportation, but how do you argue that it's not worth a shot because there is no game after this one ends? The partisanship that has occasionally simmered and bubbled over is coming to the fore -- the finger-pointing by Democrats, the bobbing and weaving by Republicans. Both sides are looking three moves ahead, as any political grandmaster will do, in a raw, selfish search for advantage once the game ends. And so after years of declaring victory when victory was not yet won, the state's political elite care mostly about preparing for defeat and ensuring who wears it. Mayor Oscar Goodman, the once and future king of outrageous hyperbole, touched on the right issue when he couldn't stop himself last week as he talked about the complacency on the dump. "We hear this all the time, it went back to World War II ... where people who could have taken folks who ultimately ended up in gas chambers and led them into their native countries, instead put them on boats to go back in order to be incinerated." The offensive analogy to the Holocaust notwithstanding, Goodman alighted on what every politician here fears the most -- voters have become inured to this fight but, if it is lost, may rise up to punish someone. So what moves are left? I see only two: + The Transportation Tactic: If Nevada's governments and the private sector can scare up enough money to frighten voters in other states about the risks of moving nuclear waste, maybe it would have an impact. My own cynicism says it's too little, too late. But why not try? The problem is that time is short. The House is sure to act quickly after Mr. Guinn goes to Washington, which will then put immense pressure on the Senate to act. Reid has received commitments to keep the measure bottled up for awhile, but how long can he hold off action? Which brings me to ... + The Daschle Defense: Can the Senate majority leader, who once over-promised that the dump was dead so long as he was there, find a way to prevent the bill from ever coming to the floor? Believe me, if there is some parliamentary necromancy he and Reid have conjured up, they won't reveal the spell before they cast it. But will the Democratic caucus crumble beneath Daschle if there are repeated attempts to bring the measure to the floor -- especially because so many Democrats have waste in their districts? Yes, I suppose it is possible that Sen. John Ensign could persuade enough of his GOP colleagues to vote against the administration and their minority leader who want the dump in Nevada -- but methinks no Ensign Surprise is in the offing. Yes, I suppose that "The West Wing" could do a follow-up episode solely focused on the transportation of nuclear waste and terrify millions of Americans into calling their senators to oppose Yucca Mountain -- but counting on Aaron Sorkin seems a little far-fetched. (Now if we could only get Dr. Frasier Crane to counsel someone terrified about the risks of nuclear waste transportation ...) And, yes, I suppose that all of those Republican senators might suddenly have an epiphany about their usual fealty to states' rights and decide to switch their allegiance to Nevada -- but something tells me the White House/Trent Lott hammer has more sway than any principle. Most politicians here -- and Guinn and Rep. Shelley Berkley candidly declared so this week on "Face to Face" -- believe the better chance for victory is in a courtroom and not the political venue. The bad news is that the inevitability momentum will pick up if the fight is lost this summer. The good news, though, is that the clock that will be punched in the legal chess game counts in years, not days. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 28 The Goshutes Can't Handle A Nuclear Site The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, April 7, 2002 BY REX A. ALLEN As we, the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, move toward the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and the operation of a High-level Nuclear Waste Storage Facility, part of our economic development project, I want to make things clear to the federally recognized Indian tribes, federal governmental agencies and the people of Utah. Many of you are interested in how the federal government can protect us and keep this world clean of any disposal of waste. A couple years ago, the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes Indians received a General Assistance Program grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, with which the Tribe established a Tribal Environmental Protection Agency (TEPA). TEPA is responsible for the administration and structure of tribal laws, regulations, permitting and ordinances, including those federal laws within the reservation jurisdiction. What I find most outrageously disgusting is the Skull Valley Goshutes have been in violation of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act for years. The water quality was contaminated with surface water containing e coli, fecal and other organisms. One violation includes leaking underground storage tanks. The tribe has not inspected, repaired, maintained or removed any underground gasoline or diesel tanks on the reservation for years. The tribe also has had an open dump for years. The soil contamination will have an enormous environmental impact on aquatic ecosystems in the future. All of the homes on the reservation haven't had an environmental assessment, especially concerning radon levels. The TEPA chairman or his delegates should be sampling the water once or twice a month to protect his people from harmful and dangerous hazards on the reservation. If a sovereign Indian tribe cannot clean up its own environmental problems within its jurisdiction, how can the tribe take care of 4,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste and guarantee the safety of its people? The message is clear, I believe the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians are not capable of handling the storage facility, and most tribal members don't have a four-year college degree and the four to six years of experience needed to even work at the nuclear storage facility. I encourage the public and other agencies to consider participating in the hearing on Proposed Skull Valley Temporary Storage. Rex A. Allen is tribal executive secretary of the Skull Valley Goshute Indians. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 29 Families Deserve More Protection Than Nuclear Power Industry The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, April 7, 2002 BY DARIO HERRERA As a Nevadan and as chairman of the Clark County Commission in southern Nevada, I profoundly disagree with the Bush administration's plan to transport the nation's high-level nuclear waste across the country to be stored at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the nation. However, the Yucca Mountain Project is not just a threat to Nevadans, it is a threat to the health and safety of millions of American families across the country. Nevadans are sincerely committed to finding a long-term solution to nuclear waste. We also understand the grave concerns about having high-level radioactive waste stored near homes. But the answer is not for Congress to give approval to a misguided project with scientific holes the size of Alaska so highly radioactive waste can be trucked across the country. A more appropriate answer is to immediately shore up the security at existing reactor sites to protect the current waste storage facilities, where it has been noted there is enough space to store another 100 years worth of spent nuclear fuel, while aggressively studying new processing technologies such as transmutation, a nuclear processing method that is a viable alternative to long-term storage. Congressional approval of the Yucca Mountain Project and the transportation of high-level nuclear waste across the country will put the health and safety of millions of Americans at risk and cause severe economic strain on already exhausted local and state budgets. There are four concrete reasons that the Yucca Mountain Project should not be approved based on transportation concerns alone: 1. The transportation of high-level nuclear waste does not simplify national security concerns nor prevent the threat of a terrorist attack on nuclear reactors or on-site waste storage facilities. Instead, it radically magnifies the threat of a terrorist attack and complicates homeland security defense. More than 100,000 truckloads and trainloads of highly radioactive waste will travel through 43 states for 40 years just to dump the 77,000 metric tons of existing high-level nuclear waste. This means about seven shipments will begin every morning for 40 years and each will travel an average of 2,000 miles along interstate highways, through newly developed suburbs, past densely populated urban areas, by national landmarks, alongside fertile farmland and vital rural communities, and a stone's throw from schools, churches and the back yards of millions of Americans. These estimates do not even include any future waste from active nuclear reactors. While there will be at times hundreds of these mobile terrorist targets spread around the country, active nuclear reactors will remain terrorist targets and will still continue to produce waste that will need to be stored on-site due to the cooling process necessary after fuel is spent. A video recently released by Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley proves that waste is far more vulnerable to a terrorist attack while being transported than it is while being stored on-site. In the video, a small shoulder-launched missile that is a favorite of international terrorists easily pierces the storage container that is not encased in concrete while it fails to completely pierce the container encased in concrete for on-site storage. So instead of increasing the security of the just over 100 active nuclear reactors, the Department of Energy proposes multiplying the terrorist threat 1,000 times and exposing millions more Americans that live hundreds of miles away from the nearest nuclear reactor to that threat. 2. The Department of Energy's proposed transportation program is of a magnitude never before experienced in this country. The Department of Energy is eager to point out their track record for shipping waste over the past 40 years, but to use past shipments as a barometer for the amount of shipments the Yucca Mountain Project requires is like comparing an ant to an elephant. Far more waste will be transported per year over the next 40 years than has been transported in total since the advent of nuclear power. In their own technical analysis and documents, the Department of Energy admits that accidents and incidents of radiation release will certainly occur during their proposed shipping campaign. The trouble is, no one knows when, where or how. 3. Most communities along the proposed transportation corridor are not aware of the immense cost of preparing for, and responding to, an incident involving high-level radioactive waste. Our studies show that the cost to Clark County public safety agencies just to prepare for the commencement of high-level nuclear waste shipments is expected to reach $360 million. Although the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (section 180 C) indicates that the Department of Energy will reimburse states for additional public safety training and equipment costs incurred as the result of nuclear waste shipments, New Mexico's experience with low-level radioactive waste indicates that sufficient resources will not be made available. The impact associated with shipping high-level nuclear waste will result in unfunded government mandates to communities across the country. Our studies demonstrate that the costs to Clark County government entities alone for additional personnel, planning, training and public outreach to prepare for incoming shipments that proceed without incident is expected to reach almost $2.7 billion over the project's proposed 39 years of shipments. While Congress will probably provide some public safety funding to the 43 states through which the shipments will travel, it is likely that the costs to communities will far exceed any federal funds received. 4. Another area of impact that has only been recently acknowledged by the Department of Energy is that of potential property value decrease, the effect on homeowners, and accompanying revenue losses to state and local governments. A study of Clark County bankers and appraisers indicates that even without an attack or accident, a property value loss of more than $500 million can be expected in one of the most active housing markets in the nation. If a severe accident occurred, this could grow to between $6.6 billion and $8.7 billion, devastating Clark County. In South Carolina, the Department of Energy's shipment of nuclear waste has already resulted in property value losses similar to what has been estimated for Clark County. Home and property owners along the transportation corridor can also expect similar property value losses, throwing a wrench into investment and retirement plans of millions of Americans. The four major transportation concerns outlined above are only a portion of the hundreds of unanswered questions about a project that was supposed to only progress based on "sound science" but will nonetheless come down to a vote in Congress despite the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board's finding that the science at Yucca Mountain is "weak to moderate" and the non-partisan General Accounting Office's detailing of 293 unanswered technical questions. There are alternatives to putting the safety and security of millions of Americans at risk while causing undue economic hardship to taxpayers. There are technologies that have shown promise in the search for an alternative to long-term storage. Unfortunately, the Department of Energy's budget proposal for FY2003 cuts transmutation research funding by 76 percent, effectively forgoing the search for an alternative. We believe Congress should act as the nation's chief guardian of public health and vote against moving forward with the Yucca Mountain project. Instead of putting high-level nuclear waste out on America's roads, Congress should increase security at existing nuclear power plants and continue research into alternatives to long-term storage. If you would like to learn more about Clark County's impact studies or public outreach efforts, please call (702) 455-4181. To voice your opposition to the Yucca Mountain Project, call or write to your member of Congress. Dario Herrera is chairman of the Clark County Board of Commissioners in Las Vegas. Dario Herrera, Chairman Clark County Board of County Commissioners © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 30 N-Waste Hearings to Begin The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, April 7, 2002 BY JUDY FAHYS Federal regulators have left little room for rabble-rousing in their tight schedule of hearings on plans to store nuclear power plant waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation, 45 miles from Salt Lake City. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the federal panel conducting the review, has set aside up to 25 days for lawyers and scientists to argue technical issues. It has allotted 10 hours for residents to speak their piece. Fifty-two people had signed up by last Monday's deadline for three-minute speaking slots, but more are expected to ask to address the licensing board Monday in Salt Lake City and April 26 in Tooele. Those two days are expected to be the final opportunity the public will have to express opinions about the proposed facility. The licensing board is on track to make its recommendations to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September. The commission could then begin preparing a license for the facility. Despite the constrained forum, anti-nuclear activists and Goshute Tribe members opposed to the facility relish the opportunity to share their views with the board. Opponent Anne Sward Hansen of American Fork has signed up, even though she doubts the panel is willing to listen to critics. "I would encourage people to come out and voice their opinions," she said, "but it falls on deaf ears." Dissident Goshute leader Merlinda Moon has urged tribe members to turn out for the meetings, too. She said it is a matter of basic rights for them, since the regulators have sided with tribe members whose authority is in dispute within the tribe. "We need to let them [licensing board members] know they can't choose who our leaders are," Moon said. "They have to work with us." Project advocates also will be on hand, including Goshute Tribe Chairman Leon Bear and Private Fuel Storage (PFS), the consortium formed by eight utility companies that have leased 125 acres on the reservation for the $3.1 billion facility. Bear sought the facility in the 1990s as a way to beef up economic development for his 127-member band. The consortium, whose member utilities fear having to shut down over a lack of on-site storage at the nuclear plants they own, sees the Utah facility as a way to extend the lives of its plants until the federal government offers them permanent disposal, probably at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Their plans call for building a concrete storage pad that would hold the deadly waste in 4,000 steel-and-concrete casks standing upright outdoors. It would be enough waste to hold all of the used power-plant fuel created in the 40 years of U.S. commercial nuclear energy, but critics say the storage could become permanent because the federal government has not found a place to dispose the waste. "We do think they are important," Bear said of the hearings, "and we want everybody to have a say." All but the two public-hearing sessions will be devoted to formal discussion between the official participants, with the tribe and the utility consortium on one side and the Utah state government and the dissident Gosh- utes on the other. They will be wrangling -- courtroom style -- over such issues as whether a rail spur will harm a proposed wilderness area, whether aircraft accidents pose a significant risk, whether the facility will cause nonradioactive water pollution and whether the storage site can withstand possible earthquakes. Matters such as these are the guts of the licensing process, said Sue Martin, spokeswoman for PFS. "It's a significant step in the process because it's an opportunity to put all the remaining issues on the table and dispense with them," she said. "We feel confident we will be able to show it will be safe for the public and the environment." The hearings have no place for some of the other issues that have been dogging the project in recent months. For instance, the licensing board will not discuss allegations of corruption surrounding Bear's leadership. While the panel asked in a written ruling to explore that issue last month, its parent agency, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plucked the question out of the board's hands to determine whether Bear has, in effect, created a disadvantaged class of Gosh- utes by using project money to reward his allies and punish his enemies. The NRC's ruling is expected in spring. A federal grand jury has been looking into the PFS-Goshute finances at least since last summer. A nother uncertainty that will not be addressed during the hearings is how the facility might change in light of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. After the attacks, the NRC ordered a review of anti-terrorism protections at all U.S. nuclear facilities. Recommendations have yet to be made. The licensing board will be in Utah to talk about the issues on its agenda until May 17. But the hearings will conclude sooner if the panel runs out of things to discuss. %%n Public comments about the proposed high-level nuclear waste facility will be taken by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Monday, 2-5 p.m. and 7-9:30 p.m. in Room 251 at the Salt Palace Convention Center, 100 S. West Temple, Salt Lake City. On April 26, 3:30-5:30 p.m. and 7-9:30 p.m., the panel will hear from the public in the auditorium of Tooele High School, 240 W. 100 South, Tooele. For more information, consult the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Web site at www.nrc.gov or a recorded message at 301-415-5036. Those who wish to attend either the public hearings or the official issues debates will be subject to security screening. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 31 Yucca: 'West Wing' View (washingtonpost.com) By Mary McGrory Sunday, April 7, 2002; Page B07 The creator of "The West Wing" likes it when the show has impact, but that isn't what Aaron Sorkin has in mind. He knows he is providing a happy hour for drooping Democrats, but all he really wants to do is entertain. "We're just this side of carnival people," he says of himself and the team of writers who dish up the weekly fare of tension, teamwork and hot-button issues that audiences are gobbling up. Last week's thriller was written by Dee Dee Myers, President Bill Clinton's first press secretary. She had the idea of dramatizing the question of nuclear waste, which is about to be voted on in the Senate. Myers figured that the fight over a repository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain had the right stuff for the show, and she was right. She imagined an accident in a Nevada tunnel in which a truck transporting radioactive waste is hit by another truck, with God knows what consequences on a nearby city. This is just the kind of problem that Jed Bartlet, the too-good-to-be-true chief executive, loves to get his teeth into. He is a Democrats' dream, the antithesis of the incumbent. He is a former New Hampshire governor, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, profoundly literate and proudly intellectual. On Wednesday he engaged a staffer's retiring high school English teacher in a discussion of "Beowulf" and "Twelfth Night." He argues with his prickly doctor-wife, and he's nice enough to do his body man's income tax returns. When he has to call the parents of young Americans killed abroad, he's humble: When, after being exhaustively briefed by his staff, he finally gets through, he says to them: "I have three children of my own, I don't know what to say to you." He is, as he tells his chief of staff, "a half-hour ahead" of those around him in technical information about the strength of the casks carrying the radioactive waste. He doesn't take sides on the question of storing radioactive waste from all nuclear plants in one state -- that isn't the "West Wing" way. Nor does anyone touch on the larger question -- the future of nuclear energy, which permanent storage would help decide. Senate Democratic Whip Harry Reid of Nevada, who is leading the fight against the Yucca Mountain site, was nonetheless ecstatic. Thursday morning his phones were ringing with congratulations that held out hope of checks to help the campaign fund and celebrity endorsements from Hollywood. Reid conveyed his joy to Dee Dee Myers. Reid and his Republican colleague Sen. John Ensign are at the door-to-door phase of their drive. They call on their fellow senators, sometimes together, seeking support. Yucca is a tough vote. The White House is all for the repository -- Vice President Cheney is a nuclear energy fan. Democrats are torn between pleasing Reid and pleasing their constituents, who favor Yucca because they sure don't want to see radioactive waste dumped in their states. If gratitude were the operating principle, Reid would have no trouble rounding up unanimous Democratic support. He made what most senators regard as the supreme sacrifice: He gave up the chairmanship of the Senate's environmental committee, stepping aside in favor of Jim Jeffords, the Vermont Republican who switched to independent and made the Senate Democratic. Majority Leader Tom Daschle asked Reid to deliver Jeffords, and Reid came through. Democrats with gavels owe their chairmanships to Reid, something they would just as soon forget now, as he comes knocking on their doors. Dee Dee Myers is one of several Clinton alumni who write for Aaron Sorkin. She may not be the only one who keeps a list of things that Bush has gotten away with and Clinton "would have been crucified for." At the top is Bush's stealth signing of the campaign reform bill, co-authored by his nemesis, John McCain. Myers is now married to New York Times correspondent Todd Purdum. Eli Attie, ex-Gore speechwriter, and Gene Sperling, Clinton economic adviser, are on call. Three Republican contributors: Bush I press secretary Marlin Fitzwater, Reagan biographer Peggy Noonan and pollster Frank Luntz. "The West Wing" has taken on such controversies as land mines, slave reparations and the tobacco lobby. Aaron Sorkin says he has no political agenda. His most controversial show was post-Sept. 11 on two terrorists, "Isaac" and "Ishmael." It outraged more viewers than anything he has presented: "I have to face the fact that it wasn't good." He did not invent Jed Bartlet to torture Democrats. The character is based on his father, a New York lawyer. Clinton chief of staff John Podesta is a fan particularly of last week's "West Wing," since he is a consultant to Harry Reid on Yucca Mountain. He thinks the show conveys the "intensity and the commitment of the White House staff." There is, of course, no Dick Morris on President Bartlet's staff. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 32 Prime Time for Yucca Controversy Gives Wing to Opponents' Message (washingtonpost.com) By Brian Faler Sunday, April 7, 2002; Page A05 Opponents of a government plan to store most of the nation's nuclear waste beneath a mountain in Nevada got a little help this week from a rather unlikely source: the television show "The West Wing." The popular White House drama aired an episode Wednesday in which a truck carrying nuclear waste crashes inside a tunnel in rural Idaho. The waste spills, authorities are unable to clean up the mess, and the president complains that, for all of his administration's precautions, it still isn't safe to move the waste. That scenario largely mirrors the line taken by opponents of the real-life plan to store nuclear waste beneath Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles from Las Vegas. Having failed to persuade the Bush administration to reconsider its decision to use the site -- opponents say the president is ignoring too many unanswered questions about its safety -- they are now emphasizing the dangers of moving the waste, which is scattered among more than 100 above-ground facilities in 39 states. The issue will likely be settled in Congress, and, in anticipation of its upcoming debate, Nevada lawmakers are planning a multimillion-dollar media and lobbying campaign. For now, though, they say the "West Wing" episode is helping to spread their message. "It certainly brought out some of the concerns [that] I think are legitimate," said Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.). Others were less impressed. Spokesmen from the Energy Department and the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's leading lobbying group, played down the significance of the show, saying it would have little effect on public opinion or the debate in Congress. Some industry officials, though, aren't taking their chances. Jack Edlow, president of Edlow International Co., a firm that ships nuclear materials, announced that he and other industry officials will launch a campaign to help protect their public image. "There were just so many inaccuracies that you can't really say that it was even anything other than total fiction," Edlow said of the show. "Yet it was presented in a way that the public would tend to think that there was some truth to it, because they don't know these things." Issues of Cold Hard Cash Democrats are proudly claiming they have set new party records for direct-mail fundraising -- a crucial source of money when new regulations take effect in November. But Republicans immediately countered that the Democrats will be short of cash as the election nears while the GOP has $38 million in the bank with no debt. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence McAuliffe said the DNC raised $26 million during the first quarter of this year, $8 million of which was from direct mail. The DNC has $23 million in the bank but debts of $9 million, and at least $12 million must be used for a new building, not for direct campaign support. Kevin Sheridan, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, contended that subtracting the building obligations and debt from the $23 million leaves the Democrats with only $2 million or less. In contrast, he said, the RNC raised $31.7 million this past quarter, increasing its cash on hand to $38 million -- with no debt or building fund obligations. After Nov. 6, when the new campaign finance law goes into effect, the parties will be allowed to spend only "hard money," federally regulated contributions from individuals and political action committees. Large "soft money" donations from corporations, unions and very wealthy people will be prohibited. During the first quarter, the DNC reported raising a total of $9 million in hard money, or about one of every three dollars raised. In contrast, the RNC hard-money total was $26 million, or just over $4 of every $5 raised. Maria Cardona, DNC communications director, disputed Sheridan's analysis suggesting the DNC is barely in the black. "Republicans should have raised a lot more money now that they have the White House, and we did a hell of a job without a White House, almost keeping up with the amount we raised when we did have the White House," she said. "We are narrowing the gap." Staff writer Thomas B. Edsall contributed to this report. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 33 Rocketdyne: Valley dump got nuclear waste Friday, April 5, 2002 By Erik N. Nelson Staff Writer Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory dumped low-level radioactive waste at the Bradley Landfill in Sun Valley for much of the past decade without the knowledge of state waste regulators or local officials, a state legislative inquiry has found. Authorities said Thursday that they may never know how much radioactive material was deposited over a decade of cleanup at the nuclear and rocket research facility in the hills between Chatsworth and Simi Valle. A state Senate inquiry into the change of state regulations governing cleanup of sites that use radioactive material, which range from cancer clinics to top-secret defense contractors, turned up the information about Rocketdyne's dumping practices last month. State Integrated Waste Management Board member David Roberti, a former state senator who represented the Valley, said the state Department of Health Services created a loophole that allowed the practice. Department officials said they were bringing state rules in line with federal Department of Energy standards and, in fact, strengthening limits on permissible radiation exposure. "We know that they've been dumping this without the knowledge of the local jurisdiction, without the knowledge of the local operator," Roberti said. "We at this point don't know how much waste of this nature has been dumped in other landfills throughout the state." State Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Van Nuys, who represents Sun Valley, expressed alarm that state and federal regulations could allow the dumping of even waste with low levels of radioactive material in an urban area. "The state Department of Health Services has basically created policies that I believe provide a loophole for people who dispose of certain kinds of waste material to avoid any kind of scrutiny," Alarcon said. Health department spokeswoman Leah Brooks said the department never loosened standards, and a spokesman for Boeing-Rocketdyne said the waste had been cleared by federal and state regulators. "What California did in 2001 was formally adopt what we had been following since 1997," when the federal Nuclear Regulatory Agency changed its standards for cleaning up sites such as Rocketdyne, the spokesman said. Under the old standard, a person living on the site, drinking its ground water and eating food grown in its soil could be exposed to no more than 100 millirems -- one tenth the exposure limit for workers inside nuclear power plants. The new standard lowered that to 25 millirems. "There may have been residual radiological contamination, but it did not exceed federal standards, and in that regard it is still protective of public health," said Dan Beck, spokesman for Boeing-Rocketdyne. He said that without checking shipping manifests over the life of the cleanup, which began in the late 1980s, it would be impossible to say how much of the material was dumped in Bradley or other waste facilities. Contamination from the landfill, which is operated by Waste Management Inc., has long been a cause of concern among local residents and employees of nearby Polytechnic High School, who believe they suffer from an above-normal cancer rate. A Los Angeles County Health Department investigation determined that the "cancer cluster" fears were unfounded. The landfill operator said the company was unaware of the nature of the Rocketdyne shipments. "We don't have any intention of taking radioactive waste. We had no indication that there was any radioactive material in (the Rocketdyne shipments). Had we known, we wouldn't have taken it," said Charles White, director of regulatory affairs for Waste Management's western region. White indicated the company might support legislation by state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Rosemead, who called a hearing on the radioactive waste issue two weeks ago. "We certainly don't want to be in the business of taking this kind of material," White said. "We hope that there is some clarity given to what is and is not radioactive waste so that this kind of problem doesn't occur in the future." Roberti said state health officials allowed the dumping by deciding to discard the standard for low-level radioactive waste used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a new standard used by the U.S. Department of Energy, which employed Rocketdyne to perform nuclear research. A spokeswoman for the EPA said the agency has no set standard, but instead determines the level of cleanup according to what is feasible and safe, depending upon factors such as what the site's future uses might be. The change was made without consulting with the state waste board, which Roberti said was unacceptable. "They have absolutely no experts, no engineers who can safely say how certain kinds of waste are contaminated and how they migrate through the landfill." A Los Angeles Newspaper Group Newspaper ***************************************************************** 34 Put nuclear waste at Yucca Providence, R.I. Editorials By The Providence Journal editorial board 03/30/2002 The U.S. Energy Department, in promoting its plan for a nuclear-waste repository in Nevada, has sent out a thick envelope that includes dozens of newspaper editorial encomia to the idea of putting the nation's chief nuclear-waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev. Only two are from Nevada, both from the Valley Times of Pahrump, one from 1974 and the other from 1983. That shows how long the idea has been around. The Valley Times was the earliest endorser, and for many years was a voice crying in the wilderness. But recently, to judge by the clips, the theme has been picked up in newspapers around the country. But Nevada papers -- and, of late, even the Valley Times -- are silent. We're not surprised, nor unsympathetic. Yucca Mountain is in Nevada, after all, and a nuclear-waste depository seems a scary thing. It involves such poisons as plutonium and strontium 90, with radioactive half-lives that conjure nightmares out of science fiction. But there is a pressing need for such a facility, somewhere. Every year, piles of nuclear waste at hospitals, power plants and military installations grow higher. The security threat they pose is great. Devices that could render cities uninhabitable for centuries can be made from the materials that hospitals use to make barium swallows. The depleted-uranium cores from power plants or the submarine fleet are cause for concern, too. A secure, permanent place for these things is a national imperative. The Yucca Mountain site, as the Valley Times noted long ago, appears appropriate in all respects. The mountain is big enough to contain an underground facility high above the water table. In addition, what little rain falls in this stretch of the Great American Desert does not flow into any stream or tributary. Any contamination could not go far. The earth's crust in the region has been geologically stable for millions of years. Yucca Mountain is the best place in the U.S. for such a facility. There's no reason not to proceed. [http://archives.projo.com/] projo@projo.com [projo@projo.com] ***************************************************************** 35 Review Ordered of Landfill (dumped N-waste) April 6, 2002 THE VALLEY Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn and the City Council on Friday ordered a review of whether low-level radioactive waste was dumped at a Sun Valley landfill and if it is now a health hazard. Hahn and the council cited a report by the California Integrated Waste Management Board that Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory disposed of waste at the Bradley Landfill without the knowledge of state regulators or local officials. "There were hearings in Sacramento and it was brought to light that through a possible loophole, low levels of radioactive waste were possibly dumped," said Council President Alex Padilla. "How much and to what extent we don't know, but it was [dumped] in Sun Valley." The review will be conducted by the city's Environmental Affairs Department. Gary Gero, assistant general manager for the department, said local rules prohibit dumping radioactive waste at the landfill. He said the department has no evidence any rules were broken. Rocketdyne officials have said the materials disposed at the landfill met federal safety standards. Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 36 Maywood Colo. foiled again on hot soil NorthJersey.com - Saturday, April 06, 2002 Associated Press Maywood officials and residents expressed frustration Friday after learning that Colorado Gov. Bill Owens signed a bill requiring public hearings and state approval before a Colorado company can accept radioactive soil from the Superfund site on Route 17. "We, the council, don't want to wait any longer. We want this stuff out!" said Maywood Council President Thomas Gaffney. Owens signed the bill after residents of Canon City, Col., formed Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste and protested the federal government's plan to ship 1,500 cubic yards of radioactive soil from Maywood to a processed-uranium mill near their city. The bill requires at least two public hearings and state approval before Colorado will accept the thorium-contaminated soil, which Maywood residents have complained about for almost five decades - ever since the defunct Maywood Chemical stopped using the thorium at a site now occupied by the Stepan Co. Soil on the property apparently seeped into a brook that ran through surrounding neighborhoods. Government reports released in 1990s showed evidence of a cancer cluster near the points of contamination. Since 1984, the Army Corps of Engineers has removed more than 40,000 cubic yards of soil in the area, cleaning up 64 of 88 soil and groundwater sites in Maywood, Lodi, and Rochelle Park. Gaffney said he doesn't blame Colorado residents for being wary. "I think they are going about it the right way," he said. "If they don't want it there, the people have to speak up about it. That's what we did, and look how long it took." Staff Writer Justo Bautista's contributed to this article. Copyright © 2002 North Jersey Media Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 37 Politician says Japanese nukes could counter China Sat Apr 6,10:37 AM ET TOKYO (Reuters) - The leader of Japan's opposition Liberal Party, Ichiro Ozawa, said on Saturday it would be a simple matter for Japan to produce nuclear weapons and surpass the military might of China if its neighbour got "too inflated". Inviting a sharp response from Beijing, which is sensitive to any signs of militarism in Japan, Ozawa told a seminar in the southern city of Fukuoka that "China is applying itself to expansion of military power". "If (China) gets too inflated, Japanese people will get hysterical," Kyodo news agency quoted him as saying. "It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads. We have plutonium at nuclear power plants in Japan, enough to make several thousand such warheads," he said. Ozawa said his statements, coming just days before Japanese Prime Minster Junichiro Koizumi visits China, were meant to encourage stronger ties between China and Japan, the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack. He said he made similar comments recently to a person he described as being affiliated with the Chinese intelligence agency. "I told that person that if we get serious, we will never be beaten in terms of military power," he said. Ozawa said Japan found itself in a difficult position. "Northeastern Asia, in which both China and North Korea (news - web sites) are located, is the most unstable region in the world," he said. "China is applying itself to expansion of military power in the hope of becoming a superpower...following the United States." Koizumi will visit China for three days from April 11 to attend an economic conference on Hainan island, although he is also expected to meet Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji. Li Peng, chairman of China's parliament, who is on a visit to Japan, said in an interview published in a regional newspaper on Saturday he was optimistic about Japan-China relations. Li said Japan and China, long resentful over its treatment at the hands of Japanese invaders, may encounter difficulties on the path to closer ties because the countries were so different. "Even in such cases, the two nations can solve any problems with effort and foresight," Li said in an interview with the Kitanippon Press, a newspaper in western Japan. Li's visit is one of several high-level exchanges between China and Japan to mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties in September 1972. Ties have been strained in recent times by Koizumi's visit last year to a shrine honouring Japan's war dead, including convicted war criminals, and Japan's approval of a history textbook that China and other Asian countries say downplays Japan's wartime aggression. Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 38 Reports: Opposition leader says Japan could easily go nuclear Sun Apr 7, 1:18 AM ET TOKYO - The leader of a small opposition party said Japan could easily develop nuclear weapons if its people feel threatened by China, newspapers reported Sunday. "Making nuclear weapons is simple," Liberal Party leader Ichiro Ozawa said in the reports. "Japan could have several thousand nuclear warheads overnight if it wants." Ozawa made the remarks during a speech Saturday in the southwestern city of Fukuoka, according to reports published in the Asahi, Sankei and Nihon Keizai, all nationally circulated dailies. Ozawa, formerly a heavyweight in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, left it amid political realignments in the 1990s. "Japan probably has enough plutonium at nuclear plants for about three to four thousand warheads," the reports quoted Ozawa as saying. "If it comes to that, Japan won't lose militarily." Ozawa said he was speaking against the backdrop of China's increased military spending, which he described as part of its effort to become a superpower. Ozawa added, however, that he felt Japan and China should live together in peace. Anti-nuclear sentiment is high in Japan, the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks. At least 200,000 people died when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the country in the closing days of World War II. The reports of Ozawa's remarks come as Japan and China are celebrating 30 years of diplomatic relations. Li Peng, China's former premier and now chairman of its Parliament, is currently visiting Japan in an attempt to strengthen ties. Officials at the Liberal Party and Ozawa's parliamentary office were unavailable to comment Sunday. (kgo/dc/dv) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 39 Henderson TN. almost became atomic town in early 1950s MyInKy: Columnists By Frank Boyett - Community Columnist April 7, 2002 Henderson nearly went nuclear 50 years ago. In 1952, however, the common term was atomic. As in Henderson was being seriously considered as the site for an atomic plant. The idea was first publicly broached by Joe Creason, a columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal, at a time when Louisville was being eyed as a possible plant site. "To be as blunt as a hammer about it, folks around here seem almost violently opposed to such a plant," Creason wrote. The lower Green River valley, however, appeared an excellent site, he added. "Most of the rumors -- and understand there has been nothing more concrete than rumors so far -- have been to the effect that the project would be a gaseous diffusion plant, similar to the one now being built near Paducah." The industry-hungry counties of the lower Green River valley constituted "a section that desperately needs some kind of pump priming," he wrote. A few days later confirmation that Henderson was being seriously considered for the plant site came from the office of U.S. Sen. John W. Bricker, R-Ohio, who headed the congressional Atomic Energy Committee. However, it was one of the senator's aides who confirmed Henderson was in the running. When The Gleaner telephoned Bricker himself, he was coy. "I don't know," he said. "So far practically every area that has been considered has started a fight against locating the plant in those areas," The Gleaner reported. "However, Portsmouth, Ohio, has put in a bid for the plant in its area," which was hand-delivered to the Atomic Energy Commission by Bricker's fellow senator from Ohio. A few days later, the AEC announced that it would build the plant somewhere in the Ohio River valley. In that story Bricker was a little more forthcoming. "Louisville and Cincinnati areas are divided," Bricker said. "Portsmouth wants it. So far as I know serious consideration has been given to the Henderson, Ky., area but no effort has been made by groups from that area to get the plant." The Indiana towns of Tell City and Newburgh also were under consideration, he said. Bricker said the plant would take two to three years to build and cost about $1 billion. In August of 1952 the Atomic Energy Commission announced that it had selected a 4,000-acre site near Portsmouth as the site for its new gaseous diffusion plant, which would be a sister plant to the one in Paducah. The primary considerations, the AEC said, were the flat terrain, the availability of large amounts of electric power, a dependable source of water, local labor and suitable transportation routes. The plant was completed six months ahead of schedule in March 1956 for $750 million -- considerably less than the estimated cost of $1.2 billion. For years the Portsmouth plant enriched uranium so that it could be used for nuclear weapons and as fuel for nuclear power plants. But this area wasn't yet through with the prospect of atomics. A few years later Henderson again was being eyed as the site of an atomic plant. That came about through the auspices of Jim Zimmerman, who was then head of the industrial development section of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. In June 1956 Zimmerman brought to Henderson representatives of Mallinckrodt Chemical Works of St. Louis and Climax Molybdenum of New York. In the 1940s Mallinckrodt pioneered ways to purify uranium; Climax, meanwhile, was putting up the bulk of the money for the project. In early October of 1956 the two companies took an option to purchase nearly 80 acres just west of Fairmont Cemetery for $120,000. That was done through local lawyer William Craig and banker Henry Lee Cooper. Within a few days the Wall Street Journal was reporting that Mallinckrodt and Climax were bidding to obtain a five-year contract to refine uranium for the AEC. They planned to build a $22 million plant in Henderson. The two companies expected to annually refine about 100 million tons of ore into 5,000 tons of enriched fuel for nuclear power plants. Six other firms also put in bids for the AEC contract, and one of them apparently won it. I could find no evidence at the courthouse that Mallinckrodt and Climax ever exercised their option to purchase land here.140 years ago F.W. Knight, an early photographer in Henderson, kept his gallery over Dallam &Soaper's store, according to an 1862 item in the Henderson Reporter. "His photo specimens are excellent," the Reporter said, noting he had photos of all the important Confederate generals. "He cannot be excelled in taking ambrotypes, melanotypes or any other styles known to the picture art." [http://www.scripps.com] © 2001 The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 40 Plutonium in Erwin related to fallout from bomb tests? Elizabethton Star - Online Edition By Kathy Helms-Hughes STAR STAFF khughes@starhq.com How did "trace" quantities of plutonium show up in offsite groundwater monitoring wells near Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin? Tony Treadway, public relations representative for NFS, said, "You know, if you really get into it, any well that you dig anywhere is going to have background levels of plutonium, based on, believe it or not, bomb tests." When asked to explain, Treadway said offsite plutonium could be the result of fallout associated with nuclear testing in Nevada in the 1960s. Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D., president for the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Md., disagrees with the theory. "First: Plutonium-238 is not a major component of fallout. The isotopes in fallout are mainly Plutonium-239 and Plutonium-240 with some Plutonium-241. So high readings of Plutonium-238 in water are curious." After reviewing NFS data, Makhijani said, "I would consider all of the measurements worthy of follow-up ..." Readings for Plutonium-239/240 also appear to be on the high side, he said. "I would question whether this is due to fallout. It is possible that these are hot spots, but if this is all fallout, then they are pretty serious hot spots and worthy of attention by the government in their own right. The EPA and the Centers for Disease Control should address the issue. I think the burden of proof should be on the company to show its fallout." Makhijani said the 1950s and 1960s typically were times of extremely bad waste management. "In many places the plutonium-containing wastes were dumped in cardboard boxes and shallow ditches," he said, and questioned whether plutonium wastes might have been dumped in NFS burial grounds. "I think they ought not to make cavalier dismissal of this data as being from fallout," he said. Leo Romanowski of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Atlanta said he had not heard of plutonium contamination at other facilities in the region. However, he said, "Most people aren't going to be measuring for it. If you don't measure for it, you can always say it's not there." One criticism of NFS analyses cited by environmental sources is that many of the samples for plutonium are filtered. According to a 1998 article in Nature magazine entitled "Plutonium Thumbs a Ride," author David Kestenbaum said researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico showed that plutonium sometimes hitches a ride on invisibly small bits of rock or clay in underground water. When the particles were filtered out, they contained almost all of the radioactive material. According to regulatory authorities, NFS conducts its own sampling, which is then reviewed by the appropriate agency. Neither NFS's Treadway, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, nor Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation knew the depth of NFS offsite monitoring wells or approximate depth to groundwater. Of those overseeing the facility, EPA appeared the most knowledgeable. A series of questions was submitted to NFS and each of its overseers: Specifically, they were asked whether the plume of groundwater contamination stops at the road which runs through the industrial park adjacent to NFS, since monitoring wells do not go beyond it; whether attempts had been made to drill farther down when sampling results showed higher levels of contaminants in deeper wells; why many sampling results were "estimated"; why some samples for radionuclides were filtered; and why 1994 data which showed an elevated level for technetium-99 was dismissed as a fluke. Questions submitted to NFS were boiled down into an official response, which failed to answer specifics. It stated, in part: "NFS began collecting groundwater characterization data on its site in the late 1980s. Results from evaluating that data led NFS to install additional onsite monitoring wells in the 1990s and, in December 1996, offsite wells. "With regard to plutonium, only trace amounts of this element have been observed in well samples, and this has occurred both in the 'background' wells (upgradient from and not related to NFS) as well as in the downgradient off-site wells. The concentrations observed are at essentially background levels. "... There is no evidence that NFS is contributing to the plutonium in the groundwater from the NFS facility, nor does the groundwater pose any threat to health or the environment. Groundwater at and near the NFS facility is not used for drinking water or any other purpose. "NFS regularly samples surface water in the vicinity of its plant, including the Nolichucky River, and the quality of the water meets the applicable standards. ... It is irresponsible to falsely raise the phantom of even a potential threat to drinking water." Copyright © 1996 - 2002 Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc. Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc., 300 Sycamore Street Elizabethton, Tennessee 37643 - 423.542.4151 ***************************************************************** 41 Sirens headed for Cold War scrapheap LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL: NEWS: According to Dick Quinn, who retired from his county technician job last year, this air raid siren atop Vegas Verdes Elementary School was cut down in the late 1970s by a neighbor who was upset about the noise. Photo by Gary Thompson. Dick Quinn, former technician for Clark County, stands beside one of the air raid sirens he serviced for nearly three decades. The purpose of the relics was to warn of emergencies, including the threat of a nuclear attack during the Cold War. Though they sounded regularly during Saturday tests, the valley's 25 sirens were never used in an actual emergency. Photo by Gary Thompson. Sunday, April 07, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal County weighs request to have obsolete devices' electrical connections severed By RYAN OLIVER REVIEW-JOURNAL After more than three decades of faithful service, the air raid sirens meant to warn Las Vegas of its pending nuclear obliteration probably will never be heard. Emergency officials say the 23 sirens still standing in and around the city have been silenced gradually in the past decade. The Cold War relics will be transformed officially into half-ton conversation pieces if the county approves a request to have their electrical connections severed. "I think they had their day," said Ken Ryckman, Clark County's retired emergency manger. "Back then, people understood there was the threat of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. But while they were mainly for a nuclear attack, they could be used for any kind of warning." The Las Vegas area originally had 25 sirens, but two came down when the buildings whose roofs they occupied were demolished. The eerie shrill of air raid sirens sent a generation of American schoolchildren under their desks in mock, nuclear bomb drills back in the 1950s and 1960s. Hollywood B-movies widely exploited their sound to hearken the arrival of anything from the Russians to the Martians to the occasional colony of giant, mutant ants. In Tokyo, it was Godzilla. Today, they're still widely used in some Midwestern states for the very real threat of tornadoes. Jim O'Brien, emergency operations manager for the county, said it was the all-purpose nature of the air raid siren that, in part, led to their demise. "The problem with just a noisemaker like a siren is that while it says something is wrong, it doesn't tell you what's wrong, where it's wrong, and what you need to do to protect yourself," O'Brien said. O'Brien conducted a study on the sirens last year and recommended their use be discontinued because current technology made them obsolete. The Clark County Public Safety Coordination Team obliged his request in a motion passed in July. O'Brien is also asking the county to pay $300 apiece to have the alarms properly disconnected from their electrical lines in order to prevent an alarm from accidentally going off and confusing the public, he said. With most sirens weighing around 1,200 pounds and a few in the 400-pound range, the county has no plans to physically remove them. "They're big bruisers," he said. "That's why we're just disabling them. Some of them are pretty high on buildings, and you'd have to have a crane to take them down." O'Brien says the electronic news media and the Emergency Broadcast System are much more useful than the sirens when it comes to alerting the public. The county also plans to eventually install a "reverse 911" system that will be able to contact thousands of residents over their phone lines during an emergency and deliver a prerecorded message. Another major deficiency of the air raid system is that there's not enough of the sirens spread around the Las Vegas area to alert even half the population. Twenty-three of the sirens were installed during the late 1960s under the Federal Emergency Management Agency's predecessor, the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, O'Brien said. The sirens still bear the defunct agency's triangular logo. The city was much smaller then, so the air raid sirens do not extend into many of today's populated areas. Only two were added since the initial batch, and that was in 1977, O'Brien said. The sirens are perched largely atop public buildings such as schools and fire stations and have never been activated for an actual emergency, he said. Until the early 1990s, the sirens, which pump out more than 120 decibels and have a horn that swivels in almost a full circle, were activated every Saturday at noon for testing, O'Brien said. That activity was scaled back to once a month by decade's end until it was discontinued altogether. Parts from the sirens' two manufacturers were also becoming increasingly difficult to find, and officials stopped maintaining them about five years ago, according to Dick Quinn, who retired from his county technician job last year. Beginning in 1968, Quinn was solely responsible for maintaining the air raid sirens' communication systems. The sirens are radio-activated from a transmitter at the Las Vegas Fire Department, he explained. "Nobody else wanted to mess with them because their receivers were very complicated. Even the contractors wouldn't mess with them," Quinn said. "It's really a big operation. These things were top of the line in their time, and I venture to say, a lot of the damn things will still work if you tried to start them." Quinn recalled the work and sirens with some nostalgia but, he said, they weren't without their controversy. Many people complained about the noise when they were sounded off each Saturday, he said. In the late 1970s, a person even snuck on the roof of a school building near Oakey Boulevard and Arville Street, and sabotaged one. "These sirens are mounted on a 6-inch riser pump, but by God he did cut (it) down. He cut the guide wires off and laid it down on the school," he said. "Hell no, they never caught the guy. But we put it back up. No big deal." Quinn said people even complained when the sirens stopped sounding off. "But the newcomers in town, it was bothering their sleep," he said. "It was a political thing to shut them down. Yeah, I maintained those damn things for 25 or 30 years, but there's nothing I can do about it now." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 42 READINESS REPORT: Nuclear testing speculation rises Anti-nuclear protesters make their way north on U.S. Highway 95 during a Good Friday peace march to the Nevada Test Site. Photo by Amy Beth Bennett. Sunday, April 07, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Agency will recommend faster preparation time for resumption of tests By TONY BATT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The federal agency overseeing the Nevada Test Site plans to complete a report by late spring recommending a faster preparation time for possible resumption of underground nuclear tests. No tests are planned yet. But the upcoming report by the National Nuclear Security Agency is fueling speculation that the testing moratorium that began in September 1992 might soon end. "Let's put it this way. This is not a sign that the Bush administration is moving away from nuclear tests," said Ivo Daldeer, a foreign policy specialist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank. But the leap from preparing for a nuclear test to actually performing one is enormous, according to Frank Von Hippel, the former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology from 1993 to 1994. "The comprehensive test ban treaty originally was signed by five countries, including the United States. Now, there are 182 countries that have signed the treaty," Von Hippel said. A resumption of nuclear tests in Nevada might spur other countries to start testing their own nuclear weapons, Von Hippel said. The National Nuclear Security Agency isn't saying what time will be recommended for test readiness. But John Harvey, a senior analyst at the agency, said in January that 18 months would be preferable to the current preparation time of two to three years. Harvey estimated it would take three years to prepare the test site for the new schedule, and the cost would be $45 million. The following month, the president's budget earmarked for the test site $15 million, the exact figure Harvey suggested for the first year, to lower preparation time for underground nuclear tests. The cost of enhancing test readiness might prove pivotal in determining what the new preparation time will be, according to Richard Galvin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "When they find out, maybe they will change their minds about (accelerating test readiness)," said Galvin, who does not support a resumption of nuclear tests. The test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, served as the location for 100 atmospheric and 828 underground nuclear tests from 1951 until Sept. 23, 1992. After the last test, the first President Bush imposed a nuclear testing moratorium. Since July 1997, the government has conducted subcritical experiments at the test site to check the safety and reliability of weapons without causing nuclear explosions. The report on test readiness will respond to the Nuclear Posture Review, the Bush administration's recent plan on how to deal with global threats. The Nuclear Posture Review concluded current testing readiness at the test site is not sufficient. "First, ... the current two- to three-year test readiness posture will not be sustainable as more and more experienced test personnel retire," the review said. "Second, the two- to three-year posture may be too long to address any serious defect (in the nuclear weapons stockpile) that might be discovered in the future." Robert Norris, an expert on nuclear weapons for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Nuclear Posture Review, "as a whole, is very enthusiastic about nuclear weapons." The drive to shorten nuclear test readiness received a hearty endorsement last month in a report by an independent group of experts. Led by John Foster, the former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the so-called "Foster Panel" recommended three months to a year to prepare for testing resumption. That idea was rejected by Everet Beckner, the Department of Energy's deputy administrator for defense programs. "During the era of underground nuclear testing, cradle-to-grave took nine to 12 months for most tests, depending on complexity," Beckner said in a letter to Foster. Despite all the talk about enhancing test readiness, the Nevada Test Site continues to operate the way it did before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to test site spokesman Darwin Morgan. That means the two- to three-year mandate to stay ready remains in place. John Gordon, head of the National Nuclear Security Agency, has said repeatedly he does not see a need to resume nuclear testing any time soon. But in addition to enhanced test readiness, the Nuclear Posture Review calls for the development of a low-yield nuclear bomb to penetrate caves where terrorists might be storing weapons of mass destruction. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said such a bomb could be easily tested at the test site. Peggy May Johnson, executive director of the Nevada environmental group Citizen Alert, opposes an accelerated schedule for nuclear testing because of concerns about Southern Nevada's groundwater. Citizen Alert issued a report in January charging the federal government is not adequately tracking contamination of the region's groundwater from previous nuclear tests. "We are very concerned because of the fact that additional tests would create more nuclear waste," Johnson said. "Our organization is fighting now tooth and nail to keep nuclear waste out of Yucca Mountain and we are concerned about the proliferation of anything nuclear." Von Hippel advocated shutting down the test site while he was serving in the Clinton administration. He said he still thinks closure is a good idea. "But with this administration, that's not going to happen," he said. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 43 Musharraf 'prepared' to use nuclear bomb BBC News | SOUTH ASIA | Sunday, 7 April, 2002, The Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, says his country is prepared to use nuclear weapons in the event of a military conflict with India. In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, published on Sunday, General Musharraf says that if pressure on Pakistan becomes too great, then use of the atom bomb is possible - but only as an absolute last resort. He accused India of having what he called superpower obsessions and of frantically arming itself. From the newsroom of the BBC World Service ***************************************************************** 44 South Korea scores diplomatic coup by leading North back to the table Sunday April 7, 10:41 AM South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung has scored a diplomatic coup by coaxing North Korea to open talks with the United States and to revive peace efforts on the Korean peninsula, analysts said. Following talks in Pyongyang, South Korean presidential envoy Lim Dong-Won said the unpredictable North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il was once again ready to engage the outside world. "Chairman Kim Jong-Il has accepted the request from President Kim Dae-Jung that the North should reopen dialogue with the United States to avoid tension on the Korean peninsula," Lim said. The envoy quoted Kim Jong-Il as saying that Jack Prichard, the US special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, would soon visit Pyongyang. The date for his visit has yet to be fixed, he said. Kim Jong-Il also wants to resume talks with Japan to normalize frosty ties between the two countries, Lim said. Lee Jong-Seok, an analyst at the private Sejong Research Institute in Seoul, said the envoy had secured unexpected results which should help defuse mounting tensions over the North's nuclear and missile programs. "Lim's visit to Pyongyang produced a better than expected outcome as it provided an opportunity to turn the tide away from mounting tension on the Korean peninsula," he said. The North has been waiting for a chance to return to the dialogue table without losing face as it knows that outside help is essential to revive its ruined economy, he added. But Lee cautioned: "It is too premature to say whether the United States and North Korea can find common ground as they are too far apart from each other on pending issues." For its part, the United States said it welcomed North Korea's offer to renew bilateral talks but will "reserve judgment" until it hears directly from Pyongyang, a senior US official said Saturday in Washington. North Korea broke off contacts after US President George W. Bush came to office and adopted a tougher line on the famine-stricken nation's suspected drive to develop nuclear missiles. In January, Bush labelled Pyongyang part of an "axis of evil" saying it was intent on spreading weapons of mass destruction. Suspicion over the North's nuclear program mounted last month when Washington said it could not certify that the Stalinist North was sticking to a 1994 nuclear accord. North Korea has responded with a verbal onslaught against the United States and its prosperous capitalist neighbour. The North, however, said it was now ready to resume peace talks with Seoul covering economic contacts and reunions of families split by the peninsula's division in 1945 and the 1950-53 Korean War. "Both sides agreed to bring back on track the inter-Korean relations that had temporarily been frozen," the Koreas said in a joint statement on Saturday. The leaders of the two Koreas signed a peace declaration in Pyongyang on June 15, 2000, raising hopes of an end to decades of Cold War confrontation before tensions escalated again this year. A return visit by Kim Jong-Il to Seoul has yet to materialize. But the envoy said the North Korean leader wanted to visit the capitalist South. The joint statement said the two Koreas would resume reunions of separated families, after three previous rounds, at the North's scenic Mount Kumgang on April 28. They also agreed to rejoin their severed cross-border railways and roads. "It is quite a significant development that the two sides agreed to resume work to restore cross-border railway links, the core inter-Korean project," said Shin Ji-Ho, an analyst at the Samsung Economic Research Institute. "Should this become reality, it would certainly lead to a reduction in military tension as well," he said. The two Koreas agreed to hold three-day economic talks in Seoul from May 7, and a North Korean delegation is set to inspect South Korean industrial facilities in May. Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 45 Concern over US plans for war on terror dominate Jiang tour Sunday April 7, 10:56 AM Chinese President Jiang Zemin begins a five-nation tour Monday in Germany, with the aim of tackling a perceived US go-it-alone attitude in the war on terror, analysts said. The trip will also take the Chinese head of state to Libya, Nigeria, Tunisia and Iran, ending on April 21. Jiang's agenda in Germany, Iran and Libya will be strongly influenced by Beijing's concerns that Washington might unilaterally expand the war against terrorism, analysts said. Foreign ministry officials in Beijing confirmed Jiang will discuss the global anti-terrorism campaign on several of his stops. "The international community has yet to reach an agreement on the definition of terrorism. Therefore, through consultation with the international community, we hope to reach a common consensus," said Wu Chunhua, the ministry's director of West Asia and North African affairs. Beijing, while generally backing the US-led response to the September 11 attacks on the United States, has expressed reservations over expanded military action potentially targeting Iraq, Iran or Libya -- all allies of China. Beijing and Berlin share similar views on the fight against terrorism, the need to maintain a strategic balance of global power and on peacekeeping, foreign ministry officials and analysts said. "Right now, both China and Germany are very much concerned about US unilateralism and its effects on international peace," said Lau Siu-kai, a political scientist at Hong Kong's Chinese University. "Both China and Germany are quite worried about the expansion of the anti-terrorism campaign by the (President) George W. Bush administration." China, which has long wanted Europe to play a stronger role in international affairs to counter US dominance, has perceived growing trans-Atlantic differences recently and may be keen to use these to its own advantage, analysts said. Beijing will likely also raise its concerns about peacekeeping forces in its neighbour Afghanistan, given that Germany is one of the countries with troops there, said Zhu Feng, director of Beijing University's International Security Program. "China doesn't want the Afghanistan reconstruction process to be influenced too much by the international community," Zhu said. The trip to Germany will also touch on EU- and German-China trade relations, which have encountered problems recently with an EU ban on some Chinese food imports due to allegedly high levels of antibiotics -- a move criticized by Beijing as "unreasonable". Jiang's visits to Libya and Iran, both countries identified by Washington as sponsors of terrorism, comes at a sensitive time when the US is threatening to expand the anti-terrorism campaign. China, Libya and Iran were all identified as potential targets in a recently leaked Pentagon nuclear weapons strategy review. Jiang's choice of destinations to some extent shows China's dissatisfaction with the United States, which also listed the country as a nuclear target, Zhu said. "This visit is to show that America cannot just define as it wishes rogue states," Zhu said. The visit to Tripoli will be the first by a Chinese leader, with the timing far from coincidental, he stressed. "It's diplomatic posturing by China ... China doesn't entirely agree with the US views (on terrorism). It wants to show its own independent policy," Zhu said. But, he said, China was not trying to organize an anti-American coalition and was keen to maintain good relations with the United States. Beijing is convinced Washington is trying to keep it from becoming stronger especially after a relative strengthening of US ties with Taiwan under the Bush administration, Lau said. "It is eager to cultivate better relations with Arab countries, such as Iran and Libya, knowing these countries now are very antagonistic against the US," he said. The tour will take Jiang to Germany from April 8-13, Libya from April 13-14, Nigeria from April 14-16, Tunisia from April 16-17 and Iran from April 17-21. Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 46 Politician says Japanese nukes could counter China Sat Apr 6,10:37 AM ET TOKYO (Reuters) - The leader of Japan's opposition Liberal Party, Ichiro Ozawa, said on Saturday it would be a simple matter for Japan to produce nuclear weapons and surpass the military might of China if its neighbour got "too inflated". Inviting a sharp response from Beijing, which is sensitive to any signs of militarism in Japan, Ozawa told a seminar in the southern city of Fukuoka that "China is applying itself to expansion of military power". "If (China) gets too inflated, Japanese people will get hysterical," Kyodo news agency quoted him as saying. "It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads. We have plutonium at nuclear power plants in Japan, enough to make several thousand such warheads," he said. Ozawa said his statements, coming just days before Japanese Prime Minster Junichiro Koizumi visits China, were meant to encourage stronger ties between China and Japan, the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack. He said he made similar comments recently to a person he described as being affiliated with the Chinese intelligence agency. "I told that person that if we get serious, we will never be beaten in terms of military power," he said. Ozawa said Japan found itself in a difficult position. "Northeastern Asia, in which both China and North Korea are located, is the most unstable region in the world," he said. "China is applying itself to expansion of military power in the hope of becoming a superpower...following the United States." Koizumi will visit China for three days from April 11 to attend an economic conference on Hainan island, although he is also expected to meet Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji. Li Peng, chairman of China's parliament, who is on a visit to Japan, said in an interview published in a regional newspaper on Saturday he was optimistic about Japan-China relations. Li said Japan and China, long resentful over its treatment at the hands of Japanese invaders, may encounter difficulties on the path to closer ties because the countries were so different. "Even in such cases, the two nations can solve any problems with effort and foresight," Li said in an interview with the Kitanippon Press, a newspaper in western Japan. Li's visit is one of several high-level exchanges between China and Japan to mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties in September 1972. Ties have been strained in recent times by Koizumi's visit last year to a shrine honouring Japan's war dead, including convicted war criminals, and Japan's approval of a history textbook that China and other Asian countries say downplays Japan's wartime aggression. Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. ***************************************************************** 47 Reports: Opposition leader says Japan could easily go nuclear AP Reports: Opposition leader says Japan could easily go nuclear Sun Apr 7, 1:18 AM ET TOKYO - The leader of a small opposition party said Japan could easily develop nuclear weapons if its people feel threatened by China, newspapers reported Sunday. "Making nuclear weapons is simple," Liberal Party leader Ichiro Ozawa said in the reports. "Japan could have several thousand nuclear warheads overnight if it wants." Ozawa made the remarks during a speech Saturday in the southwestern city of Fukuoka, according to reports published in the Asahi, Sankei and Nihon Keizai, all nationally circulated dailies. Ozawa, formerly a heavyweight in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, left it amid political realignments in the 1990s. "Japan probably has enough plutonium at nuclear plants for about three to four thousand warheads," the reports quoted Ozawa as saying. "If it comes to that, Japan won't lose militarily." Ozawa said he was speaking against the backdrop of China's increased military spending, which he described as part of its effort to become a superpower. Ozawa added, however, that he felt Japan and China should live together in peace. Anti-nuclear sentiment is high in Japan, the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks. At least 200,000 people died when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the country in the closing days of World War II. The reports of Ozawa's remarks come as Japan and China are celebrating 30 years of diplomatic relations. Li Peng, China's former premier and now chairman of its Parliament, is currently visiting Japan in an attempt to strengthen ties. Officials at the Liberal Party and Ozawa's parliamentary office were unavailable to comment Sunday. (kgo/dc/dv) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. ***************************************************************** 48 Pakistan would use nuclear weapons if there is no other option Radio Australia News - Pakistan's military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, says Islamabad would use nuclear weapons in its military stand-off with India over Kashmir but only if there was no other option. In an interview with a German magazine, General Musharraf said using nuclear weapons would only be a last resort. He said Pakistan was negotiating responsibly and was optimistic that it could defend itself using conventional weapons. General Musharraf reiterated his stance that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons if its security or existence was threatened. Pakistan and India, both nuclear powers, are locked in a stand-off over the mountainous region of Kashmir and they have fought two of their three wars over the region since 1947. A 740-kilometre long Line of Control divides Kashmir between the two. India controls 45 percent of Kashmir, Pakistan just over a third and China the rest. 08/04/2002 05:24:39 | ABC Radio Australia News ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************