***************************************************************** 06/09/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.145 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: Tennessee Valley: A nuclear future? 2 US opposes Russia's sale of uranium fuel to India 3 US: $37 billion, 169,000 employees 4 US: Office would absorb duties, employees from 8 departments 5 US: Congressional Report: Senate Approves Emergency Funding NUCLEAR REACTORS 6 US: Westchester Dispenses Pills as a Precaution Against the Unthinka 7 US: Letters INDIAN POINT NUKE PLANT: TOO TEMPTING FOR TERRORISTS 8 US: South Florida nuclear power plant licenses renewed 9 US: Lithuania says it's ready to close its one nuclear power plant 10 US: NRC extends Turkey Point licenses 11 Canada: N.B. government may close nuclear plant if buyer can't be fo 12 US: NRC opts to extend life of Miami-Dade nuclear power plant 13 Lithuania says it's ready to close its one nuclear power plant 14 Swedish nuclear reactor shut down during security tests in what 15 US: Water accidentally released at Cook Nuclear Plant NUCLEAR SAFETY 16 US: Bush tells industry to fix terror risks 17 TRACKING THE NUCLEAR TERRORISTS 18 US: Nuke Plant Neighbors Given Pills 19 In Belarus, radioactive remnants -- 20 Stolen radioactive capsule recovered NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 21 [Nuclear waste] Greenpeace calls for cancellation of unsafe 22 US: [generalnews] Government deems building insecure, so radioactive 23 US: Committee vote sends YMP issue to senate* 24 US: Xcel fights on for nuclear fuel storage 25 US: *Mock nuclear cask passes by Twin Falls* 26 US: Livermore's nuclear next-door neighbors 27 US: Agency Deems Calif. Lab Insecure 28 US: Scientist calls attention to hazards of nuclear waste 29 US: Propaganda for Yucca Mountain The full-page color advertisement 30 US: Activists cite peril of N-waste transport 31 US: Anti-nuclear activists take message to roads 32 US: NUCLEAR WASTE: Parallels seen in states' battles 33 US: Nevada sues DOE over Yucca environmental impact 34 US: Shipping N-Waste To Yucca Mountain Isn't 'Safe' Science 35 US: Could Ballot Inititiative Weaken Goshute Tribe's Hand? 36 US: Shipping Nuclear Waste Has Already Been Proved Safe 37 US: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Nukes? Not Hollywood -- And That's 38 US: Goedhart: Legal challenges may derail plans for repository* 39 US: Wellstone, Dayton yet to disclose Yucca vote 40 US: Commissioners tour Yucca site* NUCLEAR WEAPONS 41 US: War Talk; Nuclear Weapons & Media Fog; Bush Scandal for Dummies 42 FPIF News: Nuclear War in South Asia 43 US: End the Nuclear Danger: An Urgent Call 44 Caldicot Op: Reluctant anti-nuclear campaigner 45 Nuclear Arms Taboo Is Challenged in Japan 46 Hiroshima, Nagasaki protest U.S. nuke test 47 US: Scientists Skeptical of Bush Plan 48 US: Home safety office sought - - 49 Admiral (retired) J G Nadkarni on the possibility of a nuclear 50 US: Subcritical nuclear test successful after delays 51 U.S. nuclear sub visits Sasebo 52 US: Test site changes unlikely 53 India, Pakistan's rush to nuclear brink caught U.S. off guard 54 India-Pakistan nuclear war would have little fallout in U.S. 55 Letter From Pakistan: A Nuclear Mood 56 Indian astrologers predict skirmishes not nuclear war 57 Nuclear ignorance radiates across Pakistan 58 US: Rejection of atomic license plate criticized 59 US: Senate Approves $31 Billion Anti-Terror Spending Bill 60 US: We're defenseless against terror 61 US: Mobile teams on hunt for atomic threats US DEPT. OF ENERGY 62 Livermore's nuclear next-door neighbors 63 Harkin asks Bush for help with IAAP OTHER NUCLEAR 64 Study: Radon Risk in Homes Underestimated 65 UK: Home radon cleared of cancer risk to children (?) ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Tennessee Valley: A nuclear future? Elizabethton Star - Online Edition By Kathy Helms-Hughes STAR STAFF khughes@starhq.com [khughes@starhq.com] Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of stories related to these issues. In the book, "If You Poison Us," author Peter Eichstaedt told of his investigation into the plight of Navajo uranium miners who worked during the Cold War to provide a supply of uranium to be used in atomic bomb production. Many of those hired worked in underground mines in the Four Corners area without benefit of ventilation. Radioactive dust settled on their clothes. They drank water dripping down the walls of the mines and ate their lunches, oblivious to radioactive contamination. From 1950 to 1980, state and federal agencies kept from the Dineh (Navajo) mounting evidence of the dangers of uranium mining. Twenty years later, the federal government imposed safety standards. In 1990, Congress enacted the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act which provided $100,000 to miners or their survivors diagnosed with cancer or respiratory illness. In July 2001, the Federal Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act took effect, providing compensation of up to $150,000 and medical expenses to those who worked in the nuclear weapons industry during the Cold War era. Some of those workers were employed in Erwin at a facility then operated by W.R. Grace and now known as NFS Inc. THE NEW YORK CONNECTION While NFS was getting off the ground in Erwin, Davison Chemical Co. established another company in 1962 in West Valley, N.Y., also known as Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. The NFS-West Valley facility was the first private plant in the United States to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. In spring 1963, the Atomic Energy Commission issued permits to NFS, then a subsidiary of W.R. Grace Co., to begin construction of a fuel reprocessing facility at West Valley. In 1965, NFS was granted a license to receive and store fuel at its West Valley reprocessing facility. NFS-West Valley was acquired by Getty Oil in 1969 and received government and commercially generated fuel until the early 1970s. In 1972, NFS halted all reprocessing operations at West Valley in order to increase capacity and alter the facility to meet new regulatory guidelines. After four years of negotiations with federal and state authorities, NFS decided in 1976 not to reopen the plant due to cost-prohibitive safety measures imposed by the NRC, according to the General Accounting Office. In 1980, NFS exercised its right to leave the site after its lease expired, transferring ownership and responsibility for approximately 600,000 gallons of high-level nuclear waste to the state of New York. During its operation as NFS, the plant recovered 1,926 kilograms (kg) of plutonium and shipped almost 80 percent of the material to the Atomic Energy Commission. The remaining 396 kg was either kept by utility companies, sold to industry, or purchased by NFS. Separated plutonium, totaling 1,530 kg, also was shipped to Hanford from West Valley -- including 95 kg from NFS in Erwin. Radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes are now leaching from West Valley into Cattaraugus Creek, which flows along 18 miles of the Seneca Nation before emptying into Lake Erie. INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS NFS is about to embark on a new mission -- the downblending of 33 metric tons of bomb-grade uranium from the Department of Energy into low-enriched fuel to power reactors at TVA's Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama. TVA and DOE signed a memorandum of understanding in 1997 to investigate commercial use of "off-spec" highly enriched uranium. A consortium made up of Framatome-Cogema Fuels of Lynchburg, Va., Siemens Power Corp. of Richland, Wash., and NFS submitted the best proposal. Framatome and Siemens later merged into Framatome ANP and TVA then negotiated with DOE and the Framatome ANP/NFS consortium to complete the project. The 33 metric-ton surplus will have to be blended with about 460 metric tons of natural uranium before it can be used as fuel. Just over two months ago, TVA contracted with Cameco Corp. of Canada to supply the "natural uranium" blend stock, in the form of uranium trioxide. In March 1999, COGEMA of France joined Cameco and Nukem, the U.S. affiliate of a German firm, in an agreement with Techsnabexport (Tenex), the commercial arm of the Russian Federal Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM), for the purchase of "natural uranium" derived from highly enriched uranium contained in Russian nuclear weapons. Under the agreement, 500 metric tons of highly enriched Russian uranium are to be diluted in Russia and delivered to the United States as low-enriched uranium. In 1994, NFS that the Erwin company and its partner, AlliedSignal, had signed formal documents to create a joint stock company with several Russian entities to implement a landmark "weapons to plowshares" Russian-American agreement. According to the plan, weapons grade material would be converted at Russian facilities owned by MINATOM and in the United States at NFS. Also in 1994, U.S. Enrichment Corp., signed a $12 billion, 20-year contract, termed "Megatons to Megawatts" to convert 500 metric tons of highly enriched Russian uranium into low-enriched fuel which it would sell to its customers to generate electricity. In January 2000, USEC signed a contract with TVA, agreeing to provide uranium enrichment services and uranium feed to fuel TVA's Sequoyah and Watts Bar reactors. Later in 2000, USEC and TVA inked a deal for TVA to supply 10 years of low-cost electricity to USEC's Paducah, Ky., plant. It also was agreed that TVA will become USEC's primary electricity provider as the now-private company's contracts expire. Copyright © 1996 - 2002 Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc. ter@starhq.com [webmaster@starhq.com] Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc., 300 Sycamore Street Elizabethton, Tennessee 37643 - 423.542.4151 ***************************************************************** 2 US opposes Russia's sale of uranium fuel to India Saturday June 8, 3:45 PM Washington, Jun 8 (PTI) The US has opposed Russia's sale of uranium fuel for nuclear power plants in India arguing it violates Moscow's non-proliferation commitments, while holding forth the threat of sanctions if Moscow fails to curtail cooperation on sensitive technology with countries like Iran. "In selling uranium fuel to India in the face of overwhelming opposition from the Nuclear Suppliers Group," Russia has made decisions contrary to the non-proliferation guidelines to which it is a party, Assistant Secretary of State for Non-proliferation Thomas Wolf said. Accusing Russia of putting a narrow interpretation on non-proliferation, he said it tended to "downplay the threat posed by proliferant weapon programmes and express the belief that the limited technological capability of proliferant states will prevent them from developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles." "That view," he told a Senate Subcommittee hearing on Thursday, "is shortsighted and dangerous." Russia's cash-strapped defence, bio-technology, chemical weapons and nuclear industries, he said, profit from exports and transfers to states on the US list of sponsors of terrorism. The US has "made clear to Russia that it must take enforcement action to stop assistance to proliferators--and that does not mean just Iran. If Russian action does not terminate such assistance, US sanctions may be required", he said. Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 3 $37 billion, 169,000 employees The proposed Department of Homeland Security would control dozens of agencies now in eight departments. It would oversee the Secret Service as well. * Border, transportation and security. Major agencies include Immigration and Naturalization Service; Border Patrol; U.S. Customs; the Coast Guard. Department takes over new Transportation Security Administration, which oversees airport security. * Emergency preparedness and response. Department would oversee Federal Emergency Management Agency; nuclear emergency response; domestic preparedness; infra- structure protection; pharmaceutical stockpile. * Chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological countermeasures. Department would take over Lawrence Livermore National Lab (nuclear weapons research facility); oversee bioterrorism, animal disease research and Office of Public Health Preparedness. * Information analysis and computer protection. FBI and CIA remain independent, but department becomes clearinghouse for intelligence they gather; oversight of computer and communications security. More details, 6A © Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. ***************************************************************** 4 Office would absorb duties, employees from 8 departments By Judy Keen and Richard Benedetto USA TODAY WASHINGTON -- President Bush is proposing the biggest reshuffling of the federal bureaucracy in 55 years to create a vast Cabinet department overseeing homeland security. In an acknowledgment that his White House Office of Homeland Security lacks clout, Bush proposed shifting from eight Cabinet departments dozens of key agencies, including the Coast Guard, Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Secret Service. The moves would affect such everyday activities as travel, redirect disaster planning and response, and monitor the food supply, nuclear plants and emergency medical supplies. The department would absorb the recently created Transportation Security Administration and include a new agency to analyze intelligence gathered by the CIA, FBI and other agencies. Its ''overriding and urgent mission,'' Bush said in a televised speech Thursday, would be ''imagining the worst and planning to counter it.'' Bush had resisted calls to create the Cabinet department, but aides said he became convinced that it's necessary to pull together functions scattered across the federal bureaucracy. The department would be responsible for nabbing terrorists at U.S. borders, in airports and at ports, and assuring that clues about possible attacks don't slip through the cracks. The plan is also an effort to demonstrate that fighting terrorism is Bush's chief goal as congressional investigations into intelligence lapses heat up. Bush and his advisers wanted to pre-empt Congress, which is debating several bills that would create a homeland security department. None goes as far as the president's plan. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the new department would not be ''a massive addition to the bureaucracy'' because existing employees and budgets would be transferred to it. White House documents estimate that the department would have 169,154 employees and a budget of $37.45 billion in its first year. ''The focus of the president last year was immediate protection of America,'' so he set up the office in the White House, Fleischer said. Over time, officials concluded that a full-fledged department was necessary ''to fight an enduring war,'' he said. The far-reaching plan requires congressional approval, which Bush wants this year. ''We face an urgent need, and we must move quickly,'' he said. Congress is investigating whether the CIA and FBI overlooked or failed to share clues that might have prevented the terrorist attacks. White House aides denied that Thursday's announcement was timed to deflect attention from the congressional hearings. ''I do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of September the 11th,'' Bush said. ''Yet we now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us, and this terrible knowledge requires us to act differently.'' Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said those inquiries should continue despite Bush's proposal ''in order to understand fully what went wrong.'' Fleischer called the proposal the most sweeping reorganization of the federal government since 1947, when President Harry Truman unified the military under the Defense Department and created the CIA. Bush created the White House office of homeland security nine days after the terrorist attacks and named Tom Ridge, then Pennsylvania's governor, to head it. Bush and his advisers said then that Ridge would have ample clout because of his proximity to the president. Some Bush advisers said Ridge is Bush's first choice to head the new department. If Ridge doesn't want the job, they said, the president might try to recruit a high-profile figure such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. The department would have four divisions that would oversee border security, emergency preparedness, information analysis and chemical, biological and nuclear threats. Congressional lawmakers, who control Cabinet departments' budgets, have sought more authority over Ridge's office. Some expressed general approval of Bush's idea but said there would be wrangling over many details. ''The war on terrorism has been expanded to include the war on turf,'' said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., a frequent critic of the current homeland security office. ''I'm very impressed by the breadth of this proposal and the courage it takes to put it forward.'' ''I'm not sold yet,'' said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. ''My concern would be that a junior Cabinet agency is not going to be able to order Treasury and Justice and Defense around. I worked with all those agencies as a U.S. attorney, and they're like foreign nations.'' © Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. ***************************************************************** 5 Congressional Report: Senate Approves Emergency Funding News from the Washington File [Washington File] 07 June 2002 (Measure also provides funding for other priorities) (360) LEGISLATION WILL GO TO A HOUSE-SENATE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE The U.S. Senate voted 71-22 June 6 to spend an additional $31,600 million in federal funding during the current fiscal year on anti-terrorism and other priorities. The House of Representatives approved a similar emergency-spending bill 280-138 May 24 that would appropriate $29,600 million in supplemental fiscal year 2002 funds, 53 percent of which is for military operations related to the war on terrorism. President Bush had originally sought $27,100 million in emergency FY 02 funds, but now favors the House version, the White House has said. Because the Senate and House versions differ in amounts and in a number of other areas, a conference committee is expected to meet and resolve differences so that the Congress can send the president an acceptable bill before the traditional July Fourth recess next month. The Senate-passed emergency spending measure provides: -- $14,000 million for defense priorities, the same amount requested by President Bush; -- $5,800 million for domestic security enhancements; -- $200 million for AIDS funding; -- $5,500 million for recovery and rebuilding programs in New York City following the September 11th attacks; and -- approximately $3,000 million to secure the nation's ports, nuclear laboratories, airports, food inspection stations and other places deemed vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The measure also includes an amendment from Virginia Republican Senator John Warner which prohibits U.S. authorities from assisting and cooperating with the International Criminal Court. EXPORT-IMPORT BANK EXTENDED FOR FOUR YEARS The U.S. Senate unanimously approved extending the Export-Import Bank -- which provides loans and loan guarantees to American companies that want to make sales abroad -- for four additional years. President Bush has already said he will sign the measure that had also been approved by the House of Representatives by a 344-78 vote June 5. Additionally, the legislation increases the Ex-Im Bank's aggregate loan limit from $75,000 million to $100,000 million. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov) (usinfo.state.gov). Links to other Internet sites should not be ***************************************************************** 6 Westchester Dispenses Pills as a Precaution Against the Unthinkable The New York Times *June 9, 2002* *By COREY KILGANNON* YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y., June 8 ? The weather was pleasant and the sky was clear, but to hear the talk outside Yorktown High School today, a gray plume might as well be billowing already in the western sky, from the direction of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in nearby Buchanan. Officials in blue uniforms spoke to parents about survival rates at Chernobyl and dropped terms like radioactive isotopes, leaving some people more confused or alarmed than when they arrived. "If the wind is like today, we'd start evacuating from south of the plant first," an official said. The parents looked dazed; with impatient children pulling at them, they left with a fistful of small white pills intended to offer comfort and protection in the event of a radioactive disaster. The pills, potassium iodide, were given free to Westchester County residents who live within 10 miles of the Indian Point plant. Additional distributions are scheduled in the county for the next three Saturdays. Today, well before distribution began at 9 a.m., minivans and S.U.V.'s were lined up to enter a packed parking lot. Well-dressed parents and children in soccer uniforms trotted past a county emergency vehicle and joined the long lines of people in front of the school. According to county officials, more than 2,600 people showed up to pick up pills. Between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., more than 10,500 pills were distributed. One by one, each person signed a registry and took a pill for each household member. Chatty federal and county health officials handed out the pills and told parents what to do in case of a nuclear catastrophe. One official smiled at a mother with four young children. He said that the pill was effective in blocking thyroid cancer when given to children after the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion in 1986. "In the event of an accident, you will hear sirens," he said. "This pill will provide you with 24-hour protection until you get to a safe area. Have a nice weekend." Melissa Newman, 18, who was picking up pills for her family, said: "It feels like a movie. It's terrible. We shouldn't be at risk for this." She looked at an informational poster declaring that the tablets "may reduce the risk of thyroid cancer in individuals who inhale or ingest radioactive iodine." Another poster offered a long list of local pharmacies that sell these over-the-counter pills, which cost less than a dollar apiece. There was also the Indian Point Radiological Emergency Preparedness Plan, a map with concentric circles on it. Phillip Pinkney and his wife, Glenda Jordan, located their neighborhood on the map, trying to figure out how many miles they lived from the plant. Mr. Pinkney said that, in an emergency, he would pick up their 13-year-old daughter, Madison, from school and drive north on back roads. Other residents, meanwhile, discussed their evacuation plans. Of the roughly 100 nuclear plants around the country, Indian Point is in the most densely populated area, and is 40 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. There has been growing concern, especially since Sept. 11, about the safety of Indian Point's two working reactors, especially Reactor 2, which has been plagued by minor leaks and safety lapses. The tablets combat radiation-induced thyroid cancer. Taken before exposure to radiation, the pills saturate the thyroid gland with iodide, preventing the body from absorbing radioactive iodine, a fragment spewed when nuclear reactors split atoms. Anthony W. Sutton, the county's deputy commissioner of emergency services, stood in front of news cameras and explained that if harmful radiation levels were detected at the plant, the county would broadcast instructions over radio and television stations. He said the pills were not a complete solution, but "one more tool in our toolbox." Seamus O'Callaghan, a New York City firefighter who lives in Yorktown, arrived with his wife, Allison, and their children, Rebecca, 4; Ellen, 2; and Timothy, 8 weeks old. For the baby, they were told to crush half an iodide pill and add it to his bottle. The family moved to Yorktown from the Bronx, he said, but is considering moving again. "If I knew we were this much at risk, I would have moved somewhere else," he said. Christine Saffroniou, who lives in Yorktown, wondered if the pills were effective. "I don't think they'll do much good, but my husband wanted me to get them," she said. "If there is an attack, I think they'll go for the city first." She brought along her children, Elizabeth and Andrew, and two of their friends, all under age 10. "The kids asked what we were doing here," she said. "I just told them, `Grown-up stuff.' Hopefully they won't know anything. It's very frightening." Elizabeth Giegerich, 16, a junior at Yorktown High School, said she was beginning to understand how it all worked: "If the plant blows up, you take your pill and drive," she said. "It's scary," she added, "because it gets into the air and it's scary because you can't escape from the air." Her friend Nket Iyeboa, 17, added, "I never thought it would come to this, that I'd have to take pills to stay alive." Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company ***************************************************************** 7 Letters INDIAN POINT NUKE PLANT: TOO TEMPTING FOR TERRORISTS NYPOST.COM Post Opinion: June 8, 2002 -- THE ISSUE: Should the Indian Point nuclear plant be premanetly closed down? The terror attacks on the World Trade Center underscore the need for the immediate and permanent closure of the Indian Point nuclear facility ("9/11 Political Profiteers," Editorial, May 28). First of all, this facility has reached the end of its operational lifetime of 30 years. All nuclear power plants face decommissioning after their operational lives are reached. Secondly, anyone who thinks an evacuation will work needs only to drive around on our narrow, winding roads. The cars that trail behind my childrens’ school bus pose enough of a risk. In the event of a crisis, these roads will be completely gridlocked. Lastly, since our homes are a significant share of our assets, even a so-called "manageable" crisis at Indian Point will have a devastating impact on the local and regional real-estate market. Jason Hecht Manhattan The drive to close Indian Point - one of the worst-rated reactors in the United States - is anything but an effort to deprive New York of electricity. It is an effort to protect the 8 percent of the nation's population currently living in the crosshairs of an attractive terrorist target. By stating that it's improbable that nuclear-plant attacks can succeed and cause much damage, you are misinformed. An Entergy (owner of Indian Point) consultant stated just last week that a meltdown at the plant would be fatal for 10 percent of Westchester County. Christine Puente Crugers As a physician, I can assure your readers that fears about a meltdown at Indian point are not just "political profiteering." A radioactive release at the plant would result in catastrophic health consequences to the millions of people downwind of the plant, which includes the entire New York metropolitan area. Also, your estimate of a "40-percent increase" in our electricity bills should Indian Point close is grossly inflated. More importantly, if Indian Point blows, we won't have to worry about our electric bills. Susanne Saltzman Hartsdale Closing Indian Point is not a matter of partisan politics. It's a matter of the health and safety of the 20 million people living within 50 miles of the plant. You state that the likelihood of a terrorist strike is remote. However, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon flew almost directly over Indian Point on Sept. 11. The Bush Administration claims that it has intelligence that al Qaeda has plans regarding American nuclear plants. Put two and two together, guys. Not so remote after all, is it? Trevor Lysek Manhattan Your editorial left out a very important fact. A recent report by Charles Komanoff of the environmental watch group, Riverkeeper, shows that conservation measures made a big difference in California last year. In June 2001, electricity demand was down by 9 percent from June 2000, after a statewide conservation program was put into effect. If we did the same in New York, we could save enough energy to offset what Indian Point provides. Jerry Kann Astoria [http://www.nypost.com] ***************************************************************** 8 South Florida nuclear power plant licenses renewed Bradenton Herald | 06/09/2002 | [http://www.bradenton.com] Posted on Sun, Jun. 09, 2002 [story:PUB_DESC] Florida JOHN DORSCHNER Knight Ridder Newspapers MIAMI - Turkey Point, the nuclear power plant for South Florida, will get another 20 years of life, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Friday. The plant's two power units, operated by Florida Power & Light, were given license renewals that will allow them to operate until 2032 and 2033. Located near Florida City in southern Miami-Dade County, the units provide power for 350,000 homes at a cost of one-tenth what traditional fuel plants cost, according to FPL. Because of that, the nuclear plants are always running while traditional fuel plants are started and shut down daily depending on the weather and community needs. Unit 3 began operation in 1972 and Unit 4 in 1973. The original 40-year licenses were set to expire in 2012 and 2013, but FPL began the complex licensing renewal process four years ago because if the renewals were rejected, it would need to build fuel plants to provide alternative power. As part of the process, FPL held community meetings for the public in South Dade. Outside of a handful of longtime anti-nuclear environmentalists, community leaders said the plants had presented no problems in the area. "We're very appreciative of the local community's support for license renewal," said Art Stall, senior vice president of the nuclear division. FPL's other nuclear facility, St. Lucie on Hutchison Island, has two units with licenses that expire in 2016 and 2023. FPL says it expects that renewals for those units are probably two years away. John Dorschner writes for the Miami Herald, a sister paper of the Bradenton Herald/East Manatee Herald. ***************************************************************** 9 Lithuania says it's ready to close its one nuclear power plant /Fri Jun 7,12:02 PM ET/ VILNIUS, Lithuania - Lithuania said Friday that it has agreed in principle to shut down the former Soviet republic's sole nuclear power plant by 2009 ? following years of pressure from the European Union to do so. In a statement released by the office of Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, the government said it was ready to complete a deal with the 15-nation EU by next Tuesday on closing the Soviet-built Ignalina nuclear power plant. It added, however, that an exact figure on the amount of aid the EU will provide to decommission the station has yet to be decided. The cash-strapped government has estimated the process will cost some 3 billion euros (dlrs 2.8 million.) "The economic and political logic is simple: if there is no solidarity, there will be no closure in 2009," the statement read, in an apparent reference to any EU financial package. The issue has been the main obstacle to Lithuania's aspiration to join the EU, which repeatedly has said that Ignalina is a potential environmental threat and made its closure a condition of membership. Lithuania, a nation of 3.5 million people, has said it wants to finish its current membership talks at the end of this year and enter the EU by 2004. The nuclear issue aside, the EU has said pro-West, pro-reform Lithuania is a leading candidate for membership. Ignalina, 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Vilnius, the capital, provides more than 70 percent of Lithuania's electricity and some critics say closing it will cause steep hikes in the cost of electricity and hurt the economy. The plant's two reactors are the same type as those at Chernobyl, Ukraine ? site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986 ? though they have had safety upgrades since this Baltic Sea coast nation broke with the Soviet Union in 1991. The government earlier pledged to switch off the first reactor by 2005, but, until now, seemed reluctant about promising to shut down the second. Many Lithuanians, including some prominent politicians, oppose its closure. (ld-mt-krg) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 10 NRC extends Turkey Point licenses PalmBeachPost.com: Palm Beach Post Staff Reports Saturday, June 8, 2002 JUNO BEACH -- The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a request by Florida Power & Light Inc. to extend operating licenses at its Turkey Point nuclear plant for 20 years. The approval Friday came after a two-year review process by the NRC of the two units at the plant, near Homestead in Miami-Dade County. NRC staff concluded that there were no safety concerns that would preclude license renewal, the agency said. The license for Unit 3, which opened in 1972, was set to expire in 2012. The license for Unit 4, which began operation in 1973, was set to end in 2013. The licenses now will remain active until 2032 and 2033. FPL, a subsidiary of Juno Beach-based FPL Group (NYSE: FPL, $57.25), also is seeking 20-year license extensions for its two nuclear reactors at the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant on Hutchinson Island. A decision is expected in two years. India operations safe, Ocwen says WEST PALM BEACH -- Ocwen Financial Corp., which has some operations in India, said Thursday that its bottom line is unlikely to be hurt by the conflict between India and Pakistan. Ocwen's India facility, in Bangalore, is some 1,600 miles from Kashmir. Less than 15 percent of Ocwen's servicing activity is performed in India, Ocwen said, and all collections, customer service and loss mitigation are performed in the United States. West Palm Beach-based Ocwen (NYSE: OCN, $6), a mortgage servicer and technology company, said it issued a statement about its India risk in response to queries from investors. Copyright © 2002, The Palm Beach Post. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 Canada: N.B. government may close nuclear plant if buyer can't be found June 7, 2002 N.B. government may close nuclear plant if buyer can't be found FREDERICTON (CP) -- The New Brunswick government says it may close the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant in six years, if it can't strike a deal with any private investors.  Natural Resources Minister Jeannot Volpe said Friday the province is hoping for private sector involvement to pay some or all of the $1.6-billion cost to upgrade the aging nuclear power station on the Bay of Fundy shore.  British Energy PLC, which operates the Bruce nuclear station near Kincardine, Ont., has already expressed interest in buying Lepreau and other NB Power assets.  Emera, the parent company of Nova Scotia Power, has said it's also interested.  Volpe said it's not clear whether the interest will turn into an actual offer.  "If we don't get private sector offers then, at that time, we'll have to consider other options," Volpe said.  "One option would be to go ahead by ourselves. The other option would be to say that if the risk is too high for the private sector, maybe it's too high for the province."  Premier Bernard Lord said there would be a clear message for the government if the private sector decides it's not worth investing money in the reactor, which currently supplies about 30 per cent of New Brunswick's power needs.  "If no one in the private sector is interested in putting their money on the line, why should we put taxpayers dollars on the line?"  The nuclear plant will reach the end of its natural life in six years. The expensive upgrade would allow the plant to run for another 25 years.  NB Power estimates it would cost over $400 million to decommission Point Lepreau. [http://www.canoe.ca/copyright.html] © 2002, Canoe, a division ***************************************************************** 12 NRC opts to extend life of Miami-Dade nuclear power plant Jacksonville.com: 6/7/02 - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has chosen to give Florida Power & Light permission to keep two of its nuclear reactors running 20 years beyond their original license period, the company said Friday.--> Friday, June 7, 2002 Story last updated at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, June 7, 2002 NRC opts to extend life of Miami-Dade nuclear power plant The Associated Press MIAMI - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has chosen to give Florida Power & Light permission to keep two of its nuclear reactors running 20 years beyond their original license period, the company said Friday. The reactors, located at Turkey Point on Biscayne Bay near Homestead, began operating in 1972 and 1973. Their original 40-year licenses were scheduled to end in 2012 and 2013. The extension will allow FPL to run the reactors, which provide power for approximately 350,000 homes, through 2032 and 2033. "This is a significant accomplishment that will allow us to continue to provide a reliable source of safe, clean, low-cost power to our customers for many years to come," said Art Stall, senior vice president of FPL's nuclear division. The plant is among the nation's oldest and once was one of FPL's most trouble-prone. But Turkey Point's operation improved over the past decade, receiving praise from the NRC in recent years for maintaining a high level of safety performance. Anti-nuclear groups had tried to block the extension, saying they were particularly concerned about the structural integrity of Turkey Point's twin concrete and steel reactor towers. Federal tests conducted in 1992 showed that the reactor vessels at Turkey Point might be prone to cracks from radiation damage as the facilities age. Another vital issue, the activists said, is whether Turkey Point will have enough space to store its own spent nuclear fuel beyond 2013. On the Net: Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov/ Florida Power & Light: http://www.fpl.com Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 13 Lithuania says it's ready to close its one nuclear power plant Yahoo! News - Fri Jun 7,12:02 PM ET VILNIUS, Lithuania - Lithuania said Friday that it has agreed in principle to shut down the former Soviet republic's sole nuclear power plant by 2009 — following years of pressure from the European Union to do so. In a statement released by the office of Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, the government said it was ready to complete a deal with the 15-nation EU by next Tuesday on closing the Soviet-built Ignalina nuclear power plant. It added, however, that an exact figure on the amount of aid the EU will provide to decommission the station has yet to be decided. The cash-strapped government has estimated the process will cost some 3 billion euros (dlrs 2.8 million.) "The economic and political logic is simple: if there is no solidarity, there will be no closure in 2009," the statement read, in an apparent reference to any EU financial package. The issue has been the main obstacle to Lithuania's aspiration to join the EU, which repeatedly has said that Ignalina is a potential environmental threat and made its closure a condition of membership. Lithuania, a nation of 3.5 million people, has said it wants to finish its current membership talks at the end of this year and enter the EU by 2004. The nuclear issue aside, the EU has said pro-West, pro-reform Lithuania is a leading candidate for membership. Ignalina, 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Vilnius, the capital, provides more than 70 percent of Lithuania's electricity and some critics say closing it will cause steep hikes in the cost of electricity and hurt the economy. The plant's two reactors are the same type as those at Chernobyl, Ukraine — site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986 — though they have had safety upgrades since this Baltic Sea coast nation broke with the Soviet Union in 1991. The government earlier pledged to switch off the first reactor by 2005, but, until now, seemed reluctant about promising to shut down the second. Many Lithuanians, including some prominent politicians, oppose its closure. (ld-mt-krg) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 14 *Swedish nuclear reactor shut down during security tests in what appeared to be a false alarm * /Fri Jun 7,11:43 AM ET/ STOCKHOLM, Sweden - One of Sweden's largest nuclear reactors shut down Friday during routine tests of security systems, but there was no risk to the public, a plant spokesman said. The third reactor in Oskarshamn, 250 kilometers (150 miles) south of the capital, Stockholm, shut down automatically after what appeared to be a false alarm, spokesman Carl-Johan Kemgren said. The stoppage happened during monthly testing of security systems in the turbine leading to the power generator and likely was due to a problem with the testing equipment, Kemgren said. No physical problem was found in the facility and the 1,200-megawatt reactor would likely be restarted this weekend, he said. The Oskarshamn plant is one of four nuclear-generating facilities in Sweden and provides 10 percent of the country's electricity. Swedish voters decided in a 1980 referendum to phase out nuclear power, but so far only one reactor at the southwestern Barsebaeck plant has been closed. (kr-krg) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 15 Water accidentally released at Cook Nuclear Plant SouthBendTribune.com: June 7, 2002 Tribune Staff Report BRIDGMAN -- On Wednesday night during routine maintenance and surveillance testing at Cook Nuclear Plant, a valve's accidental opening resulted in the release of about 100 gallons of reactor coolant system water into a holding tank. Plant operators closed the valve after about 15 seconds in what plant officials are terming an "unusual" event, American Electric Power spokesman Bill Schalk said Thursday. There were no injuries and no major problems reported. No radiation was released in the incident, according to plant officials. Because the level of the Unit 1 reactor's coolant system changed by more than 25 gallons per minute, the incident is being classified as an unusual event -- the lowest among the four levels in the plant's emergency plan, Schalk said in a statement. That caused the incident to be reported to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The holding tank is used for reactor coolant system water storage, and no radioactive water was released to the inside of the containment building or into the air, Schalk said. AEP officials said the holding tank's valve should have been blocked from opening during the test. The test was done while Unit 1 was off-line for a scheduled refueling outage, and company officials expect it to be back up and running by next week. Cook's Unit 2 remains at 100 percent power, Schalk said. Columbus, Ohio-based AEP owns and operates the plant. [http://www.southbendtribune.com/sbtprivacy.html] ***************************************************************** 16 Bush tells industry to fix terror risks deseretnews.com World/nation Saturday, June 8, 2002 Water, waste and chemical plants are focus *By John Heilprin* Associated Press writer WASHINGTON ? The Bush administration plans to require the nation's 15,000 chemical, water and waste-treatment plants to assess how vulnerable they are to terrorists and then fix any problems, the Associated Press has learned. The terrorism assessments would be similar to risk management plans the Environmental Protection Agency already requires from the same facilities for accidental releases of toxins, a senior EPA official said Friday. An interagency group chaired by the White House's Office of Homeland Security has been developing the plan, and EPA Administrator Christie Whitman is expected to announce it within days, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Principles for the terrorism assessments and subsequent fixes were modeled after guidelines crafted by a trade group, the American Chemistry Council, for its 180 corporate members who operate about 1,000 of the affected plants, the official said. EPA has not yet determined whether new legislation is needed from Congress or whether the agency can order the measures on its own, the official said. The Justice Department and the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories have been working together to develop methods for assessing a chemical plant's vulnerability to terrorists. A similar effort also is under way by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers' Center for Chemical Process Safety. EPA already has taken steps to reduce chemical plants' risks of becoming terrorist targets. Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it removed from its Web sites the risk management plans for spills and airborne releases of toxins. Publishing those plans had been required under the belief that neighbors of a chemical plant had a right to know the risks to which they were being exposed. However, the industry and U.S. intelligence agencies have complained for years that publishing the data created a roadmap for terrorists. Other precautions the administration has already taken include briefly grounding crop-dusters out of concern they could be used to disperse biological weapons. Crop dusting resumed after farm states protested. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission directed increased security measures at all nuclear power plants and facilities storing used reactor fuel. The NRC also is revamping security standards for power plants, taking into account for the first time a possible suicide attack by a large aircraft. The envisioned EPA orders for chemical, water and waste-treatment plants will cover site and computer security; access; background checks for employees, vendors and customers; inventory controls, storage practices and the availability of safer manufacturing and treatment technologies. EPA would have to certify the completion and thoroughness of the assessment for each of the 15,000 facilities, which then would have to develop and implement steps for reducing vulnerability and hazards, the EPA official said. The agency has not decided whether to require periodic reports from each facility or third-party audits, possibly by other federal agencies or by nongovernment entities such as insurance companies. But there will be verification, the official said. Jeremiah Baumann, an environmental health specialist for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said industry guidelines don't require reducing the hazardous chemicals they're using. To the extent that EPA's plan is based on industry guidelines, it won't work, he said. "The administration is taking a good first step by addressing this problem, but they'll need to do more than just what the chemical industry says they're willing to do," Baumann said. "We hope their proposal will require each plant to make their operations safer rather than just hiring more guards and building higher fences." Chris VandenHeuvel, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, whose members account for 90 percent of U.S. chemical production capacity, said the EPA proposal could delay steps the industry already is taking to improve security. "We hope that EPA's plans will not slow down our efforts under way to make our facilities as safe and secure as possible," he said. "We know that Americans want us to work in partnership with federal security experts." © 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 17 TRACKING THE NUCLEAR TERRORISTS By Gordon Thomas Scientists at the European Trans-Uranium Institute at Karlsruhe are tracking the possibility that Osama bin-Laden has obtained further nuclear material ? following the arrest in Paris of three of his associates. They had in their possession a quantity of Uranium-235 capable of creating a ?suitcase-type nuclear bomb?. France?s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) believe the material found in Paris came from the former Soviet Union ? possibly from a weapons lab at Chelyanbinsk-70 in the Ural Mountains. Both French and Britain?s MI6 intelligence service believe that the material in Paris was transported by associates of Russia?s top Mafiya boss, Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich. They are back-tracking the route they believe the nuclear material was transported: out of the Ukraine into Poland, across Germany and on to Paris. CIA and BND agents have joined in the hunt. France?s internal security service, DST, who arrested the trio found in the Paris apartment of one man, Raymond Loeb, found documents written in Russian confirming that the uranium was of high-grade quality. Air tickets to Kazakstan ? one of the gateways from the West into Afghanistan ? were also found. Loeb?s partners are Serge Salfati and Yves Ekwella. All were travelling on Cameroon passports. DST have established that the trio have connections to Mogilevich. British intelligence sources say that the Mafiya boss left his home ? a fortified palace in Budapest ? last week. His present whereabouts are unknown. The arrest of the trio in Paris was made a month ago. But only in the last few days have their links with bin-Laden become known. Since then they have been close-questioned about other nuclear material that has been supplied to bin-Laden. Mossad has also joined in the hunt from its European headquarters in Amsterdam. The urgency of the search was underlined by former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, Graham Allison, now the director of Harvard?s Center for Science and International Affairs. ?A terrorist group could ship enough nuclear material in packets that could be mailed through the postal service or sent by a courier company,? he said. The type of fissionable material found in Paris was of 85% enriched uranium. It weighed-out at five grams. A high-ranking Mossad source said that ?by itself it would be too small to make a major explosion. But five grams is precisely the size that makes it almost impossible to detect. The urgent need is to discover just how many other five-gram packets are around or have made their way into bin-Laden?s hands.? German and French intelligence services say that given bin-Laden almost certainly does not have scientists capable of building him a bomb ? Saddam Hussein does. ?Iraq has a large number of former Soviet Union nuclear scientists who, after the end of the Cold War, were enticed by huge salaries to work in Iraq?s secret nuclear-bomb building programme.? Since the attack on America, the possibility that bin-Laden is poised to deliver a nuclear strike has, in the words of former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, ?gone from possible to very probable.? The view is reinforced by Dr David Kay, a former head of the United Nations inspection team in Iraq after the Gulf War. He believes that bin-Laden could launch a ?suitcase-type bomb? that could even surpass the destruction at the Twin Towers. Bin-Laden has made previous attempts to obtain nuclear materials ? according to the FBI?s ?supergrass? Jamal al-Fadl. Once a close associate of bin-Laden, al-Fadl made a deal with the FBI that, in return for his life, he would assist them in penetrating bin-Laden?s organisation, Al-Qaeda. He has provided the FBI with hard evidence that he had personally been ordered to offer £1 million for a half-kilo of uranium. Al-Fadl claims that the material came from a nuclear refining plant outside Pretoria, South Africa. His claims formed part of an affidavit for the U.S. Justice Department to extradite two bin-Laden suspects from Britain. And Israeli security sources said this week that they had ?credible knowledge? that bin-Laden is planning to buy a tactical ?suitcase size? nuclear bomb from Kazakstan, one of the Islamic republics that was once part of the Soviet Union. It was there that Moscow stockpiled a large part of its nuclear arsenal. Osama bin-Laden himself has said: ?We don?t consider it a crime if we try to obtain nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.? It is the possibility that he will use the latter that concerns MI5. ***************************************************************** 18 Nuke Plant Neighbors Given Pills Las Vegas SUN June 08, 2002 YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y.- Hundreds of suburbanites living near a nuclear plant north of New York City were given pills Saturday that could protect them from thyroid cancer in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. Westchester County residents living within 10 miles of the Indian Point nuclear power station lined up for 130-milligram tablets of potassium iodide. They are meant to be taken if there is a major release of radiation, a possibility that has been taken more seriously since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Before Sept. 11, I felt safe," said Jalery Arce, of Cortlandt Manor. "I moved here from the Bronx with my son to be safe. Now I'm getting medicine in case there's a nuclear disaster. I don't feel that safe anymore." In the first hour, 300 people picked up 1,200 pills outside a high school, said Tony Sutton, deputy commissioner of emergency management for Westchester County, where the Indian Point nuclear complex is located. Children in soccer gear accompanied parents in golf visors and neighbors gossiped in small groups as demonstrators urged them not to be satisfied with potassium iodide, also known by its chemical symbol KI. "The only real solution is to close the plant if you want to protect yourself and your children," said Gary Shaw, of Croton, who carried a sign that said, "KI is not an answer." Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the government has increased security at all nuclear power plants, taking into account for the first time a possible suicide attack by a large aircraft. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission began offering the pills to residents within 10 miles of nuclear plants, and 13 states have accepted them. Vermont and Maryland were the first to distribute them, starting in April; New York became the third Saturday. Potassium iodide combats thyroid cancer, a common result of radiation exposure, by flooding the thyroid glands with harmless iodine and preventing radioactive iodine from getting in. It does not protect against other radiation effects. Since the terrorist attacks, the pills have been a hot local item. Thousands have been sold over the Internet. On the Net: Westchester County site: [http://www.westchestergov.com/] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 19 In Belarus, radioactive remnants -- The Washington Times June 9, 2002 By Kristian Skaardalmso SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES RUDNIA SHLIAGINO, Belarus — The churchyard soil is radioactive. The house where he grew up has been ransacked. Ivan Katsubo, 61, recently returned to the prohibited radioactive zone to commemorate his childhood and his deceased relatives by drinking vodka and eating bread in the place he once called home. As the asphalt road leading toward the village Rudnia Shliagino turns to bumpy gravel, visitors are met by a sign stating, "entrance prohibited." Nailed to the post below is the infamous triangular symbol for radioactivity. All traffic beyond this point is still forbidden, 16 years after the Chernobyl disaster in neighboring Ukraine on April 26, 1986. However illegal it is to venture into the "dead zone," there is much activity here. In the fields, cows graze on radioactive grass. In the forests, criminals hack down and haul out radioactive timber. Houses left empty by families evacuated or resettled after the accident are slowly being dismantled and taken away. The zone has become a lawless refuge for the Russian mafia and asylum-seekers from former republics of the Soviet Union, Chechnya being the one brought up most often. Mr. Katsubo is sad because he is not allowed to regularly visit the cemetery where his mother, Maria, and sister Ann are buried. The churchyard lies inside the prohibited area. "We are only allowed to visit the place once a year," he said. "Even then, we have to bribe the police to get in. It is sad for me to come back. This place is a part of my soul." Mr. Katsubo swallows mouthful of vodka and eats a piece of bread in memory of those who lived here and to his childhood home, which exists only as a shell of its former self. He looks over the remnants of where he spent the first quarter of his life. Only the shambles of what was the red-brick chimney are still there. Most of the house has fallen apart. On the ground among the ruins, the remains of a bed catch his eye. Further toward the chimney, sits the skull of a cow. The oak tree he planted in the front yard as a child has been chopped down and sold. Mr. Katsubo's middle-aged nephew, Vladimir Verbovikov, accompanies him this day. He also has childhood memories from this small village tucked into the southeast of Belarus, a crow's flight from the Ukrainian border and Chernobyl. He spent many summers visiting his grandmother here. Before the accident, the village had 108 households and about 1,000 inhabitants. The only thing left is the row of empty, rusting mailboxes. The field where Mr. Verbovikov used to play soccer with his friends is deadly empty and silent. "Those who survived World War II and rebuilt their houses were hit by a new 'war,'" Mr. Verbovikov said referring to the Chernobyl accident and the mass evacuation that followed. The wooden fence around the churchyard, next to where Mr. Katsubo grew up, has mostly fallen apart. It is full of 3-feet-high brambles that make it difficult to access the graves, covered with colorful plastic flowers. No one can reach them with fresh ones, as visits are only allowed once each year. Unemployment and poverty force many people to live illegally inside the radioactive zone. A woman and her son, Dima, cycle along the dusty road. She will not give her name because she is afraid of repercussions from the authorities. "We have no choice but to live here," she said. The house in which her family lives has neither electricity nor running water. Both she and her son are unemployed. Her husband's income, the equivalent of $30 a month, is all the money the family has. Dima's full-time job is to safeguard the family's home. "Since it is illegal to live here, there are many people who want to dismantle and steal the house and earn money on the materials," he said. "But we have agreed to stay here together for the rest of our lives." Inside the zone cows graze, even though the radioactivity is still far above the legal level for farming. Thousands of children who were exposed to radioactive iodine in milk after the accident have developed thyroid cancer as a result. The number, according to a recent U.N. report, is expected to rise sharply. Scavengers not only bring wood out of the area, but also different types of mushrooms and berries from the forest that are sold at markets. No one knows exactly where or whether what they are getting is radioactive. The radioactive zone is supposed to be guarded by the much-feared Belarussian police force, but today, the checkpoint is empty. A group of loggers can access the area and bring out illegal radioactive timber they have cut from the woods here. Six men are about to conclude work for the day. They have two trucks full of large logs and are not happy about the attention from watching outsiders. "They bring out timber, which is sold for big money, also on foreign markets such as Poland and Ukraine," Mr. Verbovikov said. Mr. Verbovikov is the editor of the local independent newspaper, Sparetime, and has been covering the Chernobyl problems since they began. "The illegal forestry is a well-known phenomenon," he said. "These people are criminals. And they are dangerous." Because of the dangers of being exposed to radioactivity, 350,000 people, among them 135,000 Belarussians, were evacuated or resettled after the accident. A report published by the United Nations in February shows that the social problems caused by the Chernobyl accident and the resettlements that followed were at least as serious as the medical ones. In the severely affected Gomel region of eastern Belarus, where Mr. Katsubo and Mr. Verbovikov live, the average life expectancy decreased by five years from 1986 to 2000. This development is not caused exclusively by the skyrocketing number of cancer victims. Unemployment and psychological problems have become a huge problem among those resettled. Poor diet, alcoholism, heavy tobacco use and extreme living conditions also factor into the decrease in life expectancy. Ten years ago, the Belarussian government spent 20 percent of its national budget on Chernobyl expenses. Last year, the corresponding figure was only 5 percent, said Galina Skarakhod, from the private aid group, Civil Initiatives. "The consequences of the accident are being overshadowed by other national problems, such as poverty, alcoholism and low salaries," she said. "The attempts to reduce the damaging effects of the disaster have almost stopped." copyright © 2002 News World Communications, ***************************************************************** 20 Stolen radioactive capsule recovered CNN.com - - June 8, 2002 RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Search teams Saturday recovered a highly radioactive metal capsule stolen from a steel company by two teen-agers who sold it to a scrap metal vendor Authorities said searchers, after receiving an anonymous phone call, found the 3-foot-long (1 meter), 1.2-inch-wide tube undamaged near a deposit of the company Companhia Siderurgica de Tubarao in southeastern Brazil, State Security Secretary Edson Ribeiro do Carmo told local television. It's unclear what the tube, which contained americium-berilium, was used for. It's unknown whether the teen-agers were arrested or not. Neither company representatives, nor state authorities contacted by The Associated Press were available for immediate comment. The company deposit is situated close to Espirito Santo state capital Vitoria, about 300 miles (500 kilometers) north of Rio de Janeiro. Brazil has had other past incidents of misplaced radioactive material coming in contact with the public. In 1987, six people died and several hundred were sickened in the city of Goiania after a canister of cesium-137 from an abandoned medical clinic was pried open and people rubbed luminous blue powder on their bodies. Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 21 [Nuclear waste] Greenpeace calls for cancellation of unsafe Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 00:11:24 -0500 (CDT) Greenpeace calls for cancellation of unsafe plutonium shipment by Greenpeace, post by a3m 9:27pm Wed Jun 5 '02 31 May 2002 Amsterdam - Greenpeace today called on the British and Japanese Governments to abandon their plans to transport weapons- usable plutonium around the world. The call comes following the announcement that three flotillas of small yachts across the globe intend to oppose the upcoming shipment of unsafe plutonium from Japan to Europe. Although the return route this shameful shipment will make back to the UK still remains a secret, the Governments concerned can be assured that the world will be watching. The determination of people around the world to show their dissent and stop this dangerous trade in bomb-material is a strong signal to the UK and Japan to abandon their plans immediately, said Simon Boxer of Greenpeace International. The Nuclear Free Seas flotilla movement against plutonium transports was launched last year in the South Pacific with protests in the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia, as well as in Fiji. This year it has now spread to South Americas Cape Horn, and the Irish Sea. The nuclear shipment is a rejected plutonium Mixed Oxide (MOX) shipment, containing 255 kilograms of weapons-usable plutonium produced by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL). After admitting to falsifying critical safety data after the fuel had arrived in Japan in 1999, the UK Government agreed to ship it back thousands of miles to the UK. The two armed nuclear freighters, Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal are currently bound for Japan and are expected to arrive as early as June 8th. One ship is then expected to pick up its cargo faulty plutonium MOX from the Takahama nuclear reactor, then both ships will depart for the UK. For further information: - Simon Boxer, Greenpeace International Nuclear Campaigner in Sydney +31 629 001132 - Mhairi Dunlop, Greenpeace International Nuclear Press Co-ordinator in Amsterdam +31 65 350 4731 Visit www.nuclearfreeflotilla.org ***************************************************************** 22 [generalnews] Government deems building insecure, so radioactive waste goes under tents Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 00:44:52 -0500 (CDT) ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Kwick Pick opens locked car doors, front doors, drawers, briefcases, padlocks, and more. On sale now! http://us.click.yahoo.com/ehaLqB/Fg5DAA/Ey.GAA/7gSolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Government deems building insecure, so radioactive waste goes under tents Friday, June 07, 2002 By Mark Sherman, Associated Press WASHINGTON — The federal government spent $62 million on a building to store and treat low-level radioactive waste at a California nuclear weapons laboratory, then decided the structure wasn't secure enough. So where is the waste kept now? Under tents. Hundreds of bright yellow, 55-gallon drums are stacked under the tents outside the building at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, east of San Francisco. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, the area's congresswoman, is incredulous. "You're not trying to tell me that between the building and a tent, the tent wins?" asked Tauscher, a Democrat. "In a post- Sept. 11 environment, you've got to say to yourself, 'Let's find a way to get that stuff in the building.'" The barrels hold liquid and solid hazardous wastes as well as articles of clothing that became contaminated through exposure to highly radioactive materials, said Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis. The waste, said Davis, "is stored safely and securely." Terrorists' use of airplanes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon have raised concerns about the ability of nuclear plants and storage facilities to survive similar attacks. Highly radioactive materials — spent fuel from nuclear reactors and other materials that emit dangerously high levels of radiation for thousands of years — are stored in other buildings at Livermore, Energy Department officials said. Low-level wastes, like those being kept outside under tents, typically decay in a matter of years. The Livermore building has been substantially complete since last June, but Tauscher said the Energy Department has refused to let Livermore workers begin using it. Tauscher said since January she has been given different explanations for why the building remains unused. Initially, she said, she was told the building could not withstand a direct hit from an airplane. Then Jessie Roberson, the assistant energy secretary for environmental management, wrote Tauscher in May that the construction plans did not sufficiently assess potential hazards and risks and what to do about problems that may arise. A third explanation came from Davis, the Energy Department's chief spokesman in Washington, to whom calls to the laboratory were referred. "The building is still under construction," Davis said. "If you use the facility to store waste, you can't continue with the construction. We're not going to compromise safety and security just to get it operating quicker." Tauscher said no one, including Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, told her construction was ongoing. "We can't even get a straight answer out of them," said Tauscher, the top Democrat on a House Armed Services Committee panel that oversees the Energy Department's reorganization, focusing on nuclear weapons programs. Under the department's latest plan for the low-level waste, barrels of it would be stored inside beginning in September. Treatment wouldn't begin until August of next year. The Energy Department has been trying since the mid-1980s to build a new decontamination and treatment facility at Livermore for low-level waste, fighting off objections from area residents before finally obtaining money from Congress in the late 1990s. Tauscher attributed the delay to bureaucratic intransigence and said the Energy Department's record on the issue undermines the public's confidence. "How could they consider a building built to their own specifications to be inadequate?" Tauscher asked. She has asked the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, to report on the situation. Copyright 2002, Associated Press Grassroots International News Association http://www.geocities.com/rootmedia o unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: generalnews-unsubscribe@egroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 23 Committee vote sends YMP issue to senate* By HENRY BREAN, Managing Editor June 07, 2002 *YMP* A ridge of volcanic rock in southern Nye County came one step closer to becoming the nation's burial ground for high-level radioactive waste on Wednesday when a joint resolution to override Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the project was passed out of committee in the U.S. Senate. As many had predicted, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the resolution for consideration by the entire Senate. Last month, the measure cruised through the House of Representatives, passing by nearly a three-to-one margin. The Senate is expected to vote on it sometime before the end of July. Should the joint resolution pass, it would negate the historic veto from Guinn of the President's site determination decision earlier this year. On the recommendation of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Bush officially designated Yucca Mountain, roughly 20 miles from the Nye County communities of Beatty and Amargosa Valley, as the nation's central repository site for approximately 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste. Nye County Commissioners Jeff Taguchi and Henry Neth traveled to Washington, D.C., for Wednesday's committee vote. Also on hand were Les Bradshaw, manager of Nye County's Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities, and Jim Williams, a consultant for the county. Taguchi, who serves as chairman for the commission, said the vote came at about 8 a.m. local time after only "minimal discussion." That discussion included a few statements made about the repository, "some for, some against," he said. The 13-10 decision was roughly divided along party lines, with 10 Republicans and three Democrats voting yes and nine Democrats and one Republican voting no. Taguchi said the result was not surprising, "at least not from my perspective," though the fairly tight margin may raise a few eyebrows. Following the vote, Taguchi, Neth, Bradshaw and Williams remained on Capitol Hill, where they spent much of Wednesday and Thursday "cold-calling" senators in an effort educate them on what the Yucca Mountain Project could mean for Nye County. This sort of lobbying effort will only intensify as the full Senate vote approaches, Taguchi said Wednesday. "Now it's even more incumbent on Nye County to get the word out." The county's message is not one of outright opposition to the project; it has more to do with securing compensation and ensuring the health and safety of county residents should the repository become a reality. And Taguchi, like most political pundits, has little doubt that it will. "But the battle lines are drawing out," he said, "and Nye County is caught in the middle." A full Senate vote on the joint resolution has not yet been set, but county officials are being told to expect it sometime toward the end of July. "It could come out earlier. We just don't know," Taguchi said. Nye County's representatives are expected to return from Washington today. /©Pahrump Valley Times 2002/ ***************************************************************** 24 Xcel fights on for nuclear fuel storage /06/07/2002/* Jim Pumarlo , Editor June 07, 2002 *Xcel Energy and the Nuclear Management Co. continue a three-pronged effort to resolve radioactive spent fuel storage on a national level.* *Progress on a couple of those fronts will be a factor in determining whether the utility seeks additional casks at the Prairie Island plant in the 2003 Legislature, said Mike Wadley, senior vice president of government affairs for the NMC.* Wadley and Kent Larson, Xcel executive vice president, addressed community leaders Wednesday at the utility's annual breakfast. Xcel Energy owns the assets of the nuclear plants at Red Wing and Monticello. The NMC, with headquarters in Hudson, Wis., operates those plants as well as four others in Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan. The utility is addressing nuclear waste on three fronts, Wadley explained: privatization; litigation; legislation. He noted that the federal government, in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, agreed to provide a national repository for the waste by January 1998. But Yucca Mountain, the proposed site in Nevada, remains in limbo. *Three fronts* The utility continues to make headway, Wadley noted: * Privatization - Xcel Energy heads a consortium of utilities that is negotiating a private fuel storage system with a tribe in Utah. The storage would be similar to the casks at Prairie Island. The licensing process is coming to a close with the final public hearings before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Wadley said he hopes a license will be issued by the end of the year. * Litigation - The utility has sued the federal government to force it to accept waste from commercial nuclear plants. "We don't want money," Wadley said. Rather, it wants the courts to reaffirm the government's contractual obligation to start accepting the waste. * Legislation - The vote to override the Nevada governor's veto of the Yucca Mountain repository has passed the House and is poised for a Senate vote, following approval by a committee this week. The nuclear industry feels optimistic about passage - if the measure gets to the floor, Wadley said. If the measure is defeated, or if it is not offered a vote by the full body, work must begin anew on Yucca Mountain legislation. "We are working very hard to make sure the vote happens," Wadley said. *Transportation issues* Transportation of the radioactive waste is the most recent argument advanced by opponents, Wadley noted. He emphasized that those concerns will be addressed in the licensing phase once the site is approved. Wadley said they are telling lawmakers: "If you don't vote yes, you don't get those answers." The utility continues to analyze whether it will seek additional dry-cask storage at Prairie Island in 2003. Wadley said the final decision will be made later this year. Approval of the private facility in Utah and the Yucca Mountain legislation are prime considerations, he said. *Yucca capacity* In similar vein, the fate of a national repository weighs heavily on a decision of whether to relicense the Prairie Island facility, he said. Licenses for the two reactors will expire in 2013 and 2014. "Most systems are like new," Wadley said of the Prairie Island plant. The plant is poised to seek license renewal for another 20 years. But it's really depends on whether Yucca Mountain will be accepting the waste, he said. Questions also have been raised about the capacity of Yucca Mountain. The original congressional act authorizes storage for 70,000 metric tons of waste. The environmental impact statement gives approval for 120,000 metric tons, which allows utilities to seek licensing for the additional storage, Wadley said. pumarlo@republican-eagle.com /©Red Wing Republican Eagle 2002/ ***************************************************************** 25 *Mock nuclear cask passes by Twin Falls* *Sunday, June 9, 2002* *Twin Falls, Idaho* The Times-News TWIN FALLS -- A mock nuclear waste cask will pass by Twin Falls Saturday as part of a campaign to protest the selection of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the country's nuclear waste depository. After starting on the West Coast, the cask will arrive in Boise Friday before continuing through Idaho and into Salt Lake City on its way to Nevada, Gary Richardson with the Snake River Alliance said Wednesday. "Proponents in Idaho, including the congressional delegation, favor Yucca Mountain because they believe it will get nuclear waste out of Idaho," Jessica Hixson with the Snake River Alliance said in a news release. "However, if Yucca Mountain opens, hundreds of shipments of nuclear waste would travel through Boise every year for almost 40 years." The nuclear watchdog group has teamed with Citizen Alert of Nevada to sponsor the cask's journey to raise awareness of an upcoming vote in the U.S. Senate. The Senate will vote to either uphold or overturn the Nevada governor's veto of the site selection. If the veto can be overturned, Yucca Mountain, located about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will be the depository for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from around the country. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has pointed to the Department of Energy's flawless record trucking nuclear waste as evidence of the plan's safety. The Energy Department has not discussed specific routes the waste would take. The mock cask is a full-size replica of a high-level nuclear waste truck cask, a dumbbell-shaped cylinder 20 feet long and 7 feet tall, on a trailer, the release said. In Boise, the cask will be greeted by Yucca Mountain opponents at the Vista Avenue overpass above Interstate 84 before traveling to Boise City Hall, where the drivers of the cask will talk argue the dangers of transporting 77,000 tons of nuclear waste by truck or train. Copyright © 2002, Magic Valley Newspapers ***************************************************************** 26 Livermore's nuclear next-door neighbors Alan T. Saracevic, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, June 9, 2002 President Bush proposed the creation of a Homeland Security Cabinet department last week. The new department would have a budget of $37 billion and encompass more governmental agencies than a can of alphabet soup. Here in the Bay Area, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy outfit managed by the University of California, would be the most visibly impacted local concern, falling under the auspices of the Homeland mega-agency. But its neighbor would also stand to gain. Sandia National Laboratories, literally next door to Livermore Labs, is another Department of Energy facility that's managed by defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Sandia, whose primary facility is in Albuquerque, was created back in 1956 to support its neighbor's weapons research. And like Livermore, Sandia has been receiving funding from the existing Homeland Security office, headed by Tom Ridge, since its creation after the attacks of Sept. 11. While most of us know about Livermore and its nuclear weapons program, Sandia has kept a lower profile through the years. But the two labs are joined at the hip, or more accurately, the lip. "They use our parking lot. We use their cafeteria," company spokesman Nigel S. Hey said during an interview with Money Talks. Sandia's primary mission is to ensure the safety, security and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. "We are responsible for the safety of the most dangerous weapons ever made by mankind," Hey said. It also collaborates with the top companies of Silicon Valley on creating tomorrow's tech. For instance, Sandia is teaming up with chipmakers Intel, Motorola and AMD on new lithography technology used to print microscopic circuits on the world's shrinking microprocessors. While fascinating in their own right, Sandia's corporate projects pale in comparison to its national responsibilities. Since 9/11, Sandia has been working overtime creating technical simulations of various disasters, trying to give the home team a defensive edge. It has even tested to determine how San Francisco would withstand biological and chemical attacks. The accuracy of these disaster models, we hope, will never be tested. But if another 9/11 ever occurred, you'd want a "Sandian," as employees refer to themselves, in the war room. Sandia is teamed with Los Alamos National Laboratory on a homeland security project called NISAC, short for the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center. Their job is to assess the vulnerability of our largest systems, including the electric power grid, water supply, transportation, finance, emergency services and law enforcement. One of their most interesting breakthroughs, championed by Sandia researcher Richard Griffith, is a decontamination foam designed to fight chemical disasters, intentional or not. The lab claims that its magic foam "rendered all typical chemical and biological agents harmless." Amazingly, the foam's basic ingredients come from household ingredients such as hair conditioner and toothpaste. Sandia has licensed the foam to commercial firms, and small-scale systems that look like a twin-canister fire extinguisher are being sold for $29.95. (No Ginsu knives included). They're also developing something called the polychromator, a binocular- based technology that would enable soldiers in the field to detect potentially deadly chemical agents from miles away. During the past 10 years, the government has plunked down $160 million on the NISAC effort, and you can bet that figure would increase if Bush gets his billions. "A lot of the work we do falls under the realm of Homeland Security," Sandia spokesman Michael Janes said. "For instance, our joint effort with Los Alamos is now funded by Homeland Security." NISAC was asking for an additional $20 million in FY 2002 and hopes to be fully functional by 2005. That money could provide a spark to the moribund Bay Area economy. One on end, Sandia employs about 900 people on its huge, 400-acre facility. The lab estimates its current expenditures sink about $50 million into the surrounding economy. An increase in funding could expand the facility and its surrounding impact. On another level, Valley firms use Sandia's technology for economic gain. The lab estimates it licenses nearly $20 million worth of technology out to local firms annually. It's a symbiotic relationship that's attractive and horrifying at the same time. It's hard to say if having the nation's leading nuke experts in our backyard is a good thing or a bad thing. I hope we never find out. ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle . Page G - 2 ***************************************************************** 27 Agency Deems Calif. Lab Insecure Las Vegas SUN June 07, 2002 WASHINGTON- Hundreds of bright yellow, 55-gallon drums containing low-level radioactive waste sit outdoors under tents at a California nuclear weapons laboratory instead of in a new building designed to store and treat the material. The Energy Department says the $62 million building at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, east of San Francisco, isn't secure enough. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, the area's congresswoman, is incredulous. "You're not trying to tell me that between the building and a tent, the tent wins?" asked Tauscher, a Democrat. "In a post-Sept. 11 environment, you've got to say to yourself, 'Let's find a way to get that stuff in the building.'" The barrels hold liquid and solid hazardous wastes, as well as articles of clothing that became contaminated through exposure to highly radioactive materials, said Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis. The waste, said Davis, "is stored safely and securely." The Livermore building has been substantially complete since last June, but Tauscher said the Energy Department has refused to let Livermore workers begin using it. Tauscher said since January she has been given different explanations for why the building remains unused. "We can't even get a straight answer out of them," said Tauscher, the top Democrat on a House Armed Services Committee panel that oversees the Energy Department's reorganization, focusing on nuclear weapons programs. She has asked the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, to report on the situation. Initially, she said she was told the building could not withstand a direct hit from an airplane. Then Jessie Roberson, the assistant energy secretary for environmental management, wrote Tauscher in May that the construction plans did not sufficiently assess potential hazards and risks - and what to do about problems that may arise. A third explanation came from Davis, the Energy Department's chief spokesman in Washington, to whom calls to the laboratory were referred. "The building is still under construction," Davis said. "If you use the facility to store waste, you can't continue with the construction. We're not going to compromise safety and security just to get it operating quicker." Tauscher said no one, including Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, told her construction was ongoing Terrorists' use of airplanes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon have raised concerns about the ability of nuclear plants and storage facilities to survive similar attacks. Highly radioactive materials - spent fuel from nuclear reactors and other materials that emit dangerously high levels of radiation for thousands of years - are stored in other buildings at Livermore, Energy Department officials said. Low-level wastes, like those being kept outside under tents, typically decay in a matter of years. Under the department's latest plan for the low-level waste, barrels of it would be stored inside beginning in September. Treatment wouldn't begin until August of next year. On the Net: Lawrence Livermore lab: http://www.llnl.gov/ [http://www.llnl.gov/] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 28 Scientist calls attention to hazards of nuclear waste transportation [EONow: A guide to Eastern Oregon] [A partnership with East Oregonian and EONI] News 6-8-02 By CARIE L. CALL of the East Oregonian HERMISTON — Towing a silver mock nuclear waste cask with black and yellow warning signs painted on its sides, John Hadder is traveling across the nation teaching people about the hazards of transporting nuclear waste. Parked on Main Street Hermiston Thursday, Hadder got some interested looks from local passersby. “We always do,” Hadder said. “We wanted to create a visual prop to get people asking questions.” Hadder is the Northern Nevada Coordinator for Citizen Alert in Reno, Nev. He is protesting bringing nuclear waste over the roads, rivers and railroads to Yucca Mountain, Nev., for storage. The mock cask is one of six making its way across the country from various sites around the nation. Hadder’s sits on a trailer and is towed behind a white pickup with Nevada plates. When Hadder starts to talk about the transportation of nuclear waste from Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland to Yucca Mountain, it’s hard to get him to stop. Hadder, a scientist himself, is passionate about the issue. “Transporting waste this way, right now, is irresponsible and dangerous,” Hadder said. “We can do better.” He points out that terrorists could easily attack a nuclear waste truck while it is en route from Richland to Yucca Mountain, perhaps causing a leak or explosion. An accident could occur on a railway or roadway, causing a fire and contamination. “We’re not ready. Emergency responders have not been properly trained for this,” Hadder said. Department of Energy officials from Hanford say that waste would be transformed from its current liquid sludge form into a more stable glass-like substance before it is moved to Nevada. Hadder said this makes the waste more stable, but a fire from an accident or collision could surely degrade the waste, turning an accident into a national disaster. Hadder and his assistants, Jason Halprin and Nicole Tulley, have so far traveled through Corvallis, Eugene, Salem, Portland, Hood River and Seattle and are heading across country to Washington, D.C., to try to prevent a Senate vote later in the month that would support transporting nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. “We wanted to let people know what’s happening on the roads, railways and barges,” Halprin said. “See if we can prevent it.” “We certainly don’t think people are aware of the potential impacts,” Hadder said. “I think the Department of Energy needs to be informing people a lot more openly about what’s happening. They are acting with scientific arrogance and it’s uncalled for. There is still a lot we don’t know and DOE is trying to hide from it.” Critics of storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, such as Citizen Alert and Sierra Club, contend the 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste from more than 70 locations around the nation should be kept at already contaminated individual reactor sites until there is better science to show how the waste will react and when will it degrade. As many as 100,000 shipments of waste could be trucked to the site and 20,000 shipments brought there by train. Citizen Alert wants to encourage people to talk to their senators and representatives about the transportation. Instead of shipping it now, Hadder said, a comprehensive, long-term plan for nuclear waste storage needs to be developed with more public input. “This nuclear waste is going to last another 10,000 years. That is almost incomprehensible for most people. At the very least we should be certain about safety and approach this with a serious attitude.” [http://www.eoni.com/] | East Oregonian ***************************************************************** 29 Propaganda for Yucca Mountain The full-page color advertisement purchased by the Alliance for Sound Nuclear Policy (May 30) contains outrageous and dangerous misrepresentations. The Oregonian Letters 06/07/02 This propaganda piece contrasts the danger of continuing to store nuclear waste in the Pacific Northwest with the supposed safety of storing it at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The problem is that moving it from here to there, by way of the Portland metropolitan area, would create ongoing opportunities for "mobile Chernobyls." Once the waste gets to Yucca Mountain, it will be in a geologically unstable site that has been rejected as unsafe by repeated scientific studies. Yucca Mountain is a scientifically unsound solution that deserves to be rejected by the U.S. Senate. HOLLY PRUETT Northeast Portland © 2002 OregonLive.com. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 30 Activists cite peril of N-waste transport Buffalo News - Deb Katz of Rowe, Mass., left, executive director of the Citizens Awareness Network, speaks of the danger of transporting nuclear waste by rail during a news conference in Depew. A replica of a transporting cask is in the background. Staff Reporter 6/8/2002 Deb Katz has longed for the day the spent fuel stored at the nuclear power plant in her hometown of Rowe, Mass., would be shipped away. Now, as that possibility looms, she has changed her mind. "We've reached the point where we have to keep it on site," said Katz, executive director of the Citizens Awareness Network. "Isn't that awful?" Katz was among a half-dozen people who gathered along the railroad tracks next to the Depew municipal building Friday to warn area residents that the federal government could be sending regular rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel through Western New York. "We're here to oppose Yucca Mountain," she said, referring to the government's proposed high-level radioactive waste storage facility 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "We're here to alert citizens to what's going to take place in the community if the nuclear industry gets its way." The federal government, under pressure from the nuclear industry to take possession of spent nuclear fuel now stored at power plants across the country, wants to build a multibillion-dollar repository deep under Yucca Mountain, about two hours north of Las Vegas. President Bush recently endorsed the plan, and the House of Representatives has approved it, despite intense opposition by the state of Nevada. A Senate vote, expected shortly, could move the project closer to final approval, though additional legal challenges are likely. If it's built, the government would begin transporting by rail 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to Nevada, including the vitrified radioactive waste at the West Valley Demonstration Project. Opponents say that's a bad idea, in particular with the federal government issuing repeated warnings since Sept. 11 that the country will see additional terrorist attacks. "What we have to accept is that nuclear waste transports are a terrorist target now," Katz said. "This is not the time to move the waste." Katz said that anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent of the waste shipments in the country would pass through Western New York, if the proposed transport routes are adopted. "You'll have between 1,500 and 7,000 shipments coming through on this line," she said, adding that shipments from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut would come through this area, along with shipments from upstate New York's nuclear plants. The waste would be shipped in 20-foot-long, 8-foot-tall, dumbbell-shaped shipping casks, a replica of which Katz and local anti-shipment activists displayed. "Each shipping cask will hold more than the radioactive equivalent of 200 Hiroshima bombs," said Charles Cobb of the Western New York Peace Center, which also opposes the shipments. The possibility of an accident involving one of the casks is frightening enough, Cobb said, but the added possibility of a terrorist attack on one of the casks, which critics have dubbed "mobile Chernobyls," makes it even more imperative that the plan be stopped. "Tests and studies have demonstrated that an anti-tank weapon could easily penetrate a nuclear waste transportation cask and result in a potentially catastrophic release of radiation," he said. Cleanup and recovery costs of such an attack would exceed $17 billion, he said. e-mail: [jbonfatti@buffnews.com] Copyright © 1999 - 2002 The Buffalo NewsTM ***************************************************************** 31 Anti-nuclear activists take message to roads Sunday, June 09, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Environmentalists hope to sway Senate vote on Yucca dump By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- It's hard to miss: a thousand-pound, 18-foot steel and giant wood spool homemade replica of a nuclear waste shipping container. The dumbbell-shaped vessel is rusted on the ends, and panels along the side tell onlookers how much radiation they would be exposed to if they got close enough to a real one. When its anti-nuclear activist owner Kevin Kamps pulls the mock cask along highways around the country, he takes note when motorists honk their horns at him. Some people signal thumbs up. Others flip him the middle finger. "I guess that's Yucca Mountain sign language," Kamps sighed. Kamps and dozens of activists are taking to the roads one more time this month, likely the final big push before the Senate casts a climactic vote whether to authorize a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Mock casks similar to Kamps' are being towed as giant props along proposed nuclear waste routes in New England, the Midwestern states, the Pacific Northwest and in the Southwest. At stops, the environmentalists seek media attention, hand out anti-Yucca literature and try to interest people in calling their senators to stop the project. The activists say they want to give people a sense of what it might be like for motorists to encounter encased nuclear waste if the Energy Department is allowed to ship spent fuel along the nation's highways to Nevada. "It's the Paul Revere ride of the atomic age. We want people to take action," said Kamps, a nuclear waste specialist with the Nuclear Information Resource Service in Washington. The nuclear power industry, which backs the Yucca Mountain plan, takes a dim view of the campaign. Why protest nuclear waste when deadly hazardous materials already are on the roads every day, said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. "Their concern shows only that they are pursuing an anti-nuclear agenda as opposed to doing any public service," Kerekes said. The activists' plan is for the casks and drivers to hook up on June 15 in Chicago and then embark on a three-day "wagon train" bound East, where a final anti-Yucca rally is being organized for June 18 at the U.S. Capitol. The Washington leg of the campaign got off to a rough start last week. Kamps was to circle the Beltway on Thursday for a kickoff event, but his truck rig broke down. After securing a rental replacement, he drove it to the rural Virginia farm where his cask is stored. But then the 2,100-pound cask trailer got stuck in the mud and couldn't be moved. Kamps was reworking the schedule until the container could be extricated. In other parts of the country, anti-Yucca forces were already under way. "We've been on the road since Memorial Day," reported John Hadder, Northern Nevada coordinator for Citizen Alert. Hadder was on his cell phone from a Ford pickup that was towing his "cask" along Interstate 84 in Oregon just east of Hood River. Hadder and interns Jason Halprin and Nicole Tully had already done presentations before local TV stations in Portland and were headed to Pendleton, hometown of Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., where they planned to hand out anti-Yucca materials. On Thursday, Indiana activist Chris Williams picked up a cask replica from a prop maker in Harrisburg, Pa., who was paid to build four, 20-foot long plywood models for the road trips. The environmentalists put a rush on their order when it appeared the Senate might act quickly on the issue. Williams and other volunteers were painting anti-nuke slogans on the cask before heading out to Michigan and then to Chicago. "Part of our plan is to take the casks to different parts of Chicago and get them lost in traffic so people can get a look at them," Williams said. "When people learn the government plan is to unleash thousands of these on the roads, they show genuine concern." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 32 NUCLEAR WASTE: Parallels seen in states' battles From left, South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, Highway Patrol Col. Mike Kelley and Public Safety Director Boykin Rose on April 22 discuss a drill in which three dozen officers practiced blocking plutonium-laden trucks from entering the Savannah River Site. Photo by Associated Press Sunday, June 09, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal But South Carolina no ally of Nevada when it comes to Yucca Mountain By TONY BATT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU AIKEN, S.C. -- The nuclear dramas playing out in Nevada and South Carolina have more parallels than you can shake a spent fuel rod at. In both states, politicians are fighting the federal government's plans to store nuclear waste there. Both states have adopted the federal lawsuit as their weapon of choice. And players in both dramas are threatening to take the fight to the street. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges has vowed he will lie down in the road to block plutonium shipments. And Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman promises to arrest the first driver to haul nuclear waste through the city. Yet for all the similarities, South Carolina is no ally in Nevada's battle to block the federal government's plan to store the nation's most dangerous nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. "I understand the concerns of the folks of Nevada when it comes to nuclear waste storage, but we don't have their mountains and arid climate," said South Carolina state Rep. Joe Neal, D-Columbia. "We have hurricanes, tornadoes and floods near a densely populated site," Neal said. Then he paused before uttering the phrase Nevada has heard so many times since 1987, when Congress singled out Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste storage. "It's nothing personal," he said. This sentiment is not hard to come by in the halls of power in South Carolina. One top official described nuclear storage as a shell game, and expressed the fervent hope that in the end the pea will end up under Yucca Mountain. Like Nevada, South Carolina is no stranger to the nuclear debate. The Savannah River Site near Aiken was constructed during the early 1950s to produce the basic materials used to make nuclear weapons, primarily tritium and plutonium-239. South Carolina officials tend to smile when told of the sacrifices Nevada made in the 1950s, when the federal government exploded nuclear weapons in the desert. Then they ask if Nevada ever sacrificed any of its communities. On Nov. 27, 1950, the federal government broadcast a message targeting those living near the Georgia-South Carolina border. "It will be necessary to evacuate the local population," the announcer said. Three hundred square miles of pine forests and cotton farming land would be converted into a state-of-the-art nuclear facility that would be called the Savannah River Site. Here, the nation's first hydrogen bomb plant would be built. More than 6,000 people were given 18 months to abandon their homes. Four towns, Dunbarton, Ellenton, Jackson and Snelling, were condemned. Bonner Smith, then a 20-year-old resident of Ellenton, grabbed a can of shoe polish and poured his heart out in a message that was attached to the city limits sign. "It is hard to understand why our town must be destroyed to make a bomb that will destroy someone else's town that they love as much as we love ours but we feel that they picked not just the best spot in the U.S. but in the world," wrote Smith, who died recently of cancer. Aiken is a city of about 25,000 located 10 miles east of the Savannah River complex. With its downtown area marked by beautifully manicured streets and lush vegetation, the city retains much of the genteel air it acquired during its heyday as a winter polo capital. The notion that 2 tons of plutonium are buried nearby appears to cause little concern. "The people here are very much in a state of denial. The mentality here is that the Savannah River Site is a community birthright that provides 12,000 jobs," said Don Moniak, an environmentalist who lives in Aiken. Aides to the governor say South Carolina remains willing to accept storage of the nuclear waste generated at the Savannah River complex. But Hodges steadfastly opposes the federal government's plan to transport 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium from its Rocky Flats facility in Colorado to the Savannah River Site. On May 1, he filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Energy and Secretary Spencer Abraham. Hodges wants a judge to stop the plutonium shipments, and a hearing on the case is scheduled for Thursday in a federal courthouse in Aiken. Nevada, which has filed five lawsuits against the Yucca Mountain Project, is watching the South Carolina proceedings with keen interest. If South Carolina prevails, the ruling could provide a useful precedent for Nevada in its own court actions. South Carolina alleges the Energy Department's plan to transport the weapons-grade plutonium from Colorado does not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. The department contends the plutonium will be reprocessed at the Savannah River Site and then shipped elsewhere to civilian reactors to serve as nuclear fuel. Failing that, the plan is to put it in permanent storage at Yucca Mountain. These pledges offer little comfort to some in South Carolina, which has a long tradition of distrusting the federal government. Hodges, a Democrat, says the Energy Department already has broken promises. He and his supporters are concerned the reprocessing program won't be funded and the Bush administration will back away from the commitment. "The Bush administration doesn't have an energy program," said Dick Harpootlian, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. "It's just a hot-potato program. Nuclear waste goes from one place to the next because it's a hot potato everyone wants to get rid of." Hodges has vowed to do whatever it takes to prevent the radioactive material from being stored in South Carolina, including lying down in the road to stop the plutonium-laden trucks. The Highway Patrol has conducted drills on how to block the shipments. In explaining why they are fighting so hard to prevent the plutonium from ever entering the state, officials quote former South Carolina Gov. Richard Riley: "Where waste is put, it stays." In contrast, the Energy Department makes no bones about the permanent nature of the Yucca Mountain Project. The department proposes to store 77,000 tons of high level nuclear waste for 10,000 years at the site that is located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev., was hoping Hodges' lawsuit might prompt Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C. to reconsider his support for the Yucca Mountain Project. But a Hollings spokesman said Friday the senator still plans to vote in favor of President Bush's recommendation of Yucca Mountain. The state's Republican senator, 99-year-old Strom Thurmond, plans to vote the same way when the Senate considers the matter this summer. In part, these positions can be attributed to South Carolina's historic affinity for nuclear power. Unlike Nevada, which derives none of its electricity from nuclear power, there are seven nuclear reactors located in South Carolina. Between 55 and 60 percent of the state's electricity comes from nuclear power. Even those who oppose the plutonium shipments stress their support for the Savannah River Site. Support for Nevada's position is rare in South Carolina, but does exist. "The culture at the Savannah River Site makes storage safer than it would be at other sites. They've handled this stuff for years," said Moniak, the Aiken environmental consultant. Harry Rogers, an environmental activist who works as an electrician at a nuclear power plant in Jenkinsville, agrees. But both Moniak and Rogers said their opposition to Yucca Mountain is not common among other local environmentalists. "NIMBY is an overused word, but a lot of South Carolinians look at nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site like they would a wild animal in their back yard," Rogers said. "They just want to get rid of it." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 33 Nevada sues DOE over Yucca environmental impact The Nando Times: Updated: June 9, 2002 10:40 p.m. EDT United Press International By SCOTT R. BURNELL, UPI Science News WASHINGTON (June 8, 2002 12:32 a.m. EDT) - Nevada's legal fight against the proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain is unlikely to attract other states in support, observers said Friday. The state's latest action attacks the Department of Energy's environmental impact statement on Yucca. "The DOE has utterly failed to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act," said Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa in a statement. "By rushing the EIS out the door prior to completing hundreds of necessary studies, or even defining a basic repository design, DOE has made a mockery of NEPA and must be challenged." The suit, filed late Thursday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, comes as no surprise, said Joe Davis, a DOE spokesman. "The Yucca EIS represents 24 years of scientific work. It is thorough and complete," Davis told United Press International. "We expect these lawsuits at every turn." None of the people contacted by UPI gave any indication other states would join the lawsuit. Steve Kraft, an executive with the Nuclear Energy Institute, said no legal issues are raised that could later aid another state. Davis said other states with nuclear waste sites have no reason to delay progress on Yucca. The site, approximately 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, lies close to Death Valley and therefore has a very dry climate, considered essential for long-term storage of nuclear waste. The DOE plan would place tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel and other waste inside corrosion-resistant casks, which would be entombed in a layer of dense volcanic ash about 1,000 feet below the surface, and about 1,000 feet above the local water table. Nevada used a provision of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to formally oppose the DOE's recommendation of Yucca, and Congress is in the midst of overriding that veto. The House overwhelmingly passed its override in early May, and the Senate must do the same by July 25 to move the project forward. The lawsuit states the NWPA requires a geological repository, so inclusion of the man-made containers invalidates both the EIS and the site. DOE's Davis said the statute calls for natural and engineered barriers to work together in slowing down the movement of radioactive materials from the site over its expected 10,000-year lifespan. The state's action is one of desperation, said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who sponsored the House override resolution. "They can't use science to discredit Yucca because all the science is there," Barton told UPI. "It's just another attempt at delay tactics having nothing to do with science and everything to do with obstructionism." Nevada has every right to file suit, said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who led the fight against the override resolution in the full House. "The Bush administration has failed to comply with many of the requirements of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and with our nation's environmental laws in its rush to stick Nevada with the nuclear Queen of Spades," Markey told UPI via e-mail. "Hopefully, the courts will make a decision on this case based on the law and on sound science, not politics." The lawsuit repeats statements by Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., that the Yucca EIS does not cover 54 non-commercial nuclear waste sites, such as research reactors at universities. Those sites are covered by earlier impact statements, Kraft said. Even though the EIS includes more information than required by law, Nevada is selectively picking passages from relevant statues to try and make its case, he said. Copyright © 2002 Nando Media ***************************************************************** 34 Shipping N-Waste To Yucca Mountain Isn't 'Safe' Science The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, June 9, 2002 BY DARIO HERRERA As a Nevadan and chairman of the Clark County Commission in southern Nevada, I strenuously object to Energy Secretary Abraham's plan to transport 77,000 tons of the nation's most toxic nuclear waste across the country to be stored at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas -- the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the nation. If Secretary Abraham had spent more time meeting with the families who will be adversely affected by his plan and less time meeting with 36 different representatives from the energy industry -- including the Nuclear Energy Institute which supports the Yucca Mountain Project -- then he would know that his plan is a threat to health and safety of millions of Americans. There are four reasons why transporting nuclear waste across the country is far from a "safe" science: * 1. The transportation of high-level nuclear waste does not simplify national security concerns or prevent the threat of a terrorist attack. Instead, it actually magnifies the possibilities for a terrorist attack. More than 100,000 truck- 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 and past the back yards of millions of families. Every one of these shipments is a potential target for a terrorist. * 2. The Department of Energy's proposed transportation program is of a magnitude never before attempted in this country. The Department of Energy is eager to point out its track record for shipping waste over 40 years. However, far more waste will be transported per year over the next 40 years than ever been transported in total since the advent of nuclear power. Using the previous track record as a barometer for the Yucca Mountain Project is like comparing an ant to an elephant. In its own technical analysis and documents, the Department of Energy admits that accidents and incidents of radiation release will certainly occur during the 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. Further, we found that the costs to Clark County government entities alone for additional personnel, planning, training and public outreach to prepare for incoming shipments is expected to reach almost 2.7 billion over the project's proposed 39 years of shipments. While Congress might provide some public safety funding to the 43 states through which the shipments will travel, it is clear that 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 decreases. 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. The effects on Clark County would be devastating. Already in South Carolina, the Department of Energy's shipment of nuclear waste has resulted in property value losses similar to what has been estimated here. Since property taxes are a source of significant revenue for education, public safety and other local government services, we are threatening to put further strain on a number of state governments that already can't make ends meet. These are only four of the hundreds of unanswered questions posed by the non-partisan General Accounting Office about a risky project that was supposed to be based on "sound science." Even the scientists on the Department of Energy's Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board have called the science "weak to moderate." In the end it will come down to a vote in Congress. We in Nevada believe Congress should place the interests of the millions of families who will be put at risk ahead of the interests of the Nuclear Energy Institute and the 35 other special interests and corporations that got preferential treatment from the secretary of energy. Congress should act to strengthen security at existing nuclear plants while continuing to study viable alternatives to long-term storage, rather than trucking high-level radioactive waste through our neighborhoods. We should never lose sight of what is most important in this battle and that is the safety and security of all Americans. Dario Herrera is chairman of of the Clark County (Nev.) Commission. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on ***************************************************************** 35 Could Ballot Inititiative Weaken Goshute Tribe's Hand? The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, June 9, 2002 BY PAUL ROLLY Nevada may have made a deal with the devil a half century ago when it tolerated the proliferation of gambling that brought with it the evils of organized crime. It also is true the devil got his due from Nevada with first the nuclear bomb tests in the Silver State's desert, which caused its own havoc, and later the proposed storage of commercial and government nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. The gambling/nuclear nuisance comparison has jumped the border into Utah. It has become a background issue surrounding the proposed ballot initiative to ban high-level nuclear waste storage and impose extraordinary taxes on the existing low-level radioactive waste already being stored in Utah's West Desert. The Goshute Indians are trying to put a nuclear waste facility on their reservation over the objection of state officials. The Goshutes, who would store the radioactive material under a contract with Private Fuel Storage (PFS), claim that, as a sovereign nation, their land is not under the jurisdiction of state government. Here's where the gambling analogy comes in. When the Utah Legislature was considering a proposal to allow pari-mutuel betting on horse races in the early 1990s, lawmakers were apprised of a principle in federal law which prohibits sovereign nations within the boundaries of a state from engaging in activity that is prohibited by that state. Since Utah is one of the only states that prohibits any form of gambling, Utah officials were able to block attempts by Indian reservations to allow gambling. Lawmakers were told that if pari-mutuel betting was allowed, Indian tribes could bring in casinos, as they have done in other states, under the presumption that gambling existed in Utah. That theory has been discussed privately among lawyers on both sides of the initiative issue. Envirocare of Utah, which already stores low-level nuclear waste (as A-level waste) at its Tooele County site, has been issued state and federal permits for longer-life low-level waste (classified as B and C waste), although the National Radiation Control Board still needs to give its blessing. Because the ballot initiative -- sponsored by the Utah Education Association, advocates for the homeless and others -- would ban high-level nuclear rods and B and C radioactive waste, its passage could bolster the claims of Gov. Mike Leavitt and other state officials attempting to prevent PFS from storing the waste on the Goshute reservation. Their claim would be similar to the gambling argument. Of course, advocates of PFS and the Goshutes could argue that by already allowing the low-level A waste, the state already has opened the door and other types of radioactive material could be allowed on sovereign territory within Utah, despite the initiative. That would be like saying that if you allow bingo in the state, then the reservation can have bingo and blackjack games. It would all be a matter for the courts to decide, but as attorney and former Utah State Tax Commissioner Roger Tew says: "The confusion is brought about by no clear-cut nuclear and hazardous waste policy. Other states have private operators running government-owned facilities and abiding by government policies. Utah has a private contractor running a private facility and policies are determined by whatever he is able to persuade the Legislature to pass." o © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 36 Shipping Nuclear Waste Has Already Been Proved Safe The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, June 9, 2002 BY RAYMOND TAKASHI SWENSON The Tribune's May 21 editorial "Delay Yucca Mountain" made no sense at all. You called for the Yucca Mountain nuclear fuel repository to be scrapped on the grounds that it could hold "only" 77,000 tons of used nuclear fuel (the amount already in existence), and then called for the establishment of a national used-fuel reprocessing system to extract the plutonium from the fuel. You have rejected a viable option for the present problem of used-fuel disposal because it won't hold all the used nuclear fuel generated in the future, and you then have called for a politically impossible option to be adopted in its place. First, the upper bound on Yucca Mountain capacity is a statutory limit, not a scientific one. It was enacted years ago based on notions that no one state should have to accept unlimited quantities of the material. But that can be changed anytime Congress and the president agree to do so. Second, the last used-fuel reprocessing system in the United States was shut down a decade ago because of political opposition. Reopening that system, in Eastern Washington just off Interstate 84, or building a new one would mean transporting the same 77,000 tons of used nuclear fuel just as far across just as many states, including Utah. And it would be just as unpopular in Washington and Oregon, or whichever state a new one is proposed for, as Yucca Mountain is in Nevada. Not to mention requiring a new national regime for shipping back to reactors the resulting plutonium-based nuclear fuel to justify the cost of reprocessing. I have seen the irresponsible scare ads placed on Salt Lake television by the state of Nevada. Are we going to ban the movement of all hazardous substances, including gasoline and common industrial chemicals like sulfuric acid, ammonia and chlorine? The experienced risk of being injured by one of these ubiquitous shipments is nil, especially compared with the tens of thousands of fatalities that result every year from simple vehicle collisions, with occasional burning of on-board gasoline. What has been the total number of fatalities in Utah from such chemical shipments, based on a search of Tribune archives? The risk of injury from a used nuclear fuel shipment is even lower. Not only are the containers far more robust than the average gasoline tanker (they have, in tests, survived collision with a train engine), but even if the contents somehow leaked out, they are not gaseous, flammable or liquid. They would just sit there until they were swept up and repackaged, along with some surrounding dirt. Short of going to the spill site intentionally, it would be difficult for someone to even be exposed to the radiation. The only appreciable risk is of a collision with the truck or train, but it is the same risk for a vehicle delivering furniture or potatoes. A lot of this nuclear fuel started its life as uranium mined in southern Utah. (Incidentally, the Yucca Mountain system is designed to be no more dangerous than a natural uranium deposit.) A good deal of that uranium was processed at the old Vitro plant in central Salt Lake Valley. Uranium has been shipped from one end of the country to the other in the process of being mined, milled, converted into fuel rod segments, and then being shipped to the nuclear reactors. In addition to commercial power reactors, many of the destinations were Navy submarines and aircraft carriers that up until a few years ago were based in not only San Diego and Puget Sound but also the San Francisco Bay, at the western end of Interstate 80. With the end of the Cold War, much of the Navy reactor fuel has been removed and shipped to Idaho for storage so that the submarines could be scrapped as part of mutual nuclear disarmament with the Russians. These various shipments are not publicized, for obvious security reasons, but you can bet that a lot of nuclear fuel has been moving through Utah, "The Crossroads of the West," for decades. Yet not a single accident with these fuel shipments has occurred, anywhere in the nation, since nuclear power was invented half a century ago. We don't need calculations and simulations to predict the risk from nuclear fuel shipments: We know from 50 years of actual experience that it is effectively zero. Raymond Takashi Swenson is a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and an attorney in environmental law, who lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on ***************************************************************** 37 Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Nukes? Not Hollywood -- And That's Good The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, June 9, 2002 BY SEAN P. MEANS In the spate of recent terrorist warnings that have emanated from Washington, one of the most chilling was this statement from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "We have to recognize that terrorist networks have relationships with terrorist states that have weapons of mass destruction and that they inevitably are going to get their hands on them, and they would not hesitate one minute in using them." The thought of terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear weapon is almost too horrific to imagine. So why is Hollywood imagining it so readily right now? And why are moviegoers paying to watch? Last weekend, "The Sum of All Fears" -- a spy thriller that features (and the movie's advertising does not hide this) a nuclear bomb incinerating part of Baltimore -- led the box-office race, taking in $31.1 million. This weekend, moviegoers were invited to see "Bad Company," an action-comedy about CIA agents trying to keep a terrorist from planting a nuke in the middle of New York. More spy movies, from the serious ("The Bourne Identity," opening Friday) to the silly (the new "Austin Powers" debuts July 26), are also in the pipeline. Most of these movies were filmed before Sept. 11 -- but many critics are viewing them through the prism of that catastrophic day and its aftermath. In USA Today, critic Mike Clark called "The Sum of All Fears" "a mediocre terrorist melodrama turned even punier by real-life events." Richard Roeper, Roger Ebert's TV partner, added that "there's something cringe-inducing about seeing an American football stadium nuked as pop entertainment." Even Ebert, who liked "The Sum of All Fears," ended his Chicago Sun-Times review with this sad comment: "My own fear is that in the post-apocalyptic future, 'The Sum of All Fears' will be seen as touchingly optimistic." (Actually, my concern about "The Sum of All Fears" and "Bad Company" is how both depict CIA agents and analysts as super-efficient action heroes who can gather information and put it to use in less time than it takes to eat a sandwich. Considering the recent news items about the paralyzing bureaucracy of federal intelligence agencies, such depictions may give Americans a false sense of security.) Are the critics reading too much into all this? Maybe a little, but critics are paid to plumb for deeper meanings in popular culture. Is there something sick and wrong in Hollywood depicting America's worst shared fear? No, not really. Any topic should be fair game for a filmmaker, and to run away from tough issues -- even nuclear war -- is to cede victory to the enemies of democracy and free expression. When the Cold War was at its hottest, nobody told Hollywood it couldn't discuss nuclear war. The results were classics like Stanley Kramer's "On the Beach" (in which the world waits for nuclear fallout), Sidney Lumet's "Fail-Safe" (a ticking-clock thriller about an H-bomb strike on Moscow) and Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," which saw the insanity of nuclear policies and did the only thing anyone could do -- laugh in its face. The question, then and now, isn't what films can talk about, but how well the films talk about them. "The Sum of All Fears" succeeds in part because it provides clarifying images to illustrate the anxiety Americans already have -- and the first step to overcoming a fear is identifying it. On the other hand, "Bad Company's" take on nuclear terrorism is . . . well, it doesn't matter what its take is, because the movie is so badly botched that it comes off as cheap exploitation of the issue. That's the beauty of being an American: you can say what you like -- but if you want what you say to matter, you have to think when you speak. Got a question about the movies? Send it to movie critic Sean P. Means: The Salt Lake Tribune, 143 S. Main, second floor, Salt Lake City, UT 84111, or e-mail at movies@sltrib.com. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 38 Goedhart: Legal challenges may derail plans for repository* By HENRY BREAN, Managing Editor June 07, 2002 *YMP* By many accounts, the U.S. Senate is mere weeks away from approving a joint resolution that would designate Yucca Mountain as the nation's central disposal area for high-level radioactive waste. But one of the repository's closest neighbors and most vocal opponents isn't worried. Ed Goedhart is confident that even if Nevada loses its fight in the Senate, there will be enough serious legal challenges made to derail the project - or at least seriously delay it. And one of those lawsuits might just come from Goedhart's employer. Goedhart is general manager of the Ponderosa Dairy in Amargosa Valley. On a clear day, he can see the nondescript ridge of Yucca Mountain, roughly 25 miles away. Goedhart said Ponderosa might sue the federal government over planned repository, which, if built, would be directly "upstream" from the dairy, according to some groundwater models. Already, several groups have approached the dairy's ownership with some "very generous offers of carte blanche legal (representation)," he said. For now, Goedhart is holding out hope for an upset victory in the Senate. "I think if you are someone who is opposed to Yucca Mountain, you have to look at it like, 'It's in the middle rounds and I'm down on points, but the fat lady hasn't sung yet,'" said Goedhart after last month's lopsided House vote on a joint resolution to go ahead with the repository. "Ultimately, I think this will be settled in a court setting." And that should take quite some time, since Goedhart expects the government's plans to transport and store 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste to generate thousands of lawsuits. "This thing is going to make the tobacco litigation look like chump change," he said. "They're going to need a building the size of the Pentagon to house all of the attorneys." One of the first such lawsuits was filed Thursday by the Nevada Attorney General's Office. The suit seeks to stop the Yucca Mountain Project and accuses of federal officials of a host of violations. It describes the federally prepared Environmental Impact Statement for the repository "tantamount to fraud" and "perhaps the least substantive document of its kind ever produced." Assuming the courts agree to grant an injunction against the project until all of the litigation is heard, work at Yucca Mountain could be delayed for 20 or 30 years, if not indefinitely, Goedhart said. By then, three quarters of all the milk consumed in the Silver State could come from Amargosa Valley. Ponderosa currently employs about 105 people and produces about 28 percent of Nevada's milk, and the operation has plans to expand starting later this year. New barns, fields and an additional milking parlor should by up and running by the fall, increasing the operation's output by as much as 40 percent. After that comes the bottling plant and distribution facility, Goedhart said. Despite Ponderosa's status as one of the state's largest dairies and one of, if not the, single largest employer in Amargosa Valley, Goedhart said the operation has been almost completely ignored by the federal officials who are planning the Yucca Mountain repository. "We, of all people, are at ground zero, but they haven't given us so much as a phone call," he said. "That's business as usual for the federal government. We're the last people in the world they think about." /©Pahrump Valley Times 2002/ ***************************************************************** 39 Wellstone, Dayton yet to disclose Yucca vote /06/06/2002/* Michael Fielding , Staff Writer June 06, 2002 *The debate surrounding Yucca Mountain continues toward a showdown vote in the U.S. Senate, but many lawmakers aren't willing to show their hands yet.* *The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources voted 13 to 10 Wednesday to send a resolution approving the site to the full Senate, which has until July 26 to vote on it before a 90-day deadline expires.* Meanwhile, supporters argue that scientists have spent two decades of research and $8 billion to develop a recommendation for a permanent repository for used nuclear fuel. Opponents are concerned that hundreds of convoys crisscrossing the nation each year could be targets of terrorist attacks or could fall victim to accidents, placing the health of thousands of people at risk. In April, Republican Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed the Energy Department's recommendation to approve Yucca Mountain. The Senate has until the end of July to follow the lead of the House and reverse the veto. Despite strong lobbying from both sides, three U.S. senators - Paul Wellstone and Mark Dayton of Minnesota and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin - all Democrats, remain undecided. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., supports the site. *Kohl backs project* "The federal government must act to fulfill its legal responsibility to store used fuel from more than 100 nuclear power plants across America," Kohl said in a statement. "Over a decade ago, the federal government promised the ratepayers of Wisconsin that it would take possession of all the spent nuclear waste in the state by 1998 and send it to the desert of Nevada for long-term storage," the statement continued. "On the basis of that promise, the ratepayers of Wisconsin have paid over $250 million into a fund to help pay for the construction of the storage site. But we have seen no return on that investment, only delays." Yet even Kohl acknowledged serious concerns about transporting 145 million pounds of nuclear waste through counties where more than one-third of all Americans live. More than 150 truck and train convoys per year are expected to move the waste to Yucca Mountain beginning about 2010. The waste is stored at temporary sites in 39 states. *Shipment record* But supporters such as Kohl and nuclear industry representatives say transportation of waste already has been proven safe. "There have already been more than 1,000 shipments of nuclear waste around our country without a release of radiation. And there must continue to be extensive testing of transportation cask technology so that safety is ensured," Kohl said in the statement. "Safe shipment of high-level waste has been occurring in this country for over 30 years," said Maureen Brown, NMC communications director. Between 1984 and 1986, nearly three dozen rail cars carried more than 1,000 fuel assemblies from the plant in Monticello, past Red Wing, to a storage facility in Morris, Ill. Statistics such as those still aren't enough for lawmakers who say they will continue to study an issue that is likely to rank as one of the most important and far-reaching decisions ever made by Congress. *Dayton undecided* Dayton said he continues to meet with groups on both sides of the issue. While in Minnesota Saturday, he met with two groups, one supporting and one opposing Yucca Mountain. "I'm genuinely undecided and genuinely open to getting as much information as I can," he said by telephone last week. He acknowledged that both sides have employed "well-qualified experts who give almost the exact opposite view of the subject." In light of that, he isn't guaranteeing that he'll make a decision any time before the Senate considers approval of the site in July. *Local concerns* Maintaining that safe shipping is the only reason he has opposed opening the repository at Yucca Mountain, Wellstone joins other senators in what has become a typical response among Washington lawmakers: Find a safe way to transport the waste and they will support the Yucca project. "The administration never asked any local communities in Minnesota what they thought," Wellstone said. "That was a mistake. There is no local allowance for people to be trained for accidents." Supporters and opponents differ in their definitions of what safe shipment means - and how likely the convoys would be moving targets for terrorist attacks or victims of freak accidents. "The administration should never have certified the safety issue without coming to our communities," Wellstone added, countering the nuclear industry's assertion that it has already proven safe transportation. "The magnitude of this is just completely different." Wellstone admitted that while some senators may not be truly committed to one side or the other, many are putting off a public commitment as part of a strategy as states, the federal government and the nuclear industry negotiate the Yucca plan. It remains a "not in my back yard "issue, though, and the only way to convince senators such as Wellstone to support the project is to address local concerns, he said. "The White House and the Department of Energy should be direct and forthcoming and meet the concerns of local communities," he said. *Well-run facility* Both Wellstone and Dayton have visited the Prairie Island nuclear generating facility. "It's a very well-run facility," Dayton said of his 2001 tour. "From everything I could determine, (the casks are) very well maintained. Clearly all the safety measures I could inquire about are being taken into consideration." Feingold also has yet to announce whether he will join approximately 34 other senators who oppose the project. Opponents need 51 votes. "As the Senate moves closer to consideration of this issue, I have been hearing more about it from people on both sides," Feingold said in a prepared statement. "As I am considering my vote on Yucca Mountain, I am weighing whether the transportation is safe, ... (and) whether we will only be moving the material to one permanent location," he said. If the site is approved, the Energy Department would apply for a construction permit in 2004. Licensing process with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission could take four years. Michael Fielding can be reached at fielding@republican-eagle.com or 388-2914, ext. 127. fielding@republican-eagle.com /©Red Wing Republican Eagle 2002/ ***************************************************************** 40 Commissioners tour Yucca site* Evening News staff writer June 07, 2002 *Two Monroe County commissioners took a tour of Yucca Mountain and said the visit lifted any doubt about the location. * By JOSHUA KENNEDY One central, federally run and regulated repository for nuclear waste is the way to go. That's what Monroe County commissioners William Sisk and Dale Zorn said after touring the proposed Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada. In April, the board voted 8-1 on a resolution supporting the federal government's move to put all the nuclear waste in the country inside the giant rock known as Yucca Mountain. "If there was ever any hesitation on my part," Chairman Mr. Sisk said, "going there lifted that. I'd encourage people with doubts to make the trip." The commissioners were part of a 40-member group of officials from around the country who toured the site - 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas - as guests of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Mr. Zorn had visited the site four years earlier as part of a national panel looking for alternatives to handling nuclear waste. There are about 306 metric tons of nuclear wastes at the Detroit Edison Fermi 2 Nuclear Power Plant in Frenchtown Township. The federal government announced earlier this year that Yucca Mountain, a site it's spent about $3 billion investigating over the past 20 years, would be the national storage site for similar waste stored all over the state and country. The commissioners joined the excursion to better understand what - and where - the 2,000 tons of waste generated annually around the nation would be stored. The tour started with an educational briefing on the status of the mountain, legislation to make it the federal repository, and other aspects at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Science center. "Then they bussed us out to Yucca Mountain," Mr. Sisk said. "There's nothing moving out there and it was a long, long, long way out. It must've taken an hour and a half to get there." Upon arrival at the site, which looks more like a mining tunnel than any $3 billion nuclear facility, the groups donned special protective gas masks in case of any accidental exposure to gases once below. Entering the mountain, visitors notice one thing right away, Mr. Zorn said. "It's like walking into a safe. It looks like you're standing in a giant piece of cement. It's just like someone cut a huge hole in a rock." Yucca Mountain is essentially a large expansive rock. A series of tunnels has been bored in the mountain that descended to 1,000 feet below the surface. At the end of one central tunnel, workers are preparing storage legs, where casks of nuclear waste may one day sit. All along the three-mile long tunnel, there are different series of "legs" - cross-section tunnels that run perpendicular to the main tunnel - where scientists have been working for 20 years to ensure that the rock is safe. On Mr. Zorn's first visit to the facility, several of these "experiments" had just begun. "Which was neat," he said, "Because now the data and information from them is available and I got to see that." One of those tests was to apply heat to the rock. Spent nuclear fuel radiates heat. To simulate the conditions, scientists heated one of the cross section tunnels to 470 degrees for four straight years. "It's still cooling down now," Mr. Zorn said. The results of that test were promising; Mr. Zorn said scientists told his group. "They were measuring the moisture of the rock," Mr. Zorn said. "What they found was that the natural moisture of the rock flowed around the tunnel, instead of through it. "Water flowing through the rock sounds much worse than it really is," he said. "There's no water flowing through the rock. One of the scientists picked up a rock and reminded all of us that even that rock has water in it. Everything is made of water. These scientists are measuring and watching what will happen to the natural water content of the mountain," he said. The tour included a ride down to the storage area about 1,000 feet below ground. "They took us by small train, kind of like a mining cart or something," Mr. Sisk said. "We just kept going and going and going." At various intervals scientists and guides stopped the tour and explained safety procedures being taken, or installed and pointed out features of the giant network of tunnels. "The facility seems extremely secure," Mr. Sisk said. "They've taken a great deal of time and effort to make sure it's secure. But the big discussion locally when we approved the resolution was space. Is there enough space for what we have now and what we'll have in the future?" The Yucca Mountain facility currently being proposed has a capacity of 70,000 tons. There are already 40,000 tons of nuclear waste stored at 103 different sites around the country. "From talking to the scientists, there's enough space to store all the waste we have around the country now and they have the ability to double that size," Mr. Sisk said. Local opponents of the county resolution complained that because Fermi 2 was one of the last national plants to go online it will be one of the last eligible to send its waste to Yucca. That's not a concern Mr. Sisk has anymore. "That doesn't bother me," he said. "They showed me they have the ability to place all the waste from the country now. I have no reservations at all. I think we did the right thing." Mr. Zorn, who will make a presentation on the visit at Tuesday's county board meeting, said the centralized location is the safest, smartest way to deal with the byproduct of nuclear energy. "I was convinced four years ago," he said. "We created this waste and we're going to have to deal with it." /©Monroe Evening News 2002/ ***************************************************************** 41 War Talk; Nuclear Weapons & Media Fog; Bush Scandal for Dummies Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 00:24:58 -0500 (CDT) [All ads are inserted by Topica without our consent. Ignore them.] IN THIS MESSAGE: * War Talk * Nuclear Weapons & Media Fog * Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies ------------------------------------------- Hello, I hope you are frequenting the regularly updated ZNet site - www.zmag.org/weluser.htm We have recent additions on Angola, South Asis, of course the Mid East including Judy Rebick's eyewitness diary, the terror war, and so on. And we have added a section on conspiracy theory (critical of it, that is) and a new debates page, too. I also hope you will consider becoming a ZNet Sustainer if you aren't already. You can do it from the the top page, and there you can also click to find out more about the program at http://www.zmag.org/Commentaries/donorform.htm But mostly I am writing today to send you two essays - the latest commentaries from Arundhati Roy and Norman Solomon...both written in context of unfolding events in South Asia... ---- War Talk By Arundhati Roy When India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests in 1998, even those of us who condemned them, balked at the hypocrisy of Western nuclear powers. Implicit in their denunciation of the tests was the notion that Blacks cannot be trusted with the Bomb. Now we are presented with the spectacle of our governments competing to confirm that belief. As diplomats' families and tourists disappear from the subcontinent, western journalists arrive in Delhi in droves. Many call me. "Why haven't you left the city?" they ask. "Isn't nuclear war a real possibility? Isn't Delhi a prime target?" If nuclear weapons exist, then nuclear war is a real possibility. And Delhi is a prime target. It is. But where shall we go? Is it possible to go out and buy another life because this one's not panning out? If I go away, and everything and everyone - every friend, every tree, every home, every dog, squirrel and bird that I have known and loved - is incinerated, how shall I live on? Who shall I love? And who will love me back? Which society will welcome me and allow me to be the hooligan that I am here, at home? So we're all staying. We huddle together. We realize how much we love each other. And we think, what a shame it would be to die now. Life's normal only because the macabre has become normal. While we wait for rain, for football, for justice, the old generals and eager boy-anchors on TV talk of first strike and second-strike capabilities as though they're discussing a family board game. My friends and I discuss Prophecy, the documentary about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fireball. The dead bodies choking the river. The living stripped of skin and hair. The singed, bald children, still alive, their clothes burned into their bodies. The thick, black, toxic water. The scorched, burning air. The cancers, implanted genetically, a malignant letter to the unborn. We remember especially the man who just melted into the steps of a building. We imagine ourselves like that. As stains on staircases. I imagine future generations of hushed schoolchildren pointing at my stain...that was a writer. Not She or He. That. I'm sorry if my thoughts are stray and disconnected, not always worthy. Often ridiculous. I think of a little mixed-breed dog I know. Each of his toes is a different color. Will he become a radioactive stain on a staircase too? My husband's writing a book on trees. He has a section on how figs are pollinated. Each fig only by its own specialized fig wasp. There are nearly a thousand different species of fig wasps, each a precise, exquisite, synchrony, the product of millions of years of evolution. All the fig wasps will be nuked. Zzzz. Ash. And my husband. And his book. A dear friend, who's an activist in the anti-dam movement in the Narmada valley, is on indefinite hunger strike. Today is the fourteenth day of her fast. She and the others fasting with her are weakening quickly. They're protesting because the MP government is bulldozing schools, clear-felling forests, uprooting hand-pumps, forcing people from their villages to make way for the Man dam. The people have nowhere to go. And so, the hunger-strike. What an act of faith and hope! How brave it is to believe that in today's world, reasoned, closely argued, non-violent protest will register, will matter. But will it? To governments that are comfortable with the notion of a wasted world, what's a wasted valley? The threshold of horror has been ratcheted up so high that nothing short of genocide or the prospect of nuclear war merits mention. Peaceful resistance is treated with contempt. Terrorism's the real thing. The underlying principle of the War Against Terror, the very notion that war is an acceptable solution to terrorism, has ensured that terrorists in the subcontinent now have the power to trigger a nuclear war. Displacement, dispossession, starvation, poverty, disease - these are now just the funnies, the comic-strip items. Our Home minister says that Amartya Sen has it all wrong - the key to India's development is not education and health but defense (and don't forget the kickbacks, O Best Beloved). Perhaps what he really meant was that war is the key to distracting the world's attention from fascism and genocide. To avoid dealing with any single issue of real governance that urgently needs to be addressed. For the governments of India and Pakistan, Kashmir is not a problem, it's their perennial and spectacularly successful solution. Kashmir is the rabbit they pull out of their hats every time they need a rabbit. Unfortunately, it's a radioactive rabbit now, and it's careening out of control. No doubt there is Pakistan sponsored cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. But there's other kids of terror in the valley. There's the inchoate nexus between jehadi militants, ex-militants, foreign mercenaries, local mercenaries, underworld Mafiosi, security forces, arms dealers and criminalized politicians and officials on both sides of the border. There's also rigged elections, daily humiliation, "disappearances" and staged "encounters." And now the cry has gone up in the heartland: India is a Hindu country. Muslims can be murdered under the benign gaze of the state. Mass murderers will not be brought to justice. Indeed, they will stand for elections. Is India to be a Hindu nation in the heartland and a secular one around the edges? Meanwhile the International Coalition Against Terror makes war and preaches restraint. While India and Pakistan bay for each other's blood the Coalition is quietly laying gas pipelines, selling us weapons and pushing through their business deals. (Buy now pay later). Britain, for example, is busy arming both sides. Tony Blair's "peace" mission a few months ago was actually a business trip to discuss a one billion pound deal (and don't forget the kickbacks, O Best Beloved) to sell Hawk fighter-bombers to India. Roughly, for the price of a single Hawk bomber, the government could provide one and a half million people with clean drinking water for life. "Why isn't there a peace movement?" western journalists ask me ingenuously. How can there be a peace movement when, for most people in India, peace means a daily battle: for food, for water, for shelter, for dignity? War, on the other hand, is something professional soldiers fight far away on the border. And nuclear war - well that's completely outside the realm of most people's comprehension. No one knows what a nuclear bomb is. No one cares to explain. As the Home minister said, education is not a pressing priority. Part of me feels grateful that most people here don't have any notion of the horrors of nuclear war. Why should they, on top of everything else they go through, have to suffer the terror of anticipating a nuclear holocaust? And yet, it is this ignorance that makes nuclear weapons so much more dangerous here. It is this ignorance, that makes "deterrence" seem like a terrible joke. The last question every visiting journalist always asks me is: Are you writing another book? That question mocks me. Another book? Right now? When it looks as though all the music, the art, the architecture, the literature - the whole of human civilization means nothing to the fiends who run the world - what kind of book should I write? It's not just the one million soldiers on the border who are living on hair-trigger alert. It's all of us. That's what nuclear bombs do. Whether they're used or not, they violate everything that is humane. They alter the meaning of life itself. Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate these men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race? Arundhati Roy lives in New Delhi. She is the author of The God of Small Things and Power Politics (South End Press). NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND MEDIA FOG By Norman Solomon American media outlets roused themselves from outright denial in early June, spurred by belated warnings from top U.S. officials that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan would kill millions of people. The tone of news coverage shifted toward alarm. Meanwhile, atomic history remained largely sanitized. "Even one military move by either of these nuclear-armed neighbors," USA Today's front page reported in big type, "could set off an unstoppable chain reaction that could lead to the holocaust the world has feared since the atomic bomb was developed." The June 10 edition of Newsweek includes a George Will column with a chilling present-day reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis: "The world may be closer to a nuclear war than it was at any time during the Cold War -- even October 1962." Yet when it comes to nuclear weapons, the mainstream American press has scant emotional range or professional zeal to scrutinize the progression of atomic perils. From the start of the nuclear era, each man in the Oval Office has carefully attended to public relations, with major media rarely questioning the proclaimed humanitarian goals. Making an announcement on Aug. 6, 1945, President Harry Truman did his best to engage in deception. "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base," he said. "That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." But civilians populated the city of Hiroshima -- as well as Nagasaki, where an A-bomb struck three days later. Hundreds of thousands died as a result of the atomic bombings. American military strategists were eager "to use the bomb first where its effects would be not only politically effective but technically measurable," Manhattan Project physicist David H. Frisch recalled. For U.S. media, the atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities have been pretty much sacrosanct. So, in 1994, a national uproar broke out when the Smithsonian Institution made plans for an exhibit marking the 50th anniversary. Much of the punditocracy was fit to be tied. "In the context of the time ... the bombing made a great deal of sense," Cokie Roberts said on network television -- and, she added, raising critical questions a half-century later "makes no sense at all." On the same ABC telecast, George Will sputtered: "It's just ghastly when an institution such as the Smithsonian casts doubt on the great leadership we were blessed with in the Second World War." Columnist Charles Krauthammer, denouncing "the forces of political correctness," wrote that the factual display on the museum's drawing board "promises to be an embarrassing amalgam of revisionist hand-wringing and guilt." Such intense media salvos caused the Smithsonian to cave in rather than proceed with a forthright historical exhibition. Even five decades later, a clear look at the atomic bombings was unacceptable. This summer, as the leaders of Pakistan and India ponder the nuclear-weapons option, they could echo the punditry. After all, "in the context of the time," they might conclude, an atomic bombing makes "a great deal of sense," without need to question their "great leadership" or engage in "hand-wringing and guilt." Back in 1983, a statement by U.S. Catholic Bishops perceptively called for a "climate of opinion which will make it possible for our country to express profound sorrow over the atomic bombing in 1945. Without that sorrow, there is no possibility of finding a way to repudiate future use of nuclear weapons." But American officials and leading journalists continue to be highly selective with their repudiations. In medialand, a red-white-and-blue nuclear warhead is not really a "weapon of mass destruction." Three months ago, the U.S. government's new Nuclear Posture Review caused a nearly incredulous response from Pervez Hoodbhoy, a peace advocate who is a professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad: "Why should every country of the world not develop nuclear weapons now that America may nuke anyone at any time? The Bush administration has announced that it views nuclear weapons as instruments for fighting wars, not merely as the weapons of last resort. Resurgent American militarism is destroying every arms control measure everywhere. Those of us in Pakistan and India who have long fought against nuclearization of the subcontinent have been temporarily rendered speechless." What goes around has a tendency to come around. Washington's policymakers keep fortifying the U.S. nuclear arsenal with abandon while brandishing it against many other countries -- declaring, in effect, "do as we say, not as we do." But sooner or later, such declarations are not very convincing. ________________________ Norman Solomon is co-author of "Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation" (Delacorte Press, 1982). The entire book is posted online at: www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/ This message has been brought to you by ZNet (http://www.zmag.org). Visit our site for subscription options. ============================================ The Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies By Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. Circulated by [ t r u t h o u t | Sunday, 2 June 2002 Don't know about you, but all this who-knew-what-when pre-9/11 stuff is mighty confusing. So once again, I head to that all-purpose reference series for some comprehensible answers. Q. I've heard all these reports about the government knowing weeks and months in advance of 9/11 that airliners were going to be hijacked and flown into buildings, and yet the Bush Administration apparently did nothing and denied they did anything wrong. They claimed the fault lay in the intelligence agencies "not connecting the dots," or that it was the "FBI culture" that failed. Can you explain? A. Most of the "it's-the-fault-of-the-system" spin is designed to deflect attention from the real situation. Bush and his spokesmen may well be correct in saying they had no idea as to the specifics -- they may not have known the exact details of the attacks -- but it is more and more apparent that they knew a great deal more than they're letting on, including the possible targets. Q. You're not just going to leave that hanging out there, are you? Just bash Bush with no evidence to back it up? A. There's no need to bash anybody. There is more than enough documentation to establish that the Bush Administration was fully aware that a major attack was coming from Al-Qaeda, by air, aimed at symbolic structures on the U.S. mainland, and that among mentioned targets were the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Congress, Statue of Liberty. (According to Richard Clarke, the White House's National Coordinator for Anti-Terrorism, the intelligence community was convinced ten weeks before 9/11 that an Al-Qaeda attack on U.S. soil was imminent.) Q. If they knew in advance that the, or at least, an attack was coming, why did the Bush Administration do nothing to prepare the country in advance: get photos of suspected terrorists out to airlines, have fighter jets put on emergency-standby status or even in the air as deterrents, get word out to the border police to stop these "watch-list" terrorists, put surface-to-air missiles around the White House and Pentagon, etc. A. The explanation preferred by the government is to admit, eight months late, to absolute and horrendous incompetence, up and down the line (although Bush&Co., surprise! prefer to focus the blame lower down, letting the FBI be the fall guy). But let's try an alternate explanation. Think about it for a moment. If their key goal was to mobilize the country behind the Bush administration, get their political/business agenda through, have a reason to move unilaterally around the globe, and defang the Democrats and other critics at home -- what better way to do all that than to have Bush be the take-charge leader after a diabolic "sneak attack"? Q. You're suggesting the ultimate cynical stratagem, purely for political ends. I can't believe that Bush and his cronies are that venal. Isn't it possible that the whole intelligence apparatus just blew it? A. Possible, but not bloody likely. There certainly is enough blame to spread around, but the evidence indicates that Bush and his closest aides knew that bin Laden was planning a direct attack on the U.S. mainland - using airplanes headed for those icon targets -- and, in order to get the country to move in the direction he wanted, he kept silent. Q. But if that's true, what you've described is utterly indefensible, putting policy ahead of American citizens' lives. A. Now are you beginning to understand why Bush&Co. are fighting so tenaciously against a blue-ribbon commission of inquiry, and why Bush and Cheney went to Congressional leaders and asked them not to investigate the pre-9/11 period? Now do you understand why they are trying so desperately to keep everything secret, tightly locked up in the White House, only letting drips and drabs get out when there is no other way to avoid Congressional subpoenas or court-ordered disclosures? They know that if one thread of the cover-up unravels, more of their darkest secrets will follow. Q. You're sounding like a conspiracy nut. A. For years, we've avoided thinking in those terms, because so many so-called "conspiracies" exist only in someone's fevered imagination. Plus, to think along these lines in this case is depressing, suggesting that American democracy can be so easily manipulated and distorted by a cabal of the greedy and power-hungry. But I'm afraid that's where the evidence leads. Q. You mean there's proof of Bush complicity in 9/11 locked up in the White House? A. We wouldn't use the term complicity. So far as we now know, Bush did not order or otherwise arrange for Al-Qaeda's attacks on September 11. But once the attacks happened, the plans Bush&Co. already had drawn up for taking advantage of the tragedy were implemented. A frightened, terrorist-obsessed nation did not realize they'd been the object of another assault, this time by those occupying the White House. Q. This is startling, and revolting. But I refuse to jump on the conspiracy bandwagon until I see some proof. Bush says he first heard about a "lone" pre-9/11 warning on August 6, and that it was vague and dealt with possible attacks outside the U.S. Why can't we believe him? After all, the FBI and CIA are notorious for their incompetence and bungling. You got a better version that makes sense, I'd love to hear it. A. Bush and his spinners want us to concentrate on who knew what detail when it's the old magician's trick of getting you to look elsewhere while he's doing his prestidigitation. We're not talking about a little clue here and another little clue there, or an FBI memo that wasn't shared. We're talking about long-range planning and analysis of what strategic-intelligence agencies and high-level commissions and geopolitical thinkers around the globe -- including those inside the U.S. -- saw for years before 9/11 as likely scenarios in an age of terrorist attacks. The conclusion about Al-Qaeda, stated again and again for years by government analysts, was basically: "They're coming, by air. Get prepared. They're well organized, determined, and technically adept. And they want to hit big targets, well-known symbols of America." (There was a 1999 U.S. government study, for example, that pointed out that Al-Qaeda suicide-bombers wanted to crash aircraft into a number of significant Washington targets; during the 1995 trial of Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he revealed plans to dive-bomb a plane into CIA headquarters, and earlier he had told FBI agents that the list was expanded to include the Pentagon and other D.C. targets.) Elements in the FBI, all over the country, who suspected what was coming, were clamoring, begging, for more agents to be used for counter-terrorism investigations, but were turned down by Attorney General Ashcroft; Ashcroft also gave counter-terrorism short shrift in his budget plans, not even placing anti-terrorism on his priority list; John O'Neill, the FBI's NYC anti-terrorism director, resigned, asserting that his attempts at full-scale investigating were being thwarted by higher-ups; someone in the FBI, perhaps on orders of someone higher-up, made sure that the local FBI investigation in Minneapolis of Zacaria Moussauoi was compromised. All this while Ashcroft was shredding the Constitution in his martial law-like desire to amass information, and continues even now to further expand his police-state powers. (Note: An FBI agent has filed official complaints over the bureau's interfering with anti-terrorism investigations; his lawyers include David Schippers, who worked for the GOP side in the Clinton impeachment effort; Schippers says the agent knew in May 2001 that "an attack on lower Manhattan was imminent." A former FBI official said: "I don't buy the idea that we didn't know what was coming...Within 24 hours [of the attack], the Bureau had about 20 people identified, and photos were sent out to the news media. Obviously this information was available in the files and someone was sitting on it.") One can accept the usual incompetency in intelligence collection and analysis from, say, an anti-terrorist desk officer at the FBI, but not from the highest levels of national defense and intelligence in and around the President, where his spokesman, in a bold-faced lie, told the world that the 9/11 attacks came with "no warning." More recently, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, in a quavering voice, tried to characterize the many warnings as mere "chatter," and concerned attacks "outside the U.S." But the many warning-reports focused on terrorist attacks both inside and outside the United States; the August 6th briefing dealt with planned attacks IN the United States. Not only were there clear warnings from allies abroad, but the U.S., through its ECHELON and other electronic-intercept programs, may well have broken bin Laden's encryption code; for example, the U.S. new that he told his mother on September 9: "In two days you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while." And, the word of an impending attack was getting out: "put options" (hedges that a stock's price is going to fall) in enormous quantities were being bought on United Airlines and American Airlines stock, the two carriers of the hijackers, as early as September 7; San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was warned by "an airport security man" on September 10 to rethink his flight to New York for the next day; Newsweek reported that on September 10, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns"; many members of a Bronx mosque were also warned to stay out of lower Manhattan on September 11, etc., etc. Q. You're giving me intriguing bits and pieces. Can't you tie it all together and make it make sense? A. OK, you asked for it, so we're going to provide you with a kind of shorthand scenario of what may well have gone down, a kind of narrative that attempts to tie a lot of disparate-seeming events together. There is voluminous, multi-sourced evidence that establishes this scenario. It's scary, so prepare yourself. We believe that the HardRight began serious planning for a 2000 electoral victory -- and then implementation of a HardRight agenda, and the destruction of a liberal opposition -- a year or two after Clinton's 1996 victory. (The impeachment of Clinton was a key ingredient to sully Democrat opposition.) The GOP HardRight leaders decided early to select George W. Bush, a none-too-bright and easily malleable young man with the right name and pedigree. They ran into a speed-bump when John McCain began to take off in the public imagination, and so with dirty tricks they wrecked his campaign in the South and elsewhere, and continued on their merry course. For a while, they fully expected an easy victory over dull Al Gore, tainted goods for a lot of conservative Republicans and others because of his association with Clinton, but, given the obvious limitations of their candidate, they weren't going to take a lot of chances. In Florida, for example, where it looked as if the race might be tight, they early on arranged things -- through Bush's governor-brother Jeb, and the Bush campaign's Katherine Harriss, Florida's Secretary of State -- so that George W. couldn't lose. An example: removing tens of thousands of eligible African-American voters from the rolls. As it turned out, Gore won the popular vote by more than a half-million votes nationwide, and, we now know, would have won Florida's popular vote had all the ballots been counted, but the U.S. Supreme Court HardRight majority, despite its longtime support for states' rights, in a bit of ethical contortionism did a philosophical reverse in midair and ordered the Florida vote-counting to stop and declared Bush the winner, installing a President rather than letting the people decide for themselves. Q. That's ancient history. I'm interested in 9/11, not tearing at an old scab. A. OK. We're merely trying to indicate that the HardRight's campaign to take power was not an overnight, post-9/11 whim but worked out long in advance. After so many near-chances to take total control, they would do anything to guarantee a presidential victory this time around -- which would give them full control over the reins of power: Legislature (where HardRightists dominated the House and Senate), the Courts (where the HardRight dominated the U.S. Supreme Court and many appellate courts), and the Executive branch, not to mention the HardRight media control they exerted in so many areas. They had followed the news, they knew that the Al-Qaeda terrorist network was engaged in a maniacal jihad against America, and was quite capable - as they had demonstrated on many occasions, from Saudia Arabia to East Africa to the first attempt on the World Trade Center -- of carrying out their threats. They also knew, from innumerable intelligence reports from telecommunications intercepts, and from various commissions, CIA and foreign agents that Al-Qaeda liked to blow up symbolic icon structures of countries targeted, and that Al-Qaeda, and its affiliates, had an affinity for trying to use airplanes as psychological or actual weapons. (The French had foiled one such attack in 1994, where a hijacked commercial airliner would be flown into the Eiffel Tower.) By early 2001 and into the summer, warnings were pouring in to U.S. intelligence and military agencies from Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Israel, and other Middle East and South Asian intelligence sources, along with Russia and Britain and the Philippines, saying that a major attack on the U.S. mainland was in the works, involving the use of airplanes as weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, in June and July of 2001, the alerts started to be explicit that air attacks were about to go down in the U.S.; even local FBI offices in Phoenix and Minneapolis began passing warnings up the line about Middle Eastern men acting suspiciously at flight schools. In July, Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airliners and traveled only by private plane, and Bush, after but a few months in office, announced he was going to ground, spending the month of August on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Cheney disappeared from view, and our guess is that he was coordinating the overall, post-attack strategy. Under this scenario, in midsummer 2001, Bush&Co. decided this was it. Bin Laden unknowingly was going to deliver them the gift of terrorism, and they were going to run with it as far and as fast and as hard as they could. The various post-attack scenarios had been worked out, the so-called USA Patriot Act -- which contained various police-state eviscerations of the Constitution -- was polished and prepared for a rush-job (with no hearings) through a post-attack Congress, the war plans against the Taliban in Afghanistan were readied and rolled out, the air-base countries around Afghanistan were brought onboard, and so on, all during the summer of 2001. Q. I don't understand how war against Afghanistan could have been anticipated so early. A. Follow the money. Various oil/gas/energy companies had wanted a Central Asian pipeline to run through Afghanistan (costing much less to build, but also so it wouldn't have to go through Russia or Iran); that project was put on hold during the chaos in Afghanistan, but when the Taliban took over and brought stability to that country, the U.S. began negotiating with the Taliban about the pipeline deal. Even after sending them, via the United Nations, $43million dollars for "poppy-seed eradication," and inviting them to talks in Texas, the Taliban began to balk. At a later meeting, the U.S. negotiator threatened them with an attack unless they handed over bin Laden and reportedly told them, in reference to the pipeline, that they could accept, "a carpet of gold" or be buried in "a carpet of bombs." (The later U.S. government spin was that the bin Laden issue and the pipeline issues were separate, and that the U.S. threats didn't mix the two and there were misunderstandings of what was said.) Shortly thereafter, bin Laden, hiding out in Afghanistan, initiated the September 11th attacks, and the U.S. bombing of that country began. Oh, by the way, in case you haven't noticed, under the new U.S.-friendly government in Kabul, the pipeline project is back on track. Oh, by the way, the pipeline will terminate reasonably close to the power plant in India built by Enron that has been lying dormant for years waiting for cheap energy supplies. Q. You're saying that U.S. war and foreign policy have been dictated by greed? A. Among other pleasant motivations, such as hunger for domination and control, domestically and around the globe -- which always ties in with greed. That's why Bush&Co. plays such political and military hardball. That's why the arrogant, take-no-prisoners, in-your-face attitude, to bully and frighten potential opponents into silence and acquiescence, even questioning their patriotism if they demur or raise embarrassing issues. Q. But this is a democracy; people are still speaking their minds, right? A. Certainly, there are areas of America's democratic republic that have not yet been shut down. But where there should be a vibrant opposition party, raising all sorts of questions about Bush Administration policy and plans, America receives mostly silence and timidity. However, as more and more of the ugly truth begins to emerge -- and Enron, Anthrax, and pre-9/11 knowledge are just the tips of the iceberg -- the Democrats (and moderate Republicans) are beginning to feel a bit more emboldened. But just a bit, preferring to run for cover whenever Bush&Co. accuse them of being unpatriotic when they raise pointed questions. Q. You're so critical and negative about the Bush Administration. Can't you say anything good about what they're doing? A. Yes. They have moved terrorism -- the new face of warfare in our time -- front and center into the world's consciousness, and have mobilized a global coalition against it. They may be making mistakes, which could lead to horrifying consequences, or acting at times out of impure motives, but at least the issue is out there and being debated and acted upon. Now, having said that, we must point out that the institutions in this country -- the Constitution, the courts, the legislative bodies, civil liberties, the Bill of Rights, the press, etc. -- are in as much danger as they've ever been in. And the U.S.'s bullying attitude abroad may well lead to disastrous consequences for America down the line. So, what's to be done? A. The most important thing at the moment -- even, or especially when, the inevitable next terrorist attack occurs -- is to break the illusion of Bush&Co. invulnerability. The best way to do that, aside from ratcheting up the Enron and Anthrax and 9/11 investigations (and it may turn out that those scandals are deeply intertwined), is to defeat GOP candidates in the upcoming November elections. If the Democrats hang on to the Senate and can take over the House, the dream of unchallengeable HardRight power will be broken. Bush& Co. will become even more desperate, overt, nasty, and in their arrogance and bullying ways, will make more mistakes and alienate more citizens. The edifice will begin to crumble even more; there will be more and deeper Congressional and media investigations; resignations and/or impeachments (of both Bush & Cheney, and Ashcroft) may well follow. Q. You're asking me to support ALL Democrats, even though in a particular race a moderate GOP conservative would be better? A. Yes. In some cases, you may have to hold your nose and send money to, canvass for, and vote for a Democrat; we can get rid of the bad ones later. The objective right now -- for the future of the Constitution, and for the lives of our soldiers in uniform and civilians around the globe -- has to be to break the momentum of the HardRight by taking the House and keeping the Senate from returning to GOP control. Doing so would be even more important than what happened when that courageous senator from Vermont, Jim Jeffords, appalled by the HardRight nastiness and greed-agenda of the Bush folks, resigned from the GOP and turned the Senate agenda over to the Democrats. Q. And you think if the GOP gets its nose bloodied in the November election that will convince Bush to resign or lead to his impeachment? I don't get that. A. Churchill once told the Brits during World War II that "this is not the beginning of the end, but it is the beginning of the beginning of the end." There is a lot of hard work and organizing and educating to be done, but the recent exposure of Bush cover-up lies about pre-9/11 knowledge is "the beginning of the beginning of the end." With a GOP defeat in November, Democrats will be emboldened to speak up more, investigate deeper, and those inquiries will unlock even more awful secrets of this greed-and-power-hungry administration. And that will be the beginning of the end -- and the beginning of the beginning of a new era of more humane values for America and the rest of the world. --------------------- Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught American government & international relations at Western Washington University and San Diego State University; he was with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years, and has published in The Nation, Village Voice, The Progressive, Northwest Passage, and widely on the Internet. A9 : t r u t h o u t 2002=20 http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.03D.bw.911.dum.htm ___________________________________________________________ FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance under- standing of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed with- out profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________ SolidarityInfoServices Solidarity4Ever, LaborLeftNews, BayAreaNews, Labor4Justice and other lists for social justice activists and others who want in- depth coverage of issues, insightful analysis, thought-provoking commentary and notice of important social change events. News - Analysis - Commentary in Service to Social Justice What you need to know, not just to understand the world ... but to change it! ____________________________________________________________ While subscriptions are free, contributions to support this work are gratefully accepted. Make checks payable to SolidarityInfoServices 1737 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94703. If what you receive is useful, tell others; if not, tell us. _____________________________________________________________ ============================================================ Tired of haggling over the price of a car? Visit Autoweb to get a free price quote. It's the no nonsense way to buy a car. http://click.topica.com/caaanoTb1dc1Ab2zMgDf/Autoweb ============================================================ ______________________________________________ Solidarity4Ever is distributed by SolidarityInfoServices, which gathers the news you can use to understand and change the world. _________________________________________________ This is a read-only list, but if you have an item you want posted, send it to the list moderator at SolidarityInfoServices@igc.org, who will determine whether it is appropriate for redistribution. You can temporarily suspend delivery by sending a request to the same address. Notify the moderator at the time you want delivery resumed. You can also manage this function yourself by going to the list at www.igc.topica.com/lists/Solidarity4Ever where you will have to register with Topica in order to administer your own subscription. _______________________________________________ ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: map@pencil.math.missouri.edu EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://igc.topica.com/u/?b1dc1A.b2zMgD Or send an email to: Solidarity4Ever-unsubscribe@igc.topica.com T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================ ***************************************************************** 42 FPIF News: Nuclear War in South Asia Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 00:43:52 -0500 (CDT) FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS http://www.fpif.org/ What's New from FPIF? June 7, 2002 **Nuclear War in South Asia By Matthew McKinzie, Zia Mian, M.V. Ramana, and A.H. Nayyar The extensive history of war between India and Pakistan suggests that wars followed misadventure driven by profound errors of policy, political and military judgement, and public sentiment. Nuclear weapons do nothing to lessen such possibilities and there is reason to believe they may make them worse in South Asia. During the 1999 Kargil War, nuclear threats were made publicly by leaders on both sides. It took international intervention to stop the slide to a larger, more destructive war. This policy report explores the human costs if such intervention fails to prevent a nuclear war on the subcontinent. (Matthew McKinzie is a Project Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Zia Mian and M.V. Ramana are researchers with the Program for Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and A.H. Nayyar is an Associate Professor of Physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. This is a updated version for FPIF (www.fpif.org) from their chapter in Smitu Kothari and Zia Mian, eds., Out of the Nuclear Shadow (Lokayan, Rainbow Press, and Zed Books.) See new FPIF Policy Report online at http://www.fpif.org/papers/nuclearsasia.html S I R I K H A L S A Communications Coordinator Interhemispheric Resource Center Email: communications@irc-online.org Tel: 505.388.0208 Fax: 505.388.0619 IRC projects online: IRC | "Working to make the U.S. a More Responsible Global Leader and Partner" (irc-online.org) Americas Program | "A New World of Ideas, Analysis, & Policy Options" (americaspolicy.org) Foreign Policy in Focus | "A Think Tank Without Walls" (fpif.org) Self Determination In Focus | "Exploring the Future of Self-determination, Sovereignty, & Governance" (selfdetermine.org) ***************************************************************** 43 [toeslist] End the Nuclear Danger: An Urgent Call Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 21:48:40 -0500 (CDT) From: The Nation Magazine FEATURE STORY | June 24, 2002 http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020624&s=schell2 End the Nuclear Danger: An Urgent Call by Jonathan Schell, Randall Caroline Forsberg, David Cortright DECADE after the end of the cold war, the peril of nuclear destruction is mounting. The great powers have refused to give up nuclear arms, other countries are producing them and terrorist groups are trying to acquire them. POORLY GUARDED warheads and nuclear material in the former Soviet Union may fall into the hands of terrorists. The Bush Administration is developing nuclear "bunker busters" and threatening to use them against nonnuclear countries. The risk of nuclear war between India and Pakistan is grave. DESPITE THE END of the cold war, the United States plans to keep large numbers of nuclear weapons indefinitely. The latest US-Russian treaty, which will cut deployed strategic warheads to 2,200, leaves both nations facing "assured destruction" and lets them keep total arsenals (active and inactive, strategic and tactical) of more than 10,000 warheads each. THE DANGERS POSED by huge arsenals, threats of use, proliferation and terrorism are linked: The nuclear powers' refusal to disarm fuels proliferation, and proliferation makes nuclear materials more accessible to terrorists. THE EVENTS of September 11 brought home to Americans what it means to experience a catastrophic attack. Yet the horrifying losses that day were only a fraction of what any nation would suffer if a single nuclear weapon were used on a city. THE DRIFT TOWARD catastrophe must be reversed. Safety from nuclear destruction must be our goal. We can reach it only by reducing and then eliminating nuclear arms under binding agreements. WE THEREFORE CALL ON THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA TO FULFILL THEIR COMMITMENTS UNDER THE NONPROLIFERATION TREATY TO MOVE TOGETHER WITH THE OTHER NUCLEAR POWERS, STEP BY CAREFULLY INSPECTED AND VERIFIED STEP, TO THE ABOLITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. AS KEY STEPS TOWARD THIS GOAL, WE CALL ON THE UNITED STATES TO: ' RENOUNCE the first use of nuclear weapons. ' Permanently END the development, testing and production of nuclear warheads. ' SEEK AGREEMENT with Russia on the mutual and verified destruction of nuclear weapons withdrawn under treaties, and increase the resources available here and in the former Soviet Union to secure nuclear warheads and material and to implement destruction. ' STRENGTHEN nonproliferation efforts by ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, finalizing a missile ban in North Korea, supporting UN inspections in Iraq, locating and reducing fissile material worldwide and negotiating a ban on its production. ' TAKE nuclear weapons off hairtrigger alert in concert with the other nuclear powers (the UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel) in order to reduce the risk of accidental or unauthorized use. ' INITIATE talks on further nuclear cuts, beginning with US and Russian reductions to 1,000 warheads each. TO SIGN THE STATEMENT, GO TO URGENTCALL.ORG OR SEND NAME, ORGANIZATION/PROFESSION (FOR ID ONLY) AND CONTACT INFORMATION TO URGENT CALL, C/O FOURTH FREEDOM FORUM, 11 DUPONT CIRCLE NW, 9TH FLOOR, WASHINGTON, DC 20036. WE NEED TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS, MADE TO URGENT CALL, TO DISSEMINATE THIS CALL. PLEASE MAIL TO THE SAME ADDRESS. THIS CALL WAS DRAFTED BY JONATHAN SCHELL, THE HAROLD WILLENS PEACE FELLOW OF THE NATION INSTITUTE AND THE AUTHOR OF THE FATE OF THE EARTH; RANDALL CAROLINE (RANDY) FORSBERG, DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE AND DISARMAMENT STUDIES AND AUTHOR OF THE "CALL TO HALT THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE," THE MANIFESTO OF THE 1980s NUCLEAR WEAPONS FREEZE CAMPAIGN; AND DAVID CORTRIGHT, PRESIDENT OF THE FOURTH FREEDOM FORUM AND FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SANE. >There are numerous ways you can help pull the world back from the brink of >nuclear insanity: Sign the Call, make a tax-deductible donation to help >disseminate the Call, present the Call in your local community, email this >note to everyone you know, and join up with one of the many terrific groups >working toward the goal of complete nuclear abolition. > >To sign the Call, and for much more info, go to: > >http://urgentcall.org > >And check out The Nation's compilation of some of the major and >not-so-major groups working in the field, including who they are, what >they're doing, and how you can help. All available at: > >http://www.thenation.com/special/20020606call.mhtml > >As one of its chief signatories and author of the seminal antinuclear text >The Fate of the Earth, Nation Institute Fellow Jonathan Schell explains the >Call's necessity in an accompanying Nation essay detailing the growing >nuclear perils of our age. Read this essay now at: > >http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020624&s=schell2 > >As Schell explains, the cloud of nuclear danger is blacker at this moment >than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. Along the Line of Control >in Kashmir, one million soldiers confront one another across the >Indian/Pakistan border in the world's greatest military mobilization since >World War II. > >Writing from New Delhi, author Praful Bidwai offers possible ways out of >this potential conflgration in a new Nation editorial, available now at: > >http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020624&s=pbidwai > >And in a special web report, famed Indian writer Arundhati Roy issues a >rare statement of the most basic sanity and humanity in a world in which >mad has come to mean not individual anger or craziness but mutually >assured destruction. > >Read this powerful essay now at: > >http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=roy20020604 > >And after reading that, get involved in one of the upcoming nationwide >antinuclear marches, protests and events. > >One of the largest is expected in NYC next Wednesday. On the occasion of >the twentieth anniversary of the historic June 12, 1982 demonstration in >Central Park, long-time disarmament activists Randall Forsberg, David >Cortright and Cora Weiss join other former SANE/Freeze organizers to spark >a new movement to abolish nuclear weapons. Speakers include Rep. Dennis >Kucinich, Grace Paley, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Jonathan Schell, among >many others. > >Society for Ethical Culture >64th Street and Central Park West >June 12, 7:00pm >FREE >For info, call 212-870-2304, or go to: >http://www.urgentcall.org/php/new_june12pr.php > >And for info on other related events, check out The Nation's special >antinuclear events calendar at: > >http://www.thenation.com/special/2002june12.mhtml > >Finally, please check out The Nation's special antinuclear archive of >articles, essays, editorials and columns featuring material all originally >published in the pages of The Nation. > >Featured pieces include Albert Einstein's 1931 plea for disarmament at a >time when the destructive power of the atom had yet to be unleashed, >then-Nation editor Freda Kirchwey's 1945 meditation on the bomb and the >Cold War, The Nation editors' comments on the 1982 peace march, E.L. >Doctorow's 1995 essay on mythologizing the bomb and Schell's classic 1998 >call The Gift of Time, among many other selections. > >All this and much more currently available at: > >http://www.thenation.com/special/nukearchive.mhtml > >The goal of nuclear abolition is ambitious. Many say that it's >unrealistic. But a nuclear revival is clearly under way. And without a >revival of nuclear protest in turn, all of our days may literally be >numbered. So, please try to get involved today. > >Best Regards, >Peter Rothberg, Associate Publisher _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: toeslist-unsubscribe@egroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 44 Caldicot Op: Reluctant anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Helen Caldicott 08.06.2002 By TIM WATKIN In 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed and one by one eastern European countries rolled their Communist leaders out of power, the peace movement around the world packed its collective bags and went home. It seems incredibly naive of a movement that had become so battle-hardened and influential in such a short time, but many reasoned that if the Soviet bloc was gone, so was the threat of nuclear war. Dr Helen Caldicott thought as much. She had toured the world in the 80s preaching the anti-nuclear message, was nominated for a Nobel peace prize and co-founded the 23,000-member "Physicians for Social Responsibility", which won the peace prize in 1985. She became the scourge of right-wing politicians the world round, dismissed as "irresponsible and extreme" by groups such as the powerful Washington think-tank the National Centre for Public Policy but adored by peace and green groups. Her lecture tour of New Zealand in the early 80s is credited with turning public opinion in favour of a nuclear-free policy. In an Auckland hotel last week, the veteran peace campaigner drops her steely gaze for a moment and sighs. "We thought we'd won," she says. "When the Berlin Wall came down we thought, 'Right, finished'." To make the point, the Australian-born campaigner who splits her time between her home land and the United States, symbolically washes her hands in mid-air. "I thought everything was hunky-dory ... 'We've helped to end the Cold War, the weapons are going to be put away'." Of course, they never were. As you read this, the US has around 2500 of its 7000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, and Russia about 2000. The US military, intelligence services and weapon-making corporations - those Caldicott calls "the death merchants" - have been finding new enemies. Some have been altogether unthreatening - despite military provocation, it turns out the Chinese want to trade goods more than insults, and North Korea can't even feed itself. But first Iraq and then a terrorist leader by the name of Osama bin Laden have lived up to their billing. In response to the September 11 attacks, US President George W. Bush has announced a US$48 billion ($98 billion) increase in military spending for next year, taking the spend to a total of $379 billion ($775 billion). That's the largest increase in US military spending in 20 years and is 22 times the amounts the "states of concern" - Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Libya - spend on military force put together. The death merchants are back in business. Which means Caldicott is back, too. Having stepped out of the debate through the 90s - unsuccessfully standing for parliament and returning to medicine, her first professional love - Caldicott is reluctantly getting back on stage. The makeup and funky streaks in her hair fudge her age, but she's 63 and would rather not embark on another campaign. "It's a pain in the neck," she says, part-sigh, part-growl. "I realised recently I really resent these people so much. My life's work was going to be medicine and I love it. But I've had to give it up." Instead she's back on the lecture circuit and back in print, with a new book titled The New Nuclear Danger, written to update her famous 1984 book Missile Envy. "The book was written to say, 'Hey, we haven't finished our work. We've got to get off our couches again and set to and finally finish it'." DETERMINED as she is to dust-off the peace movement and put its concerns back on the political agenda, this time it will be more difficult. This time, it's not new - and therefore not news. There must be some doubt whether the techniques of the 80s will work 20 years on. In Australia, the media have largely ignored her book. "They say, 'She's been saying this for 30 years', as if that negates reality. They don't want to be disturbed from their comfort zone." Problem is, the Aussie media may well be reflecting the public mood. Nuclear war is yesterday's worry. Been there, fretted over that. These days it's GM and terrorism. One look at the T-shirts worn by the cause-celebre crowd reveals that. Most people think the nuclear threat has diminished. "The public thinks that the weapons have been eradicated. The Cold War ended, Russia's not an enemy. So why would they still be on hair-trigger alert? Why would America still have a policy to fight and win a nuclear war? But they are and they do." Consider these points from Caldicott's book: * The Pentagon's official list of nuclear targets has grown from 2500 in 1989 to 3000, including China for the first time. * Contrary to Cold War nuclear policy, those targets now include non-nuclear states. * The US department of energy's nuclear laboratories have embarked on "a second Manhattan Project", spending US$5-$6 billion ($10-$12 billion) annually for the next 10 to 15 years to design, test and develop new nuclear weapons. * The Bush Administration is pledged to fast-track plans for the Star Wars missile-defence system. * The Pentagon has speculated that it might use low-level nuclear weapons if the US attacks Iraq. C ALDICOTT says contrary to public belief, the nuclear threat is greater now than ever. And don't be lulled into complacency by the fact we haven't blown ourselves up yet. To think that just because it hasn't happened it won't happen makes no sense, she says. To illustrate, she tells of a 90-year-old patient who had an accident. He'd never had an accident in 60 years and he couldn't believe what had happened. "It's not logical. On that logic you could say I'm still alive, therefore I'm never going to die." Caldicott blames former US President Bill Clinton for the fragile state of affairs. In the early 90s the political and public mood was ripe for disposing of nuclear weapons, she argues, and Clinton failed to follow through. "I'm so pissed off with him," she fumes. "Stupid man ... He failed to abolish nuclear weapons with a friendly Russia and a very compliant Yeltsin. He needed to be liked and he was hopeless. We're in a very serious position because he left the weapons in place." Here that old naivety kicks in again. She suggests, incredibly, that because George Bush snr had started unilateral disarmament, he would have rid the world of nuclear weapons had he stayed in power. Arguing that nuclear weapons are the greatest menace to life on earth seems a little archaic post-September 11. Underlying every story since has been the message that we have a new concern. Terrorism is the new enemy. Caldicott begs to differ. Nuclear power still has more potential to kill than a busload of terrorists. Not that the two are mutually exclusive. "Terrorists have nuclear weapons all round America - 103 nuclear reactors. In each reactor core is as much radiation as that released by 1000 Hiroshima bombs. And it's very easy to melt a nuclear power plant down." Further, about 100 suitcase hydrogen bombs are missing from Russia's Cold War inventory. India and Pakistan's conflict over Kashmir, teetering as it is on the tip of a missile, threatens millions of lives. (But, says Caldicott, fall-out from a nuclear war on the subcontinent could not reach us in the south. "The hemispheric air masses do not mix at the equator.") Yet for all that potential destruction, the US and Russia should still concern us most, she says. "It's only America and Russia who can destroy life with a nuclear winter, because only they have enough weapons to do it." (In case you're wondering, she says "enough" is 1000 bombs on 100 cities.) What about the Treaty of Moscow last month, in which Russia and the US promise to slash their long-range nuclear warheads by two-thirds? That only made things worse, Caldicott says. In fact, the Americans only have to store their warheads, not destroy them, and neither country has to fulfil its promise for 10 years, when both Bush and Putin will have left office. "Everyone can do what they want under this treaty and they can get out of it at 90 days' notice," she says, adding that the US is still building around 80 new bombs a year. She says the most dangerous outcome of September 11 is that it has given the hawks supremacy in Washington. Caldicott gets wound up about the Bush Administration. "I have never seen an Administration so dangerous," she says. Her arguments, however, are undermined by her anger. While denouncing bin Laden as a wicked murderer, she says his arguments that US-led sanctions and weekly bombing raids are killing innocent Iraqis are "good points". I ask about the good points of the Bush Administration. "This mob in charge is just terribly dangerous. I see no good points at all," she says. It's the trap peace activists always risk falling into - being so critical of the bullying superpower that they become dogmatic and alienate public sympathy. Still, her criticism of Bush's advisers is not to be dismissed. Consider this quote from the New York Times in February: "There will be no stages ... this is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there ... If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now." No, that doesn't come from bin Laden or one of his coterie. That was said by Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board, an unofficial bipartisan group that includes Henry Kissinger, Newt Gingrich and former CIA director R. James Woolsey, and which advises Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Bush. If the US follows the hawks, Caldicott predicts nuclear proliferation as smaller countries strive to keep up with US escalation, and nuclear holocaust within the next 20 years. But she is not without hope. Caldicott is planning to set up an institute in California called the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. All she needs is a million dollars a year for five years and she thinks she can have nuclear weapons abolished. "We have to reproduce the groundswell that we had in the 80s," she says. "The politicians respond to a groundswell. We've done it before and I know how to do it again." New Zealand News ©Copyright 2002, New Zealand Herald ***************************************************************** 45 Nuclear Arms Taboo Is Challenged in Japan The New York Times *By HOWARD W. FRENCH* TOKYO, June 8 ? Alarmed by the rising power of China and anxious about the effectiveness of security guarantees from the United States, some of Japan's most powerful politicians have begun to consider breaking with a half-century-old policy of pacifism by acquiring nuclear weapons. In comments that stunned many here, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's top aide told reporters last week that what Japan calls its three non-nuclear principles could soon come under review. "The principles are just like the Constitution," Yasuo Fukuda, the chief cabinet secretary, was quoted as saying. "But in the face of calls to amend the Constitution, the amendment of the principles is also likely." The Koizumi government was particularly embarrassed by the timing of the controversy. The first news stories about Mr. Fukuda's comments appeared while he was in South Korea attending opening ceremonies of the World Cup, for which Japan is a co-host, and came at the same time as Japan's foreign minister was calling upon India and Pakistan to pledge not to use nuclear weapons against each other. Amid a wave of criticism, Mr. Koizumi's government initially denied that the remarks had been made. Then came a belated admission by Mr. Fukuda, who insisted, however, that his comments were not intended to signal a policy shift. Mr. Koizumi went even further, saying his government has no intention of obtaining nuclear weapons. Mr. Fukuda's comments came barely a week after another senior official, the deputy chief cabinet secretary, Shinzo Abe, said publicly that Japan could legally possess nuclear weapons, so long as they were "small." As a result, for many political analysts Mr. Fukuda's words became much more than a gaffe. In one of his many attempts to explain away his remarks, Mr. Fukuda, one of Japan's most sober and sure-footed political figures, said he was merely trying to get "young reporters" to begin thinking differently about their country's future. Despite the denials of an imminent change, remarks like these indicate that a major shift in Japanese security thinking is under way. Japan's official pacifism is more than a simple policy. Since the country's defeat in World War II with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ? the only time atomic weapons have been used in a conflict ? it has been an integral element of the national identity. The three non-nuclear principles ? never to own, produce or allow nuclear weapons on Japanese territory ? were overwhelmingly ratified in a parliamentary vote in 1971, reflecting the strong national consensus on the issue. The principles supplement the explicitly pacifist Constitution, which does not refer directly to nuclear weapons. The comments by officials in Mr. Koizumi's government, however, come against a backdrop of other recent statements that show an erosion of support for pacifism, at least among the political class. Barely a month ago, an influential opposition leader, Ichiro Ozawa, all but predicted Japan's nuclear armament. "If China gets too inflated, the Japanese people will become hysterical in response," he said. "We have plenty of plutonium in our nuclear power plants, so it's possible for us to produce 3,000 to 4,000 nuclear warheads." Mr. Ozawa was pressured to retract his remarks. But then, according to the newspaper Tokyo Shimbun, Tokyo's mayor, Shintaro Ishihara, called Mr. Fukuda to congratulate him for his comments about nuclear weapons. Mr. Ishihara, a nationalist and one of Japan's most popular politicians, is widely seen as a possible successor to Mr. Koizumi. All this was in telling contrast with the last time a prominent politician entertained such an idea. In October 1999, Shingo Nishimura, then the new vice minister of defense in the cabinet of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, said in an interview that Japan's failure to consider nuclear armament left it open to "rape" by China. The chorus of criticism that followed became so shrill that Mr. Nishimura was forced to resign. "What we are seeing is vastly accelerated change post 9/11," said Robyn Lim, a professor of international relations at Nanzan University, in Nagoya. "Japan has watched how nifty Putin's diplomacy has been, deciding that Russia will cooperate on missile defense with the United States, and the effects of this will be transmitted here through China. China will build up even faster than they might have. "You have to wonder then," she said, "how long Japan can remain the only non-nuclear power among the major countries in the region?" The nationalist-leaning Mr. Koizumi came into office just over a year ago promising sweeping economic reforms, which he has largely failed to deliver, earning him unfavorable ratings. But he has used the alarm raised by the Sept. 11 attacks and the hawkish sentiments of Japan's politicians to push through big changes in Japan's defense posture. Japan's neighbors have always regarded its non-nuclear status with skepticism. Japan spends lavishly on nuclear energy, promoting nuclear fuel enrichment programs that have produced stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium. Japan's space program, meanwhile, has developed rockets that could be converted into missile launchers. Japan's mastery of these two technologies already makes it a "virtual nuclear power," arms control experts say. Japanese conservatives have long been frustrated by a Constitution that was written by the United States during the postwar occupation, from 1945 to 1952. The Constitution prohibits Japan from having an army or using force to settle disputes. Revising this clause would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Parliament. Such backing would be difficult to achieve because pacifism enjoys continuing popular support. Rather than try to revise the Constitution, Mr. Koizumi has simply decided to reinterpret it liberally. With little opposition, he dispatched warships overseas for the first time in the postwar period, to the Indian Ocean in support of the American campaign in Afghanistan. This month, he is pushing a bill before Parliament that would give Japan's armed forces much broader powers in an emergency. "During the 1990's we had almost constant cabinet changes, and you could describe the process as one of drifting or being carried by the currents," said Yasuhiro Nakasone, a former prime minister who has supported a more assertive defensive posture for Japan. "What the Koizumi cabinet has been doing is trying to recover the lost ground." North Korea, an ally of China, first set off reappraisals of Japan's defense needs when it test fired a ballistic missile over Japan in 1998. That missile launching also served to renew doubts here about American guarantees of Japanese security under a longstanding mutual defense treaty. Japanese complained bitterly that Washington failed to share its reconnaissance intelligence and gave the country no warning of the North Korean launching. In response, Japan accelerated development of its own costly spy satellite program, and politicians began discussing the need for something beyond American guarantees to defend their country. "Simply put, we doubt that the United States would sacrifice Los Angeles for Tokyo," said Taro Kono, a member of Parliament. Mr. Kono does not support nuclear armament, but he is one of a growing number of young Liberal Democratic politicians who favor constitutional reform to allow Japan to defend itself with conventional arms. Bush administration officials said they did not yet see any substantial shift in Japan. "We see no change in Japan's policy," said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "The U.S.-Japan alliance has never been stronger." ***************************************************************** 46 Hiroshima, Nagasaki protest U.S. nuke test Editorial comments: jteditor@japantoday.com Send to a friend Print Saturday, June 8, 2002 at 20:00 JST HIROSHIMA ? The governors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the mayor of Nagasaki and many other municipal government officials protested Saturday against a U.S. subcritical nuclear test conducted Friday. In a letter to U.S. President George W Bush, Hiroshima Gov Yuzan Fujita said he is angry the United States conducted the test despite repeated calls on it not to. Fujita criticized the Bush administration for failing to rule out the possibility of a nuclear attack on Iran and Iraq and described the test as "a challenge to the international community." Nagasaki Gov Genjiro Kaneko and Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito sent similar protest messages to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. "It is a very dangerous act that could lead to a nuclear arms race," Kaneko wrote in his letter. (Kyodo News) ***************************************************************** 47 Scientists Skeptical of Bush Plan Las Vegas SUN June 07, 2002 Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory just outside San Francisco were caught by surprise by President Bush's plan to shift oversight of the lab to the new Department of Homeland Security. The laboratory has been overseen by the Department of Energy. "We just heard about this. It's hard to imagine how this could be done completely because the nuclear weapons role would have to remain within the Energy Department," Phil Duffy, a chemist who researches global warming at the lab, said Friday. Duffy said Livermore fits well in the Energy Department because, among other reasons, the agency has the high-end computers needed for nuclear research. Bush's quietly developed plan to create a Department of Homeland Security shuffles dozen of federal agencies. Regarding Livermore, the plan calls for the new agency to incorporate and focus the lab's "intellectual energy and extensive capacity." The plan was announced Thursday. Former Livermore director Michael May, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, was dubious. "Livermore does quite a bit of homeland security and wants to do as much as it can, obviously, but the major projects there are Department of Energy projects," he said. Livermore was founded 50 years ago as a second nuclear weapons design laboratory - after Los Alamos National Laboratory. Livermore's research mission has since grown to include energy, biomedicine and environmental science. The lab, with an annual budget of $1.5 billion, is managed by the University of California, as are Los Alamos and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which does non-weapons, unclassified research. The Los Alamos and Berkeley labs aren't mentioned in the Bush plan, and an Energy Department spokeswoman said she doesn't believe they will be involved in the reorganization. A spokesman at Los Alamos, which works closely with Livermore on maintaining the nation's nuclear stockpile, said he couldn't comment. The University of California was not consulted by the White House about the shift, and was awaiting further details, a spokesman there said. Retiring lab director C. Bruce Tarter, who learned about Bush's plans for Livermore from The Associated Press, said Friday he too hadn't yet received any "official details." He said all the laboratories "have played important roles in the war on terrorism and we look forward to enhancing our future contributions to this cause." Philip Pagoria, another Livermore chemist, said he heard about the proposed shift only on Friday morning. "There's always ways we can contribute to homeland security," he said, "but I'm going to have to take some time to consider what this might mean." On the Net: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: http://www.llnl.gov [http://www.llnl.gov] Department of Energy: http://www.energy.gov [http://www.energy.gov] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 48 Home safety office sought - - The Tribune Chronicle - Your Mahoning Valley News Source Friday, June 07, 2002 The Associated Press WASHINGTON - Stung by intelligence failures, President Bush called on Congress Thursday night to remake the government with a terrorist-fighting Department of Homeland Security, warning that ''thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us.'' Congress welcomed the proposal, even as lawmakers intensified their inquiry into lapses before the Sept. 11 attacks, hearing from the FBI director as well as a whistle-blower who complained about the agency's stifling bureaucracy In a nationally broadcast address, Bush acknowledged that ''suspicions and insights of some of our front-line agents did not get enough attention'' and he urged employees of the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies to report anything that raises concerns. ''We need to know when warnings were missed or signs unheeded - not to point the finger of blame, but to make sure we correct any problems, and prevent them from happening again,'' the president said in his 13-minute address. The new Department of Homeland Security would inherit 169,000 employees and $37.4 billion in budgets from the agencies it would absorb, including the Secret Service, the Coast Guard and the embattled immigration and customs services. The White House said it was the biggest government overhaul in a half-century. Bush spoke from a lectern placed in the threshold of the White House's Blue Room, with Washington's stormy evening sky visible through the window over his shoulder - a fittingly gloomy setting for his words of warning. ''America is leading the civilized world in a titanic struggle against terror,'' the president said, a small American flag pin on his lapel. ''Freedom and fear are at war - and freedom is winning.'' Homeland security adviser Tom Ridge, who aides say is virtually certain to be Bush's nominee to head the Cabinet post, conducted a blitz of TV interviews after the presidential speech. ''We're asking the country to do a big thing at a time of crisis and I believe they're going to do it,'' Ridge said. Bush hopes to have the department in place by Jan. 1. The president said that based on what he knows, ''I do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of Sept. 11. Yet we now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us and this terrible knowledge requires us to act different.'' Reaction was generally positive in Congress, though Democrats said Bush's action was overdue and likely to be overhauled on Capitol Hill. ''I think they saw they were getting behind the wave,'' said Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., co-sponsor of a homeland security reform bill, said, ''We've got to our act together, and this is the best way to do it quickly.'' Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said he wasn't sure a reorganization was needed. ''The question is whether shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic is the way to go,'' he said. White House officials privately acknowledged the proposal could be drastically watered down in turf wars as the affected agencies - and the 88 congressional committees and subcommittees that oversee them - fight to retain power. Bush aides also fear that conservatives will view the proposal as a spread of government bureaucracy. ''The reason to create this department is not to increase the size of the government, but to increase its focus and effectiveness,'' Bush said. The White House unveiled the proposal hours before Bush's address - just as FBI Director Robert Mueller took his seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain why warning signals were missed prior to the September attacks. ''The need for change was apparent even before Sept. 11. It has become more urgent since then,'' Mueller said in a nationally televised hearing. Later, FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley told the lawmakers mistakes are inevitable in an agency hampered by an ''ever-growing bureaucracy.'' The White House said its reorganization will not cost more money; it will shuffle current operations within the government without expanding the bureaucracy. The proposal itself is a marked reversal for Bush. He rejected pleas from Congress last fall to create a Cabinet position and chose instead to install Ridge as an informal adviser. That shielded Ridge from being compelled to testify before Congress. The new department would have four divisions: -Border Transportation and Security, which would take over the Immigration and Naturalization Service from the Department of Justice, the Customs Service from Treasury and the Coast Guard from the Department of Transportation. -Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection, which would draw from several agencies including the FBI and CIA to fuse and analyze information about potential threats. -Emergency Preparedness and Response, which would include FEMA, now an independent agency. -Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures, which would take over the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California. The departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture would lose divisions to this office, which would prepare the country for a full range of terrorist threats. The Secret Service, which specializes in threat assessments and security at high-profile events, would remain intact after moving from Treasury to the new department. It was unclear what authority any new secretary of homeland security would have over the FBI and CIA. A senior administration official briefing reporters at the White House said the secretary could not order - only strongly suggest - that the FBI investigate a lead. www.tribune-chronicle.com [http://www.tribune-chronicle.com] 240 Franklin St. S.E. | Warren, Ohio 44482 330.841.1600 (local) | 888.550.TRIB (toll-free) Tribune Chronicle. Copyright © 2002 Tribune Chronicle ***************************************************************** 49 Admiral (retired) J G Nadkarni on the possibility of a nuclear attack rediff.com: June 7, 2002 August 6, 2002, will mark the 57th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima by the United States. Three days later, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The world thus entered the nuclear age. There were more than 200,000 casualties in the two cities. The effects of the weapons were so horrendous that no country has ever used them again in anger against another country. At the time of the Hiroshima attack, only the United States was in possession of the weapons. The nuclear bomb was developed in a race against time. At the time it was thought that Germany, which was in possession of the technology, might develop the weapon ahead of the Allies. After the war, a large number of German scientists were transported, both to the Soviet Union and the West, where they were instrumental in further development of the weapons technology. By 1949, the Soviet Union had its own bomb. During the next 50 years both the United States and the Soviet Union perfected more sophisticated and increasingly lethal nuclear weapons and better and quicker delivery systems. At the height of the Cold War the United States had stockpiled over 12,000 warheads while the Soviet Union matched this with 7,000 of their own. In fact, each side had, and even now possesses, enough warheads to destroy each other many times over. Although the bomb was never used, certain documents now reveal that both the US and the Soviet Union came pretty close to doing so. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon each contemplated the use of nuclear weapons. Leonid Brezhnev also thought of using the bomb against China. But in each case it was against a non-nuclear power, and in each case better sense prevailed. In 1998, India, soon to be followed by Pakistan, exploded its own nuclear devices, thus joining the select club of nuclear weapon states. Today both are on the threshold of their fourth war and the main question facing the world is whether any conflict between the two countries will result in an all-out nuclear war. The principal problem when coming to any conclusion regarding the nature of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan is the absence of much data about the two countries. From information made public from time to time or extrapolating from some scientific data, a few bits and pieces are available. But a large part of the jigsaw puzzle is still missing from both sides. Thus, in the absence of any concrete evidence, much of what the experts tell us is based on conjecture, personal prejudice or even wishful thinking. This much is known. India's nuclear arsenal is plutonium-based while that of Pakistan makes use of uranium. Both claim to have in their possession thermonuclear weapons, the so-called hydrogen bomb, whose lethal power is many times more than the old atomic bomb. Both have demonstrated their ability to launch long- and medium-range missiles and have conducted tests of these missiles. Both sides also possess the ability to deliver the weapons by aircraft but as yet are not believed to have a sea-launched version. But this still leaves some large gaps in information. What, for example, are the weapon yields? What is the accuracy of the delivery systems? And, finally, what are the numbers we are talking about? No one has any definite answers to these questions. According to a number of experts who make a study of these matters, Pakistan is believed to have anywhere from 20 and 50 warheads while the number on the Indian side is said to be more than 200. They are thought to be of the 1-megaton variety (about 50 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Both India and Pakistan have missiles, which can reach the major cities and industrial and population centres of the other. But how accurate these missiles are and whether the countries have perfected the art of mounting nuclear warheads on them is anybody's guess. But India has in the past demonstrated that it can develop intricate communications satellites, mount them on rockets and place them in orbit. The problem of fitting missiles with nuclear warheads should not be too intricate to these scientists. Should a nuclear exchange develop, there are some extremely lucrative targets available to the two countries. Apart, of course, from the two capitals, there are the major ports and principal financial centres of Karachi and Mumbai. Both are the most populous cities of their respective countries, apart also from being major ports. Mumbai is India's largest port. Any damage to the port and its subsequent closure can have a major impact on the Indian economy. Another lucrative target is the nearby Bombay High oil platforms, which contribute a major part to India's oil production. What will be the effect of a 1-megaton nuclear bomb dropped on Mumbai? Hiroshima was a city of about 200,000 when it took the bomb in 1945, and not as densely packed as Mumbai, which has a population today of around 12 million, about 60 times more. Moreover, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was only of 20 kiloton. Even so, the total casualties in Hiroshima were about 140,000. Extrapolating from that, the immediate casualties in Mumbai are expected to be over 1 million, while another 2 million will suffer the consequences of an attack. Physically, the port of Mumbai will be out of action for over a year. With such unimaginable consequences, no wonder the bomb has never been used for the past 57 years. India has already declared its intention not to use the weapon for pre-emption or for a first strike. Pakistan has declined to make such an announcement and has reserved its options. So will a conventional war between India and Pakistan lead to an all-out nuclear exchange? A number of senior officers believe that the nuclear weapons will never be used. Such belief, however, makes a mockery of the nuclear deterrence theory. The bomb can only be a deterrent if one believes that it can be used in certain circumstances. Of course, the decision to use the weapon will not be taken lightly and it may be used only in the last extremity. But the entire idea of developing a nuclear capability is to be able to use it, if need occurs. There is the further and real danger of nuclear weapons or even one bomb falling into the hands of extremists or militants. People capable of planning and executing an attack on the World Trade Centre are certainly capable of mounting such an operation. Many in India and Pakistan had hopes that the development of nuclear weapons would reduce the chances of conventional warfare between the two countries. It was also expected that eventually it would lead to the reduction of both conventional forces and nuclear weapons. Both these expectations have failed to materialise. In fact the two are closer to war today than before and there is real danger of a nuclear exchange between them. The only way the threat of a nuclear war between the neighbours will recede will be with the reduction, control and capping, if not total elimination, of such weapons on both sides. ***************************************************************** 50 Subcritical nuclear test successful after delays Saturday, June 08, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal REVIEW-JOURNAL After some technical delays this week, scientists successfully detonated the Oboe 9 subcritical nuclear weapons experiment Friday at the Nevada Test Site, officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration said. The experiment was set off at 2:46 p.m., said Kevin Rohrer, a spokesman for the administration's North Las Vegas office. "Data from monitoring instruments confirmed that the experiment was subcritical, that is, no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurred," according to a statement by the agency, which is a branch of the Department of Energy. The experiment by scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was the nation's 17th since the program was launched July 2, 1997. The program allows scientists to detonate small amounts of plutonium to understand without full-scale testing how nuclear warhead materials age in the stockpile. Full-scale tests were put on hold indefinitely in 1992. In anticipation of Friday's subcritical experiment, an international anti-nuclear group, the Shundahai Network, issued a statement denouncing the work at the Nevada Test Site. "These tests continue to violate the spirit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the World Court's ruling on the illegality of preparing for nuclear war," the Shundahai Network's statement says. "It is also a continued violation of the Treaty of Ruby Valley signed with the Western Shoshone Nation." Conducted in a below-ground complex, 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, subcritical nuclear experiments allow scientists to study how materials, such as plutonium, blow apart. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 51 U.S. nuclear sub visits Sasebo Editorial comments: jteditor@japantoday.com Saturday, June 8, 2002 at 20:00 JST SASEBO ? A 6,080-ton U.S. nuclear-powered submarine made a brief call Saturday at Sasebo port in Nagasaki Prefecture, city officials said. The Columbus, with about 130 crew members aboard, stopped at the port around 9 a.m. and left an hour later after several crew members went to the U.S. naval base there by boat, they said. (Kyodo News) ***************************************************************** 52 Test site changes unlikely Intelligence-gathering faces reorganization Saturday, June 08, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- President Bush's proposed government reorganization for homeland security probably won't affect the Nevada Test Site and the counterterrorism training that takes place there, Rep. Jim Gibbons said. Gibbons, R-Nev., said the reorganization will focus on agencies that collect intelligence information. The test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is primarily a training and testing facility. The test site, which is managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration, an affiliate of the Department of Energy, "is part of our training rather than our analysis." "I don't believe for the most part the test site is going to be affected," he said. The government spends at least $10 million per year on programs at the test site to train law enforcement officers and other civilians how to respond to potential attacks by terrorists wielding biological or nuclear weapons. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other state leaders have campaigned for more money to expand the facility's mission and to have the site declared a National Center for Combatting Terrorism. Gibbons attended a White House meeting Friday to discuss the reorganization plan. The Nevadan and eight other members of Congress gathered for an hour and 15 minutes with Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Tom Ridge, director of the White House Office of Homeland Security. Gibbons was asked by the Bush administration to become a congressional sponsor of Bush's proposal to create a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Gibbons said he was assigned to work with House leaders to devise a system to move the bill. With 88 congressional committees sharing jurisdiction over homeland security matters, Gibbons said it probably would be necessary to create a single special panel to handle the bill in the House. No such committee would be needed in the Senate, Gibbons said, because the government affairs committee already has approved a homeland security bill. Gibbons is scheduled to testify Tuesday at the first House hearing on the plan. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 53 India, Pakistan's rush to nuclear brink caught U.S. off guard Pittsburgh, PA Cold War's end dulled policy-maker thinking on atomic weapons Sunday, June 09, 2002 By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette National Bureau WASHINGTON -- It's been decades since U.S. officials seriously contemplated the prospect of nuclear war. Busy prosecuting the war on terror and trying to quell the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they were caught off guard by the brinkmanship being played out between Pakistan and India that raises the prospect anew. For well over a decade now, American policy makers have not considered nuclear war a distinct possibility even as more countries worked to gain nuclear capability. When archrivals India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998, the Clinton administration focused on why U.S. intelligence agencies missed the warning signs that tests were coming, not on the real possibility of war between the two newly nuclear states. After Sept. 11, in gratitude to both countries for joining the U.S. war against terrorism, President Bush lifted sanctions imposed as a result of the 1998 tests that had prohibited weapon sales to Pakistan and India. There was little talk at that point about what might happen if Muslim radicals in Pakistan began escalating their attacks in the disputed territory of Kashmir. Many would like nothing more than to spark all-out war between India and Pakistan, which might allow them to pick up the pieces and gain control of Pakistan. Much of the theorizing on what-ifs should nuclear weapons be fired has been in the intellectual realm of private think-tanks. U.S. officials fear that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf might be tempted to use a nuclear bomb in an all-out war because India's army is twice the size of Pakistan's. U.S. officials also are nervous about the pride Pakistan takes in its fledgling nuclear capability. Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, said this week, "Nuclear affairs are now being guided by wishful, delusional thinking. The most frightening delusion is India's trivialization of Pakistan's nuclear capability." Musharraf said a few days ago he doesn't believe either country is "irresponsible" enough to fire nuclear weapons. But India, with 1 billion people, eight religions and 18 languages, is much bigger than predominantly Muslim Pakistan with 142 million people. And India's ambassador to the United States, Lalit Mansingh, bitterly notes that terrorists based in Pakistan have killed more than 60,000 Indians in the past 20 years. When Secretary of State Colin Powell began trying a few weeks ago to convince both countries of the danger they were flirting with, sources say, U.S. officials dusted off and updated computer models indicating that if both countries launched nuclear warheads, millions would die on both sides. Thousands more would sicken and eventually die from radiation sickness. President Bush called both leaders this week. He told Musharraf the United States "expects Pakistan to live up to the commitment Pakistan has made to end all support for terrorism," and he told Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee that India "must respond with de-escalatory steps." The administration also sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the region to warn both sides that nothing they could hope to win from such an unthinkable confrontation would be worth the catastrophic results. Enroute to South Asia, Rumsfeld said the 57-year period that has elapsed since nuclear weapons were fired in anger is "an impressive accomplishment on the part of humanity. I don't know of any other time in history where there has been a significant weapon that has not been used for that long of a period." U.S. officials are warning that aside from untold death and illness, a nuclear exchange would cause devastating economic, agricultural and environmental damage to both countries. They are privately telling authorities in both countries that while the United States would help with humanitarian relief, it would not provide economic aid to a country that launched a nuclear weapon. Anti-nuclear groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists and Physicians for Social Responsibility argue that the United States helps legitimize the building and possible use of nuclear weapons by refusing to give up its own. Copyright ©1997-2002 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights ***************************************************************** 54 India-Pakistan nuclear war would have little fallout in U.S. Pittsburgh, PA Sunday, June 09, 2002 By Michael Woods, Post-Gazette National Bureau WASHINGTON -- Radioactive fallout from a nuclear war between India and Pakistan probably would not threaten the United States but could drift over U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan, experts say. Deadly levels of fallout would also drift across southern Asia including Bangladesh, Nepal, and China. Depending on weather conditions and other factors, the fallout could cause thousands of deaths for years into the future. The experts, who have studied the consequences of nuclear war in South Asia, foresee a devastating impact in India and Pakistan. "The immense scale of these effects should make it clear that possible use of such weapons would lead to a major catastrophe," said Mani V. Ramana of Princeton University. Ramana and his associates also calculated the possible overall effects of a "limited" nuclear war between India and Pakistan. They assumed that each country would use one-tenth of its stockpile of nuclear weapons. The weapons, they assumed, would be targeted on the 10 largest cities in both countries. In that scenario, 2.6 million people would die or be critically injured in India and 1.8 million in Pakistan. Estimates from the Institute for Science and International Security indicate that India has about 65 nuclear bombs and missile warheads and Pakistan about 40. Their explosive power, or yield, is a key factor in projecting possible radiation effects in the United States and other areas outside India and Pakistan. Weather conditions are one factor that decides where fallout will land. Rain, for instance, could quickly wash more material out of the air and deposit it locally. The annual monsoon rains are now settling over India and Pakistan. In addition to increasing localized fallout, they could give India a strategic edge in a nuclear exchange, experts say. Before the monsoons, prevailing winds are from the northwest, and could blow fallout from nuclear blasts in Kashmir or Pakistan back over India. During the monsoons, they generally blow from the south and south-west, and could carry fallout across Pakistan and into Afghanistan and China. "I imagine there would be no significant health consequences in the United States from fallout," Ramana said. The United States exploded 90 similar-size weapons in the atmosphere at the Nevada Test Site during the 1950s. A 1997 National Center Institute study found that eveyone in the country was exposed to radioactive fallout for about two months after each test. The health consequences, if any, are still unclear. Copyright ©1997-2002 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights ***************************************************************** 55 Letter From Pakistan: A Nuclear Mood Los Angeles Times | L.A. Weekly Friday June 07 06:24 PM EDT By Ali Ahmed Rind ON THE STREET CORNERS OF KARACHI, THE talk is of war. How it's inevitable, how our leaders are vowing to teach the enemy a lesson. "What do you think, will India cross over the Line of Control?" I hear someone ask a friend. "No, it will dare not. Pakistan has got atom bombs and would not hesitate to use them." Last week I traveled to Umarkot along the Pakistan-India border, about 500 kilometers east of Karachi in the Thar Desert. I wanted to see what people there thought about our war footing, seeing how they are the first major town that comes in the way of Indian forces. In the 1965 war, Indian soldiers came through Umarkot, which the Pakistani military abandoned to the locals and their outdated weapons. "How do you feel about the imminence of war?" I asked the owner of a small grocery shop. "I am worried about it, but I doubt if it will happen," he replied. "But, what if it really comes about?" "Well, in that case I would wait until it is finished," he said. It surprises me that in the heart of the possible battlefield, people have no idea about how this war could well be different from any other. They do not comprehend what a catastrophe an exchange of nuclear warheads would be. They agree with President Pervez Musharraf that Pakistan would have little choice if cornered by the much larger Indian armed forces. "Any incursion by the Indian forces across the Line of Control -- the working boundary separating Kashmir from both countries -- would unleash a storm," Musharraf said last week. Yet the government has issued no warnings about nuclear war, or what people can do to increase their chances of surviving one. Perhaps this explains why, when both countries blasted nukes in their deserts to test their power of annihilation in the summer of 1998, people danced in the streets and distributed sweets in joy. The situation on our borders is grave. We hold our breath in anticipation of the world's first nuclear war. But for many Pakistanis, it's just another day in an already difficult life. This is a country where on an average day, three to four people commit suicide for economic reasons, where six of 10 people do not know how to read or write. LAST WEEK, KARACHI'S MAYOR, NAIMATULLAH Khan, led a parade through his city of 12 million in "Defense of Pakistan." The crowd carried banners and flags and some people chanted, "Kashmir will become Pakistan." Some burned Indian flags and an effigy of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpaye. What troubled me while witnessing the jingoistic mood of the crowd was not so much the way the elite class of the city dealt with such a sensitive matter, but the mayor's tone. I could not decide if I was hearing an aggressive outburst of a Taliban demagogue or a responsible leader of my city. Referring to medieval Afghan Muslim conqueror Mahmood Ghaznavi, who looted and plundered South Asia (present-day Pakistan and India) 17 times, he declared: "The 18th attack on India is still in the cards, and God willing, we will complete his [Ghaznavi's] mission. We have made missiles and bombs not to be kept in showcase but to employ. The people of Karachi are eager to wage jihad." Pakistan, by the way, named its recently tested ballistic missiles after Ghaznavi. The Abdali and Ghauri missiles were named for medieval Muslim conquerors. FREE DEBATE ON EMOTIONAL ISSUES SUCH AS our standoff with India is largely forbidden in Pakistan and India, particularly on television, which is under state control in both countries. Generally, the only voices one hears are of those who twist reality and seem content to misinform and misguide. "Despite being a nuclear power, if we keep running on American dictation, it would be collective catastrophe for us," said Majeed Nizami, chief editor of Pakistan's largest group of newspapers, Nawa-i-Waqt. "If Hindus are contemplating [building dams on our two key rivers, Jhelum and Chenab], we should send an atom bomb to them." Many commentators see India's pressure tactics as fast losing support in Indian states. Or they say it is an attempt by the right-wing Hindu nationalist government to divert attention from domestic problems. Another view is that America is behind the Indian show of belligerence. They argue that Americans want to pressure Pakistan to get maximum collaboration in the ongoing war against terrorism. "What India is doing is all with the Americans' blessings. If not, that means there is one exceptional country in the world that could defy America's wish," one political leader commented. The few voices of sanity remaining in this part of the world warn against such delusions. "They are either in deep deception or overestimate the nuclear deterrence as a panacea to all security threats," said Imtiaz Alam, a leftist intellectual. He says Pakistan has seriously miscalculated the cost of refusing to meet basic Indian demands for de-escalation over the Kashmir issue. I must say, we made the same mistakes in 1965 and 1971, when full-scale wars broke out. Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc., and ***************************************************************** 56 Indian astrologers predict skirmishes not nuclear war Ananova * Ananova: * Indian astrologers are predicting military skirmishes but not all-out nuclear war with Pakistan next week. Their celestial calendars say the heavens will be in "chaotic ferment" between June 13 and 15. They say there's a "turbulent" combination of planets as the Moon clashes with the Sun, Mercury and Saturn. Leading astrologer Acharya Govind says it's a "highly vulnerable and negative period" for India and Pakistan. Another Delhi astrologer Suman Pandit told The Daily Telegraph the army should be on a heightened state of alert. Many Indian politicians are known to employ astrologers, palmists and numerologists to give them advice. Story filed: 09:12 Saturday 8th June 2002 /Copyright © 2002 Ananova Ltd/ ***************************************************************** 57 Nuclear ignorance radiates across Pakistan June 8, 2002 Nuclear ignorance radiates across Pakistan 'Lack of education': Feeds public desire for war with India Stewart Bell National Post Arko Datta, Reuters A resident of the Indian Kashmiri village of Pansar carries earthen pots salvaged from her house, destroyed in recent cross-border shelling. ISLAMABAD - Shopping at a crowded bazaar, where vendors sell rolls of brightly coloured cotton and stacks of fresh mangoes, a man wearing sandals and a traditional Pakistani tunic looked confused when asked whether he was worried about a nuclear war between his country and India. He finally shook his head, admitting he could not answer because, like many in Pakistan -- which is both a nuclear power and a Third World country -- he did not know what nuclear weapons were or the kind of damage they would cause. India and Pakistan have indicated they are ready to fire some of their 200 nuclear warheads at each other in their dispute over Kashmir; foreigners are fleeing the subcontinent and world leaders are trying to defuse what is considered the worst nuclear threat since the Cuban missile crisis. But you wouldn't know it in the Pakistani capital. For a city said to be on the brink of a nuclear conflict that could kill tens of millions, Islamabad is remarkably calm, in part, Pakistanis admit, because much of the population has no idea what a nuclear bomb is or the destructive force it unleashes. "There is some unawareness about what nuclear war brings," said Haroon, who works at a shop that sells pirated copies of music CDs. "People mostly don't know what destruction these weapons can make and what are the aftereffects." Pakistan has among the world's lowest education levels, and most people are illiterate. A blast that could vaporize everything within a few kilometres and pollute the land and air with deadly radiation is a concept beyond the comprehension of a good number of people. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University, decried what he called his country's "simple ignorance about what nuclear war means," adding even his students did not comprehend the long-term impact of a nuclear explosion. In Islamabad, nobody seems to be stockpiling food, building fallout shelters or sending their families abroad. Everyone appears to be just carrying on as before, preoccupied with World Cup soccer and the approaching monsoon season rather than nuclear annihilation. Banners hung around the city warn of the dangers of tobacco advertising, but there are no anti-nukes slogans to be found. "I think Europeans are more worried than local residents here," said Mahboob Saghri Khaddak, a retired journalist. Nuclear ignorance is not unique to Pakistan. Protesters in India marched this week carrying signs reading, "We Want War," apparently without regard for the risk of nuclear escalation. "Both countries, we are stupid due to lack of education," said Majid Ali, as he watched a soccer match on a tiny black-and-white screen on the counter at his grocery store. Ever since they were partitioned at the end of British colonial rule, India and Pakistan have quarreled regularly over Kashmir, a stretch of the Himalayas between the two countries. With its Muslim majority, Kashmir might have rightly gone to Pakistan in 1947, but its Hindu ruler favoured joining India. Persistent unrest has followed, as Islamic militants pressing for an end to Indian rule have launched a series of guerrilla and terrorist attacks that have intensified in recent weeks. India accuses Pakistan of aiding the militants and has retaliated by shelling Pakistani villages. A million troops are now stationed along the Line of Control that divides India's part of Kashmir from the smaller segment under Pakistani authority. But it is the nuclear weapons possessed by both India and Pakistan that have fuelled concerns in the West. Richard Armitage, an envoy dispatched by George W. Bush, the U.S. president, met on Thursday in Islamabad with Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, who pledged he would not be the one to launch the war. Mr. Armitage met yesterday with Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, amid signs tensions were easing. "I was able to convey [to Indian leaders] ... the commitment of President Musharraf to stop all cross-border, cross-LOC infiltration," Mr. Armitage said. Reinforcing his words, the State Department said it had detected a significant reduction in the number of infiltrations from Pakistani-controlled Kashmir into the Indian-controlled part of the territory. "We have growing indications that infiltration across the Line of Control is down significantly," spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington. Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Defence Secretary, is to meet the two leaders next week. Outgunned by its better-armed adversary, Pakistan sees nuclear weapons as a way of evening the military balance in the region. After India conducted five underground nuclear tests and declared itself a nuclear power in May, 1998, Pakistan announced it had tested six bombs. Pakistan has an estimated 25 to 50 nuclear warheads which can be dropped from fighter planes, or fitted to Ghari missiles with a range of 1,500 kilometres or Shaheen missiles with a shorter range. India has 100 to 150 warheads and missiles capable of hitting targets up to 3,000 km away. Because of the subcontinent's dense population, experts have predicted that a nuclear strike could kill tens of millions. But rather than sounding the alarm bells, as would be expected of Western activists, a local peace group scorned Mr. Musharraf and Mr. Vajpayee this week for creating war hysteria. In a part of the world where one of the most common expressions is "inshaallah," Arabic for "if God wills it," the relaxed attitude to the possibility of mutually assured destruction can also be partly attributed to the fatalism of the local culture. Three men squatting beside a sidewalk tea stand in the heavy afternoon heat put the odds of a nuclear war at 50-50 but shrugged away the thought. "I leave it to God," one of them said. They also seemed oblivious to the full consequences of a nuclear attack. A group of taxi drivers resting in the shade on a woven mat, however, said they were well aware that if nuclear weapons were launched "everything is finished. The atom bomb," one of them said, "is very, very dangerous." Perhaps even more disturbing than those who don't understand nuclear war are those who do yet are still unfazed. "I know what is nuclear, no worry about that," offered a man in Rawalpindi, the bustling city southeast of the capital. But he said he was not concerned about the prospects of a nuclear strike, saying if it happened, he and other Pakistani casualties would gladly become martyrs, or shaheed, for Kashmir. "We are ready," he said. "No worry about nuclear because we want to be shaheed." Mustat Mirza, 78, said nuclear war would be devastating for both countries. "Everything will be totally eradicated from the use of that atomic bomb," he said. But he agreed Pakistan should use its nuclear missiles if it were necessary to repel India. Some Pakistanis said the lack of panic in Islamabad's wide streets was simply a sign that people are certain nuclear war will not happen, either because the two sides will negotiate peace or because neither leader wants to expose his own citizens to nuclear fallout. "People here are very confident that the government and the other side will not go to that point," said Haroon, who did not want to give his full name. "That's the major reason people are so satisfied." sbell@nationalpost.com [sbell@nationalpost.com] Other Stories by this Writer 6/10/2002 - Militants on the run, Musharraf boasts 5/29/2002 - Minister vetoed bid to stop Tamil funding 5/28/2002 - Terrorism warnings not aimed at Canada: CSIS 5/13/2002 - Occupied basilica holds first service since siege ends Copyright © 2002 National Post Online | Privacy Policy | ***************************************************************** 58 Rejection of atomic license plate criticized Las Vegas SUN June 07, 2002 LAS VEGAS SUN The Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation is fanning the fallout of the Department of Motor Vehicles' decision to cancel a license plate bearing an atomic mushroom cloud. Troy Wade, chairman of the foundation, said he believes the decision this week was "nothing less than politics clouding common sense." The DMV announced Wednesday it would not issue the specialty plate in light of the state's current battle against a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain and because of current tensions and the threat of nuclear war between India and Pakistan. But the historical foundation, which sought to net $25 per plate for its planned atomic testing museum, thinks the mushroom cloud is too much a part of Nevada history to scrap. "No amount of revisionist history will change the fact that the cold war was fought and won on Nevada soil," Wade said in a prepared statement today. "Nothing can change the fact that this state -- its citizens -- toiled tirelessly for this nation's security. Yet politics has found its way into doing just that." Gov. Kenny Guinn said recently the plate was a setback to Nevada's efforts to block Yucca Mountain. During the House vote on Yucca, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., highlighted the plate and said Nevadans are ready to reclaim their nuclear heritage. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 59 Senate Approves $31 Billion Anti-Terror Spending Bill (washingtonpost.com) By Helen Dewar Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 7, 2002; Page A04 The Senate early today approved more than $31 billion in additional anti-terror spending this year after rejecting a series of proposals to strip out specific projects and bring the measure more in line with President Bush's less costly request. After several days of partisan squabbling, the Senate passed the legislation, 71 to 22. Earlier, Democrats handily won a vote to limit debate after Republicans decided to let the bill pass and try to scale it back in negotiations with the House. The new spending, which comes on top of substantial increases in counterterrorism funding for this year, includes $14 billion for military operations, $5.8 billion for domestic security and $5.5 billion to help New York recover from the Sept. 11 attacks. It is designed to cover any increase in governmental costs for the last four months of fiscal 2002, which ends Sept. 30. Funds are targeted for a wide array of activities, including increased security for airports, seaports, nuclear facilities, food supplies and water systems, and to aid local law enforcement, firefighting and medical response efforts. As it worked into the night, the Senate agreed to double to $200 million an outlay for the global fund to fight AIDS in poor countries but rejected a Democratic proposal to raise the amount to $500 million. Post-midnight passage of the bill came after a series of angry exchanges over attempts by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) to block amendments packaged to pass at the end of debate, prompting cries of outrage from disappointed senators. The bill now goes to a conference between the Senate and House, which has approved a $28.8 billion bill more in line with Bush's spending priorities and his earlier request for $27 billion in new funds. The White House, arguing that the Senate bill provides more money than can be spent this year and includes nonessential projects such as aid to New England fishermen, has threatened a veto unless the Senate version is substantially modified in the conference. Even as the Senate signaled its intention to pass the bill by limiting debate, Democrats and Republicans continued to accuse each other of playing politics with spending for national security. Given the projects added over White House objections, "is anybody shocked that Republicans are concerned about [the bill] and that we're objecting?" asked Gramm. But Democrats said Republicans were "slow-walking" the bill in hopes of backing up Senate business and denying the Democratic majority any bragging rights on popular issues for this fall's elections, when control of both houses of Congress will be at stake. As a result, they said, important national security funding was being delayed. "What does it take to jar some of the members of this body out of the usual political posturing?" asked Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), chief author of the bill. After the vote to limit debate, McCain took aim at a series of relatively small items that he said bore little if any relation to the war on terrorism, but failed to defeat them. Voting 65 to 31, the Senate refused to drop language earmarking $2.5 million from previously appropriated funds for the mapping of coral reefs in waters off Hawaii. It also rejected, 66 to 30, a proposal that would have blocked $2 million to begin designing a new building to house 730,000 gallons of flammable alcohol now used to store animal specimens in Smithsonian buildings along the Mall. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 60 We're defenseless against terror Chicago Sun-Times - Andrew Greeley [Andrew Greeley] June 9, 2002 BY ANDREW GREELEY The United States of America, the richest, the most powerful nation in the world, is defenseless. Terrorists can infiltrate it at will and work whatever ingenious mayhem they may devise. Our various intelligence agencies are incapable of stopping them. The warnings a couple of weeks ago that we are still in grave danger and that nuclear terror was "inevitable" were obviously designed to frustrate demands for an independent commission to investigate the World Trade Center attack. We are at war, the vice president said, it is unpatriotic to engage in politically motivated criticism of the president in wartime (as though Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson were immune from criticism during war). In fact, however, there was more truth in these wolf-at-the-door cries than scare tactic. There is no reason to think that our intelligence agencies are any better now at preventing terror than they were in September. The revelations the last couple of weeks of the failings of the FBI and the CIA last summer are enough to scare the living daylights out of everyone. With some happy exception, the FBI are as inept at their jobs as the Catholic bishops are at theirs. Suddenly, nine months after the tragedy in New York, the FBI is to be transformed. It will expend more effort on stopping terrorists than chasing bank robbers. It will hire more agents. It will even let some of the hated CIA into its offices (when the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit). It will try to find some Arab-speaking agents. How can anyone seriously believe that those gumshoes who hunted down bank robbers and drug lords are now going to turn into counterspies, especially without the most modern computers and with supervisors more interested in protecting their careers than hunting down terrorists? The man who refused to take seriously the complaints from Minneapolis was promoted. Now he has more responsibility at which to fail. The problem lies not with the field officers in either agency, but with the corporate bureaucracy in D.C. whose members are engaged more in promoting their own careers and pleasing their superiors than in doing their job--like most bureaucrats, including ecclesiastical bureaucrats. What has changed since that dreadful day in September? The government has spent tens of millions of dollars on "homeland defense" and has succeeded only in making air travel, as Don Carty, the president of American Airlines, has put it, not worth the effort. Government employees harass and insult air travelers but cannot ferret out plots. They can't even, as President Bush promised, smoke out the leader of the terrorists. But they can, with ill-concealed delight, chip away at civil liberties. Even though the World Trade Center catastrophe took place on the president's "watch," it is not fair to blame him. But when the next tragedy happens, he will deserve blame. For all the talk about a "war on terror" it would appear that very little has been done save for driving Osama bin Laden into a cave somewhere in Pakistan. The next step will be a war against Iraq. When in trouble, a muscle-bound, inept bureaucracy does not do good things, it does those things it does well. The United States does not clean out the terrorists around the world because it cannot find them. Rather it makes war against another country, as the president suggested in his West Point address, to preempt terror, even if that country was not involved in the World Trade Center attack. We are utterly defenseless, therefore we attack the first available target. It will look like we're warring against al-Qaida when in fact we're pretending that we're not really defenseless against them. When someone sets off a nuclear device that kills 300,000 of us (whether we try to smoke out Saddam Hussein or not), then Bush and his oil-billionaire colleagues will be guilty of monumental failure to improve out intelligence services in the last nine months. Apparently they are not smart enough to figure out how to do it--for example by establishing a new and hungry super agency which has the sharp edge that the FBI and the CIA did long ago. Copyright 2002, Digital Chicago Inc. ***************************************************************** 61 Mobile teams on hunt for atomic threats NUCLEAR SHADOW By Fred Kaplan, Globe Staff, 6/9/2002 [N] EW YORK - In the days and months following Sept. 11, helicopters hovered more intently than usual over New York City's docks and bridges - and, in Washington, over the Capitol and White House. They looked like ordinary helicopters, but inside them scientists from the national nuclear-weapons laboratories were scanning the landscape with invisible beams that they hoped would detect the radioactive elements of a terrorist's nuclear bomb. The helicopters and the scientists are among the main assets of a little-known agency inside the US Department of Energy called the Nuclear Emergency Support Team. NEST is a small program with a $77 million budget. Its scientists, who number about 750, are all volunteers from the Energy Department's weapons labs, working on rotating call. But their mission - to protect the countless bridges, tunnels, ports, skyscrapers, and monuments in American cities from a terrorist's nuclear strike - is almost imponderably daunting in this era of permanent alert. It is a task complicated by the bureaucratic thicket that has encircled the agency throughout its 28-year history. Rooted in the Energy Department, NEST assists the FBI and reports to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pentagon. (President Bush's reorganization would place it in the new Department of Homeland Security.) Still, if terrorists ever try to sneak a nuclear weapon or a ''dirty bomb'' - a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material - into the country, NEST will form the front line of defense. ''I don't know how effective this would have been if there had been a bomb somewhere,'' a senior law-enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of NEST's post-Sept. 11 activities. ''You can't search everything, and there are ways to shield nuclear materials from detectors. The fact is, we're a wide-open society. We're vulnerable. There's only so much you can do, but you've got to do what you can.'' NEST teams take on more duties, missions Since Sept. 11, NEST has been doing much more. Besides the helicopter patrols, teams have been driving around urban areas in vans known as ''Hot Spot Mobile Labs,'' armed with instruments that detect alpha, beta, gamma, and neutron radiation. Other teams are equipped with backpacks that hold smaller detectors. Last October, when intelligence agencies warned that a ''dirty bomb'' might be placed in lower Manhattan, NEST technicians stood with FBI agents and police, waving hand-held hazardous-material detectors across the thousands of trucks that were stopped and searched. ''We put a lot more hand-held detectors out on the streets after that report,'' the law enforcement official said. Though the effort has relaxed somewhat since the October scare, one official said NEST units still go on random, weekly search missions in different cities, focusing on ports, warehouse districts, and other locations where a smuggled weapon might be housed. NEST was started in 1974 after an extortionist threatened to explode a nuclear bomb in Boston if he didn't receive $200,000. The threat turned out to be a hoax, but federal officials were horrified that they had no way of responding had it been real. Since then, NEST scientists have been deployed on occasional real-life patrols - in Washington, D.C., during the Bicentennial and in Atlanta and Salt Lake City during the Olympics. However, not until recently have they conducted so many missions on such a far-flung, prolonged basis. Since September, NEST's budget for radiation-detectors has doubled, and the nation's weapons labs - Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia - are developing and rapidly deploying smaller and more refined models. As of the middle of last year, NEST had only four helicopters and three fixed-wing aircraft based at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. (One official said he had heard that the fleet has been enlarged, though a spokesman for the program would not comment.) The teams are on 24-hour call, and more of its members are now stationed in the field. Still, it could take several hours to fly them to a threat zone. `Mirage Gold' exercise tarnished by insider tips Time was not especially crucial in the 20 simulated field exercises that NEST and other agencies jointly conducted from 1986 to 2001. But the scenarios for those war games were based on a pre-Sept. 11 premise: terrorists, usually domestic militia groups, threatening to detonate a weapon if they didn't get a substantial amount of money. Nuclear-emergency teams had days to respond. In a threat involving a group like Al Qaeda, every minute of response time could matter. Whatever the circumstances of a real threat, the field exercises have been less than reassuring to the officials who analyzed them. In March 1996, a Senate subcommittee chaired by then-Senator Sam Nunn held hearings and reached what the panel called ''disconcerting'' conclusions about the exercises. The main problem, according to the panel's staff report: ''Our agencies are still suffering from their own inability to transcend age-old turf battles ... Problems with coordination and information-sharing among government agencies continue, despite recent efforts to resolve them at the highest levels of the CIA and FBI'' - a finding echoed in recent revelations about interagency foul-ups just prior to Sept. 11. Nunn's subcommittee focused mainly on ''Mirage Gold,'' a five-day exercise in October 1994 that involved more than 1,000 officials and played out a scenario in which members of a fictitious militia group, the Patriots for National Unity, threatened to explode a nuclear bomb in New Orleans. The test's organizers claimed that the bomb was found and defused. But an official report by Rear Admiral Charles J. Beers Jr., then a deputy assistant secretary of defense, found that the exercise was ''conducted in a manner to `stack the deck' in favor of unrealistic success.'' Specifically, the game's players were ''inappropriately leaked'' information about the bomb's location and technical features. ''Basically, we lost New Orleans,'' John Sopko, the Senate panel's former chief counsel, recalled in an interview last week about the exercise, The Beers report prompted a comprehensive review of NEST by Duane C. Sewell, a former assistant secretary of energy, who concluded that the agency needed more money, more field exercises, and a more streamlined bureaucracy. Some of the suggestions were followed. In the decade before Nunn's hearings, NEST had taken part in just four field tests. Over the next five years, it would take part in 16 - four times as many tests in half the time. Exercise underscores lack of communication The biggest of these exercises, ''Operation Topoff,'' was a five-day exercise in May 2000 mandated by the Senate at a cost of $3.5 million. Chaired by top officials of the Justice and Defense departments and involving more than 300 other officials, Topoff simulated three simultaneous terrorist strikes: chemical weapons in Portsmouth, N.H., biological weapons in Denver, and a dirty bomb in Washington, D.C. Several officials pronounced Topoff a success. At a July 2000 meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, then a counterterrorism specialist at the National Security Council, called Topoff ''nearly flawless'' and proclaimed that ''After the exercise, I'm now one of the most optimistic people in the federal government.'' A senior Senate staff member who closely followed Topoff while it was going on laughed when told of this remark. Topoff, the staff member said, ''was a patchwork of different agencies going off into their own ether worlds, with no centralized strategy or plan to put it all together.'' He also said no ''after-action report'' was written, or at least none was provided to the Senate, which had ordered and funded the exercise. However, a former high-ranking Pentagon official said the Justice Department did complete such a report last year. ''It's a huge document,'' the official said, but the Bush administration ''won't let it get out of the building.'' The former official agreed with the Senate staff member's assessment of the exercise. ''Were there problems involving interagency coordination?'' he said. ''Sure. They were huge.'' He also said, ''Topoff is not a realistic assessment of how these things really work. Any time you get a politically-ordered exercise, the people who conduct it are not going to fail.'' As with Mirage Gold, though not so blatantly, the test was set up in a way to maximize the chances of success. ''For instance,'' the official said, ''six weeks before this supposedly `no-notice' exercise, the FBI leased 11 T-1 phone lines and installed them in an empty warehouse that it planned on using as a command post. ''Now there are two ways to interpret this,'' he added. ''The cynical interpretation is that they prearranged things so there'd be no snafus. The charitable interpretation is that when you're doing an exercise, you're not going to order AT's global communications network to install all these lines, but you might be able to do that in a real emergency, so why not simulate it? ''Both interpretations are probably true,'' he said. ''This is a basic problem with all these tests. You can't avoid artificiality. How much does that distort your results? It's hard to say.'' Analysts say agencies are making strides Another uncertainty, which no exercise could fully resolve, is whether NEST scientists can neutralize a terrorist bomb after they find it. According to Jeffrey T. Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, a private Washington-based research center, weapon-lab scientists have several ways to perform this delicate task. They can detonate small explosives around the bomb. They can blast it into small pieces with a 30mm cannon. Or, before exploding it, they can build a huge nylon tent around the bomb, then pump in 30,000 cubic feet of thick foam to block the dispersal of radiation. NEST scientists built a nylon tent around the bomb at the end of the 1994 exercise, Mirage Gold, but they were denied permission to detonate it, partly because the FBI and FEMA disagreed over which agency had the authority to grant it. The consensus, even among skeptics, is that NEST and other federal agencies have vastly improved their ability to deal with a terrorist bomb in the past six years, even more so in the past six months. The technology is better. The agencies have had practice at working together more smoothly. Detailed emergency plans, which once barely existed, are now in place in dozens of US cities. However, this consensus is theory; even the war game-planners realize that the reality won't be known until it happens. In September 1999, NEST and 40 other agencies took part in a two-day exercise in Annville, Penn., called ''Vigilant Lion.'' The scenario had terrorists pumping Strontium-90 into an office building's ventilation system, then threatening to explode a dirty bomb. The official after-action report said the players did their jobs well, and concluded that the US government ''has the ability to deal with the terrorist incident that was simulated.'' Those last three words were key. The implicit caveat is that no one knows how it will deal with incidents that have not been simulated. This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 6/9/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. [ Send this story to a © Copyright 2002 Boston Globe Electronic Publishing LLC | ***************************************************************** 62 Livermore's nuclear next-door neighbors [http://www.sfgate.com] [asaracevic@sfchronicle.com] Sunday, June 9, 2002 President Bush proposed the creation of a Homeland Security Cabinet department last week. The new department would have a budget of $37 billion and encompass more governmental agencies than a can of alphabet soup. Here in the Bay Area, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy outfit managed by the University of California, would be the most visibly impacted local concern, falling under the auspices of the Homeland mega-agency. But its neighbor would also stand to gain. Sandia National Laboratories, literally next door to Livermore Labs, is another Department of Energy facility that's managed by defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Sandia, whose primary facility is in Albuquerque, was created back in 1956 to support its neighbor's weapons research. And like Livermore, Sandia has been receiving funding from the existing Homeland Security office, headed by Tom Ridge, since its creation after the attacks of Sept. 11. While most of us know about Livermore and its nuclear weapons program, Sandia has kept a lower profile through the years. But the two labs are joined at the hip, or more accurately, the lip. "They use our parking lot. We use their cafeteria," company spokesman Nigel S. Hey said during an interview with Money Talks. Sandia's primary mission is to ensure the safety, security and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. "We are responsible for the safety of the most dangerous weapons ever made by mankind," Hey said. It also collaborates with the top companies of Silicon Valley on creating tomorrow's tech. For instance, Sandia is teaming up with chipmakers Intel, Motorola and AMD on new lithography technology used to print microscopic circuits on the world's shrinking microprocessors. While fascinating in their own right, Sandia's corporate projects pale in comparison to its national responsibilities. Since 9/11, Sandia has been working overtime creating technical simulations of various disasters, trying to give the home team a defensive edge. It has even tested to determine how San Francisco would withstand biological and chemical attacks. The accuracy of these disaster models, we hope, will never be tested. But if another 9/11 ever occurred, you'd want a "Sandian," as employees refer to themselves, in the war room. Sandia is teamed with Los Alamos National Laboratory on a homeland security project called NISAC, short for the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center. Their job is to assess the vulnerability of our largest systems, including the electric power grid, water supply, transportation, finance, emergency services and law enforcement. One of their most interesting breakthroughs, championed by Sandia researcher Richard Griffith, is a decontamination foam designed to fight chemical disasters, intentional or not. The lab claims that its magic foam "rendered all typical chemical and biological agents harmless." Amazingly, the foam's basic ingredients come from household ingredients such as hair conditioner and toothpaste. Sandia has licensed the foam to commercial firms, and small-scale systems that look like a twin-canister fire extinguisher are being sold for $29.95. (No Ginsu knives included). They're also developing something called the polychromator, a binocular- based technology that would enable soldiers in the field to detect potentially deadly chemical agents from miles away. During the past 10 years, the government has plunked down $160 million on the NISAC effort, and you can bet that figure would increase if Bush gets his billions. "A lot of the work we do falls under the realm of Homeland Security," Sandia spokesman Michael Janes said. "For instance, our joint effort with Los Alamos is now funded by Homeland Security." NISAC was asking for an additional $20 million in FY 2002 and hopes to be fully functional by 2005. That money could provide a spark to the moribund Bay Area economy. One on end, Sandia employs about 900 people on its huge, 400-acre facility. The lab estimates its current expenditures sink about $50 million into the surrounding economy. An increase in funding could expand the facility and its surrounding impact. On another level, Valley firms use Sandia's technology for economic gain. The lab estimates it licenses nearly $20 million worth of technology out to local firms annually. It's a symbiotic relationship that's attractive and horrifying at the same time. It's hard to say if having the nation's leading nuke experts in our backyard is a good thing or a bad thing. I hope we never find out. ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.   Page G - 2 ***************************************************************** 63 Harkin asks Bush for help with IAAP The Hawk Eye Newspaper Saturday, June 8, 2002 Senator refers to 'slowdown' in activity. By Dennis J. Carroll The Hawk Eye Sen. Tom Harkin, D–Iowa, called on President Bush this week to speed up restoration and other environmental and health projects at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown. "While much good work has been done, I have become increasingly frustrated and disappointed at inaction on a number of issues," Harkin said in a letter to the president. Harkin cited several areas of concern where he said there has been "a notable slowdown," including: the $100 million–plus Superfund environmental cleanup; a radiological survey and cleanup; and lifting of secrecy policies; and survey of health impacts. He said because former nuclear weapons workers at IAAP essentially were forgotten for 25 years after nuclear operations ended, "it is especially upsetting that they and the community appear to be forgotten again." The Iowa senator called on Bush to ensure that the Army quickly submit its request to Congress that the plant be included in a program that provides funds for restoration of sites contaminated by production of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in St. Louis has recommended that because of Atomic Energy Commission operations at IAAP, the plant qualifies for the program known as the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program. Chunks and shards of depleted uranium, left over from AEC production, have been unearthed on at least one test–firing site at the plant. Harkin also charged that the Office of Management and Budget has been sitting on a congressional request for a report on the need for an extensive radiological survey of the plant. Harkin has been joined by fellow Sen. Charles Grassley, R–Iowa, Gov. Tom Vilsack and state radiological regulators in calling for a low–level flyover of the plant with specially equipped helicopters or airplanes. Harkin also complained to Bush that the Superfund cleanup of chemical contamination has been delayed. "This year ... not a single shovelful of earth is being moved or treated on the plant site," Harkin said. He did note that the Army is testing groundwater southeast of the plant to determine the extent of a toxic underground water plume. "While coordination between the programs is important, there is no excuse for delaying cleanup of known toxic areas at IAAP," Harkin said. The senator also said the Pentagon has been slow to review its secrecy policies that would assure former workers that they are not violating secrecy pledges by speaking about their health problems. "No assessment has been done, no worker has been contacted, and no report has been sent to Congress," Harkin said. Harkin also urged the president to speed a determination of whether former IAAP workers will be given "special cohort status" so they do not have to prove exact radiation exposure levels in the Energy Department's compensation program for former nuclear weapons workers. Because of the passage of so much time and the unavailability of some worker records, reconstructing the levels of radiation received by IAAP workers has been difficult. The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 Front Desk · 319-754-6824 FAX · 1-800-397-1708 Toll Free ***************************************************************** 64 Study: Radon Risk in Homes Underestimated Lung Cancer May Be in the Genes | Email Sales Finds past research didn't take living space exposure into account **By Robert Preidt* /HealthScoutNews Reporter/* FRIDAY, June 7 (HealthScoutNews) -- The health risk posed by residential radon exposure may be 50 percent higher than indicated by previous studies, say University of Iowa researchers. "I think the risk posed by radon is really underestimated," says R. William Field, a research scientist at the University of Iowa College of Public Health and the lead author of a study just published in the /Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology/. Radon is a naturally occurring, odorless, tasteless, and colorless radioactive gas produced by the breakdown of radium in soil, rock, and water. It seeps out of the soil and into homes. Long-term exposure to the gas in a home is associated with increased lung cancer risk. Field and his colleagues examined several exposure assessment methods used in previous residential radon studies that were done in North America, Europe and China. Those epidemiological models looked for associations between radon exposure and lung cancer rates. The Iowa researchers compared those models to a more comprehensive exposure model that assesses the health risk by measuring radon levels in specific areas of a home and how much time the residents spend in those areas. All the exposure models were assessed using the same study population. The models used in previous studies all produced risk estimates that were about 50 percent lower than the more comprehensive model used by his team, Field says. "To really get a good radon dose assessment, you have to perform the study on the individual level," Field says. For example, the basement of a home may have high levels of radon -- but that's not much of a health threat if the occupants don't spend much time there, he says. But if a living room has high radon levels and it's the focus of family activity, then the health risks will go up. "If you are really concerned about what are the levels you're being exposed to and what kind of risk does that put you at, our study indicates that you should really be testing your living areas of your home and your bedroom. You spend six to 10 hours a night there, so that's a significant amount of your time per day," Field says. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official says Field's research is unique and valuable for helping make residential radon risk estimates more precise. "His research supports that radon risks are at least as big as we thought," says David Rowson, director of the Center for Healthy Buildings, part of the EPA's Indoor Environments Division. "The growing body of data on radon risk continues to support the need for all homes in America to be tested for radon and for elevated levels to be fixed," Rowson adds. The EPA says 15,000 (or nearly 10 percent) of all lung cancer deaths in the United States are attributable to radon. Smokers are at higher risk of developing radon-induced lung cancer. There's no evidence to link radon to other respiratory diseases such as asthma, the EPA says. Although radon levels may be higher in some areas of the United States, it's a potential problem in every state. Local geology, construction materials, and how an individual house is built can affect indoor radon levels. So don't assume that you have a problem even if your next-door neighbor does. Experts advise that the only way to know for certain whether your home has high radon levels is to have it tested. The EPA recommends that homes be fixed if the occupants' long-term radon exposure averages 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). The average indoor radon level in the United States is 1.3 pCi/L. *What To Do* You can buy radon detecting devices or hire a qualified radon tester to check your home's radon levels. Most radon repairs cost between $800 to $2,500. They may include installing underground pipes and an exhaust system to expel the radon, or sealing cracks and other openings in floors and walls. For more information about radon, go to the Environmental Protection Agency or the National Safety Council . SOURCES: R. William Field, Ph.D., research scientist, epidemiology department, University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City; David Rowson, director, Center for Healthy Buildings, Indoor Environments Division, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C.; May 2002 /Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology/ Copyright © 2002 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 65 UK: Home radon cleared of cancer risk to children (?) Times Online June 08, 2002 By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor A MAJOR study has shown no evidence that radon in homes is a cause of cancer in children. The results appear to show that the greater the exposure to radon, the lower the risk of all childhood cancers – a reassuring and unexpected result. Radon, a colourless radioactive gas that seeps into homes from the soil, is a major natural source of radioactivity. Levels of radon tend to be highest in areas of granite rock, such as Devon and Cornwall. The principal worry over radon is that it might cause some cases of lung cancer in people exposed to it over a lifetime. The best evidence comes from uranium miners, who in the past faced high levels of radon and had a higher risk of lung cancer. There has also been concern that radon might contribute to childhood cancers such as leukaemia, lymphoma, brain tumours and Hodgkins’ disease. Professor Sir Richard Doll of Oxford University, chairman of the UK Childhood Cancer Study Group, said: “Previous research has been inconclusive, so it’s not surprising that parents have been worried. “This study is the first in the UK to measure domestic levels of radiation and relate them to children’s cancer risk, so it’s pleasing to be able to ease those fears.” The team, which reports its results in the British Journal of Cancer, measured both radon levels and gamma radiation levels in the living rooms and bedrooms of almost 6,000 children – 2,226 of them with cancer, and 3,773 healthy children. The aim was to see if the children with cancer lived in homes with a higher radon level than those who were healthy. However, the study showed that children brought up in homes in the top ten per cent of radon levels had a cancer risk less than half that of those whose homes had the lowest levels. The trend was seen across the range of exposures and was statistically significant for the top six of the ranges of exposure. A second analysis, for gamma radiation, also showed no positive link with cancer, but did not show the negative link seen in the radon figures. David Grant, Scientific Director of the Leukaemia Research Fund, one of the bodies that supported the research, said: “The first question parents ask when their child is diagnosed with leukaemia is why. People quite naturally turn to their immediate environment for answers, but it is reassuring to know that commonly encountered levels of radon gas and gamma radiation appear not to put children at risk.” Some radiation specialists have suggested that humans have developed a resistance to radon, and that, at low levels, it may actually be healthy. The team responsible for the study does not accept this explanation. “It is unlikely,” they say, “that the negative trend is either an adaptive response or a true protective effect.” For that to be true, it would have to apply to many different cancers with different causes, including some with no known link to radiation. Natural level would shut nuclear plant + Levels of odourless, colourless radon are higher in the South West + Breakdown of uranium in the area’s granite bedrock produces the gas. It builds to levels that would force a nuclear power plant to shut + About 250,000 people live in homes with excessive radon levels. The average level in UK homes is 20 becquerels per cubic metre of air. Homes in the South West have levels above 200 becquerels, (29 per cent in Truro and 14 per cent in Devon) the point at which the Government recommends taking remedial action + In west Devon, water from a private borehole was contaminated with radon five times higher than the 1,000 becquerel per litre safety limit. The body absorbs radon in air more easily than in water but people who drink tainted water face a greater chance of stomach cancer Copyright 2002 [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,549,00.html] Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************