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07/10/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.176
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RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE
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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 UK: MP Fined for Nuclear Demonstration
NUCLEAR REACTORS
2 US: Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station
3 international chernobyl information platform
4 US: NRC Oversight Panel to Hold Two Meetings in Oak Harbor, Ohio, on
5 Ukrainian reactor back on line after repairs
NUCLEAR SAFETY
6 US: [psy-op] Fwd: Cynthia McKinney and Depleted Uranium
7 US: South Carolina to visit North Carolina tablet program
8 AU: Radiation tests revealed
9 Breakthrough for atomic test veterans
10 US terror experts set for UK ports
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
11 Beach owner sues over radioactive waste
12 US: [toeslist] Stop the Hanford Radioactive Waste Dump
13 US: In the wake of the Yucca Mountain vote...
14 US: Yucca Mountain Controversy Chronology
15 US: Yucca FAQs
16 US: Yucca: More hurdles await project
17 US: Yucca: Innocence Lost
18 US: VENUE CHANGE: State pins last hopes on courts
19 US: EDITORIAL: Now it's on to the courts
20 US: Yucca Mountain Project contract worker Bryan Swiney talks Tuesda
21 US: Yucca vote offers no doubt: Washington harbors little respect fo
22 US: Business view shifts to make the best of it
23 US: Nevada's fight moves to Washington courts
24 US: Notable quotes from the Yucca debate
25 US: Congress OKs Nevada Nuke Waste Site
26 US: Nevadans look ahead: Obstacles remain for government to proceed
27 US: Partisanship ensues after state suffers stinging loss
28 US: Battle over licensing looms
29 US: Energy Dept. will use in-house attorneys to handle legal work
30 US: Tourist plans won't be affected -- yet
31 US: Yucca decision could aid UNLV research
32 US: Editorial: Yucca vote imperils the nation
33 US: Senate Approves Storage Of Nuclear Waste in Nevada
34 US: How lawmakers voted on Yucca Mountain -
35 US: Nevada vows to continue court fight against nuclear dump
36 US: Gov. Guinn's statement regarding the U.S. Senate, Yucca Mountain
37 US: Pioneer and UEX Proceed With Plan Of Arrangement
38 Citizens unite against enrichment plant, threats
39 US: Congress approves sending nation's nuclear waste to Nevada
40 Russia wins aid to clean up nuclear waste
41 Unicoi considered for uranium enrichment plant
42 Plutonium Disposition Plan Narrowly Avoids Scrapping, But Still
43 US: Nev. Mixed on Senate Nuke Site Vote
44 US: *YMP TIMELINE*
45 US: Chamber of Commerce Pro-Yucca Ads Are Misleading, Deceptive
46 US: Many a Molehill Before Nuke Waste Finds Mountain
47 US: Yucca Mountain transportation routes concern tribe on U.S. 95
48 US: Nuclear Route
49 US: Utahns strike Yucca deal
50 US: Residents left to wonder about waste transport
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
51 US: [generalnews] Ambitious Nuclear Arms Pact Faces a Senate
52 US: Nuclear nightmare returns to haunt U.S.; Earth to Expire by
53 [generalnews] Iraq Still Says 'No' to UN Weapons Inspections
54 US: Fwd: Invitation to Action for Nuclear Abolition, October 5 -15,
55 Iraq Seeking Ukraine Weapons Help: Paper
56 US: Under treaty, U.S. to keep 2,400 reserve warheads
57 Officials remove World War II bomb from nuclear submarine base
58 Law firms to consider possible class-action suit regarding
59 US: Nuclear arms pact criticized at hearing
60 -- A throw-back to Soviet justice
61 Iraq Seeking Ukraine Weapons Help: Paper *
62 Russia to scrap world's biggest subs
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
63 Funds rise for ORNL energy research
OTHER NUCLEAR
64 Dairy Queen to sell irradiated beef
65 WNA NEWS BRIEFING 02.28 | 3 - 9 July 2002
66 Cheney, Halliburton accused of accounting fraud
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 UK: MP Fined for Nuclear Demonstration
Scotsman.com
Press Association
Wed 10 Jul 2002
/By Gordon Darroch, PA News /
Labour MP George Galloway was today fined £180 for his part in a
demonstration at Britain?s nuclear submarine base.
The 47-year-old was convicted on a breach of the peace charge at
Argyll and Bute District Court in Helensburgh after he and
hundreds of other demonstrators were led away by police from the
main entrance to the base on February 12 last year.
Galloway, who represents Glasgow Kelvin in the House of Commons,
argued that he was exercising his ?hard-won democratic right? to
peaceful protest and did not cause any fear or alarm to anyone.
But after listening to the evidence in an hour-long trial,
magistrate Fraser Gillies found Galloway guilty of the charge
outside Clyde Naval Base at Faslane.
The MP said he respected the decision of the court and pledged to
pay the penalty in seven days.
©2002 scotsman.com
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2 Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station
cleveland.com:
07/10/02
John Mangels and John Funk
Plain Dealer reporters
FirstEnergy Corp. - with some prodding from federal regulators -
has agreed to more thoroughly test the giant containment vessel
of the Davis-Besse reactor for air leaks to the outside world.
The pressure test must be done before the crippled
nuclear plant can be restarted.
The steel liner of the nearly 300-foot-tall containment
building is the biggest and last barrier between the highly
radioactive reactor core and the environment. In the event of an
accident, a sizable leak in the liner could allow radioactive
steam to escape the plant.
The company must cut a locomotive-size hole in the
containment wall to accommodate the removal of the reactor's
ruined steel lid.
FirstEnergy officials had said as recently as last month
that they only intended to do a "local" leak test around the
edges of the repair patch in the liner.
But because of the unusually large size of the hole and
NRC concerns that parts of the steel liner's 1½-inch-thick walls
are corroded, the agency has told FirstEnergy it wants the entire
shell tested for leaks once workers replace the reactor lid and
weld the liner patch into place.
FirstEnergy hasn't formally notified the NRC of its
change in plans. But spokesman Todd Schneider said this week the
company has decided the agency has a point.
"We want to make sure [the restart] goes smoothly," he
said. "The last thing we want is to bring the reactor up and take
it down a week later" due to unexpected leaks. "We're flexible.
We thought it best to do what's right."
The NRC has not directly ordered FirstEnergy to do the
more extensive test. In fact, agency officials are not entirely
certain whether regulations actually dictate which one
Davis-Besse should do.
The NRC has allowed other utilities to do more limited
testing after cutting smaller holes in their reactor
containments.
"They are cutting a 20-by-20-foot hole. That is a
significant repair," said Doug Pickett, an NRC senior project
manager assigned to Davis-Besse.
Also, the NRC wants to know whether corrosion near a
recently found gap between the liner and the building's concrete
floor is a leak threat, said Pickett.
Only the more widespread "integrated" test would show
that.
Had the company disagreed, it would have had to publicly file a
formal appeal, he said. "I think they are concerned about their
public image. It would be a public image problem. . . . It's safe
to say we've nudged them."
The NRC is awaiting a formal letter committing the
company to the more extensive test.
FirstEnergy's conciliatory approach on the leak test
parallels its course change in May, when it abandoned a plan to
repair the reactor lid and instead purchased a never-used one
from a Michigan utility. The NRC had not ordered the company to
buy the new lid, but its staff was sharply critical of the
lid-patching plan.
"When you are in the NRC's regulatory doghouse, which
Davis-Besse is now, you're playing with all your cards face up,"
said David Lochbaum, nuclear engineer with the Union of Concerned
Scientists, a watchdog organization. "With past plants I've
watched, they're much more agreeable than they will be a year
from now. They want to turn the keys [to restart the plant]. They
don't want to fight the NRC."
In the full building leak test, engineers pump enough
compressed air into the containment vessel to raise the pressure
to about three times the normal atmosphere. Over the next several
hours, they monitor for any decrease.
If there are leaks beyond a minimal amount, engineers use
a variety of techniques to pin down their location - from
listening to hisses or watching smoke to using more localized
vacuum tests at suspect sites.
All of this restoration is necessary because for years
the company and NRC inspectors failed to notice that acid-laced
cooling water had seeped through cracks in the lid's nozzles and
eaten a large hole in the 6½-inch-thick metal lid. Only a thin
liner of stainless steel kept the high-pressure coolant from
spewing out of the reactor vessel and causing a dangerous
accident.
The plant has been idled since the discovery of the acid
hole in early March. Schneider said inspectors are examining
every component inside the containment building for signs of
corrosion damage from airborne acid mist. For example, in
addition to cleaning and painting the liner, workers must replace
the rusted cooling coils inside three big air coolers.
The NRC must approve the fixes before Davis-Besse can
resume generating electricity.
FirstEnergy hopes to complete the work by the end of the
year. The company has estimated the cost - including the purchase
of replacement power for the downed reactor and other repairs -
at $200 million.
To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:
jmangels@plaind.com, 216-999-4842
jfunk@plaind.com, 216-999-4138
© 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. © 2002
cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved.
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3 international chernobyl information platform
- provided by sdc
(swiss agency for development and cooperation)
[http://www.chernobyl.info/en]
Mirror sites
[http://www.belarus.chernobyl.info] |
[http://www.ukraine.chernobyl.info]
"Together, we hope to infuse fresh impetus to the international
cooperation on Chernobyl through the effective implementation ot
the proposals presented in the new strategy for recovery.“
Kenzo Oshima, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian
Affairs, UN Coordinator of International Cooperation on Chernobyl
[http://www.chernobyl.info/en/Facts]
"We want to develop friendships with people from other countries,
stay in contact with them and write letters to them."
Katya Melnikova, Student from Igovka, Belarus
[http://www.chernobyl.info/en/Projects]
"Chernobyl is a global environment event of a new kind. It is
characterized by the presence of thousands of environmental
refugees, longterm contamination of land, water and air and
possibly irreparable damage to ecosystems."
Christine K. Durbak, Chairwoman of World Information Transfer,
New York
[http://www.chernobyl.info/en/Organisations]
"The half-life of our memory of catastrophes such as Chernobyl is
only a small fraction of the half-life of those radioactive
isotopes that were released by the exploding reactor on 26 April
1986 in Ukraine. With this in mind, we see the www.chernobyl.info
Internet platform as a manifesto against forgetting."
Walter Fust, Director General, Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation (SDC)
[http://www.chernobyl.info/en/Strategy]
[http://www.chernobyl.info/en/Strategy/Actuality/launchComunique]
On June 25 2002 Director General Walter Fust of the Swiss
Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Kenzo Oshima,
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and United
Nations Coordinator of International Cooperation on Chernobyl, in
the presence of Government officials from Belarus, Russia and
Ukraine, inaugurated the new communications platform on the long
term consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe www.chernobyl.info
at the Palais des Nations in Geneva (Switzerland).
From autumn 2002, visitors to this Internet platform will be able
to support carefully selected Chernobyl projects of well-known
organisations directly. The "Friends of Chernobyl" Committee,
with leading personalities from around the world, is being
founded. Soon you will find out more about this initiative at
www.chernobyl.info and in our Newsletter.
[http://www.chernobyl.info/en/Projects/Igovka]
The pupils of the Igovka village school in the southeastern
Belarussian region of Gomel had an idea. They wanted to create a
website about their everyday life in the contaminated area around
Chernobyl.
[http://www.chernobyl.info/en/Projects/Igovka]
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4 NRC Oversight Panel to Hold Two Meetings in Oak Harbor, Ohio, on
Davis-Besse Reactor Vessel Head Damage
NRC: Press Release Region III - 2002 - 42 -
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs,
Region III 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle IL 60532 www.nrc.gov
No. III-02-042 July 9, 2002 CONTACT: Jan Strasma
(630) 829-9663 Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662 E-mail:
opa3@nrc.gov [opa3@nrc.gov]
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will hold two meetings
on Tuesday, July 16, in Oak Harbor, Ohio, to review the status of
activities at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station as a result
of the corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head. The plant,
which has been shut down since February 15, is operated by
FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company. Both meetings will be at
the Oak Harbor High School Auditorium, 11661 West State Route
163, in Oak Harbor.
The first meeting will be at 3 p.m. when the NRC oversight panel,
set up to coordinate the agency's activities associated with the
corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head, meets with utility
officials to discuss the plans for replacement of the reactor
vessel head and other activities under the utility's
return-to-service plan. The public is invited to observe the
business portion of the meeting and will have an opportunity to
make comments and ask questions of the NRC staff before the
meeting is adjourned.
The second meeting will be at 7 p.m. to update the public on
NRC's activities related to the reactor vessel head degradation.
The public will be encouraged to ask questions and make comments.
Transcripts will be prepared of both meetings and posted on the
NRC's web site.
The NRC oversight panel, created on April 29, includes NRC
management and staff from its Region III office in Lisle,
Illinois, the NRC Headquarters office in Rockville, Maryland, and
the NRC Resident Inspector Office at the Davis-Besse site.
Documents on the Davis-Besse corrosion issue, including meeting
transcripts and further details on NRC's oversight panel
activities, are posted on the NRC's web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/vessel-head-degradation.ht
ml.
*****************************************************************
5 Ukrainian reactor back on line after repairs
July 9, 2002 7:00pm
Kiev, 9 July: The No 5 reactor (VVER-1000) of the Zaporizhzhya
nuclear power plant has been reconnected to the energy grid after
repairs to the plant's power transmission line.
Engineers are gradually increasing the reactor's output back to
its rated capacity, the national nuclear generator Enerhoatom has
reported.
[The reactor was disconnected from the energy grid at 1140 gmt
today due to a fault in a power line, according to
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian 1130 gmt 9 Jul
02.]
[Passage omitted: general information on Ukraine's power plants]
Source: Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian 1538 gmt 9
Jul 02
/© BBC Monitoring
Copyright 2002. All Rights Reserved.
Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Africa Intelligence Wire
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6 [psy-op] Fwd: Cynthia McKinney and Depleted Uranium
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 19:35:22 -0500 (CDT)
--- In MedPolPlus@y..., "nicholasd108" wrote:
--- In iac-discussion@y..., "Rania Masri" wrote:
Dear all,
Two important points to share:
(1) In the first move by someone in Congress to investigate the
military's use of DU weapons, U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) has
introduced the Depleted Uranium Munitions Suspension and Study Act of
2001, H.R. 3155. McKinney's bill would:
* Suspend the U.S. military's use and approval for foreign sale or
export of DU munitions, pending a certification from the Sec. of
Health
and Human Services that DU munitions will not pose a long-term threat
to
the health of U.S. or NATO military personnel or jeopardize the health
of civilian populations in the area of use;
* Suspend the foreign sale and export of plutonium-contaminated DU
munitions;
* Initiate a GAO investigation of plutonium contamination of DU, and
* Initiate a study of the health effects of DU on current or former
U.S.
military personnel who may have been exposed and medical personnel who
treated such affected personnel.
In an appeal for co-sponsors McKinney wrote, " ... the U.S. should
take
care not to leave a toxic legacy for either people in a foreign land,
nor to our own military personnel. Approximately 300 tons of DU
munitions were used in the Gulf War, much of which still sits on the
ground in Iraq. Since we really do not know the comprehensive
consequences of DU contamination, I urge you to support this
legislation, and protect our soldiers and innocent citizens from any
unnecessary health threats." For more Info: Eric Lausten at
(2) Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) is a treasure for all who
love peace and justice! And, McKinney is being targeted by AIPAC and
others. She needs our help for re-election. We have already lost
another good friend in Congress- Congressman Earl Hilliard of Alabama.
(Hilliard was ousted out of the *primary* by money from outside the
state, primarily NY. According to various reports, AIPAC and
connected
groups targeted Hilliard by raising between $300,000 and $500,000 from
out-of-state individuals for his primary opponent, Arthur Davis.) Let
us
make sure that the same won't happen to McKinney. Let's keep McKinney
in
Congress!
McKinney has been one of the strongest - and most courageous - voices
for peace and rationality in Congress. Please support her re-election
campaign. Let us show our friends that we support them, with our
money
and not just our rhetoric, and let us show the war-mongers and the
war-hawks that we are a bloc to be contended with, that we - the peace
lobby - do exist!
Please - you can donate online directly at:
http://www.cynthia2002.com/donate_online.htm Please donate at least
$100. Or you can mail your donation to: McKinney for Congress Post
Office Box 371125 Decatur, GA 30037 Or phone (404) 243-5574 for more
information. Contributions of more than $200 must by law include the
donor's name, address, employer's name and employer's address.
(If you want, you can email me at rania@n... - so that we can tell
our friend McKinney how much we peace-lovers have supported her.) We
really need your help.
Thank you,
-Rania Masri
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
- Ella Baker
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
--------
--- End forwarded message ---
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7 South Carolina to visit North Carolina tablet program
heraldsun.com:
The Associated Press
Jul 10, 2002 : 9:03 am ET
ANDERSON, S.C. -- A delegation from South Carolina will visit
North Carolina to study that state's plans to distribute free
tablets that could help prevent thyroid cancer following a
nuclear accident.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has offered to provide states
with enough potassium iodide pills to treat everyone living
within 10 miles of a nuclear power station.
"We have a number of logistic questions we have to work out
before we decide," said Thom Berry, spokesman for the Department
of Health and Environmental Control.
The pills saturate the thyroid with iodine, preventing the gland
from absorbing any more. If taken at the right time, the pills
can prevent radioactive iodine from being taken into the thyroid
and causing cancer later in life.
The amount of radioactive iodine released in a nuclear accident
would vary based on the type of accident and the amount of
radioactive material released, said Roger Hannah, spokesman for
the NRC in Atlanta.
Tens of thousands of people exposed in 1986 to radioactive iodine
from the Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine have since developed
thyroid cancer. The NRC began offering the tablets to 33 states
in December; 15 states have accepted the tablets.
The program is not a response to the terrorist attacks,
spokeswoman Sue Gagner said. The program had been approved in
2000, she said.
The remaining 18 eligible states have declined the tablets or
remain undecided, Gagner said.
The pills don't protect against all types of radiation.
"We did not want people thinking they didn't have to evacuate
because they were protected from radiation," said Stacey Hoffman,
director of the Georgia Division of Public Health's office of
risk communication.
The NRC assumes the tablets would be given as part of evacuation
plans, providing another layer of protection, Gagner said.
"We feel its best to get people out of harm's way," said Ron
Osborne, director of the South Carolina Emergency Management
Division.
There are 74,000 people in the 10-mile zone around Duke Energy's
Oconee Nuclear Station, spokeswoman Dayle Stewart said. Duke will
support whatever decision the state makes, she said.
The decision on whether to accept the tablets rests with DHEC's
seven-member Nuclear Emergency Response Section, which will
consider information from a technical advisory committee
including physicians, emergency planning officials and nuclear
station representatives.
Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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8 AU: Radiation tests revealed
[10jul02]
news.com.au -
By MARK DUNN
RADIATION experiments were carried out on Aborigines in the
1960s, without proper consent, to test human survival in the
desert.
[aborigine]
Radiation tests were carried out on Aborigines without proper
consent, it has been revealed. News photo Latest national news
Other radiation experiments on indigenous people included tests
for cretinism and genetic flaws in Papua New Guinean
tribespeople, according to a report by the Australian Radiation
Laboratory.
Water laced with radiation was given to an unknown number of
Aborigines north of Woomera in 1962 so metabolic studies could
monitor their fluid retention in arid conditions.
Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency health
director Peter Burns said the level of radioactive isotopes in
the experimental drinking water did not pose excessive health
risks to the subjects. The issue was the participants' lack of
informed consent to the experiments, he said.
"It was a different world then," Mr Burns said.
Australian scientists also used radiation tests on PNG
highlanders, detecting a genetic imbalance of isotopes.
This led to the large-scale prevention of goitreism, a severe
inflammation of the throat and related deafness and muteness.
The ARL report, written in 1994, refers to radioactive tests to
research cretinism and metabolism which were carried out on
Central Australian Aborigines and PNG Chimbu tribesmen.
Radioisotope tests were conducted on PNG children as young as
three months.
Adult Aborigines in an area north of the former Woomera rocket
range were proposed as test samples for other experiments.
"It is reasonable to assume that (the Aborigines and PNG
tribespeople's) knowledge and understanding of the implications
of the administration of radioisotopes to humans would have been
limited," the ARL report states.
"It has not been made clear . . . whether any effort was made to
obtain some sort of informed consent from the two groups of
native people."
Herald Sun
NEWS.COM.AU
*****************************************************************
9 Breakthrough for atomic test veterans
BBC News | HEALTH |
Wednesday, 10
July, 2002,
[John Berry]
John Berry says radiation exposure wrecked his health
Former servicemen exposed to high levels of radiation during
nuclear testing have won legal aid to fund a study into their
health.
They hope the results will assist their battle for compensation
from the UK government.
Thousands of veterans of a-bomb testing during the 1950s and
1960s say their health was permanently damaged as a result.
Ministers say there is no evidence that the tests led to
side-effects, and it looked as if the former servicemen had lost
their case when a European court rejected a compensation claim
two years ago.
However, the Legal Services Commission has now agreed to the
funding of research which will look for faults in the DNA of
former soldiers to look for damage which may have been caused by
radiation. Their genetic structure will be compared with that of
unaffected former soldiers.
'Case to answer'
Mervyn Fudge, the solicitor representing a small number of
veterans, said: "They are satisfied that there has been a matter
that has to be looked into. "The information we have got suggests
they have a good claim and this has been accepted by the Legal
Services Commission."
My life has been destroyed. I know I have been placed in danger
John Berry, former serviceman
John Berry was a young soldier when, in 1956, he was sent to the
Indian Ocean island of Trimoli to set out radiation detection
devices near a nearby nuclear test site.
At one point, he waded into a pond to make sure his line of
detectors was dead straight - but he now believes the water was
heavily radioactive. He told the BBC: "When I got back to the
ferry, my legs had gone red almost all the way up to the crotch."
Years of pain
[John Berry] John Berry believes his health has been affected
He believed it was sunburn, but shortly afterwards, his skin
shrivelled and the legs began to bleed.
"That was 46 years ago - and they're still bleeding," he said. He
accused the government of suppressing information which could
assist his claim.
"My life has been destroyed. I know I have been placed in
danger." Mervyn Fudge is now trying to recruit more than 2,500
former nuclear veterans to take part in the medical trials.
He believes that, if a link is proven, the government will face a
hefty compensation bill.
"Some of these people have been unable to work for 25 years
because of their injuries."
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10 US terror experts set for UK ports
[BBC NEWS]
Wednesday, 10
July, 2002,
[Felixstowe Port]
Felixstowe port could be first to host US agents
US customs inspectors could soon be based at British sea ports as
part of the American-led war against terrorism.
It is feared groups linked to Al-Qaeda could try to smuggle a
crude weapon of mass destruction into the US inside a sea
container.
Three European ports, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre, have
already signed up to the new American initiative.
Felixstowe in Suffolk, the largest container port in the UK,
could soon follow suit.
Sea ports carry 90% of world trade - it is a vast global business
on which everyone's prosperity depends.
However, high security was never really built into the container
system - until now.
Dirty bomb threat
The United States wants to station its own customs agents at
ports around the world to help screen suspect containers heading
towards the USA.
In Europe, agreements have been signed in the last two weeks with
Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre, and the US Customs Commissioner,
Robert Bonner, says Felixstowe is the first British port he wants
to add to the list.
Making container traffic more secure is a massive task - about
six million containers arrive at sea ports in the United States
every year.
The fear among US officials is that one of them might conceal a
dirty bomb - a crude nuclear or biological weapon.
If such a device were to explode inside an American port, it
could threaten thousands of lives and badly damage world trade.
To minimise the risk, containers will now be pre-screened before
they reach American soil, but only at selected ports.
That has raised fears that ports outside the system will suffer
commercially because it will take them longer to ship their cargo
to the United States.
*****************************************************************
11 Beach owner sues over radioactive waste
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 23:17:47 -0500 (CDT)
Beach owner sues over radioactive waste
By Paul O'Hare
05 July 2002
A landowner has launched a lawsuit against the UK Atomic Energy
Authority, claiming it has repeatedly contaminated his beach with
radioactive particles.
Geoffrey Minter, who owns Sandside Bay near the nuclear installation
at Dounreay in Caithness, said the action was a response to a
fruitless five-year campaign against the authority. Mr Minter
described his action, believed to be the first of its kind, as the
only way to resolve the long-running dispute in the face of "spin,
excuses and broken promises".
The authority said it would consider the issues raised by the petition
before issuing a formal response.
The first radioactive particle was discovered on the beach in 1984.
Seven years later Mr Minter bought Sandside House, an estate which
includes beaches, a harbour and an 18-hole golf course. But it was not
until 1992, after a planning application for new waste pits, that the
particle discovery was made public.
Two further radioactive particles were found on Sandside Bay's main
beach in 1997, and a further 17 since.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=312068
*****************************************************************
12 [toeslist] Stop the Hanford Radioactive Waste Dump
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 23:23:25 -0500 (CDT)
note: public meetings in WA state will be held -
August 6, 2002 Richland, WA Red Lion Hotel 802 George Washington
Way
August 7, 2002 Seattle, WA The Mountaineers Pinnacle Room 300 3rd
Ave. W
Also, where are WA State senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell??
-melissa
From: "WA COnTACT Network" Subject: Stop
the Hanford Radioactive Waste Dump Date: 08 Jul 2002 22:47:43 -0000
In May, the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) issued a plan to
double the total amount of radioactive waste buried in unlined soil
trenches at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.
Hanford, which sits next to the Columbia River, is already the
single most contaminated site on this continent.
You can take action on this alert either via email (please see
directions below) or via the web at:
http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/hanford
We encourage you to take action by July 22, 2002
Stop the Hanford Radioactive Waste Dump
----------------------
TAKE ACTION BY SENDING A LETTER OR ATTENDING A MEETING
BACKGROUND:
The analysis of how burying more radioactive waste at Hanford
impacts your health and the environment is contained in the Solid
Waste Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). This EIS is now out
for public comment.
You can view the EIS at: www.hanford.gov/hanford.cfm
For more information on stopping unsafe transport and burial of
radioactive waste at Hanford see: www.heartofamericanorthwest.org
TAKE ACTION!
Come to a public meeting in your area and make your voice heard!
Urge the U.S. Department of Energy to STOP importing waste to
Hanford and increasing the risk of contaminating our Columbia River.
Meetings will be held in Seattle, Portland, Hood River and Richland.
For information on meeting times and locations, please go to:
www.heartofamericanorthwest.org/upcoming.html
If you cannot attend a hearing, please write a letter to the U.S.
Department of Energy, urging them to provide the public with an
adequate analysis of all the impacts to human and environmental
health, including risks from groundwater contamination and
transportation accident.
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13 In the wake of the Yucca Mountain vote...
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:58:21 -0500 (CDT)
Now that the majority of Congresscritters have voted to approve the
nuclear industry's agenda and defy the will of the people (quel surprise!!),
you might want to consult the following websites (the fight
ain't over yet):
Check www.mapscience.org to find out how close you live to a
proposed route for transporting nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain
site and to a nuclear power plant, plus lots more useful information.
Also these valuable sites:
Citizens Awareness Network http://www.nukebusters.org/
Nuclear Information Resource Service http://www.nirs.org/
Safe Energy Communication Council http://www.safeenergy.org/
Nuclear Neighborhoods http://nuclearneighborhoods.org/friend/
Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment
Program: http://www.citizen.org/atomicroad/articles.cfm?ID=7122
*****************************************************************
14 Yucca Mountain Controversy Chronology
Las Vegas SUN
July 09, 2002
What's ahead for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in
Nevada now that Congress has approved the project.
2002: The Energy Department continues to work on unresolved
scientific issues as it prepares an application for a
construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
2003: Energy Department completes a detailed transportation plan,
working with 43 states on routing and security, and with the NRC
on waste canister designs and safeguards.
2003: Courts likely to rule on first of six lawsuits already
filed by Nevada challenging the Yucca project.
2004: Energy Department plans to apply for construction permit.
Licensing process before the NRC likely to take three to four
years.
2007: Construction expected to begin.
2010-2034: Shipments of 3,200 tons of waste a year to arrive at
the Yucca site. Initial capacity is 77,000 tons, but with
congressional approval it could be expanded to 120,000 tons, to
be filled by 2048.
2035 and beyond: Waste site to remain open for 100 to 300 years,
after which it would be shut in. Some isotopes in the waste will
remain highly radioactive for thousands of years.
Source: Energy Department. -- All contents copyright 2002 Las
Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
15 Yucca FAQs
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Q: How was Yucca Mountain singled out as a repository site?
A: Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982,
directing the Department of Energy to identify potential U.S.
repository sites in the East and West. In 1986, the field of
potential sites was narrowed to those in Nevada, Texas and
Washington state. The next year, Congress dropped Texas and
Washington as possible sites, reasoning that it was too expensive
to simultaneously study three different sites. Nevada officials
referred to this 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act
as the "Screw Nevada Bill."
Q: Is Yucca Mountain really a mountain?
A: Yucca Mountain is a flattop, volcanic rock ridge 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas. It's called a mountain because its crest
is roughly 5,000 feet in elevation, and it's more than 1,000 feet
higher than surrounding land, the yardstick for mountainous
terrain in the United States. Yucca Mountain was formed some 13
million years ago from alternating periods of volcanic ash
falling from the sky and lava oozing from a caldera near Timber
Mountain, 12 miles north. The volcanoes and cinder cones near
Yucca Mountain are extinct, according to federal geologists.
Q: Why does the federal government want the nation's high-level
nuclear waste kept in one place?
A: In recommending the Yucca Mountain site to President Bush in
February, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham noted that 161 million
Americans live within 75 miles of the 131 locations where spent
fuel, high-level nuclear waste and excess plutonium are stored.
He said facilities housing the materials in 39 states "were
intended to do so on a temporary basis." Citing national security
and the need for a single location for this waste, Abraham
advised Bush that a a deep, underground facility far from
population centers "that can withstand an attack well beyond any
that is reasonably conceivable" is preferred. Bush agreed when he
quickly recommended the site. Since passage of the 1982 Nuclear
Waste Policy Act, the federal government has had a contractual
obligation to take title to spent fuel at commercial power
reactor sites by January 1998. Since the government failed to
meet the deadline, nuclear power companies have filed 18 cases
that are pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Combined,
eight of the cases seek a total of more than $4 billion in
damages. Damages in the remaining cases have not been specified,
but in all the Nuclear Energy Institute estimates $55 billion in
damages could be sought from general tax revenues.
Q: What do Nevada officials mean when they say politics, not
science, has driven the Yucca Mountain Project, and why aren't
they sold on the safety of the repository?
A: Nevada officials cite the Energy Department's cancellation of
the second repository program in 1986 and the 1987 amendment to
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act as their first clues that politics
was playing a role in the search for a repository site. Nevada
officials became even more convinced they were facing a stacked
deck when the DOE changed repository requirements to make
man-made barriers a key component in containing radioactivity.
Original federal legislation called for Yucca Mountain's natural
geology to completely contain radioactivity. State Nuclear
Projects Agency chief Bob Loux said Nevada officials doubt the
site is safe for storing nuclear waste because various scientific
panels have raised questions about the site's integrity and
experts are not uniform in their opinions. Researchers have
different conclusions about the threats posed by groundwater
movement, seismic and volcanic activity and the ability of the
geology to contain the waste.
Q: How much will a completed Yucca Mountain repository cost?
A: The life-cycle cost in 2000 dollars is expected to be $58
billion, covering a period from 1983 through about 2135, or 100
years after the last waste canister is loaded into the
repository.
Q: What kinds of nuclear waste will be buried at Yucca Mountain?
A: Most of the waste destined for Yucca Mountain is metal-clad
tubes, known as fuel assemblies, that contain uranium pellets.
These assemblies have been used inside power reactors to generate
energy from the atom-splitting process known as fission. Other
nuclear materials that will be put inside the repository include
spent fuel from Navy reactors and solidified, high-level
radioactive wastes and surplus plutonium from nuclear weapons
development.
Q: How much electrical energy can be generated from a typical
fuel rod assembly?
A: Based on six months of winter electricity use and six months
of summer electricity use, a single 1,900-pound fuel assembly can
power about 2,011 average Southern Nevada homes per year. A
typical reactor uses about 200 fuel assemblies containing
enriched uranium fuel to generate electricity.
Q: Why does Southern Nevada use electricity generated by nuclear
reactors if the state doesn't have a nuclear power plant?
A: Nevada Power Co., the state's largest electric utility,
doesn't have long-term contracts with any nuclear power plants
and its ratepayers don't contribute to a waste disposal fund. But
the company must purchase some electricity from the open market
to meet the valley's energy needs. Nevada Power officials say
about 8 percent of the electricity the company purchases on the
open market is produced by nuclear reactors.
Q: Why have millions of electricity consumers contributed
billions of dollars to a federal trust fund?
A: Commercial nuclear plants provide 20 percent of the nation's
power. Since 1983, nuclear power ratepayers have been required by
law to pay one-10th of a penny on each monthly bill into the fund
set up for nuclear waste disposal costs. Some $18 billion has
been collected for the fund so far. About $7 billion has been
spent on the nuclear waste disposal program with most of that, $4
billion, on the Yucca Mountain Project.
Q: How many people live along possible transportation routes to
Yucca Mountain?
A: Energy Department officials project that during a 24-year
shipping campaign, through about 2035, about 16.4 million people
would live within half a mile of railroad routes, if rail is the
most-used transportation method. If shipments are made mostly by
truck, some 10.4 million people would live within half a mile of
those routes, according to Energy Department estimates.
Q: How soon could nuclear waste shipments to Nevada begin?
A: At the earliest, with a three-year licensing review and no
major construction delays, the first spent fuel canisters could
be put inside the mountain in 2010, according to the current
schedule. But Nevada has filed several lawsuits challenging the
project, and the state's lawyers believe any of them could cause
years of delays. The General Accounting Office, the nonpartisan
congressional agency that audits federal programs, predicted in
testimony to Congress this year that waste shipments to Yucca
Mountain realistically couldn't begin until at least 2020.
Q: Will nuclear waste be transported through the metropolitan Las
Vegas area?
A: Department of Energy officials say they have no plans to take
nuclear waste shipments through the Las Vegas metropolitan area.
Shipments are supposed to follow Department of Transportation
preferred routes: the most direct interstate highways and rail
lines. But the governor also can propose preferred routes, which
must be followed unless the Department of Transportation finds a
compelling reason why they are unsafe. The Energy Department's
final impact statement for the Yucca Mountain Project considers
five potential corridors to reach the mountain, including using
transfer stations near the Las Vegas Valley that would be
designed to put truck shipments onto rail cars to continue the
journey 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But the document,
released in February, notes that "at this time, there is no rail
access to the Yucca Mountain site. This means that material
traveling by rail would have to continue to the repository on a
new branch rail line or heavy haul trucks at a ... transfer
station in Nevada, and then travel on existing highways that
could need to be upgraded."
--KEITH ROGERS
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
16 Yucca: More hurdles await project
[http://www.reviewjournal.com/]
Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency chief Bob Loux pauses Tuesday as
he talks about Yucca Mountain issues. In the background the
television broadcasts the historic Senate floor debate to
override Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of storing the spent
nuclear fuel in Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Photo by Steve Andrascik.
Graphic by Mike Johnson.
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Law requires licensing application be submitted to Nuclear Regulatory
Commission within 90 days
By KEITH ROGERS
REVIEW-JOURNAL
The Yucca Mountain Project has survived Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto,
but the Energy Department must clear another procedural test --
and another challenge from Nevada -- before it can begin building
the nuclear waste repository.
The department is required to submit a construction license
application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Energy
officials say the detailed application, which must include design
specifications and a construction schedule, will be ready no
sooner than December 2004.
Nevada officials, however, say the Energy Department has only
three months to put the documents together, and federal
legislation seems to back them up.
"The secretary shall submit to the commission an application for
a construction authorization for a repository at such site no
later than 90 days after the date on which the recommendation of
the site designation is effective," the Nuclear Waste Policy Act
states.
Tuesday's Senate vote to override Guinn's veto made the site
designation official. Just hours after the Senate vote, Energy
Department spokesman Joe Davis restated Secretary Spencer
Abraham's promise that only a "full and complete application"
will be submitted to the NRC, even if it takes through 2004 to
prepare one.
"We don't see any significant issue will arise from the 90 days,"
Davis said. "The fact of the matter is we've already missed one
deadline, in 1998, to accept the waste."
Bob Loux, Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency chief, said his office
is investigating how to force the Energy Department to adhere to
the required 90-day period for submitting a substantially
complete license application.
"They seem to believe the element of the law they don't like,
they don't have to obey," he said. "The laws we have to live with
every day they believe apply selectively to them. In essence,
they think they're above the law."
Jeff Ciocco, senior project manager for the NRC's High-Level
Radioactive Waste Branch, says the Energy Department is obligated
to meet the 90-day application filing requirement.
"The NRC isn't required to take any action if DOE doesn't submit
a license application within 90 days," he said in a telephone
interview.
He added that the Energy Department must make documents
supporting the application available electronically to the NRC
six months prior to submittal.
The application must include general information about Yucca
Mountain; a schedule for construction of the repository and
receipt of the waste; where the waste will be placed within the
repository's maze of tunnels; and a safety analysis that
describes the repository's dimensions, material properties and
specifications.
Nevada officials say the application should include a detailed
design that shows how the tunnels will be spaced and how hot or
cold the repository will become as the waste decays.
Once the construction license application is submitted, the NRC
could begin a licensing review that would take several years to
complete.
If the NRC determines the application is incomplete, it will be
sent back to the Energy Department for correc- tions.
"What normally happens, if we have questions ... then we ask the
applicant to answer those questions. There might be more than one
round," NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said.
NRC staff can reject the application if it demonstrates that both
below-ground and above-ground operations cannot be conducted
safely.
If the application is ruled complete, it will be accepted by
entering it into a docket with a notice that gives the public,
including Nevada officials, a chance to intervene in a hearing
process.
Gagner said the hearing will include a number of sessions and
will be held in Nevada. It will be "very extensive," she said,
although she could not specify how much money the NRC plans to
spend to conduct the sessions.
A three-member licensing board, appointed by the NRC's Atomic
Safety License Board Panel, decides whether to recommend
construction to the five-member NRC.
The licensing board can hold all issues to the scrutiny of a
public hearing, including those pertaining to the suitability of
Yucca Mountain, despite Tuesday's Senate vote authorizing the
site.
Another issue of contention for the state is the length of time
the repository would be required to contain the waste. Some of
the nuclear materials that would be stored inside Yucca Mountain
won't reach their peak dosages for 300,000 to 800,000 years, or
longer in some cases. Yet the repository would be required to
safely contain the highly radioactive wastes for only 10,000
years.
Other issues Nevada officials are concerned about include the
size and shape of a proposed 11-mile buffer zone around the
mountain. The Energy Department says radioactive materials that
leak from the site would be diluted in the zone's groundwater.
The buffer zone, according to state officials, contradicts the
original intent of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which calls for
the mountain's natural geology to contain the waste and all
radioactivity.
If the NRC denies the license, the Energy Department can submit
another application for review, starting the cycle over again.
There is no limit to how many times the Energy Department can
submit new applications, Gagner said.
Eventually, the Energy Department will need NRC approval to
receive spent fuel from commercial power reactor operators and
load it into the tunnels of the Yucca Mountain repository.
The Energy Department also will need a license modification to
close the repository once it has been filled with the highly
radioactive used fuel assemblies.
The second licensing phase will come as construction of the
repository nears completion. At that time, just prior to 2010
under the current schedule, the Department of Energy must submit
an application for a license to receive up to 77,000 tons of
high-level radioactive waste, most of which is spent fuel from
commercial power reactors across the nation.
If that license is granted, the Energy Department can begin
loading the canisters of spent fuel into the repository's
tunnels.
In the third licensing phase, after the repository has been
filled with waste containers, estimated to be sometime after
2034, the Department of Energy can apply for a license amendment
to decommission and close the repository.
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
17 Yucca: Innocence Lost
Protesters demonstrate against Yucca Mountain at UNLV during a
reception for nuclear scientists on Oct. 29, 1990.
REVIEW-JOURNAL FILES
Graphic by Glenn Cook and Mike Johnson.
Bill Vasconi, co-chairman of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Study
Committee, speaks in favor of the Yucca Mountain Project during a
Sept. 5, 2001, hearing by the U.S. Department of Energy.
REVIEW-JOURNAL FILE PHOTO
Former Nevada Sen. Richard Bryan smiles as he is introduced at
his first Nevada Nuclear Projects Commission meeting on June 8,
2001. Bryan regrets his early support for a nuclear repository.
REVIEW-JOURNAL FILE PHOTO
Graphic by Mike Johnson.
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Early embrace of nuclear power lost its fervor
By ED VOGEL
REVIEW-JOURNAL CAPITAL BUREAU
CARSON CITY --
Assemblyman Lloyd Mann introduced a resolution on Feb. 26, 1975,
that said Nevada would welcome the creation of a nuclear waste
repository at the Nevada Test Site.
Both houses of the Legislature overwhelmingly approved the
resolution within weeks. They said the "people of Southern Nevada
have confidence in the safety record" of the Atomic Energy
Commission.
Within a few years, residents began hearing about studies at
Yucca Mountain, an ugly razorback a few miles north of Lathrop
Wells, now called Amargosa Valley.
On Tuesday, Nevada was awarded what its legislators and many of
its residents wanted back in 1975, although most of them now view
things nuclear much differently. The U.S. Senate overturned Gov.
Kenny Guinn's veto of Yucca Mountain as the nation's high-level
nuclear waste repository.
"It was the biggest political mistake of my life," remembered
former U.S. Sen. and Gov. Richard Bryan about the vote he made a
generation ago.
As a legislator, Bryan supported the repository resolution. He
said those votes came when Nevadans, out of a sense of
patriotism, would support just about anything nuclear as long as
it brought well-paying jobs to the state.
During the 1950s, many Nevada schoolchildren rose at dawn to
watch the flash of atomic tests. Almost everybody in Las Vegas
had a relative or friend who worked at the Nevada Test Site.
"When the nuclear age came to Nevada, it was embraced
enthusiastically," said Bryan, a Democrat. "Ninety-nine point
nine percent of us never thought about nuclear waste or knew it
existed. We just knew the bomb brought an end to the war."
Not long after the passage of the pro-nuclear resolution, 11
spent fuel rods from a nuclear reactor in Florida were hauled to
the Nevada Test Site and placed within the bowels of a mine.
There were no protests to this early demonstration of the storage
of nuclear waste. Test site officials regularly bused members of
the media and local leaders to the mine to show how safely
nuclear waste could be stored.
"We were very naive in the early days," said Bob Loux,
administrator of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects. "We
thought the selection would be a fair process."
The son of a career Energy Department worker, Loux took a job
with the state in 1979 to monitor federal activities in selecting
the nuclear repository.
"I knew most of the guys at the DOE in the early days," he said.
As Loux became Nevada's point man on Yucca Mountain, the views of
average Nevadans about the nuclear age began to change.
First, there was a spate of lawsuits filed by former Interior
Secretary Stewart Udall in 1979 on behalf of downwinders, people
who lived downwind of the test site during the days of
atmospheric testing.
Test site workers started to complain of illnesses and asked
Congress to help. A cancer cluster was reported in St. George,
Utah. Thyroid problems cropped up in younger people who had been
brought up on milk produced by cows downwind of the test site.
The Three Mile Island nuclear disaster was blared over newscasts
in 1979.
Bringing the horror to celluloid reality was the 1979 release of
the movie "The China Syndrome," spawning concern of a reactor
meltdown in those pre-Chernobyl days.
"All of a sudden, we saw nuclear as something exceedingly
dangerous," Bryan said. "There was a shattering of innocence.
People became less trusting of government. That may be the legacy
of Vietnam."
"The noose was around our neck from the start," added Bob
Fulkerson, who as the leader of Citizen Alert organized the first
protests against the Yucca Mountain Project. "Nevada had a
gung-ho, all-for-our-country, pro-military position in the '70s
and '80s. We begged the government not to shut down nuclear
weapons testing, and the same time we said we didn't want nuclear
wastes."
During that era, the federal government looked at different rock
and salt formations across the country in its quest to find a
place to dispose of wastes piling up in cooling ponds outside the
nation's more than 100 nuclear power plants.
Quickly identified as leading contenders for a repository were
the basalt formations at the government's Hanford, Wash., Nuclear
Reservation, the volcanic tuff at the Nevada Test Site and salt
formations in Deaf Smith County, Texas. Sites in Utah,
Mississippi, Louisiana and New York also were checked.
Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act on Dec. 22, 1982.
President Reagan signed the bill into law two weeks later. That
act called for the Energy Department to construct two
repositories, one in the East, the other in the West, opening the
first by 1998.
Five sites initially would be studied for each repository. Three
would be selected by 1985 for detailed study.
Within six months of Reagan's signing, news reports circulated
that then-unknown Yucca Mountain was the leading contender for
the repository. Bill Vasconi, the Southern Nevada chairman of the
Nevada Nuclear Waste Study Committee, said it was not a
coincidence that Yucca Mountain was ranked so high.
"The test site has been one of the of the most-studied geological
sites in the country," said Vasconi, whose group favors the Yucca
Mountain site and wants the state to negotiate for compensation
in exchange for accepting the repository. "We detonated 928
nuclear devices at the site. We were doing it for our country.
All for our country ... should still mean something. Yucca
Mountain was chosen because we already had a nuclear facility
there."
On Dec. 19, 1984, the Energy Department selected Yucca Mountain
as one of three finalists for the first repository. In a Las
Vegas news conference, officials touted the economic benefits:
8,500 workers would be needed during site construction.
About that time, Loux compared notes with his colleagues in other
states being considered for the repository. He found the studies
there were perfunctory.
"They'd say, `Nevada, you're it,' " he remembered. "We had
assumed it would be a fair selection, but it was becoming
painfully obvious it was a political process."
Regardless of the law, Energy Secretary Donald Hodel announced in
1986 there would be no studies for a second repository. He also
said if Texas didn't want the repository in Deaf Smith County,
near Amarillo, then it would not be built there.
By then, Bryan and members of the Nevada congressional delegation
were crying foul. Their protests fell on deaf ears.
A year later, Congress put into law what Hodel had proposed. On
Dec. 17, 1987, a House-Senate negotiating team reworked the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act and made Yucca Mountain the only
candidate for a high-level nuclear repository.
No Nevadans were on the negotiating team. All four members of the
Nevada delegation said the decision was pure politics. Deaf Smith
County was dropped because of the influence of House Speaker Jim
Wright of Texas, and Hanford was rejected because of the clout of
Majority Leader Tom Foley of Washington.
Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La., who drew up the bill, boasted:
"We got a site and we will be able to put nuclear waste there
safely.
"Nevadans are not particularly happy about it, but they've known
for some time they would be picked," Johnston added. "I would bet
anything after it is built they would deem it one of their
treasures."
Five days later, as part of an Omnibus Reconciliation Act, the
Yucca Mountain amendments were approved by Congress. The
legislation became known in the Silver State as the "Screw Nevada
Bill," and Johnston become a persona non grata in Nevada.
"What is proposed is an act of naked and unprovoked aggression by
the people of several states against a state which is smaller and
has less power, the state of Nevada," said Sen. Harry Reid,
D-Nev.
Then in his first year as a senator, Reid called himself a
pessimist and predicted "Nevada won't be able to stop the dump."
Nevada's political leaders consider that law purely political,
but Steve Kraft of the Nuclear Energy Institute said the decision
was made on science.
"The fact was there was a record before each member of Congress
that said Yucca Mountain was ranked Number One," Kraft said.
"During the floor debate in the Senate a month before, they
argued about costs."
Kraft said lawmakers initially thought studies to find a suitable
repository would cost $60 million. But by 1987, the estimates of
studying a single site reached $1.2 billion. As of today, $4
billion has been spent at Yucca Mountain, with $7 billion on the
program overall, and costs may reach $60 billion before a
repository actually opens, he said.
Shortly after the 1987 vote, Reid blamed the decision to study
only Yucca Mountain on former Sen. Paul Laxalt, R-Nev., saying
Laxalt did "zip" as a senator to keep it out of Nevada.
Laxalt retaliated by saying, "Harry blew it, and everybody in
Washington knows it." Laxalt said Democrats had cut the "nasty
deal" that essentially brought the dump to Nevada. The
legislation later was signed by Laxalt's best friend, President
Reagan.
If blame is handed out after today's vote, Loux could point his
finger at members of both political parties.
He remembers one-term Sen. Chic Hecht, R-Nev., infamous for
calling Yucca Mountain a "nuclear suppository," beat him up as a
witness when Loux journeyed to Washington to testify on Yucca
Mountain. Loux said mixed signals were sent by the delegation
about Nevada's views on Yucca Mountain.
"At the national level, the Democrats put the screws to us," said
Loux, pointing to Johnston and Rep. John Dingle of Michigan.
Outside the Washington beltway, Loux said, the real culprit is
the nuclear power industry, which pulled the strings of
politicians who acted on not-in-my-back-yard principles. The
nuclear power industry provided the contributions for politicians
who did not want a dump in their states, he said.
Reno political consultant Andy Barbano says one can go back to
President Eisenhower and his "Atoms for Peace" program of the
1950s to find blame.
Under Eisenhower, the nation began looking for peaceful uses of
atomic energy and started building nuclear power plants. No
consideration was given then to waste disposal.
"Nuclear power plants were developed as part of the program to
justify spending on nuclear weapons," he said. "Blame the
military industrial complex."
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
18 VENUE CHANGE: State pins last hopes on courts
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Elected officials confident they can prevail by exposing DOE flaws
By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- The fight over nuclear waste storage in Nevada has
shifted from the U.S. Capitol to the federal courthouse, a
quarter-mile in distance but a world apart in atmosphere.
State leaders failed to redirect the hot rhetoric that led
Congress to finalize Yucca Mountain as the nation's waste
repository site on Tuesday. They now will try to stop the project
with dispassionate legal reasoning.
Having already committed millions of dollars to litigation,
Nevada's elected officials like their chances.
"The Energy Department won't be able to hide behind its political
allies in Congress when the courts begin their review of DOE's
record on this project," Gov. Kenny Guinn said. "We are confident
that we will prevail."
For the next few years, much of the grappling between lawyers for
the state and its two-headed foe, the Bush administration-nuclear
power industry tandem, will take place on paper.
Yucca Mountain won't be debated in a trial atmosphere. There will
be some public court sessions, but attorneys largely will argue
matters of law and procedure among the quiet hallways and high
ceilings of the federal appeals court at the bottom of Capitol
Hill.
The District of Columbia Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals
will weigh the Yucca Mountain Project against environmental laws
and administrative records that federal agencies have compiled to
support the selection of the site, 100 miles northwest of Las
Vegas.
It could take two years for individual cases to wind through the
process. The state's first lawsuits, filed last summer, have oral
arguments scheduled for February.
The cases could be wrapped up by the time the Energy Department
submits a construction license application to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission late in 2004. Or, judges could throw the
project into chaos, and years of delay, by sending key portions
back for more work.
"Any one of our cases can wreak havoc on this project," said
Joseph Egan, an attorney and nuclear engineer based in McLean,
Va., who heads Nevada's special legal team.
The state has committed $2.5 million to Egan's group through
Sept. 30, 2004. Others on the team include constitutional law
authority Charles Cooper, a former member of the Reagan Justice
Department who bills $450 an hour, and William Briggs Jr., an
administrative law expert and former solicitor at the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, who charges $350 an hour. Egan, 47,
charges $395 an hour.
Since last summer, Nevada has filed five lawsuits in Washington
disputing segments of the Yucca Mountain Project:
• One lawsuit contends repository radiation standards set by the
Environmental Protection Agency won't protect Nevadans far into
the future, when radiation escaping from Yucca Mountain should
reach its highest levels.
• Three allege the Bush administration and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission made decisions based on Yucca Mountain site guidelines
wrongfully amended into the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
• The most recent, filed June 6, picks apart the Energy
Department's massive environmental impact statement for Yucca
Mountain. The 57-page lawsuit claims there are dozens of
violations of procedural law and the 1969 National Environmental
Policy Act.
A sixth lawsuit, over Yucca Mountain water rights, is being
contested in federal court in Las Vegas.
And now that Congress has finished its action, a seventh lawsuit
probably will be filed soon, officials said. The next one will
allege government decisions to single out Nevada for nuclear
waste storage were unconstitutional. Deputy Attorney General
Marta Adams said the state may argue the Yucca Mountain selection
process violated Nevada's state rights.
"We think there's something there to argue that Nevada is being
unfairly targeted to bear the brunt of the nation's nuclear
legacy that is not being shared in any way by the
nuclear-generating states," she said.
"If in a war, all the soldiers were to come from Nevada, the
state of Nevada would have an equal protection type of argument
we could take. It's our view there's some real justice issues
here."
Egan said such a case almost certainly would wind up before the
U.S. Supreme Court.
"It would basically be, how far can the federal government go to
screw one particular state?" he said. "If you didn't stop here
(at Yucca Mountain), could Nevada end up being the national
sacrifice area for everything? A toxic waste dump for everyone?
What are the limits of equal protection under the federal
system?"
Nevada has been suing the government over Yucca Mountain since
1985. It won its first case, obtaining federal funding to monitor
Energy Department site studies.
But it has lost more than a half-dozen cases since then,
including a challenge of 1987's "Screw Nevada" legislation, which
eliminated sites in Texas and Washington state from study and
made Yucca Mountain the nation's sole site under consideration
for the repository.
Michael Bauser, associate general counsel for the Nuclear Energy
Institute, said that case, Nevada v. Watkins, is noteworthy
because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected
constitutional arguments about the project. The U.S. Supreme
Court subsequently declined to hear a Nevada appeal.
"People forget about that case because it's over 10 years old,
but it was a very significant case," said Bauser, who keeps a
copy of the decision on his desk.
Adams maintains the project is ripe for lawsuits because the
government has laid out its administrative record, and the Bush
administration and Congress have made final decisions about Yucca
Mountain.
The Nuclear Energy Institute has filed its own lawsuit against
the EPA radiation standards and has entered the other Yucca
Mountain cases to back the Energy Department.
"Our position will be to support the sufficiency (of the project)
based on what we've seen so far," Bauser said.
Jay Silberg, a Washington lawyer who often represents the nuclear
industry, said he doesn't think Nevada has a strong case. Silberg
isn't involved in the lawsuits, but he says he may be hired to
help the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Silberg, a partner in the Shaw Pittman firm, said judges won't
"flyspeck" federal agencies on matters like environmental impact
statements.
"The standard is a test for reasonableness. They don't require
perfection or for people to foresee the future," Silberg said.
"They look to see if the agencies made a good-faith attempt to
take a hard look at what the impacts are, and anyone who has seen
the (Yucca Mountain environmental study) expects it will pass.
"If you throw enough mud around, you hope something will stick,
and Nevada has done that for years," Silberg said.
But Jim Morman, a top environmental litigator in the Justice
Department during the Clinton administration, said "there's never
been a case like this one."
"If the plaintiffs can show there were shortcuts, I would think a
court would be interested.
"A NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) case could put a real
hole in the waterline of this project," Morman said. "It's
happened many times. Agencies are frequently told by the court to
go back and do it again."
"Chances of the government being upheld are better than 50-50,
but on the other hand this is a unique law," Morman said.
Egan said an order for the Energy Department to redo key parts of
the Yucca Mountain program would be as good as killing it
outright. Nevada officials don't think the Yucca Mountain Project
can pass muster if done the "right way."
"There are certain things (the Energy Department) cannot do
right, and that's why they didn't do it right the first time,"
Egan said.
Egan says Nevada believes it has found enough problems to derail
Yucca Mountain.
"I can't imagine we're going to lose every one of these
lawsuits," Egan said. "There's just no way we're going to lose
every case."
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
19 EDITORIAL: Now it's on to the courts
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
State loses in the Senate on Yucca; turns attention to legal challenges
During a hard fought 1998 re-election campaign against a young
congressman named John Ensign, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid played the
Yucca card, arguing that his influence and seniority would
protect Nevada from plans to bury the nation's high-level nuclear
waste some 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
A vote for the challenger, Sen. Reid said, was a vote to send
nuclear waste to the Silver State. After a televised debate, he
opined: "It's clear he (Ensign) can't answer the nuke waste
question."
Neither, it has now become obvious, can Sen. Reid.
Although represented by the second-ranking man in the U.S.
Senate, Nevada on Tuesday got rolled again. Despite repeated
assurances to the contrary, Sen. Reid and Sen. Ensign -- who
after losing that 1998 race won an open seat two years later, in
part promising he would provide the state greater leverage with a
Republican administration on the issue -- have failed in the
political battle to kill the Yucca Mountain repository. (Only two
Republicans joined Sen. Ensign in opposing the site.)
As it became clear Tuesday that the Senate would override Gov.
Kenny Guinn's veto of the project, Nevada officials vowed to
continue the fight in the courts. And truth be told, that's the
only place the state's all-or-nothing, no-compromise strategy had
a realistic chance of prevailing.
For all the years of wrangling on this issue -- the maneuvering
of our congressional delegation; the demagoguery of the Nevada
elite in its constant effort to exploit the debate for political
gain; the partisan finger-pointing and bickering -- the political
battle was decided in 1987 when Congress chose to bypass science
and screw a sparsely populated Western state without much clout.
And now that the thoroughly choreographed congressional charade
has concluded, all eyes will turn to the state's legal approach.
It's true that Nevada has lost more than a half-dozen
Yucca-related court cases since 1987. But five pending lawsuits
addressing the environmental and procedural aspects of the
project -- along with a likely challenge on 10th Amendment
grounds -- raise legitimate issues that the courts must take
seriously.
No, the battle is not yet lost. Yucca Mountain remains years from
fruition and the entire matter will almost certainly wind up in
front of the U.S. Supreme Court. And Nevada stands a better
chance of succeeding in the more analytical and sober legal arena
than in it did in the hyperbolic and hypocritical world of
politics.
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
20 Yucca Mountain Project contract worker Bryan Swiney talks Tuesday
about the mood at the project's Hillshire Drive office.
David Allen, of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Citizen Alert
Executive Director Peggy Maze Johnson watch Tuesday's Internet broadcast of
the Senate's final approval of the Yucca Mountain Project at Citizen Alert's
Las Vegas office.
Photo by K.M. Cannon.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
ACTIVISTS REACT: Forces favoring Yucca gleeful; foes incensed
Vote draws strong reaction from those on both sides
By KEITH ROGERS
REVIEW-JOURNAL
While pro-Yucca Mountain forces prepared victory statements
Tuesday, environmental activist Peggy Maze Johnson sat glued to
the live Internet feed on her computer at Citizen Alert's office,
mesmerized that the Senate had, in her opinion, sold out to the
nuclear industry in deciding to bring its waste to Nevada.
"The fact that it was 60-39 to proceed with the vote, which
absolutely turns over a Senate tradition, shows me how easy it is
for the Senate to be bought," she said after the tally.
"It's appalling. One industry can do that? Where are the people
in this country? We know they spent $75 million, and we know it
wasn't on advertising," Maze Johnson said.
A few hours before the vote, Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency chief
Bob Loux sat on the veranda of a restaurant on Paradise Road,
eating tortilla chips and drinking ice tea while watching
senators on C-SPAN debate the pros and cons of hauling the
nation's most lethal waste to a repository that he said won't be
ready until 2020 at the earliest.
He chuckled at the notion that Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., and
others believed spent fuel could, in the face of terrorist
concerns, be safely transported and isolated at Yucca Mountain.
He nodded in agreement with Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who
said, "It goes without saying the world has changed since
September 11."
But Loux, too, conceded that the Senate battle had been lost
because Nevada was outspent 10-to-1 by the Nuclear Energy
Institute, the nuclear industry's lobbying arm.
"I don't think anybody gave us a shot to win this at all," Loux
said.
Joe Colvin, the Nuclear Energy Institute's president and chief
executive officer, declared victory in a statement, saying, "This
is a great day for U.S. energy security and common-sense
environmen- talism.
"A bipartisan group of U.S. senators from all regions of the
country had the courage of their convictions to choose good
public policy in the face of intense political pressure," his
statement read.
Troy Wade, chairman of the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy
and Business, a nonprofit organization of Nevada Test Site
contractors and suppliers, said state leaders should now get
involved in the licensing process.
"I want the state to insist on a railroad, and I think it's time
for the state not to be reactive, but proactive in what their
concerns are."
He said federal scientists should not abandon other options for
dealing with the waste problem, such as reprocessing used nuclear
fuel and transmuting it to reduce its volume and lethality.
"I hope we move in that direction where we give consideration to
reprocessing as a way to reclaim an enormous investment in our
fuel. Other countries have gone ahead with reprocessing and done
so profitably and safely," Wade said.
Despite the Senate decision, Loux said he is optimistic that
Nevada will prevail in its court battles and hopeful that the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission will find fault with the site and
the repository design during its licensing review.
"I think we're going to win court cases. We'll win one or two,
and they've got to win them all," he said. "I think they're going
to have a hard time making a safety case before the NRC. The site
is so poor."
The Western Shoshone National Council, which has steadfastly
opposed the repository plans for 20 years, called the Senate's
action "environmental racism" and a violation of human rights and
the Ruby Valley Treaty ratified by the Senate 136 years ago.
Chief Raymond Yowell accused the federal government of locating
the repository "within Western Shoshone homeland without lawful
authority, jurisdiction, or ownership of the land at the site
being considered."
Council Representative John Wells stated, "It is unethical and
immoral to use democracy to decide whom to dump nuclear waste
upon. That is not democracy. That is environmental racism."
The mood was different at the Yucca Mountain Project office on
Hillshire Drive in northwest Las Vegas, where employees were
joyful but low-key. Most of the dozen employees from the staff of
250 federal and contract workers who walked out of the building
shortly after the vote declined comment.
But a few, like Bryan Swiney, described the mood as positive.
Others said employees are eager to proceed toward the project's
licensing phase.
Senior Technical Adviser Rick Craun kept a brisk pace as he
headed toward his car. "I'm glad it's over," he said. "I'm glad
they voted."
Spokeswoman Gayle Fisher said workers seemed to be satisfied with
the vote. "I just think its the culmination of a lot of hard
work."
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
21 Yucca vote offers no doubt: Washington harbors little respect for state
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
COLUMN: John L. Smith
The Senate roll call vote to override Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of
Yucca Mountain on Tuesday in Washington was a lopsided 60-39, but
by my count the score was too close for comfort.
Make that way too close.
Don't misunderstand. Like most Nevadans, about 80 percent by one
recent poll, I was opposed to the creation of the Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste repository on several grounds, the greatest of
which was the fact it was being rammed down our throats by the
federal government against the wishes of a majority of our
citizens. Health and safety concerns came next, followed by the
obvious lack of potential compensation for the state. We were
being asked to become the nation's radioactive storage facility
for little in return. It was a rube's bargain, a carnival con of
epic proportions.
On Tuesday, a lowly state's rights and its real and imagined
fears were cast aside one by one by senators who voted
overwhelmingly on the side of Yucca's formidable Department of
Energy and nuclear industry supporters. Although Nevada's
congressional delegation vows to fight to its last breath, and
some critics contend, the final sound bite, the estimated
$50-plus billion project now is expected to move forward at an
accelerated pace.
So why did Tuesday's historic vote provide relief?
Because it finally ends all confusion that any of our 1.9 million
residents might have had about their status in the union. It
meant Nevadans won't have to worry about taking the chips off
their shoulders anytime soon.
It proved once again what some Nevadans have known for
generations: We are not like other states. We are not one among
50 equals. We are other. We are the Outlaw State, the Pariah
State.
It should come as a relief to know that your suspicions about the
federal government's embrace of the Silver State remain
justified. You're not paranoid; they really don't respect you.
"Don't go away mad, Nevada," a majority of senators said, "just
go away. Accept your role as the doormat on which the nuclear
industry wipes its radioactive feet."
Nevada has held outlaw status since not long after its 1864
statehood, when our rich silver deposits made us acceptable
political dance partners during the Civil War.
Statehood with an asterisk was more like it.
It didn't help that outlaw image when Nevada legalized gambling
in 1931 and embraced the quickie divorce racket out of economic
necessity. Over the years, the presence of legalized gambling has
set Nevada at odds with the federal government more than once.
The irony, of course, is that legal gambling and speedy divorce
are accepted in most states. But outlaw Nevada continues to carry
the stigma of its gambling roots.
Despite our status, we've never failed to come running when duty
has called. Nevadans also have shouldered more than their share
of the burden for this country. Look no further than the Nevada
Test Site and Nellis Air Force Base for two of many examples.
We have a record of service, but not the respect that should
accompany it.
Nearly 140 years after statehood, the federal government still
controls more than 80 percent of Nevada. That includes the desert
site of the Yucca Mountain Project, located about 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas.
Barring some catastrophic mishap, and contrary to the propaganda
shouted by Yucca's critics, neither Las Vegas nor the rest of the
state will be crippled by the repository. In many respects, we
probably won't miss a beat.
But that doesn't make it right.
If enough senators outside Nevada were willing to listen, it
might have been persuasively argued that Yucca Mountain was sold
on the false promise of ridding the nation of its radioactive
waste. It won't. It will provide storage for only a part of an
ever-growing, ever-glowing pile.
The transportation safety issue was compelling, but it failed to
impress those senators who obviously thought nothing of sending
77,000 tons of nuclear fuel across the country to the national
patsy.
Nevada's history as the republic's Pariah State continues into
the 21st century.
Battle Born, Outlaw Forever.
John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and
Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
22 Business view shifts to make the best of it
"I say what nine out of 10 people in Nevada believe. Why don't we
get our head out of the sand and take advantage of some of the
(financial) rewards that are there?"
JIM MARSH LAS VEGAS CAR DEALER
Wednesday, July 10, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Emerging pragmatism suggests less said now, less to recant later
By DAVE BERNS GAMING WIRE
The image persists of a unified business community battling to
keep the nation's nuclear waste from Southern Nevada.
The reality reflects the nuance of a complex political debate.
Some, such as Silver State Bank Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer Tod Little, are outspoken in their opposition to the
Yucca Mountain Project.
"I don't think anyone who's thinking rationally would want to
have a nuclear waste dump 80 miles from their house. I don't
think it's a tough call," Little said.
Others have adopted a conciliatory approach.
"I say what nine out of 10 people in Nevada believe," Las Vegas
car dealer Jim Marsh said. "Why don't we get our head out of the
sand and take advantage of some of the (financial) rewards that
are there?"
Whatever the take, there's an emerging school of thought that
business leaders might have to ease the tone of their rhetoric.
The reason is simple.
The more heated the talk, the greater the local, regional and
national focus on the repository, publicity that could keep
Yucca-wary tourists, businesses and home buyers from Southern
Nevada.
Many have heard the same doomsday-tinged messages that were
crafted for members of Congress in hopes of an anti-Yucca vote.
"That is the dilemma that Las Vegas is in right now," Los Angeles
marketing executive Anthony Mora said. "They're fighting it tooth
and nail, and understandably, but if they lose they'll have to
reverse field to convince people that it's OK to come here
despite the dump."
Somer Hollingsworth is dealing with that emerging reality.
The president and chief executive officer of the
business-recruiting Nevada Development Authority routinely touts
the region to out-of-state executives.
In theory, the recent Yucca talk would have made it tougher to
recruit new businesses. Yet Hollingsworth, whose organization
opposes the repository, said he never has been asked about the
issue by the target of one of his pitches.
"So what we're going to do going forward is business as usual,"
he said. "For all intents and purposes, we're going to ignore it
unless it's brought up by the companies."
For that, NDA officials have developed a list of key Yucca
questions and answers.
It reads:
• When would the dump open? As early as 2010.
• What could the impact be on the valley? Don't know at this
point.
• What if a waste-carrying truck were to overturn? Don't know.
• What is the upside to this? Possibly extra business at the test
site.
Members of the state's political elite have opposed the Yucca
project for nearly 20 years, fearing it would hamper severely the
region's economy while creating the potential for a deadly
disaster.
Major U.S. companies and small, mom-and-pop operations alike have
invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the Las
Vegas-Henderson region.
The opening of a waste site less than two hours north of two of
the country's fastest growing cities could slice severely into
the value of those investments, or so the thinking goes.
On the surface it would appear that major real estate developers
would oppose the project. But that's not necessarily the case.
"We have been fairly neutral along the line," Del Webb Corp.
spokesman Sean Patrick said.
Del Webb's parent company, Michigan-based Pulte Homes, operates
in 44 states, many of which want to send their spent nuclear
waste to a Nevada site, making it a politically tricky issue for
the homebuilder.
"It certainly is. It certainly is," Patrick acknowledged.
A spokesman for Summerlin developer Howard Hughes Corp. failed to
return phone messages Tuesday.
On the Strip, a top gaming executive eyed the Senate results with
a hint of the reserve that has dominated many of the industry's
public statements on the topic.
"I honestly don't think it will have an impact on tourism until
or unless there is an incident," MGM Mirage Senior Vice President
Alan Feldman said. "The presence of nuclear waste does not
necessarily have an effect on tourism. If there is an incident,
then I'm afraid it could have a very serious effect."
As for the suggestion that local business and political leaders
might want to transform their long-stated opposition to Yucca
into a friendlier rhetorical bent, Las Vegas marketing executive
Billy Vassiliadis offered a quick response.
"Many Nevadans have not started a serious consideration of how
we're going to deal with it because many are optimistic this
won't come to fruition," Vassiliadis said. "We need to ...
continue to support our state's elected leaders and fight the
fight."
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
23 Nevada's fight moves to Washington courts
Las Vegas SUN
July 10, 2002
By Cy Ryan SUN CAPITAL
BUREAU
CARSON CITY -- Nevada's fight against Yucca Mountain now moves
from the U.S. Senate to the courts in Washington, D.C., where
state officials feel they will get a fair shake.
The state has some "slam dunk" suits that can derail the
building of the high-level nuclear dump, says Senior Deputy
Nevada Attorney General Marta Adams, in charge of coordinating
the legal fight.
"We may seek to expedite some of the cases we now have pending,"
said Adams after the Senate voted Tuesday to override Gov. Kenny
Guinn's veto of the repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Guinn said the court fight will provide a level field "and
Nevada's factual, scientific arguments will be heard by impartial
judges."
"The Department of Energy and the nuclear industry will no
longer be able to hide behind the political process and wield
their influence to move the Yucca Mountain agenda," Guinn said.
"Now, perhaps for the first time in this process, the DOE will
finally be held accountable for its many imprudent and unsound
decisions and we are highly confident that Nevada will prevail."
Adams said the lawsuits "get to the heart of why Yucca Mountain
is the wrong place to do the project.
"I want to encourage Nevadans not to give up," Adams said. "We
have got to commit our heart and soul to the legal fight. We have
a level playing field in the courts."
There are seven suits pending, five of them in the U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. The other two -- dealing with
Nevada's effort to stop the Energy Department from getting water
rights at Yucca Mountain -- are in the U.S. District Court in Las
Vegas and the Nye County District Court in Tonopah.
The state has contracted with attorney Joseph R. Egan of
Washington, D.C. for $2.5 million over three years. Eagan charges
$395 an hour and some of the work is farmed out at a cost ranging
up to $450 an hour.
Antonio Rossmann, a San Francisco lawyer, has also been hired
for $300,000 a year. He charges $300 an hour and his associate
Roger Moore bills at $210 an hour.
Bob Loux, director of the state's Office of Nuclear Projects,
said the next step is clearly the courts.
He said there is $4 million to $5 million "tucked away" to
finance the suits through next June 30. "We will need some money
from the Legislature," in 2003, Loux said.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said, if there are
"indications that the legal efforts are progressing, I'm sure we
would fund it fully."
In the past, Raggio said the Legislature has agreed to spend
money on pending suits that showed they were productive.
Loux said Nevada's success in any of the suits would be "fatal"
to the future of Yucca Mountain.
The key cases are the ones that challenge the geology and the
radiation standards.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires that the waste and its
radiation must be contained by the geologic formations in the
mountain. The Energy Department plans to erect shields to protect
the storage casks from eroding from mineralized water that enter
the tunnels.
The state, in another suit in the Washington circuit court,
challenges the radiation standard set for Yucca Mountain, saying
it would allow contamination of drinking water. And the standard
is set for 10,000 years, which is not long enough to adequately
protect public health and safety from the effects of exposure to
higher-level nuclear waste that becomes more lethal after 10,000
years.
Adams said she expects word from U.S District Judge Roger Hunt
of Las Vegas soon on scheduling more arguments whether the Energy
Department is entitled to water permits. The state denied the
water permits. Judge Roger Hunt initially dismissed the Energy
Department suit but the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sent
the case back to Hunt to decide if federal law pre-empts state
law. There is also a lawsuit pending in the district court in
Tonopah by the DOE on the same water issue.
Adams said even if the state won this suit, the Congress could
pass legislation forcing Nevada to allocate water to the site.
+ Notable quotes from the Yucca debate
[http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-gov/2002/jul/10/513693436.html]
10 July 11:10:37
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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24 Notable quotes from the Yucca debate
Las Vegas SUN
July 10, 2002
The following are quotes from people involved in Tuesday's debate
about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
"I cannot describe to you the level of disappointment I feel. I
take responsibility for not getting more Republicans. I did
everything I could to get Republican votes and I failed to get
those." -- Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.
"It's very difficult for a senator to fight the president." --
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Ensign.
"We are pleased that the Congress agrees moving forward is the
right thing to do." -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham
"All we're doing is allowing the secretary (of Energy) to apply
for the license. The act does not address the transportation or
storage" of waste. -- Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, a leading
Yucca advocate
"I look at their record (in court). And the scoreboard says
state of Nevada: zero." -- Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, on Nevada's
chances in court
"The Department of Energy still needs to convince the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission that the repository is safe before
construction of the repository would begin or before
transportation of waste to the site would begin." -- Sen. Jeff
Bingaman, D-N.M., on his vote for Yucca Mountain
"I say to my colleagues, this is a moment of truth for every
person here. The things we do can come back to haunt us." -- Sen.
Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
"Fundamentally, I want the waste out of Michigan, but I don't
want to create more risks in the process." -- Sen. Debbie
Stabenow, D-Mich.
"Bill your hours. Feel good about yourselves. You are
perpetrating a travesty on the people of this country." -- Reid
from the Senate floor to several nuclear lobbyists "in their
Gucci shoes and their nice suits" sitting in the Senate gallery.
"We are going to look at this issue every year congressionally,
as we should. We shouldn't abandon all these years of effort." --
Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.
"There is no deal to be made. They are not going to give us
anything. We're just going to have to work our way through this."
-- Reid on getting concessions from the federal government
"We just can't back off. We'll keep fighting." -- Las Vegas
Mayor Oscar Goodman
"We will not bargain, we will not negotiate, we will not waiver
in our determined opposition to Yucca Mountain." -- Dario
Herrera, Clark County Commission chairman
"The fight is just beginning. We will continue to fight to
protect the families here and we won't sell out." -- Clark County
Commissioner Myrna Williams
"I think it's a sad day for Nevada. I don't want us to be known
as the nation's nuclear waste dump." -- Thalia Dondero,
university regent and former Clark County commissioner
Compiled by Sun reporters Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
25 Congress OKs Nevada Nuke Waste Site
Las Vegas SUN
July 09, 2002
WASHINGTON- After a favorable Senate vote, the political verdict
on Yucca Mountain is in, but the proposed nuclear waste dump in
Nevada still faces major hurdles, including lawsuits and a long
licensing process.
The Senate gave President Bush the green light on Tuesday to
proceed with the Yucca site, where the administration wants to
entomb 77,000 tons of highly radioactive materials, most of it
building up at power plants in 31 states. The Senate voted 60-39
to override Nevada's veto of the project following action by the
House in May. Under a 1982 law Nevada could have killed the
project if Congress hadn't intervened.
A disappointed Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., nevertheless, insisted,
"this is not over" and said the fight would continue before the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission and in the federal courts.
In Las Vegas, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn promised to pursue at least
five lawsuits the state has filed challenging the Yucca project.
"We have made considerable headway in convincing others that
Yucca Mountain is a bad idea," Guinn said.
But that message didn't reach enough senators.
Despite sharp criticism of the Yucca site by Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle and an intense lobbying effort by Reid and
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., 15 Democrats and all but three
Republicans sided with Bush on the issue. The vote "confirms the
president's decision very forcefully" and clears the way for the
department to prepare a license application to the NRC by 2004,
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said.
The Nevada lawsuits focus on a broad range of issues challenging
everything from the failure of the Energy Department to develop a
clear transportation plan to the Yucca engineers' use of man-made
barriers to contain waste and the Environmental Protection
Agency's health standard.
The NRC's review also is expected to be complex and lengthy,
taking at least three or four years as the agency decides whether
to issue a construction license and then a permit for the Yucca
facility to accept waste.
"I believe it is a safe repository," Senate Minority Leader Trent
Lott, R-Miss., said, adding that whatever issues remain to be
resolved, it's up to the NRC to do it during its licensing
review.
The target date for opening the facility, located 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas, is 2010.
Nevadans expressed mixed views of the Senate vote.
Dave Hall, 55, who farms alfalfa about 15 miles southwest of
Yucca Mountain, said he didn't think the Yucca Mountain
repository was an inevitability. "Maybe they've decided here's
the spot," he said. "But there's still a long way to go and there
are a whole lot of obstacles."
Hall said he disagreed with neighbors and some Nevada political
leaders who said the state should begin bargaining with the
federal government for benefits such as improved roads, schools,
water and sewers.
"No use fighting," said Doris Jackson, a saloon owner and
chairwoman of the elected advisory board in Amargosa Valley, a
rural Nevada desert town of 1,271 residents. "It's done. Let's
get what we can out of this."
The Nevada senators tried for months to convince colleagues the
issue was much broader than a single state because of the
thousands of shipments of highly radioactive used reactor fuel
that would be sent over highways and rail lines in 43 states if
Yucca Mountain became a central repository.
But more senators appeared to be concerned about finding a way to
get rid of wastes at reactors in their state, rather than
worrying about wastes moving through. Many of the Democrats who
voted for Yucca - among them Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois,
Bob Graham of Florida and John Edwards of North Carolina - are
from states where utilities are heavily committed to nuclear
power.
Asked why he couldn't muster more opposition to the Yucca dump,
Ensign replied: "Nimby. Not in my backyard."
Reid lashed out at nuclear lobbyists and their "unending source
of money" for perpetuating "the big lie" that the Nevada dump was
urgently needed. The waste - most of it from nuclear power plants
- can be kept safely where it is, avoiding the transportation
risks, Reid insisted.
Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said if Congress let the Yucca
project die, nuclear power itself would be threatened and a new
hunt for a waste site would begin with no assurance where the
search would lead.
"Looking for another site ... is not realistic," Sen. Jeff
Bingaman, D-N.M., argued, noting that Yucca Mountain has been
studied for 24 years at a cost of $4.5 billion. While there are
still uncertainties to be resolved, he said, "we're not likely to
find a better site next time."
But Daschle, D-S.D., whose state has no nuclear power plant,
complained that there were still "far too many questions" about
the Yucca site's suitability to give it the go-ahead now.
Opponents also accused the Energy Department of failing to ensure
that waste shipments - anywhere from 175 to 2,200 a year,
depending on the mix of rail and truck shipments - will be safe
and secure.
Abraham promised a transportation plan before the end of next
year and said stringent safety requirements will provide an
"effective first line of defense" against terrorist threats.
On the Net:
Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov [http://www.ymp.gov]
Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects:
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste]
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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26 Nevadans look ahead: Obstacles remain for government to proceed
Las Vegas SUN:
July 10, 2002
By Benjamin Grove
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., took a quick phone call
Tuesday from Gov. Kenny Guinn in the middle of the Senate debate
on Yucca Mountain, a few hours before the state lost its epic
battle to keep the nuclear waste dump out.
Reid, a former amateur boxer, told Guinn he was in the midst of
a fight that reminded him of his days as a youth scrapping in a
pool hall.
"I told him, 'Kenny, I've been called out in the pool hall,' "
Reid said. "I said, 'I'm just going to wade in and do the best I
can.' "
Nevada reeled from the flurry of punches: The Senate voted 60-39
to approve a resolution to build a national nuclear waste dump at
Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
It was the final congressional hurdle for the controversial
project -- the House approved the project in May -- and marked a
significant milestone in the project's 20-year history.
But while Nevada took a beating Tuesday, it wasn't the final
fight. Yucca Mountain faces other challenges before the project
is constructed.
State officials vow to continue the fight.
"I feel kind of invigorated," Reid said. "I feel so right in my
heart I did the right thing and I'm energized to keep fighting.
I'm not down on my back being counted out."
The state's focus moves from politics to lawsuits and the
licensing process.
By law, the Energy Department, which manages the Yucca Mountain
site, has 90 days to apply for a license to permanently bury the
nation's most high-level radioactive waste in tunnels at the
desert ridge.
But the Energy Department has signaled it will not meet that
deadline and intends to submit the license by December 2004. The
department is not expected to pay any penalties for the delay, a
Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman said.
The NRC must review the license application, and approval could
take up to four years. Public hearings will be part of the review
process. State officials say the hearings will show the flaws in
the Energy Department's science and that could derail the
project.
Meanwhile, Nevada, Las Vegas and Clark County will pursue
lawsuits already pending in federal court, officials said.
Guinn said the state would fare better in its court challenges,
"and we are highly confident that Nevada will prevail."
If Yucca survives the review and legal challenges, the first
national nuclear waste dump would be built 1,000 feet below the
Earth's surface. Waste would be shipped to Yucca as early as 2010
from 131 temporary storage sites nationwide.
Many critics say that timeline is unlikely. The project has been
plagued by delays and cost overruns.
Reid, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, pledged
to slow the project by squeezing its budget each year. He is also
chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the NRC, which
in a sense gives him oversight of the review process. He vowed to
be a "more aggressive" NRC watchdog in the approval process.
Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said their intense efforts to
lobby their colleagues were overwhelmed by lobbying by the
nuclear industry and White House.
Forty-five of 49 Republicans voted for Yucca, with three voting
against it -- Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina did not vote.
Fifteen Democrats voted for Yucca. Independent Sen. James
Jeffords of Vermont, who once signaled support for Yucca, voted
against it.
Ensign takes blame
A dejected Ensign was apologetic that he could not muster more
than two Republicans to vote against the project.
"I cannot describe to you the level of disappointment I feel,"
said Ensign, who campaigned for his seat saying the state needed
a Republican who could lobby the GOP. "I take responsibility for
not getting more Republicans. I did everything I could to get
Republican votes, and I failed to get those."
Reid had only praise for Ensign's effort. As the Senate vote was
nearing an end, Reid and Ensign met in the well of the Senate,
Reid put his hand on Ensign's shoulder, the two shook hands and
exchanged a few quiet words.
"It's very difficult for a senator to fight the president," Reid
said later. Nuclear industry leaders, Yucca advocates in the
Senate and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham cheered the vote.
"We are pleased that the Congress agrees moving forward is the
right thing to do, rather than cutting off the process now and
leaving nuclear waste for future generations to deal with,"
Abraham said.
The vote was crucial for the Energy Department because nuclear
utilities are suing it because it broke a contractual agreement
to begin hauling waste to Yucca by 1998, Abraham said.
He said the vote paved the way for companies to someday build
new nuclear plants in America because Yucca Mountain solves the
waste problem.
Industry leader Joe Colvin praised senators for the "courage of
their convictions to choose good public policy in the face of
intense political pressure."
"The Senate's approval of the Yucca Mountain resolution is a
clear signal of continued congressional support for nuclear
energy," said Colvin, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute,
the industry's top trade group.
Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who for years has argued to move
nuclear waste stored in his state to Yucca, joined Sen. Frank
Murkowski, R-Alaska, in breathing a sigh of relief after a long
struggle.
"The time for a permanent nuclear waste repository has come,"
Craig said.
Craig dismissed optimism among Nevada officials that pending
lawsuits could derail the project.
"I look at their record (in court)," Craig said. "And the
scoreboard says state of Nevada: zero."
Abraham declined to comment directly about the lawsuits.
"Nevada has had its day," Abraham said.
Battle continues
Environmental groups vowed to continue their fight against
Yucca.
Public Citizen plans to dog the NRC during its licensing
process, activist Lisa Gue said. The group and several other
organizations joined Nevada in its lawsuit against the
Environmental Protection Agency challenging its safety standards
for Yucca.
Reid and Ensign stressed that the money raised in Nevada to
fight Yucca was not wasted.
About $9 million in public and private money was spent, much of
it committed to ongoing legal battles and about $2 million for
public relations and anti-Yucca commercials that ran in seven
states. The nuclear industry spent three times that, Nevada
officials have said.
Of the 14 senators in the seven states, only three voted against
Yucca: Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., and
Jeffords. Reid said the commercials drove the nuclear industry
crazy.
"We'd run one ad, and they'd come back with 10 or 15," Reid
said.
Ensign said the money awakened Americans to the folly of the
repository and the risks of shipping waste. That, he said, will
pay dividends in the future.
"You're building a case," Ensign said. "The money was well
spent."
The much-anticipated vote followed a long, sometimes emotional
debate, with nearly one-fifth of the 100-member Senate arguing
their points.
Scientists have not found any scientific evidence that would
disqualify the site, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., argued, adding
that experts at the NRC, not the Senate, should have final
review.
"The Department of Energy still needs to convince the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission that the repository is safe before
construction of the repository would begin or before
transportation of waste to the site would begin," Bingaman said.
Shipping worries
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said shipping waste cross-country
to Nevada endangered people living, working and going to school
along the transportation routes. She toted to the Senate floor
maps of Sacramento and Los Angeles bisected by likely
waste-shipping routes. One-fifth of the 35 million people in
California live within a mile of the routes, she said.
"I say to my colleagues, this is a moment of truth for every
person here," Boxer said. "The things we do can come back to
haunt us."
Murkowski led arguments in favor of Yucca. He dismissed Boxer's
maps and reminding senators that final waste routes have not been
determined.
"These are not proposed routes," Murkowski said. "They are
possible routes."
Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Carnahan said they were
opposed to Yucca because the Energy Department had not outlined a
safe waste shipping plan.
"Fundamentally, I want the waste out of Michigan," Stabenow
said. "But I don't want to create more risks in the process."
In his final speech Reid spoke directly to several nuclear
industry lobbyists "in their Gucci shoes and their nice suits"
sitting in the Senate gallery.
"Bill your hours. Feel good about yourselves," Reid chided. "You
are perpetrating a travesty on the people of this country."
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said President Bush
had tied the hands of lawmakers when he approved Yucca, forcing
them by law to act before key scientific studies at Yucca were
completed.
"The administration is doing the bidding of special interests
that simply want to make deadly nuclear waste they have generated
someone else's problem," Daschle said.
But Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., pleaded with
senators not to kill Yucca after two decades of research.
"We are going to look at this issue every year congressionally,
as we should," Lott said, assuring senators they would still have
some oversight.
"We shouldn't abandon all these years of effort."
Reid rejected the notion that it is now time for Nevada to
negotiate in Congress to obtain money or other concessions for
Yucca.
"There is no deal to be made," Reid said. "They are not going to
give us anything. We're just going to have to work our way
through this."
Reid joked that for its legal efforts Nevada had the best
"high-priced lawyer" in the nation in Las Vegas Mayor Oscar
Goodman, who watched the Senate vote in the gallery. Goodman
joked that he was working on this case "pro bono."
"We just can't back off," Goodman said. "We'll keep fighting."
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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27 Partisanship ensues after state suffers stinging loss
Las Vegas SUN
July 10, 2002
By Erin Neff
Although the state's political fight against a proposed nuclear
waste dump officially ended Tuesday, the politics of Yucca
Mountain will remain a key issue in Nevada this election year.
The bipartisan efforts of Nevada's federal delegation are
dissolving with political finger-pointing.
Moments after the 60-39 vote in the U.S. Senate to proceed with
approval of the dumpsite 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the
Democrats had forgotten Republican Sen. John Ensign's work and
were ratcheting up the partisan rhetoric.
Nevada Democratic Chairman Terry Care thanked only Sen. Harry
Reid and Rep. Shelley Berkley, both Democrats, for their work and
assailed both the Bush administration and two Republican
candidates in Nevada, pointing out they took money from the
nuclear industry.
Republicans responded by saying the campaign contributions
weren't an issue because their candidates were fervently opposed
to the dump. Democrats, they note, also took money from Yucca
supporters.
Still Care sees the issue as a wedge between the parties.
"I think it can be an issue that resonates this fall," Care
said.
But many doubt whether the issue -- given the inevitability of
the Senate vote and the bipartisan work to oppose the dump --
will resonate with voters.
"In this fall's elections, it's pretty much clear that
everybody's on the same side," said Ted Jelen, chairman of the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science department.
Jelen said Democrats have nothing to lose by "making hay" out of
the issue because voters won't reject assaults on Republicans as
unethical.
Care thinks that Yucca Mountain will be a key issue in the race
for Nevada's new congressional seat.
State Sen. Jon Porter, a Republican running for Nevada's 3rd
Congressional District, received $69,000 in campaign
contributions from House Republicans who pushed for the
repository.
GOP attorney general candidate Brian Sandoval took a minimal
contribution from Nuclear Energy Institute lobbyist Robert List,
a former Republican governor of Nevada.
"Yucca Mountain is not going to go away as an issue," Care said.
Indeed, Porter's and Sandoval's opponents are not letting it
rest.
Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera, a Democrat
running for the 3rd congressional seat, called Tuesday's Senate
vote "outrageous" and vowed to continue battling President Bush,
the nuclear power industry and House and Senate Republican
leaders.
"They are the ones who pushed this through," Herrera said.
Porter's campaign consultant Mike Slanker said he does not think
Yucca is an issue that will stick in the congressional race
because "Dario is just transparent on it."
"The Democrats and a handful of Democratic candidates are just
going to beat the same old drum and try to make Republicans look
bad on nuclear waste," Slanker said.
Democratic attorney general candidate John Hunt launched his
campaign against Sandoval from the steps of the Foley Federal
Building downtown saying he would often be in court there
fighting the federal government on Yucca issues. Hunt also
attacked Sandoval for taking money from List.
"There will be attempts by the party on the other side of the
aisle to make this a political issue," Nevada Republican Chairman
Bob Seale said. "They are no more anti-nuclear waste than we
are."
Slanker said Herrera is being a hypocrite because his campaign
also received money from Yucca supporters. Herrera received
$5,000 from three U.S. representatives that subsequently voted
for the dump.
"He says, 'Oh my guys aren't as important as your guys,' "
Slanker said.
Many politicians, including Ensign and Reid, have taken money
with at least a remote tie to Yucca Mountain.
Jelen said Tuesday's Yucca vote will likely have a greater
impact in 2004 and 2006 than it will this fall. President George
Bush may have trouble in Nevada in 2004 and Ensign will have to
work hard to regain voter confidence prior to his 2006
re-election bid, Jelen said.
"John Ensign made it a centerpiece of his campaign that he was
going to be able to get Republican votes," Jelen said. "Obviously
he didn't live up to that."
Ensign was joined by Sens. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., and Ben
Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., in voting against the Yucca
resolution Tuesday.
Guinn said he thinks Yucca's significance as a political issue
is over, even though he acknowledges an election year will draw
barbs.
The governor also said it's time for politicians to re-focus
their efforts on Nevada's legal battle and the state's continued
need for federal ssistance on a host of issues.
"I went against President Bush because it was the right thing to
do for Nevada," Guinn said. "But I'm going to continue talking to
President Bush because that's absolutely the right thing to do
for Nevada."
Although Democrats continue to attack on Yucca, both parties are
united in mainstream opposition to negotiating for benefits.
"There's no deal to be made," Reid said after the Senate vote.
"This is just the beginning of the fight and it makes no sense to
go after money that isn't even there."
Most politicians followed suit. But Independent congressional
candidate Pete O'Neil and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joe
Neal both favor bargaining for concessions from the government
for accepting the waste.
Neal, a state senator from North Las Vegas, has been arguing for
negotiations for years. O'Neil, who is running against Porter and
Herrera, said Tuesday's Senate vote "validated" his position.
Although the political establishment is now steeling for a
lengthy legal and licensing showdown over Yucca, nobody is
talking about how the state will be able to afford such a fight.
Guinn said the state can pay for the money spent on lobbyists
and television ads trying to sway the Senate vote. But raising
money was difficult as lawmakers balked at a special session of
the Legislature to add money to the fight and Nevada's business
community by and large kept its fingers on its checkbook.
"I applaud the financial support we received," Guinn said.
"We'll have to take our case to the people of Nevada and the
Legislature again."
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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28 Battle over licensing looms
Las Vegas SUN
July 10, 2002
Attention shifts to approval of Nuclear Regulatory Commission
By Benjamin Grove
WASHINGTON -- Now that the Senate has approved Yucca Mountain,
project managers at the Energy Department have shifted their
attention to winning the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
The Maryland-based NRC by law must license and regulate the
nuclear waste dump.
By December 2004 the Energy Department plans to submit a license
application to begin constructing the site. A three-member
licensing board at the NRC would review the license and make
recommendations to the five-member commission, which makes the
final decision.
Ultimately the NRC would grant a license based on whether the
site can meet federal safety standards, such as radiation release
standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The NRC has up to three years to review the Energy Department's
construction application, plus an additional year if the NRC
sends the license back to the DOE to make corrections, NRC
officials said.
Because the project is the first of its kind in the world,
highly controversial and extremely complex, it is likely that the
construction application review could take the full four years,
Janet Kotra, an NRC systems performance analyst, said.
After reviewing the application, the NRC has three options:
+ Flatly deny it.
+ Accept it with conditions. The NRC could amend the site's
capacity or the rate at which waste would be hauled to the site,
for example.
+ Accept it as submitted.
Once the license is granted, construction of the site can begin.
That process would take several years. After construction is
complete, the DOE must apply for another license to accept waste
at the site.
The NRC could determine that the site cannot meet safety
standards and deny the license to operate, Kotra said. But it is
more likely the NRC would direct the DOE to make project changes
in order to meet the standards.
It's not known exactly how long construction could take.
But DOE officials on Tuesday said they still intend to open the
dump by 2010. If the license review took four years, that would
give the DOE just two years to construct the site and receive
final approval from the NRC.
Project critics, along with Congress' General Accounting Office,
say that's highly unlikely. The GAO in a report released in
December said it could take the DOE until 2006 to submit its
construction license.
Related stories:
+ Energy Dept. will use in-house attorneys to handle legal work
[http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-gov/2002/jul/10/513693848.html]
10 July 11:08:31
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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29 Energy Dept. will use in-house attorneys to handle legal work
Las Vegas SUN
July 10, 2002
By Benjamin Grove
WASHINGTON -- Faced with the complex task of applying for a
license to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, the Energy
Department is relying solely on its own lawyers to oversee the
sophisticated legal work involved.
For now, the department is not announcing any plans to hire an
outside law firm to help shepherd the DOE through the licensing
process, Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said.
"If we have any intention of retaining another firm, then we
will announce it," Davis said.
The department plans to apply for the license from the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission by a target date of 2004, Davis said. For
now, the Energy Department is on schedule using in-house lawyers,
Davis said.
The department had relied on the Chicago-based law firm of
Winston &Strawn to assemble the license, until the firm resigned
amid controversy in December 2001. But that loss has not slowed
the department's plans to apply for a license within two years,
Davis said.
Winston &Strawn had a $16.5 million contract with the Energy
Department. A team of the firm's Washington-based lawyers was
working on the project.
But the firm quit two years into the job in December 2001 after
the Sun reported that the firm had also been paid by the Nuclear
Energy Institute, a nuclear industry trade group, to lobby in
favor of Yucca Mountain.
That presented a conflict of interest, Nevada officials said.
They argued that the firm was working for the Energy Department,
which at the time -- before the Department formally recommended
the Yucca site to President Bush -- was supposed to be an
impartial project manager. It was improper for the department to
hire a firm that was closely tied to the pro-Yucca nuclear
industry, they said.
Winston &Strawn strongly denied any wrong-doing, and said there
had never been a conflict of interest. The firm quit after an
Energy Department inspector general's investigation because the
controversy had become a distraction to the department's work,
firm officials said.
The inspector general found that Winston &Strawn had not
revealed its relationship with NEI before the Energy Department
hired the firm.
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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30 Tourist plans won't be affected -- yet
Photos: Patrice Stafford and James Lee of New York City | Jim
Godwin of Marble Hill, Mo. | Greg Isaacs and his wife Stephanie
Isaacs
Las Vegas SUN
July 10, 2002
A nuke accident would make many visitors think twice
By Christina Littlefield
Yucca Mountain may strike terror into the hearts of locals, but
many of the tourists on the Strip Tuesday hadn't even heard of
the proposed nuclear waste site just 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas.
The mere mention of nuclear waste, however, drew raised eyebrows
as people questioned whether the approved site approved Tuesday
by the Senate would affect their future travels to Las Vegas. "I
would have to think about it," Terry Martin of Jacksboro, Texas
said.
"Yeah, we wouldn't want to get toxic waste when we come out
here," Martin's friend Sherry Hammond agreed.
With tourism driving the Las Vegas economy, industry officials
are hoping visitors choose to visit again despite Yucca
Mountain's proximity to the city. Las Vegas Convention and
Visitors Authority spokeswoman Erika Brandvik declined to
speculate on how or if the nuclear waste repository would affect
the 35-million-visitors-a-year industry.
"We could think of better things for tourism, but we aren't
predicting doom on the destination by it coming here," Brandvik
said.
A professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' School for
Hotel Management said the nuclear waste site would have a minimal
effect on tourism as long as the site remained safe. An accident,
however, would be
"catastrophic" for the industry, Thomas Jones said.
"The public's memory is rather short-lived, and this should fade
from view soon," Jones said. "I don't think it will affect
tourism until or unless there is an accident in the
transportation of this waste."
The threat of a transportation accident, contamination or
radiation leakage into the air or ground water is what tourists
said might deter them from planning future vacations to Las
Vegas.
For Jim Godwin, a visitor from Marble Hill, Mo., those threats
are enough to keep him away.
"I wouldn't come back," Godwin said as he enjoyed the heat
outside Treasure Island. "I know (nuclear waste) ain't no good,
and that they don't know what to do with it. They should have
thought about that when they were making it back during World War
II. They know how to make it, but they can't get rid of it."
For other tourists, such as Greg and Stephanie Isaacs of Corpus
Christi, Texas, the threat of nuclear waste is something they are
already facing with a plant near their home.
"Nuclear waste scares us no matter where we live, so we'll still
come to Las Vegas and take our chances," said Stephanie Isaacs,
who has visited the city with her husband twice a year for 15
years.
A few tourists said they trusted the facility would be safe, but
most took a wait and see approach.
"What are you going to do?" James Lee of New York City said.
"The destination is still going to be attractive and they are
going to tell you every lie in the book that they are
safeguarding this and safeguarding that. It will probably be a
deterrent, but they'll find a way to whitewash it."
Photos: Patrice Stafford and James Lee of New York City | Jim
Godwin of Marble Hill, Mo. | Greg Isaacs and his wife Stephanie
Isaacs
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
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31 Yucca decision could aid UNLV research
Las Vegas SUN
July 10, 2002
By Jennifer Knight
UNLV officials didn't dare to speculate Tuesday about any
financial benefits the $58 billion Yucca Mountain project could
bring to the university, but they did say expansion of the
school's research facilities is likely.
"I'm not going to say that UNLV would benefit from Yucca
Mountain. That would be highly imprudent," said Ray Alden,
University of Nevada, Las Vegas provost. "We are available as a
resource, but we can't be a free resource."
Tuesday's Senate vote approved Yucca Mountain as the nation's
nuclear waste repository. As the dump moves forward -- through
both the regulatory process and the legal battle -- there are
scientific questions that will be need to be answered.
And where there are scientific questions, there is research --
and research money.
"As they continue to move forward with the project, there will
be more and more questions and the university will more than
likely do a lot of the research," said Jean Cline, a UNLV geology
professor who studies Yucca Mountain.
Cline pointed out a number of questions relating to Yucca. For
example, the mountain's rock formations -- originally thought to
be a barrier against nuclear radiation -- are believed to be
leaky, she said.
There are also concerns about seismic and volcanic activity in
the area -- although a magnitude-4.4 earthquake that hit last
month 12 miles southeast of the site caused no damage, according
to Energy Department scientists.
"The reality is, the more you study this, the more you become
aware of the limits of it," Cline said.
One scientist at UNLV's Harry Reid Environmental Center believes
a big impact on the university is inevitable due to the massive
project.
"Four to five years from now, I think you're going to see a
noticeable change in the university community," said Gary
Cerefice, a research scientist at the environmental center.
"You'll start seeing new professors coming on board. You're going
to see the new science and engineering building moved higher and
higher up on the list of priorities for (legislative) funding."
UNLV's $75 million science and engineering complex is considered
a state-of-the-art facility capable of drawing world-class
scientists.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the senator
already supports university research and that the Yucca decision
won't bring extra benefits to the state.
"Basically, there is no windfall in this for Nevada," Reid's
spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said. "A significant amount of that money
already comes from the senator's position on the Senate
Appropriation Committee, and he will continue to make sure that
Nevada's universities have enough money for research."
One project that Reid supports is UNLV's Advanced Accelerator
Transmutation Project, in which scientists are working to find a
way to drastically reduce radiation levels in waste headed for
Yucca Mountain.
The price tag for a prototype -- to which several other
organizations will contribute -- is estimated at $11 billion over
20 years, almost as much as the controversial Star Wars missile
defense system.
Research projects for Yucca Mountain are already bringing in
money to institutions throughout the state's university system.
UNLV has already received $6.7 million for Yucca Mountain-related
research. About $11.2 million in grants has gone to the
University of Nevada, Reno, along with $2 million to the Desert
Research Institute.
While lawmakers work out the politics of Yucca and lawyers work
out the legal issues, Alden and colleagues such as DRI President
Stephen Wells say they will let the research dollars fall where
they may.
"Even though the political side is done, I'm not sure that the
legal side is done," Alden said. "As an institution we just can't
say we are gearing up to handle Yucca Mountain. That just
wouldn't be wise."
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
32 Editorial: Yucca vote imperils the nation
Las Vegas SUN
July 10, 2002
Perhaps the low point during Tuesday's U.S. Senate debate on
Yucca Mountain -- preceding its 60-39 vote in favor of sending
nuclear waste to Nevada -- came when Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.,
admonished opposing senators for instilling "fear" into their
constituents by raising issues of transportation safety. He said
the chance of anything dangerous happening while high-level
nuclear waste is transported cross-country daily for 30 or 40
years is "so unlikely" that it should "not be of concern to us as
we move forward with this legislation." The remark was
reminiscent of 1950s Atomic Energy Commission rhetoric, advising
people not to worry about fallout from the nuclear bomb
explosions at the Nevada Test Site. We have all -- particularly
the people who lived downwind of the Test Site -- seen how those
words have come back to plague us.
Kyl's remark was directed at such senators as Paul Wellstone,
D-Minn., who criticized the vote as irresponsibly premature
because there is no transportation plan; John Ensign, R-Nev., who
pointed out that a terrorist attack could puncture the canisters
containing the waste; Mark Dayton, D-Minn., who reminded his
colleagues that just "one accident" could have "devastating
effects"; Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who warned that
"transportation is a disaster waiting to happen" in population
centers such as Sacramento and Los Angeles; Maria Cantwell,
D-Wash., who said the people of Washington have learned the hard
way about following the "trust me" approach; Debbie Stabenow,
D-Mich., who shuddered at what could happen to Lake Michigan as
it's traversed by barges carrying nuclear waste; Jean Carnahan,
D-Mo., who spoke to the fear in her state's neighborhoods at the
prospect of nuclear waste trundling along nearby highways;
Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who envisioned "hundreds, e!
ven thousands, of rolling dirty bombs" primed for terrorists, and
Harry Reid, D-Nev., who painted a picture of trucks, trains and
barges merging incessantly into the country's regular,
accident-prone traffic.
While the opponents of burying nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain
spoke persuasively about the risk to human life if the Senate,
with a yes vote, propelled Yucca toward possible licensure by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, supporters spoke of the
inconvenience and expense of having to put the plan on hold. They
predicted dire consequences, including temporary storage on
Indian reservations and opening up expensive studies of
previously dismissed sites in Texas and Washington. Not only
that, they said taxpayers would absorb upward to $70 billion in
federal payouts to nuclear energy companies who would surely win
lawsuits arguing the government breached its contract to take
their waste.
Led by the Senate Republican leadership, the supporters of Yucca
Mountain absolved themselves from any responsibility over what
might happen in the future. They stated repeatedly that theirs
was not a vote to open Yucca Mountain, but a simple passing of
the torch to the "experts" associated with the NRC. Over the next
several years, this demonstrably pro-Yucca agency will review
studies before deciding whether to grant Yucca Mountain a license
to become a nuclear waste dump. The state will mount a legal
challenge to block the dump, but the truth is that Tuesday's vote
was a powerful blow to the safety of millions of Americans for at
least the next several generations if the dump receives federal
regulatory approval. Voting no could have allowed waste to be
stored safely on the site of nuclear power plants for the next
hundred years or so, until such time a s a sane plan for its
disposal could have been constructed. While we might speculate
about their motivations -- party polit! ics, the spell of monied
lobbyists -- there is no doubt what the supporters of Yucca
Mountain have done: It is they who have instilled the fear.
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
33 Senate Approves Storage Of Nuclear Waste in Nevada
(washingtonpost.com)
Workers at Yucca Mountain, site of the proposed national
nuclear waste dump near Mercury, Nev., get off a train that takes
them in and out of the mountain. (AP)
By Eric Pianin and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 10, 2002; Page A01
The Senate approved a Bush administration plan yesterday to store
much of the nation's nuclear waste beneath Nevada's Yucca
Mountain, giving final legislative approval to a project that has
been debated for nearly a quarter-century.
Despite strong objections from Nevada officials, gambling
industry leaders and environmentalists, the Senate voted 60 to 39
to affirm President Bush's finding that the $58 billion project
is "scientifically sound and suitable" and would enhance
protection against terrorist attacks by consolidating the
radioactive waste underground.
Fifteen Democrats joined 45 Republicans in approving the project,
underscoring widespread concern over management of growing
nuclear waste piles at power plants in 39 states. Maryland
Democrats Barbara A. Mikulski and Paul S. Sarbanes voted against
the project while Virginia Republicans John W. Warner and George
Allen voted for it. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) did not vote.
In the late 1980s, Congress authorized the Energy Department to
consider Yucca Mountain as the sole site to collect and bury
nuclear waste, which remains radioactive for thousands of years.
It gave Nevada veto rights, however. Yesterday, the Senate joined
the House in overriding Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's objection to
Bush's Feb. 15 decision endorsing the plan to bury as much as
70,000 metric tons of radioactive waste in desert tunnels 90
miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The vote was a victory for Bush and Energy Secretary Spencer
Abraham, who said the project was critical to their efforts to
expand domestic energy production. It dealt a blow to Majority
Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who
led the effort to sidetrack the project.
The Senate "cast a very vital and important vote in favor of
America's national security, in favor of America's energy
security and in favor of this country's environmental security,"
Abraham said.
The vote ended an intense lobbying effort by the nuclear energy
industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent about $72
million since 1994 lobbying for the project. Senate supporters
said the vote will help ensure the future of the U.S. nuclear
power industry by keeping it from "choking on its own waste," as
Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) put it.
Reid, Ensign and other opponents called the administration plan
"the big lie," a project riddled with technical and
transportation problems that will not solve the waste storage
problem because spent fuel will continue to pile up at nuclear
power plants around the country even with a centralized
repository.
"We are being forced to decide this issue prematurely, without
sufficient scientific information, because this administration is
doing the bidding of special interests that simply want to make
the deadly waste they have generated someone else's problem,"
said Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.).
While the legislative issue appears settled, the Energy
Department still must obtain a license from the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission to build and operate the repository -- a
process that could take four or five years -- and overcome a
series of lawsuits brought by Nevada state officials.
"Our view is that this process is just beginning, not ending,"
said Joe Egan, Nevada's lead nuclear attorney.
By relying on a combination of geological barriers and hardened
steel-alloy storage casks, the administration says the government
could safely bury the radioactive refuse for at least 10,000
years without it leaching into underground water or escaping into
the environment in harmful doses.
More than 40,000 tons of spent nuclear materials are stored in
131 aboveground sites in 39 states, and about 2,000 tons of new
waste is generated annually. The Energy Department's goal is to
ship the waste to the Yucca site by rail and truck, beginning in
2010. Critics and the General Accounting Office say that is
highly optimistic.
Yesterday's vote followed months of intense efforts by Sens. Reid
and Ensign to turn the tide running against them as nuclear waste
accumulated at power plants and military weapons sites. From the
start, Reid had the backing of most Senate Democrats, and he
ardently wooed Democratic freshmen who had not previously voted
on the Yucca issue. Ensign had a far harder job.
Day after day, Ensign went to the offices of nearly 40 of his 49
GOP colleagues, toting an inch-thick binder about the project,
including detailed maps of possible rail and highway routes
through each senator's state. He won praise for diligence, but
earned no votes beyond those of the two GOP senators who
supported him from the outset -- Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colo.)
and Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) -- and independent James M. Jeffords
(Vt.).
Several senators expressed concerns about risks to their states
as trucks and trains carry radioactive waste to the Nevada
repository. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) wanted to rid
Illinois of its large reservoir of nuclear waste, but was deeply
troubled by the transportation dangers. After struggling for
weeks, he decided to support the project, saying he was satisfied
with its safety and would address transportation concerns in
separate legislation.
For Utah Republican Sens. Orrin G. Hatch and Robert F. Bennett,
there was a different dilemma. They feared that an Indian
reservation in Utah's Skull Valley, about 40 miles from Salt Lake
City, could become a privately developed waste repository if
Yucca was rejected. After a White House meeting on Monday, the
two senators pledged support for the Yucca Mountain plan.
"Given the choice before us, I would rather have the waste go
through Utah than to Utah," Bennett said.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
_____Background_____ • Nev. Nuclear Waste Plan Faulted by
Ex-Official (The Washington Post, Feb 6, 2002) • Nevada Nuclear
Waste Site Affirmed (The Washington Post, Feb 16, 2002) • House
Backs Plan to Bury Nuclear Waste in Nevada (The Washington Post,
May 9, 2002) • GAO Challenges Plans for Storage Of Nuclear Waste
(The Washington Post, Nov 30, 2001) • Prime Time for Yucca
Controversy Gives Wing to Opponents' Message (The Washington
Post, Apr 7, 2002) • DOE Amends Rules on Nevada Nuclear Waste
Site (The Washington Post, Dec 11, 2001) • Mountain of
Controversy Created by Proposed Waste Site (The Washington Post,
Apr 9, 2002) • Senator Asks for Probe of Energy Official (The
Washington Post, Jun 3, 2002)
_____Opinion_____
• One Safe Site Is Best (The Washington Post, Mar 26, 2002)
• Battle of Yucca Mountain (The Washington Post, Apr 30, 2002)
• On the Road to Yucca Mountain (The Washington Post, Feb 19, 2002)
• Default Nuclear Dumping Ground (The Washington Post, May 14, 2002)
• Sound Site for Nuclear Waste (The Washington Post, May 21, 2002)
• Nuclear Waste: Not in Our Neighborhoods (The Washington Post, Apr 1, 2002)
• A Bad Approach To Nuclear Waste (The Washington Post, Feb 13, 2002)
• The Senator Explodes (The Washington Post, Mar 3, 2002)
• 'West Wing' View (The Washington Post, Apr 7, 2002)
_____Recently in Congress_____
• Senate Approves Yucca Mountain as Nuclear Waste Site (The Washington Post,
Jul 9, 2002)
• Key Senators See Audit Bill Passing as Debate Starts (The Washington Post,
Jul 9, 2002)
• In Nuclear Waste Site Debate, Visions of Transport Disaster (The Washington
Post, Jul 8, 2002)
• Bush Country Likes Democratic Senate Candidate (The Washington Post, Jul 7,
2002)
• Congress To Postpone Revamping Of FBI, CIA (The Washington Post, Jul 2,
2002)
• [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/fedpage/congress/107/]
*****************************************************************
34 How lawmakers voted on Yucca Mountain -
July 9, 2002
CNN.com -
(AP) -- The 60-39 roll call by which the Senate voted to send radioactive
waste to Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert.
On this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote to send the radioactive waste to Nevada
and a "no" vote was a vote to stop the shipments.
Voting "yes" were 15 Democrats and 45 Republicans.
Voting "no" were 35 Democrats, 3 Republicans and one independent.
Alabama
Sessions (R) Yes; Shelby (R) Yes.
Alaska
Murkowski (R) Yes; Stevens (R) Yes.
Arizona
Kyl (R) Yes; McCain (R) Yes.
Arkansas
Hutchinson (R) Yes; Lincoln (D) Yes.
California
Boxer (D) No; Feinstein (D) No.
Colorado
Allard (R) Yes; Campbell (R) No.
Connecticut
Dodd (D) No; Lieberman (D) No.
Delaware
Biden (D) No; Carper (D) No.
Florida
Graham (D) Yes; Nelson (D) Yes.
Georgia
Cleland (D) Yes; Miller (D) Yes.
Hawaii
Akaka (D) No; Inouye (D) No.
Idaho
Craig (R) Yes; Crapo (R) Yes.
Illinois
Durbin (D) Yes; Fitzgerald (R) Yes.
Indiana
Bayh (D) No; Lugar (R) Yes.
Iowa
Grassley (R) Yes; Harkin (D) No.
Kansas
Brownback (R) Yes; Roberts (R) Yes.
Kentucky
Bunning (R) Yes; McConnell (R) Yes.
Louisiana
Breaux (D) No; Landrieu (D) Yes.
Maine
Collins (R) Yes; Snowe (R) Yes.
Maryland
Mikulski (D) No; Sarbanes (D) No.
Massachusetts
Kennedy (D) No; Kerry (D) No.
Michigan
Levin (D) Yes; Stabenow (D) No.
Minnesota
Dayton (D) No; Wellstone (D) No.
Mississippi
Cochran (R) Yes; Lott (R) Yes.
Missouri
Bond (R) Yes; Carnahan (D) No.
Montana
Baucus (D) No; Burns (R) Yes.
Nebraska
Hagel (R) Yes; Nelson (D) Yes.
Nevada
Ensign (R) No; Reid (D) No.
New Hampshire
Gregg (R) Yes; Smith (R) Yes.
New Jersey
Corzine (D) No; Torricelli (D) No.
New Mexico
Bingaman (D) Yes; Domenici (R) Yes.
New York
Clinton (D) No; Schumer (D) No.
North Carolina
Edwards (D) Yes; Helms (R) Not Voting.
North Dakota
Conrad (D) No; Dorgan (D) No.
Ohio
DeWine (R) Yes; Voinovich (R) Yes.
Oklahoma
Inhofe (R) Yes; Nickles (R) Yes.
Oregon
Smith (R) Yes; Wyden (D) No.
Pennsylvania
Santorum (R) Yes; Specter (R) Yes.
Rhode Island
Chafee (R) No; Reed (D) No.
South Carolina
Hollings (D) Yes; Thurmond (R) Yes.
South Dakota
Daschle (D) No; Johnson (D) No.
Tennessee
Frist (R) Yes; Thompson (R) Yes.
Texas
Gramm (R) Yes; Hutchison (R) Yes.
Utah
Bennett (R) Yes; Hatch (R) Yes.
Vermont
Jeffords (I) No; Leahy (D) Yes.
Virginia
Allen (R) Yes; Warner (R) Yes.
Washington
Cantwell (D) No; Murray (D) Yes.
West Virginia
Byrd (D) No; Rockefeller (D) No.
Wisconsin
Feingold (D) No; Kohl (D) Yes.
Wyoming
Enzi (R) Yes; Thomas (R) Yes.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press
*****************************************************************
35 Nevada vows to continue court fight against nuclear dump
Las Vegas SUN:
July 09, 2002
LAS VEGAS (AP) - After fighting a 20-year losing battle to stop
the federal government from burying the nation's nuclear waste in
Nevada, opponents of the Yucca Mountain project promised Tuesday
to press on. Others said it was time to give up and bargain.
Gov. Kenny Guinn, whose attempt to veto the project was overruled
by the Senate on Tuesday and the house in May, promised to
continue the state's challenge in the courts, where the state has
filed five lawsuits.
"Despite flawed science, the lack of transportation planning and
now the lack of a clear consensus from the Senate, the Yucca
Mountain project has barely survived another round," Guinn said.
Energy Department officials have defended the selection of the
Yucca Mountain project at the western edge of the Nevada Test
Site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
There was bitterness among some of those who have fought the
Yucca Mountain proposal since Congress began in 1982 looking for
a permanent place to bury the nation's nuclear waste.
"They've chosen the nuclear industry over the people," said Judy
Treichel, director of the Las Vegas-based Nevada Nuclear Waste
Task Force and an outspoken opponent of the project.
"I smell money, and it ain't ours," said Peggy Maze Johnson,
executive director of Citizen Alert, another anti-Yucca Mountain
organization. "It's amazing there's an industry rich enough to
buy the Senate."
Former Nevada Gov. Robert List, a consultant and one of the
project's highest-profile backers in Nevada, said the state
should start bargaining for benefits.
"The politics of it have not played out the way we would have
liked," List said, "so we have to make lemonade out of the lemons
and come away with some positives."
List said the state will benefit from jobs and money spent
building the site and from services and goods provided to it.
"Sixty billion dollars is a huge amount of money," List said,
rounding up federal estimates of the $57 billion expected to be
spent on Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department must obtain a
license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before it can
begin entombing 77,000 tons of spent commercial, industrial and
military nuclear fuel in metal alloy containers in a grid of
mined tunnels 1,000 feet deep.
The first shipments from 39 states would begin arriving in 2010.
The site is being designed to remain radioactive for tens of
thousands of years. "No use fighting," said Doris Jackson, a
saloon owner and chairwoman of an elected advisory board in
Amargosa Valley, the desert town closest to Yucca Mountain.
"It's done. Let's get what we can out of this."
Jackson said her board began last month to draft a recommendation
asking Nye County officials to pass along a request for federal
aid to build roads, schools, water and sewer systems.
"Some people are talking about a high school or something,"
Jackson said, "our property taxes paid forever, a complete water
and sewer system for a 50-mile radius, paying for kids who go to
college."
Allison Macfarlane, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology
researcher who is writing a book about Yucca Mountain, called the
Senate's decision premature. "Politics is once again moving ahead
of the science," she said from Boston. Macfarlane, a geologist,
said not enough is known about volcanic activity in the area and
about water leaching through the mountain.
"If climate changes severely, there is a potential it could rain
more at Yucca Mountain," she said. "More water (would) seep down
to repository level and corrode canisters that we don't have that
much data on and then transport radioactivity to the water
table," she said, "Then, it's a question of how quickly
radioactivity gets back to the surface."
Bob Loux, director of the Nevada state Nuclear Projects Office,
said the state will rely on its five lawsuits, four of which are
pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.
"We're disappointed, but this is just the political side of the
battle," said Loux. "I think we're going to fare much better in
the legal arena."
Two suits challenge the criteria on which President Bush and
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham made their decisions in favor of
the project, and the validity of the Energy Department's final
environmental impact report.
The state also has separate lawsuits challenging the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission's licensing standards and the Environmental
Protection Agency's radiation standards.
In Las Vegas, the state is fighting in U.S. District Court to cut
off water to the project.
Loux said that with arguments set to begin on one case in
February, he expected the lawsuits to take three or more years.
"They've got to win them all," he said. "We only have to win one.
Any of them are potentially fatal to the project."
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
36 Gov. Guinn's statement regarding the U.S. Senate, Yucca Mountain vote
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: July 9, 2002 CONTACT: Brian O.
Catlett PHONE: 775-684-5670 CARSON CITY: 775-684-5670 CELL:
775-848-0639 FAX: 775-684-5689
CARSON CITY -While disappointed the Senate did not uphold my veto
of the Yucca Mountain project, it is clear we have made
considerable headway in convincing others that Yucca Mountain is
a bad idea. The U.S. Senate vote today is the beginning of
Nevada's legal and regulatory fight to stop the Yucca Mountain
project. Despite flawed science, the lack of transportation
planning, and now the lack of a clear consensus from the Senate,
the Yucca Mountain project has barely survived another round.
For the first time, most Americans and their elected
representatives were made aware that Yucca Mountain is not a safe
or effective place to store nuclear waste. Obviously our message
has changed some minds. A large number of Senators now realize
that by the time Yucca Mountain is filled to capacity, the
nation's power plants will still be storing more than 90 percent
of the nuclear waste they now have. Now the process moves to the
federal courts, where the playing field is level and Nevada's
factual, scientific arguments will be heard by impartial judges.
The Department of Energy and the nuclear industry will no longer
be able to hide behind the political process and wield their
influence to move the Yucca Mountain agenda. Now, for perhaps the
first time in this process, the DOE will finally be held
accountable for its many imprudent and unsound decisions, and we
are highly confident that Nevada will prevail.
###
*****************************************************************
37 Pioneer and UEX Proceed With Plan Of Arrangement
[http://www.investorcanada.com]
VANCOUVER, July 10 /CNW/ - Pioneer Metals Corporation
("Pioneer") announced that the British Columbia Registrar of
Companies has accepted for filing its previously announced Plan
of Arrangement (the "Plan") with UEX Corporation ("UEX"),
satisfying the final condition to implementation of the Plan. The
Plan will become effective and be completed on July 17, 2002. The
Plan record date is the close of business on July 16, 2002.
Accordingly, Pioneer shares will trade with the right to receive
a UEX common share up to and including July 11, 2002. After that
date, UEX common shares and Pioneer common shares will trade
separately. It is anticipated that the UEX common shares will be
listed for trading on the TSX under the symbol UEX on July 17,
2002 following completion of the Plan and the closing of the
public offering described below. Pioneer will also retain its
listing on the TSX.
Under the Plan, Pioneer's interest in all of its uranium
exploration properties, including the Riou Lake Uranium Project,
will be transferred to UEX. Shares in UEX will be distributed to
Pioneer shareholders of record as of the Plan record date on the
basis of one common share of UEX for each common share of
Pioneer. The shareholders will continue to hold all of the
outstanding Pioneer common shares.
The Plan is being implemented in connection with the
agreement entered into between Pioneer and Cameco Corporation
("Cameco") to establish UEX as a new public uranium exploration
company. UEX will focus its exploration activities in the
Athabasca Basin area of Saskatchewan, which hosts the world's
largest, high-grade uranium deposits. Immediately following
implementation of the Plan, Cameco will transfer to UEX its
Hidden Bay advanced exploration properties for a 40% interest in
the new company with the result that Pioneer shareholders will
collectively hold a 60% interest.
z As previously announced, UEX has filed a final prospectus and
entered into an agency agreement with Northern Securities Inc.,
Griffiths McBurney & Partners and Dundee Securities Corporation
for a public offering of common shares and flow-through common
shares for gross proceeds of $4.0 million to $5.55 million. The
common shares and flow-through common shares are priced at $0.25
and $0.30, respectively. The offering is scheduled to close on
July 17, 2002 immediately following implementation of the Plan
and completion of the agreement with Cameco.
Pioneer will retain the balance of its assets including its
100% owned Puffy Lake Gold Mine in Manitoba, the Nokomis Lake
Gold Project in Manitoba, the Bonito Gold/Silver Project in New
Mexico and two copper-gold exploration properties in British
Columbia. After the completion of the Plan, Pioneer will continue
its efforts to exploit these gold and base metals assets.
Additional details concerning the Plan and the Cameco
Agreement are contained in Pioneer-UEX press releases dated
October 24, 2001, November 12, 2001, January 16, 2002 and in
Pioneer's Management Information Circular dated November 27,
2001.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF PIONEER METALS CORPORATION
AND UEX CORPORATION Stephen H. Sorensen, President & C.E.O.
%SEDAR: 00004265E -30-
For further information: Stephen H. Sorensen, PIONEER METALS
CORPORATION, PH: (604) 669-3383, FAX: (604) 669-1240; UEX
CORPORATION, PH: (604) 669-2349, FAX: (604) 669-1240
© 2002 Canada NewsWire Ltd. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
38 Citizens unite against enrichment plant, threats
Elizabethton Star - Online Edition
By Kathy Helms-Hughes
STAR STAFF
khughes@starhq.com
Approximately 120 citizens gathered at Farmhouse Gallery to
speak out against a billion-dollar uranium enrichment facility
proposed for their community.
Supporters from Johnson City and Elizabethton, even a couple
from across the mountain in Asheville stopped by to lend support
to "Unicoi Citizens for Public Information." Not even threats
stopped the gathering.
Johnny Lynch, owner of the Gallery and also an alderman for
the Town of Unicoi, told the group he had tried to get them on
the agenda for the monthly town meeting scheduled for Monday
night so they could voice their concerns, "but I was thwarted on
every attempt. They canceled the city meeting Monday for lack of
an agenda," Lynch said.
"I've had all kinds of different things thrown at me to try
to stop me on this. I've had, I guess, a threat, if you will,
that if we didn't stop trying to stop this industry from coming
in, that they were going to do away with the Town of Unicoi and
start a move to unincorporate," he said.
Why? Because if they were to do away with the Town of Unicoi,
"they would do away with our planning commission and our Board of
Mayor and Aldermen, which is one of the obstacles in front of
these folks as they try to move into this county," he said.
It has been confirmed that a consortium known as Louisiana
Energy Services, or LES, has set its sights on a tract of more
than 100 acres on Tinker Road to build the first gas centrifuge
plant of its kind in the United States.
LES, made up of major utility companies such as Exelon and
Duke Energy, along with Louisiana Light & Power, Fluor Daniel,
and Urenco -- sole competitor against U.S. Enrichment Corp. of
Bethesda, Md., in the import of low-enriched uranium into the
United States -- apparently began talks with Unicoi County
officials three to four months ago, according to Lynch.
"We didn't find out about this until just a couple of weeks
ago," he said, referring to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen.
"They kept it from us."
Lynch said the mayor is in regular attendance at meetings of
the Economic Development Board, where the proposed LES plant was
discussed. "So I've got a real bone to pick with the mayor for
keeping that information from the rest of the aldermen.
"Evidently, what it seems they're trying to do is keep us
from being heard. I'm thinking that's their plan: to not let this
company know that there is opposition out here to this thing," he
said.
The LES partnership intends to use Urenco gas centrifuge
technology currently operating at three plants in the
Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany at its proposed uranium
enrichment plant.
Paul Monk, county executive, and Rep. Zane Whitson claim the
facility is a cure for the county's economic ills. Monk said
recently that LES has the potential to create tax revenues which
could reverse three years of budget cuts affecting the county's
2,480 public school students. Whitson estimates the plant could
increase Unicoi County's property tax by $9 million.
Some of the local citizenry and experts called upon to speak
at Tuesday night's three-hour-long meeting thought otherwise.
Steven Sykes of Reedy & Sykes Architects in Elizabethton and
Dr. Ed Stead of East Tennessee State University College of
Business, said they are still trying to figure out the multiplier
used to come up with the monetary benefits set out in a press
release issued by Monk's office.
Dr. Dave Close, professor and chairman of physics at ETSU,
discounted the theory that there would be no adverse
environmental impact if the facility was built within the
community.
One resident questioned whether having another
uranium-handling facility close by would make the area an even
larger target for terrorists.
"Just paint a big bulls-eye around Unicoi," another
responded.
Tom Dennison challenged a claim that the industry would
create a lot of high-paying jobs in Unicoi County, while Frances
Lamberts of the League of Women Voters, said a contact person in
Germany told her that Urenco "was very good at promising a lot of
jobs. He said they had [been] promised 1,000 jobs. After
construction, 180 people are employed and he said most of the
jobs are lower-paying."
Dr. Stead said building the gas centrifuge facility boils
down to one simple economic assumption: "Is there a market for
the fuel they would be producing?"
Newspaper and magazines have indicated there is going to be a
growth in nuclear power plants in the United States, Stead said.
"But from everything I know right now, that's just a very shaky
assumption."
U.S. Enrichment, in a letter posted Monday on the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission's Website, also questioned the need for
more enrichment services in the United States and asked the NRC
to make LES back up its application for the new facility with
proof of need.
Stead said it also appears that the multiplier used to
develop statistics on jobs and increased revenues is "a much
higher multiplier than is typical for this region."
Stead, who has conducted research in Homer, La., and who
attended LSU, said, "If the people in Louisiana can turn this
plant down, we can turn them down here." In 1989, LES canceled
plans to build a gas centrifuge facility in Homer following seven
years of challenges.
"All we have to do is keep plugging away and chipping away
and making them spend money, because when they start spending too
much money, they're going to pack up and they're going to leave.
... And to heck with the Board of Mayor and Aldermen!" Stead
said, to rousing applause.
"The Board of Mayor and Aldermen has ostrich dynamics. When
you see their head in the sand, you've got to realize what's
sticking up in the air," he said.
Sykes told the group that if the property owners developed
their own businesses on the Tinker Road site, "it's going to
provide jobs for the people of Unicoi County" and the profits
will be returned to the county, rather than some town in Germany.
Sykes said that through the years his office building in
Elizabethton has been "a grocery store, a farm store, a shoe
store, it's been an office supply store. Time after time, that
property has been used and redeveloped ... and it's helped the
citizens."
If an enrichment plant comes and goes, he said, "All we have
left of that factory is a Superfund site."
Dr. Close told the group that from an environmental
standpoint, the uranium the company would handle would not be as
big a concern as the heavy metals that would be produced. Another
problem, he said, "is there is an enormous amount of waste."
Copyright © 1996 - 2002 Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc.
Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc., 300 Sycamore Street Elizabethton,
Tennessee 37643 - 423.542.4151
*****************************************************************
39 Congress approves sending nation's nuclear waste to Nevada
Las Vegas SUN
July 09, 2002
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate voted Tuesday to entomb thousands of
tons of radioactive waste inside Yucca Mountain in the Nevada
desert, rejecting the state's fervent protests and ending years
of political debate over nuclear waste disposal.
The vote to override Nevada's objections to the waste dump 90
miles northwest of Las Vegas cleared the way for President Bush
to proceed with the project that has been studied for more than
two decades.
Nevada's senators, who tried for months to rally their colleagues
against the Yucca waste dump, argued that the issue was much
broader than Nevada. They hoped concerns over thousands of waste
shipments crossing 43 states would sway some lawmakers, but were
disappointed.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., lashed out at nuclear lobbyists and
their "unending source of money" for perpetuating "the big lie"
that the Nevada dump was urgently needed. The waste - most of it
from nuclear power plants - can be kept safely where it is,
avoiding the transportation risks, Reid insisted. If Congress
does not act, countered Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, nuclear
power itself would be threatened, the government could face
lawsuits, and lawmakers will have to start looking all over again
for a waste site with no indication where the search might lead.
Asked why he could not muster more opposition to the Yucca dump
among GOP senators, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., replied: "Nimby.
Not in my backyard. They do not want to reopen this."
The Senate action came despite the refusal of Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to bring up the matter, forcing
Republican senators to use a provision of a 1982 waste law that
allows any senator to demand a vote. The same law required the
Senate to act by July 26, or the Yucca site would be shut down
automatically.
Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said the Senate was
forced to act or be "squeezed" by the deadline. The House passed
an identical resolution, overriding Nevada's veto, in May.
After an afternoon of debate, the Senate voted 60-39 on a motion
to proceed with the resolution. It became the key vote as
senators then agreed to approve the resolution by voice.
Daschle said there are still "far too many questions" about the
Yucca site and whether wastes can be transported securely. "We
are being forced to decide this issue prematurely," he
complained.
Yet 15 Democrats voted with almost all the GOP senators for the
waste site. Only three Republicans - Sens. Ensign, Lincoln Chafee
of Rhode Island and Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado - opposed
the dump. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., did not vote.
Some senators worried that waste shipments might become terrorist
targets or lead to radiation releases in a severe accident. They
criticized the Energy Department for not clarifying how the
wastes would get to Nevada and what routes it would take.
But the Bush administration and other supporters of the Nevada
waste dump said leaving the radioactive garbage at power plants
and defense sites in 39 states would pose an even greater risk.
And they said waste has been transported for years without
radiation releases.
"Looking for another site ... is not realistic," Sen. Jeff
Bingaman, D-N.M., argued, noting Yucca Mountain has been studied
for 24 years at a cost of $4.5 billion. While there are still
uncertainties to be resolved, he said, "we're not likely to find
a better site next time."
President Bush directed in February that the Yucca project
proceed, concluding that research had shown 77,000 tons of waste
could be stored there safely for the tens of thousands of years
it will remain dangerously radioactive. A 1982 law allowed Nevada
to veto the president's action, subject to a final political
decision in Congress.
The fight over Yucca Mountain does not end with the vote on
Capitol Hill. Nevada has filed five lawsuits challenging the
project, and the Energy Department must still get a license for
the facility from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a process
that could take up to five years. Even some Yucca supporters
admit plans to open the site by 2010 may be too optimistic.
"I believe it is a safe repository," Lott said. If the country
does not find a central place for the waste, he said, "we're
going to have to shut down" the nuclear industry.
Opponents focused on transportation, accusing the Energy
Department of failing to ensure that waste shipments - anywhere
from 175 to 2,200 a year depending on the mix of rail and truck
shipments - will be safe and secure.
"While I want this high level nuclear waste out of our state ....
there are too many uncertainties, too many unresolved issues and
the risks are too high," said Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn. His
state's utility has said it may have to shut down the Prairie
Island nuclear power plant because of its growing waste problem.
Environmentalists dubbed the planned waste shipments "mobile
Chernobyl" - a reference to the nuclear disaster in the former
Soviet Union. They see a disaster in the making as the
radioactive cargo moves past major cities, over bridges and
through tunnels on its way to Nevada.
Murkowski countered that "we've not had a single harmful release
of radioactivity" in past waste transports.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham promised a transportation plan
before the end of next year and said stringent safety
requirements will provide an "effective first line of defense"
against terrorist threats.
White House clout was demonstrated Monday when Utah's two
wavering Republican senators - Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett -
switched from undecided to supporting the project. Although
worried about waste transports through their state, Abraham
suggested it might wind up at a Utah site if Yucca weren't built.
At a White House meeting, the two were told the Energy Department
would help keep the waste out of the Utah site if Yucca gained
approval. Minutes later, both Hatch and Bennett announced their
support for the Yucca repository.
On the Net: Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov
[http://www.ymp.gov] Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects:
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste]
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
40 Russia wins aid to clean up nuclear waste
- 7/10/2002 - ENN.com
Wednesday, July 10, 2002 By Marcin Grajewski, Reuters
BRUSSELS — International donors launched a 1.8 billion euro
(US$1.78 billion) program Tuesday to help clean up the
environment in and around northern Russia, which faces a big
threat from nuclear waste.
A one-day conference chaired by the European Union and Russia
announced initial funds totaling 110 million euros for the most
urgent projects needed to reduce water and air pollution in the
Baltic and Barents Sea regions.
The European Commission, the E.U.'s executive body, pledged 50
million euros. Six countries — Russia, Denmark, Finland, the
Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden — offered 10 million euros each.
More pledges are expected to follow soon, organizers said.
"The conference showed our shared concern, our commitment to
help. We now have to deliver efficiently," said Jean Lemierre,
chief of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,
which will manage the fund. The start-up funds are to co-finance
1.8 billion euros worth of loans from international financial
institutions such as the EBRD and Nordic Investment Bank for more
than a dozen clean-up projects already identified.
"Future generations will not understand if we do not act now to
tackle the legacy of environmental degradation and above all the
legacy of dangerous nuclear material left in northern Europe,"
said E.U. External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten.
Some 500 million euros is to be spent on tackling dangerous
nuclear waste in Russia, which is the legacy of the Cold War,
when the Soviet Union built hundreds of nuclear submarines. The
vessels are now being decommissioned, with many just rusting away
on bases on the Barents Sea, and the spent radioactive material
is stored in hazardous conditions. "There are hundreds of nuclear
submarines and reactors to be dismantled and vast quantities of
radioactive waste to take care of," Patten said.
RUSSIA'S RESERVATIONS
Russia welcomed the aid but made clear it would prefer the aid
program to be more focused on its nonnuclear elements, as the
costs of cleaning radioactive waste need a much larger financing
scheme, possibly even 10 times bigger. The donors decided that
out of the 110 million euros initial fund, 62 million will be
earmarked for nuclear projects.
"We are far from enthusiastic about the intention to direct half
of the fund to the nuclear part of the environmental program,"
said Russia's deputy finance minister, Sergei Kolotukhin. He
added that Moscow, though happy to accept the aid, would prefer
to discuss nuclear cleanup in the context of a wider program
agreed last month with the United States and other members of the
G-8 group of rich nations plus Russia.
The G-8 program envisages spending some $20 billion over the next
10 years to help Russia get rid of old Soviet weapons of mass
destruction, including nuclear stockpiles.
But before Russia receives any money for a nuclear cleanup,
including funds from the Brussels conference, it has to sign an
agreement, called the Multilateral Nuclear Environment Program,
on legal conditions of the operations. The deal would also define
liability for the operations and the rules of donors' access to
nuclear sites in Russia.
Kolotukhin told reporters that the deal should be signed in the
fall. "Politically, we have decided to sign this agreement, but
some technical issues still need to be resolved."
Copyright 2002, Reuters
*****************************************************************
41 Unicoi considered for uranium enrichment plant
KnoxNews: Business
By Staff and wire reports
July 10, 2002
ERWIN, Tenn. - A consortium called Louisiana Energy Services is
considering Unicoi County for a $1 billion uranium enrichment
plant.
The consortium's identity was disclosed in a June 27 letter from
the Unicoi County Board of Education to County Executive Paul
Monk endorsing the group's recruitment, the Johnson City Press
reported Tuesday.
State Rep. Zane Whitson, R-Unicoi, confirmed that LES is behind
the project and said Britain-based Urenco is the principal
company in the consortium. "The consortium consists of several
billion-dollar companies with Urenco being the principal one
involved," Whitson said.
Other companies attending a Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting
April 30 about the project with LES were Duke Energy Corp. and
Exelon Nuclear. "Now that the word is out about who the company
is, there are other counties in Tennessee recruiting the plant to
locate in their area," Whitson said without identifying which
were interested.
The facility could provide about 400 jobs during construction and
250 permanent full-time jobs once it is operational, possibly as
early as 2006. The plant would enrich uranium used in generating
electricity, the news release said.
Other potential plant sites previously mentioned by Urenco
officials are Piketon, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky.
In 1991, LES tried to get NRC approval to build an $855 million
uranium enrichment plant in Claiborne Parish, La. Opponents
accused the group of "environmental racism" for picking a site
populated by poor blacks.
The plan was abandoned in 1998 after LES, which at that time
included Urenco, Duke and California-based Fluor Corp., spent $34
million.
Nuclear Fuel Services already does business in Erwin, and TVA has
a $450 million subcontract with the firm to "blend" highly
enriched uranium from the Department of Energy's stockpile.
The 33 metric tons of uranium will be used to generate
electricity at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in northern
Alabama.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
42 Plutonium Disposition Plan Narrowly Avoids Scrapping, But Still
Has Many Critics
International Co-operation
Section on international co-operation covering nuclear waste
imports to Russia and exports of Russian nuclear technology.
MOSCOW - A-nine-year-old joint US-Russian agreement to dispose of
68 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium — which insiders say was
nearing the scrap heap — was given a jump-start by a recent US
Department of Energy (DOE) plan to demonstrate the feasibility of
converting warhead plutonium to oxide, allowing it to be burned
as fuel.
Charles Digges, 2002-07-09 23:45
That jump-start came from a pair of contracts forged by the DOE
with the Russians, according to which a "conversion demonstration
facility" will be built at the Mayak Chemical Combine, near
Chelyabinsk, to show the physical and financial possibility of
making the fuel, called MOX — a mixture of plutonium and uranium
oxides.
The US Los Alamos lab is the other signatory in the $3.6 million
contract with Mayak on the demonstration project, and US
technicians will be working with their Russian counterparts to
develop the highly dangerous fuel that destroys weapons-grade
plutonium when burned in a reactor. A prototype should be ready
in about three years.
Had these contracts not been signed, said a source close to the
Urals regional arm of Gosatomnadzor (GAN), Russia's nuclear
regulatory agency, the DOE plutonium disposition programme may
have been scrapped altogether — though current DOE officials
would not comment on whether that was the case. "This particular
program has been languishing. First, it was really the obstinacy
of some Russian facilities who wanted to get research and
development contracts. Second — it was the leadership and
direction on the US side. [...] They were just wasting US
taxpayer money," said the source who spoke on the condition of
anonymity.
"These [contracts] show that the DOE is willing to not just talk
about what they are going to do, but actually do something — so
[the DOE officials] said we're going to do real work, we're going
to run the numbers, and do the design."
The source close to the GAN Urals branch further said that the
DOE plan would add no radioactive waste to local facilities,
something previous DOE delegations had not been able to address
to the satisfaction of Urals officials and environmentalists in
prior negotiations. "Working with this particular DOE team is the
difference between night and day," said the source.
The plutonium disposition programme, however, is not out of the
woods yet, he said, but the contracts bought the programme time
and credibility pending a major announcement by the DOE on
plutonium disposition in mid-July. The source would not specify
the nature of the announcement, but referred to it as the "$400
million question," which suggests — though the source would not
confirm or deny this — that the decision may mean wide-scale
reactor technology upgrades in Russia for the burning of the MOX.
Indeed, with the last week's pledge by the world's leading
industrial nations to give Russia $20 billion over the next 10
years for non-proliferation efforts — a sort of worldwide
Nunn-Lugar Act — experiments in new reactor technologies for MOX
disposition may be the next deal on the table between the DOE and
the Kremlin.
But not all who heard of the MOX agreement sounded pleased as
they cited extreme dangers behind the fabrication of the
demonstration fuel — to say nothing of converting vast quantities
for reactor use.
"The conversion and fabrication of weapons-grade plutonium into
mixed oxide fuel involves ultra-hazardous first-generation
technologies with no proven history of success on an industrial
scale," said Robert Alvarez, senior policy advisor to the DOE's
Secretary of Energy from 1993 to 1999, in an email interview with
Bellona Web.
"There's a considerable amount of work that needs to be done to
convert this stuff, that is not required with fresh plutonium
that hasn't been rendered into a metal for weapons."
MOX vs. immobilization: a brief history
Mayak plant
Mayak Chemical Combine is located near Ozersk, a closed city in
the Southern Urals. There used to be six operational reactors at
Mayak Chemical Combine (MCC) for the production of weapons
plutonium. Of these, five were graphite-moderated while the sixth
was originally a heavy water reactor.
Read on Bellona's working paper »
[http://www.bellona.no/imaker?id=8223?=1]
The origins of the agreement to create MOX fuel stem from a 1993
US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Report requested by the US
Senate Congressional Armed Services Committee. The NAS report
focused primarily on the weapons materials coming from dismantled
warheads. For plutonium, NAS suggested the options of MOX and
immobilization methods as a means to achieve non-proliferation
objectives.
Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, enjoying a political
upsurge on the international stage, publicly agreed to destroy
some 68 tonnes — or 34 tonnes apiece — of excess weapons
plutonium that the US and Russia had declared as having at the
end of the Cold War.
But immobilization was dealt a major setback in 1998 in the US
due to the technological failure to pre-treat military high-level
nuclear wastes for vitrification — mixing plutonium with glass
for permanent storage — at the Savannah River Site. This process
was to provide the primary radiation barrier for the plutonium in
the United States.
Red tape
A piece of plutonium. www.fas.org
Ever since then, the creation of MOX fuel — and the eventual
building or retrofitting of reactors to burn it in — has been one
of the hallmark hopes of the DOE's Russian non-proliferation
programme, though neither side has made any meaningful progress
until now. As one former DOE official, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity, explained it, an edict to destroy excess weapons
plutonium was handed down from the White House — during years
when Yeltsin-Clinton back-slapping was at a peak — but then the
support evaporated.
"The mandate [for the plutonium disposition programme] came from
Clinton and Yeltsin saying 'we're going to declare 68 tonnes [of
plutonium] in excess of weapons needs," said the former DOE
official in a recent telephone interview. "And out of the White
House comes the directive — okay, DOE, do something. But what the
White House didn't do was continue to support the mission of
plutonium disposition at a really high level, and that's what it
takes." Adding to this, said the former DOE official, was tension
between the DOE and its plutonium labs.
"The policy people and technical people are in different teams
and they can often be at odds with each other," the official
said.
According to another government official, the DOE was prepared to
sign off on a demonstration of MOX conversion as far back as
three years ago, but the US State Department, which brokered that
deal, never gave the go-ahead to start testing.
Because of such halting progress, the Urals source said, the
programme as a whole fell into endless cycles of research and
development, wherein — in Russia especially — many of the labs
weren't focused strictly on the science of the project.
Labs at the Russian research and development body Bochvar, for
instance, have nixed several MOX proposals over the past years,
mainly, according to the Urals source, because the pursuit of MOX
is not profitable. Bochvar, he said, makes a royalty on each
nuclear fuel rod — with its built-in potential for reprocessing —
sold in Russia.
The MOX programme, which is geared toward the ultimate
destruction of weapons-grade plutonium, rather than its
re-harvesting — threatens to break a lucrative Bochvar rice bowl,
the source said. Bochvar officials declined to comment.
Minatom's cult of plutonium
Russia's Pu and U stocks
As successor to the Soviet Union, Russia possesses some 25,000
nuclear warheads of tactical and strategic application (some
sources put this figure at 30,000). Review of Russia's management
of fissile materials. Read on »
[http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/status/4109.html]
For decades — and arguably even still — anything having to do
with the destruction of weapons plutonium has been a taboo for
Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry, Minatom. Therefore, according to
Minatom sources, quiet celebrations at the ministry accompanied
the announcement of the Savannah River vitrification failure in
1998.
The Russians, said the Urals source, would only consider MOX for
the purpose of putting the excess plutonium to some power
producing use — like it is done in France, where reactor-grade
MOX fuel has been burned for more than a decade, although not
entirely successful.
"[...]Throughout the Clinton Administration, Minatom would not
even consider discussion of immobilization, because of the belief
that plutonium has great value based on the Soviet rationale of
'sunk costs,'" Alvarez wrote.
"Minatom's plutonium policy mirrors that of the US in the 1960's.
Powerful elements of secrecy, isolation and privilege have
fostered a rigid theological view by Minatom about the benefits
of plutonium."
According to Minatom sources, the MOX option as spelled out in
the new agreement is grudgingly acceptable because it allows for
the disposition of plutonium in an energy producing way.
"The contract provides [....] for that demonstration [of
conversion] to finally show [...] that disarmament is not just
talk, and that we are taking the warheads, turning them into
powder, turning that into fuel and giving light and heat to [...]
Russian people," said the source close to the Urals GAN.
Reactors
But a plan with that ambition would presumably require that MOX,
incorporating weapons-grade plutonium, be fabricated for and
burned throughout Russia in already existing civilian reactors.
Currently, the only hope of burning weapons MOX on the Russian
side is at the Beloyarsk fast neutron reactor, and even that is
questionable.
Valery Kuznetsov, a former GAN inspector, who now works for the
Moscow-based environmental group Green Cross, told Bellona Web
that current reactor technology in Russia simply doesn't support
weapons-grade MOX fuel. Another option — using Russia's seven
VVER—1000 reactors, which have been considered candidates for
upgrades by the DOE and Minatom — could, he said, "lead to second
Chernobyl — maybe worse."
He added that any upgrade to a VVER-1000 that would bring it
anywhere near a safe range for operation with MOX fuel would
require $100 million — a dangerous experiment that would
presumably be financed by the DOE. Storage until destruction
If other reactors are not developed and funded, that leaves,
according to Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of Moscow-based
Ecodefence! environmental group, Beloyarsk's beleaguered breeder
reactor, which, with 34 tonnes of plutonium oxide gathered in one
place waiting to be burned, would "create a terrorist's
paradise."
Alexey Yablokov, who was a senior advisor on environmental safety
issues to former President Boris Yeltsin in the mid-1990s, agreed
with Slivyak.
"The materials that make up the warhead have to be mixed with
glass or concrete and stored in a safe facility, or they must be
processed in breeder reactors," Yablokov told Bellona Web.
"Unfortunately, Russia does not have the means to do either of
these things."
There are 52 military storage depots for the enriched uranium and
plutonium from which nuclear warheads are made, but Yablokov and
others who have studied security at the sites say security is lax
and accounting systems for weapons-grade materials non-existent.
"The basic problem is that the current US-Russian MOX agreement
puts the cart before the horse," former DOE senior policy advisor
Alvarez said.
According to him, though, weapons-grade plutonium is still more
secure than the huge amounts of poorly protected separated
plutonium, not used in warheads, that Minatom is storing at its
nuclear material and other production sites.
"The a priori assumption behind the MOX agreement is that the
safe and secure storage of nuclear materials is of secondary
importance. Nothing could be further from the truth, in the US
and in Russia," Alvarez said.
"We now need to address these realities. The Nunn-Lugar program
served a good purpose during the early years of the post Cold
War, particularly for the dismantlement of delivery systems," he
added.
"Now it's time for the US, Russia, and nations formerly part of
the Soviet Union, to enter into a nuclear material framework
agreement with the goal of achieving the safe and secure storage
of excess nuclear materials."
Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President:
Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no
[info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no
[webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22
38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
43 Nev. Mixed on Senate Nuke Site Vote
Las Vegas SUN:
July 10, 2002
LAS VEGAS- One politician said it felt like a punch to the gut,
while another said it represented a unique opportunity. Some said
it was time to bargain, while others said it was time to go to
court.
As word arrived that the Senate had approved burying much of the
nation's radioactive waste in the bowels of Yucca Mountain, the
reaction in Nevada ranged from anger to resignation.
"I feel like I've been punched 100 times in the gut," said
Republican Sen. John Ensign, who along with Democrat Sen. Harry
Reid, launched an intense lobbying effort against the plan.
Opponents planned to back least five lawsuits pending against the
plan, which would ship waste from 103 nuclear reactors to a tomb
beneath an ancient volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas.
"We will not bargain, we will not negotiate, we will not waver in
our determined opposition to Yucca Mountain. Today we lost a
battle, but we will win the war," said Clark County Commission
Chairman Dario Herrera.
The first shipments from 39 states are due to begin arriving in
2010. The site is being designed to house 77,000 tons of spent
commercial, industrial and military nuclear fuel.
The Energy Department must obtain a license from the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, which could take up to five years. Even
some Yucca Mountain supporters admit opening the site by 2010
might be too optimistic.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, a pro-Yucca lobbying group, hailed
the Senate vote as a signal of governmental support for an
industry supplying electricity to one in five homes and
businesses.
Critics argue that shipping the waste through more than 40 states
to Nevada runs a risk of accidents, with the potential for
radioactive releases. The shipments also could be targets for
terrorists, opponents say.
"I think the consensus is that it's inevitable, that it's like
trying to change the course of the Colorado River. I haven't
resigned myself to that," said Ed Goedhart, a dairy farmer and
Amargosa Valley town advisory board member.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he was convinced that the
tons of waste destined for Nevada can be stored safely for the
tens of thousands of years it will remain radioactive.
Some residents and political leaders said the state should begin
bargaining with the federal government for benefits such as
improved roads, schools, water and sewers.
"No use fighting," said Doris Jackson, a saloon owner and
chairwoman of the elected advisory board in Amargosa Valley, a
rural Nevada desert town of 1,271 residents. "It's done. Let's
get what we can out of this."
Gov. Kenny Guinn said in a statement that he was disappointed
with the vote and looked forward to making Nevada's case in
federal court. He said the Yucca project "has barely survived
another round."
"The Department of Energy and the nuclear industry will no longer
be able to hide behind the political process and wield their
influence to move the Yucca Mountain agenda," Guinn said in a
statement. "Nevada will prevail."
Guinn's predecessor saw things differently.
"Nevada needs a financial shot in the arm," said former Gov.
Robert List. "Construction dollars are going to be spent in
Nevada, and there will be ongoing money spent on services and
goods far into the future."
On the Net: Yucca Mountain Project: [http://www.ymp.gov] State
of Nevada: [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste]
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
44 *YMP TIMELINE*
By: July 10, 2002
*07-10-02*
1982: The construction of a permanent repository becomes a
national priority with Congress' passage of the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act.
1986: Federal officials narrows the field to three potential
repository sites in Nevada, Texas and Washington.
1987: Three becomes one as Congress dumps the sites in Texas and
Washington. It's dubbed the "screw Nevada bill," but it's really
an amendment to the 1982 measure.
1994: Utilities sue the U.S. Department of Energy for abandoning
its pledge to begin accepting high-level waste from commercial
reactors by 1998.
1995: A federal court rules that the government is liable for
damages if it does not accept the waste by 1998, though the
extent of that liability has not yet been determined.
1997: Nearly three years of drilling culminate with the
completion of a 25-foot-tall, five-mile tunnel through Yucca
Mountain.
Feb. 14, 2002: Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham declares Yucca
Mountain suitable and recommends it be approved as a repository
site. President Bush concurs a few weeks later.
April 8: Gov. Guinn sends the issue to Congress with his historic
veto of the President's site selection.
May 8: Needing only a simple majority, the House of
Representatives overwhelmingly votes to override Guinn's veto,
306-117.
Tuesday: The Senate officially kills Guinn's veto - and
designates Yucca Mountain as the repository site - in a ??? vote
that clears the way for DOE to begin license application process.
2006: Four years from now is the soonest construction could begin
on the repository, and that's only if the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission approves DOE's license application.
2010: Eight years from now is believed to be the soonest the
repository could open and begin accepting waste shipments.
Promised lawsuits by opponents of the project and other delays
could push back the opening by years, even decades.
/©Pahrump Valley Times 2002/
*****************************************************************
45 Chamber of Commerce Pro-Yucca Ads Are Misleading, Deceptive
*/July 8, 2002/*
WASHINGTON, D.C. ? U.S. Chamber of Commerce ads in support of the
proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump are misleading, the
consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen charged today.
The radio ads have run over the past week in several states where
U.S. senators are considered swing votes on the Yucca Mountain
issue. A Senate vote is expected this week.
The main point of the Chamber?s ads is that the Yucca Mountain
plan would "get [nuclear waste] out of our communities." In fact,
waste will remain at nuclear reactors throughout the country
whether or not Yucca Mountain opens because the waste must cool
for five years before it can be moved. If we continue to generate
nuclear waste at the current rate, capacity limits at Yucca
Mountain will be exceeded even before the repository could open.
Also, far from removing waste from communities, the Yucca
Mountain plan would send it through major cities in 44 states and
the District of Columbia to get it to Nevada, making it
susceptible to catastrophic crashes or terrorist attacks.
The ads also claim that the waste would be stored safely in
Nevada. In fact, that is highly questionable. Yucca Mountain is
located atop an aquifer, which is a source of drinking water, and
in an earthquake zone. Even government officials have confessed
that they haven?t figured out how to safely contain the waste for
the thousands of years it will remain radioactive.
"With the Yucca Mountain project facing an uncertain future in
the Senate, the nuclear industry has turned to its friends in the
business community to help market this dangerous plan," said
Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook, who today sent a letter
to senators urging them to reject the dump. "But problems with
the project extend far beyond the realm of marketing. The Senate
should put public health and safety above the profit interests of
the nuclear industry and reject the Yucca Mountain project."
Several local Chambers of Commerce in Utah and Nevada have passed
resolutions opposing the Yucca Mountain plan. The Las Vegas
Chamber of Commerce, the third largest in the country, resigned
from the U.S. Chamber last December to protest the national
body?s pro-Yucca campaign.
The Alliance for Sound Nuclear Policy, a nuclear industry front
group, also ran pro-Yucca ads last weekend. The Alliance has
refused repeated requests by Public Citizen to disclose its
funding sources and document the 26 million people it claims to
represent.
###
Public Citizen
*****************************************************************
46 Many a Molehill Before Nuke Waste Finds Mountain
The New York Times
*July 10, 2002*
*By MATTHEW L. WALD*
WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The political support for burying nuclear
waste beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada may be as strong now as in
1987, when Congress first picked the site. But the Senate's
approval of the site today, while it lets the Energy Department
proceed, is far from the last word.
What comes next is more complicated than winning the blessing of
Congress: transforming political momentum into sound science and
engineering, and actually creating a functioning repository. That
is likely to take years ? if indeed it ever comes to pass.
The Energy Department, Yucca Mountain's prime sponsor, is an old
hand at managing giant, first-of-a-kind projects, but many of
them have horrible histories. The Superconducting Supercollider,
an $11 billion project, was canceled in 1993 after $2 billion had
been spent, falling victim to rising costs and daunting technical
problems. The Clinch River Breeder Reactor, begun in 1970 as a
$700 million project, was canceled in 1974 after $1.5 billion had
been spent, as opponents questioned whether it was worth the
effort. For similar reasons, the modernization of a nuclear fuel
plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, begun in 1977, was canceled in 1985
after $3.5 billion had been spent. Then there was the
nuclear-powered airplane, begun in 1954 and canceled in 1961
after $1 billion had been spent. By then, there were overwhelming
doubts that it would fly.
Yucca Mountain will be even tougher to pull off, in one regard.
Congress has required that the Energy Department, a mostly
self-regulating bureaucracy, win a license from a sister agency,
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That is far from easy, even
for nuclear power companies with long experience getting approval
from the commission for simpler projects. In the 1980's, for
example, two commercial reactor projects in the Midwest, Zimmer
and Marble Hill, were canceled because of licensing difficulties.
"Yucca's not a sure thing," said C. William Reamer, the deputy
director of the commission's waste management division. The
Energy Department will have to lay out "not just their argument,
but what supports their argument" about why the repository will
contain the wastes successfully for 10,000 years, he said.
Thus far, the department does not even have a design. It plans to
put waste in an area unusually subject to rust but has little
data on how its metal canisters will perform. It has a huge
environmental impact statement, but critics say that in its
current form, the statement makes many unverifiable claims.
Because Yucca Mountain is complex, Congress created a committee
of outside experts, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, to
help assess the Energy Department's work. Its chairman, Jared L.
Cohon, who is the president of Carnegie Mellon University, said
today that for all the work the department had done so far, there
was still "a relatively high level of uncertainty" about how well
it would isolate the waste. Congress may have voted, Dr. Cohon
said, but "that issue is still there."
Too, the Energy Department needs to keep working to understand
how water, which will spread the waste, moves through the
mountain; then it needs to explain this to the public, Dr. Cohon
said.
But right now, the department will probably turn its attention to
preparing a license application. Under the law, the department is
supposed to apply for a license within 60 days of Congressional
approval. But it has told the commission that it will file more
than two years late, by December 2004. In most Energy Department
projects, including this one so far, nothing happens ahead of
schedule and most things happen later.
The nuclear commission is supposed to decide in three years
whether to grant a license, but it may take a fourth. If the
staff asks the department too many questions, the review could
easily take longer, experts say. The commission expects an
adversarial hearing with 8 to 10 parties, each of which can raise
questions and make arguments. In the 1960's and 70's, when the
commission was still licensing power reactors, a hearing with
only three or four parties could drag on for years.
There is more potential for delay in the commission's insistence
on a detailed safety analysis before it grants a license. The
Energy Department's practice is to build major factories while
simultaneously working on critical technical details, a technique
pioneered in World War II to build the atom bomb, and still in
use. For example, in the 1980's the department started work on a
processing plant in Aiken, S.C., for solidifying liquid wastes,
without figuring out how it would get wastes out of storage tanks
and into the plant without producing flammable gases. Now the
solidification plant is running but is limited in how much waste
it can process because the flammable gas problem has not been
solved.
The Yucca Mountain project has something going for it that
previous doomed projects lacked. The federal government needs it
to resolve its commercial dispute with the nuclear utilities.
Under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the utilities all signed
contracts with the government, agreeing to pay one-tenth of a
cent per kilowatt-hour generated at their reactors, in exchange
for the government's taking their wastes, beginning in 1998.
But Yucca Mountain also has first-of-a-kind disadvantages. For
one, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to decide on
granting a license by applying rules written by the Environmental
Protection Agency. But those rules are being challenged by Nevada
and by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental
group, which argue that the agency gerrymandered the site's
boundaries to allow for excessive leakage. The boundaries look
like a gigantic number 9, with a three-mile ring around the
repository and a tail of about 10 miles in the direction that
water flows underground. Geoffrey H. Pettus, a lawyer with the
Natural Resources Defense Council, called it "an underground
septic field."
Nevada has other legal challenges under way, too.
Then there is the fact that Yucca Mountain is too small. The
resolution passed today limits it to 77,000 tons, but the nation
will produce more than 100,000. Congress may have to act again.
*****************************************************************
47 Yucca Mountain transportation routes concern tribe on U.S. 95
Las Vegas SUN:
July 10, 2002
RENO, Nev. (AP) - With Yucca Mountain moving closer to reality,
Nevadans are concerned about nuclear waste transportation routes
and no one is more worried the 1,000 members of the Walker River
Paiute Tribe.
That's because they live along U.S. Highway 95, the state's
principal north-south highway.
"We're right at the crossroads," said Robert Quintero, 43, a
Walker River native who is in his third year as tribal chairman.
"We are very concerned about what's going to happen. Nobody has
said how it's going to happen," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Reservation leaders aren't sure what they'll do if U.S. 95, which
runs through the middle of tribal headquarters in Schurz, becomes
a transportation route to Yucca.
Routes to Yucca Mountain haven't been picked. But if the site in
the southern Nevada desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas
becomes the country's nuclear repository, U.S. 95 might be judged
a good way to reach the dump, according to the states nuclear
transportation expert.
"It's absolutely credible and possible," said Robert Halstead,
who's worked on the route issue for 24 years and advised Nevada
since 1988.
Halstead, who lives in Wisconsin, also claims a U.S. 95
designation would bring radioactive waste from the West Coast
through Reno and Sparks on Interstate 80 before trucks turn south
at Fernley.
But a nuclear industry spokesman who was once Gov. of Nevada
calls such speculation "fear mongering."
Robert List, a Las Vegas-based adviser and lobbyist who was the
states chief executive in 1979-83, points to railroads and
highways on the eastern side of the state as likely routes for
nuclear waste.
"Maybe none would come through Reno," List said. "I don't know
what purpose it serves to do this fear mongering."
Halstead claims the federal government might be left with U.S. 95
as one of the few highway alternatives, especially for waste
shipments from the Pacific Northwest, if its preferred routes are
blocked by legal, political, financial or safety considerations.
Along with truckloads of nuclear waste on I-80, Halstead also
says rail shipments from California and the Pacific Northwest
would come through Reno and Sparks.
"The worst case is a total of 10 to 20 percent of the rail
shipments would come through Reno and Sparks," Halstead said.
Trains for radioactive waste also could run through the Paiute
reservation, Quintero fears, because it sits at a key
transportation junction between Yerington and Hawthorne.
Two roads meet in Schurz, U.S. 95 and U.S. 95 Alternate, merging
into the route that continues south past Yucca Mountain and into
Las Vegas. A rail line also runs through Schurz.
"The tracks run right through the heart of town," Quintero said.
"I can see them from my window. It's about 200 feet from the
railroad. About 100 feet from the railroad, we have a clinic, a
day-care center, a church and a store." Despite the rail line and
highway running through tribal land, Quintero doubts the
reservation could stop nuclear shipments.
"I don't know how we're going to do anything," he said.
An expert in American Indian law at the National Judicial College
at the University of Nevada, Reno says the tribe could go to
court, although it would probably have little possibility of
winning.
"In the end, the chances are pretty slim," said Mitchell Wright,
head of the National Tribal Judicial Center. "It could be an
interesting legal battle. It could slow them down."
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
48 Nuclear Route
[http://www.phillyburbs.com/]
The government has a plan to ship thousands of tons of nuclear
waste along the Pennsylvania Turnpike through Bucks. Opponents
say the shipments would be a target for terrorists and an
accident would harm the environment.
By RICK MARTINEZ
Courier Times
The U.S. Senate voted last night to make a mountain in Nevada the
country's one-stop depository for the nuclear waste generated by
America's power plants.
And though Bucks was not mentioned by name during the debate,
this county's roads would likely become the route for
transporting 77,000 tons of radioactive material to the nuclear
dump site in the desert.
The federal Department of Energy has proposed that the spent fuel
be moved to Yucca Mountain, Nev., along the Pennsylvania
Turnpike. The Senate's vote yesterday ensured that thousands of
shipments would travel from nuclear power plants on the East
Coast through Bristol Township, Bensalem, Lower Southampton and
Upper Southampton on the way west.
The DOE promises the project would be done safely, using
specially designed nuclear waste containers that can withstand
high-speed collisions and fires. More locally, the head of the
county's emergency management office, John Dougherty, said in the
unlikely event of an accident the county already has plans and
some equipment to deal with any radiation leak. But critics of
the plan, particularly environmentalists, argue that in this
post-Sept. 11 world, the government is endangering nearly 2
million Pennsylvania residents who live within a mile of the
proposed route.
Opponents like Richard Wiles, senior vice president of the
Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group, complain that
the government is putting the cart - in this case containers
containing nuclear waste - before the horse - the trucks and
trains that would transport it.
Wiles' group wanted the Senate to delay approving Yucca Mountain
as the country's nuclear waste depository and order the Energy
department to take another look at how it plans to get the
material to Nevada.
"We basically want a timeout for communities to be able to have
meaningful input into this," he said. "People have the right to
know what's in their food, in the air, in the water, and we think
they have a right to know that nuclear fuel is being shipped
through their community."
Wiles said the effected towns, like those in Lower Bucks, should
have some say in the planning of the shipments. Yucca Mountain,
he said, should not have been approved until the safest mode of
transportation was assured.
That includes safety from terrorist attacks as well. Wiles
called the nuclear waste shipments - which are scheduled to begin
in 2010 and take 24 to 38 years to complete - "ready-made weapons
of mass contamination."
"Anyone seeking to make a name for themselves, be they domestic
or international terrorists, will have these thousands of moving
targets," he said. Wiles and opponents say they are not persuaded
by the argument that having a central nuclear depository is safer
than having hundreds of nuclear waste dumps throughout the
country. Wiles points out that even with consolidation, almost
all nuclear plants would still have a stockpile of radiocactive
waste on site.
Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, concedes
that there will still be some nuclear waste at sites throughout
the country. But the number of potential targets for terrorists
will be greatly reduced, he said.
"Yucca Mountain can hold all the nuclear waste foreseen being
generated in this country," he said.
As for terrorists, Davis said the times and dates of the
shipments would be kept secret, each truck and train carrying the
waste would be escorted by an armed guard, and there would be
satellite surveillance. Davis also asked why a terrorist would
wait eight years to try and figure out where and when a shipment
is instead of targeting the waste where it is now?
High level nuclear waste from the Limerick nuclear plant will
be traveling to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, in a route that takes it
through Lower Bucks County.
The Department of Energy said it is already notifying cities,
towns and states about the shipments and giving them some say in
which roads and tracks would be used. And there is a program in
place to train the firefighters and police officers who would
respond first to an accident, Davis said.
Of course, Bucks has already had some say on the matter. On May
8, Congressman Jim Greenwood, who represents the county in
Washington, D.C., voted in favor of Yucca Mountain. "Highly
radioactive material is a very nasty, toxic material," said
Greenwood on Monday. "The most risky proposition is to leave it
stored at unsecure facilities like Limerick and scores of other
plants throughout the country."
The Republican lawmaker said he was not persuaded by arguments
that there would still be radioactive material at individual
plants even with Yucca Mountain. Living downwind from the
Limerick plant, he said, he'd rather have less nuclear waste
there than more. Greenwood said he is also unconvinced that
transporting the waste is highly dangerous. The government has
done proper studies on when and where to transport the waste, he
said. And the nuclear waste containers have been engineered to
"extraordinarily high degrees" of safety.
Asked if he would still be in favor of Yucca Mountain if nuclear
waste were being transported through Erwinna, where he lives with
his wife and two daughters, the congressman said that would be
OK.
"In the worst case scenario, if a cask rolled off a truck or a
train crashed, they're designed to withstand that," he said. "We
probably face more risks walking across River Road to get mail."
That same lack of worry is evident with Dougherty, the county's
emergency management chief. He said information provided by the
Department of Energy shows that waste containers are built to
withstand being dropped from 100 feet in the air or collisions
with a concrete wall at 80 miles per hour.
Dougherty said it was a couple years ago that his office was
told Bucks rail lines could be used for transporting the nuclear
waste. He did not know that some waste might be transferred to
Nevada via the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
If there were an accident in Bucks involving the nuclear waste,
Dougherty said there are fire companies throughout the county
with equipment to monitor radioactivity. "They would respond
first. If they detected something, then naturally we'd evacuate a
perimeter, its size depending on how far away we were getting
readings," he said.
Next, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be contacted and
that federal agency would be responsible for sending a team,
Dougherty said.
FYI
Number of people in Pennsylvania that live within 1 mile of a
nuclear transportation route: 1,858,916
Schools within 1 mile of the proposed route in Pennsylvania: 853
Fatal tractor-trailer wrecks in Pennsylvania from 1994-2000:
1,112
Train wrecks in Pennsylvania from 1990-2001: 2,288
Nuclear waste shipments in Pennsylvania over the life of the
project: if by truck - 21,225; if by train - 3,154
SOURCE: Environmental Working Group, compiled using 2000 Census.
Rick Martinez can be reached at 215-949-4165 or
[rmartinez@PhillyBurbs.com] .
July 10, 2002
*****************************************************************
49 Utahns strike Yucca deal
[deseretnews.com]
Tuesday, July 9, 2002
By Lee Davidson
Deseret News Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON — Utah's senators made the Bush administration a deal
it couldn't refuse Monday — one that may bring thousands of
shipments of nuclear waste through Utah but help ensure that Utah
is not their final destination.
The senators pledged to cast the possibly deciding votes
to make Yucca Mountain, Nev., the nation's nuclear waste
repository. In exchange, the administration pledged to try to
help kill a proposed private nuclear waste facility in Utah's
Skull Valley.
Over the objections of Democratic leaders, Senate
Republicans moved to force a vote on the controversial proposal,
which is expected to pass.
Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said he and Sen. Orrin Hatch,
R-Utah, negotiated with the administration for months on the
deal. It was closed and announced at the White House Monday on
the eve of Yucca Mountain votes expected Tuesday afternoon.
"When they first assumed I was an automatic positive vote,
I said, 'No, I'm not, because I have to have your support to
ensure we don't end up with this stuff,' " Bennett said. "We told
them what we have to have, and now they have produced it."
U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham signed letters
saying the administration will block use of federal funds to help
build, maintain or transport nuclear waste to a repository on the
Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley proposed by Private
Fuel Storage, a consortium of Midwest utilities.
Abraham and the senators said the PFS facility likely
would not be economically viable without money from the Nuclear
Waste Policy Act. That law required nuclear utilities to collect
taxes from customers to help fund and develop a national
repository and ship waste to it.
Abraham said the administration is taking the position
that the PFS facility is private, and not built under terms of
the act, so no money from the act could be used for it.
Bennett said, "I would expect that the utilities behind
PFS would continue to push for a license (for the Goshute
facility) just as an insurance policy but would doubt that they
would put another dime toward construction until they are sure
that Yucca Mountain had failed."
Senators said other steps to help block PFS are also being
discussed with the administration. When asked if that included
support for proposals to block a rail line to PFS by declaring
some needed land as wilderness, Bennett said, "We're having
conversations about every possible way of blocking Skull Valley."
PFS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Abraham said the best way to prevent the
Goshute facility is to support use of Yucca Mountain.
"I am convinced that if we don't support Yucca Mountain .
. . that plans will proceed both for the Utah site and perhaps
others. Waste will begin moving across America," Abraham said.
Foes of Yucca Mountain have found support from areas
worried about shipments of waste through them. Abraham argues
that if Yucca is blocked, such shipments will occur anyway to
places like the Goshute Reservation, but without extra safeguards
he says his department would provide for Yucca shipments.
"We're not talking about a few companies sending a little
bit of waste to Skull (Valley). We're talking about Skull
(Valley) very conceivably becoming the alternative to Yucca
Mountain and having the waste of the entire nation," Abraham
said.
He said PFS and private utilities would likely provide
only minimum required safeguards, while for Yucca shipments the
DOE would "go to virtually all of the appropriate government
authorities throughout the entire country as we develop a
transportation plan. . . . We'll consult and try to select
preferred routes. . . . We provide support for states for
first-responder training. . . . None of these things are required
of a private company."
Abraham also said it makes more sense to put waste
underground at Yucca where $4 billion worth of research says it
would be safe, rather than above ground at Skull Valley where he
said no research has been done about its safety.
When asked if that means waste now stored above ground at
nuclear power plants nationwide is not safe, Abraham said it is
safe but that it makes sense to consolidate it into one safer
facility at Yucca Mountain.
Hatch also said the Skull Valley site is "near the Utah
Test and Training range," where F-16s fly with live munitions. He
said, "It doesn't make any sense to put a nuclear repository in a
place like that."
The Senate was expected to debate and possibly vote
Tuesday afternoon on whether to override a veto by Nevada Gov.
Kenny Guinn of President Bush's designation of Yucca Mountain as
the nation's nuclear waste repository. The House earlier voted to
override it.
Nevada's senators had hoped that Hatch and Bennett might
give them an edge to block Yucca Mountain before the deal with
the administration was reached.
Of note, some environmental groups and Rep. Jim Matheson,
D-Utah, had argued that the best way to kill the Goshute facility
was to kill Yucca, claiming that the PFS "temporary" facility
depended on plans for a permanent facility at Yucca for its
proposed license.
Bennett and Hatch said they disagreed. Bennett said, "They
don't understand the legal position of the Skull Valley facility.
I went down that road, and it's a dead end."
E-MAIL: lee@desnews.com [lee@desnews.com]
© 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company
*****************************************************************
50 Residents left to wonder about waste transport
Don Cox [dcox@rgj.com]
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
7/10/2002 12:05 am
With the U.S. Senate vote on Yucca Mountain on Tuesday, northern
Nevada residents await clues as to whether radioactive waste
could be shipped down their Main Streets.
No one is more concerned than the 1,000 Walker River Paiute Tribe
members who live along U.S. 95, the state’s principal north-south
highway.
“We’re right at the crossroads,” said Robert Quintero, 43, a
Walker River native who is in his third year as tribal chairman.
“We are very concerned about what’s going to happen. Nobody has
said how it’s going to happen.”
Reservation leaders aren’t sure what they’ll do if U.S. 95, which
runs through the middle of tribal headquarters in Schurz, becomes
a transportation route to Yucca.
Routes to Yucca Mountain haven’t been picked. But, if the site in
the southern Nevada desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas,
becomes the country’s nuclear repository, U.S. 95 might be judged
a good way to reach the dump, according to the state’s nuclear
transportation expert.
“It’s absolutely credible and possible,” said Robert Halstead,
who’s worked on the route issue for 24 years and advised Nevada
since 1988.
Halstead, who lives in Wisconsin, also claims a U.S. 95
designation would bring radioactive waste through Reno and Sparks
on Interstate 80 before trucks turn south at Fernley.
But a nuclear industry spokesman who was once governor of Nevada
calls such speculation “fear mongering.” Robert List, a Las
Vegas-based adviser and lobbyist who was the state’s chief
executive in 1979-83, points to railroads and highways on the
eastern side of the state as likely routes for nuclear waste.
“Maybe none would come through Reno,” List said. “I don’t know
what purpose it serves to do this fear mongering.”
Halstead claims the federal government might be left with U.S. 95
as one of the few highway alternatives, especially for waste
shipments from the Pacific Northwest, if its preferred routes are
blocked by legal, political, financial or safety considerations.
Along with truckloads of nuclear waste on I-80, Halstead also
says rail shipments from California and the Pacific Northwest
would come through Reno and Sparks.
“The worst case is a total of 10 to 20 percent of the rail
shipments would come through Reno and Sparks,” Halstead said.
Trains for radioactive waste also could run through the Paiute
reservation, Quintero fears, because it sits at a key
transportation junction between Yerington and Hawthorne.
Two roads meet in Schurz, U.S. 95 and U.S. 95 Alternate, merging
into the route that continues south past Yucca Mountain and into
Las Vegas. A rail line also runs through Schurz.
“The tracks run right through the heart of town,” Quintero said.
“I can see them from my window. It’s about 200 feet from the
railroad. About 100 feet from the railroad, we have a clinic, a
day-care center, a church and a store."
Despite the rail line and highway running through tribal land,
Quintero doubts the reservation could stop nuclear shipments.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do anything,” he said.
An expert in American Indian law at the National Judicial College
at the University of Nevada, Reno says the tribe could go to
court, although it would probably have little possibility of
winning.
“In the end, the chances are pretty slim,” said Mitchell Wright,
head of the National Tribal Judicial Center. “It could be an
interesting legal battle. It could slow them down.”
© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett
*****************************************************************
51 [generalnews] Ambitious Nuclear Arms Pact Faces a Senate
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 23:02:12 -0500 (CDT)
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washingtonpost.com
Ambitious Nuclear Arms Pact Faces a Senate Examination
Minimal Details and Huge Warhead Cuts Embody Bush Policy
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 7, 2002; Page A08
The Senate opens hearings Tuesday on the shortest yet one of the most
far-reaching treaties in four decades of arms accords with Russia, a
novel document billed by the Bush administration as the embodiment of
its minimalist vision of nuclear arms control.
The Senate may come to adopt that vision. It is widely expected among
arms control analysts that the pact reached by President Bush and
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May will be ratified,
but members of the Foreign Relations Committee plan to pose some old-
fashioned questions about the new approach, according to lawmakers
and their aides.
They plan to ask Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the sturdiness of a treaty whose
body contains only 10 sentences. They will ask how permanent the cuts
will be, and how the United States can be certain that Russia will do
what it promised.
The hearings, which are expected to stretch through the summer, will
open a window onto the administration's nuclear strategy as well as
its assessment of the U.S. relationship with Russia. They also will
expose how Bush and Putin jettisoned many of the dogmas that have
characterized negotiations with Russia and its Soviet predecessor
since the 1960s and built an accord based largely on expectations of
good faith.
Gone are the covenants, caveats and vast appendixes typical of
nuclear deals. Gone, too, if all goes well, will be two thirds of the
strategic nuclear arsenals of the former superpower rivals. At the
accord's heart is Bush's conviction that "Russia is a friend," as he
put it in a June 20 letter that accompanied the treaty to the
Senate. "There is no longer the need to narrowly regulate every step
we take."
The document is unprecedented in allowing the United States and
Russia to do as they please, as long as they cut their strategic
nuclear arsenal to no more than 2,200 warheads by Dec. 31, 2012. That
means a change from Senate hearings that once focused on the minutiae
of verification. This time, said former Armed Services Committee
chairman Sam Nunn, senators must "determine what the treaty really
means."
"There are no mileposts for performance. There is nothing really to
verify except good faith," said the Georgia Democrat, who called the
treaty a strong step forward. "If things start going sour between the
two countries and we get into a period of intensive distrust, this
document will be looked back on as having no legal enforcement
mechanism, no performance mechanism and not much of an accomplishment
at all."
The treaty's simplicity resulted from complex negotiations conducted
on a six-month timetable -- a blink of an eye in the arms control
world. Both sides ultimately emphasized broad assurances over detail,
yet the outcome reflected an imbalance of power that favored the
United States. In the process, Bush and Putin pledged the steepest
strategic nuclear reductions in history.
'A Piece of Paper'
On Nov. 13, side by side with Putin in the East Room of the White
House, Bush announced the United States would cut its long-range
arsenal of 6,000-plus nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200.
Bush had vowed during the 2000 campaign that he would dramatically
reduce the country's nuclear arsenal -- and would do so on the basis
of U.S. strategic needs, without a treaty if necessary. Putin wanted
to reduce his nuclear stockpile as well, although his motivation was
different: Russia couldn't afford to maintain its weapons.
Putin wanted an agreement that covered "verification and control." He
had just finished another meeting with Bush where he got nowhere in
trying to preserve the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty's limits on
missile defense tests, a cornerstone of superpower nuclear policy for
30 years. Putin promised to deliver missile cuts, but he wanted a
signed document that committed the United States to specific terms.
"I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand," Bush said. "And if
we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do
that."
With that exchange, the leaders set an ambitious goal for their
negotiators: Reach agreement on steep reductions and do it in time
for Bush's visit to Moscow in May.
The Russians delivered the first set of ideas in January, led by
Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov, whose arms control risumi
dates to Soviet times.
Problems arose early. As U.S. officials saw it, the Russian requests
were overly ambitious and drew on tired doctrine. What the Russians
saw as ways of increasing predictability, the Bush administration saw
as limits on U.S. flexibility in structuring its nuclear force.
The Russians wanted both sides to eliminate missiles, long-range
bombers and submarines. They reasoned that if launchers were taken
out of service, then the warheads would follow. Fewer U.S. Trident
submarines capable of carrying nuclear weapons would mean fewer
warheads threatening Russian targets.
But the Bush administration wanted to focus on deployed warheads.
That meant counting each atomic warhead on a submarine, in a missile
silo or on a bomber base.
A specific Trident submarine would be counted as having only as many
warheads as it carried, not how many it was equipped to carry. The
United States could have as many nuclear-equipped B-52 bombers as it
liked as long as the overall warhead numbers declined.
The broader position reflected Bush's campaign pledge. The details
flowed from the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review, which emphasized
sufficient deterrence, flexibility and a new missile defense against
smaller threats.
"We want to have flexibility without making them nervous," a U.S.
negotiator explained.
The Russians were nervous and they were playing a weak hand. Everyone
knew they wanted to reduce their long-range atomic weapons anyway. To
reassure the Russians, Powell was the first to argue that the United
States should turn Bush's "piece of paper" into a legally binding
document.
Something Putin Needed
In White House meetings and his daily telephone conversations with
Rumsfeld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Powell said
a binding deal would help Putin at home, reassure the Europeans, and
install some limits on Russian behavior -- a benefit, he reasoned,
given the country's historic volatility. He also thought a written
promise might ease the sting many Russians felt at the U.S.
withdrawal from the ABM Treaty.
First, Powell had to persuade Bush, who was hearing from Rumsfeld and
Vice President Cheney that an agreement tying the hands of the United
States would be a mistake. Cheney, in particular, further opposed
turning the document into a treaty that would open the negotiations
to a Senate debate and vote. Bush sided with Powell and signaled that
the document would be binding.
"I think the Russians would have felt much more comfortable with an
old-fashioned treaty that spelled everything out, and Bush would have
been quite happy with no agreement at all," said a U.S.
negotiator. "Bush understood as one politician to another that this
was something Putin had to have."
Negotiators had a draft text by March. As they hurried back and forth
between Washington and Europe, the Russian position was inscribed in
italic, the U.S. position in bold. The weekly goal was to remove more
brackets -- the areas in the text where the sides still disagreed.
But barely two months before the summit, the sections in brackets
outnumbered the sections in New Courier Normal.
Missile defense produced "huge hassles," an American negotiator said.
The Russians tried for months to include limits on U.S. plans, first
seeking a pledge in the treaty that any U.S. defensive system would
not threaten Russian strategic forces. When the administration
rejected that, the Russians pressed for a firm statement in the
treaty's preamble, which the U.S. team also rejected. More than once,
the issue was written out of the draft, only to be written back in by
the Russians.
Discussions also proved difficult over how one side would know what
the other was doing. Strategies for sharing information and checking
its accuracy were the nucleus of earlier arms control deals and the
essence of President Ronald Reagan's "trust but verify" admonition.
During the Cold War, U.S. negotiators sought access to Russia's
closely guarded nuclear establishment while protecting their own
facilities. But this year, U.S. officials said they offered the
Russians more access to bomber bases and U.S. storage areas than the
Moscow negotiators were willing to permit in return.
Neither side was keen on destroying warheads, several participants
said. Negotiators were wary of the cost, complexity and inevitable
intrusiveness. The issue faded. But a month before Bush was scheduled
to leave for Europe, the two sides became stuck on their opposing
views of how to reach the lower warhead numbers.
Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, the administration's chief
negotiator, was in Moscow on April 22, when Deputy Foreign Minister
Mamedov told him that Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov wanted to
present him with a new draft. Bolton met Ivanov that evening and
hurried back to Washington.
'Parallel Bookkeeping'
It was a conceptual breakthrough, U.S. officials said later. The
Russians had dropped their insistence on cutting rockets, bombers and
submarines. In time, they would also agree that the 1991 START I
treaty's inspection and notification systems would govern the accord
until more assurances could be drafted. Because essentially the same
warheads were involved in both documents, Ivanov called it "parallel
bookkeeping."
The two sides had the outlines of a deal, but they kept stumbling
over missile defense. They also needed to resolve a dispute over how
the countries could withdraw from the treaty, and under what terms.
The United States wanted to be able to pull out of the treaty within
six months or exceed the 2,200-warhead limit with 45 days notice if
the need arose. To the Russians, 45 days seemed suspiciously short.
With three weeks to go before the summit, Putin and Bush had each
made clear to their proxies that they wanted a deal. Igor Ivanov, the
Russian foreign minister, was due in Washington to discuss the crisis
in the Middle East. He agreed to spend May 3 on the treaty. "Both
sides were feeling pressure to get things done," one of the U.S.
negotiators said. "If we hadn't made a lot of progress that day, the
tide might have turned."
Ivanov and Powell met at 10 a.m. in Powell's outer office. Frequent
telephone companions, they took seats facing one another by the
fireplace, joined by Bolton and Mamedov, who shared a couch. Powell
said he told Ivanov that the United States had gone as far as it
intended. He declared that the treaty would cover warheads, not the
removal of delivery systems. They agreed to a three-month withdrawal
period.
"What turned it is I wasn't giving anything more," Powell said.
Ivanov failed to obtain a mention of missile defense in the treaty.
But in a diplomatic fudge, the preamble contains a reference to
comments made by Bush and Putin in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001. The
language in Genoa was generic, the sentiment safely vague. With that
addition, the deed was nearly done.
All that remained was a name.
The Russian title needed to include a noun such as "weapons"
or "systems," but U.S. officials objected to such words, worried anew
that the Russians would find a way to constrain U.S. flexibility,
even in a title. The U.S. position again prevailed. The English
version is called the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty.
) 2002 The Washington Post Company
Grassroots International News Association
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52 Nuclear nightmare returns to haunt U.S.; Earth to Expire by
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 23:06:15 -0500 (CDT)
[All ads are inserted by Topica without our consent. Ignore them.]
IN THIS MESSAGE:
* Nuclear nightmare returns to haunt U.S.
* Earth to Expire by 2050
* Detroit Urban Renewal, Without the Renewal
--------------------------------------------------------
Nuclear nightmare returns to haunt U.S.
By David Westphal -- Bee Washington Bureau Chief
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Sunday, July 7, 2002
First of two parts.
WASHINGTON -- Four decades after American schoolchildren hid under their
desks, practicing for the day when an atomic bomb might fall nearby, the
nuclear threat is back.
The magnitude is different from the all-out nuclear exchange that
threatened to kill hundreds of millions during the Cold War with the Soviet
Union.
Yet the horrific prospect of a mushroom cloud rising above a major American
city has returned. Once again, the government is starting to prepare the
country for a possible nuclear attack -- this time not by missile-rich
Russia but by militants looking for a single bomb to explode in the United
States.
"People have asked whether we should worry now about a nuclear explosion
happening in the U.S.," said Gary Milhollin, one of the world's top experts
on nuclear weapons. "The answer is yes."
Although it is far from clear that any group will gain access to a nuclear
weapon anytime soon, experts say a calamitous atomic blast, detonated by a
terrorist group and claiming tens or hundreds of thousands of lives, is
within the realm of possibility. And some say the government needs to do
more to prepare the public for the aftermath of such an explosion.
"The clock is ticking," former Defense Secretary William Cohen told a
Senate hearing earlier this year. "It is one minute before midnight. And
every moment that we hesitate ... we come closer to that kind of Armageddon
that we all want to avoid."
Asked about his biggest worry among all the threats the United States
faces, homeland security adviser Tom Ridge responded in one word: "nuclear."
The new threat packs an emotional punch, in part because many Americans
thought this was one nightmare -- which reached a crescendo with the Cuban
missile crisis of 1962 -- that had been all but buried with the ending of
the Cold War.
Then came Sept. 11.
Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency,
said the importance of the suicide attacks on the United States is that
they "showed the way" for groups that want to destroy the country. From
their perspective, he said, "the only thing wrong with those attacks is
that they didn't go far enough."
Opening the door wider to the possibility of a massive attack, he said, is
the absence of the deterrent that helped keep U.S. and Russian missiles in
their silos for 50 years -- the near certainty that neither country could
destroy the other without also destroying itself.
That principle of mutually assured destruction doesn't work with a small
militant group, Wilson said.
"Non-state adversaries are not likely to be deterred by our overwhelming
military superiority," he said.
That doesn't mean nuclear weapons are the most probable means of any future
attacks by
anti-U.S. terrorists. Many analysts say groups wishing to harm the nation
more likely would turn to chemical or biological agents, or to a so-called
"dirty bomb" that uses conventional explosives to spread harmful fallout
from a radioactive element. Others say the difficulty of producing or
obtaining a nuclear warhead is so high that a successful detonation is
unlikely.
Yet the government's biggest nightmare is that, somehow, a group like
al-Qaida would succeed in its explicit quest to secure a nuclear weapon and
that its explosion could cause economic or political chaos.
According to the Washington Post, President Bush ordered his national
security team last October to make the prevention of nuclear terrorism its
top priority.
Some experts say the country needs to act more aggressively on those fears
and ramp up planning for a possible nuclear attack -- not only by
disrupting militant groups abroad but by implementing a civil-defense
response plan at home.
"We tend not to think about the consequences," said Harry C. Vantine, a
counterterrorism expert at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east
of San Francisco, "because it's not a very pleasant thing to think about.
"The effects are tremendous, and loss of life is just enormous," he said in
recent testimony to Congress. "We really have to think about that. ...
There have to be emergency plans in place. There have to be decontamination
procedures exercised and embedded."
Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, said the
government needs to move quickly to place radiation detectors at U.S. entry
points, as well as near bridges and tunnels and other vulnerable facilities.
So far, Bush, Ridge and other top administration officials have been
reluctant to say much specifically about the nuclear threat. Doing so, of
course, could dramatically raise American anxieties at a time when no one
really knows whether a nuclear attack is likely at home or how it ranks in
comparison to other threats.
Still, at least some parts of government do appear to be acting on the
nuclear menace. Congress has instructed its staff to identify alternative
meeting places if the Capitol were to be destroyed or become uninhabitable
because of radiation. Sites up to 1,000 miles away are being reviewed for a
backup assembly, and officials are looking at the possibility of using
video conferencing in the event members can't convene.
Wall Street also has stepped up its contingency planning, with the New York
Stock Exchange identifying at least three temporary trading floors distant
from lower Manhattan.
While it's impossible to predict a precise scenario in which the United
States would find itself under nuclear attack, history provides a
disquieting model: the August 1945 nuclear bombs dropped by the United
States over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
President Truman's decision to deploy the bombs, developed in a frantic, $2
billion national program to win a global nuclear race, remains an emotional
point of contention in the United States.
Yet there is little dispute about what the bombs wrought: a maelstrom of
heat, pressure, wind and radiation such as the planet had never seen. Those
close to the center of the explosion were instantly incinerated.
At Hiroshima, the 15-kiloton bomb "Little Boy," dropped by the crew of the
Enola Gay on Aug. 6, 1945, killed as many as 200,000 from the bomb's blast
and the longer-term effects of radiation, according to some estimates. At
the heart of the explosion, temperatures rose into the thousands of
degrees, and wind velocity approached 1,000 miles per hour.
Three days later, an even larger bomb, the 22-kiloton "Fat Man," was
dropped over Nagasaki. Despite the bomb's larger size, the casualty toll
was somewhat lower because the contours of the hilly city absorbed some of
the blast.
Five days after the Nagasaki explosion, Japan unconditionally surrendered.
Today's modern nuclear weapons are many times more potent than those 1945
bombs. But even if militants constructed their own crude bomb, the results
could be devastating.
A recent report to Congress declared that a nuclear engineer graduate "with
an orange-sized lump of plutonium ... could fashion a nuclear device that
would fit in a van and would destroy every building in the Wall Street
financial area and would level lower Manhattan."
Is this sort of doomsday scenario inevitable? Not at all, say some
arms-control experts.
Joseph Cirincione, who heads the nonproliferation section of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, said the overwhelming arms trend of
recent decades has been the world's shedding of weapons -- not just nuclear
but biological and chemical as well.
"Compare this new threat to the global war we worried about for the last 40
years," he said. "We had predictions of a nuclear exchange with hundreds of
millions dead in the Soviet Union, Europe and the United States. We worried
that 20, 25, 30 nations might acquire nuclear weapons."
What has happened instead, he said, is a steep decline in the number of
nuclear weapons.
"Can you put the nuclear genie back in the bottle?" he asked. "Absolutely.
Arguably, we're most of the way there."
Also working against the theory that a nuclear explosion is inevitable in
the United States is the reality that, despite the passage of 57 years,
making a nuclear bomb remains an immense challenge.
Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said
creating a nuclear bomb requires a combination of advanced scientific
know-how, hard-to-obtain fissile material and hard-to-manufacture machine
tools.
"It's almost impossible to do it without state sponsorship, and it's pretty
difficult to hide," he said.
Even countries such as Iraq and Iran have had extreme difficulty coming up
with a single atomic bomb.
The easiest bet for a terrorist group, many experts say, is to acquire a
bomb, or its essential elements, from a government's existing stockpile.
Even that, they say, would be exceptionally difficult.
But not impossible.
"The bottom line here is it's hard, but it is far, far, far, far, far from
impossible," said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. "There is a bazaar out there. ... The American people
should understand people are attempting to purchase these weapons."
Bush is particularly worried that Iraq, which came close to attaining
nuclear capability before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, might produce an
atomic bomb or two and make them available to militant groups.
But policy-makers are also concerned about already available nukes. There,
the overwhelming focus is Russia, which ended the Cold War as owner of the
world's largest nuclear stockpile and now is struggling to find the
resources to keep the weapons secure.
Although the Russians have made significant progress in recent years, U.S.
government officials and nuclear experts fear their security controls are
still too lax to ensure that every warhead is safe from theft.
Constantine Menges, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, said there's a
simple explanation why militant groups haven't already obtained a nuclear
weapon from one source or another.
"It is only through divine providence," he said.
MONDAY: Could a nuke get loose in Russia?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
About the Writer
---------------------------
The Bee's David Westphal can be reached at (202) 383-0002 or
dwestphal@mcclatchydc.com .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Copyright ) The Sacramento Bee
======================================
the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that
outstrips its capacity to support life.
more than a third of the natural world has been
destroyed by humans over the past three decades.
either consumption rates are dramatically and rapidly
lowered or the planet will no longer be able to sustain
its growing population.
sharp fall in the planet's ecosystems between 1970 and
2002 ... freshwater ecosystems in the region of 55 per
cent.
USA ... blocking many of the key initiatives on energy
use, biodiversity and corporate responsibility.
+++
The world's ticking timebomb
Earth Will Expire By 2050
by Mark Townsend and Jason Burke
Published on Sunday, July 7, 2002 in the Observer of
London
Earth's population will be forced to colonize two
planets within 50 years if natural resources continue
to be exploited at the current rate, according to a
report out this week.
A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to be
released on Tuesday, warns that the human race is
plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its
capacity to support life.
In a damning condemnation of Western society's high
consumption levels, it adds that the extra planets (the
equivalent size of Earth) will be required by the year
2050 as existing resources are exhausted.
The report, based on scientific data from across the
world, reveals that more than a third of the natural
world has been destroyed by humans over the past three
decades.
Using the image of the need for mankind to colonize
space as a stark illustration of the problems facing
Earth, the report warns that either consumption rates
are dramatically and rapidly lowered or the planet will
no longer be able to sustain its growing population.
Experts say that seas will become emptied of fish while
forests - which absorb carbon dioxide emissions - are
completely destroyed and freshwater supplies become
scarce and polluted.
The report offers a vivid warning that either people
curb their extravagant lifestyles or risk leaving the
onus on scientists to locate another planet that can
sustain human life. Since this is unlikely to happen,
the only option is to cut consumption now.
Systematic overexploitation of the planet's oceans has
meant the North Atlantic's cod stocks have collapsed
from an estimated spawning stock of 264,000 tonnes in
1970 to under 60,000 in 1995.
The study will also reveal a sharp fall in the planet's
ecosystems between 1970 and 2002 with the Earth's
forest cover shrinking by about 12 per cent, the
ocean's biodiversity by a third and freshwater
ecosystems in the region of 55 per cent.
The Living Planet report uses an index to illustrate
the shocking level of deterioration in the world's
forests as well as marine and freshwater ecosystems.
Using 1970 as a baseline year and giving it a value of
100, the index has dropped to a new low of around 65 in
the space of a single generation.
It is not just humans who are at risk. Scientists, who
examined data for 350 kinds of mammals, birds, reptiles
and fish, also found the numbers of many species have
more than halved.
Martin Jenkins, senior adviser for the World
Conservation Monitoring Center in Cambridge, which
helped compile the report, said: 'It seems things are
getting worse faster than possibly ever before. Never
has one single species had such an overwhelming
influence. We are entering uncharted territory.'
Figures from the Center reveal that black rhino numbers
have fallen from 65,000 in 1970 to around 3,100 now.
Numbers of African elephants have fallen from around
1.2 million in 1980 to just over half a million while
the population of tigers has fallen by 95 per cent
during the past century.
The UK's birdsong population has also seen a drastic
fall with the corn bunting population declining by 92
per cent between 1970 and 2000, the tree sparrow by 90
per cent and the spotted flycatcher by 70 per cent.
Experts, however, say it is difficult to ascertain how
many species have vanished for ever because a species
has to disappear for 50 years before it can be declared
extinct.
Attention is now focused on next month's Earth Summit
in Johannesburg, the most important environmental
negotiations for a decade.
However, the talks remain bedeviled with claims that no
agreements will be reached and that US President George
W. Bush will fail to attend.
Matthew Spencer, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said:
'There will have to be concessions from the richer
nations to the poorer ones or there will be fireworks.'
The preparatory conference for the summit, held in Bali
last month, was marred by disputes between developed
nations and poorer states and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), despite efforts by British
politicians to broker compromises on key issues.
America, which sent 300 delegates to the conference, is
accused of blocking many of the key initiatives on
energy use, biodiversity and corporate responsibility.
The WWF report shames the US for placing the greatest
pressure on the environment. It found the average US
resident consumes almost double the resources as that
of a UK citizen and more than 24 times that of some
Africans.
Based on factors such as a nation's consumption of
grain, fish, wood and fresh water along with its
emissions of carbon dioxide from industry and cars, the
report provides an ecological 'footprint' for each
country by showing how much land is required to support
each resident.
America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per
head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while
Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha. In Ethiopia
the figure is 2ha, falling to just half a hectare for
Burundi, the country that consumes least resources.
The report, which will be unveiled in Geneva, warns
that the wasteful lifestyles of the rich nations are
mainly responsible for the exploitation and depletion
of natural wealth. Human consumption has doubled over
the last 30 years and continues to accelerate by 1.5
per cent a year.
Now WWF wants world leaders to use its findings to
agree on specific actions to curb the population's
impact on the planet.
A spokesman for WWF UK, said: 'If all the people
consumed natural resources at the same rate as the
average US and UK citizen we would require at least two
extra planets like Earth.'
The world's ticking timebomb
Marine crisis:
North Atlantic cod stocks have collapsed from an
estimated 264,000 tonnes in 1970 to under 60,000 in
1995.
Pollution:
The United States places the greatest pressure on the
environment, with its carbon dioxide emissions and
over-consumption. It takes 12.2 hectares of land to
support each American citizen and 6.29 for each Briton,
while the figure for Burundi is just half a hectare.
Shrinking Forests:
Between 1970 and 2002 forest cover has dwindled by 12
per cent.
Endangered wildlife:
African elephant numbers have fallen from 1.2 million
in 1980 to half a million now. In the UK the songbird
population has fallen dramatically, with the corn
bunting declining by 92 per cent in the past 30 years.
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July 7, 2002
Detroit Urban Renewal Without the Renewal
By JODI WILGOREN
DETROIT Like a gardener pruning rosebushes, Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick
wants to tear down this city to save it.
Not the whole thing just the rotten parts. The burned-out facades and
shattered windows, caving porches and crumbling rooftops that mar the
landscape from the crux of downtown to the city's outskirts.
But what sets the mayor's project apart is not the pace at which buildings
are coming down or the scale of the effort other cities have become more
aggressive about demolishing abandoned buildings as part of revitalization
but the high likelihood that little will go up in their place. Few people
in Detroit expect anything to replace the rubble, a reality that frustrates
both the mayor, who took office in January, and the city government's
critics.
The population of the 140-square-mile city has been halved since its
heyday, with little hope of a big rebound. Year after year, dangerous
vacant houses have been turned into desolate vacant lots, creating an oddly
sparse urban patchwork.
For Mr. Kilpatrick, the need to rid the city of deserted buildings
outweighs the consideration of what will replace them. "This is where drug
dealers stash their drugs, this is where people stash guns, this is where
girls get abused," said Mayor Kilpatrick, 32. "It's also a pride issue. If
you don't have community pride, if you don't have a safe, clean city, you
don't have a world-class city."
After campaigning on a promise to raze 5,000 houses by September, Mr.
Kilpatrick, has so far seen only about 1,000 come down. He blames lack of
money and a diffuse bureaucracy. But he vowed to step up the process in the
new fiscal year, which began on Monday, and expects to destroy some 4,000
buildings near schools by summer's end. Mr. Kilpatrick also hinted that at
least two of the dozen once-magnificent pre-Depression skyscrapers sitting
empty downtown but for squatters and urban spelunkers might soon be
bulldozed.
Though the mayor has the support of county prosecutors and state officials,
with groups devoted to fighting urban blight, others are beginning to
express concern that the city may be moving too fast and without firm
enough plans.
"The real tragedy is that there is no effort to reclaim what was there, no
aspiration and no resources to go back to something that approximates what
was there before," said Camilo Jose Vergara, a photographer who has
proposed creating an urban theme park out of the downtown wreckage, which
was highlighted in his 1999 book, "American Ruins."
Other once-faltering cities, helped by demographics and economics, have
been able to link demolition with development. Philadelphia has issued $160
million in bonds to demolish 10,000 structures in five years in hopes of
assembling larger, developable parcels. Baltimore is trying to obtain
titles to 5,000 properties, and plans to give or sell the lots to residents
to use as yards or gardens. In West Palm Beach, Fla., 50 abandoned
buildings were leveled and a commercial and residential development called
City Place constructed, raising property values to $85 per square foot from
$7.
In Detroit, there is some rehabilitation and redevelopment near Comerica
Park, the $300 million baseball stadium that opened downtown in 2000, but
in the neighborhoods, the abandoned houses are seen more as garbage to be
removed than as opportunities for growth.
Detroit, the nation's 10th-largest city with 961,000 people down from 2
million in 1955 may just need right-sizing. According to the 2000 census,
it has 6,855 residents per square mile, compared with 12,750 in Chicago,
26,403 in New York and 7,877 in sprawling Los Angeles.
Detroit's lack of population density is clear after a short drive. Though
there are a few pockets of well-maintained buildings, none are far from a
block pockmarked with skeletal structures and grassy emptiness. The city
list of 1,587 properties ready for destruction as well as the nearly
10,000 others that are abandoned and deemed dangerous includes multiple
addresses in each of its 22 tax wards.
Al Fields, the mayor's deputy chief operations officer, who is overseeing
demolition, said Mr. Kilpatrick's ambitions had been frustrated by a
bureaucracy in which permits and inspections were spread over four
agencies, and by a limited budget for $10,000-a-pop demolition. He is
combining the process into one department, trying to improve cooperation
with the state, which owns hundreds of the houses, raising the budget
request to $13 million from $12 million, and seeking private donations.
More than 28,000 houses have been demolished since 1989-90; the city spends
$800,000 a year maintaining its empty lots.
Along Michigan Avenue, the old train depot is a behemoth of broken glass
surrounded by a razor-wire fence. The clock on the CPA Building seems to
have been stuck at 5 of 11 for decades.
In the Brush Park neighborhood behind Comerica Park, a row of new town
houses has sold for about $100,000 each. A block away is a dilapidated
apartment building with plywood in its windows, a red-brick number with
broken windows and, in the distance, an eight-story building with no
windows at all.
"We're kind of taking a chance," said Keith Hustak, 23, who is moving into
Jacobs Manor, a 1930's building that had become a crack den before a
developer bought it at auction in November for $500,000. Mr. Hustak's
apartment has a view of the ballpark, as well as the drug deals at the
empty house next door.
John George, a former insurance agent, watched for months as addicts
traipsed in and out of a house near his in Northwest Detroit. He called
city officials daily before boarding the place up himself. In the 14 years
since, the group Mr. George started, Motor City Blight Busters, has
demolished 100 houses, helped build 101 others and renovated 158 more.
"Blight is like a cancer; our theory has been we can eliminate it before it
spreads," he said.
Mr. George welcomed the mayor's attention to the problem that defines his
life, but worried that the city would flatten houses that could be rehabbed
and siphon corporate money from grass-roots groups like his that can do the
work more cheaply.
"There are dozens of homes in our community that if we could have gotten
the titles from the city quickly, we could have families in there and have
them back on the tax rolls," he said. "When the city demolishes a house,
they don't plant grass, they don't plant trees, it's just a big scar."
At 21425 Santa Clara sits Blight Busters' 101st target, a burned-out
bungalow. On one side is an empty lot, on the other is another empty house,
then another empty lot.
The 15700 block of Burgess Street, once a vibrant row of postwar homes, is
a patchwork of weedy swatches, a gray house with the yellow "D"
spray-painted to signify imminent demolition, and a "fresh grave," as Mr.
George calls the gravel-laden sites left by the city's crews.
"Whatever happens to the houses deemed unsalvageable, we need to do
something with the streetscape," said Katherine Clarkson, a local
preservationist who is resigned to the demolition but hopes to save the
downtown landmarks the mayor has called dinosaurs. "If you have nothing to
walk past for blocks and blocks, just empty weed-filled lots, you're going
to end up with similar kinds of scariness."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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53 [generalnews] Iraq Still Says 'No' to UN Weapons Inspections
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 22:14:18 -0500 (CDT)
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Iraq Still Says 'No' to UN Weapons Inspections
Fri Jul 5, 3:47 PM ET
By Evelyn Leopold
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iraq failed to reach an accord with the United
Nations ( news - web sites) on Friday to resume weapons inspections
after intensive talks involving Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( news -
web sites) and Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri.
The impasse will favor those in the Bush administration who want the
military to topple President Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites) while
many European and Arab leaders want to find a diplomatic compromise.
The two-day meeting was the third high-level session on the arms
inspectors this year.
"They didn't say yes," Annan told reporters after the talks, which he
called constructive, ended on Friday. "I would have preferred more,"
he said, adding: "I cannot force a decision."
Sabri said he expected another round of talks in the coming months on
the weapons inspectors, abscent from Iraq for more than three years,
but Annan said no date had been set for the discussions, expected to
be in Vienna or Geneva.
The Iraqi delegation will now go back to report to their authorities,
he said. "We have agreed to maintain contacts, including continuing
discussions on technical matters."
IRAQ WANTS ANSWERS
Sabri made clear he wanted answers to many of the questions he
submitted at the last talks in May, on issues ranging from U.S.
threats for a "regime change" in Baghdad to a timetable for the
lifting of U.N. sanctions, imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August
1990.
But Annan has said repeatedly he is not in a position to answer any
political questions concerning U.S. policy or other issues that fall
within the province or the 15 U.N. Security Council members.
However, Sabri was not persuaded and accused the Security Council of
violating its own resolutions.
"We need assurances from the United Nations," Sabri said. "We are the
victims of illegal practices forced by the United States on the
Security Council. We have lost 1.67 million citizens as a result of
the sanctions the Security Council imposed in clear violation of
international law."
Richard Grenell, a spokesman for John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations, told Reuters in New York: "We are disappointed
yet again but not surprised that they haven't complied with Security
Council resolutions."
The weapons inspectors, whose return is a key requirement to lifting
U.N. sanctions, left Iraq in December 1998 on the eve of a U.S.-
British bombing raid and have not been allowed to return. Iraq
maintains the inspectors were U.S. spies and that it has declared all
its dangerous arms programs.
The United States has stepped up war plans for what President Bush (
news - web sites) calls a "regime change," in part to pressure Iraq
into allowing U.N. inspectors to check on weapons of mass
destruction.
Washington would lose much support for its campaign against Saddam if
the U.N. inspectors were allowed to return, diplomats and analysts
say.
The New York Times reported on Friday that the Pentagon ( news - web
sites) had drafted plans to invade Iraq, using air, land and sea-
based forces. The newspaper said the plans appeared in an advanced
state although an attack did not seem imminent.
The most positive news to come out of the talks were arrangements
made between Iraq and the United Nations to return tons of archives
of state papers looted from Kuwait when Baghdad's troops occupied the
emirate in August 1990. (Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau)
Grassroots International News Association
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54 Fwd: Invitation to Action for Nuclear Abolition, October 5 -15,
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 22:59:43 -0500 (CDT)
Date: Sun, 07 Jul 2002 12:46:53 -0600
From: Shundahai Network
Subject: Invitation to Action for Nuclear Abolition, October 5 -15, 2002
>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<
Action for Nuclear Abolition, October 5 -15, 2002
www.actionfornuclearabolition.org
800-471-4737, shundahai@shundahai.org
>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<
Dear Friends,
We invite you to join us October 5-15, 2002, in international nonviolent
resistance to U.S. nuclear policies at the upcoming Action for Nuclear
Abolition events in Nevada. Together we will build community and take
direct action for nuclear abolition. With our Western Shoshone hosts and
friends from around the world, we will wise up, rise up, honor and resist.
The big day that we are hoping people will come out for will be Saturday
October 12th - Indigenous Peoples Day. We will be holding ceremonies and
events to honor and stand in solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples of the
world who have suffered the deadly consequences of nuclear colonialism.
Representatives from indigenous nations, organizations and communities will
lead a rally and sunset candle-light vigil at the gates of the Nevada Test
Site (NTS).
The campaign will kick off on Hiroshima Day, August 6, at Los Alamos, New
Mexico, birthplace of the nuclear bomb, where the Family Spirit Walk For
Mother Earth - "Walking in wellness so that our children will follow"- will
begin its 800-mile pilgrimage through the indigenous peoples lands of the
southwest to the Nevada Test Site. The walk will commemorate the ten-year
anniversary of the Walk Across America For Mother Earth and the U.S.
moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site
(www.angelfire.com/retro/nuclear).
The walk will arrive in Las Vegas, NV on October 3rd where activists
dedicated to protecting Mother Earth will converge.
On October 5th we will hold a Peoples' Nuclear Abolition Summit in Las
Vegas, Nevada. Speakers from indigenous and environmental justice
organizations will educate and inspire us. Good food, music and celebration
will also be part of the mix. (We are still looking for the suitable venue
for our camp, but wemll let you know the details as soon as possible. Cheap
motel rooms will also be available nearby.)
>From October 6th -10th, the Family Spirit Walk for Mother Earth will cover
the 65 miles from Las Vegas to Peace Camp at NTS. Beginning with a rally at
the Department of Energy's headquarters, the walk will cross into Newe
Sogobia (Western Shoshone country) with nightly trainingms addressing:
oppression awareness and cultural sensitivity, nonviolence, peacekeeping
and action planning.
>From October 11-14th we will hold our Action for Nuclear Abolition
Nonviolent Direct Action Camp across from the main entrance to NTS. This
will be a weekend of ceremony, planning meetings and nonviolent direct
action to shut the Test Site down and "Reclaim the Land for All Life.n
Friday October 11th will feature the Keep Space for Peace Rally and
Nonviolent Direct Action at the gates of the NTS in solidarity with a
week-long series of international events organized by the Global Network
Against Nuclear Weapons and Power in Space
http://www.space4peace.org/ .
Saturday, October 12th - Indigenous Peoples Day - will be the focal day of
the weekend, featuring ceremonies and events to honor and stand in
solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples of the world who have suffered the
deadly consequences of nuclear colonialism. Representatives from indigenous
nations, organizations and communities will lead a rally and sunset
candle-light vigil at the gates of the NTS.
On Sunday, October 13th workshops, training, action and planning will
prepare us to lStop the Madness! Shut the Test Site Down.n
Then on Monday, October 14th we invite nonviolent occupations, blockades
and other actions at Yucca Mountain and NTS. Letms sit down, shut them
down and reclaim the land for all life!
At Peace Camp we will continue prayers and actions that were started 10
years ago during the l500 Years of Resistancen demonstration. We oppose the
generation of more nuclear waste, and want to ensure the clean-up of toxic
and radiological contamination on Native lands, in communities of color and
in the many disenfranchised communities of this country. It is time to end
the legacy of nuclear colonialism.
These events will be organized with the guidance of the Western Shoshone
National Council and have a strict policy prohibiting alcohol, drugs, and
weapons. Please be respectful of our Western Shoshone hosts and their
traditional customs. There will be daily sunrise ceremonies and sweat
lodges open to all.
Participants will be asked to sign a pledge of nonviolence and to take the
appropriate nonviolence or related trainings available at Peace Camp.
Activists wishing to participate in the nonviolent direct actions at the
Nevada Test Site will be asked to join affinity groups or, better yet, to
form affinity groups in their local areas and come prepared to join other
affinity groups in creative direct action.
Be prepared for desert camping: hot days and cold nights. Please bring your
own folding chairs, plates, eating and drinking utensils. Good food, water
and toilet facilities will be provided. We are asking a small donation of
$7 a day (How ever many days you can stay) to cover our logistical
expenses, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
We seek your participation, endorsement and/or financial sponsorship. Our
goal is to raise $4,000 in pre-event organizational sponsorship and
registration funds. If your group would like to help create a fantastic
event, please let us know. In any case, we welcome your endorsement and
would love to include your organizational name in our participantsm packet.
Please cut the sponsor / endorsement / registration form at the bottom of
this email and paste it into a new message addressed to
shundahai@shundahai.org.
Initial Participating Organizations: Ashland Peace House, Center for Energy
Research, Citizen Alert, For Mother Earth - Belgium, Family Spirit Walk for
Mother Earth, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space,
Nanish Shontie, Nevada Desert Experience, Promoting Enduring Peace, Oregon
PeaceWorks, Seeds of Peace, Shundahai Network, Tewa Women United, Tribal
Environmental Watch Alliance, Tri Valley CARES, Wild Rockies Earth First,
An organizing committee representing activists from California, Nevada,
Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, was formed at the Mothersm Day Weekend Gathering
to Celebrate All Life, Peace Camp at the Nevada Test Site on May 12th. We
had another planning meeting June 9th in Salt Lake City and formed
organizing collectives. If you have the energy and ability to follow
through on commitments, we would love to have you help us and join one of
the organizing collectives. There is a spokescouncil with representatives
from each collective meeting monthly via phone. There's a lot to do so if
you want to be involved, we will put you in contact with the right folks.
Organizing Collectives: Nonviolence and Direct Action Planning and
Preparation; Nonviolence and Legal Trainings: Rallies and Legal Direct
Action Planning: Peacekeepers/Legal Observers/Vibes watchers; Legal
Defense; Media; Outreach; Camp and Walk Logistics; Fundraising/Bookkeeping;
Entertainment;
|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<
sponsor / endorsement / registration form:
( Please cut and paste it into a new message addressed to
shundahai@shundahai.org. )
|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<
Name:
Organization:
Mailing Address:
City / State / Zip
Phone number:
Email:
Web Page:
Our organization would like to sponsor / endorse these events. (We are
asking sponsors to contribute $50 - $500 towards the logistical costs and
helping with travel costs for indigenous representatives )
I am not ready to sponsor, endorse or register yet. Please send me more
information by: email / snail mail
I / we have a newsletter and would like to put a camera-ready event ad in
it. Name of newsletter and deadline:
I / we would like to pre-register ________ (number) people for these events.
October 5th - Peoples' Nuclear Abolition Summit, October 6th -10th - Family
Spirit Walk for Mother Earth, October 11 - 14th Action for Nuclear
Abolition Nonviolent Direct Action Camp.
I / we will be staying for (which dates)
I / we are sending in our registration donation of _______ (We are asking
a small donation of $7 a day per person to cover our logistical expenses,
but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
I / we are interested in joining an affinity group to participate in the
nonviolent direct action.
I / we have an all ready formed affinity group and we would like to
participate in the nonviolent direct action.
I / we can offer a ride for ________ (number) people.
I / we need a ride from:
I/ we are interested in helping with organizing these events. I would like
more information about the Organizing Collective(s) circled below.
Organizing Collectives: Nonviolence and Direct Action Planning and
Preparation; Nonviolence and Legal Trainings: Rallies and Legal Direct
Action Planning: Peacekeepers/Legal Observers/Vibes watcher; Legal
Defense; Media; Outreach; Camp and Walk Logistics; Fundraising/Bookkeeping;
Entertainment;
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55 Iraq Seeking Ukraine Weapons Help: Paper
July 10, 2002
[TehranTimes Navigation]
LONDON -- Iraq is cultivating ties with the former Soviet state
of Ukraine in its efforts to rebuild its arsenal of weapons of
mass destruction, Britain's ***Financial Times*** newspaper said
on Tuesday.
"For some years there was an intensive defense-technology
relationship between Ukraine and Iraq," the paper quoted former
UN weapons inspector Timothy McCarthy as saying.
"This appears to be re-emerging and we don't want to repeat the
mistakes of the past," said McCarthy, now with the monterey
institute for international studies, Reuters reported.
The report is the first part of a three-month investigation by
the newspaper into the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction by Iraq, Iran and North Korea, branded by U.S.
President George W. Bush as part of an "axis of evil".
It concludes that the three countries are actively trying to
procure nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Reuters
reported.
The report was published as Bush repeated his pledge to force
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power -- a task his father
failed to follow through when he was U.S. president during the
Persian Gulf war in 1991.
Bush told a news conference in Washington he would use "all
tools at our disposal" to get rid of Saddam.
Controversially. The ***Financial Times*** report also named
Pakistan -- a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror and which
recently came to the brink of war with neighboring India -- as
part of its shortlist of countries possibly breaching the
moratorium on nuclear proliferation.
India and Pakistan have both tested nuclear weapons.
Send your questions and comments to: webmaster@tehrantimes.com
[webmaster@tehrantimes.com]
*****************************************************************
56 Under treaty, U.S. to keep 2,400 reserve warheads
Yahoo! News -
Wed Jul 10, 8:37 AM ET
Bill Nichols USA TODAY [http://www.usatoday.com:80/]
WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that
even though a new U.S.-Russia pact reduces the nuclear arsenals
of both sides to fewer than 2,200 warheads within 10 years, the
United States plans to keep 2,400 more warheads on reserve.
Powell Urges OK of Russia Arms Pact (AP)
Critics of the accord signed in Moscow on May 24 by President
Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin have complained that it
does not require either side to destroy any weapons. Instead, an
unlimited number can be kept on reserve as long as active
warheads are reduced to a range between 1,700 and 2,200. Russia
and the United States each have about 6,000 active warheads.
Powell's comments, at a hearing on ratification of the new treaty
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were the first
public indication by the administration on how large the U.S.
nuclear reserve would be. He said the Pentagon envisions a
maximum force of 4,600 active and reserve warheads by 2012.
Administration officials say that though Bush is committed to
large-scale nuclear reductions, he wants a sizable nuclear
reserve force for unforeseen events, such as a downturn in
U.S.-Russian relations.
Russia has not said how many warheads it would keep on reserve
status. Russian officials have said they want to destroy as many
warheads as possible, given that Putin's financially strapped
government has little money to provide for the upkeep of Russia's
nuclear arsenal.
Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., took Powell's words as a
signal that the administration plans to destroy at least 1,400 of
its current 6,000 warheads. ''It was welcome news that they're
going to destroy something,'' Biden said.
He added, however, that he would like to hear Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld echo Powell's figures when Rumsfeld testifies on
the Moscow treaty before the committee next week.
Pentagon officials did not dispute the accuracy of Powell's
comments Tuesday.
Some arms control experts, however, view Powell's comments as
evidence that the administration does not plan deep nuclear cuts.
''What this means is that we are managing a Cold War-size nuclear
force into the foreseeable future,'' said Daryl Kimball,
executive director of the Arms Control Association.
Powell urged the Senate to ratify the treaty as soon as possible.
He called the pact -- a three-page document that puts few
requirements on either country -- an outgrowth of a new
U.S.-Russian relationship.
''This is a different treaty in a different world than the one I
knew so well as a soldier,'' said Powell, a retired Army general
and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ''Its
simplicity is a reflection of the new world we live in.''
Most senators indicated they were likely to support the treaty.
Biden said it was his ''hope and expectation'' that the pact
would be ratified by the Senate before Congress adjourns this
year.
Other members criticized the treaty's lack of detail. Concerns:
* Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said that though he supports the
treaty, it points up the need for more U.S. financial aid to help
Russia dismantle its nuclear weapons. Powell said the
administration already gives Moscow about $1 billion a year for
that purpose.
* Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said the pact's lack of a system to
verify cuts marks ''a huge contradiction in this treaty.'' Powell
said the agreement will use some verification systems from the
START I nuclear treaty between the United States and Soviet
Union.
* Senator Russell Feingold, D-Wis., questioned the treaty
provision that allows either country to pull out of it with three
month's notice. Feingold, the only committee member to suggest he
might oppose the pact, said he believes a treaty can only be
repealed by an act of Congress.
Copyright © 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
*****************************************************************
57 Officials remove World War II bomb from nuclear submarine base
AP World Politics
Wed Jul 10, 8:22 AM ET
LONDON - Workmen on Wednesday began removing a 1,000-pound (450
kilogram) World War II bomb from the Scottish naval base that
serves Britain's nuclear submarines.
French divers on a training exercise earlier this month found the
British-made bomb, embedded in silt less than 80 feet (25 meters)
from a submarine jetty at the Clyde Naval Base.
With the nuclear submarines berthed "well away," Commodore John
Borley said, divers would retrieve the device, then workmen will
tow it 30 miles (50 kms) to Kilbrannan Sound, an area of deep
water where the bomb will be detonated on Thursday.
Police closed local roads and ships on the River Clyde was warned
to keep clear while the bomb is retrieved.
"Safety is paramount and that is why I have taken the exceptional
decision to allow the majority of the work force to leave the
base slightly earlier today," said Borley, the base director.
"Our high safety standards will not be compromised," he said.
"... All nuclear submarines will be berthed well away from the
area."
The area around the River Clyde was used as a base for ships
during World War II and experts believe the bomb — designed to be
dropped from an aircraft — fell into the river as it was being
transported.
(scl/jw-acw)
Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press
*****************************************************************
58 Law firms to consider possible class-action suit regarding
nuclear tests in the South Pacific
AP World Politics
Tue Jul 9,12:42 PM ET
LONDON - Two law firms said Tuesday they have received public
funding to look into lodging a class-action lawsuit on behalf of
veterans and civilians exposed to British nuclear tests in the
South Pacific half a century ago.
The Alexander Harris and Clarke Willmott & Clarke law firms said
they had received new medical evidence linking the tests to
several illnesses, including cancer.
They are using funding from the Legal Services Commission, the
legal assistance panel, to investigate the strength of five
sample cases before considering the launch of a compensation
class-action suit involving hundreds of veterans and civilians
from Britain, New Zealand and Fiji.
Thousands of British and Commonwealth troops, and local
civilians, were exposed to atomic radiation from nuclear test
explosions in the Pacific between 1952 and 1963, the year that
the International Nuclear Testing Ban was signed.
Britain's Ministry of Defense has always denied the level of
exposure was sufficient to cause the illnesses — cancer, muscular
diseases, gastrointestinal problems, heart conditions, asthma and
loss of teeth and hair — that those exposed later complained of.
Mervyn Fudge, a partner at law firm Clarke Willmott & Clarke,
said recently published research shows "that the stance taken by
the Ministry of Defense is incorrect and that the veterans have
sustained injuries which should allow them to claim compensation
from the British government."
"From the information which is available to both ourselves and
Alexander Harris, we are at this time satisfied that such an
action is sustainable and would be successful," he said.
But a Ministry of Defense spokesman said independent studies had
shown no evidence of excess illness or mortality among the
veterans.
"We refute very strongly any suggestion that these veterans were
used as guinea pigs," he said on customary condition of
anonymity.
During the Cold War, Britain and the United States detonated
nuclear devices at several locations in Australia, Christmas
Island and other islands in the South Pacific. Troops from
Britain, the Commonwealth and the United States were involved,
and many civilians also witnessed the nuclear program.
The veterans claim they were not given suitable protective
clothing and were exposed to atomic radiation.
Fudge said the firms were still gathering complainants and had
already been contacted by hundreds of people.
(jw-jl-acw-twx)
Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press
*****************************************************************
59 Nuclear arms pact criticized at hearing
The Seattle Times:
Wednesday, July 10, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Capital Watch
WASHINGTON — Democratic senators criticized the Bush
administration's no-frills approach to nuclear-arms control
yesterday, questioning the wisdom of a U.S.-Russia treaty that
would provide less verification and no guarantee that
decommissioned atomic weapons would be destroyed.
As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened hearings on the
treaty, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., complained of shortfalls and
"contradictions" in the agreement to make deep cuts in long-range
nuclear arsenals.
Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., noted the treaty has no
mileposts and suggested it doesn't go far enough, but he also
said he will vote in favor of ratification, suggesting the deal
faces no serious obstacles in the Senate for approval this fall.
Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke passionately about the
treaty's potential to reduce Russian and U.S. strategic weapons
stockpiles by two-thirds by Dec. 31, 2012. He called Russia an
"emerging partner" and testified that verification measures are
sufficient at a time when relations between the Kremlin and the
White House are closer than they have been in decades.
House panel approves $700 million to fight fires
A House committee voted yesterday to provide an extra $700
million for battling wildfires that have raged across more than 3
million acres this year, mostly in the West.
The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee approved the
money by voice vote, even though the Bush administration opposes
the extra money.
The amendment to a $19.7 billion measure financing federal land
and cultural programs was sponsored by Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash.
Environmental rules don't hinder military, GAO says
Congressional auditors found little evidence to support Bush
administration claims that military training is hampered by laws
that protect endangered species and migratory birds.
The administration asked Congress this year to exempt the
military from some major environmental laws, including the 1973
Endangered Species Act and the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
The General Accounting Office, in a report that surfaced at a
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing yesterday,
found that the Defense Department had little evidence to support
its contention that environmental "encroachment" on training
bases has hurt training.
"It is true we have not documented any environmental degradation"
of the military's ability to train, Gen. John Keane, the Army's
second in command, told the committee, "but we all know it's
true."
House committee targets U.S. firms over tax havens
A House committee voted overwhelmingly yesterday to curtail
federal contracts for many companies that move abroad to avoid
U.S. taxes.
The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee approved the
measure 41-17. "These companies, I think we'd agree, put profit
before patriotism," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the bill's
sponsor.
The opponents, all Republicans, said federal regulations and
taxes were the reasons why some companies have fled U.S. shores.
"We've already got a tax structure that has driven them off,"
said Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan.
Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
60 -- A throw-back to Soviet justice
Pasko Case
Gregory Pasko, an investigative journalist who worked for the
Pacific Fleet's newspaper, was arrested on 20 November 1997 by
the FSB and charged with high treason for his writing about the
nuclear safety issues in the Russian Pacific Fleet.
Last month's decision by the Russian Supreme Court upholding the
espionage conviction against environmental whistleblower Grigory
Pasko has created harsh international reactions.
Bellona'a lawyer Jon Gauslaa (author) and Grigory Pasko in
Vladivostok, September 2001.
Vladislav Nikiforov/Bellona
Jon Gauslaa, 2002-07-10 15:34
On June 25, 2002 the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme
Court sustained the Pacific Fleet Court's treason conviction of
Grigory Pasko, who has won international plaudits for his role in
uncovering potential nuclear disasters involving Russia's Pacific
Fleet. Last week the European Parliament denoted the decision as
a considerable setback for the rule of law in Russia. Also other
international reactions have been harsh.
Orwellian Justice
-- The decision is a throw-back to Soviet-style justice against
dissidents, complete with Orwellian judicial proceedings and hard
labour at a gulag, said Tom Carpenter of the Government
Accountability Project (GAP), a public interest law firm
specialising in whistleblower protection, with offices in
Washington, D.C., and Seattle.
-- In upholding the sentence against Mr. Pasko, the court based
its decision on the Russian intelligence service's version of
what he thought, not what he did, Carpenter said in a statement
[http://www.whistleblower.org/www/Paskopr.htm] issued by GAP. --
In a legal system more reminiscent of that of Joseph Stalin
rather than a NATO partner, Mr. Pasko's case exemplifies a
corrupt bureaucracy seeking to punish a dissenter.
GAP urges Russian officials to release Pasko now, and show that
Russia is ready to give up its old habits of reprisal against
dissenters and begin respecting human rights.
A verdict of the past
In a press release [http://www.ihf-hr.org/appeals/020703.htm]
issued on July 3, 2002 the International Helsinki Federation of
Human Rights (IHF) states that Pasko was punished for his alleged
thoughts, not for his actions, and that the conviction was based
on illegally confiscated 'evidence'.
The respected human rights organisation, also points out that the
way of thinking that is evident of the Supreme Court's verdict
belongs to times past. With reference to President Putin's
expressed wish to turn Russian into "a dictatorship of the law"
the IHF is concerned that the law has not ruled in the
Pasko-case.
Political vendetta
Amnesty International, who adopted Pasko as a prisoner of
conscience in January, said in a news release that the conviction
appears "motivated by political reprisal for exposing the
practice of dumping nuclear waste into the Sea of Japan, as well
as alleged corruption within the higher military command of the
Russian Pacific Fleet."
Also the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is
dismayed that the Pasko's conviction and sentence was upheld by
the Supreme Court. -- With every ruling, the case against Pasko
looks more and more like a political vendetta said CPJ's honorary
co-chairman Terry Anderson in a statement
[http://www.cpj.org/news/2002/Russia25june02na.html] issued after
the June 25 ruling.
*
Grigory Pasko was arrested on November 20, 1997 and charged with
treason through espionage. He was acquitted of these charges by
the Pacific Fleet Court in Vladivostok on July 20, 1999, but
sentenced to a three-year imprisonment for 'abuse of his official
position although he was not charged with that crime, and
released on a general amnesty.
After both sides had appealed, the Military Supreme Court
cancelled the verdict in November 2000 and sent the case back for
a new trial at the Pacific Fleet Court. The re-trial started on
July 11, 2001 and ended on December 25, with Pasko being
convicted to four years for having kept notes taken at a meeting
of the staff of the Pacific Fleet at home with the alleged
intention to hand them over to the Japanese Journalist Tadashi
Okano.
The verdict was again appealed by both sides. On June 25, 2002
the Military Supreme Court confirmed Pasko's four-year sentence,
which means that he will be released on April 25, 2004. Pasko's
defence team is currently preparing a request to the chairman of
the Russian Supreme Court, Vyacheslav Lebedev, to bring the case
before the Supreme Court Presidium.
Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President:
Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no
[info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no
[webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22
38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
61 Iraq Seeking Ukraine Weapons Help: Paper *
*July 10, 2002* News Content
TehranTimes Navigation
LONDON -- Iraq is cultivating ties with the former Soviet state
of Ukraine in its efforts to rebuild its arsenal of weapons of
mass destruction, Britain's ***Financial Times*** newspaper said
on Tuesday.
"For some years there was an intensive defense-technology
relationship between Ukraine and Iraq," the paper quoted former
UN weapons inspector Timothy McCarthy as saying.
"This appears to be re-emerging and we don't want to repeat the
mistakes of the past," said McCarthy, now with the monterey
institute for international studies, Reuters reported.
The report is the first part of a three-month investigation by
the newspaper into the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction by Iraq, Iran and North Korea, branded by U.S.
President George W. Bush as part of an "axis of evil".
It concludes that the three countries are actively trying to
procure nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Reuters
reported.
The report was published as Bush repeated his pledge to force
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power -- a task his father
failed to follow through when he was U.S. president during the
Persian Gulf war in 1991.
Bush told a news conference in Washington he would use "all tools
at our disposal" to get rid of Saddam.
Controversially. The ***Financial Times*** report also named
Pakistan -- a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror and which
recently came to the brink of war with neighboring India -- as
part of its shortlist of countries possibly breaching the
moratorium on nuclear proliferation.
India and Pakistan have both tested nuclear weapons.
Send your questions and comments to: webmaster@tehrantimes.com
*****************************************************************
62 Russia to scrap world's biggest subs
United Press International
Published 7/10/2002 12:59 PM
MOSCOW, July 10 (UPI) -- Russia's nuclear missile-armed Akula
submarines, which were once the pride of the Soviet navy during a
Cold War, will be destroyed under a U.S.-financed program,
Moscow's Novye Izvestia daily newspaper reported Wednesday.
Three of the six vessels will be reduced to scrap metal at the
Nerpa shipyard in northwest Russia, the report said.
The decision, announced by the Russian navy chiefs, was largely
influenced by the chronic shortage of funds needed to repair the
vessels. The world's biggest submarine, Akula, "The Shark" in
Russian, was designed by the St. Petersburg-based Rubin military
design bureau two decades ago.
Then Soviet leader Yuri Andropov took great pride in the vessel
which he considered a fitting response to the Star Wars campaign,
conducted by the Reagan administration.
In early 1982, the Dmitry Donskoi flagship was put on water under
the TK-208 coded number. Subsequently, the Sevmash shipbuilding
plant in Severodvinsk manufactured five more vessels that joined
the 1st Submarine Flotilla of the Soviet Union's Northern Fleet.
The submarine soon caused great interest in the West and naval
intelligence even gave it a coded name, Typhoon.
In June, Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov visited
Severodvinsk to attend the ceremony of submerging a renovated
Dmitry Donskoi after years of repair and modernization.
"The vessel has undergone a deep modernization and actually been
given a new life," the minister said.
Indeed, the list of the submarine's technical parameters looks
more than impressive: 571 feet in length; operated by 179
crewmembers; normal displacement - 28,500 tons, underwater
displacement - 49,800 tons; armed with 20 RSM-52 hard-fuel
missiles each of which has 10 separating warheads.
The launching weight of the missile totaled 90.1 tons, with
capability to hit targets at over 10,000 kilometers.
The entire missile arsenal can be fired in two launches.
Analysts also noted the vessel's remarkable ability to emerge in
completely frozen-over waters, breaking with ease a 2.5 meter,
8.25 feet, layer of ice.
The Akula's nuclear missile system is also capable of hitting as
many as 200 targets located over 6,500 sq. kilometers, or 2,600
square miles, of area within four minutes.
Due to their size and strategic purposes, six Akulas had to be
stationed at the Nerpichya naval base, which underwent major
reconstruction before hosting the vessels.
However, Russia's painful post-Soviet transition to market
economy left the vessels moored in the dockyard for most of the
time.
The government lacked funding to renovate the subs with the
Dmitry Donskoi waiting for modernization since 1989.
According to Novye Izvestia, the recent modernization program may
have also included arming the Dmitry Donskoi with the
sophisticated Bulava-30 missile system.
Nevertheless, this week's decision to scrap three Akulas caused
little surprise in Russia and abroad as Moscow is eager to get
rid of its aging nuclear arms arsenal under foreign-sponsored
assistance programs.
Currently, the United States is sponsoring the program to scrap
all Russia's submarines built under the 667-BDR project.
The estimated cost of the program to destroy the 941 project subs
such as Akula totals 450 million per year.
Recently, Washington and its partners in the group of seven
richest and most industrialized nations agreed to finance a
$20-billion assistance program to help Russia destroy its
stockpiles of nuclear and chemical weapons.
Copyright © 2002 United Press International
*****************************************************************
63 Funds rise for ORNL energy research
The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News --
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
by Paul Parson
Oak Ridger staff
Funding for Oak Ridge National Laboratory's energy efficiency and
renewable energy programs is pushing the $106 million mark for
next year.
In fact, the fiscal year 2003 Interior spending bill figure is
$8 million over FY 2002's funding and $20 million over President
Bush's request, according to U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District.
The House Appropriations Committee, on which the congressman has
served for the last six years, met Tuesday to consider the bill.
Billy Stair, a spokesman for ORNL, said the funding will go
toward several projects, including technologies to reduce home
heating and cooling costs. Also benefiting from the funding is
vehicle-related research in the areas of cleaner emissions and
fuel cells that require no gasoline.
Wamp this morning described ORNL as a leader in the field of
developing more cost-effective appliances, more fuel-efficient
transportation and more durable lightweight materials. These
technologies make a real difference, according to the
congressman.
The 2003 Interior spending bill also includes funding for a
number of land conservation projects, including $1.5 million
slated for the Obed National Wild and Scenic River Corridor in
Morgan County. This funding will purchase approximately 1,000
acres of land within the Obed National Wild and Scenic River
corridor.
"It's an incredible asset," Wamp said of the area.
Established on Oct. 12, 1976, the National Park Service
currently owns approximately 3,400 acres at the Obed National
Wild and Scenic River and this funding will allow more pristine
land to be added to this reserve.
In addition, the spending bill would provide $2 million for the
National Biological Infrastructure Initiative's Southern
Appalachian Tennessee Node. The mission of the National
Biological Infrastructure Initiative is to systematically
organize, access and display biological entities, inland
waterways and water resources across jurisdictional lines and to
have these data readily available.
Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or
[pparson@oakridger.com] .
[http://www.oakridger.com/contact/index.html]
[http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak
Ridger
*****************************************************************
64 Dairy Queen to sell irradiated beef
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 12:59:01 -0500 (CDT)
Health & Science: Dairy Queen to sell irradiated beef
The Associated Press
EDINA, Minn. (July 9, 2002 10:40 p.m. EDT) - International Dairy Queen will
begin serving irradiated ground beef at several Twin Cities stores this week.
By next week, irradiated beef will be available in 43 Minnesota stores -
roughly one-third of the Dairy Queens in the state that sell hamburgers.
The company is one of the first in the $115 billion fast-food industry to sell
ground beef that is irradiated, a government-approved process that kills
bacteria and reduces the chance of food-borne illnesses.
"Anytime you're a leader, it's a little scary. But we're confident in the
process," said Dean Peters, Dairy Queen spokesman.
As of Tuesday, Twin Cities stores in Maple Grove, Delano, Plymouth, Anoka,
Woodbury, Bloomington and Minnetonka were selling irradiated burgers. An
additional 23 stores will come on line in the next few days.
Dairy Queen began testing the sale of irradiated ground beef this year in
Hutchinson and Spicer, then added 11 central Minnesota stores in May.
Customers receive information at the stores and are encouraged to call a
survey line to express their views on the product.
After an initial 60 days, the company will evaluate responses.
The company's franchisees pay about 5 cents a pound more for the irradiated
ground beef, but have not passed the increase on to consumers, Peters said.
*****************************************************************
65 WNA NEWS BRIEFING 02.28 | 3 - 9 July 2002
A weekly summary of international news relevant to the nuclear
energy industry.
[NB02.28-1] The UK government has published a White Paper
outlining key policy, financial and regulatory issues relating to
the country's nuclear industry. The paper outlines the steps
necessary for the creation of the Liabilities Management
Authority (LMA), which will take on the financial responsibility
for all public sector civil nuclear liabilities and assets
currently held by BNFL and UKAEA. The liabilities will be managed
on the LMA's behalf by site licensees, initially BNFL and UKAEA,
under performance-based contracts. Due to 'regulatory and
managerial reasons reflecting the integrated nature of the
Sellafield site', the Thorp reprocessing plant and the Sellafield
MOX Plant will also transfer to the LMA. The Department for Trade
and Industry (DTI) has established a Liabilities Management Unit
(LMU) to serve in the interim period before the LMA is
established, to strengthen the DTI's existing capability for
overseeing work on the nuclear legacy and to 'prepare the ground'
for the LMA. The White Paper - entitled 'Managing the Nuclear
Legacy: A Strategy for Action' - can be downloaded from here
[http://www.dti.gov.uk/nid/nuclearlegacy/whitepaper.htm] .
(NucNet News, 238/02, 4 July; BNFL, 4 July; SpentFUEL, 8 July,
p2; see also News Briefing 02.27-14)
[NB02.28-2] US: The Senate was today expected to begin
consideration on the Yucca Mountain vote. Senator Frank Murkowski
(R-AK) is likely to make the motion to proceed on the resolution
that will designate Yucca Mountain as the site for the country's
spent fuel repository. Two votes may be needed to pass the
resolution. The first vote will be on a motion to proceed on the
Yucca Mountain Resolution, unless the Senate decides to go
straight to a vote on the resolution. Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev)
is expected to challenge the vote on procedural grounds -
however, his objections can be overturned by a majority vote. The
Senate must vote to approve Yucca Mountain by 27 July or the
project will be cancelled. (NEI InfoWire, 8 July; Ux Weekly, 8
July, p4; Financial Times, 9 July, p10; see also News Briefing
02.24-1)
[NB02.28-3] The Pacific Pintail transport ship set sail from
Japan on 4 July carrying eight unirradiated mixed-oxide (MOX)
fuel assemblies being returned from Kansai Electric Power's
Takahama nuclear power plant to BNFL's Sellafield facility in the
UK. The ship will be joined by an armed cargo vessel for its
two-month voyage. Norman Askew, BNFL Chief Executive, said that
the departure of the shipment means that 'we have now honoured
the commitment we gave to our Japanese customers to return the
fuel'. After the MOX fuel had been delivered to Kansai, it was
discovered that quality controls related to a small number of
fuel pellets had been falsified. BNFL and Kansai agreed in 2000
that the cost of returning the assemblies would be borne by BNFL,
which also agreed to pay Kansai 20 million UK pounds in
compensation. Earlier, the UK Environment Agency (EA) ruled that
claims by Greenpeace - that the return required specific EA
authorisation under national legislation concerning the
international shipment of radioactive waste - did not apply. The
EA said BNFL's plans to recover and reuse the plutonium and
uranium content of the fuel were 'technically feasible and
credible'. (BNFL, 4 July; NucNet News, 235/02, 4 July; SpentFUEL,
8 July, p1; see also News Briefing 02.19-14)
[NB02.28-4] South Africa: Uranium producer NUFCOR reported that
output in the first half of 2002 increased slightly over the
first half of 2001. First-quarter production fell almost 11% to
511 037 pounds U3O8 (196.6 tU), compared with 573 791 pounds U3O8
(220.7 tU) in the first quarter of 2001. However, output in the
first half of 2002 reached 1.078 million pounds U3O8 (414.6 tU),
compared with 1.059 million pounds U3O8 (407.3 tU) in the first
six months of 2001. Uranium production at the Vaal River
Operations gold-uranium mine complex is expected to reach 2.242
million pounds U3O8 (862.4 tU) for the whole of 2002, up 2.7%
from the 2.183 million pounds U3O8 (839.7 tU) produced in 2001.
(FreshFUEL, 8 July, p5; see also News Briefing 01.42-4)
[NB02.28-5] Japan: The Fukushima Prefectural Assembly has voted
to increase the tax on nuclear fuel from 7% to 10% and to add an
additional charge based on the fuel's weight. The additional
charge makes the effective tax on nuclear fuel in Fukushima about
13.5%. Japan's Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Post
and Telecommunications must still approve the tax increase. Tokyo
Electric Power Co (TEPCO) operates 10 reactors at two sites in
Fukushima. Fukushima's decision to raise the tax could lead other
prefectures to do likewise, thereby increasing the cost of
operating nuclear power reactors in Japan. (Ux Weekly, 8 July,
p3; see also News Briefing 02.19-11)
[NB02.28-6] US: A reduction in fees for uranium producers and
processors will not be considered, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) announced. The NRC said that Congress requires
the agency to fund its activities through user fees based on
budgeted costs for regulating a particular class of licensees,
not on the economic circumstances of that class. NRC's actions
came with the denial of a petition by the National Mining
Association on behalf of the US domestic uranium recovery
industry seeking a rulemaking to establish the basis for waiving
all licensing and inspection fees and annual fees until the
uranium prices increases to US$13-16 per pound U3O8. (FreshFUEL,
8 July, p1; see also News Briefing 99.25-16)
[NB02.28-7] US: A design certification application made by
Westinghouse Electric Co for its AP1000 advanced reactor design
has been accepted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The
NRC decided that the application contained 'sufficient
information to be formally docketed and processed'. Westinghouse
referenced the AP600 standard design - which was certified by the
NRC in 1999 - in submitting its application for design
certification on 28 March 2002. NRC staff will now start to
review the application, request any additional information 'if
necessary', and then issue a draft Safety Evaluation Report to
address any 'technical and safety questions'. A final Safety
Evaluation Report will be issued when 'all technical and safety
questions have been resolved'. The design can then be certified
through the NRC's rulemaking process, which includes an
opportunity for public participation. (NucNet News, 234/02, 3
July; Ux Weekly, 8 July, p2; see also News Briefing 02.14-3)
[NB02.28-8] The French government plans to partly privatised
Electricite de France (EDF), the country's new prime minister,
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has confirmed. The move is aimed at
ensuring EDF can 'take full benefit' of the developing European
energy market. Mr Raffarin announced that an unspecified number
of shares in both EDF and Gas de France (GDF) would be sold to
private investors, although both companies would 'remain in the
public sector'. Mr Raffarin also promised a major nationwide
debate on energy policy - including the future role of nuclear
power - which would result in the passage of a new energy law. He
added that his government would ensure the passage of a new law
on nuclear 'transparency'. (NucNet News, 236/02, 4 July; see also
News Briefing 01.05-18)
[NB02.28-9] Spain: Power utilities are considering a plan that
would combine all nuclear-related companies - from power
producers to those handling radioactive waste - into a single
entity. This entity - which would be a holding company - would
later be in charge of requesting state aid and constructing new
nuclear power plants. (Ux Weekly, 8 July, p3)
[NB02.28-10] Finland: A new opinion poll shows the majority of
Finns approve of the parliament's decision in principle to build
the country's fifth nuclear power reactor. 55% of those
questioned back parliament's vote, with 31% against and 13%
undecided. The poll was conducted by Suomen Gallup for the
Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK) immediately
after the decision in May. (NucNet News, 240/02, 8 July; see also
News Briefing 02.22-1)
[NB02.28-11] Lithuania: The government approved a revised energy
strategy that calls for the Ignalina-2 reactor to be closed in
2009. However, the new strategy - which must be approved by
parliament - specifies that the country will 'keep the nuclear
option open' and not rule out new nuclear units in the future.
(NucNet News, 239/02, 8 July; see also News Briefing 02.25-1)
[NB02.28-12] Croatia: The parliament has approved a resolution
supporting the creation of a joint venture to own and operate the
Krsko nuclear power plant in Slovenia. The 50-50 joint venture
with Slovenia addresses a significant political issue between the
two countries created from the former Yugoslavia. There are
concerns among the Croatian government, however, that if the
plant's closure becomes a condition of Slovenia's accession to
the European Union (EU), Croatia must still assume some
responsibility for decommissioning and spent fuel disposal. (Ux
Weekly, 8 July, p3; FreshFUEL, 8 July, p5; see also News Briefing
02.01-9)
[NB02.28-13] US: Siemens-Westinghouse Power Corp (SWPC) has been
awarded a contract by PSEG Nuclear to upgrade the turbines for
Salem-1 and -2. The project - which will take about four years to
complete - will increase generating capacity at the 2300 MWe
plant by some 90 MWe. (Ux Weekly, 8 July, p3)
[NB02.28-14] Russia: Plans to construct a nuclear waste storage
facility on the island of Novaya Zemlya off Russia's Arctic coast
may be scrapped. The Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev
said results of geological tests have shown the site as
unsuitable, according to an AFP report. The proposed site, as
well as being rich in limestone, could reportedly turn into a bog
in 100 years due to climate changes. (SpentFUEL, 8 July, p5; see
also News Briefing 02.24-15) Notice: The WNA was saddened to hear
that Dr Uwe Schulze passed away on 1 July at the age of 53 years.
He worked for Siemens KWU in the nuclear fuel business since
1980, before joining ANF in 1995. He was the head of ANF's
Logistics Department and made a major contribution to the
formation of the new ANF after merging the plants in Lingen,
Duisburg and Karlstein.
Previous News Briefing NB02.27
*****************************************************************
66 Cheney, Halliburton accused of accounting fraud
The Oak Ridger Online -- State News --
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
MIAMI (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney and Halliburton Co., the
oil company he ran for five years, are being accused of
accounting fraud by a watchdog group.
Washington-based Judicial Watch said it would file a shareholder
lawsuit today against Cheney and Halliburton. Cheney was chairman
and chief executive of the oil field-services giant from 1995 to
2000. Halliburton announced on May 28 that it received notice
from the Securities and Exchange Commission that the commission
was looking into Halliburton's accounting methods -- adopted in
1998 -- for reporting cost overruns on construction jobs.
The SEC has not filed any charges against Halliburton.
Judicial Watch alleges those accounting practices resulted in
the overvaluation of Halliburton's shares, deceiving investors.
"We're seeking actual and punitive damages for allegations of
securities fraud, for changing accounting practices and not
advising the public of these changes," Judicial Watch chairman
and general counsel Larry Klayman said Tuesday night in Miami.
Messages seeking comment from Cheney and the White House were
not immediately returned late Tuesday.
"We don't believe that there's any merit to this case,"
Halliburton spokeswoman Zelma Branch said.
The lawsuit, which is expected to be filed today in federal
court in Dallas, also names 10 of Halliburton's board members.
Klayman said auditor Arthur Andersen LLP will also be named in
the lawsuit.
Andersen spokesman Patrick Dorton declined to comment.
Under Texas law, the lawsuit can only specify that it seeks
damages greater than $200,000. Judicial Watch is seeking far
more.
"We're looking for millions of dollars in damages. We're looking
to hold Vice President Cheney and others accountable," Klayman
said. "We have no faith in the Bush administration and we have no
faith in the Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation."
Judicial Watch, a private, conservative group, has sued for
access to records of the Cheney-led energy task force that
drafted the Bush administration's energy policy.
The allegations against Cheney came on the same day that
President Bush called for tougher penalties to fight the
corporate corruption that has engulfed several high-profile
companies in recent months.
Bush himself has come under criticism for transactions he made
while a director at Harken Energy Corp. in the early 1990s. He
has denied any wrongdoing.
[http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger
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