***************************************************************** 08/10/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.204 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: [toeslist] ALERT ON PINE RIDGE 2 US: Supreme Court upholds pipefitter lawsuit 3 US: Westinghouse Electric lands $350 million contract 4 US: PUC gives initial OK to Seabrook nuclear plant sale /* NUCLEAR REACTORS NUCLEAR SAFETY 5 US: Energy Department to help sick workers 6 Commemorating victims of U.S. nuclear tests in Marshall Islands 7 US: Misplaced radioactive device raises concerns 8 US: Three families in Jefferson County sue over well-water contamina NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 9 US: Radioactive site poses no threat, EPA says 10 US: Boxer Pushing for Stricter Cleanup at Santa Susana lab 11 US proposed Antarctic as atomic tomb 12 US: Majority want to continue Yucca fight 13 US: Molycorp focusing on clearing out, not fixing up site 14 US: Demo Congressional Hopefuls to Make Yucca Site an Issue 15 US: Envirocare Fails In Bid to Join Initiatives Debate 16 US: Company donates uranium mining land to state 17 US: Senator Questions Nuclear Plant Cleanup 18 Australia accused of swaying Pacific into accepting nuclear waste 19 LES lowers its proposal for 2003 rate increase 20 US: Group loses challenge on Millstone fuel storage* NUCLEAR WEAPONS 21 A-Bomb was a Mistake, if not a Crime 22 A sailor's photos of Nagasaki 23 US: Pugwash scientists seek end of nuclear weaponry 24 Searching for lost souls / Photojournalist finds new hope for Hirosh 25 Nagasaki mayor slams U.S. N-policy 26 America releases a Seawolf troop into oceans 27 August: The heroic and tragic month for the Russian Navy 28 US: Get A Grip: Nevada Test Site and later fallout deaths prove that 29 US: Servicemen recall visiting Hiroshima weeks after atomic bomb dro 30 Nagasaki mayor lashes out at U.S. 31 Poems tell of tragedy that befell Nagasaki 32 US: U.S. peace rally marks Nagasaki A-bombing anniversary US DEPT. OF ENERGY 33 Y-12 protester sent to prison for trespassing 34 No word on DOE plan, budget 35 Expert group from US Department of Energy inspects nuclear OTHER NUCLEAR 36 Friedel Sellschop, pioneer of nuclear physics, dies Johannesburg 37 Earth fuelled by nuclear reactor, says study ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [toeslist] ALERT ON PINE RIDGE Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 01:37:23 -0500 (CDT) Subject: ALERT ON PINE RIDGE NOTE-The Stronghold site is already occupied by the Oyate. ArrivalTime: 06 Aug 2002 13:35:21.0010 URGENT APPEAL FROM PINE RIDGE RESERVATION! Sacred Burial Grounds Disturbed; Zeolite Wanted for Plutonium Disposal Indians Appeal for Observers, Nonviolence Trainers and Night-Vision Gear Mass Civil Disobedience Set to Begin Aug. 12 on Indian Land in South Dakota U.S. Agents in Night Raids Use High-Tech Choppers and Infrared Equipment Sioux Nation, Scene of Daily Indignities, Becomes C Mississippi of the North I have just returned from Oglala Lakota Nation in the Badlands of South Dakota where a shocking drama has begun to unfold. While the White House is pushing hard to launch high-level nuclear waste disposal operations in Nevada, federal agents are running roughshod over human rights in Pine Ridge Reservation, S.D., astride deposits of zeolite. If legal efforts to block the invasions fail, AIM leaders and many members of the 25,000-strong tribe plan to use their bodies to stop the bulldozers as early as Aug. 12. The Lakota people, also known as Sioux, are appealing to other Indian tribes, all Americans of conscience and the nations of the world to come to their aid. Right now they need: *Qualified volunteers to conduct nonviolence training for protesters. *Independent observers ready to be witnesses in case of confrontation. *Infrared cameras and goggles for night-vision. *Four big mud tires for serious S.U.V. off-roading. By day, federal police treat the Oglala Lakota people so abusively that their reservation has become known as Mississippi of the North,C" reminiscent of 1960s civil rights struggles. Police insult Indians, write bogus tickets, tear down meeting signs, etc. By night, helicopters, their lights turned off, whirl into American Indian airspace and touch down amid sacred sites near the historic Stronghold. The feds take ancient fossils, use heavy earth-moving equipment close to sites of human remains, and set off small explosions. The excavations under cover of darkness appear to rely on high-tech night-vision equipment. Pine Ridge Reservation is a potential source of zeolite, a mineral that government officials would like to see mined for use in plutonium waste repositories. Work has begun to improve the dirt road into the area, reportedly with 16-inch-deep pavement, which would support heavy trucks. Plans are said to be drawn to build a railroad line to reach the remote area. Indians are concerned that zeolite mining would release erionite, a known human carcinogen, into the environment. Many sites of human remains exist in the area on and near the big Stronghold plateau, where survivors of the December 29, 1890 Wounded Knee massacre went. There, most of those who escaped the Wounded Knee atrocity were subsequently hunted down, murdered by white militia, and left in winter graves. More than a century later, just in recent months, long-term erosion, natural to the geology of the area, has begun to uncover many shallow graves. Coincidentally, in recent months, federal agents have been entering the area without permission and tampering with Indian property. Some of the Lakota people believe the surfacing of the old human remains is a sign that it is time to take a stand. Current federal activities in the area violate the 1868 Treaty of Laramie, and a 1976 memorandum of understanding between the National Park Service and the Oglala Lakota Nation. Department of Interior officials have refused to consult with Lakota leaders regarding federal plans for the IndiansC"b,b" land. The Tribal president has demanded that the National Park Service replace its area superintendent, whom the Indians have found so autocratic that they refuse to meet with her. Lawyers for Oglala Lakota Nation, while asking the Department of Justice to persuade the Department of Interior to back off, got ready to go to federal court for an emergency injunction. If these efforts fail, the tribal leaders and many other Indians are expected to join hands in a great circle around sacred areas where the National Park Service plans to step up daytime excavation activity in the open on Aug. 12. They are appealing for help to ensure that peace and justice will prevail. Please respond. Please post and forward this appeal to all potential allies. My office can help you find low-cost air fares to Rapid City, S.D., plan logistics for ground transportation or helicopter service if desired, and get in contact with Oglala Lakota leaders. By Tony Bothwell, Chairperson American Indian Affairs Committee National Lawyers Guild *********************************************************************** NOTE: ALL E-MAILS PURSUANT TO THE USA/PATRIOT ACT ARE READ BY FEDERAL AND STATE LAW ENFORCEMENT. REMEMBER THE MIRANDA WARNINGS WHEN MAKING ANY AND ALL ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSIONS AS NONE ARE PRIVATE IN THE WAKE OF THE PASSAGE OF THE USA/PATRIOT ANTI-FREE SPEECH/ANTI-CIVIL LIBERTIES ACT. ALSO NOTE THAT ANY PERSON YOU CONVERSE WITH YOU DO NOT KNOW, MAY BE AN FBI AGENT AND ANY STATEMENTS MADE ON ANY FORUM OR DISCUSSION GROUP WILL BE READ BY AN FBI AGENT UNDER THE ANTI-DISSENT ACTIONS TAKEN BY THE FBI ON MAY 30, 2002. PLEASE ACT ACCORDINGLY AND PROTECT YOURSELF IN THE MORE VISIBLE AMERICAN POLICE STATE THAT NOW EXISTS. NOTICE: This electronic mail (e-mail) message and any attachment to this e-mail message contains confidential information that may be legally privileged. This message is intended solely for the purview and dissemination of the recipient(s) and the recipient(s) directly affiliated organization(s). If you are not the intended recipient, you must not review, retransmit, convert to hard copy, copy, print, use or disseminate this e-mail or any attachments to it. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify us immediately by return e-mail or by telephone at 727-826-6960 and delete this message. If you do not desire to recieve email from the American Indian Movement of Florida please reply via AIMFL@aol.com. Please note that if this e-mail message contains a forwarded message or is a reply to a prior message, some or all of the contents of this message or any attachments may not have been produced by the American Indian Movement of Florida, Inc., its membership, affiliates, or support groups. ############################################################ _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/09Lw8C/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/NJYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: toeslist-unsubscribe@egroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 2 Supreme Court upholds pipefitter lawsuit This story was published Thu, Aug 8, 2002 By the Herald staff The Washington Supreme Court Wednesday turned down Fluor's petition to review a Court of Appeals decision favoring 11 former Hanford pipefitters, according to the Government Accountability Project. That opens the door for the pipefitters to proceed with a jury trial in Benton County Superior Court. In 1997 a pipefitting crew at Hanford balked at participating in a hydraulic pressure test on a pipe valve the men feared was unsafe. The crew also raised other safety concerns and believe that's why members were laid off. Fluor Federal Services denies any retaliation was involved. The company says the layoffs were part of normal job fluctuations in construction work. The pipefitters filed a lawsuit in Benton County in August 1999, seeking lost pay and unspecified damages. But a judge ruled the case should go to an arbitrator. The pipefitters appealed to the Court of Appeals in Spokane, which ruled in their favor eight months ago. Fluor lost its petition to have that decision reviewed Wednesday. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 3 Westinghouse Electric lands $350 million contract PittsburghLIVE.com - By Thomas Olson [tolson@tribweb.com] TRIBUNE-REVIEW Saturday, August 10, 2002 Westinghouse Electric Co. won a contract worth more than $350 million to provide nuclear power equipment and engineering services to a utility in South Korea that is building four nuclear plants. The 8-year-long contract is the largest job won by Westinghouse since it was spun off by CBS Corp. four years ago. Monroeville-based Westinghouse is the largest business unit of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., known as BNFL. Much of the work on the project will be done at Westinghouse's nuclear instrumentation and controls plant in Plum Boro, which employs about 350 people. The contract will not create new jobs, but will provide work for about 1,000 Westinghouse employees in three states, said a spokesman. The company employs about 9,000 workers, including some 3,000 in this region. "(The project) further proves the viability of nuclear power as an economically competitive energy source that produces no carbon emissions," said Steve Tritch, who was recently named Westinghouse president and chief executive. Yesterday's announcement comes just a day after Westinghouse landed a $50 million job in the United States. The company was selected by Commonwealth Edison parent Exelon to provide steam generator services to two nuclear power plants in northern Illinois. Korea Electric Power Corp., Seoul, will own and operate the four 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plants on the drawing board. Budgeted at roughly $6 billion to construct, the plants employ a Westinghouse technology design. The Pittsburgh corporation supplied the first nuclear steam system to South Korea in the late 1970s, and has supplied 13 others there since then, the company said. "Westinghouse is committed to the nuclear market for the long term," said Tritch, who succeeded Charles Pryor when he was promoted to head BNFL's entire nuclear utilities group in June. Thomas Olson can be reached at tolson@tribweb.com [tolson@tribweb.com] or (412) 320-7854. The Tribune-Review ***************************************************************** 4 PUC gives initial OK to Seabrook nuclear plant sale /* *News - August 10, 2002* *By GARRY RAYNO* Union Leader Staff CONCORD ? State regulators gave initial approval yesterday to the sale of Seabrook Station to Florida Power and Light Group Inc. The Public Utilities Commission?s action is the first step in a number of needed state and federal regulatory approvals before the sale can close. Final commission approval will come in a written order to be issued within a week or two, according to PUC general counsel Gary Epler. The sellers and buyers of Seabrook hope to close the deal by the end of the year. Rachel Scott, manager of nuclear communications for FPL, said, ?We are on track in all the different regulatory arenas.? She said the company hopes other state regulators issue orders by early next month and expects rulings from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by mid-October. The N.H. Nuclear Decommissioning Finance Committee will hold a public hearing on its resolution of the issue Sept. 4 in Seabrook, she said. There has been little opposition in New Hampshire to the sale of the 1,161-kilowatt nuclear power plant to FPL for $836.6 million, but the Massachusetts Attorney General?s Office wants conditions placed on the sale that would return excess decommissioning funds to that state?s customers. The NHPUC placed no conditions on its approval, according to Epler, who oversaw the auction process for state regulators. Under state law, the owner is required to return any excess decommissioning funds to consumers, he said. In a letter dated July 31 to the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Energy, Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General Alexander Cochis said Massachusetts customers of the utilities selling Seabrook should receive a proportional share of any excess decommissioning funds just as New Hampshire and Connecticut customers do under the purchase and sales agreement. Unless Massachusetts customers are given a share, Cochis said, the department should not approve the request to sell the plant. Utilities should not benefit from the sale of the plant ?at the expense of Massachusetts customers,? he wrote. The Massachusetts utilities that own a share of Seabrook ? New England Power Co., Canal Electric Co., Cambridge Electric Light Co. and Commonwealth Electric Co. ? filed briefs this week opposing the attorney general?s position. The largest owner, North Atlantic Energy Corp., a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities, the parent company of Public Service of New Hampshire, owns about 36 percent of Seabrook. Other owners include the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative. In New Hampshire, the Office of Consumer Advocate backed the proposed sale. Consumer Advocate Michael Holmes said, ?There?s no question that this is an aboveboard deal.? He said he was comfortable that the auction was widely advertised and the sale price was the best bid. ?We had a legislative mandate to sell Seabrook,? Holmes said. Public Service spokesman Ian Wilson said the sale of Seabrook was part of the deregulation agreement the company reached with the state. ?The sale of Seabrook for Public Service customers means the company will be able to pay down our stranded costs more quickly than originally scheduled. It puts us in a position to lower retail rates sooner for all of our customers,? he said. But one longtime critic of the plant, attorney Robert Backus of the Campaign for Ratepayers Rights, said the state may come to regret Seabrook?s sale. ?It is very fortunate for the people of New Hampshire that we stopped the sale of the fossil plants by Public Service. I hope someday we don?t wish we had stopped the sale of the atomic plant,? Backus said, referring to legislation last year that directed the company to retain its fossil-fuel-burning plants after an energy crisis in California sent the price of electricity skyrocketing there. The architect of the state?s deregulation plan, House Science, Technology and Energy Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, said the sale of Seabrook will further reduce electric rates by an additional 8 percent on top of the 15 percent they have already been lowered. Under the sales agreement, the new owners ? not consumers ? are responsible for the operations and decommissioning of the plant, he said. The sale will also generate about $12 million in state taxes, which will help with the current budgetary problems, said Bradley, who is running for the Republican nomination for the 1st Congressional District seat being vacated by John E. Sununu. The nuclear plant sale produced $300 million more than had been expected when the state and Public Service reached the deregulation agreement that ended years of court and regulatory battles. Search Archives · Copyright © 2002 Union Leader Corp. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 Energy Department to help sick workers This story was published Fri, Aug 9, 2002 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer The Energy Department will help Hanford workers exposed to toxic substances get state compensation under new regulations more friendly to workers than those proposed earlier by the Bush administration. "Under this program, we will help remove bureaucratic barriers that currently confront deserving contractor employees when they seek to obtain state workers' compensation benefits," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. DOE issued regulations for the program Thursday for nuclear workers nationwide. They call for an independent panel of doctors to assess whether exposure to materials such as asbestos, acids or mercury made a worker ill. "This is a positive step forward because people have the potential for a fair shake before a physician panel," said policy analyst Richard Miller at the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group. But he warned that the federal government appeared to lack the legal authority to force the state of Washington to pay worker compensation to ill Hanford workers. It only could order payment if Hanford contractors were self-insured, Miller said. In about half the cases nationwide, he expects workers to be unable to get paid, even though the DOE program has determined that toxic exposures damaged their health, he said. The regulations released Thursday stem from legislation Congress passed two years ago that ordered the government to help workers at Hanford and other nuclear sites file claims for state workers' compensation if they had been exposed to toxic materials. Lawmakers said then that the practice of routinely fighting worker compensation claims would end. The same legislation also offered $150,000 compensation and medical costs for workers with cancer caused by radiation or lung disease caused by beryllium. Those payments would come from the federal government. That federal compensation does not extend to those made ill by chemicals and substances such as beryllium, who instead must apply to the state with DOE's help. Instead those workers would have a disability-based program, and they or survivors could be eligible for medical costs and lost wages rather than a lump sum. Earlier drafts of the regulations for those exposed to toxic materials angered worker advocates. "The Bush administration turned the law completely on its head," Miller said. But under the final regulations, several provisions have been reversed to more clearly reflect what worker advocates see as the intent of the law. A uniform standard for doctors to determine what made a worker ill will be set nationwide that's "comparatively claimant friendly," Miller said. DOE had been considering allowing standards to be set state by state. Contractors would no longer be allowed to fight the medical decision, and the doctors on the panel could reach a majority opinion rather than being required to reach a unanimous decision under the final regulations. In addition, the Bush administration had been considering allowing contractors to be reimbursed for fighting some parts of worker compensation claims, but they will not be reimbursed under the final regulation. "This rule is directed at ensuring that DOE assist as many of those contractor employees, who may have been exposed to toxic substances while working at DOE facilities, as possible in obtaining the state workers' compensation benefits they deserve," Abraham said. The program covers illnesses such as asbestosis, cancers caused by toxic substances including radiation, liver disease, nervous system disorders, noncancerous respiratory or kidney disease, heavy metal poisoning and certain reproductive disorders. About 10,000 workers have filed applications for the programs offering a lump sum compensation for radiation cancer and for the program to help get state worker compensation. An additional 2,700 have filed claims just for help getting state worker compensation. More information about filing claims for either program is available by calling 783-1500 or 888-654-0014. Under the regulations adopted Thursday for exposure to toxic chemicals, DOE will help current and former workers verify employment histories and establish levels of exposure to toxic substances. That information will be referred to the independent doctors' panel for a decision on whether exposure to a toxic substance was a significant factor in causing the worker's illness. If the panel finds in the worker's favor, DOE will help the worker file a claim for state workers' compensation benefits. DOE also will direct the contractor who employed the worker not to contest the parts of the claim dependent on the physician panel's ruling. A bipartisan group of House members is preparing legislation that would take the program a step further, ensuring workers with valid claims would get paid, Miller said. They're proposing that the claims go to the Department of Labor, just as radiation claims do, rather than to state programs. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 6 Commemorating victims of U.S. nuclear tests in Marshall Islands Daily Yomiuri On-Line Kakuya Ishida Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer "I recall the sea being a very deep blue that day, but the sea I see before me now is a clear blue," Matashichi Oishi, a former tuna fisherman, said upon visiting the Marshall Islands for the first time since he was exposed to radioactivity during a U.S. hydrogen bomb test in the area in 1954. Staring out at the Pacific Ocean from Majuro, the capital of the island group, at 6:45 a.m. on March 1 of this year, Oishi, 68, recalled the force of the test bomb blast, which occurred at the same time and the same date 48 years ago, while he was working on a fishing boat off the Bikini Atoll. "The scene remains etched in my mind forever because it altered the light and the shade of the sea," he said. From the end of World War II to the late 1950s, the Marshall Islands, located in the central Pacific Ocean, were the site of a series of hydrogen bomb tests by the United States. Oishi was one of 23 crew members aboard the Japanese fishing vessel Fukuryu Maru No. 5 (Lucky Dragon) who were exposed to radioactivity during the March 1 test. That bomb tested that day, code-named "Bravo Shot," was the largest detonated by the U.S. government in the period. It was about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Oishi visited Majuro in March this year with a delegation from the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo). The council is involved in a project to construct a peace museum in Majuro dedicated to victims of the nuclear tests. The project is being organized by residents of the Marshall Islands with the support of antinuclear groups in Japan. The organizers from the islands includes victims of the nuclear tests, lawmakers and local government heads. This past spring, about 20 Japanese established a group to help raise the approximately 20 million yen needed to build the museum. The group comprises former Fukuryu Maru crew members, atomic bomb victims, peace activists, photographers and others who have been involved in exchanges with residents of the Marshall Islands. It is hoped that the peace museum will not only raise awareness of the plight of test bomb victims in the islands but also serve as a center for exchange programs between local residents and Japanese atomic bomb victims from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The museum is to open on March 1, 2004, the 50th anniversary of the Bravo Shot test. It will be named "Rongelap Peace Museum" in commemoration of Rongelap Atoll, which sustained the most serious damage from the tests. The museum will explain the history of nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. Exhibits will include photos and videos of victims, as well as materials provided by the U.S. government. There will also be a display space dedicated to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A facility attached to the museum will be set up to deal with issues related to health care, education and economic development for residents of the islands. Shared pain Japan ruled the Marshall Islands for 30 years before World War II. After the war, the two countries were linked by their mutual suffering resulting from the U.S. nuclear tests. The crew of the Fukuryu Maru, which was based in Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, were not the only Japanese affected by the tests. Studies later revealed that more than 800 fishing vessels from Japan were contaminated with radioactivity during the period. The United States conducted 67 nuclear tests at The Bikini Atoll and Enewretak Island between 1946 and 1958. The Rongelap Atoll is located about 200 kilometers north of The Bikini Atoll. During his stay in the Marshall Islands, Oishi met a 60-year-old woman, who was exposed to radioactivity on the Rongelap Atoll when she was 12 years old. She is one of 86 former residents of the atoll who were forced to evacuate to other atolls and islands after Rongelap was found to have been contaminated by the U.S. tests. The United States has been working to decontaminate the atoll, but it is uncertain how long it will take before people can resettle there. The woman, who now lives in Majuro, told Oishi that her first child died at age 5 due to a hole in her heart. She herself has thyroid cancer, for which she will have to take medication for the rest of her life. Another woman told Oishi she lost four children due to cancer. "The situation for the victims is almost the same whether they're in the Marshall Islands or Japan," Oishi said. "My first child was stillborn and deformed. I got liver cancer nine years ago and had to have an operation." In 1986, the Compact of Free Association came into effect and the Marshall Islands gained full independence from the United States. However, under the agreement, the United States is still responsible for the defense of the islands. It has an air base on one of the Marshall Islands and also provides financial aid. In 1987, the United States set up the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in Majuro to allow residents of the Marshall Islands to make claims for compensation for health damages and land lost as a result of the nuclear tests. As of 2000, about 1,700 residents had been officially recognized as victims of the tests. According to Bill Graham, a local representative of the tribunal, victims with any of 19 designated diseases, including thyroid and stomach cancer, are eligible to receive 50,000 dollars in compensation. However, the 150 million dollars fund allocated by the U.S. government has already dried up. After the tests, the United States said the contamination was an accident resulting from a change in wind direction. It did not inform people on Rongelap of the tests beforehand. Graham contends that part of the motive for the tests was sinister. "It was an experiment on the human body..." According to Oishi, Japanese fishing crews affected by the radioactive fallout also received little sympathy at home in the aftermath of the tests. "People saw us as a 'plague' responsible for bringing contaminated tuna into Japan," he said. Eventually, the U.S. government offered a lump-sum payout to the affected crews, and, in exchange, the Japanese government went on record as saying there were in fact no Japanese victims of the U.S. nuclear tests. "Each of the former crew members (of the Fukuryu Maru) received 2 million yen as a token of the (U.S.) government's sympathy, but not as compensation," Oishi said. "We were strongly criticized by the people of Shizuoka for receiving what was a huge sum of money at that time. I couldn't stand it so I decided to leave Yaizu and go to Tokyo. I started a dry cleaning business." During his visit to the Marshall Islands, Oishi also observed a gap between victims there who received compensation and those who did not. Those given compensation, he said, have tended to use the money to build houses in wealthier areas, leaving those without the means to do so feeling resentful. Oishi is now preparing to publish a book about his life since the nuclear tests. "Out of the 23 crew members (of the Fukuryu Maru), 11 have already died. All of the others suffer from cancer and liver troubles," he said. "I wish they could have come to the Marshall Islands with me. It was good for me to meet the victims there and renew my determination not to let people forget the tests. I'll never forget the suffering of the victims." Moving ahead with the museum Construction of the peace museum in Majuro is scheduled to start in August next year. The two-story building is to be built out of wood and have a thatched roof. Both the organizers in the Marshall Islands and their supporters in Japan are still working hard to raise the 20 million yen needed to carry out the project. They have launched an international appeal for donations that will run until summer next year. The Japanese side is aiming to raise half the costs. Yayoi Tsuchida, Gensuikyo's member in charge of the museum project, said: "The Marshall Islands have a deep connection to Japan both historically and in terms of the nuclear bomb test victims. It's right for us to pay attention to the Marshall Islands, both when you think of the past and the current situation in which the world has yet to implement a comprehensive nuclear test ban." Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 7 Misplaced radioactive device raises concerns Las Vegas SUN: August 09, 2002 By Mary Manning A radioactive source misplaced for two hours at a local casino during a training exercise raised the concerns of Nevada radiological officials. After Sept. 11 and public fears of a "dirty bomb" made from radioactive materials, such an incident is "a public relations nightmare, not a public health threat," University of Nevada, Las Vegas, health physicist William Johnson said. Bechtel Nevada trainers recovered the device, a radioactive source used to measure the accuracy of monitoring equipment. They discovered the device was missing after they returned equipment to the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and returned to the hotel. Bechtel was conducting a course at Santa Fe Station in how to respond to weapons of mass destruction on July 22-23 for 105 law enforcement and emergency crews, said LeeAnn Inadomi, Bechtel's manager of external affairs and strategic communications. The dime-sized piece of cesium posed no public health threat and the person responsible was not reprimanded, Inadomi said. "The person responsible was asked over and over again if all the sources were accounted for," she said. "Obviously, a mistake was made." When training exercises are conducted at a hotel, the experts keep the keys to a locked storage area, Inadomi said. The source was left behind in a room used for training on July 22. Stan Marshal, chief of the Nevada Bureau of Radiological Health, said that the state has called Bechtel and the National Nuclear Security Administration to fill in the details of what occurred. Bechtel is the contractor hired by the NNSA to manage the Test Site. "In a way, it almost becomes a non-issue," Marshal said, because the source was not found on the street or on the casino floor. "It still is an issue and we have talked to people involved. I believe we have concluded the source was found in a controlled area." The radioactive source is small and does not need a license, field officer Larry Franks in the Las Vegas bureau office said. "A person could eat it and nothing would happen," said Johnson, the health physicist. To put it in context, the radioactive source is a fraction of the 330 millirems of natural radiation Las Vegas residents are exposed to every year from the sun, cosmic rays and local rocks, he said. "It's still a public relations nightmare with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the fear of a 'dirty bomb,' " Johnson said. There are small radioactive sources everywhere, including construction sites and universities, that do not need a permit, Johnson said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reported about 170 radioactive devices from laboratories, universities and construction sites missing and unaccounted for through 2001. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 8 Three families in Jefferson County sue over well-water contamination stltoday BY TIM ROWDEN Of the Post-Dispatch 08/10/2002 09:07 PM Three families whose drinking wells were contaminated with chemicals from a shuttered nuclear fuel plant in Jefferson County have sued Westinghouse Electric Co. and the previous owners of the plant. The suits, filed this week in Jefferson County Circuit Court, allege that the companies knowingly deposited and released radioactive and chemical wastes at the plant site. The suits seek unspecified damages and name Westinghouse, its parent company, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., ABB C-E Nuclear Power, Inc., and the plant's founder, Mallinckrodt chemical company, as defendants. The plant, in Hematite about 35 miles south of St. Louis, opened in 1956. It was used to fill military contracts and later manufactured nuclear-fuel-rod assemblies for commercial power plants. Westinghouse stopped production at the plant last year. Company spokesman Vaughn Gilbert said he had not seen the suits and could not comment on them. The suits name as plaintiffs three of six families whose wells this year were found to be contaminated with the chemicals, trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene and their byproducts. The chemicals were used as cleaning agents at the plant in the 1950s and 1960s and have been linked to cancer and other health problems. Clarissa Eaton's family is among those seeking damages. The discovery of the chemical contaminants in her family's drinking water turned Eaton, who lives in a subdivision southeast of the plant, into an overnight activist. She is working to organize a community action group to monitor cleanup efforts at the plant. "We want to make sure they're doing their jobs," Eaton said. "Because we're going to be the ones that are going to be left here." Westinghouse paid to have filters installed on the contaminated wells and has installed a series of sentry wells to monitor the spread of the contaminants. *Reporter Tim Rowden: E-mail: trowden@post-dispatch.com Phone: 636-931-1017 * /Aug. 9, 2002, 11:04PM/ *Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle* Federal environmental officials are recommending that residents call its toll-free hot line for answers about cleanup efforts at an abandoned building in Webster filled with radioactive materials. Recent publicity about the problem prompted several dozen calls to the agency from citizens, said Cynthia Fanning, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "We believe the site is secure and the materials are contained. And we do not believe it imposes an immediate public health threat to nearby residents," she said. For 20 years, Gulf Nuclear of Louisiana Inc. manufactured radioactive materials in the building at 202 Medical Center Blvd. as well as another facility at 9302 Tavenor near Hobby Airport. When the company filed for bankruptcy in 1992, it performed some cleanup at the Hobby Airport site, but virtually none at the Webster location. Cleanup work is now under way at both sites and officials expect the cost -- some money coming from the federal Superfund -- to reach $8.5 million. ***************************************************************** 10 Boxer Pushing for Stricter Cleanup at Santa Susana lab Los Angeles Times - latimes.com August 9, 2002 THE VALLEY * Environment: During Chatsworth visit, U.S. senator says she will continue to urge Boeing and federal agencies to adopt tougher standards at Santa Susana lab. By ANDREA PERERA, TIMES STAFF WRITER U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer paid a visit on Thursday to a Chatsworth couple's home, where she fielded questions and discussed concerns among neighbors of Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory, the site of an ongoing cleanup of radioactive and chemical waste. The Democratic legislator used the informal meeting at the home of George and Eleanore Rembaum to assure residents that she would continue pushing Boeing, Rocketdyne's parent company, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen cleanup standards at the lab. "I'm going to be all over this and continue to be a thorn in their sides," said Boxer. Through the years, Boxer has urged federal regulators to impose stringent EPA standards for cleanup of the hilltop lab, a former nuclear power development facility that is still used for Department of Defense-sponsored rocket engine and missile testing. In May 2000, Boxer asked then Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to prepare a comprehensive environmental review of the site. The department decided on an environmental assessment of past and ongoing cleanup operations that would be conducted by a panel of government experts. But Boxer has maintained that the scale of the cleanup and the severity of the contamination warrant a full environmental impact statement, which would include analysis of methodology and standards and would allow for public involvement in the process. Residents and community leaders are concerned that too much contamination remains in the lab's soil, posing a long-term threat to Rocketdyne workers and neighbors. A decision on what type of environmental review will be undertaken is expected later this year. Boxer has also asked EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman to ensure that the Rocketdyne cleanup is consistent with her agency's own standards, which are more rigorous than those established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Whitman informed Boxer in a letter in May 2001 that the EPA was prepared to provide a thorough survey of the site. But residents of the area told Boxer they worry because these issues remain unresolved. "We can't understand why they would be so reluctant to go by EPA standards," said Barbara Johnson, a resident of Susana Knolls and member of the Rocketdyne Clean Up Committee. Boxer listened as other residents and former Rocketdyne workers talked about how they believed the cancers they had contracted through the years may be directly related to their proximity to the lab. "You don't need a degree to see that people are getting sick near the site," Boxer said. But officials at Rocketdyne said that the lab does not pose a safety or health threat to its neighbors. They said the cleanup should be completed by 2007 or 2008. All but three of the 28 facilities formerly used for nuclear testing have been removed, said Steve Lafflam, Rocketdyne's director for safety, health and environmental affairs. Lafflam said he believes current cleanup standards "are protective of public health." But he said Boeing would abide by stricter standards if necessary. He said the company's main goal is to finish the cleanup as soon as possible. Lafflam said to do the kind of environmental review that Boxer is advocating would delay operations by three or four years. Those attending Thursday's meeting said they would join with Boxer in continuing to push for stricter cleanup standards at the lab. Jeanne Londe, an 81-year-old Reseda resident, told the senator that for the first time in the 13 years that she's been active in the contamination issue, "I feel some hope." Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 11 US proposed Antarctic as atomic tomb Monday August 12, 2002 By ALISON HORWOOD American scientists planned to bury the world's radioactive waste under the ice in Antarctica, declassified documents reveal. The waste was to be put in containers, which would melt through the ice until they hit rock and became entombed. But the proposal 30 years ago for a high-grade nuclear dump met with New Zealand opposition. It got as far as the 12-nation Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research before it was quashed. The documents, which include New Zealand's response, were declassified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade this week and filed in the National Archives. The plan was hatched by Professors Edward Zeller and Ernest Angino, of the University of Kansas, who wanted to embed waste in a solid glass matrix. Left on the ice in containers, the waste would sink a metre a day. Containers would take five years to reach the underlying rock, where they would remain frozen for a million years. The professors said America's nuclear waste would increase tenfold by 2000, and there was no permanent way to dispose of it. It stayed radioactive for 250,000 years, and to prevent it boiling it had to be stored in permanently cooled containers constantly monitored for leaks and temperature change. Central Antarctica was ideal, they said, because it was a remote, almost international territory that was naturally cooled. The proposed dumping area was bounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, Pole of Inacessibility and Filchner Ice Shelf. Sabotage or interference could be ruled out because it was "as far from the centres of human civilisations as you could get", they said. In July 1973, the New Zealand Ambassador to Washington, the late Lloyd White, wrote to Foreign Affairs in Wellington urging the secretary to think carefully about a response. Since 1943 America had accumulated 300,000 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste, he wrote. It was kept in cooled containers while the Atomic Energy Commission looked for a permanent site. Mr White called the American safety record "undistinguished". Since 1944 there had been 14 reports of leaks involving 1300 tonnes of waste. "These accidents highlight the need for more reliable methods of storage." He said the Antarctic Treaty - which New Zealand had signed - would not allow the scheme, but Professors Zeller and Angino believed there was scope for amendments in legislation. Mr White also said the plan had prompted debate among scientists, some claiming it would "trigger a series of catastrophic events", melting the icecap and therefore increasing the sea level by 5m to 25m and contaminating the Antarctic Ocean. The file contains letters from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Institute of Nuclear Sciences and the NZ Atomic Energy Committee calling the idea deficient and saying it should be treated with caution. ©Copyright 2002, New Zealand Herald ***************************************************************** 12 Majority want to continue Yucca fight Don Cox [dcox@rgj.com] RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL 8/9/2002 12:26 am A majority of state residents say Nevada should continue to fight the planned Yucca Mountain radioactive waste dump, a new poll shows. The Reno Gazette-Journal/News 4 survey shows support for the battle is stronger in Washoe County, although the desert repository is located in southern Nevada, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. In the statewide poll of 600 people, 55 percent said they want Nevada officials to keep fighting, with 38 percent opposed and seven percent not sure. In Washoe County, where 607 people were questioned, 61 percent said they back continued anti-dump efforts, with 25 percent opposed and 14 percent not sure. In Clark County, where residents are much closer to Yucca Mountain, 52 percent of those surveyed said they want the state to continue attempts to stop the project, 42 percent said the state should cease efforts and six percent weren’t sure. The survey was conducted after President Bush signed legislation in July authorizing the project. Gov. Kenny Guinn said Thursday he plans a court battle over the federal government’s plan to store 77,000 tons of the country’s most radioactive nuclear garbage inside the mountain. “Our best chance is in court,” Guinn said in an interview “We always knew that.” The statewide poll by a Maryland-based firm, Research 2000, was taken July 22-24. The Washoe County survey by the same company was done July 18-19 and July 22-24. Bush approved the project on July 23, allowing the Department of Energy to seek a license for Yucca Mountain from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “I don’t have anyone telling me not to fight,” said Guinn, who noted the percentage of people supporting the battle may have dropped after Congress passed Yucca Mountain legislation and Bush signed it. Pollster Del Ali, president of Research 2000, shares the theory. “I would suspect that support (for fighting the project) was probably a lot higher a year ago,” Ali said. “But (the poll) also shows Nevadans aren’t happy about it.” Men surveyed statewide were almost evenly split, with 47 percent favoring fighting, 48 percent opposed and five percent not sure. For women, it was 63 percent to continue the battle, 28 percent to stop and nine percent not sure. In Washoe County 56 percent of men said they favored continued efforts to stop the dump, 31 percent opposed and 13 percent weren’t sure. For women, it was 66 percent backing the fight, 19 percent opposed and 15 percent not sure. Eric Shriver, 54, a Reno resident and gas station cashier said the project is inevitable because of federal money already spent on the project. “They’re not going to let all those billions go to waste,” he said. Reno-based accountant David Turner, 60, said the fight should continue, but with a different goal in mind. “The fight shouldn’t be to make Yucca go away but to get compensation for Nevada as a result of the dumping,” Turner said. “If they don’t fight, there is nothing to compromise.” Bill Vasconi of Las Vegas also wants the state to stop fighting and start making a deal with the federal government to get something, possibly millions of dollars in research and benefits, in exchange for storing the country’s high-level nuclear waste. “I think we ought to be investigating avenues of benefit for the state of Nevada,” said Vasconi, retired after working 15 years at the Nevada Test Site, where the U.S. used to explode nuclear devices and in a corner of which Yucca Mountain is located. Vasconi, co-chairman of a group called the Nuclear Waste Study Committee, started by Las Vegas businesses, claims Nevada is wasting millions of dollars continuing to fight Yucca Mountain. “I think we’re spending good money after bad right now,” he said. Bob Fulkerson, executive director of the Reno-based Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, a political action group that opposes Yucca Mountain, looks at money spent fighting the project as a “great investment.” Fulkerson points out the dump still needs regulatory approval, which could take a long time. “We have a number of arrows in our quiver,” Fulkerson said of the battle. Reno rancher Guy Betten, 38, agreed that continued, active opposition is a good idea. “There are a lot of issues that haven’t been addressed,” Betton said. “For instance, they have to drive through all the cities and there are risks involved such as spilling.” But former Nevada governor Bob List, now a Las Vegas-based advisor to the nuclear power industry, sees continued resistance as futile. “I think it’s true that Nevadans still don’t want it,” List said of the nuclear dump. “There has been a massive shift toward recognition of reality.” List said the poll, along with asking whether the state should continue fighting, should also have asked whether the state should try to make a deal for the dump. “If people had been asked whether we should begin to ask for benefits and protection money, you would have had an equally strong ‘yes’ to that,” List said. Bob Loux, head of the state’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, claims its impossible to make a deal that sticks, with the federal government. Loux says Congress can render any pact void by eliminating funding or changing priorities. “You’re left holding the bag,” he said. Bill Phillips, who spent 25 years as a safety manager at the Nevada Test Site, claims storing nuclear waste in the desert makes sense. Phillips, who works with List, also says it may be too late for the state to make a deal. “It’s the law,” Phillips said of Yucca Mountain legislation. “They don’t have to give us anything now.” © Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett ***************************************************************** 13 Molycorp focusing on clearing out, not fixing up site O-R Online | [http://www.observer-reporter.com] Friday, August 9, 2002 BY CHRISTIE CAMPBELL THE OBSERVER-REPORTER [chriscam@observer-reporter.com] Molycorp Inc. is the largest property owner in Canton Township's planned economic revitalization zone near the Jessop Place exit of Interstate 70. But those hoping to hear the company's plans for the property were disappointed when company officials said Thursday they are concentrating only on remediation of the site. And that, they said, could take as long as five years. Allen C. Randle, Molycorp's vice president of operations from Questa, N.M., said the company's goals are only to remove the 24 buildings and clean up the site. "At this point, we haven't planned beyond that," he said in response to Supervisor Chad Smith's question of whether the company had any ideas for the site. "I guess I expected to hear from you folks more than just the timeline for the remediation plan," said Supervisor Emil Stanish. As did others who attended the meeting called by the township's economic development advisory committee, including Washington County commissioners J. Bracken Burns and Diana L. Irey; county planning director Lisa Cessna; Rich Galway, community development director with the redevelopment authority; representatives from the offices of state Reps. Leo J. Trich Jr., D-Washington, and Victor Lescovitz, D-Midway; state Sen. J. Barry Stout, D-Bentleyville; U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown; and township planners and business leaders. Molycorp is removing low-level radioactive waste from its property under guidelines set by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state Department of Environmental Protection. The company produced molybdenum, a substance used to strengthen steel, during the 1960s. A Brazilian ore used in the process produced low-level radioactive waste, much of it used as backfill on the site. In addition to cleaning up the soil, Molycorp is demolishing all the buildings on its property. A decision to close the business permanently was made at the end of 2001. Project manager George Dawes said 80 percent of the buildings now are gone. The office on Caldwell Avenue will eventually be razed and all that will remain is an office trailer at the site. Dawes is the last Molycorp employee in Washington. Canton put together its advisory committee about 18 months ago to entice new industry into the former industrial valley. Smith reviewed the goals of the committee, which include developing the 330-acre site in five phases, hopefully to create good-paying jobs. From the beginning, the committee has involved representatives from the county and other municipalities, believing the development is a regional asset. Smith noted that in addition to Molycorp, other companies in the area such as Ferro Industries, Allegheny Ludlum and Falcon Plastics, have supported the plan. And though Molycorp has no immediate plans, Randle promised the company would work with the economic committee to develop the Molycorp site. Molycorp, a subsidiary of UNOCAL, has converted depleted oil fields to mixed residential-type developments in other areas, he said. [http://www.observer-reporter.com/INTERACT/about.html] ***************************************************************** 14 Demo Congressional Hopefuls to Make Yucca Site an Issue The Salt Lake Tribune -- Saturday, August 10, 2002 BY MIKE DEL MURO PROVO -- The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada may be a done deal for Congress, but two Democratic congressional candidates want to make it an issue in the Nov. 5 election. Nancy Jane Woodside, the Democratic 3rd Congressional District challenger, fired the first shot this week, claiming incumbent Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, "sold the farm" and got nothing in return for his district when he voted to deposit the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev. People in the East "get the jobs and the energy and all we get is to be the garbage bucket," said Woodside at a news conference in Provo announcing the endorsement of local and state firefighter associations. The development of Yucca Mountain as a storage site for nuclear waste received congressional and presidential approval earlier this year. It is estimated that as much as 90 percent of the nuclear waste will be shipped through Utah if the facility is built there. A temporary storage facility for nuclear waste also is planned on the land of the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute Indians west of Salt Lake City. Cannon defended his vote, saying that storage of the waste in Yucca Mountain ensures that it won't be dumped in Utah. That is the same reason why Utah Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, as well as retiring 1st District Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, voted in favor of locating the facility at Yucca Mountain. Last month, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the approval of Yucca Mountain made the Skull Valley facility unnecessary. But the consortium of nuclear waste companies proposing the Skull Valley project has said it will continue with its plans regardless of the status of Yucca Mountain. Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson was the only member of Utah's congressional delegation to vote against the Nevada facility. He said Tuesday the fight to stop Yucca Mountain is not yet over. Woodside and Matheson said that if Yucca Mountain is built, firefighters and emergency units should be trained and receive enough federal money to be able to respond to a nuclear accident or terrorist attack during transportation of the waste. Cannon said funding and training already will be provided by President Bush's homeland security plan. Matheson's Republican opponent, John Swallow, said he also would have voted against the Nevada storage facility but because of state's rights issues, not for safety or environmental concerns. "With it being in Nevada, Nevada should have had a real vote on the issue," said Swallow. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 15 Envirocare Fails In Bid to Join Initiatives Debate The Salt Lake Tribune -- Saturday, August 10, 2002 BY JUDY FAHYS Envirocare of Utah tried and failed this week to angle into the Utah Supreme Court case over the Radioactive Waste Restrictions Act, a proposed law that will not be on Utah ballots this fall even though more voters signed onto it than any other initiative in the state's history. It was the radioactive landfill company's first open effort to derail the waste-curbing tax law and one of several key maneuvers this week in the constitutional tussle over the state's citizen-lawmaking powers. A flurry of legal briefs were filed before Tuesday's deadline. Justices have the rest of August to make a final ruling but they resolved two side questions this week: * Should the state Legislature be allowed to defend the constitutionality of the citizen-lawmaking process it has devised? The court said yes. * And, should Envirocare be invited to the debate? Without explanation Wednesday, the court said no -- tossing out Envirocare's request to join the litigation. Envirocare had suggested the court would be wasting its time reviewing the state initiative law because, in Envirocare's view, the Radioactive Waste Restrictions Act is "patently unconstitutional." If the court rules on the initiative law, Envirocare said "the Court will be expending its judicial capital on an exercise which is designed to ultimately determine if an unconstitutional initiative should be submitted to the electorate, only to be inevitably stricken down either by the state or federal courts upon its passage [if such occurs]." Arguing that the proposed waste law would put them out of business if enacted by voters, lawyers for Envirocare suggested that the Radioactive Waste Restrictions Act is similar in effect to a package of Utah laws a federal court judge struck down last month. In that case, Judge Tena Campbell said Utah could not, through legislation, block storage of high-level nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation. Envirocare has operated a 640-acre landfill for low-level radioactive waste in Tooele County for more than a decade. Campbell's ruling, lawyers for Envirocare argue, proves that state law must adhere to fair-business principles and cannot punish Envirocare any more than it could legally stop spent-fuel storage. The justices were more accommodating to the Legislature. They welcomed the Legislature's request to detail why it believes the state's initiative law is constitutional. The law came under fire this summer after the state Elections Office denied the waste initiative a place on ballots for the November election, despite having verified that 95,975 registered voters signed petitions saying they wanted an opportunity to vote on the initiative. At issue before the Supreme Court is the Election Office's two-pronged test, developed by the Legislature, for placing a citizen initiative on the ballot. Petitions must be signed by 10 percent of the number of registered voters who voted in the past gubernatorial election, and the 10 percent threshold must be achieved in at least 20 of Utah's 29 counties. The Radioactive Waste Restrictions Act, backed by the Utah Education Association, garnered almost 20,000 more signatures than it needed to pass the statewide number test. But a minimum number of signatures was gathered in only 14 counties -- six short of the geographic distribution hurdle, which lawmakers devised to prevent Wasatch Front voters from dominating rural voters. In court papers, attorneys for the Legislature argue that proponents of the Waste Restrictions Act "threaten to subvert the Legislature's constitutional authority, threaten to disrupt the integrity of the initiative process that the Legislature created in statute, and seek to void the Legislature's intent." Proponents of the initiative, however, argue the initiative process has the opposite -- and equally unfair -- effect of giving a rural voter's signature more weight than an urban voter's. Although proponents want the court to order the Radioactive Waste Restrictions Act onto ballots this fall, it is unclear whether the court will act soon enough. fahys@sltrib.com © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 16 Company donates uranium mining land to state CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - The state Board of Land Commissioners has accepted a company's donation of 2,461 acres in the Shirley Basin. The land donated by Petrotomics Company, a subsidiary of ChevronTexaco Company, is about 30 miles north of Medicine Bow and 40 miles south of Casper. The land was once used for uranium mining but has not been mined since 1977. The Office of State Lands and Investments estimated the land is worth $250,000, or $100 per acre. The tract includes filled-in, open-pit uranium mines that were reclaimed by the Abandoned Mine Land Division of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality between 1986 and 1993, according to board documents. Petrotomics is still transferring its mill site, encompassing 1,500 acres in the same area, to the U.S. Department of Energy for long-term study and monitoring. Harold Kemp, acting director of the Office of State Lands and Investments, said that has far as he knows the land presents no liability to the state. Petrotomics representative Mike Franco told board members he understands why they are curious the company wanted to donate the land. He explained that three oil companies bought the land in 1959. The land was then owned by a succession of companies. Mining ended in 1977 and the company closed its uranium and milling operation in the mid-1980s. The land then "sat there," he said. While one of the landowners wanted to walk away from the property, he said, the land was reclaimed and has been used for recreation and grazing and by wildlife. One of three reservoirs on the land, the 100-acre Walker Jenkins Lake, is a state fishery stocked by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. The lake was once an open-pit mine that was reclaimed under an Abandoned Mine Reclamation project. "If there were any problems with the land it would have shown up over the last 18 years," Franco said. Evan Green, head of the Abandoned Mine Land Division, said the division spent $13 million reclaiming uranium mines in the Shirley Basin, including the land being donated by Petrotomics. Besides getting the land, the state will also get all mineral rights, water rights and improvements to the property. The land is adjacent to 840 acres of state land currently used for grazing by the Q Creek Land and Livestock Co. The acquisition will also provide access to about 1,000 acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management land that has no legal public access now. ***************************************************************** 17 Senator Questions Nuclear Plant Cleanup (washingtonpost.com) Hinting at Coziness, Grassley Seeks Memos Between Energy Dept. and Lockheed By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, August 10, 2002; Page A03 A Senate Republican yesterday demanded extensive records of the Department of Energy's dealings with contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., questioning whether "cozy relations" were impeding a government probe of alleged fraud and environmental abuse at the agency's Paducah, Ky., uranium plant. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, was the second senior lawmaker in as many days to publicly question the department's handling of the cleanup at Paducah, a nuclear-fuel plant that became the focus of a federal probe three years ago this month. Although the department has acknowledged extensive environmental damage at the Kentucky plant -- and even issued an apology to workers -- it has not decided whether former plant operator Lockheed Martin should be held financially responsible. A Justice Department decision on whether to join a whistle-blower lawsuit against Lockheed has been delayed for more than two years, in part because the department has withheld its opinion on the merits of the case. The lawsuit alleges that Energy Department contractors misled workers and the government about environmental contamination at the plant, built in 1952 to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. "I am troubled by the possibility that there may be a subtle effort underway at the Energy Department to slow or even sideline" the government's intervention in the case, Grassley wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Too often, he wrote, "I have seen agencies place a premium on cozy relationships with their contractors . . . over and above the need to protect taxpayers." Grassley asked Abraham to turn over three years' worth of documents and memos between Energy officials and Lockheed. Similar concerns were raised in a letter Thursday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee. Waxman noted ties between Lockheed and the Bush administration -- Vice President Cheney's wife, Lynne V. Cheney, is a former Lockheed board member -- as well as the contractor's reputation for lobbying and political giving. "If a corporation has indeed caused this terrible harm at Paducah, it would be outrageous to force the public to pay the bills three times over -- first for contract fees, second in suffering the harm and third for the cleanup," Waxman wrote. The Energy Department yesterday promised to review the lawmakers' concerns. "We are carefully considering all points raised and seeking the views of all parties," department spokesman Joe Davis said. Lockheed Martin has declined to talk about the specifics of the whistle-blower case, but spokeswoman Meghan Mariman said yesterday that the company has cooperated fully with government investigators. "We believe the case has no merit," she said. The apparent ambivalence over the whistle-blower case stands in sharp contrast with the department's decisive steps in launching a $1.3 billion cleanup and assisting ailing workers. On Thursday, Abraham announced changes intended to make it easier for workers to qualify for payments. "Employees of DOE contractors have performed important work for their country," Abraham said in announcing the rule changes. "Even though they may have worked for a government contractor, these dedicated individuals are our workers, and we are going to take care of them." © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 18 Australia accused of swaying Pacific into accepting nuclear waste Radio Australia News - [http://abc.net.au/ra/news/] [http://abc.net.au/ra/news/] The environmental lobby group Greenpeace says Australia is playing "divide and conquer" with Pacific states to get them to accept the shipment of nuclear waste in the region. Since the 1970s, Japan has transported waste from its nuclear reactors to Britain, using shipping routes which pass through the exclusive economic zones of several Pacific states. Fiji's Greenpeace coordinator, Ang Heffernan, says she expects the Australian government to use its influence at next week's Pacific Islands Forum in Suva to ensure the transport of nuclear waste continues. Australia has its own interests at heart. It provides Japan with its nuclear shipments for its nuclear reactors. So it's not in its interest to ensure that shipments do not go through the region. It's divide and conquer: take out the weak links and ensure that you've go the major support. So that come to the Forum, they can work certain countries against each other. 10/08/2002 16:00:11 | ABC Radio Australia News ***************************************************************** 19 LES lowers its proposal for 2003 rate increase Lincoln Electric System has lowered its proposed 2003 rate increase to 5 percent and postponed its effective date by three months after settling litigation that changed its power cost calculations. A public hearing on the proposed rate increase will be held Aug. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Walter A. Canney Service Center, 2640 Fairfield St. On July 31, LES and the Nebraska Public Power District signed a settlement agreement on lawsuits involving Cooper Nuclear Station. A subsequent analysis showed a planned 6 percent rate increase on Jan. 1, 2003, could be reduced to a 5 percent increase effective April 1, 2003, said Terry Bundy, LES administrator and CEO. The net effect for calendar year 2003 will be a 4.5 percent increase, he said. The Lincoln utility's last rate increase was in 1994, Bundy said. Since then, the number of LES customers has increased 19 percent and energy use has risen 31 percent. "The rate increase will help support new generation and the continued building, maintenance and improvement of facilities to meet the needs of our customers," Bundy said. Even with a 5 percent increase, rates will only be a few percentage points higher than in the mid-1980s, Bundy said. "The last nationwide study of electric rates in 106 cities showed that LES' rates remain in the lowest 10 percent of the country," Bundy said. Meanwhile, Nebraska Public Power District is predicting a 6.6 percent wholesale rate hike for all of its electricity customers. The proposed hike is due primarily to increased costs at the Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville, said Dennis Grennan, vice president for customer service. The hike would generate an additional $24million a year to be used mostly for expenses at Cooper, Grennan said. The utility's board is expected to vote on the proposal in December after discussing the rate increase with customers, NPPD spokeswoman Marcia Cady said. The increase is expected to be approved, she said. Copyright © 2002, Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved. This content may not be archived or used for commercial purposes without written permission from the Lincoln Journal Star. 926 P Street Lincoln NE 68508 402 475-4200 ? feedback@journalstar.com ***************************************************************** 20 Group loses challenge on Millstone fuel storage* Associated Press August 09, 2002 *WATERFORD ? Two anti-nuclear groups lost their challenge to a fuel storage plan at the Millstone 3 nuclear power plant.* The Coalition Against Millstone in Connecticut and Long Island, N.Y., had argued that Millstone 3 should not be allowed to store more radioactive fuel in its spent fuel pool. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Thursday rejected that contention. The groups claimed that a missing fuel rod incident at the Millstone 1 plant proves the plants' operators are not running the Millstone nuclear power complex safely. The board said it is closing its inquiry into the issue, calling the missing fuel rod incident "a product of unusual circumstances" in its 23-page ruling. The board said Millstone 3 operators have demonstrated their ability to locate spent fuel and related tasks. Nancy Burton, the lawyer representing both groups in the suit, said they will appeal. "Millstone committed the most serious breach of public trust when it lost accountability of two deadly spent fuel rods," Burton said. Millstone 3 got approval from the board in October 2000 to store up to 1,860 spent fuel bundles in the pool, which looks like a 40-foot-deep L-shaped swimming pool. Water in the pool is cold and laced with boron to suppress a nuclear reaction. The old license allowed the company to store up to 756 bundles. After the ruling, Millstone operators installed more racks in the pool to accommodate the additional fuel rods, said Pete Hyde, Millstone spokesman. "It's good news," Hyde said of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board's decision. "We felt all along that we had the appropriate controls in place to ensure the fuel was safely stored." Millstone asked to increase capacity in the pool so that it could store more fuel while it waited for the federal government to prepare the Yucca Mountain national storage site in Nevada. The Coalition Against Millstone got the board to revisit the issue after details came to light about two fuel rods that were missing from the Millstone One plant. The rods have not been found, but an investigation determined that they were likely mistaken for other radioactive waste and shipped to licensed storage dumps. In June, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fined the plant's owner and operator, Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, $288,000 for violating regulations. The rods went missing while Northeast Utilities owned the plants. NU agreed to pay the fine. /©New Haven Register 2002/ ***************************************************************** 21 A-Bomb was a Mistake, if not a Crime Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 01:33:08 -0500 (CDT) "A Mistake and A Crime," Boston Globe (August 6, 2002) by James Carroll "I MADE ONE great mistake in my life," Albert Einstein admitted, ''when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made...'' The letter was brought to the president in the fall of 1939, within weeks of the beginning of the war. Einstein and other scientists were worried that Hitler had embarked on an atomic bomb project, which is why Einstein's comment continued, ''... but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them.'' (My source for this quote, and inspiration for this column, is Martin J. Sherwin's milestone book, ''A World Destroyed.'') Motivated by an urgent impulse to achieve the atomic weapon before Hitler, a collection of the world's most brilliant physicists went to work. The first self-sustaining chain reaction was created at the University of Chicago in December 1942, but then, unknown to the scientists, a strange thing happened. Winning the race against the Nazis stopped being the paramount concern. As the policy chiefs of the Manhattan Project began to see exclusive possession of the bomb as a source of tremendous diplomatic power, they recognized its potential as an unprecedented political check on the Soviet Union after the war. The bomb had a new, if as yet unadmitted, purpose. In November 1944, the United States discovered that Germany's atomic program was embryonic: There was no real threat of a Nazi bomb. Sherwin suggests that this crucial intelligence may have been kept from the Los Alamos scientists ''in order not to dampen their enthusiasm.'' By this point in the war, there was no longer any real danger of an Allied defeat, yet the Manhattan Project proceeded with more urgency than ever. The policy chiefs had an eye as much on a post-war rivalry with the Soviet Union as on the endgame with Germany and Japan, which gave them a whole new motive for using the bomb as soon as possible. Today marks the anniversary of the American atomic bomb falling on Hiroshima. The unfinished debate about whether that attack, and the subsequent bombing of Nagasaki, were justified has always focused narrowly on the question of the war with Japan. Didn't the atomic bomb, in effect, spare the lives of all the leathernecks and GI's who would otherwise have landed on the beaches of the die-hard island nation? What else could Truman have done? These questions have stymied the American conscience, making it impossible to seriously reckon with that crossing of the nuclear threshold, which in turn inhibits our moral reckoning with our present nuclear arsenal. But what if the invasion of an all-but-defanged Japan was, and remains, a red herring? What if, just as the Nazi threat fell by the wayside, the Japanese threat was not the real issue by then either? What if, by the summer of 1945, the overriding purpose of the atomic bomb was not to end a conflict against Japan, but to control the shape of an anticipated conflict with the Soviet Union? What if it was not Emperor Hirohito we were mainly trying to terrorize, but Premier Stalin? Not a last shot against the Axis powers, but a first shot against the Kremlin? In war and politics, there are never one-factor answers to complex questions. In truth, the atomic bomb was a last shot and a first shot both. The point of my asking is simply to suggest that, as a people insisting on a narrative in which Hiroshima marked the end of a conflict instead of the beginning of one, we have given ourselves a pass on a far more troubling question. If we used the nuclear weapon as much to send a signal to the Soviet Union as to end World War II, then all the wickedness unfolding from that use - not only the arms race, but the demonic new idea that national power can properly depend on the threat of mass destruction - belongs to us. If Saddam Hussein wants weapons of mass destruction for the sake of the strategic diplomatic power they will give him, he is playing by rules written in Washington. There are two ways to use the nuke - as a source of world destruction, and as a source of world power. We did the former at the end of World War II, which was the exact beginning of the Cold War. We have been doing the latter every day since. And why should Hussein not want to imitate us? The bombing of Hiroshima was a great crime. That the United States of America has yet to confront it as such not only leaves the past with unfinished business, but undercuts the possibility of present moral clarity about the exercise of American power and leaves the earth's future tied to a fuse that we set burning 57 years ago today. ***************************************************************** 22 A sailor's photos of Nagasaki By CHRIS BARRON August 9, 2002 It was a scene of lifeless devastation. The once-bustling Japanese port city of Nagasaki lay before them, now in ruins. And eerily quiet. For the sailors aboard the Navy destroyer USS Ammen, it was a moment of overwhelming awe. Nearly five weeks had passed since the United States dropped the second atomic bomb Aug. 9, 1945, and the Ammen was the first U.S. ship to pull into the devastated city's harbor. Ray Tee, a wide-eyed 18-year-old machinist's mate third class, pulled out his camera to record what he and his shipmates' were seeing. He kept snapping photos after he and other crewmembers were allowed to go ashore and see the devastation up close. Even today, Tee whispers and looks around furtively as he explains how he had a camera with him aboard his ship. "It was illegal as hell," he said, explaining how the military forbid servicemen from taking photographs during World War II. "I wasn't supposed to have that camera. I put it in my sea bag when I went overseas." Tee, 75, who lives in Bremerton, Wash., took his photos with a Kodak Brownie using 127 film. They were among the first taken by an American following the dropping of the bomb. Once off the ship, Tee continued on with his camera. Considering the Japanese had surrendered exactly one month earlier, no one seemed concerned about him taking photographs. "That's the last thing anyone was worried about," he said. Until he attended the first World War II Kamikaze Survivors Reunion in May in Everett, Wash., Tee said he had never even thought about his Nagasaki photos. Once the Ammen returned to Hawaii, Tee mailed the undeveloped film back home. When he got home from the war in 1946, he looked at them and put them away. "They were in a little tin box with some Japanese occupational money and some jewelry I traded for cigarettes in the Philippines," he said. Tee said he has rarely even mentioned to anyone he was in Nagasaki, not even to his children. "I didn't want to get into any controversy," said the soft-spoken Tee. "I'm not the type of person who tries to change someone's mind. I suppose I was like some of the Vietnam veterans who didn't want to talk about it because of the stigma that was involved with it." Originally, the city of Kokura was designated as the second U.S. target, but a haze from the Hiroshima bomb dropped Aug. 6 prevented proper sighting. Instead, the "Fat Man," as the second atomic bomb was nicknamed, was dropped at 11:02 a.m. Nearly 70,000 of the city's 270,000 people died from the impact or radiation effects by the end of 1945. The sailors who toured the area were given no protection when they left their ship. "We couldn't even spell atomic back then, much less know what it was," Tee said. "Nuclear fusion? What's that? We didn't know what we were walking around in. They didn't let us know." (Contact Chris Barron of The Sun in Bremerton, Wash., at http://www.thesunlink.com.) The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 Pugwash scientists seek end of nuclear weaponry SignOnSanDiego.com > General conference makes first S.D. visit By Bruce Lieberman UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER August 9, 2002 In 1957, when a small group of scientists met in a tiny Nova Scotia village called Pugwash to talk about how to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the Cold War was at its coldest. Five years later, the United States and the Soviet Union, locked in a battle of wits over missiles in Cuba, came their closest ever to nuclear war. Those dangers seem remote today, but new ones have replaced them in a world destabilized by the collapse of the Soviet Union, regional conflicts in South Asia and international terrorism. Today in La Jolla, the 52nd Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs will welcome 260 scientists from 60 countries searching for ways to defuse the world's most harrowing threats. This meeting, opening on the 57th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, is the 52nd general conference the group has held in 45 years. An unprecedented number of sessions are open to the public, including panels about ongoing animosities between nuclear powers India and Pakistan, immediate threats of bioterrorism and the political divide between the Islamic world and the West. But this meeting, the first held in the United States since 1989 and the first in San Diego, will draw from the expertise of some scientists based here. Richard Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography will speak about the implications of global climate change. UCSD researchers Mark Thiemens and Larry Smarr will speak about the latest research to quickly detect and manage bioterrorist attacks. Thiemens, an atmospheric chemist, has turned his attention in recent years to the perils of biological and chemical terrorism. Today's threats are in many ways more menacing than they were during the Cold War, because the enemy, his weapons and his motivations are less clear. But Pugwash scientists, outspoken activists for nuclear disarmament for nearly half a century, say nuclear weapons still pose the greatest threat to humankind. "With the end of the Cold War, people thought we would have the end of the nuclear threat," said Joseph Rotblat, emeritus professor of physics at the University of London and one of the founding members of Pugwash. Frightening confrontations between India and Pakistan late last spring reminded the world of the nuclear arsenals that still could kill us all, Rotblat said. The possibility that poorly guarded nuclear weapons in Russia could fall into the hands of al-Qaeda, meanwhile, is very real, he said. Pugwash scientists say they are particularly concerned by suggestions this year from the Bush administration that the United States would consider using nuclear weapons in its fight against terrorism. Also alarming, they say, is the U.S. rejection in June of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty. "We really are very much concerned with terrorism and it's certainly a threat, as are biological and chemical weapons, but the real threat is still nuclear," said Ruth Adams, who helped organize the first Pugwash conference in 1957 as an editor for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which invented the "Doomsday Clock" in the 1950s. During Pugwash's early years, critics blasted it for its anti-nuclear views, calling its members Communist spies, Soviet sympathizers or, in the best of circumstances, dupes. "It took some courage for people to go to these meetings openly, and to discuss things openly with their counterparts during the Cold War," Adams said. "We never were sympathetic to one or the other regime," Rotblat added. "We are concerned about the prevention of a catastrophe that will affect everybody. Our aim was how we could remove that danger." Since they first met in 1957, Pugwash scientists say they have played important roles in nuclear disarmament treaties and other agreements to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. Among them: the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1997. In 1995, the Pugwash Conferences and Rotblat shared the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the decades of work to reduce the threat of nuclear war and abolish nuclear weapons. "I think some of the credit for the fact that there has been no nuclear war certainly should go to Pugwash, for our efforts to bring sides together and talk sensibly," said Rotblat, who quit the Manhattan Project in protest after learning of U.S. intentions to use the atomic bomb as a Cold War weapon and not just to end World War II. The founding members of Pugwash had no illusions that they alone could persuade a rapidly arming world to abandon nuclear weapons. But in July 1955, British Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell articulated their ambitions in a manifesto signed by 10 world-renowned scientists  including Albert Einstein, two days before his death. Its closing words are as relevant today as they were 47 years ago: "There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death." Bruce Lieberman: (619 )293-2836; bruce.lieberman@uniontrib.com © Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 24 Searching for lost souls / Photojournalist finds new hope for Hiroshima Daily Yomiuri On-Line Asami Nagai / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer "I strongly urge (U.S.) President (George W.) Bush to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki...to observe this human legacy and confirm with his own eyes what nuclear weapons hold in store for us all." Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba made this statement in a peace declaration he delivered Tuesday, the 57th anniversary of the bombing of the city, due to increasing concerns over nuclear armament. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," he said. Akiba's worries are echoed by photojournalist Tsuneo Enari, who laments the fact that the remains of the city's famous A-bomb Dome only observes the aftermath of the blast. As little evidence of bombing remains in the city today, Enari struggled to visually capture the agony he feels is lingering in the city. For 17 years, he searched for the souls of the dead, culminating in the photograph collection Hiroshima Bansho (Sleeping Souls of HIROSHIMA). The book's first image, a black-and-white photogram of the familiar A-bomb Dome, contrasts sharply with the image that follows it, a conceptual shot of fallen red camellias, which represents the bomb's hypocenter. In the center of the image, young weeds symbolize hope for a new life. The book strays from representational shots that suggest direct connections with the bomb. "There were deaths everywhere in Hiroshima, but today, we have no sense of what happened there," Enari said. "Fellow journalists have asked me what I hope to accomplish during my repeated trips to Hiroshima." Enari's objective is simple: to pass the memory of the sins of humankind in the 20th century to the next generation. "We must always remember that nuclear power was once used as a weapon," Enari said, adding that 13 of the 33 accounts published in Japanese by A-bomb survivors have been translated into English so the experiences of the survivors can be shared with people all over the world. One of the people Enari interviewed, Shizuko Yamamoto, who lost her father at the building known today as A-bomb Dome, described the horrible spectacle of the dome as "like a giant ghost." She told him that, on the second night after the bombing, she saw a vision of a fire ball gently wafting about the darkness of her home. Then 19, Yamamoto, who was expecting her father to return from his job in the building, realized the fire ball had risen from her father's body the moment after he had died, and started to cry. Eventually, her brother, who also worked in the building but was not there at the time of the bombing, died of complications linked to radiation exposure. "Because both of them worked in the building...and my father's remains were found there, I consider the A-bomb Dome as a kind of gravestone," she said. Enari has been obsessed with the city for more than 40 years. As a university student, he first came across celebrated photographer Ken Domon's Hiroshima, a book of photos whose images of ghastly scars and keloids on victims' limbs and faces, in addition to the torn city, left him speechless. "Everything was so real in the book," Enari said. "Since then, Domon's works have been central in my photographic ambitions and I've always harbored a desire to shoot Hiroshima the way I see it." Although Enari went freelance in 1974 after a 12-year stint as photographer at a Tokyo newspaper, he did not travel to Hiroshima until much later in his career. "I had no personal connection with Hiroshima, such as relatives or close friends," Enari said. Growing up in Kanagawa Prefecture, Hiroshima was remote both geographically and psychologically. "Hiroshima is not my town and I don't think anyone should visit Hiroshima unaware of its significance. So, I was probably intimidated," he said, explaining the challenge to a reporter in covering the city. In the end, it took him 11 years to muster up the confidence to visit the city. Enari finally arrived there on Aug. 6, 1985--the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. "It was a hot day," Enari said. "I saw oleander flowers in full bloom but, obviously, no signs of an atomic bomb blast." The contemporary landscape of Hiroshima is similar to that of any city with a population of 1 million. Despite beliefs that plants would not grow in the area for 40 to 50 years, the city is lush with greenery and full of energy. Enari began interviewing victims to document what happened the day of the blast. The more people he met, the more he realized it was impossible for the survivors to forget their painful memories. "There were many people who broke down right in front of me. I get teary eyed just remembering the way they would tell me their stories," he said. Wanting to visualize their memories, Enari wandered in the city endlessly and began to sense the presence of the dead. As a result, ordinary street scenes, the bubbling of a river, scarlet blossoms, even a small bicycle left in an alley, became inspirations for the photographer's beautiful conceptual images. === Enari's road to Hiroshima Enari began photographing war-themed subjects in 1978, when he traveled to California to photograph Japanese women married to U.S. war veterans. When he completed the project, Enari planned to visit northeastern China--which was known as Manchuria during Japan's occupation before and during World War II. According to the central government, more than 2,700 Japanese have been reported as being war-displaced in the area. Those believed to have been Japanese nationals were young people abandoned in China during the postwar turmoil. Most of them were adopted into Chinese families. For Enari, who was 9 years old when the war ended, and who belongs to the same age group as the war-displaced, their misfortune was not someone else's problem. In 1981, Enari took part in efforts by Japanese citizens to find their long-lost children and siblings who, if alive, would have been in their late 30s and older. In Daian and several other cities, Enari witnessed countless adults, dressed in typical moss-green Mao shirts, desperate to find their family members and learn their histories. "They even asked me for my business card," Enari said. "I can imagine how desperate they were to connect with Japan. Most of them were unable to speak a word of Japanese." This visit changed the way Enari looked at the war. "Despite the atrocities committed by the Japanese military during the war, Chinese people graciously adopted the children of their enemies," Enari said. "Postwar Japan strived for economic growth, which has made people materialistic, but we haven't learned from the past." He visited China several times to photograph the people and landscape of northeastern China. "Each time I finished a book, I would get such an enormous feeling of accomplishment," he said. "After experiencing Manchuria, where Japan instigated the war, I needed to go to Hiroshima to document the other side of that period of time." Enari chose Hiroshima as a symbolic place that is directly connected to the end of the war, but his thoughts and condolences for victims in Nagasaki also are included in his Hiroshima work, he said. Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 25 Nagasaki mayor slams U.S. N-policy Daily Yomiuri On-Line Yomiuri Shimbun Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito denounced U.S. nuclear policy Friday at a ceremony to mark the 57th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city. It was the first time a mayor of the city has criticized the United States by name in an annual Peace Declaration. At a ceremony held at the Nagasaki Peace Park, which is close to ground zero, Ito also criticized government officials over comments that Japan might reconsider its three nonnuclear principles. "International tensions have been heightened (since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States) by the ensuing attacks against Afghanistan and the intensified strife in the Middle East, as well as military clashes between India and Pakistan that have threatened to develop into nuclear conflict," Ito said in the Peace Declaration during the ceremony. Ito also denounced the United States for recent policy decisions, including unilaterally withdrawing from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and refusing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). "Other concepts, such as the redeployment of many warheads subject to deactivation according to the Strategic Offesive Reduction Treaty with Russia, also run counter to the disarmament efforts of the international community," the mayor said. "We are appalled by this series of unilateral actions taken by the government of the United States, actions also being condemned by people of sound judgment around the world." Ito went on to express indignation over comments by government officials that the nation may reconsider its three nonnuclear principles of not possessing, producing or allowing nuclear arms on Japanese soil. "(The comments) stabbed at the hearts of Nagasaki citizens," he said. "As the only nation ever to have sustained nuclear attack, Japan should stand at the forefront of nuclear arms abolition." The mayor then insisted the three nonnuclear principles should become law to clarify the nation's policy of not relying on the "nuclear umbrella." Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said in his speech at the ceremony that the government would maintain its policy of holding fast to the principles. Bells rang out to mark the start of the ceremony at 10:45 a.m., and three books listing the names of 2,564 people who died in the past year of illnesses said to be linked to the atomic bomb were placed on a podium in front of a memorial statue. Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 26 America releases a Seawolf troop into oceans Pravda.RU 11:30 2002-07-30 According to a special information bulletin circulated by the Russian Shipbuilding Agency among directors of military shipyards, America is actively building more and more nuclear-powered vessels. Russian military shipbuilders read information about activity of American colleagues with sadness: it turns out that US’s shipbuilding is experiencing a real boom. The rate with which America builds nuclear submarines can’t be compared with Russia’s. It is rather paradoxical but Americans financed liquidation of Russian nuclear subs with ballistic missiles provided within a so-called Nann-Lugar program, but at the same time the USA itself is expanding the nuclear threat. By the way, it is for the first time that information for high-ranking authorities compiled on the basis of open materials published in the foreign press is not classified as secret at all in Russia. It used to be classified in Russia some time ago. Wasn’t it done for Russian shipbuilders not to envy success of the USA in the sphere? Production of nuclear subs of Los Angeles, Ohio, Virginia classes has become more active in the USA recently. Two shipbuilding giants, Newport News (Newport) and General Dynamic’s Electric Boat Division (Groton, Connecticut) are operating now at their full capacity, with practically the same effectiveness that Russian shipyards did in the Cold War era (six battle nuclear subs were produced every year then). And now, America has come up with Russia and practically left it behind. Newport News can build up to four battle nuclear submarines per year. The first launching of a Seawolf class submarine with the same name took place in July 1997. Designing of this class of submarines started in the mid 1980s for fighting the most powerful threats on land and at sea. Seawolf’s main objective was liquidation of Soviet nuclear submarines with ballistic missiles on board before the latter venture to attack American targets. Soviet nuclear subs were the most dangerous weapon in the intercontinental war arsenal. That is why order for construction of the first sub of a new class, Seawolf, was made in 1989 already. Seawolf subs were supposed to gradually substitute submarines of a Los Angeles class. However, the need in submarines of this class died away with the end of the Cold War, moreover, cost of the sub was too high. And it was decided to suspend the program in favor of smaller and cheaper submarines of a Virginia class. Seawolf (SSN21) was launched in 1997, the second submarine of this class, Connecticut (SSN22), was built in 1998; both are identical in their construction. The Seawolf submarines are more manoeuvrable than Los Angeles subs; production technology of the sub has been simplified due to a compartment construction. Designers even provided for a space for further upgrade of the equipment and armament. Seawolf became America’s first nuclear submarine with a 108 meter hull made completely of HY100 steel (HY80 steel was mostly used with the previous models). The innovation allows the submarine to dive to the depth of up to 610 meters, and even under Polar conditions. Seawolf’s propulsive system is based upon a GE PWR S6W reactor, two 52,000 horse power (38.8 thousand kWh) turbines, a water engine and a secondary motor designed for diving. Designers paid special attention to noise reduction: Seawolf is ten times quieter than even improved Los Angeles submarines; that is why the tactical velocity is twice as much and makes up 25 knots. The maximal velocity is 35 knots. The Lockheed Martin BSY-2 battle control system is based upon more than seventy of Motorola’s 68030 processors. Ratheon Mk2 system is designed for fire control. No weapons are placed outside the submarine. The sub is equipped with Tomahawk class missiles made by Ratheon; the missiles can be used for offensives on land and at sea. Tomahawks for land offensive have the radius of 2,500 km. Tercom’s passive navigation system directs a missile flying with transonic speed to the targets placed at a height of 20-100 meters. Tomahawks can be equipped with warheads, but there are usually none on board. Seawolf is also equipped with Boeing’s anti-ship missiles of a Harpoon class; they use an active radar for pointing a warhead with the weight of 225 kg, and distance to the target may reach 130 km. Seawolf has eight outcomes for launching missiles or torpedoes which number may be about 50 aboard. ADCAP’s torpedoes Gould mk-48 can attack ships and speedy submarines with deep diving. Warhead mass makes up 267 kg. Another, the third sub of Seawolf class (SSN23) named after President Jimmy Carter was launched in December 2001. At the same very time Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in launching of a Gepard class submarine at the Sevmashpredpriyatiye enterprise in Severodvinsk. The Russian submarine was successfully delivered to the place of its regular service, but its American rival was soon sent for modification for its better maneuverability under water and more space for missiles. According to America’s original plans, 45 submarines of a Seawolf class were to be built. Moreover, the USA planned to equip the submarine fleet with different modifications of Seawolf, but the whole question turns on money: one Seawolf costs $4,2 billion, at the time when one Los Angeles costs $800 million only. At the same time, it is an open secret that America’s military budget is speedily increasing, that also means, the USA will keep on building more and more submarines. A question arises then: was it right that Russia took America’s financing for liquidation of its submarines when they could be successfully modified and serve for 20-30 years more? Vitaly Bratkov PRAVDA.Ru Translated by Maria Gousseva [http://pravda.ru/main/2002/07/29/44838.html] ***************************************************************** 27 August: The heroic and tragic month for the Russian Navy Pravda.RU A tragedy happened on board the Russian K-122 submarine 22 years ago August of 1980 was the time, when the whole Soviet Union was rejoicing about the success of the Soviet athletes at the Olympic Games,which Moscow hosted at that time. Needless to mention that such bad news like a breakdown on board a nuclear cruiser was not a good thing to expose to the public eye"> + A tragedy happened on board the Russian K-122 submarine 22 years ago August of 1980 was the time, when the whole Soviet Union was rejoicing about the success of the Soviet athletes at the Olympic Games,which Moscow hosted at that time. Needless to mention that such bad news like a breakdown on board a nuclear cruiser was not a good thing to expose to the public eye--> ¹ Aug, 09 2002 PRAVDA.Ru is the first of the Russian media outlets to publish the details of the breakdown, which happened on board the Soviet nuclear sub 22 years ago. August is both a heroic and tragic month for Russian submariners. The first Soviet nuclear sub K-3 was built in the city of Severodvinsk 45 years ago, so, today is the official day of the Russian nuclear fleet. However, there is another anniversary coming up – the day, when the nuclear cruiser Kursk sank in the Barents Sea. The Hero of the Soviet Union, rear-admiral Vadim Berezovsky said that August 12th could be considered the day, when the Russian nuclear fleet died: it is unreal to wait for its revival. There is another tragic event, about which PRAVDA.Ru decided to report. The breakdown on board a nuclear submarine happened exactly 22 years ago, that event was classified as secret for many years. Kursk file has been closed. Today we are opening another tragic page in the history of the Soviet and Russian nuclear submarines. August of 1980 was the time, when the whole Soviet Union was rejoicing about the success of the Soviet athletes at the Olympic Games,which Moscow hosted at that time. Needless to mention that such bad news like a breakdown on board a nuclear cruiser was not a good thing to expose to the public eye. St.Petersburg journalist Vladislav Samborsky described the tragic event in detail. Nuclear submarine K-122 (659T project) was added to the nuclear arsenal of the Russian Navy in July of 1962. After it came back from a regular active service, the submarine was put in a dock for repairs, the crew went on vacation, but an unexpected order changed all that very quickly: it was ordered to prepare the sub for travelling into the sea. Everything was prepared in a hurry, which had its consequences afterwards. K-122 went into the sea with the new command in July of 1980. The commander of the sub was G.Sizov, the chief assistant - lieutenant commander G.Garusov. After the forced crossing of the Korean Gulf, K-122 took the place of another submarine, K-151, which was going back to the base. K-122 went to its patrolling area around Okinava island. The ignition of the hydroacoustic station on August 19 was like an overture to the tragedy. The central compartments of the sub were filled with smoke. Individual protective devices were carried over there from rear compartments, and stayed there afterwards. The situation with fire was taken under the strict control, though. The ignition was liquidated very soon, the command decided to ventilate the sub from under the water. The tragedy started on August 21. The crew were practicing their “struggle for life” classes, which were over with unsatisfactory marks. Everyone had supper in the evening, and then it was decided to continue with the training. When they were practicing the order to shift the overload from the turbogenerator of one board to the other, a flap was heard in the seventh compartment, puffs of smoke started filling the compartment up. A flame of fire about five meters long came out of the turbogenerator. This compartment was adjacent to the control console of the main powerplant, there were eleven people in there. It was vital to take urgent measures, but the command was lingering. A submariner died over smoke poisoning. The central command post finally allowed the evacuation of the crew from the emergency compartment to the adjacent one. It took eight minutes to make such an important decision, and the fire reached regeneration cartridges and moved over to the fuel of the emergency diesel generator. The compartment was doomed, freon could not cope with the fire alone. Smoke was gradually coming into the fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth compartments. The emergency system of reactors was activated and the submarine stopped. There was a serious threat of radioactive danger. The commander made a decision to go up to the surface. When it happened, it was decided to evacuate the crew of the eighth compartment onto the superstructure, but it was not successful due to the excessive pressure inside the compartment. The strongest submariner tried to remove the rack gearing with a hammer, but he soon fell down dead, having breathed in too much of smoke. The same attempts were made in the ninth compartment, there were nine people in there. The gas pollution in the sub was increasing, but there was a lack of individual protection means, since the devices were carried over to the central compartment. Warrant officer Belevtsev managed to open the front lids of the torpedo tube in absolute darkness, without any protection device. This allowed to smooth the pressure out, but the warrant officer died over smoke poisoning. The hatch of the eighth compartment went finally open, 48 people went onto the deck, two of them were unconscious, nine people were already dead, five were missing. The situation with the sub was going worse and worse, there was no electric power, so it was impossible to report about it to the command. Mobile radio stations were helpless, the crew used signal flares. The English vessel Harry came up to the submarine soon, which was a great help to K-122. The English helped the Soviet submariners with food and water, they also helped to transmit a SOS message to Moscow and to Vladivostok. Then the English ship went away, having reported the whereabouts of the Soviet sub to Americans and Japanese. The fire on the sub was going on, so the crew had two major goals to pursue: not to let the submarine sink and to secure the nuclear plants. The commander offered the only correct decision for that moment: to descend to the reactor compartment from the superstructure and to stop the reactor manually. It was very hard work, but they eventually succeeded. Japanese helicopters appeared in the sky at daybreak, the silhouette of American aircraft could be seen on the horizon too, a Japanese destroyer came into the picture soon after. It seemed that the submarine could be captured. The Meridian training ship came up to the submarine, which took the bodies of nine dead submariners on its board, as well as the majority of the crew. Those, who remained on the deck of the submarine, started searching for their missing friends, they were doing their best to extinguish the fire as well. The submarine was taken to Pavlovsky Harbor several days afterwards. Three other nuclear submarines of the Northern Navy died under the similar circumstances: K-8 in 1970, K-219 in 1986, K-278 in 1989. K-122 lost 15 people in total, one of them died over a heart attack at home. The special committee at first determined that the crew was guilty of the fire on board the submarine, but then it was found out that the reason of the ignition was a constructive flaw, which was found on all other submarines of the same project. On the photo: K-122 submarine. The picture was taken from a foreign ship near Okinava island Vitaly Bratkov PRAVDA.Ru Severodvinsk Translated by Dmitry Sudakov ***************************************************************** 28 Get A Grip: Nevada Test Site and later fallout deaths prove that there must be a better way* Kingman Daily Miner - *News* News Column By Abbie Gripman Miner News Editor My mother-in-law remembers. She remembers being herded out of class when she was a very young student at Palo Christi Elementary School in Kingman. She remembers the jostling crowd of students being marched up the hill behind the school and told to watch the northern sky. Four hundred miles north, at the Nevada Test Site, an atomic bomb was exploded while dignitaries watched from a 'safe' distance. The explosions became a spectacle for residents in towns for hundreds of miles around. In Kingman, schoolchildren watched from a hilltop and townspeople wandered outside or sat in lawn chairs to see the awesome sight of the massive, billowing mushroom cloud. As they watched, the incessant desert wind blew around them. During the 24 Operation Plumbob blasts in 1957, maps of the radioactive clouds released by the tests show the cloud sweeping over vast swathes of Mohave County within 72 hours of six blasts held in May, June, August, and September. The clouds traveled across the country and around the world, spreading contamination as they went. As certain as soldiers these innocent watchers were unknowingly drafted for war. In the years following the blasts residents who lived downwind starting getting the diagnosis: cancer. They were diagnosed with cancers including leukemia, myeloma, lymphomas, breast cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, and ovarian cancer. Soon they started to die. Sons and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins. They started to die. They are still dying today, these 'downwinders.' A tragic consequence of the Cold War. Congress voted to compensate some of the sick and the families of some of the dead under the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The act and a 2000 amendment allows for compensation of $50,000 to downwinders or their families. But there are criteria that must be met, including geography. To be eligible for funding the downwinder must have lived or worked in certain Nevada, Arizona and Utah counties for at least two years between 1951 and 1958 or the entire period between June 30 and July 31, 1962. The downwinder also must have one of 20 types of cancer covered in the bill. The counties list oddly excludes Mohave County. In fact, a map of the specified counties seems to skip right over Mohave County. The designated areas are: the Utah counties of Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane, Millard, Piute, San Juan, Sevier, Washington and Wayne; the Nevada counties of Eureka, Lander, Lincoln, Nye, White Pine, and parts of Clark County; and the Arizona counties of Apache, Coconino, Gila, Navajo and Yavapai. Messages left with the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program offices in Washington, D.C., to ask how the counties were selected, were not returned. A government report released earlier this year estimates that radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests conducted worldwide during the Cold War likely caused at least 15,000 U.S. residents born after 1951 to die. These figures reinforce my belief that there has to be a better way. There has to be a smarter way for countries to live together on the same planet without sending death on the wind, a way without bullets and bombs. We're supposed to be a smart, progressive, mighty nation. But it seems to me that we're not being very smart in how we view conflict and resolution. We fall back on the time-honored traditions of kill or be killed without really pushing for a better solution. We pass up opportunities for greatness in favor of ongoing participation in the corporate war game. The downwinders remind us that war has many different kinds of casualties ? whether or not they are reimbursed for their pain. Many years ago I traveled to the Nevada Test Site. There I found out that there are many thousands of other people who, like me, think there has to be a better way. We rallied and protested for two days while FBI agents frantically took pictures of all the 'crazies.' Our impact was probably little more than an annoyance for the government. But then, as now, downwinders were dying. I think they'd appreciate it if we all tried to find a better way. Friday, August 9, 2002 at 08:00 JST WASHINGTON ? A group of American peace activists and Japanese atomic-bomb victims gathered in Washington on Thursday to mark the 57th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and renewed their commitment to rid the world of nuclear weapons. "As long as I'm alive, I'll speak out against the horror of nuclear weapons," said Masao Morihara, a 76-year-old man from Fuchu, Hiroshima Prefecture, who attended the memorial service. Morihara and other participants in the peace rally, held to coincide with the Japan date of the anniversary of the Nagasaki A-bomb attack, vowed to work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons in the world and world peace. A similar memorial service was held in Washington on Monday to mark the anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. (Kyodo News) ***************************************************************** 33 Y-12 protester sent to prison for trespassing By Jamie Satterfield, News-Sentinel staff writer August 10, 2002 Calling it a "privilege," John Patrick Liteky pleaded guilty Friday to federal trespassing charges, making him the first protester to be sentenced to prison since authorities upped the stakes for activists targetting the Y-12 nuclear plant in Oak Ridge. U.S. Magistrate Clifford Shirley sentenced Liteky to 60 days in a federal prison, to be followed by one year of supervised probation, for his admitted trespassing at the Y-12 plant Sunday as part of an annual protest. Liteky's plea, which was part of an agreement he entered with the U.S. Attorney's office, came at a hearing that was supposed to serve as a detention proceeding at which Shirley would have been asked to decide whether to free Liteky on bail while he awaited trial. But Friday was also the anniversary of one of two events remembered in Sunday's protest. On Aug. 9, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, just three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. The bombings hastened the end of World War II and marked the first and last time the United States military used nuclear warfare against an enemy. Liteky noted the Nagasaki bombing when he entered his plea, saying he was "privileged to plead guilty to the terrible crime of trespassing." Liteky was the only protester among the more than 200 gathered outside the Y-12 property Sunday to commemorate the bombings in Japan who crossed onto federal property. At a similar protest earlier this year, four protesters were arrested for climbing over a metal barricade onto the Y-12 property. All four were charged with a federal crime, a departure from the previous practice on the annual protests. In years past, protesters who crossed onto the Y-12 property were charged through state court, where the toughest penalties handed out for the misdemeanor offense were a fine and community service work. After Sept. 11, however, the U.S. Department of Energy went on heightened alert and persuaded authorities to prosecute trespassers for federal violations. A federal trespassing conviction can bring up to a year in prison. Of the four protesters arrested in April, one pleaded guilty but was not ordered to serve any time behind bars. The three others were convicted after a trial in June but will not be sentenced until September. Ralph Hutchison, who coordinates the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, called Liteky a "shining example of a person of conscience who lives what he believes." Jamie Satterfield may be reached at 865-342-6308 or Satterfield@knews.com. Copyright 2002 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 34 No word on DOE plan, budget This story was published Fri, Aug 9, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer The Department of Energy's national accelerated cleanup plan and its revised 2003 budget remain in behind-the-scenes limbo. Details of both were expected to be made public Thursday, but no new information was available from DOE's Washington, D.C., headquarters. This is the second time in a week that information failed to materialize. DOE headquarters staff said it was unknown whether revised 2003 budget figures and the accelerated cleanup plan went to the federal Office of Management and Budget. That information was due to OMB by Thursday, according to DOE's schedule. The OMB is President's Bush budget-writing agency and submits the budget request to Congress. Meanwhile, the headquarters staff said details on its nationwide accelerated cleanup plan "would be released at an appropriate time." No date has been set. However, DOE's initial cleanup budget figures for fiscal 2004 through fiscal 2008 calculations will be completed by Sept. 9, according to D.C. headquarters. DOE's two Hanford offices submitted their acceleration proposals -- with the state's and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's blessings -- to DOE headquarters July 24. If Hanford gets the $433 million in proposed acceleration money, that means the U.S. Senate, House and DOE agree to allocate $1.893 billion to Hanford for 2003 -- if DOE headquarters doesn't significantly change its plans. Impatient with DOE's lack of final figures, the Senate wants to split Hanford's proposed $1.893 billion with $761 million going to the Richland office and $1.132 billion going to the Office of River Protection. DOE and the House have not publicly said how they want to split the money. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 35 Expert group from US Department of Energy inspects nuclear production plant near Krasnoyarsk Pravda.RU 13:33 2002-08-06 Another five experts from the US Department of Energy have started inspecting the mining and chemical plant located in the restricted town of Zheleznogorsk in the nearby Krasnoyarsk. Experts will inspect the plant's schemes to register, control and secure the nuclear materials stockpiled there. Pavel Morozov, the head of the facility's PR department, said on Tuesday that "this is a routine inspection," which would be held in compliance with a Russo-American intergovernmental agreement signed in October 1999 on the monitoring of weapons-grade plutonium production at the plant. The thing is that the Americans are no longer producing weapons-grade plutonium, while the Siberian facility cannot but produce it because the facility's reactor is simultaneously supplying heat and electricity to the 100,000-population town. Another two reactors were shut down in the 1990s, the last one will be closed in 2006, when an alternative power source for Zheleznogorsk is constructed. The Russian side in conjunction with the Americans, who will also cover part of the expenses, are creating a joint command centre, which will replace separate posts monitoring nuclear storage facilities. In addition, it has been decided to equip the plant with a special radio cable, which will improve communication within the plant whose facilities are located deep under ground, which hampers the use of regular radio communication systems. The Americans are expected to leave the Russian production plant on August 10th. © RIAN ***************************************************************** 36 Friedel Sellschop, pioneer of nuclear physics, dies Johannesburg Mail&Guardian Online Professor Friedel Sellschop, a world leader in the field of nuclear physics died peacefully at his Johannesburg home on Sunday, the University of the Witwatersrand said. In a media statement on Monday the university said the 72-year-old emeritus professor's most remarkable nuclear discovery was the first proof of the existence of the neutrino -- a sub-atomic particle -- in nature. University representative Martha Molete said Sellschop was equally well known for pioneering the field of diamond physics. He exploited the unique properties of the nearly perfect diamond lattice to produce and study the highest energy photons ever generated in a laboratory. Sellschop thought of a diamond as a "messenger from the deep". This poetic description is apt because a diamond is a chemical and physical "prison" for material from the earth's mantle 200km below the surface and from 2,5-billion years ago when the diamond was formed. Sellschop and collaborators unwrapped the hidden geochemical secrets contained in diamonds, known as inclusions. His later research was into diamonds' high tech applications. Although he officially retired in 1996 he never stopped working, and had nine patent applications registered at the time of his death. Born in Luderitz, in what is now Namibia, in 1930, he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree by the University of Pretoria, a Master of Science by the University of Stellenbosch, and a PhD in nuclear physics by the University of Cambridge. In 1956 he was the founding director of the Nuclear Physics Research Unit which is today the Schonland Research Institute at Wits University. He later became the first holder of a chair in nuclear physics in South Africa. His numerous positions at Wits included Dean of the Faculty of Science and later deputy vice-chancellor of research from 1984 to 1996. He was a past president of the Royal Society of South Africa, and the South African Institute of Physics, and was scientific adviser to Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Minister Ben Ngubane. Sellschop leaves his wife Sue, his sons Richard and Jacques and daughters Ingrid and Celia. - Sapa NATIONAL NEWS | ***************************************************************** 37 Earth fuelled by nuclear reactor, says study THE TIMES OF INDIA INDIATIMES THE SUNDAY TIMES [ SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2002 12:10:03 AM ] A five-mile-wide ball of uranium and plutonium acting like a giant nuclear reactor at the centre of the Earth is the source of the energy that sustains life, according to controversial new research. The natural reactor generates the Earth?s magnetic shield, which protects the planet from bombardment by deadly particles from the Sun. It also provides the energy that powers volcanoes and the movement of continental plates. If true, the theory would overturn current ideas of what lies at the heart of our planet. They suggest the Earth?s core contains a huge ball of solidified iron and nickel surrounded by a molten mantle. The new theory would also bring the Earth?s life to an end far earlier than previously forecast. Instead of lasting up to four billion years, the planet will die in just two billion years as the reactor runs out of fuel, cools and the protective magnetic shield is dissipated. The study, by scientists at the US Department of Energy?s Oak Ridge Laboratory, looked at the radioactive elements given off during volcanic eruptions. They also designed a sophisticated computer model of how a reactor at the Earth?s core might behave. "We found strong evidence that 4,000 miles beneath our feet the Earth?s core contains a fast-neutron breeder reactor made of uranium and plutonium, a type that can regenerate new fuel for itself. What?s more, such a reactor would have a life similar to that of the Earth," said Marvin Herndon, the Oak Ridge researcher who presented the findings at a recent conference of the American Geophysical Union. Herndon and his collaborator, Daniel Hollenback, say the theory explains mysteries that have baffled experts. One is the way the Earth?s magnetic field is generated. Some theories suggest it derives from flows of molten iron around the core, others that it comes from some cooling mechanism. The Oak Ridge research says such theories cannot explain why the Earth?s north and south poles appear to "flip over" every 200,000 years. Under their theory, the reactor would undergo cycles of activity at the end of which the poles would naturally switch positions. The researchers suggest that similar reactors could lie at the heart of other planets, too, and that this could explain why Jupiter, among others, radiates nearly twice the energy it receives from the Sun. Some of the strongest evidence for the theory comes from lava spewed up from deep beneath the ocean bed near Hawaii and Iceland. It contains relatively high levels of helium-3 an isotope formed only during fission reactions. It had been explained as a leftover from the formation of the Earth but Herndon?s calculations show that the ratios in which it occurs can only be explained by an underground reactor. The researchers believe the five-mile-wide ball of uranium has been operating as a nuclear reactor for about 4.5 billion years with an output of about 4m megawatts. Some scientists are sceptical. Kathy Whaler, professor of geophysics at Edinburgh University, said she stuck to the traditional view that the Earth?s core was slowly cooling: "I am doubtful of this new theory. I would be extremely surprised if there were enough radioactive elements to produce a reaction." Herndon said: "One huge implication is that the nuclear reactor will run out of fuel. When it does, the magnetic field that protects us will die -and so will we." *****************************************************************