***************************************************************** 05/11/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.121 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: Nuclear emergency planning bill ripped 2 UK: Let's really go nuclear 3 Norway buys uranium from Russia NUCLEAR REACTORS 4 US: FirstEnergy may buy reactor lid 5 New Brunswick Power refit likely to drive up rates 6 US: FirstEnergy may buy reactor lid 7 US: Report: Man with criminal background hired at nuclear plant 8 Number of nuclear malfunctions increases in Ukraine 9 Chernobyl Gets Glowing Reviews NUCLEAR SAFETY 10 US: Feds Warn on 'Trucking Terrorists' 11 US: Radiation accident training given NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 12 US: Government Reversal Adds to Rift in South Carolina 13 Caribbean ministers concerned over nuclear shipment 14 Confronting a nuclear and present danger: The Editor briefing: 15 US: Yucca fight ended two years ago 16 US: Decision on Goshute N-waste delayed 17 US: State's Nuclear shipments would rise 18 US: AU: Mine cleared but leaks may happen again 19 Russia, US fail to resolve Taiwan's nuclear waste issue 20 US: Residents challenge waste site 21 US: Lunch Bunch Week 1: Plutonium In S.C. 22 US: Anti-Yucca drive takes in $257,000 23 US: NRC to hold public meetings on Yucca 24 Russia, US fail to resolve Taiwan's nuclear waste issue 25 US: DOE Delays Plutonium Shipments to South Carolina 26 US: Historic vote on Yucca full of drama 27 US: Skull Valley: Water Hazard 28 US: Question of 'Orphan' Nuclear Casks Raised 29 US: Sense on nuclear waste 30 Kyrgyzstan: Nuclear Waste Fears 31 US: Residents rip Cotter 32 US: Parks nuke cleanup set for completion in 2007 33 US: Group: State's Nuclear shipments would rise NUCLEAR WEAPONS 34 Tough Bomb Materials Treaty Expected 35 UN Nuclear Chief Sees Treaty Soon 36 Russia: Moscow, U.S. Form Radioactive Materials Office 37 US: Test site training center may get boost 38 Analysis: 'Axis of evil' capabilities 39 NDA says nuclear tests raised India's esteem News Home 40 Rumsfeld Says Iraq Still Building Deadly Weapons 41 Nuke indifference breeds suspicions abroad 42 Tough Bomb Materials Treaty Expected 43 Nuclear war feared in South Asia, says report - 44 Rumsfeld Says Iraq Still Building Deadly Weapons News US DEPT. OF ENERGY 45 Experts at Flats in wake of delay 46 Bunning DOE safety amendment approved OTHER NUCLEAR ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Nuclear emergency planning bill ripped The Rutland Herald Online - May 11, 2002 By DAVID GRAM The Associated Press MONTPELIER — The state’s emergency management director is sharply criticizing a bill that would boost funding for disaster planning around the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, saying it’s not enough. And that director, Ed von Turkovich, said in a memo to a key lawmaker that the two top people involved in the disaster planning program “will find other work” rather than move to the Brattleboro area, as the bill would require. Von Turkovich has acknowledged since well before nuclear emergency planning became a top issue following the Sept. 11 attacks that the funding for the program has been inadequate. He said so in his memo to Sen. Susan Bartlett, D-Lamoille, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in some of his strongest language yet. Legislation included in budget bills passed by both the House and Senate calls for the $400,000 a year paid toward emergency preparedness by Vermont Yankee to be increased to $800,000. Von Turkovich pointed to past analyses showing that the program actually requires about $1.2 million dollars a year, and that the shortfall has been made up for years by contributions from the Health, Public Safety and other departments of state government. He wrote to Bartlett that the Radiological Emergency Response Program fund “does not cover the expenses related to the program and will not at the current funding level proposed.” He said the program is “in trouble, grossly under-funded, under-resourced and has been for years.” There’s been a major push from Windham County lawmakers this year to move more of the program’s funds and focus to the emergency planning zone. The radiological disaster program currently is run from the emergency management headquarters in Waterbury. But Von Turkovich took exception to a section of the Senate version of the bill saying that “the state personnel with primary responsibility for developing the plan shall be physically located in the region.” That language has “alarmed my staff, carelessly and I believe unnecessarily,” Von Turkovich wrote. “The two staff persons we have devoted to (the program) have indicated that they will find other work before accepting a transfer to the Brattleboro area. Both cite family hardships this would cause.” Von Turkovich said he agreed that some program staff needs to be located within Vermont Yankee’s 10-mile emergency preparedness zone. He said he had hoped funding for the program would be increased enough that new staff could be added. “I intend to make whatever adjustments I can to keep the promise made to the communities (in the emergency zone) that we would devote new resources to them, on their turf,” Von Turkovich wrote. “However, insisting by law that the present manager and his assistant move their offices to Brattleboro without discussion appears on the surface to be arbitrary, capricious and poorly researched.” In an interview, von Turkovich expressed dismay that what he thought was a private memo had been leaked to a reporter, repeatedly said he meant no disrespect for Bartlett and sought to couch the memo’s language in softer terms. “I’m grateful for the support we’ve had from Senator Bartlett and the committee in the past,” he said. On moving staff to Windham County he said it would be “a tremendous hardship on them, and I don’t think it would be in the best interests of the program because parts of the program involve strong interagency cooperation” between departments including Public Safety and Health, which are headquartered in Waterbury and Burlington, respectively. Moving the staff was defended by two Windham County lawmakers, the Senate’s Democratic president pro tem, Peter Shumlin, and Rep. Patricia O’Donnell, R-Vernon. “There’s only one nuclear plant in Vermont. It’s in Windham County,” Shumlin said. “That’s where the resources and the presence should be.” O’Donnell said, “That’s where the personnel should have been all along.” She added that a big issue for her is that local public safety agencies get a bigger piece of the disaster planning pie than they have relative to the state agency in the past. “The money does not belong in Montpelier or Waterbury,” she said. “It belongs in Windham County.” Auditor of Accounts Elizabeth Ready, whose office issued a report pointing to inadequate funding for emergency management in January, sided with von Turkovich. “We have continued to fail drills,” said Ready, adding that the “House and Senate versions both fall short of what my report called for and what the local communities and agencies have said again and again and again they need to do the job.” On the possibility that program administrator Lew Stowell and his assistant might leave their posts, Ready said, “It would be a pity if we lost the expertise of our valued staff. I think we would be further behind than we were on Sept. 11.” [http://www.rutlandherald.com/photogallery] Rutland Herald 27 Wales Street P.O. Box 668 Rutland, Vermont 05702-0668 Tel (802) 747-6121 Fax (802) 775-2423 Email info@rutlandherald.com ***************************************************************** 2 UK: Let's really go nuclear outdoors.telegraph.co.uk - (Filed: 11/05/2002) Environmental menace or friend of the earth? Ross Clark says that, contrary to popular fears, nature loves a reactor ON the long list of terrors to have enraged environmental protesters, none causes quite as many sparks as the nuclear power station. Here is a menace capable not just of wiping out a few bunnies, but of visiting genetic mutation upon their three-eyed descendants for thousands of years to come. [Sizewell B] Glowing recommendation: Sizewell B helps cut Britain's CO² emissions With the Government's recent energy review contemplating a restarting of the stalled nuclear power industry, and with British Energy working on plans to build nine new power stations, the response from environmental pressure groups has been predictable. "Ministers should rule out the nuclear option for good," said Greenpeace recently. Any new nuclear power stations will be "vigorously opposed", promised Friends of the Earth. But would more nuclear power stations really be bad for the environment? For years, anti-nuclear campaigners have painted visions of an Irish Sea aglow with discharge from Sellafield. But for just as long, the irradiated lobsters and mutant shrimps have remained works of imagination. When Greenpeace was charged with the simple challenge of citing one case of a plant or an animal that has been harmed by radioactive emission from a nuclear plant in western Europe, it could not. "Lobsters have been found off Sellafield with twice the levels of radioactivity allowed in European food regulations," says nuclear campaigner Peter Roach. "But no one has ever looked at whether the lobsters have suffered as a result." In fact, the evidence suggests that more birds have been sliced in two by wind farms than creatures have been harmed by British nuclear power stations. No one is denying that there is radioactive discharge from the nuclear industry. It is just that the level of discharge is feeble compared to the natural background radiation with which, in contravention of Britain's assorted "nuclear-free zones", humans, animals and plants have had to live since life on earth began. Less than one per cent of the radiation the average European is exposed to comes from nuclear power stations or industrial sources. Fourteen per cent comes from exposure to medical procedures such as X-rays and barium meals, while a whopping 85 per cent comes from natural sources such as radon gas and granite. The average Briton receives as much radiation from eating one Brazil nut as from exposure to pollution from nuclear power stations. Of all the sources of drinking water in Britain, the most radioactive is not from near Sellafield but from Derbyshire, where local rocks bear naturally occurring uranium. The effect of nuclear power stations on shellfish has been of particular concern because their method of feeding - passing large quantities of estuarine mud through their bodies - puts them at risk of accumulating radioactivity in their bodies. As a result, the health of shellfish off Sellafield is constantly monitored by the Environment Agency. The most radioactive lobsters caught there show radiation levels of 32 micrograys per hour. While this is 30 times higher than the levels lobsters would show were they living in a pristine environment, it is less than one tenth of the radiation levels capable of inflicting harm upon a lobster. There is no evidence, either, of any harm higher up the food chain. According to the Food Standards Agency, anyone who lives next to Sellafield and has a vast appetite for locally caught shellfish still only exposes himself to 19 per cent of the European Union's recommended safe limit for radiation absorption. Not unreasonably, environmentalists ask what would happen were there to be an accident. A Chernobyl-style disaster in this country, or anywhere else in western Europe, is deeply improbable because more stringent design standards exist than in the Soviet Union. But even if a Chernobyl did happen here, there is little evidence that wildlife and plantlife would have anything to fear. Since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, its impact on nature has been carefully studied. Some pine trees died within the six-mile exclusion zone around the plant. Some molluscs also died - but they were living in the cooling ponds attached to the plant, and their numbers have since recovered. "In no way does it detract from the significance of the disaster, but it has been suggested that biodiversity around Chernobyl has actually increased due to the absence of humans," says Clive Williams of the Environment Agency. "Wolves and black storks are now more abundant within the exclusion zone than outside it. Even in the most contaminated areas, plant diversity is similar to that outside the exclusion zone." There is a good reason why wildlife has less to fear from radioactive pollution than humans. The biggest terror for us after a nuclear accident would be of developing cancer. Wild animals, however, do not tend to hang around long enough to develop it: they quickly reproduce and die. There is every reason, on the other hand, why the environment should benefit from a return to the nuclear programme. Nuclear power stations produce negligible quantities of sulphur dioxide, responsible for acid rain, and carbon dioxide, blamed for global warming. Were it not that 25 per cent of electricity in Britain is already generated by nuclear means, carbon dioxide emissions would be 13 per cent higher than they are now and it would be impossible for us to meet our commitments under the Kyoto agreement. When it comes to killing wildife, "environmentally friendly" renewable energy sources win hands down. Abarrage across the Severn Estuary to exploit tidal power has been proposed several times but rejected on environmental grounds: it would destroy the breeding grounds of fish and wading birds. One proposed wind farm off Argyll would have been directly in the migratory path of the rare Greenland white-fronted goose. If lobsters, rabbits and geese had a vote, there is no doubt they would say: "Nuclear power? Yes please." 8 March 2002[News]: Call to expand nuclear power 10 December 2001[News]: Scotland can lead UK in wind and tide power © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002. Terms &Conditions ***************************************************************** 3 Norway buys uranium from Russia The Norway Post - Doorway to Norway 11. Mai 2002 The Norwegian Institute for Energy has acknowledged that Norway buys uranium from Russia, but its security chief, Atle Valseth, does not know from which mine. Bellona-leader Frederic Haauge says to Dagsavisen that to trade with the Russian nuclear industry in this way is extremely risky. According to Hauge, the uranium could come from a mine in Siberia, which could be responsible for large emissions of radioactive pollutants. Bellona's expert on nuclear energy, Erik Martiniussen, says a number of reports show that the Russian uranium mines in Siberia are a source of danger to both the environment and the health of the population. (NRK) Rolleiv Solholm Share this article with others ***************************************************************** 4 FirstEnergy may buy reactor lid » More From The Plain Dealer 05/11/02 John Funk Plain Dealer Reporter FirstEnergy Corp. has moved one step closer to buying a new reactor lid from a Michigan utility for the crippled Davis-Besse nuclear power plant. The company signed a "nonbinding letter of intent" with Consumers Energy Co. of Jackson, Mich., to buy the head from a never-used reactor at Consumers' Midland power station near Saginaw Bay. "We intend to inspect and X-ray portions of the unused head before we take any further action," said FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider. "The deal is contingent upon the resolution of a number of issues, including issues having to do with liability and safety," said Consumers Energy spokesman Charles McInnis. Neither company would divulge a possible selling price. Negotiations began several weeks ago. Schneider said FirstEnergy is still preparing to repair the corrosion hole in the original Davis-Besse reactor head so as to be ready if the Consumers deal falls through. FirstEnergy would use the Midland head for only 10 years. Schneider said major renovations, such as replacing Davis-Besse's steam generators, are scheduled in a decade, and the company believes that would be a good time to install a new head. The company also still plans to take delivery in two years of a brand-new head it ordered last fall from French nuclear company, Framatome ANP. That head has been cast but must still be machined. Whether it buys the Midland head or repairs the original head, FirstEnergy still believes the reactor can be ready to restart in September, Schneider said. Davis-Besse has been idle since Feb. 16. The corrosion hole was discovered in early March. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the final say on when the plant can be restarted. The NRC must also approve either fix. Its top engineers have already indicated they believe that buying the Midland head appears to be a better idea. NRC spokesman Jan Strasma said the agency is still analyzing the repair proposal. Consumers abandoned the Midland reactor in 1986 before completing construction because of financial problems. The reactor has remained in its closed containment building. If the head has to be modified, FirstEnergy's contractors, Bechtel and Framatome, would try to do some of the work at Midland, since the building is not radioactive, Schneider said. "It's an 'as-is, where-it-is' deal," said McInnis of Consumers Energy. "If it comes to fruition, it will involve their contractors coming up here and doing a major engineering project." Contact John Funk at: jfunk@plaind.com, 216-999-4138 © 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. » Send This Page | » Print This Page © 2002 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 New Brunswick Power refit likely to drive up rates Financial Post - Canada; May 11, 2002 NEW YORK - New Brunswick Power can't afford the proposed $845-million refurbishment of Point Lepreau nuclear plant, says an Ontario energy consultant, the Canadian Press reported yesterday. In a submission to New Brunswick's Public Utilities Board, Energy Probe executive director Tom Adams criticized a plan to refit Lepreau, calling it a non-starter given the public utility's financial difficulties. "New Brunswick's electricity debt relative to the size of the provincial economy is almost twice that of Ontario -- New Brunswick Power's debt equals 16% of the provincial economy whereas the old Ontario Hydro debt equals 9% of the provincial economy," he said. Mr. Adams says these factors coupled with persistent reported negative net income, unreported costs and slow progress in debt reduction make New Bruswick Power the weakest utility in Canada in financial terms. ***************************************************************** 6 FirstEnergy may buy reactor lid The Plain Dealer 05/11/02 John Funk Plain Dealer Reporter FirstEnergy Corp. has moved one step closer to buying a new reactor lid from a Michigan utility for the crippled Davis-Besse nuclear power plant. The company signed a "nonbinding letter of intent" with Consumers Energy Co. of Jackson, Mich., to buy the head from a never-used reactor at Consumers' Midland power station near Saginaw Bay. "We intend to inspect and X-ray portions of the unused head before we take any further action," said FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider. "The deal is contingent upon the resolution of a number of issues, including issues having to do with liability and safety," said Consumers Energy spokesman Charles McInnis. Neither company would divulge a possible selling price. Negotiations began several weeks ago. Schneider said FirstEnergy is still preparing to repair the corrosion hole in the original Davis-Besse reactor head so as to be ready if the Consumers deal falls through. FirstEnergy would use the Midland head for only 10 years. Schneider said major renovations, such as replacing Davis-Besse's steam generators, are scheduled in a decade, and the company believes that would be a good time to install a new head. The company also still plans to take delivery in two years of a brand-new head it ordered last fall from French nuclear company, Framatome ANP. That head has been cast but must still be machined. Whether it buys the Midland head or repairs the original head, FirstEnergy still believes the reactor can be ready to restart in September, Schneider said. Davis-Besse has been idle since Feb. 16. The corrosion hole was discovered in early March. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the final say on when the plant can be restarted. The NRC must also approve either fix. Its top engineers have already indicated they believe that buying the Midland head appears to be a better idea. NRC spokesman Jan Strasma said the agency is still analyzing the repair proposal. Consumers abandoned the Midland reactor in 1986 before completing construction because of financial problems. The reactor has remained in its closed containment building. If the head has to be modified, FirstEnergy's contractors, Bechtel and Framatome, would try to do some of the work at Midland, since the building is not radioactive, Schneider said. "It's an 'as-is, where-it-is' deal," said McInnis of Consumers Energy. "If it comes to fruition, it will involve their contractors coming up here and doing a major engineering project." Contact John Funk at: jfunk@plaind.com, 216-999-4138 © 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. © 2002 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 7 Report: Man with criminal background hired at nuclear plant heraldsun.com: The Associated Press May 10, 2002 : 11:35 am ET GREENVILLE, S.C. -- The FBI is investigating an energy company's report that a temporary worker with a criminal background was allowed to enter the Oconee Nuclear Station. Duke Energy Co., based in Charlotte, N.C., filed a report with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that said a later FBI check discovered the worker failed to put down his criminal background on a job application, The Greenville News said Friday. Duke's report said it was the third time since 1999 such a security breech occurred where an applicant for temporary work did not put down past offenses. "Therefore, this is a recurring event," the report said. Duke's report said the worker was in the vital area for four minutes. There were no equipment failures or radiation releases. The report says there was no threat to public safety. The NRC and Duke Energy would not detail the worker's name or his criminal background. FBI spokeswoman Carol Allison said the investigation is ongoing. Duke's report says badges permitting people on site are good for up to 180 days. Watchdog groups say the incident shows how vulnerable nuclear plants are to terrorist attacks. Ed Lyman is scientific director of the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute, which opposes nuclear proliferation. He said granting temporary access to nuclear plants without FBI checks is "ridiculous, especially now." Lyman said while the Oconee breech is "obviously benign, ... they're letting criminals get access to the plant right now. This is a warning." Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Ken Clark said sometimes contract workers like painters or maintenance people get inside power plants without adequate checks of background. Clark said he could not comment on the Oconee incident. "We couldn't discuss ongoing investigations," he said. The report said the worker filled out a job application and got a temporary access badge March 18. Those granted temporary badges must have a photo ID, pass a credit check, have a character reference, pass a psychological evaluation, get fingerprinted and have their employment for the last year reviewed. The worker in Duke's report was found in the Unit 1 and Unit 2 cable room for less than four minutes during an orientation. He was with an employee authorized to be in the area. "At no time did he display any form of aberrant behavior. The intentional falsification does not appear to be due to any malicious intent with respect to the health and safety of the public," the report said. Duke Energy spokesman Tom Shiel said the worker was escorted all four minutes he was in the vital area. The worker's temporary badge was taken away. Bob Alvarez, a former aide ex-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, said the quick work to remove the worker does not "excuse the fact that they aren't checking." Alvarez says the NRC has become less public since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. "The NRC has dropped an iron curtain," he said. "We don't know if they're slapping their wrists or taking it seriously. These are weapons of mass destruction for terrorists." Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 8 Number of nuclear malfunctions increases in Ukraine KPnews.com -- News about Ukraine 10 May 2002 The Associated Press KYIV, May 10 - All 13 of Ukraine's nuclear reactors were unstable last year and the number of malfunctions rose substantially, Ukraine's State Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report issued Wednesday, according to a news agency. Sixty-seven malfunctions, including 22 that caused reactor shut downs, were registered at Ukraine's four nuclear power plants last year, the committee reported, according to the Interfax news agency. However, most of the malfunctions had a zero-level environmental impact according to the international INES scale of nuclear incidents. Seventeen cases were registered as posing a grade-one or slight environmental danger, Interfax said. The number of grade-one incidents rose by 70 percent in 2001 compared to 2000, when only 10 cases were registered, the report said. The most troubled reactors were the Khmelnytsky and Rivne power plants, which had 15 and seven malfunctions respectively. Reactors at Ukraine's four nuclear power stations are frequently shut down for both planned and unscheduled repairs. Currently, 10 out of 13 nuclear reactors are functioning, producing about 40 percent of Ukraine's electricity output, the Energoatom state nuclear company said. Reactors at the Rivne, Khmelnytsky and Yuzhna power plants are undergoing repairs. Ukraine was the site of world's worst nuclear catastrophe in 1986, when a reactor at the Chornobyl power plant exploded and caught fire, spewing radiation over much of Europe. Chornobyl was closed down for good in 2000. © 2000 SputnikMedia.net. ***************************************************************** 9 Chernobyl Gets Glowing Reviews May 11, 2002 Travel: Visitors can see rare horses and breathe surprisingly fresh air in a strange twist on adventure tourism at the site of reactor disaster. By MARY MYCIO, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES CHERNOBYL, Ukraine -- Yuri Zayets pointed his binoculars toward a distant copse of birches and shouted excitedly from midway up the fire tower: "They're over there, grazing near the forest." It had taken nearly two hours of driving through the unique radioactive wilderness born of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster to find them, but one of the world's few wild herds of rare Przewalski horses finally came into view. "Stay here," Denis Vishnevsky, a zoologist with the Chernobyl Ecology Center, said after the group of official guides and a journalist piled out of their minibus to see the short but powerfully robust horses, introduced here in 1998 to eat what was supposedly "excess" vegetation in the depopulated area. "They'll come to us." "Chernobyl safaris," mused Rima Kiselytsia, a guide with Chernobylinterinform, the agency that shepherds all visitors to the "Zone of Alienation" around the now-decommissioned reactor, an area that once was home to 135,000 people. "It's a strange idea, but I like it." Chernobyl tourism has been a hot topic in Ukraine since January, when a U.N. report urged Chernobyl communities to learn to live safely with radiation--such as consuming only produce grown outside the zone. The report suggested specialized tourism as one of several possible ways to bring money into a region that has swallowed more than $100 billion in subsidies from Soviet, Ukrainian and international government funds since the nuclear accident 16 years ago. Back in the town of Chernobyl, where the zone's administration manages the Rhode Island-sized no man's land around the destroyed reactor, one official said economic benefits of tourism will never be more than minor. But he doesn't reject the idea outright. "The U.N. is 12 years too late," said Mykola Dmytruk, deputy director of Chernobylinterinform, referring to technicians who have been coming to the zone for that long. "We've been allowing tours since 1994." A few Kiev tourist agencies advertise Chernobyl excursions on their Web sites, but so far the zone administration doesn't actively promote the idea. "A great deal still isn't known," said Dmytruk, "and we warn everyone about the risks, even scientists." The risks, though small, are real. And so is the desolation. But the aftermath of the accident has created a misleading stereotype of the zone as a toxic wasteland, a nuclear desert devoid of life, and certainly not a place a sane person would want to visit. In fact, by ending industrialization, deforestation, cultivation and other human intrusions, radiation has transformed the zone into one of Europe's largest wildlife habitats, a fascinating and at times beautiful wildness teeming with large animals such as moose, wolves, boar and deer. It now is home to 270 bird species, 31 of them endangered--making the zone one of the few places in Europe to spot rarities such as black storks and booted eagles. And traveling to Chernobyl may qualify as a kind of adventure tourism. The very knowledge of the buzzing background of radiation imbues even the prosaic act of walking down the street with an aura of excitement. It isn't the same adrenalin punch as bungee jumping in the Andes, but it is a palpable sensation--like being surrounded by ghosts. By law, no one can enter the zone without permission. But except for children under 17, the administration may give permission to pretty much anyone. The vast majority of the nearly 1,000 annual visitors are scientists, journalists, politicians and international nuclear officials, but the zone has hosted a handful of what Dmytruk calls "pure" tourists--including three Japanese in 2000--and it can put together customized programs, such as safaris in search of Przewalski horses, which some experts believe are the ancestors of all domestic horses but far more aggressive.. "If a group of Californians want to go bird-watching, we can organize that," Dmytruk said, adding, "so long as they know the difference between plutonium and potatoes." Of course, Chernobyl isn't Club Med. But 16 years after the fourth reactor bloc spewed radiation around the globe, the risks are mostly manageable. About a quarter of the cesium and strontium have already decayed, and 95% of the remaining radioactive molecules are no longer in fallout that can get on or inside a visitor, but have sunk to a depth of about 5 inches in the soil. From there, they have insinuated themselves into the food chain, making the zone's diverse and abundant flora and fauna radioactive indeed. An antler shed recently by a Chernobyl elk was stuffed with so much strontium that it cannot be allowed out of the zone. But three Przewalski foals born in the wild, though radioactive, have grown to adolescence with no visible effects. Such radioactivity now has receded to the background. On an average day, a visitor might receive an extra radiation dose about equivalent to taking a two-hour plane trip, zone officials say. That is, if the visitor follows the strict but simple safety rules: "Don't eat local food, stay on the pavement, and go only where your guide takes you," Dmytruk said. It is almost impossible to smell fresher air in an urban setting than here in the town of Chernobyl, where the number of cars seen on a warm April day could be counted on one hand and songbirds frequently provide the only sound. "It is one of the zone's many paradoxes, but because human activity is banned nearly everywhere, the region is one of Ukraine's environmentally cleanest," Dmytruk said. "Except for radiation." Today, villages are slowly succumbing to encroaching forests. In the abandoned town of Pripyat, less than two miles from the nuclear reactor, empty black windows stare blindly from high-rise buildings at kindergartens littered with heartbreakingly small gas masks. It may seem like an odd place for a rewarding tourism experience. But nowhere else can a visitor stand amid a herd of wild Przewalski horses like a character in Jean Auel's Ice Age novels, or watch a pair of rare white-tailed eagles circling above the ghostly high-rises of Pripyat, a moving monument to the devastating effects of technology gone awry and nature's near miraculous resilience and recovery. Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 10 Feds Warn on 'Trucking Terrorists' Las Vegas SUN May 10, 2002 WASHINGTON- Even after Sept. 11, there are insufficient safeguards to prevent would-be terrorists from getting licenses to haul truckloads of hazardous materials, government investigators say. "Existing federal standards and state controls are not sufficient to defend against the alarming threat" posed by individuals who seek to fraudulently obtain commercial driver's licenses, said a report by the Transportation Department's inspector general. Department spokesman Chet Lunner said the agency was following many of the recommendations. The report was issued Friday amid continuing worries about terrorists using trucks loaded with gasoline, bombs or other hazardous materials in the same way that hijackers used commercial airliners to kill thousands on Sept. 11. "U.S. territory is more likely to be attacked with (weapons of mass destruction) using non-missile means," CIA official Robert Walpole told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in March, citing trucks, ships or planes as likely vehicles for chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. FBI agents investigating the terrorist attacks found that several men of Middle Eastern descent had obtained fraudulent licenses to transport hazardous materials. Joan Claybrook, who headed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration during the Carter administration, said the shortcomings noted Friday create loopholes that can be exploited by terrorists. "It means you can have terrorists get their hands on them and legitimately drive vehicles that have toxic chemicals and nuclear materials," said Claybrook, now president of the advocacy group Public Citizen. The federal and state agencies that oversee the trucking industry do not carry out detailed checks to make sure that driver's licenses are properly issued, the inspector general said. Only four of 13 states examined by the inspector general's office required applicants to prove they were citizens of the United States or legally in the country, the report said. Many states do not require applicants to prove they live in the state, do not verify Social Security numbers and do not give tests to prove whether a driver can read and speak English, it said. Assistant Inspector General Alexis Stefani recommended new federal rules to address the problems. Lunner said many of those suggestions would be followed. "We are implementing many of the recommendations of the inspector general's report," Lunner said. "We are working diligently with the states to improve their systems." Dave Osiecki, vice president for safety and operations for the American Trucking Associations, acknowledged problems with licensing drivers. However, he said, the number of fraudulent licenses was small compared with the 10 million truck and bus drivers on the road. "The industry has seen gaps in this program for a significant period of time," Osiecki said. "Federal oversight of state compliance has been one of those gaps. Most who follow the program know oversight could have been and can be improved." The Transportation Department is writing regulations requiring background checks before a state can issue or renew a license that allows the driver to carry hazardous materials. On the Net: Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration: [http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov] Inspector General: [http://www.oig.dot.gov] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 11 Radiation accident training given May 11, 2002 Emergency personnel from Howell, Stone, Barry, St. Clair and Polk counties attend. By Jim Watson For the News-Leader BOLIVAR — Thirty people involved in firefighting, health and emergency management in five southwest Missouri counties recently attended a training session in Bolivar on how to handle radiation accidents and emergencies. The session, sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, through the Missouri Emergency Management Office, was open only to those most likely to be first on the scene of a radiological event. It drew personnel from Howell, Stone, Barry, St. Clair and Polk counties. Kermit Hargis, Polk County emergency management director, said, "After the (Cold War) threat of nuclear attack diminished, we kind of slowed down on radiation training. “It wasn’t a priority, but since 9-11, a lot of us are making it a priority again.” The session was taught primarily by Jack Kammerer, radiological systems maintenance supervisor with the Department of Public Safety, Office of the Missouri Adjutant General. Rick Davis, Polk County fire and rescue training coordinator, attended the training and said it covered the most likely sources and causes of radiation events and the use of dosimeters and survey meters. “We want to get trained because a radiation accident or event of some sort could happen; there’s a lot of radiation material being hauled up and down our highways,” Davis said. Bolivar Fire Chief Patty Head, who also attended, said: “(The training) explained a lot about the different kinds of radiation we might encounter, the types of haulers, placards, symbols, and so forth. “And, it was a good class; the instructors were very good,” Head said. In addition to the training, the state also replaced the counties’ radiation-measuring equipment (dosimeters and high- and low-level survey meters) with recently calibrated equipment. These instruments were distributed only to fire, health, and emergency units with radiological training. Hargis cautioned against being overly concerned about radiation, even the possibility of a “dirty bomb.” “Of all the hazardous materials out there, radiation is actually the safest to deal with,” he said. “A lot of chemicals, bromine or chlorine, for example, have tremendous toxicity levels that can cause a lot of problems very quickly.” More news stories» ozarksnow.com ***************************************************************** 12 Government Reversal Adds to Rift in South Carolina May 11, 2002 By MATTHEW L. WALD COLUMBIA, S.C., May 8 — For years the Energy Department has promised to clean nearly all the radioactivity out of bomb wastes here that are to be secured in giant concrete blocks. Now, faced with a cleaning technology that it has been unable to make work properly for more than a decade, department officials have reversed themselves. The new proposal to mix a sizable portion of the waste with cement without cleaning it is adding to tensions between the federal government and Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina, who has threatened to use state troopers to block new shipments of plutonium into the site, the Savannah River nuclear reservation here. [On Friday, a federal judge in South Carolina ordered the Energy Department to wait 30 days before beginning to ship weapons-grade plutonium from Colorado to Savannah River. The order, which means that no shipping can begin until June 15, came a week after Governor Hodges filed suit to stop the shipments, which he opposes because of uncertainties about the technology that would be involved in converting the former nuclear-weapon triggers to power-plant fuel.] Governor Hodges, a Democrat, is running campaign commercials that accuse federal officials of "breaking their promise" not to treat the state as a nuclear dumping ground. Now he says he cannot accept the Energy Department's word that its new plan to secure much of the existing waste in concrete will be safe. "The way I feel about the Department of Energy, we have to trust but verify," Mr. Hodges said, borrowing a phrase that Ronald Reagan applied to nuclear deals with the Soviet Union. Stored in 51 giant tanks, the mix of radioactive sludge, liquid and salts is a legacy of the factories here that produced the United States' atomic arsenal. Experts say it is the most lethal garbage in the world. The Energy Department, which designs, builds and maintains nuclear weapons, has a powerful motive to simplify the cleanup. Any method that proves effective here will be duplicated at sites in Idaho and Washington. A $2.4 billion factory here is processing the sludge, which has most of the radioactivity, mixing it with molten glass and pouring the mixture into stainless steel canisters. The mixture cools into glass logs, and about 1,200 of them have been made since production began in 1996. The plan is to bury them deep underground, presumably at Yucca Mountain, Nev., where they are supposed to be secure for thousands of years. Under the original plan, the factory here would take almost 30 years to handle all the material in the tanks, Energy Department officials say. If they can skim off some of the less radioactive salts and cover that here with concrete and dirt, they said, and squeeze more waste into each log, they estimate they can save eight years and $8.6 billion in processing costs. Under that method, they cleaned the salts by washing out radioactive cesium-137 and then mixed the salts with cement. But the washing process also produced a volatile compound, benzene, which made the waste tanks vulnerable to fire or explosion. Now officials have decided much of the salts is clean enough to mix it with cement without washing it. Mixed with enough cement, officials say, it will no longer be defined as high-level waste and can be kept here under piles of dirt. The concrete blocks will be stored in a dozen monoliths, each 100 feet wide, 600 feet long and 25 feet high. That plan will let the tanks empty sooner and the glass factory retire sooner, reducing the risk of spillage or terrorist attack, the department officials said. Governor Hodges, however, is not the only one with doubts. James D. Werner, who was director of strategic planning and analysis for the Environmental Management program of the Energy Department in the Clinton administration, said managers should have given up on the process for washing the cesium out of salts years earlier and looked for another way. "The problem arises if you are in technological denial," Mr. Werner said, adding that engineers knew about benzene in 1988. The department's record with cement is spotty. In the 1980's it tried to clean up a contaminated pond at the Rocky Flats plant, in the suburbs of Denver, by mixing radioactive material with cement to produce what officials called pondcrete. In months, the pondcrete crumbled. A solution here will be a model for Hanford, Wash., where there are more tanks, in worse condition, and where the department recently broke ground for another glass factory. Officials in the Northwest are skeptical of cement, too. Feeding the skepticism is a statement last November by Jessie Roberson, the assistant secretary for environmental management, that the amount to be turned into glass logs should be cut by three-quarters, to save time and money. "You've got to have a real cleanup," said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who has long focused on the Hanford tanks. Of the plans in South Carolina, Senator Wyden said: "They're going to do this on the cheap, and lower the bar so they can claim they're moving ahead of a cleanup schedule. I think the bottom line here is they're increasing potential of harmful effects to public health and risk of environmental damage." Governor Hodges said the plan should not be driven by budget demands, but by "sound science." That term is borrowed from President Bush, who used it to describe the basis for selecting Yucca Mountain. Other opponents say a failed cleanup could create a dead zone. "This is a radical and unheralded shift in our national policy for the management and disposal of defense high level wastes," said Robert Alvarez, who was a senior advisor to the energy secretary in the Clinton administration. "It reflects a drift toward the practices of the Soviet nuclear weapons program, which unabashedly wrote off, large areas and water supplies." The Energy Department has also loosened its definition of when a tank is empty. State officials say the department is planning to leave up to 15,000 gallons in some tanks. The department argues that emptying the remainder is too difficult and that what is left is incidental. But at the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, James Hardeman, manager of the Environmental Radiation Division, said, `They can call it mudpies, it's still high level waste." It should be buried at Yucca Mountain, Mr. Hardeman said. But department officials say they need to reduce risk and costs. "What's important with us is that we get on with the job of dispositioning waste, solidifying waste, while working towards separation of cesium," said Greg Rudy, the Energy Department's manager at Savannah River. "We believe it's important to make progress on many fronts at the same time." Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Michael Holahan for The New York Times Energy Department officials are in a dispute with Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina over how best to clean up radioactive waste at the Savannah River nuclear reservation. Within the circles are 10-foot canisters filled with waste from the reservation factories that produced atomic weapons. Michael Holahan for The New York Times Workers at the Savannah River nuclear reservation prepared a plastic building over the opening of underground tanks of radioactive waste. ***************************************************************** 13 Caribbean ministers concerned over nuclear shipment BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; May 10, 2002 on 10 May CASTRIES, St Lucia: Caribbean Community foreign ministers have registered deep concern and consternation at reports that two nuclear transport vessels are currently en route to Japan, after passage through the Caribbean Sea to undertake the most controversial nuclear shipment in history. The likelihood of the return journey also transiting the Caribbean Sea is of grave concern to the foreign ministers as well, said the ministers in a statement issued at the end of the fifth meeting of the Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) in St Lucia earlier this week. The ships, Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal, left England on April 26 and were due to enter the Caribbean between Wednesday and Thursday of this week. In Japan they are to pick up a cargo of deadly plutonium fuel and return it to a site at Sellafield in England, in defiance of international law. The environmental watchdog, Greenpeace, has condemned the nuclear transshipments, saying it presents an unacceptable environmental and security threat to all nations on the transport route. In condemning the shipment, the COFCOR meeting drew reference to the September 11 United States tragedy. "COFCOR stresses that the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent public revelations that nuclear options have indeed been explored by terrorist groups, clearly demonstrate that the threat of nuclear accident or nuclear terrorism is very real. "In these circumstances, and at a time when the international community is so heavily focused on security issues, it is inconceivable that these dangerous shipments should be allowed to continue on a routine basis, without regard to the obvious and escalating risks to which they expose all societies in their transit path," the ministers said. The council also expressed deep disappointment at the lack of adequate prior notification of these shipments and at the absence of any comprehensive environmental impact assessment on this matter undertaken by the shipping or receiving states. Source: Caribbean Media Corporation news agency, Bridgetown, in English 1810 gmt 10 May 02 /© BBC Monitoring ***************************************************************** 14 Confronting a nuclear and present danger: The Editor briefing: An urgent safety review of nuclear waste disposal has been urged by the Royal Society in a submission to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). It comes amid prote The Guardian - United Kingdom; May 11, 2002 What spurred Defra's inquiry into nuclear waste management? In the past, the emphasis has usually been on underground burial of the waste . . . For the first time, all the practicable solutions need to be evaluated on, as far as possible, a common basis, both openly and transparently, to decide what is best . . . We cannot afford any more failed initiatives. Neither can we continue with no clear long-term policy. What we need are sensible and lasting solutions that command the widest possible public support. (Advice to Defra from government advisers, the radioactive waste management advisory committee, Sept 12 2001) Why is the Royal Society concerned? The industry seems to have regarded the treatment of waste as of secondary importance, and to have focused its efforts on countering what it saw as unfounded hostile public opinion . . . The current waste management regime falls short of that which could be achieved through the use of currently available technologies . . . The present hazard is real and the risk only maintained at acceptably low levels by very active management systems. These are costly and inevitably bring some risk of worker exposure. (From the Royal Society report, Developing UK Policy for the Management of Radioactive waste, May 3) How big is the problem? Britain has more than 10,000 tonnes of dangerously radioactive waste - mainly stored at Sellafield in Cumbria with some at Dounreay on the north coast of Scotland - and future operations and decommissioning of nuclear plants will add another 500,000 tonnes, even if no new reactors are built. Geoffrey Boulton . . . who chairs the society's working group on radioactive waste, said nuclear waste storage over the past 50 years had caused no significant damage to the environment or human health - but that was no reason for complacency. "It could be that we are living on the edge of a volcano," he said. (From the Financial Times, May 3) Have there been any recent accidents? Scientists at the Cumbrian plant are fighting to control leaks from 50-year-old tanks holding thousands of tonnes of untreated waste. Teams are working around the clock to stop the toxic fuel reaching the local water supply. (From the Daily Mirror, April 19) What concerns do the Irish have about Sellafield? "Sellafield has already made the Irish Sea the most radioactive in the world," says Ali Hewson [wife of U2 singer Bono], "and if an accident happens or there is a terrorist attack, depending on which way the wind blows . . . vast parts of Ireland would be uninhabitable. Forever." (From the Guardian, April 23) What is the Irish government's position? We want Sellafield shut . . . Its continuing operation threatens every man, woman and child in Ireland. It must be shut down immediately. (From Irish government website, www.irlgov.ie, March 15) Waste land: Britain has more than 10,000 tonnes of nuclear waste to manage ***************************************************************** 15 Yucca fight ended two years ago North Lake Tahoe Bonanza May 10, 2002 by Kirk Caraway It will take a while for the sad news to sink in about the fight to keep nuclear waste out of Yucca Mountain. It has been a great struggle that united almost all residents of the Silver State, something that is hard to do in this state full of independent thinkers. We Nevadans are a proud lot, and don't take too well to be pushed around. So it is sad to see that the U.S. Senate is almost surely a lost cause in terms of stopping the dump. A newspaper poll of 89 senators shows that 44 are solidly in favor of dumping nuke waste in Nevada. Only 20 would say they were against it. Of the 11 senators who didn't answer the survey, Trent Lott has expressed his strong support for the dump. That means they need only five more votes, along with Vice President Dick Cheney's tiebreaker, to win. And while senators Harry Reid and John Ensign are trying to stay positive about their chances to derail this project, you can sense in their words and expressions that they know it's over. They just don't have enough political capital to spend to get 31 other senators to vote with them. That was the way this legislation was set up in the first place, so that the other 49 states could stick it to Nevada. The only person with the power to have stopped Yucca Mountain was the one sitting behind that big desk in the Oval Office. This fight was lost on that day in 2000 when then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush stood on the shore of Lake Tahoe and said he would only support a dump that was based on "sound science." That was a loophole big enough to drive 77,000 tons of nuclear waste through, and everyone who didn't know it at the time should have. I don't even think that Gov. Kenny Guinn, deep down, actually believed it, and he was standing right next to the future president when he said it. And it is really too bad that he took Dubbya at face value, kind of like the guy who pays sticker price for a used car. Gov. Guinn is an amateur politician compared to Bush. A Texas governor does more political wheelin' and dealin' before lunch on an average day than Guinn has done in his three-plus years in Carson City. It's not that Guinn is incompetent or anything, just that he got bested by one of the slickest politicians to come along since that guy named Willie from Arkansas. What Guinn should have known is that he had a lot more sway with Bush than he realized. Instead of swallowing that "sound science" quip hook, line and sinker, Guinn should have held out for an outright pledge not to open Yucca Mountain, period. That's because the 2000 election was very close, even at the time Bush came to Lake Tahoe to fill his pockets with campaign cash and endorsements. He needed those four measly electoral votes, and he wasn't getting them unless he got Guinn's endorsement. If Guinn had threatened to come out and say what everyone else had already figured out, that a vote for Bush would be a vote for Yucca Mountain, Dubbya would have been kissing ol' Kenny's shoes to get him to change his mind. And as the months ticked by and the race with Al Gore looked more and more like a dead heat, Guinn's endorsement would have soared in political value, much higher than all those millions of campaign dollars donated by the nuclear power folks. Bush would have caved in on Yucca Mountain as sure as the tumbleweeds blow across the high desert. It would have been a tough move for a republican like Guinn to stand up to his party's presidential nominee and demand a concession of that magnitude. That kind of bare-knuckled political feud is not something a nice guy like Guinn likes to get caught up in. But that is the way things get done in Texas, and our governor showed up at the proverbial gunfight wearing a water pistol. Hopefully Guinn has learned his lesson. Dubbya and his boys play hard ball, and if he wants to get anything from Washington, he had better learn how to play. After reading his response to Bush's approval of Yucca Mountain, I would say he has. Copyright North Lake Tahoe Bonanza. ***************************************************************** 16 Decision on Goshute N-waste delayed Saturday, May 11, 2002 Attorneys are taking longer than expected to debate 4 issues By Donna Kemp Spangler Deseret News staff writer It's looking more like a federal panel will delay its decision until mid-November on whether to recommend that a consortium of nuclear power utilities be granted a license to temporarily store its nuclear waste in Utah's west desert. The U.S. Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, meeting in Salt Lake for the past four weeks to consider the state's opposition to the proposal, had hoped to make a final decision by the end of September on Private Fuel Storage's plan to temporarily store 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods on the Goshute Indian Reservation 75 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. "We're now looking at a mid-November decision," Michael Farrar, chairman of the licensing board, told attorneys Friday. That's partly because the attorneys on both sides are taking much longer to argue the case before the board on four specific issues — the possibility that nearby military aircraft flights pose a threat, whether a rail spur will harm a proposed wilderness area, if the facility will cause groundwater pollution and if the storage site can withstand possible earthquakes. At issue Friday was whether to consider the state's late-filed contention disputing NRC findings that show there are benefits to the PFS proposal, but only if the nuclear waste is stored in Utah for 40 years. The NRC failed to show any benefits the proposal will have during the 20-year license period currently being considered by federal regulators, argued Monte Stewart, the state's lead attorney. After a three-hour hearing, the board said it would decide next Friday whether the state's objections have merit. If the board rules in the state's favor, it could mean another two weeks of hearings on the NRC's economic analysis. PFS and NRC attorneys argued the state filed its objections too late and the judges should not even consider the issue. To consider it would unduly delay the proceedings, they argued. "The rules are crystal clear," PFS attorney Jay Silberg argued. "You can't sit by and wait for the documents to gather dust then say, 'I have a new issue,' " he added. But Stewart argued the state relied on NRC staff to correct the problem when the state raised it months ago during an environmental review process. NRC staff made some revisions but only partially, he added. The NRC assumed then and still does that the license would be renewed for another 20 years, Stewart said. He is seeking to have the NRC redo its economic projections. PFS has always maintained the $3.1 billion facility will be temporary, only until a permanent repository is built at Yucca Mountain, which won't come on line until at least 2010. That's why PFS has an option to renew its lease with the Goshutes for another 20 years, or until about 2040. The board plans to meet next week to hear more testimony over military overflights. Then it will return the first week of June to conclude the seismic issues. E-mail: donna@desnews.com © 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 17 State's Nuclear shipments would rise billingsgazette.com - version 5.0 Last modified May 11, 2002 - 1:40 am Associated Press CASPER, Wyo. (AP) - Nuclear waste shipments could pass through Wyoming every 10 hours if Yucca Mountain is approved as a repository for radioactive waste, a nuclear energy watchdog group said. The U.S. House this week decided by a nearly 3-1 margin to support President Bush's plan to make the Nevada site the nation's central nuclear waste repository. The next showdown will come in the Senate, which must decide by July whether to override a Nevada veto of the Yucca Mountain project, as the House did Wednesday by a 306-117 vote. Three Nevada lawsuits challenging the plan already are in the courts. If the proposal comes to fruition, Wyoming would rank fourth in traffic if most of the 77,000 tons of radioactive waste is shipped by rail, and fifth if shipped by truck, according to the Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environmental Program. There would be 16,124 railroad loads or 33,685 truckloads, the group said. "That means there could be one nuclear shipment every 10 hours," said Hugh Jackson, public policy analyst for the organization, based in Washington, D.C. Bryan Jacobs, spokesman for Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., said her vote in favor of the plan to develop Yucca Mountain was a difficult one. "This could very well have been Wyoming," he said. "Cubin feels that there is an obligation, however, to the general welfare of the nation." In recent months, Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., has spoken in favor of the plan, but Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., is still undecided, Enzi's spokesman, Coy Knobel, said. "He's still listening to the senators from Nevada to get their side," Knobel said Thursday. Jackson, speaking by phone from Las Vegas, said Wyoming's delegation ought to stand beside its counterpart in Nevada in fighting the plan. "Wyoming politicians have for years made the case that the federal government runs roughshod over the states," he said. "What the federal government is doing to Nevada right now is the egregious example of that." Jacobs said Cubin believes opponents of the plan are perpetuating false information about transportation safety, and that a relatively good safety record to date can continue through careful planning. "Transportation plans will have to be addressed in detail (by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)," he said. "Those regulators would have to approve the plans before shipments to Yucca Mountain can begin." But Jackson said the volume of shipments would far exceed that of the past. "They have no experience shipping anywhere near the volume of this stuff that's going to go through Wyoming," he said. Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises. ***************************************************************** 18 AU: Mine cleared but leaks may happen again news.com.au - [11may02] By KIM WHEATLEY FURTHER radioactive and acid-mining-solution leaks at the Beverley uranium mine are "almost inevitable", a high-level investigation team at the site said yesterday. However, despite growing community and environmental concerns about the many leaks, it gave the controversial mining operation an initial all-clear. The company operating the Far North mine, Heathgate Resources, revealed the number of leaks may be as high as 40 in the past four years – although some were less than the 200 litres required for reporting. Of most interest to the investigation team was the latest incident site, where 14,900 litres of contaminated water and uranium solution leaked from a fractured wellhead fitting on Sunday night. While the company maintains that low levels of uranium or sulphuric acid in the spills have left no environmental damage, the team has signalled it may call in more experts. "There are high volumes of liquid that are being pumped here, and under those circumstances it is almost inevitable that you will get some leaks," Environment Protection Agency executive director Nicholas Newland said. "From the information we've had so far, it would be difficult for us objectively and scientifically to prove environmental harm. (But) it's too early to make that judgment." Despite only having a one-day visit, Mr Newland gave the operation an initial green light. "My general feeling so far . . . is that the operation here is pretty good," he said. The mine, which operates the controversial acid in-situ leaching process, resembles a major plumbing operation as 20km of pipe feeds about 100 wells up to 20 million litres of fluid a day. Heathgate Resources vice-president Stephen Middleton said the mine was a "world-class operation", and "alarmist statements" from anti-nuclear activists were the biggest hurdle to overcome. "I can't say that there will be no more spills, but I can give a complete assurance that there won't be any that cause an environmental impact," he said. "The uranium concentrations that we're dealing with are so low – 0.0014 per cent uranium – it's having no impact on the environment at all." However, the Australian Conservation Foundation said yesterday: "Radioactive contamination and deliberate and routine pollution of groundwater will never be acceptable." ***************************************************************** 19 Russia, US fail to resolve Taiwan's nuclear waste issue The Taipei Times Online: 2002-05-11 By Charles Snyder STAFF WRITER IN WASHINGTON Discussions between US and Russian officials this week failed to make any progress on an agreement that would help Taiwan solve its problem of where to store tonnes of spent nuclear fuel, senior US and Russian officials said. Supporters of the agreement had hoped to have a deal in place before a summit later this month between US President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Russian nuclear energy minister Alexander Rumyantsev spent three days in Washington this week, meeting with US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, members of Congress and others to set the stage for nuclear and non-proliferation issues for the summit meeting. While the spent-fuel issue came up, Rumyantsev and Abraham told reporters little progress was made. Taiwanese authorities are seeking to find repositories for spent fuel generated by the nation's nuclear power plants, and have been holding talks with Russia, seeking to ship the waste now stored at Orchid Island and other sites to Russia for long-term storage. But the deal has been held up by a requirement that Washington must agree to the transfer, since Taiwan's nuclear power plants were built, and the nuclear material supplied, by US firms. To move the material to Russia, Washington and Moscow must decide how the waste will be handled, which would require settlement of the "Agreement of Cooperation on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy" under the US Atomic Energy Act enacted in 1954. While the week's meetings centered on nuclear weapons and non-proliferation issues, Taiwan's nuclear-waste problem did come up, both sides revealed at a press conference on Thursday. "Yes, indeed, we touched upon this issue," Rumyantsev told reporters. "But the signing of such an agreement really requires a lot of time for preparation," he said. "We really haven't had any specific discussions of Taiwan fuels, American-based or American-sourced fuels at this point," Abraham said. "That's one of a lot of the issues that are engaged in broader agreements that are not yet formulated," he said. The possibility of Taiwan shipping its spent fuel to Russia surfaced last June, when the Russian parliament approved a law allowing the importation of spent nuclear fuel. While specific plans were formulated, the issue has been bogged down by the Russian environmental movement, which opposes the importation of spent fuel. This story has been viewed 243 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/05/11/story/0000135558] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 20 Residents challenge waste site bakersfield.com - Bob Christie Email [local@bakersfield.com] (661) 395-7413 By KERRY CAVANAUGH, Californian staff writer, e-mail: kcavanaugh@bakersfield.com Friday May 10, 2002, 10:39:18 PM Over the last six months, a quiet battle has been waged over the future of the Safety-Kleen hazardous waste disposal facility in Buttonwillow. At the heart of the debate is two shipments of radioactive waste buried underground near the small, rural town. Attorneys for a Buttonwillow resident group charge Safety-Kleen's land-use permit doesn't protect public health, in part because it allows the company to accept radioactive waste. Safety-Kleen and Kern County attorneys reply the facility has been proved safe and the waste shipments from former nuclear facilities are allowed by law. The result of a hearing currently under way could be a ban on similar transfers to the dump. For their part, Safety-Kleen officials say they have already decided not to take any more of the controversial waste. But the battle rages on after 10 years of fighting over the Buttonwillow site. Thursday, attorneys for Safety-Kleen, Buttonwillow residents and the county presented their closing arguments in the review over the company's land-use permit. It was day 14 of the hearing, which began in November and has since continued sporadically in the Kern Board of Supervisors' chambers. The seven-person panel of elected leaders and state environmental agency officials are asked to determine if Safety-Kleen's land-use permit protects public health. They will decide by June 11 if the state needs to convene another hearing to revise the permit. The plaintiff is a Buttonwillow group called Padres Hacia Una Vida Mejor -- Spanish for Parents For a Better Life. Safety-Kleen has been at the center of a state and national controversy over radioactive materials since 1999. The Buttonwillow facility received more than 2,164 tons of building materials from a plant in New York used for processing uranium in the development of the atomic bomb. The materials were shipped across the country and buried. State and federal officials were at odds --and still may be -- over whether Safety-Kleen is allowed to accept that kind of radioactive material. Last year Safety-Kleen was again under the microscope for accepting radioactive materials from a Simi Valley site that was used for nuclear reactor testing by the Department of Energy. Safety-Kleen attorney J. Martin Robertson said environmental agencies investigated the company in both situations and did not find violations of its permit. But Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment Attorney Caroline Farrell said: "No agency studied the risk associated with accepting radioactive waste before issuing their permits." Her group proposes banning radioactive materials. In a worst-case scenario, Farrell said, Safety-Kleen could legally accept 34,000 curies of radioactive materials, or the equivalent of 180 nuclear weapons. Safety-Kleen attorneys scoffed at the center's allegations. They said the company's expert studied the risk of accepting the New York and Simi Valley radioactive materials shipments each year for the next 30 years and found the cancer risk to be minimal. "Enough is enough," Safety-Kleen attorney Michael Hogan said. "This is not only the end of this 14-day hearing, but of seven to 10 years of legal attacks," on the company. The Padres group has challenged Safety-Kleen's permits in virtually every forum since 1991 with no success. At one point Thursday, hearing board member M.J. Dube, the mayor of Twentynine Palms, questioned whether the people of Buttonwillow were running the challenge or the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. Farrell replied the core Padres members were working and couldn't attend the hearing, but the group has dwindled over the last decade. "I'd be lying to you if I said they weren't disheartened or demoralized by what they've seen," she said. [http://discussion.bakersfield.com] ***************************************************************** 21 Lunch Bunch Week 1: Plutonium In S.C. WYFF TheCarolinaChannel.com Friday May 10 08:22 PM EDT The Energy Department plans to ship weapons-grade plutonium to the Savannah River Site near Aiken, hoping to convert the material into fuel for nuclear reactors. Many state politicians want assurances that if the process fails or takes longer than expected, the nuclear material won't be stored in South Carolina indefinitely. Meet The Lunch Bunch Warren Mowry: "What we could see is literally swords being hammered into plowshares. The weapons material being changed into something that is going to actually produce some good." Mowry: "Twenty years ago when this plant was fully operational, they had 3 reactors going and 8000 people employed there. And now they have 13,000 people employed there and nothing being produced." Gary Weier: "But obviously it's going to bring some problems with quality of life as well and I think that's why it's such a big issue. I think a lot of South Carolinians are dealing with that: I think the state lottery was the same kind of thing: key economic revenue benefits, but what does it do to the quality of life?" Liz Patterson: "It just seems like all of a sudden our state has woken up to the fact that we are really sort of the dumping ground and sure it is money versus quality of life." Luis Mercado: "I think one thing that may be bringing this to the forefront as you say is probably since 9/11 now people think plutonium, nuclear weapons, therefore terrorists are going to be targeting this area." Mercado: "But again the economics of it. What it would bring, the economic impact it would bring to the area and to the state, I think should go beyond and fear that we would have." Holley Ulbrich: "There's always an issue of safety. Highway safety. And where it's passing through and it's passing through increasingly congested areas." Mowry: "We've had hundreds of shipments throughout the country and plutonium has been at the SRS plant for 50 years. This is nothing new." Marc Wilson: "Our nerves are so frayed that it takes almost nothing to turn any issue into an emotionally charged issue." This week, Gov. Jim Hodges officially turned plutonium into a political issue when he launched a television ad campaign underscoring his role in the fight. Third District Rep. Lindsey Graham, who is running for the U.S. Senate has been trying to diffuse the issue with a congressional compromise. But the Republicans hoping to defeat Hodges have stayed fairly quiet on the issue. Weier: "It is a tough issue to deal with and I don't think they want to take the risk of taking the position... any kind of public position on it." Wilson: "And it's all the one thing that all the republican candidates can covenant on. They can turn Hodges into an easy boogeyman. So why should they choose many shades of dissent on the issue? Ulbrich: "Or worse yet agreement. Or worse yet, agreement. If they agree with Hodges that takes some of the tarnish that they've been trying to put on him off." Patterson: "I think everybody, both parties, have woken up to the fact that this is a political issue this time and we're going to play it to the limit." Ulbrich: "I think poor Jim Hodges is lost in the shuffle of all those republican candidates running in the primary and he really needs to remind people that there is another candidate in the governor's race." Next week, more pasta salad and more political talk. Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! and ***************************************************************** 22 Anti-Yucca drive takes in $257,000 Saturday, May 11, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal REVIEW-JOURNAL CAPITAL BUREAU CARSON CITY -- Nevadans have contributed $257,000 to the campaign to induce Congress to oppose President Bush's plan to put a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Bob Loux, administrator of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, said Friday that more than 1,000 people have contributed to the anti-Yucca drive. Gov. Kenny Guinn asked each Nevadan on April 10 to give at least a dollar to the anti-Yucca movement. The money will go to advertising agencies who are running anti-Yucca advertisements on television stations in states with nuclear power plants. Guinn hopes the advertisements will prompt people in those states to encourage their senators to vote against the repository. That vote is expected in July. "I am very pleased with the response," Loux said. "I think it is a tremendous response from individuals." He said the money from 200 new letters still has not been counted, and other donations arrive daily. "We are receiving a lot of $100, $20 and $50 individual contributions," Loux said. The donations do not include the $1.5 million that the Clark County Commission voted to donate. The donations are doubly important for opponents of the repository because the Legislature's Interim Finance Committee has agreed to match these contributions, up to $3 million. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 23 NRC to hold public meetings on Yucca Saturday, May 11, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal A tentative plan the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will use to review the Energy Department's expected license application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain will be the topic of three public meetings this month in Las Vegas and Pahrump. The NRC meetings are scheduled: • 6:30 to 9 p.m. May 21 at the Mountain View Casino, Pahrump • 2 to 4:30 p.m. May 22 at the Clark County Building Department, 4701 W. Russell Road, Las Vegas • 6:30 to 9 p.m. May 23, 4701 W. Russell Road. The meetings will focus on the "purpose, scope, structure and content" of a draft of the Yucca Mountain Review Plan. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2002/May-11-Sat-2002/news/18727131. html ***************************************************************** 24 Russia, US fail to resolve Taiwan's nuclear waste issue The Taipei Times Online: 2002-05-11Saturday, May 11th, 2002 By Charles Snyder STAFF WRITER IN WASHINGTON Discussions between US and Russian officials this week failed to make any progress on an agreement that would help Taiwan solve its problem of where to store tonnes of spent nuclear fuel, senior US and Russian officials said. Supporters of the agreement had hoped to have a deal in place before a summit later this month between US President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Russian nuclear energy minister Alexander Rumyantsev spent three days in Washington this week, meeting with US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, members of Congress and others to set the stage for nuclear and non-proliferation issues for the summit meeting. While the spent-fuel issue came up, Rumyantsev and Abraham told reporters little progress was made. Taiwanese authorities are seeking to find repositories for spent fuel generated by the nation's nuclear power plants, and have been holding talks with Russia, seeking to ship the waste now stored at Orchid Island and other sites to Russia for long-term storage. But the deal has been held up by a requirement that Washington must agree to the transfer, since Taiwan's nuclear power plants were built, and the nuclear material supplied, by US firms. To move the material to Russia, Washington and Moscow must decide how the waste will be handled, which would require settlement of the "Agreement of Cooperation on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy" under the US Atomic Energy Act enacted in 1954. While the week's meetings centered on nuclear weapons and non-proliferation issues, Taiwan's nuclear-waste problem did come up, both sides revealed at a press conference on Thursday. "Yes, indeed, we touched upon this issue," Rumyantsev told reporters. "But the signing of such an agreement really requires a lot of time for preparation," he said. "We really haven't had any specific discussions of Taiwan fuels, American-based or American-sourced fuels at this point," Abraham said. "That's one of a lot of the issues that are engaged in broader agreements that are not yet formulated," he said. The possibility of Taiwan shipping its spent fuel to Russia surfaced last June, when the Russian parliament approved a law allowing the importation of spent nuclear fuel. While specific plans were formulated, the issue has been bogged down by the Russian environmental movement, which opposes the importation of spent fuel. This story has been viewed 242 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/05/11/story/0000135558] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 25 DOE Delays Plutonium Shipments to South Carolina Environment News Service: AmeriScan: May 10, 2002 AmeriScan: May 10, 2002 WASHINGTON, DC, May 10, 2002 (ENS) - The Energy Department (DOE) says it will delay shipments of plutonium to South Carolina to allow a judge time to hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging the shipments. On Thursday, DOE spokesperson Joe Davis told the press that the agency will wait until at least June 15 before beginning shipments of surplus, weapons grade plutonium to the DOE's Savannah River Site. "Given that the governor has elected to throw this matter into litigation, DOE believes that the best way to avoid undue delay in shipments is an expedited briefing schedule that will allow the court the opportunity to make an informed decision on the merits of the matter," Davis said. South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges filed a lawsuit against the DOE on May 1, seeking a stay against any plutonium shipments until the agency completes environmental studies which Hodges charges the DOE has illegally disregarded. The DOE plans to ship a total of 34 metric tons of plutonium from various DOE weapons facilities around the nation to the Savannah River Site, where it will be turned into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors. The plutonium, pure enough to be used in nuclear weapons, is now located at Rocky Flats, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and at the PANTEX Facility in Amarillo, Texas. About 76 trailer loads of plutonium are expected to be shipped from Rocky Flats alone. The DOE had told the governor that shipments from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant outside Denver, Colorado would begin this month in order to meet a Congressionally mandated deadline for closing down the Rocky Flats facility. The agency will now delay its shipments until after the first hearing in the governor's lawsuit, scheduled for June 13. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie will hear arguments regarding Hodges' request for a preliminary injunction which would bar the plutonium shipments until the lawsuit is settled. Hodges has pledged to block the shipments, using state troopers to blockade roads if necessary, until he receives assurances that the plutonium will not be stored in South Carolina after it is processed, or remain in the state if the proposed conversion plant is never funded. "That's good news for us that they've agreed to delay shipments," Hodges said after hearing of the DOE's delay. However, "all this does is move from May to June the day of reckoning," Hodges added. U.S. - Russia Task Force Tackles Dirty Bombs WASHINGTON, DC, May 10, 2002 (ENS) - The United States and Russia have agreed to work together to improve the security of radiological materials that could be used to make so called dirty bombs. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced the agreement at a press conference Thursday with Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumyantsev in Washington DC. "This effort will be a new logical extension of the work we are already doing together on protecting nuclear materials in the Russian Federation," Abraham said. He explained that radioactive material exists in many forms including medical isotopes, radiography sources and some sources of electric power, which make them "potentially attractive targets for theft" by terrorists. During a meeting in Moscow last December, the two governments agreed to accelerate their work on protecting nuclear materials that could be used to make bombs. "As a result of our agreement, we have intensified our efforts in Russia," Abraham said. "We now expect to complete the work of protecting some 600 tons of fissile material by 2008, a full two years earlier than we expected at this time last year." "Nonetheless, September 11 has made clear to both Russia and the United States that more needed to be done," Abraham added. "Both countries have become concerned with radioactive materials that, while not capable of causing a nuclear explosion, would be very suitable for use in a so called 'dirty bomb,' or radiological dispersal device." Dirty bombs would not cause devastating nuclear reactions, but they could spread radioactive materials over a large area, endangering the lives and health of thousands of people. Abraham and Rumyantsev agreed to create a joint U.S.-Russian task force to start looking at the potential for nuclear materials to be stolen to create dirty bombs. Initial funding for the task force will come from the joint Materials Protection, Control and Accounting program. The United States also is set to resume buying plutonium 238 from Russia, Abraham said, a material used as a power source in the U.S. space program. The Abraham-Rumyantsev discussions in Washington, which lasted almost three days, were part of a series of cabinet level consultations in preparation for the upcoming Moscow-St. Petersburg summit between Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin. Email the Environment Editor [news@ens-news.com] ***************************************************************** 26 Historic vote on Yucca full of drama Photo: The south portal entrance to Yucca Mountain Las Vegas SUN May 10, 2002 Columnist Benjamin Grove: Historic vote on Yucca full of drama Benjamin Grove covers Washington, D.C., for the Sun. He can be reached at grove@lasvegassun.com [grove@lasvegassun.com] or (202) 628-3100, Ext. 269. WASHINGTON -- Debate on the Yucca Mountain project has always been marked by moments of high drama, and the historic House vote last week did not disappoint. Lawmakers voted to approve the nuclear waste dump and send it to the Senate with a 306-117 vote. Three and a half hours of debate were spiced with strange, poignant and a few amusing moments. Highlights from the House floor: Showdown. No one knew exactly when lawmakers would turn their attention to the Yucca debate on Wednesday. It was entirely appropriate, after 15 years of study and intense debate about Yucca Mountain, that the final shootout in the House began when Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., brought the matter to floor at exactly 12 p.m. -- high noon. Scurrilous (skur' a les), adj., Vulgar, abrasive. In the first few minutes of debate, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., argued that the House should toss out the Yucca resolution because the project would create unfunded mandates for state and local governments along waste transportation routes. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, a tireless advocate for the Yucca project, said he was "shocked -- shocked and amazed" that Gibbons would suggest that Barton would push a resolution with unfunded mandates. "This is far from being an unfunded mandate. This is the most overfunded, unmet, unobligated, unconstructed thing that we could have ever done in federal government." Barton urged the House to throw out Gibbons' "scurrilous point of order." Those words raised Gibbons' hackles and he cornered Barton a few minutes later. Barton, known for his low-key wit, told Gibbons he was merely being playful with his word choices, the two men said later. Gibbons later said people might think Barton was insulting him. "(Barton) said, 'My God, that's not what I intended. I'll get up there and apologize,' " Gibbons said later. "And he did." A nuclear flush. Barton had praised Gibbons during debate for valiantly fighting for Nevada. Gibbons was simply overwhelmed, Barton said later. "In Las Vegas poker terms, his highest card was a two or a three, and we had a full house," Barton said. "He just didn't have a hand." Barton added, "Contrary to popular belief we love Nevada." Barton said he goes to Las Vegas three or four times a year, joking, "I do what I can to contribute to the local economy." Anyone home? At one point, Gibbons seemed to be making a desperate plea to his GOP friends: "Where are my colleagues who are advocates of states' rights? Of local control? Of fiscal discipline?" In the end, just 13 Republicans voted against Yucca Mountain; 203 voted in favor. Berkley mad. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., joined Gibbons in his disgust with Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who toted a giant poster of the Nevada license plate featuring a nuclear mushroom cloud to the floor for his speech. "The state of Nevada has a tremendous nuclear legacy, as identified by this recently approved Nevada state license plate," Shimkus said. "The state of Nevada can again fulfill their nuclear legacy and continue to aid this nation and our citizens by safely storing high-level nuclear waste for our country." Gibbons later said Shimkus' comments were in poor taste, given that Nevadans died testing nuclear bombs in service to the nation. Berkley said the state had been left with a legacy of cancer, no thanks to the federal government. She said Nevadans don't trust government officials on Yucca precisely because they lied about the bomb tests. "Those Nevada Test Site workers, if they are not dead, they are dying," Berkley said during debate. "Those people that observed those tests and watched as they ate their bologna sandwiches, they are dying, too. Those downwinders in Utah and in Nevada who happened to be caught living downwind of these atomic tests, they are all dead, too." Berkley mad again. Berkley fumed later when Barton insisted there was no proven link between nuclear bomb tests and cancer, arguing "not one scientific study shows that there is any greater incidence of cancer in Nevada than anywhere else in this country. That may be an anecdotal tale, but there is no scientific validity to it." Furious, Berkley tried to reclaim the microphone, but Barton owned the debate time. Berkley noted later that the Energy Department in 2000 acknowledged workers died from cancers they got from working at the Test Site -- an extraordinary admission -- and Congress approved landmark legislation to compensate them. "I was astounded by (Barton's) lack of knowledge regarding the plight of Nevada Test Site workers," Berkley said. The downwinder. One Nevada ally, Rep. James Matheson, D-Utah, delivered a passionate, personal speech about his own experience with downwinders. "On Oct. 7, 1990, my father died at age 61 from a cancer called multiple myeloma," Matheson said. "Thousands of citizens throughout the West continue to get sick and die from radiation exposure-caused illnesses. We saw a picture of a license plate talking about the nuclear legacy of Nevada. That is a legacy of which we should be ashamed." What a dump. Shimkus called Yucca "a barren, windswept desert ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas." Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich.: "It is close, if not contiguous, to where we have done nuclear testing for decades. It will never be a vacation spot." You said a mouthful. Few congressmen actually speak a more government-ese language than Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., a leading Yucca supporter. Here's one sentence (deep breath): "No site will ever be found to be perfect for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste, but I am persuaded that the studies which have already been conducted and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission review that is still to come provides sufficient assurances that the appropriate nature of the Yucca Mountain site has been established and will justify approval of the legislation now before us." In other words: "Yucca seems good enough to me." The Dario Effect. How much influence did Clark County Commissioner and House candidate Dario Herrera have in lobbying two dozen Democratic lawmakers? Consider Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas, one of many lawmakers who had wrestled with their decision in the face of conflicting interests. The electric utility in Gonzalez' district, City Public Service, relies on a nearby nuclear plant for 20 percent of the electricity it provides consumers. The industry hounded him to support Yucca; the utility's general manager had just sent him a letter urging him again to vote "aye." But Berkley had bent Gonzalez' ear, too, and made good arguments that the site simply isn't safe, he said. As he was leaving his office to vote, Gonzalez already planned to vote against Yucca. But Herrera made his decision easier, Gonzalez said. Gonzalez, eager to see a fellow Hispanic Democrat elected to Congress, agreed to chat with Herrera in his office just before the vote. Herrera argued the county's case. "He really made me feel comfortable that I was doing the right thing," Gonzalez said. "I just kept thinking, 'What if this were my district?' " The congressman, not the comedian. What possessed 12 Republicans to buck their president, House leadership and the nuclear power industry? Each has his or her reasons. Gibbons shares a congressional district border with Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif. But Lewis opposed Yucca mostly because county officials in San Bernardino and Inyo counties leaned on him, spokesman Jim Specht said. Local officials are concerned about waste transportation accidents, he said. "Neither of those counties is prepared to deal with that," Specht said. Nevada's struggle with Yucca now turns to the Senate and the federal courts. "This was not the end," Gibbons said in one of a flood of press releases the Nevada delegation released last week. "True to our battle born heritage, Nevada will continue to fight." Photo: The south portal entrance to Yucca Mountain Las Vegas SUN main page All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 27 Skull Valley: Water Hazard The Salt Lake Tribune -- Water Hazard Saturday, May 11, 2002 A desert community's most precious asset is its water, and with a drought looking Utah in the eye, Utah must be vigilant about protecting its water resources. In Skull Valley, the groundwater is mostly ancient water, and if used or degraded it will preclude further development, use and enjoyment of that valley for generations. Yet the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken a nonchalant view toward the groundwater resources in Skull Valley when preparing its final environmental impact statement for the proposed spent nuclear fuel storage facility we've all heard so much about. The NRC staff did not require any characterization of the aquifer, did not require site-specific groundwater quality samples to be collected, and it is relying upon the license applicant's promise never to have an accidental or intentional release to protect the quality of the groundwater. Worse, the dozens of geotechnical boreholes drilled across the site were improperly sealed, thus creating preferential conduits for surface contamination to reach the groundwater. Let the NRC know that Utah's water is too precious to be treated this way. KURT SEEL Salt Lake City © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 28 Question of 'Orphan' Nuclear Casks Raised The Salt Lake Tribune -- Saturday, May 11, 2002 BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH Whether a temporary dump for high-level radioactive waste in Utah's west desert ends up going bankrupt and "orphaning" casks of spent nuclear reactor fuel is not an environmental concern, Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff told a licensing board Friday. The U.S. Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is expected to decide next Friday whether the state of Utah has a valid complaint that NRC staff failed to adequately assess the cost and benefits of a utility consortium's proposed $3 billion waste dump on the impoverished reservation of the Skull Valley band of the Goshute Indian Tribe. The board is holding hearings through next week in Salt Lake City. Making arguments that at times seemed to indicate the state's desperation to find any angle to thwart the project, Special Assistant Attorney General Monte Stewart told the panel of administrative law judges that if the dump operates only for the 20-year term of the proposed license, the consortium would suffer substantial financial losses. The state contends NRC and Private Fuel Storage (PFS) are showing positive cost-benefits based on a 40-year operating life, rather than the less-rosy financial projections for a 20-year dump. "This deal isn't going to go ahead if the stuff has to go in and come out in 20 years," said Stewart. He said the board must consider the potential "environmental outrage" if PFS goes bankrupt and casks of all the nuclear waste produced at U.S. commercial reactors over the past 40 years are left sitting unattended on a concrete pad 75 miles southwest of Salt Lake City in Tooele County. "Do you want bankruptcy court jurisdiction in such a matter?" Stewart asked. But attorneys for the NRC and PFS said dire financial scenarios are not required decision factors in the environmental impact study process. "Whether the applicant makes or loses money is not relevant to our licensing decision," said NRC staff counsel Robert Wiseman, who said the disputed analysis in the study examines the cost and benefit to society, not the consortium. The agency has a separate "financial qualifications assessment" process that is under way on the Delaware-based company and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) does not require any "break-even" consideration in deliberating environmental impacts. "One reads the words of NEPA in vain to find any mention of cost-benefit analysis," added PFS attorney Jay Silberg. Utah's contention that a 40-year license rather than a 20-year license is required is "simply wrong," Wiseman said. Under the proposal, four casks of waste will arrive weekly for 1,000 weeks, or about 19 years. After the 20-year license term expires, no new waste will be accepted and PFS will begin decommissioning the dump and "off-loading" the casks to a permanent nuclear waste repository -- probably Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada. Silberg said the state's claim that off-loading the dump may take another 20 years "is bogus." The state raising a new contention on a subject not required by NEPA analysis this late in the process may make the entire argument moot. The hearing judges must determine whether the state met the timeliness requirements for lodging a complaint and whether adjusting the cost-benefit ratios would really make any difference in the environmental impact decision. "I would have more trouble with this if you were taking part of a national forest, a national park or Bureau of Land Management property, but you have a unique situation here where the Goshutes have said, 'Take our reservation, we'd love you to have it,' " said Michael Farrar, the chairman of the three-judge panel, who cautioned the audience not to assume from his questions what his opinion is. "Why do we care if Mr. Silberg's clients make or lose money on this deal?" csmith@sltrib.com © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 29 Sense on nuclear waste Birmingham Post-Herald Commentary Birmingham Post-Herald May 11, 2002 By a vote of 306-117, the House has voted its support for shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the opposition keeps voicing two main objections that zigzag all over the map in an apparent effort to avoid common sense. Objection one: There is not yet proof that this site will be safe, and there is no reason to rush things. Absolute proof? Nothing like that is even possible. But $7 billion has been spent over the past 24 years studying this area, and reputable panels of scientists have found it sound. The alternative to moving the waste to Nevada is not that it will somehow disappear. The alternative is to continue leaving it at 131 locations that are reasonably safe but not nearly as safe as this site will be. The government had pledged to move the waste by 1998, and some of these other sites are beginning to run out of storage space. Under the best of circumstances, the Yucca site will not be open until 2010. Postponing the date again is much riskier than moving ahead with a process that has been extremely cautious and will not cease being cautious in the years ahead. Objection two: When the trucks and trains start rolling, they will have to make thousands of trips carrying thousands of tons of this radioactive material, and they will put millions of unsuspecting Americans in frightful danger as they pass by or through the cities in which they live. Fact one is that there is nothing new about transporting radioactive materials in the United States. There have been thousands of such shipments since the 1960s with no one ever being hurt by the materials and next to no prospect that anyone would be. Fact two is that millions more people live close to the materials now than will be close to the materials during shipment. Fact three is that, sooner or later, the nuclear waste must be and will be shipped. It cannot just sit where it is forever. Like the House, the Senate will likely vote to back the president in his determination to move the waste to Nevada, which happens to be suitable because of its geological and climatic characteristics and sparse population. The sooner the vote comes, the better for common sense and reasonable public policy. The rights of dead animals The Bush administration's obsession with secrecy is well known but now it seems to have permeated the government to a bizarre extent. According to The Washington Post, the capital's National Zoo refused to give one of its reporters the autopsy records on the death of a popular giraffe because it would violate the dead giraffe's right to privacy and the confidentiality of the veterinarian-animal relationship. Zoo director Lucy Spelman also listed two other reasons for the denial, according to the Post: "The general public is incapable of understanding the raw data; only zoo officials are capable of explaining them. And the release of information would disrupt scientific research." The latter reason is extremely doubtful; the whole point of scientific research is to increase the amount of information available. And the first reason is a classic bureaucratic fudge. The insult to the general public aside, this is a bureaucracy's way of saying, "We will only release information that makes us look good." The assertion that animals, especially dead ones, have a right to privacy and confidentiality pursuant to the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prompted a variety of responses from attorneys and privacy experts polled by the Post, all of them bad for the zoo: "Hogwash." "Zoo doo." "Unbelievable." "Mind-boggling." "Preposterous." If the Post persists in trying to get the giraffe's records, it has limited choices. It can try to embarrass the zoo into releasing the records or it can sue. Since the case involves constitutional issues, it could go all the way to the Supreme Court, if the zoo dug in its hooves. Normally, the paper could file a request under the Freedom of Information Act, but the Smithsonian, of which the zoo is a part, argues, with some reason, that it is not subject to FOIA. Besides, Attorney General John Ashcroft has urged federal agencies to fight FOIA requests. If the zoo isn't suitably embarrassed, the paper should sue. But we hope the zoo will take the lead in demonstrating a new spirit of government openness and that this spirit will spread from the Large Mammal House to the White House and maybe even, although let's not get giddy here, the Justice Department. Copyright (c) 2002 Birmingham Post Co. ***************************************************************** 30 Kyrgyzstan: Nuclear Waste Fears Institute for War and Peace Reporting The government is struggling to make safe decaying Soviet-era nuclear waste pits. By Tolkunbek Turdubaev in Bishkek (RCA No. 119, 1-May-02) Prolonged rainfall and a series of earthquakes across Central Asia have renewed fears of waste uranium escaping from nuclear waste pits in Kyrgyzstan's southern province of Jalal-Abad. Should a mudslide or earthquake displace millions of cubic metres of material from the nuclear waste disposal areas, there is concern that it could pose a threat not just to southern Kyrgyzstan but also to the wider region. Following an urgent appeal by the Bishkek government, a European Union inter-parliamentary commission is expected to visit the region on May 13 to investigate the burial sites, known as tailing pits. Anarkul Aitaliev, from the department of environmental monitoring, part of the ministry of the environment and emergencies, described a chilling worst-case scenario, involving the river Maily-Suu triggering a radioactive mudslide of 120,000 cubic metres "tearing through Central Asia all the way to the Aral Sea". Emphasising the scale of the problem, he added, "That's what only one of the pits can do". The river Maily-Suu currently flows just a few metres away from the nearest tailing pit and according to the local civil defence headquarters there are 165 sites in the province with a high risk of landslide. Heightening the sense of alarm, the last earthquake to shake the area, which occurred only a few days ago, was close to the burial sites. Kyrgyzstan inherited its nuclear waste burial sites from the Soviet Union. The material is covered only by thin layers of gravel, sand and clay. The largest pits are located in the Jalal-Abad province, where a uranium refinery served a number of Soviet-era nuclear power projects. There are 23 uranium-tailing pits and 13 slag heaps near the town of Maily-Suu alone, containing upwards of a million cubic meters of waste. The ministry of the environment and emergencies officially took over the care of the sites in March 1999. Prior to this, Aitaliev said, the pits were kept in a "basically safe" condition by several government agencies, although no maintenance had been undertaken in the five years before the hand-over. The radioactivity level around the burial sites stands at a safe level of between 18 and 30 micro roentgen/hour, he said, well below the maximum permitted level of 100 micro roentgen/hour. However, Aitaliev warned that the condition of the pits had deteriorated each year. "All extraneous influences, such as high water, mudslides and earthquakes, contribute to their erosion. The pits are not safe now," he said. Local residents hold the pits responsible for a high cancer rate and a growing number of children born with deformities, although Nemat Mambetov, head doctor of the local sanitation and epidemic prevention station in Maily-Suu, said such fears could not be proven. "Most of the cancer patients here are senior citizens. Some of them actually used to work in uranium mines. We have no way of ascertaining whether their illness is related to the tailing pits." Rumours about radioactive meat from cattle grazing on the restricted sites also periodically shake the local communities, though Mambetov ruled this out. "All the cattle are checked by veterinarians. We live in a dangerous area, so we have to be vigilant. We would be the first to know if something like this happened," he said. TACIS, the European Union project for technical assistance to the former Soviet Union, has pledged 500,000 euros towards research on the tailing pits. Aitaliev said European consultants would produce a report outlining the pits' design and rehabilitation requirements. "Phase one has already been completed, including research and repair of two kilometres of fence around one of the repositories," he said. "The effort will be continued this year." Kyrgyzstan's worried neighbours are also contributing to the effort. Uzbek experts are due to conduct research on the uranium repositories together with their Kyrgyz counterparts. Russia's Ministry of Nuclear Power has also offered assistance. However, TACIS, World Bank and Kyrgyz experts estimate it will cost 24 million US dollars to properly secure the pits. It is a sum that Kyrgyzstan, with its struggling economy and deficit-plagued budget, cannot afford. The 40,000 dollars the government has allocated so far for emergency work was barely enough to clean the landslide drains and repair decrepit dams. But as the unprecedented rainfall sees rivers rise in southern Kyrgyzstan and mudslides become increasingly destructive, the cost of inaction may start to alarm everyone. Tolkunbek Turdubaev is a BBC stringer in Kyrgyzstan © Institute for War &Peace Reporting Lancaster House, 33 Islington High Street, London N1 9LH, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7713 7130 Fax: +44 (0)20 7713 7140 ***************************************************************** 31 Residents rip Cotter 5-10-02 [http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com] . Residents rip Cotter Phil Krauth Pat Mutz Dan Slater John Lemons Record Staff Writer In two emotionally charged public meetings Thursday, opponents of both Maywood soil shipments and Cotter Corp. lined up to send a message that neither Cotter nor radioactive materials are welcome in Fremont County. "The message we got was 'We want you shut down and out of here,"' said Pat Mutz, general manager for the Cotter uranium mill. Only a few of the 75 to 80 people who spoke at the two meetings were in support of the proposal to bring low-level radioactive material from New Jersey as intermediate cover for the uranium mill tailings. Officials estimated there were 250 people at the 2 p.m. meeting and 175 at the evening meeting. Cotter officials said they were surprised at the community reaction to the proposal to ship 470,000 tons of Maywood Superfund site soil to the Cotter mill. "It seems so low that nobody would be concerned," said Phil Krauth, Cotter lab manager. "It is all within the bounds of material that we are allowed to have. It looked like something we could safely handle." Numerous people said they were concerned about Cot-ter's ability to handle even the lowest level of radioactive tailings after it was revealed that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had cited Cotter for 16 violations involving health protection of employees. Three of the violations were repeat violations. A retired U.S. Navy dentist, Eldon Leff of Cañon City, said that under the Navy's nuclear program, repeat offenses were not condoned. "It would not have happened twice," he said. "Everybody would have been fired." Leff voiced a question that was asked many times by the public. "If this stuff is not harmful, why is it coming here?" he asked. The Maywood soil is being removed from around homes and commercial property where it represents a health threat, said Allen Roos, a representative of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of the Maywood Superfund site in New Jersey. "In its present location it is an uncontrolled situation," he said. Cotter was chosen because it is a controlled site where the material would be monitored by staff and eventually become a containment site for radioactive materials under the control of the federal government, he added. "I do not propose to pollute Lincoln Park here," Roos said. The meeting format was required as part of the process to have the CDPHE review the public comments on an environmental assessment of the materials proposed for shipment to Cotter, he said. A second public meeting has been set for May 23. After a review of a transcript of the meetings and the environmental assessment, the CDPHE staff will make the final decision on the shipments to Cotter, according to the new law. Cañon City resident Paul Kendall complained about the five-minute time limits on speakers while Cotter had 55 minutes to present its position. Dan Slater, a Fremont County attorney and candidate for the Colorado Legislature, said there were fundamental flaws in the environmental assessment. The person who did the assessment, Jan Johnson, is a long time employee of Cotter and spoke against the bill that created the requirements to hold the public meetings. Johnson said the Maywood shipments to Cotter would have no social and economic impacts on the community. The use of the lower-level materials as a mill tailings cover will benefit the adjacent residents because there will be less radiation. "These soils are not toxic waste or hazardous materials," she said. "These soils don't pose a chemical hazard." Others objected to the study, which was paid for by Cotter. Cañon City Councilman Mike Near said he believes the Maywood shipments would have an adverse impact on the city's economy. Many people said the community has made investments to improve the economy to benefit from tourism, but that will be affected when the community becomes known as a radioactive disposal site. Cotter made it clear that it was pushing forward with the intent to receive not only the Maywood soils, but other soils and substances, including shipments from New York. Ó 2000 Royal Gorge ***************************************************************** 32 Parks nuke cleanup set for completion in 2007 PittsburghLIVE.com - [Valley News Dispatch] By Mary Ann Thomas [mathomas@tribweb.com] VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH Thursday, May 9, 2002 PARKS: The completion for cleaning up the nuclear burial grounds along Route 66 is set for September 2007. In its first public meeting about the Parks site Wednesday evening, officials from the Army Corps of Engineers announced a cleanup schedule and activities. "We want to do the job right," Maj. Steven Roemhildt, Pittsburgh District Corps deputy district engineer, told about 100 residents and government officials. Parks resident Jack Bologna said of the cleanup schedule: "Half of us will be up in Boot Hill before this will even be done." The reason the corps is doing the job is because U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, was disgusted with past efforts by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC leaned toward keeping the toxic and radioactive material at the site instead of digging it up and hauling it away. Murtha added legislation in the 2002 defense appropriations budget for the corps to take the lead role in the cleanup away from the NRC. Doing it right, according to Roemhildt, means investigating the site, developing cleanup alternatives, coming up with a plan and seeking approval from the public and environmental agencies such as the state Department of Environmental Protection. But the cleanup does not necessarily mean digging up and removing the waste, Roemhildt said. Radiological and chemical wastes were buried at the Parks site in unlined trenches from the NUMEC nuclear fuel facility in Apollo between 1960 and the early 1970s. The Atlantic Richfield Co. and BWX Technologies (formerly Babcock &Wilcox) became subsequent owners of the site. The burial grounds are behind the former NUMEC plutonium processing plant. Murtha is urging the corps to remove the materials rather than keep the contamination on site, which sits on top of a tight maze of underground coal mines. "Sooner or later, the hazardous substances will find a way out into our environment through the old mine workings," Murtha said in a statement read by his spokesman, Brad Clemenson. "Let's clean it up now while we have the momentum and not end up with a crisis later and no money to fix it," Clemenson said. After the meeting, Clemenson said that Murtha will try to accelerate the cleanup schedule. Residents asked questions about the contamination of the waste dump, but corps officials didn't have many answers. It's still early, according to Richard Dowling, corps spokesman. "This was a great first step," he said of Wednesday's meeting. The corps will post answers to residents' questions as they become available on its Web site. "The citizens of the Kiski Valley are the only true stakeholders here," said environmental activist Patty Ameno of Leechburg. "We have been equivalent to veteran soldiers in our own right - veterans who were unknowingly committed to the battle of the Cold War." Ameno, who has been working with Murtha's office on the Parks cleanup, gave the corps a list of requests. Among them: A citizens' oversight panel; construction of an emergency evacuation access road for residents of the Kiskimere section of Parks; core sampling at the site and in neighboring areas; and review of all proposals, plans, tests and studies by independent experts. Mary Ann Thomas can be reached at mathomas@tribweb.com [mathomas@tribweb.com] or (724 )226-4691. 2002 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 33 Group: State's Nuclear shipments would rise billingsgazette.com - May 11, 2002 Last modified May 11, 2002 - 1:40 am Associated Press CASPER, Wyo. (AP) - Nuclear waste shipments could pass through Wyoming every 10 hours if Yucca Mountain is approved as a repository for radioactive waste, a nuclear energy watchdog group said. The U.S. House this week decided by a nearly 3-1 margin to support President Bush's plan to make the Nevada site the nation's central nuclear waste repository. The next showdown will come in the Senate, which must decide by July whether to override a Nevada veto of the Yucca Mountain project, as the House did Wednesday by a 306-117 vote. Three Nevada lawsuits challenging the plan already are in the courts. If the proposal comes to fruition, Wyoming would rank fourth in traffic if most of the 77,000 tons of radioactive waste is shipped by rail, and fifth if shipped by truck, according to the Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy &Environmental Program. There would be 16,124 railroad loads or 33,685 truckloads, the group said. "That means there could be one nuclear shipment every 10 hours," said Hugh Jackson, public policy analyst for the organization, based in Washington, D.C. Bryan Jacobs, spokesman for Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., said her vote in favor of the plan to develop Yucca Mountain was a difficult one. "This could very well have been Wyoming," he said. "Cubin feels that there is an obligation, however, to the general welfare of the nation." In recent months, Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., has spoken in favor of the plan, but Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., is still undecided, Enzi's spokesman, Coy Knobel, said. "He's still listening to the senators from Nevada to get their side," Knobel said Thursday. Jackson, speaking by phone from Las Vegas, said Wyoming's delegation ought to stand beside its counterpart in Nevada in fighting the plan. "Wyoming politicians have for years made the case that the federal government runs roughshod over the states," he said. "What the federal government is doing to Nevada right now is the egregious example of that." Jacobs said Cubin believes opponents of the plan are perpetuating false information about transportation safety, and that a relatively good safety record to date can continue through careful planning. "Transportation plans will have to be addressed in detail (by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)," he said. "Those regulators would have to approve the plans before shipments to Yucca Mountain can begin." But Jackson said the volume of shipments would far exceed that of the past. "They have no experience shipping anywhere near the volume of this stuff that's going to go through Wyoming," he said. Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises [http://www.leeenterprises.com] . ***************************************************************** 34 Tough Bomb Materials Treaty Expected Sat May 11, 8:24 AM ET By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The world's nations, spurred on by fears of catastrophic terror attacks, are expected by year's end to put the final touches on a toughened treaty obligating governments to better protect nuclear material from bombmaking terrorists, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency said. Mohamed ElBaradei also said Friday he hopes for an agreement with Washington and Moscow giving his International Atomic Energy Agency responsibility for verifying reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Historically, such reductions have been verified by the two nuclear powers alone. In a third area, ElBaradei said he favors a treaty requiring regulation of radioactive materials, such as cobalt used for cancer therapy, that cannot be made into true nuclear weapons but that terrorists could blow up with explosives — so-called "dirty bombs" — to spread panic. ElBaradei, in an interview, said global attitudes toward nuclear threats have changed since Sept. 11. Just last month, American officials reported that a captured leader of al-Qaida, the group blamed for those attacks, told interrogators it planned to build some kind of nuclear device. "We have seen a new kind of risk we have not seen before, people who would sacrifice their lives in the process of committing an act of violence. We have seen a high degree of sophistication in committing an act of violence," he said. "That necessitated a complete re-evaluation of the (nuclear) security risk." One early result, ElBaradei said, should be an expansion of the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. That treaty set technical standards for protecting plutonium and enriched uranium — the material of nuclear bombs — but only in international transportation. Specialists have been negotiating a major amendment to the treaty that would expand its requirements to also guard such bomb-grade material when it is in civilian use or in storage — at research or power plants, for example — with specified protective structures and security measures. The working group meets again next month, planning to submit a draft document to a full-scale diplomatic conference for approval. "We hope that we'll be successful and complete the exercise by the end of the year," ElBaradei said. He was also hopeful about chances for wrapping up three-way negotiations with the United States and Russia that would allow the agency to check any nuclear bomb material declared excess under arms control agreements. Since its founding almost a half-century ago, the Vienna-based U.N. agency has not played an active role in any kind of review of the nuclear powers' weapons inventories. "We are making some progress," ElBaradei said. "I hope in the not very distant future, we'll have an agreement. That, I think, would be an important breakthrough." He also said he favored "binding norms" — that is, a treaty — to set worldwide standards for the security of cobalt-60, cesium-137, strontium-90 and other radioactive isotopes used in medicine and industry. Such materials could contaminate large areas for long periods if blown up in a terrorist bomb. ElBaradei said negotiating a treaty could take years, however, and for now he would like to see governments commit, less formally, to security guidelines that the agency published last December. Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 35 UN Nuclear Chief Sees Treaty Soon Las Vegas SUN May 10, 2002 VIENNA, Austria- The world's nations, spurred on by fears of catastrophic terror attacks, are expected by year's end to put the final touches on a toughened treaty obligating governments to better protect nuclear material from bombmaking terrorists, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency said. Mohamed ElBaradei also said Friday he hopes for an agreement with Washington and Moscow giving his International Atomic Energy Agency responsibility for verifying reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Historically, such reductions have been verified by the two nuclear powers alone. In a third area, ElBaradei said he favors a treaty requiring regulation of radioactive materials, such as cobalt used for cancer therapy, that cannot be made into true nuclear weapons but that terrorists could blow up with explosives - so-called "dirty bombs" - to spread panic. ElBaradei, in an interview, said global attitudes toward nuclear threats have changed since Sept. 11. Just last month, American officials reported that a captured leader of al-Qaida, the group blamed for those attacks, told interrogators it planned to build some kind of nuclear device. "We have seen a new kind of risk we have not seen before, people who would sacrifice their lives in the process of committing an act of violence. We have seen a high degree of sophistication in committing an act of violence," he said. "That necessitated a complete re-evaluation of the (nuclear) security risk." One early result, ElBaradei said, should be an expansion of the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. That treaty set technical standards for protecting plutonium and enriched uranium - the material of nuclear bombs - but only in international transportation. Specialists have been negotiating a major amendment to the treaty that would expand its requirements to also guard such bomb-grade material when it is in civilian use or in storage - at research or power plants, for example - with specified protective structures and security measures. The working group meets again next month, planning to submit a draft document to a full-scale diplomatic conference for approval. "We hope that we'll be successful and complete the exercise by the end of the year," ElBaradei said. He was also hopeful about chances for wrapping up three-way negotiations with the United States and Russia that would allow the agency to check any nuclear bomb material declared excess under arms control agreements. Since its founding almost a half-century ago, the Vienna-based U.N. agency has not played an active role in any kind of review of the nuclear powers' weapons inventories. "We are making some progress," ElBaradei said. "I hope in the not very distant future, we'll have an agreement. That, I think, would be an important breakthrough." He also said he favored "binding norms" - that is, a treaty - to set worldwide standards for the security of cobalt-60, cesium-137, strontium-90 and other radioactive isotopes used in medicine and industry. Such materials could contaminate large areas for long periods if blown up in a terrorist bomb. ElBaradei said negotiating a treaty could take years, however, and for now he would like to see governments commit, less formally, to security guidelines that the agency published last December. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 36 Russia: Moscow, U.S. Form Radioactive Materials Office Washington, 10 May 2002 (RFE/RL) -- The United States and Russia have agreed to set up a joint task force to prevent radioactive materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Russian Atomic Energy Minister Aleksandr Rumyantsev announced the agreement late yesterday after three days of talks in Washington. The new body will seek to identify low-grade non-military radioactive materials which could be used by terrorists to produce bombs that would not have the destructive power of a nuclear weapon, but would spread toxic radiation when exploded. Such radioactive substances can be found in many forms, including medical isotopes. Abraham said the effort would be financed by the U.S. Energy Department. Abraham also announced that the U.S. would resume buying plutonium 238 from Russia to use as a power source in U.S. spacecraft. The U.S. signed an agreement to buy the nonweapons-grade plutonium in 1992, but in recent years none has been bought. © 1995-2001 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc., All Rights http://www.rferl.org ***************************************************************** 37 Test site training center may get boost Saturday, May 11, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Committee OKs funds for counterterrorism By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The Nevada Test Site has been put on a path in Congress toward a substantial increase in funding for counterterrorism training. The Senate Armed Services Committee this week authorized $50 million to be spent next year at the test site to train emergency responders in handling possible situations involving nuclear, biological or chemical attacks. That amount is a five-fold increase over current spending for counterterrorism programs at the Nevada range and also five times what the Bush administration had requested for next year. The funding was written into the committee's annual defense authorization bill, which now goes to the Senate floor. "The support of the Armed Services Committee is an encouraging indication of support for the National Center for Combating Terrorism," said Sen. Harry Reid, using a name he is trying to get President Bush to designate at the test site. Reid, D-Nev., has campaigned for dramatic increases in test site counterterrorism spending since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and worked to arrange the defense bill line item. Reid has called for between $50 million and $60 million in annual counterterrorism spending at the site. The National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the test site, had requested $69.6 million during internal Bush administration budget talks. The Senate committee action is an early stage in the bill process, although once line items are inserted they generally survive to final passage. Once authorized, the program would need funding to be appropriated by Congress in a separate bill. The House bill contains $37.4 million for programs at Nellis Air Force Base, according to Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev. Among Nellis funding are $6.9 million for an ordnance disposal facility; $3.2 million for an F-22 munitions maintenance hangar; $12.3 for a dormitory, and $15 million for land acquisition to expand a base buffer zone. The House bill also contains $4 million to test a reprocessing method for plutonium extracted from nuclear weapons. Gibbons said the money would support the efforts of Thorium Power, a Washington-based firm testing the process in Russia. Gibbons said he is among lawmakers intrigued by emerging thorium fuel technology, which its proponents say generates 40 percent less waste plus less radioactive byproducts than conventional uranium fuel.. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2002/May-11-Sat-2002/news/18726159. html [http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2002/May-11-Sat-2002/news/18726159 .html] ***************************************************************** 38 Analysis: 'Axis of evil' capabilities BBC News | AMERICAS | 9 May, 2002 In January President Bush described Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an 'axis of evil' and accused them of seeking to develop nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Now a senior US official has added Libya, Cuba and Syria to the list. Iraq President Bush's pointed reference to Iraq in his State of the Union address suggests that he intends to take some kind of action against Baghdad before the end of his presidency. Military budget: $1.4bn Army: 383,000 Combat aircraft: 200-300 Missiles: Small number of short range surface-to-surface types Weapons of mass destruction: Reportedly trying to produce nuclear, biological and chemical weapons Despite years of weapons inspections by the United Nations and international sanctions, Iraq is suspected of still wishing to pursue programmes to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and missile developments. Analysts suggest the US would need to deploy at least 250,000 troops to seriously threaten Iraq's 383,000-strong army. Iraqi forces are likely to be more resilient than in the Gulf War if the US objective is the removal of President Saddam Hussein. Iraqi soldiers are already reported to be digging trenches in preparation, and the country's air defence systems have also been upgraded. Iran Although moderate elements have emerged in Iran and there are some signs that Washington seeks a reappraisal of relations, deep hostility and suspicion between the two countries remains. Military budget: $7.5bn Army: 513,000 Combat aircraft: 476 Missiles: About 200 conventional medium range Scud missiles Weapons of mass destruction: Reportedly chemical and biological; believed to be developing nuclear weapons Iran remains on the US State Department list as a state sponsor of terrorism. And Washington is also concerned that Iran has regional ambitions. The US believes Iran is developing long-range ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction and will probably have them by 2015. President Mohammad Khatami's support among moderates is strong, but hard-liners control the military, intelligence, judiciary and security forces. Iran also has a strong enough navy to "stem the flow of oil from the Gulf for brief periods," according to US Defence Intelligence Agency Chief Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson. But, according to a report from the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, while Iran's conventional forces are large, much of its equipment is dilapidated and obsolescent. North Korea Washington perceives that the most serious threat from North Korea comes from its long-range ballistic missile programme. Pyongyang is reportedly an exporter of sensitive ballistic missile technology to states like Iran, Libya, Syria and Egypt. Military budget: $1.3bn Army: 1,000,000 Combat aircraft: 800+ Missiles: 500 conventional medium range, longer range in development Weapons of mass destruction: Reportedly chemical, some biological capacity, developing nuclear weapons North Korea is said to have ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States by 2015, and may have the plutonium to build one or two nuclear weapons. Pyongyang, however, is complying with an agreement to freeze aspects of its nuclear programme, and the country remains beset by a famine. In its final years, the Clinton administration appeared to make progress in attempts to engage North Korea in dialogue. However, 37,000 US troops remain deployed in South Korea to counter the threat from the North's one million strong army, and President Bush seems to have put any hopes of further rapprochement firmly on ice. Syria Syria has never shown serious interest in producing nuclear weapons, but the country is said to have a well-developed chemical weapons programme. Military budget: $0.8bn Army: 235,000 Combat aircraft: 589 Missiles: 200 Scud B, 80 Scud C medium range Weapons of mass destruction: Reportedly chemical weapons, biological weapons research This is reported to have started in earnest after clashes with Israel in 1982. By 1984 Syria had set up two chemical weapons plants producing significant amounts of nerve gases such as Sarin and VX. Syria currently has a range of medium range surface-to-surface missiles, including Scud B mobile launchers, Russian-built SS-21's and longer range Scud C missiles. While the army is large, with about 235,000 active troops, much of its equipment is relatively obsolete. The Syrian air force is also considered largely out-dated, with a token strength of exported MiG-29 and SU-24 strike attack aircraft. Recently, there have been fears that Syria has started to develop biological weapons - but details of the level of advancement and delivery systems of such programmes are not known. Cuba Cuba does not possess nuclear or chemical weapons, and shows no sign of attempting to acquire them. Military budget: $0.7bn Army: 60,000 Combat aircraft: 130 Missiles: None Weapons of mass destruction: No nuclear or chemical weapons, very limited bio warfare research The country is believed to have a limited biological warfare research programme - but the scope and extent of this are not known. In 1990, Cuba possessed perhaps the most advanced air force in Latin America, with about 150 Soviet-built MiG 23 and 29 fighter aircraft. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union - and loss of Soviet subsidies - decimated each branch of Cuba's armed forces. The army currently has about 60,000 active troops - compared to more than 200,000 in 1994. Libya In the 1970s, Libya's apparent determination to acquire nuclear weapons alarmed the West. This was compounded by the Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi's often fractious relations with successive US administrations. Military budget: $1.2bn Army: 35,000 Combat aircraft: 420 Missiles: Some Scud B medium range missiles Weapons of mass destruction: Reportedly chemical, researching biological, nuclear programme stalled While its nuclear plans appear to have now stalled, analysts say Libya has continued to develop chemical weapons. A parallel biological warfare project is thought to be in its early research stages. Both programmes have been hindered, however, by a lack of scientific expertise. The Libyan Government denies it is developing weapons of mass destruction. Libya's air force has a number of medium-range Scud missiles and TU-22 bombers. Its army is relatively small, with about 35,000 active front-line troops. ***************************************************************** 39 NDA says nuclear tests raised India's esteem News Home Yahoo! News - Sat May 11, 9:21 AM ET NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India says its esteem in the world has grown after it conducted nuclear tests four years ago and refused to buckle under pressure from the international community, the ruling federal coalition said on the anniversary of the tests on Saturday . "India's esteem has gone up in the international world following the government's efforts," a resolution from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) said. "In the last four years, the country has faced several challenges to its security but the government has overcome them with strength," it said. The meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee (news - web sites). Four years ago India stunned the world by conducting nuclear tests at Pokhran in Rajasthan, prompting Pakistan to conduct its own tests within a month. The tests led to widespread consternation and triggered fears of a nuclear confrontation in the sub-continent. Several developed countries including the United States and Japan imposed sanctions, many of which have since been lifted. India and Pakistan have massed closed to a million troops on both sides of the India-Pakistan border for nearly four months now, in a crisis provoked by an attack on the Indian parliament, blamed on Pakistan-based rebel groups operating in disputed Kashmir (news - web sites). The military confrontation shows no signs of abating, deepening concerns of a miscalculation or an accident that could escalate into the world's first nuclear exchange. Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or ***************************************************************** 40 Rumsfeld Says Iraq Still Building Deadly Weapons Yahoo! News - Fri May 10, 7:09 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq is forging ahead with its outlawed chemical, nuclear and germ weapon programs as well as with the development of missiles to deliver them, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday. "Saddam Hussein's appetites for these weapons is enormous," he said in an interview with the Fox News Channel. "We know he's been focusing on them." Rumsfeld said Iraq's ballistic weapons program had proceeded "apace," as had chemical and biological programs. "The borders are porous, they are able to get any number of things across those borders," he said, referring to so-called dual-use items that, he said, were immediately put to military ends. Rumsfeld added that Iraqi nuclear experts had gone on working together, under the "guise of working on other things," even before Iraq expelled United Nations weapons inspectors in December 1998. Iraq was supposed to scrap any weapons of mass destruction under the Security Council disarmament resolutions that ended the U.S.-led 1991 Gulf War that drove Iraq from Kuwait but left Saddam in power. "Under the U.N. resolution, Saddam is not supposed to have weapons of mass destruction," Rumsfeld said. "Therefore the focus should not be so much on inspecting ... but to actually finding what they are doing and disarming them and denying having those weapons." President Bush and his aides have been building the case for toppling Saddam, fueling speculation that Washington is waiting for the right moment to launch military action. Mon May 13,12:51 AM ET - (Reuters) ***************************************************************** 41 Nuke indifference breeds suspicions abroad asahi.com : ENGLISH Asahi Shimbun [http://www.asahi.com/] JAPANESE By Keiji Takeuchi The overseas media is abuzz over the recent comment by Liberal Party leader Ichiro Ozawa that Japan might go ahead with nuclear armament. In Japan, however, the comment has gone right over many people's heads. This gap in perception between Japan and the rest of the world has generated international friction. Whenever concerns were raised abroad in the past about Japan's potential to become a nuclear power, the Japanese government and nuclear experts invariably denied such a possibility, arguing this was not only politically unrealistic but the nation's ``three non-nuclear principles'' also stood in the way. Ozawa's remarks, however, undermine this argument. The impact of his comment lies in the fact that even though Ozawa is only an opposition party chief at present, he is a powerful politician and future leader material. There is no question Ozawa has planted a very legitimate seed of doubt about the stated permanence of Japan's non-nuclear policy. But the Japanese public remains indifferent because nobody took Ozawa's comment seriously. People simply dismissed it out of hand in their belief that Japan could not possibly arm itself with nuclear weapons. In Japan, however, spent fuel from nuclear power plants is reprocessed for plutonium extraction. Japan already has a 5-ton plutonium stockpile, plus an additional 27 tons extracted under contract with reprocessing firms in Britain and France. Japan has developed its large H2A rockets. The nation certainly has the materials to make nuclear weapons, as well as the potential means for their transportation. On the other hand, Japan's handling of plutonium and concentrated uranium is monitored most rigorously by the International Atomic Energy Agency, accounting for 20 percent of all IAEA inspections. Moreover, the Japanese government also carries out the same inspection independently. Ryukichi Imai, former Japanese ambassador to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, is the leading proponent of the argument-voiced by many Japanese nuclear researchers-that Japan's reactor-grade plutonium is not a suitable material for nuclear weapons. Imai claims that the composition of reactor-grade plutonium makes it passable as a material for explosive devices, but unsuitable for strategically reliable nuclear weapons. For these reasons, many Japanese nuclear experts are often annoyed by overseas concerns about the nation's possible nuclear armament. Their argument, however, does not hold water abroad. The Council of International Security and Armament Control of the U.S. Science Academy takes the position that it is possible to make nuclear weapons from reactor-grade plutonium. For the Japanese to stop any further growth of suspicions abroad, they must stop expecting the rest of the world to simply understand their lack of interest in turning their nation into a nuclear power. Specifically, the Atomic Energy Commission, which has the final say on the nation's nuclear policy and promotes peaceful utilization of nuclear power, should have issued a statement in response to Ozawa's comment rather than ignore it. Tatsujiro Suzuki, a Keio University professor, started his ``peace pledge movement'' in October 1999 to collect signatures from nuclear researchers who refuse to ``participate in the research, development, production, acquisition and utilization of nuclear weapons.'' Suzuki, however, has collected only 150 signatures to date. ``We must raise the structural barrier to the development of nuclear weapons, and at the same time be more aware of the existence of weapons-usable materials and technology in Japan,'' Suzuki noted. When Japan receives its shipment of plutonium from Europe in future, the world will remember and quote Ozawa's comment on every such occasion. Japan will then realize the price of having remained indifferent to the issue. The author is an Asahi Shimbun senior staff writer.(IHT/Asahi: May 11,2002) [Copyright Asahi Shimbun ***************************************************************** 42 Tough Bomb Materials Treaty Expected Yahoo! News - Sat May 11, 8:24 AM ET By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The world's nations, spurred on by fears of catastrophic terror attacks, are expected by year's end to put the final touches on a toughened treaty obligating governments to better protect nuclear material from bombmaking terrorists, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency said. Mohamed ElBaradei also said Friday he hopes for an agreement with Washington and Moscow giving his International Atomic Energy Agency responsibility for verifying reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Historically, such reductions have been verified by the two nuclear powers alone. In a third area, ElBaradei said he favors a treaty requiring regulation of radioactive materials, such as cobalt used for cancer therapy, that cannot be made into true nuclear weapons but that terrorists could blow up with explosives — so-called "dirty bombs" — to spread panic. ElBaradei, in an interview, said global attitudes toward nuclear threats have changed since Sept. 11. Just last month, American officials reported that a captured leader of al-Qaida, the group blamed for those attacks, told interrogators it planned to build some kind of nuclear device. "We have seen a new kind of risk we have not seen before, people who would sacrifice their lives in the process of committing an act of violence. We have seen a high degree of sophistication in committing an act of violence," he said. "That necessitated a complete re-evaluation of the (nuclear) security risk." One early result, ElBaradei said, should be an expansion of the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. That treaty set technical standards for protecting plutonium and enriched uranium — the material of nuclear bombs — but only in international transportation. Specialists have been negotiating a major amendment to the treaty that would expand its requirements to also guard such bomb-grade material when it is in civilian use or in storage — at research or power plants, for example — with specified protective structures and security measures. The working group meets again next month, planning to submit a draft document to a full-scale diplomatic conference for approval. "We hope that we'll be successful and complete the exercise by the end of the year," ElBaradei said. He was also hopeful about chances for wrapping up three-way negotiations with the United States and Russia that would allow the agency to check any nuclear bomb material declared excess under arms control agreements. Since its founding almost a half-century ago, the Vienna-based U.N. agency has not played an active role in any kind of review of the nuclear powers' weapons inventories. "We are making some progress," ElBaradei said. "I hope in the not very distant future, we'll have an agreement. That, I think, would be an important breakthrough." He also said he favored "binding norms" — that is, a treaty — to set worldwide standards for the security of cobalt-60, cesium-137, strontium-90 and other radioactive isotopes used in medicine and industry. Such materials could contaminate large areas for long periods if blown up in a terrorist bomb. ElBaradei said negotiating a treaty could take years, however, and for now he would like to see governments commit, less formally, to security guidelines that the agency published last December. Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 43 Nuclear war feared in South Asia, says report - DAWN - Stories; 11 May, 2002 By Our Staff Correspondent WASHINGTON, May 10: An op-ed article in The Washington Post, noting that the South Asia is the only part of the world where a nuclear war may break out, on Friday urges the American diplomatic intervention. It says the US and European officials are increasingly worried about what could happen between Pakistan and India over Kashmir in the next couple of months. The article, by columnist David Ignatius, also says the officials warn that all the ingredients are in place for a disastrous chain of miscalculation on the order of August 1914 when the over-armed European nations blundered into World War I. The state department is alarmed enough that it is hurriedly sending a senior official to visit India and Pakistan, probably next week. Secretary of State Colin Powell may call top officials in the two countries by telephone this week to caution against misjudgment. The possibility of the conflict outlined in the article is based on the assessment that Pakistan will not be able to meet the Indian demands for handing over of 20 suspected militants, and to stop Pakistan-based militants from going into Kashmir as the passes into that region begin to open. The Indian intelligence agency, RAW, is likely to submit a report shortly to the Vajpayee government saying that Islamabad has failed to respond to the two demands, and the report is bound to make hard-liners in the Indian government urge action against Pakistan. With a three to one superiority in conventional forces " the Indians could burst across the border and, in a matter of days or even hours, overrun run and effectively cut Pakistan in half". Many analysts fear that facing an Indian onslaught, Pakistan might launch a retaliatory nuclear attack and India would probably retaliate with its own nuclear weapons. The article says the Indians believe Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is deeply involved in the long-running campaign to free Kashmir from Indian control, "and the list of 20 alleged terrorist they have given to Pakistan for extradition includes some people who are reputedly close to the ISI". Gen Pervez Musharraf, the article asserts, cannot also meet the other Indian demand, for an end to infiltration of Kashmir, " seven if he finds some face-keeping compromise on the 20 names. The Pakistani president already ordered such a halt in a widely-praised Jan 12 speech, but analysts say the flow of potential terrorists into Kashmir has continued. © The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2002 ***************************************************************** 44 Rumsfeld Says Iraq Still Building Deadly Weapons News Iraq Fri May 10, 7:09 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq is forging ahead with its outlawed chemical, nuclear and germ weapon programs as well as with the development of missiles to deliver them, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday. "Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s appetites for these weapons is enormous," he said in an interview with the Fox News Channel. "We know he's been focusing on them." Rumsfeld said Iraq's ballistic weapons program had proceeded "apace," as had chemical and biological programs. "The borders are porous, they are able to get any number of things across those borders," he said, referring to so-called dual-use items that, he said, were immediately put to military ends. Rumsfeld added that Iraqi nuclear experts had gone on working together, under the "guise of working on other things," even before Iraq expelled United Nations (news - web sites) weapons inspectors in December 1998. Iraq was supposed to scrap any weapons of mass destruction under the Security Council disarmament resolutions that ended the U.S.-led 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) that drove Iraq from Kuwait but left Saddam in power. "Under the U.N. resolution, Saddam is not supposed to have weapons of mass destruction," Rumsfeld said. "Therefore the focus should not be so much on inspecting ... but to actually finding what they are doing and disarming them and denying having those weapons." President Bush (news - web sites) and his aides have been building the case for toppling Saddam, fueling speculation that Washington is waiting for the right moment to launch military action. Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or ***************************************************************** 45 Experts at Flats in wake of delay By Mike Soraghan [msoraghan@denverpost.com] Denver Post Washington Bureau Friday, May 10, 2002 - WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Energy dispatched a team of experts to Rocky Flats on Thursday to find ways to keep the former nuclear bomb factory on track for closure in 2006, after it agreed to delay shipments of plutonium from the facility until at least June 15. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham had said that shipments to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina had to begin by May 15 to meet the 2006 deadline. But now officials say that the shipping date might be flexible. DOE wanted to give a federal judge time to hear arguments in a lawsuit filed by South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges seeking to block the shipments. A hearing has been set for June 13 in South Carolina. The federal government is spending $7 billion to decontaminate Rocky Flats and turn it into a wildlife refuge. That means moving 6 tons of weapons-grade plutonium from the plant in northeast Jefferson County to the Savannah River site, where a $3.8 billion "MOX," or mixed oxide, fuel facility is to be built to recycle it into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. The DOE team was sent at the request of Gov. Bill Owens and U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, both Republicans, who said they're worried that Hodges' opposition could push closure past 2006. Democrat Hodges and the Bush administration have been in a standoff for weeks because the governor says DOE hasn't provided sufficient guarantees that the MOX plant will be built. Cancellation of the plant would leave South Carolina as "the nation's nuclear dumping ground," Hodges said. In addition to filing suit, he's threatened to lay down in the road or send out the state highway patrol to stop the shipments. Allard filed a bill Thursday that would punish South Carolina for Hodges' resistance. He wants to order DOE to move the MOX plant, costing the state 1,300 jobs, and to look into shutting down the Savannah River nuclear weapons plant. The plant already employs 15,000 people. "The governor of South Carolina has convinced me through his words and actions that his state is no longer interested in having the MOX facility at Savannah River," Allard said in a statement. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., is well-known for working to bring projects to his home state and keep them there. But he made no pledge to fight to keep Savannah River open. "I was concerned that the recent filing of a federal lawsuit by the governor could jeopardize current and future jobs at the Savannah River site. It is now apparent that my concerns were well founded," Thurmond said in a statement. Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., who has quietly backed Hodges, didn't return calls. Political experts questioned whether Allard, as a freshman senator in the minority party, has the power to prevail over Thurmond and Hollings - two of the most senior members of the Senate. "It comes down to a question of which state's senators have more power, and if this was a contest we'd have to stop it after one round," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Virginia. "Colorado would lose." Sabato said he believes that Thurmond failed to immediately oppose the bill because he is "letting Allard score some rhetorical points" because of his re-election challenge in Colorado this year. All contents Copyright 2002 The Denver Post ***************************************************************** 46 Bunning DOE safety amendment approved [http://www.paducahsun.com/] The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Saturday, May 11, 2002 The Senate Armed Services Committee has approved an amendment to improve worker health and safety at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and other Department of Energy nuclear facilities. Offered by Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Southgate, the amendment was approved Thursday night as part of the 2003 Defense Authorization Bill. It now goes to the Senate floor. Although there are Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards for industrial and construction work at commercial sites, there are no such standards for DOE facilities, Bunning said. His bill would make DOE regulations enforceable by placing similar OSHA requirements on DOE contractors. "It makes no sense to me as to why DOE's health and safety standards are not legally enforceable at the Paducah plant," Bunning said. "Worker health and safety should not be any less a worry at DOE sites than at commercial sites." Leon Owens, president of the Paducah plant's energy workers' union, called the amendment "very significant," because for the first time, plant contractors would be held accountable for OSHA standards. He said the measure was opposed by DOE and not fully supported by the Bush administration. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************