***************************************************************** 07/11/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.177 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 AU: Reveal nuclear sites: Minister 2 EXCLUSIVE: Taxpayers bail out bankrupt nuclear plants 3 UK: NEW BODY IS CREATED TO DEAL WITH NUCLEAR LEGACY 4 Homer's powerful nuclear lesson for Scots 5 US: Bush appoints Vandy professor to nuclear post 6 US: NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste To Meet in Rockville, 7 UK: THE MAIN UNION 8 UK: (CORE)ANTI-NUCLEAR GROUP NUCLEAR REACTORS 9 Another radioactive leak reported at Japanese nuclear power plant 10 Moscow to Deliver Nuclear Turbines to Iran on August: Russian Minist 11 US: NPPD considering private firm to run nuclear station 12 US: NRC Oversight Panel to Hold Two Meetings in Oak Harbor, Ohio, On 13 US: Nuclear lax oversight of Davis-Besse scary NUCLEAR SAFETY 14 US: The nuclear threat: it could happen here 15 Scotland ill-prepared for nuclear leak 16 US: No cure-all for nuclear disaster 17 US: Iodide pill sales increase 18 Al-Qaeda hunt radioactive material in US 19 DRC says rod is not missing 20 British baby deaths "down to Chernobyl"* 21 UK: WORKERS' FEARS OVER LMA 22 BNFL employees undergo safety briefings 23 British secret services on the ground in Iraq 24 Uranium levels worry Harrietsfield residents NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 25 US: Appeals court hears S.C. complaint 26 US: Senators who led in nuke money voted for Yucca 27 US: Vanderbilt professor appointed to nuclear board 28 BNFL loses £2bn after nuclear storage write-down 29 Citizens unite against enrichment plant, threats 30 *Opponents Of Locating Uranium-Enrichment Plant In Unicoi To Meet Mo 31 US: Utilities to press for Utah nuclear waste dump 32 US: Nuclear Waste, More Than a Backyard Issue 33 US: Uranium experts deliver hard facts at Black Falls meeting* 34 US: State begins defense in nuke dump lawsuit 35 US: S.C. Appeals Plutonium Shipments 36 UK: Nuclear waste may traverse Worcester 37 US: Newspapers report vote on front page 38 US: The waste that waits 39 US: Yucca foes shift focus to NRC 40 US: Three federal judges hear nuclear waste storage case from South 41 US: S.C. Appeals Plutonium Shipments 42 US: EWG Asks Private Fuel Storage To Declare Intentions 43 US: Money talks in Yucca Mountain vote 44 *Nuclear waste* 45 Russia: Cleanup of World's Worst Nuclear Wastes Funded NUCLEAR WEAPONS 46 Nuke-shelter for armed personnel developed ** 47 Assessing the nuke threat from Russia's arsenal 48 Lawmakers Appeal Pasko Conviction 49 Gorbachev warns of Cold War legacy 50 Japan and South Korea to urge the North to accept inspections US DEPT. OF ENERGY 51 [EMMAS] [EmNz] Radioactive Recycling! (fwd) 52 Technology:Lawyers argue SRS' capacity 53 Speeding Nuclear Cleanup Is Seen as a Way to Reduce Work 54 GOP senator scorns Livermore as national anti-terror center 55 SNS funding at $225 million OTHER NUCLEAR ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 AU: Reveal nuclear sites: Minister news.com.au - July 11, 2002 By Political Reporter REBECCA HOLMES THE public has a right to know where radioactive waste is stored in South Australia, Environment Minister John Hill says. In debate this week on the Government's Bill to ban the establishment of a national low-level nuclear dump in SA, he said the location of waste should be disclosed, "not down to the street basis, but I think which suburbs, in a general sense". "I think the public has an absolute right to that knowledge," he said. The Bill, including a mechanism to trigger a state referendum should the Commonwealth try to put a dump on federal land in SA, has been passed by the Lower House and now will be considered by Upper House MPs. In the Lower House, the Opposition's amendments for a question to be added to the referendum paper, and for the referendum to be voluntary, were rejected. Opposition environment spokesman Iain Evans said low-level nuclear waste was stored in Adelaide suburbs – including Bedford Park and Mt Barker – and in country towns. He said the Opposition believed the Government, as part of a referendum, should seek the community's opinion if the state's low-level radioactive waste should be stored in any national facility in SA. "We believe most South Australians would want low radioactive waste, currently stored in South Australian suburbs and country towns, stored in a purpose-built facility," he said. "The reason we sought to make the referendum voluntary was that the Government admits this is a political point-scoring exercise with Canberra. "If people fail to vote in the referendum, they will face a substantial fine." ***************************************************************** 2 EXCLUSIVE: Taxpayers bail out bankrupt nuclear plants Leaked BNFL report reveals £2bn losses By Rob Edwards , Environment Editor British Nuclear Fuels, which runs the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria and the Chapelcross nuclear power station in Dumfries and Galloway, has made a £2.1 billion loss because of the huge cost of managing its radioactive waste business. According to a report leaked to the Sunday Herald, the state-owned company is technically bankrupt, with more liabilities than assets. But the Blair government is planning to bail it out by removing £20bn worth of nuclear liabilities -- and giving them to the taxpayer. This, says its chief executive, Norman Askew, will 'liberate the company'. British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) is to publish its annual report for 2001-2002 on Tuesday, when it will disclose a loss of £2bn last year compared to a loss of just £46 million in 2000-2001. The main reasons for such an enormous increase were 'significant lifetime cost increases' of £1.9bn identified by a review of how to deal with large stockpiles of dangerous radioactive waste. These stockpiles consist of all the medium-level wastes created by more than 50 years of civil and military nuclear activities at Sellafield, Chapelcross and elsewhere. It is estimated that there are currently 44,100 cubic metres of nuclear waste in storage, plus another 67,300 cubic metres to come from decommissioning defunct nuclear facilities. BNFL also incurred an 'adverse accounting charge' of £375 million because of its recently announced decision to bring forward the closure of its two oldest nuclear stations: Chapelcross and Calder Hall, next to Sellafield. In addition, the rest of BNFL's worldwide nuclear reprocessing and decommissioning business made an operating loss of £68m. 'While we achieved our own budgetary targets, it is obvious that our performance is still significantly short of where it needs to be,' said Askew. Last year's huge loss has pushed BNFL's overall long-term debt -- the amount by which its future costs exceed its current assets -- to £1.85bn. The company's group finance director, John Edwards, said: 'Whilst it is our belief that we have adequate financial resources to meet our obligations in the short to medium term, it is evident that the group in its current form would not generate sufficient cash to meet these now increased longer-term liabilities.' BNFL is eagerly anticipating the establishment of a new agency that the government has promised will take over its expensive liabilities. These include all the radioactive waste, all the shut-down facilities and all the ageing nuclear reactors -- which amount in total to £20bn worth of liabilities. The new agency, named the Liabilities Management Authority (LMA), will be entirely bankrolled by the government. Details were announced in a White Paper on July 4, causing BNFL to postpone plans to publish its annual report that day. "The UK government's decision to establish the LMA was the most important BNFL-related decision for many years," said Askew. "It will remove a substantial proportion of our net liabilities from the balance sheet. We therefore stand on the threshold of fundamental change within our company." BNFL's plan now is to concentrate on building new reactors, designed by its subsidiary Westinghouse, in Britain and around the world. "Specifically we expect our expertise in new reactor design to pave the way for our participation in the resurgent global nuclear energy market," Askew predicted. BNFL is promoting two new reactors, known as AP600 and AP1000, as replacements for existing stations such as those at Hunterston in Ayrshire and Torness in East Lothian. In the leaked annual report, BNFL chairman Hugh Collum urges the government to fast-track the establishment of the LMA so that BNFL can become a profitable business and be privatised. "Only when legislation has been passed and the new liabilities structure established can the company truly start to take shape." Environmentalists last night savaged the nuclear industry for incurring such mammoth debts. Greenpeace's Peter Roche said: "This report gives the lie to the government's claim that the LMA has nothing to do with a new reactor programme. Clearly it will free BNFL to go and create yet more nuclear waste that we have no idea what to do with". ©2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights ***************************************************************** 3 UK: NEW BODY IS CREATED TO DEAL WITH NUCLEAR LEGACY [The Whitehaven News] [http://www.cumbria-online.co.uk] [pic tom kay copy lesley] By Alan Irving THE multi-billion pound task of cleaning up Sellafield will be handed to BNFL and the UKAEA - but only on a starting basis. There is no guarantee that either company will be entrusted with the job long-term. They will face tendering competition from other firms. This is made clear in a White Paper published by the government about the creation of a new national body - Liabilities Management Authority (LMA) - which will take overall responsibility for dealing with what is called Britain's nuclear legacy. Minister for Energy Brian Wilson said: "Contracts will be placed initially with BNFL and UKAEA but, over time, other contracts could be placed with third parties following competitive tenders." One of the government's aims is to ensure, through competition, that "the best available skills and experience from both public and private sectors, are brought to bear on the task". But the White Paper stresses: "Any change in site management arrangements would be made only after full consultation with the nuclear regulators and local stakeholders." Under the radical changes, the powerful new body will take over ownership, financial and legal responsibility for the Sellafield plants, including the flagship Thorp and SMP (Mox) facilities. In return for the transfer of the existing BNFL/UKAEA assets, the LMA will provide funding for the clean up. This will extend across the UK, but the biggest tasks are at Sellafield and will take decades. The total estimated cost is £47.9 billion and the annual spend well over £1 billion in each of the next 10 to 15 years. It will pay for decommissioning and eventual demolition of irradiated plant and buildings along with the processing, storage and final disposal of nuclear wastes and the cost of carrying out any necessary environmental restoration. The nuclear legacy is said to cover the sites and facilities now operated by UKAEA/BNFL but developed in the 40s, 50s and 60s to support government research programmes, the waste materials and spent fuel produced by these programmes and the Magnox fleet of nuclear power stations. On top of this comes the Sellafield facilities for reprocessing Magnox fuel and all the associated waste and materials. The LMA will be responsible for making sure the clean up is carried out safely, securely and cost effectively. Energy minister Brian Wilson also said: "Nuclear clean up is one of the most important technical and environmental challenges facing the UK. "We need to ensure the nuclear legacy is cleaned up in ways to protect the environment for the benefit of current future generations." The creation of the LMA is expected to lead to the BNFL's privatisation. ***************************************************************** 4 Homer's powerful nuclear lesson for Scots Scotsman.com /MURDO MacLEOD POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT/ D?OH! Bumbling cartoon character Homer Simpson is more likely to influence people?s thinking on the nuclear industry than the government, a new study has revealed. Rather than turn to official sources, Scots are more likely to rely for information on the exploits of the beer-guzzling cartoon dad - best known for his catastrophic blunders while working as a safety inspector at a nuclear power plant. The startling finding, which would no doubt cause Homer to smack his forehead in disbelief, is revealed in a study commissioned by the Scottish Executive examining public attitudes towards nuclear dumping. Last night environmentalists and opposition MSPs ridiculed the government and the nuclear industry, claiming their Homer Simpson image has been earned by a record of gaffes and secrecy. The report, by independent think-tank the Scottish Council Foundation, said: "Participants... identified the US television cartoon series The Simpsons, where Homer Simpson (the father character) works in a dangerously ill-managed nuclear power plant, as a source of information." The majority of people in the study?s focus groups said they received their information on the nuclear industry from the media - television or newspapers. Only a tiny minority said they regarded the government, the nuclear industry, or agencies which manage nuclear waste as sources of information. Deirdre Elrick, one of the team who compiled the study, said: "We found two or three people in most of the focus groups cited Homer Simpson as an example of how they hear about the nuclear industry. In all cases they were unprompted. "I think this is indicative of people feeling that they do not have enough information about the nuclear industry." Yesterday Kevin Dunion, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, claimed the association between The Simpsons and the real-life nuclear industry was justified. He said: "Nuclear power is no stranger to accidents, explosions, pollution and contamination. So it is hardly surprising that people should associate Scotland?s nuclear industry with the accident-prone Homer Simpson." Robin Harper, the Green Party member of the Scottish parliament, said: "The Homer Simpson comparison is more accurate that people may think. This is an industry which has made mistakes and which we should be sceptical of." Last night a spokeswoman for Fox TV in Los Angeles, which makes The Simpsons, said: "That is, like, so sad." She added: "I would hope your people might have some more faith in your government?s own information." A spokesman for British Nuclear Fuels Limited said: "We do make every effort to inform the public about our activities, and get as much information out as possible." A Scottish Executive spokesman said: " We need to tackle the perception of secrecy about radioactive waste and its management. ©2002 scotsman.com | contact ***************************************************************** 5 Bush appoints Vandy professor to nuclear post By The Associated Press July 11, 2002 NASHVILLE - President Bush has appointed a Vanderbilt University engineering professor to a federal nuclear waste board. Mark Abkowitz was appointed to a four-year term on the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. The 11-member board reviews Department of Energy policy pertaining to the management and disposal of nuclear waste, particularly Nevada's Yucca Mountain site. The Senate gave President Bush the green light on Tuesday to proceed with the Yucca site, where the administration wants to entomb 77,000 tons of highly radioactive materials. Board director Bill Barnard said Abkowitz is well qualified for the job, and said the timing of Abkowitz' appointment was no coincidence. "This is a very important time for this program, especially considering yesterday's vote," he said regarding Yucca Mountain. The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste To Meet in Rockville, Maryland, on July 23 - 25 NRC: Press Release - 2002 - 81 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: [opa@nrc.gov] www.nrc.gov No. 02-081 July 11, 2002 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste (ACNW) will meet July 23 - 25 in Rockville, Maryland, to discuss, among other things, the draft proposed Yucca Mountain Review Plan, as well as both the agency's program for control of radioactive materials and programs in several states. The meeting, which will be open to the public, will be held in Room T-2B3 of the agency's Two White Flint North building, at 11545 Rockville Pike. It will begin at 12:30 p.m. on the first day, and at 8:30 a.m. on the remaining two days. A complete agenda is attached. For additional information or agenda changes, contact Howard Larson at 301-415-6805. ACNW Agenda TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2002 12:30 - 12:40 P.M. Opening Statement The Chairman will open the meeting with brief opening remarks, outline the topics to be discussed, and indicate several items of interest. 12:40 - 3:15 P.M. Yucca Mountain Review Plan, Revision 2 The Committee will hear presentations from industry and government representatives on the proposed plan. In addition, it will discuss the elements of a letter report. 3:15 - 3:30 P.M. ***BREAK*** 3:30 - 6:00 P.M. Preparation of ACNW Reports The Committee will discuss proposed reports on the following topics: -- Long-Term Behavior of Waste Packages -- Igneous Activity Considerations -- High-Level Waste Performance Assessment Sensitivity Studies WEDNESDAY, JULY 24 8:30 - 8:35 A.M. Opening Statement The Chairman will make opening remarks regarding the conduct of today's sessions. 8:35 - 9:40 A.M. Greater-than-Class C (GTCC) The Committee will be briefed by a DOE representative on GTCC related activities. 9:40 - 11:00 A.M. Source Control - A State Perspective The Committee will be briefed by respective representatives from Illinois and Texas on the materials and radiation control programs in their states. 11:00 - 11:15 A.M. ***BREAK*** 11:15 - 12:30 P.M. Source Control - NRC Activities (Open) The Committee will receive an oversight of the technical issues of the NRC program for the control of radioactive materials (e.g., NRC and licensee programs for source control, the General License Program, Orphan Sources, NMED, International activities. etc.). 12:30 - 1:30 P.M. ***LUNCH*** 1:30 - 2:30 P.M. Agreement State Programs The Director, Office of State and Tribal Programs (OSTP) will discuss the NRC Agreement State Oversight Program (Integrated Materials Performance Evaluation Program). 2:30 - 3:30 P.M. Materials/Waste Issues Related to Advanced Reactors The Committee will receive an information briefing by NRC staff representatives on materials and waste considerations associated with advanced reactors. 3:30 - 3:45 P.M. ***BREAK*** 3:45 - 6:00 P.M. Preparation of ACNW Reports The Committee will discuss proposed reports on the following topics: -- GTCC/Source Control -- Long-Term Behavior of Waste Packages -- Igneous Activity Considerations (GMH/MPL) -- High-Level Waste Performance Assessment Sensitivity Studies THURSDAY, JULY 25 8:30 - 8:35 A.M. Opening Statement The Chairman will make opening remarks regarding the conduct of today's sessions. 8:35 - 2:45 P.M. Preparation of ACNW Reports (LUNCH 12 NOON - 1:00 P.M.) The Committee will continue preparation of reports. 2:45 - 3:00 P.M. Miscellaneous The Committee will discuss matters related to the conduct of Committee activities and matters and specific issues that were not completed during previous meetings, as time and availability of information permit. 3:00 P.M. Adjourn 136th Meeting NOTE: Presentation time should not exceed 50 percent of the total time allocated for a specific item. The remaining 50 percent of the time is reserved for discussion. Thirty-Five (35) copies of the presentation materials should be provided to the ACNW. ***************************************************************** 7 UK: THE MAIN UNION [The Whitehaven News] [pic tom kay copy lesley] PROSPECT, the nuclear industry's main staff union, has given a cautious welcome to the proposals. It has called for a co-ordinated approach capable of capitalising on existing competence. The union says it is also crucial to establish the financial viability of contractors and that staff are properly trained in nuclear skills for work lasting generations. Sellafield section secretary Peter Clements said: "While the new organisation raises some concern we welcome the level of new public investment which is to be made in the industry, much of it here at Sellafield. It will make a significant contribution to the security of employment in West Cumbria for the foreseeable future." [http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk ***************************************************************** 8 UK: (CORE)ANTI-NUCLEAR GROUP [The Whitehaven News] [Westfield in green win this header against Dearham.] Anti-nuclear group Core has dismissed the LMA as "little more than moving the Sellafield deckchairs around at great public expense". Core claims there is a major inconsistency in allowing BNFL to pursue new reprocessing and Mox contracts. A statement from the group says: "The LMA can't have it both ways. A genuine desire to protect our environment should mean not only no new contracts but an immediate end to reprocessing. "It is a nonsense to turn a blind eye to Thorp's operations because somebody else is paying - it is always Cumbria and its environment that ends up in the long run paying the price for Thorp's discharges and contamination. [news@whitehaven-news.co.uk ***************************************************************** 9 Another radioactive leak reported at Japanese nuclear power plant AP World Politics Jul 11,11:14 AM ET TOKYO - A minor radioactive leak occurred at a troubled Japanese nuclear power plant that has been plagued by shutdowns caused by similar leaks, an official said Thursday. Water with minute traces of radioactivity was found dripping from a defective pipe in the No. 4 reactor of Chubu Electric Power's Hamaoka nuclear reactor plant in Shizuoka prefecture (state) southeast of Tokyo, Chubu Electric company official Toshiaki Inoue said. There was no danger to employees or the environment, and the reactor was not shut down, he said, adding that the leak was expected to be fixed by Friday morning. Similar leaks have taken place at the plant in recent weeks. On July 3, a radioactive leak was found in the Hamaoka plant's No. 3 reactor, though no radioactivity escaped into the outside environment. That leak was first made public on the plant's Internet Web site Tuesday, and the company said it had delayed announcing the incident because it was not deemed serious. On May 25, a radioactive leak was discovered in the plant's No. 2 reactor, just one day after its operations resumed following a six-month hiatus. The Hamaoka plant first gained attention in November last year when the company found radioactive water dripping inside the facility's No. 1 reactor. Two days earlier, a small amount of radioactive steam had been found leaking from a pipe that ruptured during a routine test. The company has said that neither of those leaks posed any radiation danger. At the time, it shut down both the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors for inspection. The No. 1 reactor has remained inactive. Japan relies on nuclear power for 30 percent of its electricity. However, the Japanese public has become increasingly wary of the power source since a 1999 radiation leak at a fuel-reprocessing plant killed two workers. Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press ***************************************************************** 10 Moscow to Deliver Nuclear Turbines to Iran on August: Russian Minister * TehranTimes Navigation /*TEHRAN TIMES ECONOMIC DESK */ TEHRAN -- Russia will hand over turbines destined for Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in August, IRNA reported. Russian Atomic Energy Minister .......told a press conference on Friday that the construction work of the first phase of Bushehr plant is near completion and the heavy machinery including turbines and other atomic reactors parts will be destined for Iran. He said Russian has proposed Iran the construction of another nuclear plant with a 1,000 megawatt capacity but the Tehran has not yet decided on the feasibility and the site of the project. Russian officials have tacitly reported of the construction of another power plant in Iran. Home Page | Advertise Send your questions and comments to: webmaster@tehrantimes.com ***************************************************************** 11 NPPD considering private firm to run nuclear station The Associated Press COLUMBUS -- Nebraska Public Power District executives will visit a nuclear power plant operator in Wisconsin today as they seek management answers for NPPD's Cooper Nuclear Station. The future of the plant will be the subject of a special board meeting July 31. Several board members and President/CEO William Mayben will visit the Nuclear Management Co. in Hudson, Wis., today. That firm already manages six nuclear plants around the nation. NPPD officials have been debating whether to continue to operate the Brownville plant or to hire someone else to do it. NPPD is familiar with the Wisconsin management company because it is the source for recent management additions to Cooper. Dave Wilson, the plant's chief nuclear officer, and Mike Coyle, site vice president, have been contracted to operate NPPD's nuclear plant through the end of this year. NPPD spokeswoman Marcia Cady said that even if Nuclear Management operated Cooper, NPPD would maintain ownership and ultimate control of the plant, including budget decisions. Besides the special meeting July 31, Cady said, there will be another such session near the end of August. The board will hold its next regular meeting Aug. 8-9 in North Platte. An ongoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection of NPPD's nuclear plant was also discussed during Friday's board meeting. The intensive inspection began June 24 and is expected to end in two weeks. A public meeting on the NRC findings will be held Aug. 19. The power plant, built nearly 30 years ago, is rated among the worst in the country for meeting safety regulations. It also will soon lose some of its largest customers when usage contracts end. Copyright © 2002, Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 12 NRC Oversight Panel to Hold Two Meetings in Oak Harbor, Ohio, On Davis-Besse Reactor Vessel Head Damage NRC: Press Release Region III - 2002 - 42 (revised)- U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region III 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle IL 60532 www.nrc.gov No. III-02-042 (revised) July 11, 2002 CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663 Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662 E-mail: opa3@nrc.gov [opa3@nrc.gov] CORRECTED RELEASE: FIRST MEETING AT 2 P.M. INSTEAD OF 3 P.M. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will hold two meetings on Tuesday, July 16, in Oak Harbor, Ohio, to review the status of activities at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station as a result of the corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head. The plant, which has been shut down since February 15, is operated by FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company. Both meetings will be at the Oak Harbor High School Auditorium, 11661 West State Route 163, in Oak Harbor. The first meeting will be at 2 p.m. when the NRC oversight panel, set up to coordinate the agency's activities associated with the corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head, meets with utility officials to discuss the plans for replacement of the reactor vessel head and other activities under the utility's return-to-service plan. The public is invited to observe the business portion of the meeting and will have an opportunity to make comments and ask questions of the NRC staff before the meeting is adjourned. The second meeting will be at 7 p.m. to update the public on NRC's activities related to the reactor vessel head degradation. The public will be encouraged to ask questions and make comments. Transcripts will be prepared of both meetings and posted on the NRC's web site. The NRC oversight panel, created on April 29, includes NRC management and staff from its Region III office in Lisle, Illinois, the NRC Headquarters office in Rockville, Maryland, and the NRC Resident Inspector Office at the Davis-Besse site. Documents on the Davis-Besse corrosion issue, including meeting transcripts and further details on NRC's oversight panel activities, are posted on the NRC's web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/vessel-head-degradation.ht ml. ***************************************************************** 13 Nuclear lax oversight of Davis-Besse scary The Tribune Chronicle - Your Mahoning Valley News Source Tuesday, July 09, 2002 The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission really dropped the ball on keeping an eye on Ohio's Davis-Besse nuclear power plant. In 1990, the NRC signed off on Davis-Besse's plan to prevent corrosion even though there were concerns that the program had significant problems. With its ''acceptable'' grade, NRC's special attention to corrosive-prevention work ended. Too soon, as it happened. A review of company records by Cleveland's Plain Dealer showed that the agency assumed the company was doing what it was supposed to do. At the same time, the company assumed its corrosion inspection work was adequate because the agency had approved the plan. The result of these mistaken assumptions was a rust hole that ate all the way through the reactor's nearly seven-inch-think steel reactor lid. The company failed to remove boric acid that leaked onto the reactor lid for eight years and then crystallized. Had the stainless steel cladding or liner burst, we would have had the worst nuclear accident since Three-Mile Island in 1979. Right in northwest Ohio. The federal agency must do better to make sure utilities comply with safety regulations. This one was too close for us all. www.tribune-chronicle.com [http://www.tribune-chronicle.com] 240 Franklin St. S.E. | Warren, Ohio 44482 ***************************************************************** 14 The nuclear threat: it could happen here By DAVID WESTPHAL July 10, 2002 Four decades after American schoolchildren hid under their desks, practicing for the day when an atomic bomb might fall nearby, the horrific prospect of a mushroom cloud rising above an American city has returned. Once again, the government is starting to prepare the country for a possible nuclear attack - this time by militants looking for a single bomb to explode in the United States. "People have asked whether we should worry now about a nuclear explosion happening in the U.S.," said Gary Milhollin, an expert on nuclear weapons. "The answer is yes." Although it is far from clear that any group will gain access to a nuclear weapon anytime soon, experts say a calamitous atomic blast, detonated by a terrorist group and claiming tens or hundreds of thousands of lives, is within the realm of possibility. "The clock is ticking," former Defense Secretary William Cohen said at a Senate hearing earlier this year. "It is one minute before midnight. And every moment that we hesitate ... . . we come closer to that kind of Armageddon that we all want to avoid." Asked about his biggest worry among all the threats the United States faces, homeland security adviser Tom Ridge responded in one word: nuclear. The new threat packs an emotional punch, in part because many Americans thought this was a nightmare that had been all but buried with the Cold War. Then came Sept. 11. Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, says that the suicide attacks on the United States "showed the way" for groups that want to destroy the country. Opening the door wider to the possibility of a massive attack, he says, is the absence of the deterrent that helped keep U.S. and Soviet missiles in their silos for 50 years - the near certainty that neither country could destroy the other without being destroyed itself. That principle of mutually assured destruction doesn't work with a small militant group, Wilson said. "Non-state adversaries are not likely to be deterred by our overwhelming military superiority." That doesn't mean nuclear weapons are the most probable means of attack by anti-U.S. militants. Many analysts say groups wishing to harm the nation more likely would turn to chemical or biological agents, or to a "dirty bomb" that uses conventional explosives to spread harmful fallout from a radiological element. Others say the difficulty of producing or obtaining a nuclear warhead is so high that a successful detonation is unlikely. Yet the government's biggest nightmare is that, somehow, a group like al Qaeda succeeds in its quest to secure a nuclear weapon. According to the Washington Post, President Bush ordered his national security team last October to make the prevention of nuclear terrorism its top priority. Some experts say the country needs to act more aggressively and speed planning for a possible nuclear attack - not only by disrupting militant groups abroad but also by implementing a civil-defense plan at home. "We tend not to think about the consequences," said Harry Vantine, a counterterrorism expert at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, "because it's not a very pleasant thing to think about. "The effects are tremendous, and loss of life is just enormous," he said in recent testimony to Congress. "We really have to think about that. ..... . There have to be emergency plans in place." So far, Bush, Ridge and other top administration officials have been reluctant to say much about the nuclear threat. Doing so, of course, could dramatically raise anxieties at a time when no one really knows whether a nuclear attack is likely or how it ranks in comparison to other threats. While it's impossible to predict a precise scenario in which the United States would find itself under nuclear attack, history provides a disquieting model: the August 1945 nuclear bombs dropped by the United States over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs wrought a maelstrom of heat, pressure, wind and radiation such as the planet had never seen. At Hiroshima, the 15-kiloton bomb "Little Boy," dropped by the crew of the Enola Gay on Aug. 6, 1945, killed as many as 200,000 people with the bomb's blast or the longer-term effects of radiation, according to some estimates. Three days later, the 22-kiloton "Fat Man" was dropped over Nagasaki. The casualty toll was somewhat lower because the contours of the hilly city absorbed some of the blast. Five days after the Nagasaki explosion, Japan unconditionally surrendered. Today's nuclear weapons are many times more potent. And even if militants constructed only a crude bomb, the results could be devastating. A recent report to Congress declared that a nuclear engineering graduate "with an orange-sized lump of plutonium .... . could fashion a nuclear device that would fit in a van and would destroy every building in the Wall Street financial area and would level lower Manhattan." Is this sort of doomsday scenario inevitable? Not at all, say some arms-control experts. Joseph Cirincione, who heads the nonproliferation section of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the overwhelming trend of recent decades has been the world's shedding of weapons - not just nuclear but biological and chemical. "Compare this new threat to the global war we worried about for the last 40 years," he said. We worried that 20, 25, 30 nations might acquire nuclear weapons." What has happened instead, he said, is a steep decline in the number of nuclear weapons. "Can you put the nuclear genie back in the bottle?" he asked. "Absolutely. Arguably, we're most of the way there." Also working against the theory that a nuclear explosion is inevitable in the United States is the reality that making a nuclear bomb remains an immense challenge. Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said that creating a nuclear bomb requires a combination of advanced scientific know-how, hard-to-obtain fissile material and hard-to-manufacture machine tools. "It's almost impossible to do it without state sponsorship, and it's pretty difficult to hide," he said. The easiest bet for a terrorist group, many experts say, is to acquire a bomb, or its essential elements, from an existing stockpile. Even that, they say, would be exceptionally difficult. But not unattainable. "The bottom line here is it's hard, but it is far, far, far, far, far from impossible," said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Bush is particularly worried that Iraq, which came close to attaining a nuclear capability prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, might produce an atomic bomb or two and make them available to militants. But policymakers are also concerned about already available nukes. There the overwhelming focus is on Russia, which ended the Cold War with the world's largest nuclear stockpile and is struggling to find the resources to keep the weapons secure. Although the Russians have made significant progress, U.S. government officials and nuclear experts fear their security controls are still too lax. Constantine Menges, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, said there's a simple explanation why militants haven't already obtained a nuclear weapon from one source or another. "It is only through divine providence." (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.) The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 15 Scotland ill-prepared for nuclear leak Planned countermeasures against a radioactive disaster are a laughable, logistical nightmare By Rob Edwards , Environment Editor Government advisors have warned that Scotland is ill-prepared for a terrorist attack or a major accident at a nuclear power station. The lack of safeguards is leaving thousands of children across central Scotland at risk of thyroid cancer following an escape of radioactivity. Plans to distribute pills which can prevent the cancers are haphazard, inadequate and laughable, according to government safety advisers, nuclear experts and local authorities, while official advice to extend and improve the handout of the pills is being ignored. Pills containing ordinary iodine offer crucial protection in the first few hours after a disaster at a nuclear reactor. They fill up the thyroid gland and stop it from absorbing any radioactive iodine released by the reactor. If young, growing thyroids are exposed to radiation, the risk of cancer rises significantly. The huge release of radioactive iodine 131 from the explosion that blew apart the Chernobyl reactor in the Ukraine in 1986 has given 2000 children in three countries thyroid cancer. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a further 8000 exposed when they were young are likely to contract the disease in the future. An accidental meltdown or a jumbo jet deliberately dropped on any of Scotland's nuclear stations could produce a similarly massive release of iodine 131, experts say. Clouds of escaping radioactivity from Torness in East Lothian, Hunterston in Ayrshire or Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway would threaten children in Edinburgh, Glasgow or Carlisle, depending on the direction of the wind. Yet an investigation by the Sunday Herald has discovered that no arrangements have been made for distributing iodine pills more than two miles from nuclear sites in Scotland. And it will take many years for government advice to extend these areas to be heeded. 'The present emergency plans are next to useless,' said John Large, an international advisor on nuclear safety. 'It's Dad's Army.' Large said iodine pills should be available to people 60 miles or more from a nuclear site. 'The more I've looked into this, the more genuinely concerned I have become,' he added. Over the last month in Ireland, packets of eight iodine pills have been posted to every single household, as part of the Irish government's response to September 11. There are no nuclear plants in Ireland but ministers say the pills are necessary to protect Irish families from a disaster at a nuclear site in Britain. In the US, the government is offering states iodine pills to distribute to populations within 10 miles of nuclear plants. But in Scotland there are no plans for the widespread distribution of pills. They have been given to households within two miles of Torness, but not to people living near Hunterston or near the naval nuclear base at Rosyth in Fife. There may have been some distribution close to Chapelcross. Yet local authorities and the emergency services were urged more than 10 years ago to extend the distribution zones in the wake of Chernobyl. The Department of Trade and Industry sent out a circular in March this year reminding authorities to implement this recommendation. In 1999, the WHO said that, in order to protect children, iodine pills should be available over much larger areas than previously thought. This prompted the Department of Health to commission a group of leading experts to review arrangements for iodine prophylaxis in the UK. It concluded last year that the radiation dose at which pills should be handed out should be cut by a third, thereby greatly expanding the potential danger zones. However, they did not advise widespread distribution in advance to individual households because of the risk that the pills would be lost, implying that they should be kept in hospitals, schools and other centres instead. Rod McKenzie, an Edinburgh emergency planner on the government's Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee, thinks that it could take years to make these recommendations a reality. 'Past experience suggests that this may be implemented in a piecemeal manner,' he told the Sunday Herald. Keith Baverstock, the WHO's radiation specialist in Europe, pointed out that iodine pills have been distributed to schools and hospitals in Finland and Belgium. The German government has three huge stockpiles which it plans to fly by helicopter to affected areas. 'There are huge logistical problems to this,' Baverstock said. 'The task of being prepared for an accident is a major one. It is a serious public health issue and it is important to get it right.' The British radiation watchdog, the National Radiological Protection Board, warned that September 11 had major implications. 'What we learnt from Chernobyl is that it is important to protect children as soon as possible,' said the board's Michael Clark. The Scottish Executive said that although it hadn't made a formal response to the expert group's proposals on iodine prophylaxis, they were being taken into account in regular reviews of emergency planning. 'Plans have been reviewed in light of the September 11 incident,' said an Executive spokes man. 'These consider the operation of a number of countermeasures in the event of a release of radioactive material. The use of stable iodine tablets is one of those countermeasures appropriate only when the release contains radioactive iodine. Local plans will have taken into account whether pre- distribution is necessary,' But this was dismissed by Stewart Kemp, the secretary of the 88-strong group of UK nuclear-free local authorities. 'The current arrangements were inadequate before September 11 and now they are even more so .' It would be sensible for Britain to follow the example set by Ireland and distribute iodine tablets to every household, he argued. 'The nuclear industry has put public relations before public safety. It does not like the message that iodine pre-distribution sends to the public. It reminds them that there are risks attached to nuclear power.' ©2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights ***************************************************************** 16 No cure-all for nuclear disaster The Herald By Caroline Brustad [cbrustad@heraldonline.com] The Herald (Published July 11‚ 2002) South Carolina health officials are unsure whether to participate in a federal program offering free anti-radiation tablets to states with nuclear plants. The potassium iodide pills, also known by the chemical symbol KI, are being offered to 33 states with residents living within 10 miles of a nuclear plant. Since the government started the program in December, 15 states have accepted the tablets, including North Carolina. The program, approved in 2000, is not a response to terrorist attacks, according to officials from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is overseeing the program. Health officials from North and South Carolina will meet today in Raleigh, N.C., to discuss the issue further. "South Carolina has not formally decided what we are going to do," said Thom Berry, a spokesman for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. "We're in the process of making a decision on the matter now." If taken within a short time of a nuclear disaster, the pills can help prevent thyroid cancers and other thyroid diseases, according to the NRC. North Carolina's decision to request potassium iodide followed a review of the program by a committee comprised of state health, public safety and environmental officials. While the pills do not protect the entire body from radiation, they could serve as a "preventive public health measure in the unlikely event of a radiation release at one of the nuclear power plants," according to a statement released by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. North Carolina officials are still working on how to distribute the 750,000 doses of KI, which provides two pills for residents and workers within North Carolina's portion of the 10-mile emergency planning zone around four plants, including the McGuire Nuclear Station north of Charlotte and the Catawba Nuclear Station on Lake Wylie, both run by Duke Power. An estimated 154,000 people live in the emergency planning zone for the Catawba station. The zone includes residents in both Carolinas who live within a 10-mile radius of the plant, located about six miles north of Rock Hill. Duke Power isn't taking a stance on the anti-radiation pill program. "This really isn't our decision to make," Duke Power spokesman Tom Shiel said. Some public officials question the necessity and effectiveness of the tablets. There is no "magic pill" to protect against harmful radiation, said Cotton Howell, director of York County's Office of Emergency Management. "It would give people a false sense of security." In the event of a nuclear accident, the best course of action is to evacuate or get to a shelter, Howell said. "The only sure-fire protection is limiting exposure." Eric Marshall, a staff pharmacist with CVS in Rock Hill and Charlotte, takes a similar view. "KI is not the magic bullet against radiation," he said. "I think North Carolina's got it wrong." Marshall recently attended a continuing education course in Columbia sponsored by the University of South Carolina's College of Pharmacy. One of the key topics of discussion was the government's potassium iodide program. Problems with the pills DHEC representatives spoke about some of the program's shortfalls, Marshall said. For one, there is only a narrow window of opportunity during which the pills can be taken and be effective. For another, KI protects only against certain aspects of radiation. More importantly, Marshall said, some officials were concerned that in the event of a nuclear emergency, people might spend time trying to track down pills rather than evacuating the area. Others might take the pill and decide not to evacuate, thinking they are protected from radiation. Other concerns about the potassium iodide program are a lack information about dosage and possible side effects from the pills. The government has yet to provide any guidance on the number of pills adults and children should take, Howell said. Some potassium iodide manufacturers also haven't recommended dosages. A local emergency management worker recently tried buying pills online from a Web site, www.nukepills.com, which sells the product under the name Iosat. There was no dosage information on the package, Howell said. While considered safe for most people, KI can cause minor side effects, such as gastrointestinal problems and rashes. And people who are allergic to iodine - including those allergic to shellfish - should not take potassium iodide. The pills are available without a prescription. For now, they are not available at CVS stores in Rock Hill, Marshall said. If they did become available, they would likely be stocked behind the counter rather than on the shelves. While no one in Rock Hill has asked pharmacists about potassium iodide tablets, some Charlotte customers have inquired about them, he said. One of South Carolina's main questions about the federal potassium iodide program is how to distribute the tablets, Berry said. DHEC officials expect to make a decision on the matter once they meet with their North Carolina counterparts and learn more about their plans. Howell agreed that trying to get the pills into people's hands could be a "logistics nightmare." Despite Howell's skepticism of the program's effectiveness, he acknowledged the importance of keeping regional policies consistent. A regional nuclear power task force - including Howell and representatives from the Catawba and McGuire plants - will meet today to share information and discuss the issue further. Howell said the public can have confidence in the safety of the Catawba Nuclear Station. "I feel comfortable with the security that's in place there," he said. Contact Caroline Brustad at 329-4082 or cbrustad@heraldonline.com. Copyright © 2002 The Herald, South Carolina ***************************************************************** 17 Iodide pill sales increase By Mimi Hall USA TODAY Before Sept. 11, only a few small mom-and-pop outfits sold anti-radiation pills to the public. They operated mostly by word of mouth. What few customers they had tended to be survivalists and people worried that the Y2K computer bug would bring catastrophe. But in the past 10 months, Internet-based potassium iodide businesses have blossomed. Those who sell the inexpensive pills, which can prevent thyroid cancer in people exposed to radiation, say sales are growing with each new terrorist threat. Troy Jones, president of NukePills.com, started his Mooresville, N.C., company in 1999 after reading articles in his local newspaper about the dangers of living near a nuclear plant. But mail-order sales ''were next to nothing,'' he says. Now he's selling hundreds of thousands of pills to the government, private companies, pharmacies, hospitals and individuals. Each Food and Drug Administration-approved package of 14 pills costs $9.95, plus shipping. One company in Washington, D.C., placed an order for $10,000 worth of pills last week. ''When 9/11 happened, no one had heard of potassium iodide,'' Jones says. Now, ''I get calls from everybody -- physicians, lawyers, mothers, people who live near nuke plants.'' Potassium iodide prevents the thyroid gland from absorbing radioactive iodine, which would be released after a nuclear plant accident or detonation of a ''dirty bomb.'' The thyroid is the organ most sensitive to radiation. The pills, which can be given to children, help prevent thyroid cancer and other thyroid diseases if taken, one a day, during exposure. They do not protect against other cancers caused by radiation exposure, such as leukemia and skin cancer. For those, there is no pill. Some independent pharmacies are beginning to stock the non-prescription pills. They are unavailable in most parts of the country, but demand is growing. Shane Connor, a businessman in Gonzales, Texas, runs another Internet potassium iodide business, KI4U.com. His site, like others on the Internet, gives users a lesson on the history of radiation exposure. It includes statistics on cancer rates from the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in Ukraine in 1986. That accident is believed to have killed thousands. ''We hope this stuff sits on people's shelves for many years,'' Connor says. ''It's insurance.'' © Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 18 Al-Qaeda hunt radioactive material in US THE TIMES OF INDIA INDIATIMES AFP [ THURSDAY, JULY 11, 2002 10:06:00 AM ] WASHINGTON: Between five and six al-Qaeda cells could be operating in the United States trying to obtain radioactive material to build a "dirty" radiological bomb, /NBC News/ reported Wednesday. The report said they might have infiltrated the country and begun their search for materials even before the September 11 attacks. There is no evidence al-Qaeda militants have achieved their goal, but federal agents are checking nuclear facilities around the country that stockpile radioactive materials and medical waste, according to NBC News, citing unnamed government officials. According to the report, the US government obtained the information about the cells from captured high-ranking al-Qaeda militants Abu Zubaidah and Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. But the officials said there was no evidence at this time that any attack with a "dirty" radiological device was imminent, the network said. In May, FBI agents arrested in Chicago US-born suspected al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla, who, according to justice officials, was planning a radiological terrorist attack against the United States. According to NBC News, the al-Qaeda cells had been already searching for radioactive materials in the United States when Padilla was detained. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has declined to comment on the report. *Related stories* Bin Laden alive and well: Al-Qaeda spokesman US probing roommates of September 11 hijackers ***************************************************************** 19 DRC says rod is not missing AfricaOnline.com - Staff Reporter KINSHASA, 10 July 2002 The DRC has denied a UN report of missing nuclear fuel rod. KINSHASA: Despite confirmation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are denying that another nuclear fuel rod is missing from the small research reactor in Kinshasa. In a statement to the Voice of America, the Regional Centre for Nuclear Studies in Kinshasa dismisses as "false," "absurd" and an "invention" last week's report that nuclear material is missing from the one megawatt Congolese reactor. But the confirmation of the loss of low-enriched uranium fuel rods comes directly from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' body in charge of promoting the safe and peaceful use of nuclear energy worldwide. IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky revealed last week for the first time that the agency has known two fresh fuel assemblies were missing from the reactor since the mid-1970s. That information had never before been made public. But the loss of one fuel rod was confirmed after officials in Italy recovered one of the assemblies from criminals in a 1998 undercover operation. That a second fuel rod was also missing and unaccounted for remained a closely held secret until last week when Gwozdecky, responding to a VOA inquiry, disclosed its loss. He said its whereabouts remain unknown and authorities cannot rule out the possibility it is in the hands of terrorists. Still, he downplayed the potential danger. One rod no use for bomb "Although the whereabouts of that single fuel element are not known," he said, "we would say that one element would be of essentially no use in constructing a nuclear device - nuclear explosive device - and it would also be a poor choice for constructing a radiological, or so-called 'dirty bomb'." It is unclear why authorities in Kinshasa would deny the loss of the nuclear materials, especially since the loss was disclosed by the IAEA. However, some nuclear industry sources say Congolese officials, as a matter of national pride, have in the past resisted international efforts to shut down or impose stricter controls on the reactor, long considered a kind of embarrassment as well as a potential hazard. IAEA spokesman Gwozdecky said in his VOA interview the agency has sent several expert missions to Kinshasa to inspect the facility and to recommend improvements. He said authorities there have been cooperative. "I think it is important to say that while there were measures that needed to be corrected, and a good number of them, that the authorities in Congo have taken the recommendations that we have put to them very seriously and have done a number of things to address both the safety issues with regard to the reactor and security issues," Gwozdecky said. Nevertheless, the spokesman says the reactor still "has some ways to go" before the IAEA would certify it meets all requirements. Kinshasa received its first research reactor in the late 1950s under the US "Atoms for Peace" program. The more modern Triga Mark II reactor replaced the original facility in the early 1970s. ©Copyright 2001. All rights reserved. AfricaOnline.com Ltd. ***************************************************************** 20 British baby deaths "down to Chernobyl"* NewScientist.com 19:00 26 June 02 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Fallout from the accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Ukraine may have led to hundreds of deaths and deformities among babies in Britain. In April 1986, one of Chernobyl's reactors exploded and showered a swathe of Europe with radioactivity. Although most experts say the fallout had a detectable impact on human health only in the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, studies in Germany, Greece, Scotland and Wales have suggested links between the accident and increases in infant leukaemia. Now research by John Urquhart, a statistician based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has discovered high rates of infant deaths and birth defects in England and Wales in the three years after Chernobyl. He estimates that between 1986 and 1989, at least 200 more children than normal died before their first birthday. He calculates there were over 600 extra cases of babies born with Down's syndrome, spina bifida, cleft palate and other abnormalities in these years. One possible explanation is that radiation from the accident could have damaged the immune systems of the children or their parents, rendering them more vulnerable to harmful viruses. The results, unveiled at a conference on low-level radiation in Dublin last weekend, were "unexpected but dis-turbing", Urquhart says. "We've probably been too complacent about health effects from Chernobyl in western Europe." *High rainfall* Urquhart analysed 80,000 birth defects in children born in the 15 health regions of England and Wales between 1983 and 1992. He found that most of the extra cases between 1986 and 1989 were concentrated in just five English regions: Northern, North Western, Trent, South Western and South West Thames. When he looked at infant deaths in England and Wales from 1981 to 1992, he found a similar pattern. Death rates fell every year except for 1986, with the extra deaths mostly occurring in four of the five same regions. The odds that the overlap occurred by chance are 1 in 200, he says. Urquhart can't explain why these particular regions should have suffered more than others. But he points out that the total radiation dose received by people in Britain was at least 40 per cent of that received by people in the affected areas of the Ukraine, partly because of high rainfall, and that doses varied across the country. "At first sight his data appears to support his conclusions, and the matter needs thorough examination," says Philip Day, a radiation specialist from the University of Manchester. Rob Edwards ***************************************************************** 21 UK: WORKERS' FEARS OVER LMA [The Whitehaven News] THE bulk of Sellafield's workforce is likely to stay on the BNFL payroll, even though the nuclear site will have a new national owner. Worries among workers that they might have to transfer over to the proposed new Liabilities Management Authority, with less generous pay and pensions, appear to be unfounded - at least for the time being. BNFL employs 7,500 at Sellafield including Calder Hall which closes in two years time, and nuclear "insiders" feel certain the core workforce will stay with the company rather than become direct government employees. The view is reinforced by the LMA White Paper which makes it clear that the basic principle is one of minimal disruption. It says: "There will transfer to a different employer in some cases but terms and conditions will be protected by existing legislation and pension benefits will also be protected." The LMA is being set up to take overall responsibility for dealing with Britain's nuclear waste legacy, most of it in storage at Sellafield, where the new body will also assume ownership of the site's operational plants. However, one of the main nuclear unions, Prospect, which has a big staff membership at Sellafield, has concerns because eventually both BNFL and the UKAEA will have to compete with other companies and perhaps countries for future work. Sellafield Prospect spokesman Peter Clements said: "Our preferred option is that BNFL will continue to be the employer of the Sellafield workforce by proving its ability to do the work safely, effectively and with value for money to the taxpayer. "Prospect has led the discussions on assurances to terms and conditions and future pension arrangements that will give the workforce security no matter who runs the site in future years." Longer term worries centre on the government's intent to put Sellafield work out to competitive tendering to ensure that "through competition the best available skills and experience from both public and private sectors are brought to bear on the task". BNFL and the UKAEA have been assured that the first contracts will go to them but there will be performance targets to meet. However, the White Paper warns that over time contracts could be placed with "third parties following competitive tenders". Energy Minister Brian Wilson believes that BNFL's key asset is its workforce whose skills and knowledge can be maximised under new arrangements. nNew body created to deal with nuclear legacy: page 8 [news@whitehaven-news.co.uk ***************************************************************** 22 BNFL employees undergo safety briefings The Oak Ridger Online -- Feature: Business -- Thursday, July 11, 2002 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff BNFL Inc. management just wrapped up two days of briefing its employees about safety following a couple of incidents, one of which brought the company's cleanup project at the Oak Ridge K-25 site to a halt for about a week. Norman Hammitt, a BNFL spokesman, said the safety briefings resulted from a July 1 incident in which a load of wall panels was dropped about 10 feet from a crane. The incident happened near building K-33, one of the three facilities the company is working on for the Department of Energy. The material was being moved to BNFL's supercompactor for compression when it was dropped. No equipment was damaged and only two people required minor first aid as a result of the incident, according to Hammitt. Because of the incident, a June 27 fire in the K-33 building and the impending Fourth of July holiday weekend, Hammitt said BNFL's managers decided on the afternoon of July 1 to implement a "safety pause" that lasted until 6 a.m. Monday. This meant that nearly 400 workers were sent home for that time period without pay. During the time off, BNFL's managers devised what they called an "extensive" safety briefing in hopes of getting employees refocused on work. "We don't want them not focused," said Hammitt. "We want to make sure people are paying attention." BNFL, which employs around 900 workers, signed a six-year contract with DOE in August 1997 to work on buildings K-33, which totals 2.8 million square feet; K-29, 586,880 square feet; and K-31, 1.4 million square feet. The company's Oak Ridge cleanup project recently surpassed the 500,000 work hours without a lost-time accident mark. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 23 British secret services on the ground in Iraq Scotsman.com NEW evidence of British involvement in covert and possible military action to overthrow Saddam Hussein emerged today as Iraqi opposition leaders met in London to discuss their plans to replace the Baghdad dictator. It emerged in London and Washington that British secret servicemen were already on the ground in Iraq trying to foment revolt against the regime. And British special forces are to play a key role in trying to sabotage Saddam?s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons plants if, as expected, a major allied invasion goes ahead early next year. The news will anger Labour left-wingers, including Linlithgow MP Tam Dalyell, who are bitterly opposed to any such military action and British involvement in it. Tony Blair and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon have always said that there are no definite plans for action and that Britain has not been asked to take part. But now US sources are making clear that President George W Bush wants to see an invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam involving 250,000 troops invading from Turkey in the north and Kuwait and Quatar in the south. He hopes to have as many as 25,000 British troops. But the big fear is that the Iraqi dictator might then unleash his ?weapons of mass destruction? at Israel or Western countries. The SAS and the Royal Marines Special Boat Service have been pencilled in by Washington to play a key role in trying to prevent such a disastrous eventuality by making an early strike against the plants making the weapons and the launching pads for the missiles to carry them. ©2002 scotsman.com | contact ***************************************************************** 24 Uranium levels worry Harrietsfield residents canada.com » Halifax » Local News » Story Thursday » July 11 » 2002 By BEVERLEY WARE - The Daily News Gerri Jones found out by accident more than a year ago that she has four times the legal amount of uranium in her drinking water. Fourteen months later, residents of Harrietsfield have finally been able to put their questions to the provincial Environment Department. ?We wanted to get the information out to the residents. (The department) told us nothing, nothing. It?s only by mistake that we found out about the uranium in our water,? Jones said. ?We?re annoyed with the Department of Environment. They didn?t inform us; that was their only responsibility, and they didn?t do that.? She?s lived in the community for 26 years. A year ago in May, a neighbour decided to pay to have his water tested for uranium. The results came back May 5 at 0.11 parts per million, slightly above the acceptable limit of 0.1 ppm. Jones decided to get hers tested. The results came back May 12 at 0.08 ppm. ?We thought we were just under the wire,? she said. But her family was told not to drink the water, because the province had just tightened the acceptable limit to 0.02 ppm, in keeping with federal guidelines. She finally managed to get both government and the community to commit to a meeting, in which medical health officer Dr. Robert Strang answered participants? questions. While uranium can cause kidney problems, Jones said Strang told residents the water poses a threat only if they drink more than eight glasses a day. Jones said that information was helpful, yet, ?We want to know what government can do to help, but we didn?t get a lot of answers.? Halifax Atlantic NDP MLA Robert Chisholm represents the area. He said the department has not kept residents well informed, and he wants Environment Minister David Morse to do four things: - provide free water-quality tests so that residents can find out how much uranium or other heavy metals are in their water; - provide an emergency supply of drinking water for those who need it; - give residents better information about drinking-water hazards; - help residents buy treatment supplies or find alternative water sources. Jones wants the Environment Department to set up a committee to follow up on these recommendations. She said she continues to drink the water, because she doesn?t drink enough to put herself at risk. One of her neighbours has installed a filtration device. bware@hfxnews.southam.ca © Copyright 2002 The Daily News ***************************************************************** 25 Appeals court hears S.C. complaint Rocky Mountain News: Local State: More studies were needed on storing plutonium By Associated Press July 11, 2002 ABINGDON, Va. - Lawyers for South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges told an appeals court Wednesday that the federal government should have conducted more environmental studies before targeting his state for plutonium storage. Hodges' attorney, William L. Want, said the Energy Department didn't know enough about the Savannah River Site's long-term storage capacity before it decided in April to store weapons-grade plutonium from Rocky Flats there indefinitely. An attorney for the government disagreed, telling the three-judge panel for the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals that a study conducted in February was sufficient. "You don't need a new environmental assessment as long as you studied a range of options," said Jeffrey B. Clark, the deputy assistant U.S. attorney general. The panel did not rule after the two-hour hearing. The Energy Department plans to transfer six metric tons of plutonium from the former Rocky Flats nuclear facility, northwest of Denver, to the Aiken, S.C., site. Federal officials hope to convert the material into commercial nuclear fuel called mixed oxide, MOX. Fearing that the storage will become permanent, Hodges has fought the plan since last summer, holding highway roadblock exercises and vowing to lie down in front of trucks to keep the shipments from crossing the state line. He sued the federal government in May. It was unclear whether the Energy Department has begun shipping plutonium into South Carolina. The department keeps that information classified, and Hodges said he doesn't know. The Savannah site currently stores about two metric tons of plutonium. © The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 26 Senators who led in nuke money voted for Yucca Las Vegas SUN July 11, 2002 By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- The senators who have received the most money from the nuclear industry voted for Yucca Mountain, according to a campaign money watchdog group. The 45 Republicans who voted for the nuclear waste dump project on Tuesday received an average $50,585 between 1997 and 2002 from companies that operate nuclear power plants, nuclear trade groups, and companies that develop nuclear technology. That's according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. For the 15 Democrats who voted for Yucca, the average was $35,900. The senators who received the most cash from the industry, according to the analysis: Robert Smith, R-N.H. ($169,021); Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska ($146,542); Rick Santorum, R-Pa. ($113,191); Mary Landrieu, D-La. ($109,249); Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. ($98,149). All voted for Yucca. Twenty-four of the top 25 cash recipients voted for Yucca, with the exception of Sen. John Breaux, D-La. After months of lobbying on both sides of the Yucca issue -- project foes led by the state of Nevada spent several million dollars of their own on television commercials and lobbyists -- the Senate voted 60-39 to approve the project, marking the end of years of legislative wrangling. The campaign cash figures generally show that the industry, which lobbied heavily for the plan to permanently bury its high-level nuclear waste at the Nevada site, influenced the vote, the CRP report said. "The vote was a bitter defeat for Nevada's congressional delegation, led by Majority Whip Harry Reid who had lobbied vigorously against the plan," the report said. "But when it came down to it, Reid and his friends may just have been outgunned." But campaign cash does not weigh heavily on a lawmaker's policy decision, lobbyists often argue. Most senators who voted for Yucca did so because they want the waste piling up in their states shipped to Yucca -- not because the industry gave them a few donations, nuclear industry officials say. Senators who voted for Yucca believed the site is safe and represents good public policy, said Mitch Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a lobby group. He pointed to senators like Breaux, who received campaign money from the industry but voted against Yucca. Several senators who received no industry money voted for it. "It's unfair to draw a direct analogy between campaign contributions and the vote," Singer said. Even Reid, a Democrat, defended some of the senators who received nuclear industry money. "Some of them have been long-time advocates of Yucca Mountain, so in fairness, why wouldn't they take some money from the industry?" Still, Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., have said repeatedly that the industry spent more money in the Yucca fight, making their job tougher. Today the senators said they were most struck by the report's pleasant surprises, including Breaux, who voted against Yucca despite receiving $66,050; and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who received $47,250. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 27 Vanderbilt professor appointed to nuclear board Las Vegas SUN July 10, 2002 NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - President Bush has appointed a Vanderbilt University engineering professor to a federal nuclear waste board. Mark Abkowitz was appointed to a four-year term on the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. The 11-member board reviews Department of Energy policy pertaining to the management and disposal of nuclear waste, particularly Nevada's Yucca Mountain site. The Senate gave President Bush the green light on Tuesday to proceed with the Yucca site, where the administration wants to entomb 77,000 tons of highly radioactive materials. Board director Bill Barnard said Abkowitz is well qualified for the job, especially because of his experience with the "interface between storage, transportation and disposal." Barnard said the timing of Abkowitz' appointment was no coincidence. "This is a very important time for this program, especially considering yesterday's vote," he said regarding Yucca Mountain. Abkowitz is also the founder and chairman of Visual Risk Technologies - a Nashville-based company that designs risk management software. Abkowitz did not return messages left by The Associated Press seeking comment on the post. On the Net: U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board: [http://www.nwtrb.gov] Vanderbilt University: [http://www.vanderbilt.edu] Visual Risk Technologies: [http://www.vrisk.com] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 28 BNFL loses £2bn after nuclear storage write-down money.telegraph.co.uk By Mary Fagan / (Filed: 14/07/2002) / British Nuclear Fuels, the state-owned nuclear group, will this week unveil a colossal loss of more than £2bn for last year, after charges linked to nuclear waste storage and the early closure of two Magnox electricity generating power plants However, the loss masks a return to the black at the operating level, following the previous year's £210m deficit. BNFL, which the Government eventually hopes to privatise, has informed ministers that it will make an exceptional charge of £1.9bn linked to a reassessment of the cost of storing of radioactive waste. The company had previously based its cost estimates on storage by Nirex, the nuclear waste body. However, the future of Nirex has been increasingly uncertain since it was refused planning permission in 1997 on a site for the storage of low and intermediate level waste. BNFL is working with the Environment Agency and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate in an attempt to establish a storage solution at Sellafield in Cumbria. The exceptional charges have now been increased by up to £300m after BNFL's decision to bring forward the closure of Calder Hall nuclear power station in Cumbria and the Chapelcross reactor in Scotland. Based on an earlier £140m charge for the closure of Hinkley power station, BNFL's total write-downs are likely to be £2.2bn. Under plans drawn up by the Government to establish a nuclear Liabilities Management Agency, which would take over the responsibility for liabilities from BNFL and the UK Atomic Energy Authority, those charges would no longer lie with BNFL. However, there is no guarantee when the LMA will be up and running. Last week Norman Askew, BNFL's chief executive, told the House of Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee that he hoped the LMA will be operating by October 2003. But that depends on a Bill being included in the Queen's speech this November. DTI sources suggest the legislation is likely to be delayed.. © Copyright Telegraph Group Limited ***************************************************************** 29 Citizens unite against enrichment plant, threats Elizabethton Star - Online Edition By Kathy Helms-Hughes STAR STAFF khughes@starhq.com Approximately 120 citizens gathered at Farmhouse Gallery to speak out against a billion-dollar uranium enrichment facility proposed for their community. Supporters from Johnson City and Elizabethton, even a couple from across the mountain in Asheville stopped by to lend support to "Unicoi Citizens for Public Information." Not even threats stopped the gathering. Johnny Lynch, owner of the Gallery and also an alderman for the Town of Unicoi, told the group he had tried to get them on the agenda for the monthly town meeting scheduled for Monday night so they could voice their concerns, "but I was thwarted on every attempt. They canceled the city meeting Monday for lack of an agenda," Lynch said. "I've had all kinds of different things thrown at me to try to stop me on this. I've had, I guess, a threat, if you will, that if we didn't stop trying to stop this industry from coming in, that they were going to do away with the Town of Unicoi and start a move to unincorporate," he said. Why? Because if they were to do away with the Town of Unicoi, "they would do away with our planning commission and our Board of Mayor and Aldermen, which is one of the obstacles in front of these folks as they try to move into this county," he said. It has been confirmed that a consortium known as Louisiana Energy Services, or LES, has set its sights on a tract of more than 100 acres on Tinker Road to build the first gas centrifuge plant of its kind in the United States. LES, made up of major utility companies such as Exelon and Duke Energy, along with Louisiana Light & Power, Fluor Daniel, and Urenco -- sole competitor against U.S. Enrichment Corp. of Bethesda, Md., in the import of low-enriched uranium into the United States -- apparently began talks with Unicoi County officials three to four months ago, according to Lynch. "We didn't find out about this until just a couple of weeks ago," he said, referring to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen. "They kept it from us." Lynch said the mayor is in regular attendance at meetings of the Economic Development Board, where the proposed LES plant was discussed. "So I've got a real bone to pick with the mayor for keeping that information from the rest of the aldermen. "Evidently, what it seems they're trying to do is keep us from being heard. I'm thinking that's their plan: to not let this company know that there is opposition out here to this thing," he said. The LES partnership intends to use Urenco gas centrifuge technology currently operating at three plants in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany at its proposed uranium enrichment plant. Paul Monk, county executive, and Rep. Zane Whitson claim the facility is a cure for the county's economic ills. Monk said recently that LES has the potential to create tax revenues which could reverse three years of budget cuts affecting the county's 2,480 public school students. Whitson estimates the plant could increase Unicoi County's property tax by $9 million. Some of the local citizenry and experts called upon to speak at Tuesday night's three-hour-long meeting thought otherwise. Steven Sykes of Reedy & Sykes Architects in Elizabethton and Dr. Ed Stead of East Tennessee State University College of Business, said they are still trying to figure out the multiplier used to come up with the monetary benefits set out in a press release issued by Monk's office. Dr. Dave Close, professor and chairman of physics at ETSU, discounted the theory that there would be no adverse environmental impact if the facility was built within the community. One resident questioned whether having another uranium-handling facility close by would make the area an even larger target for terrorists. "Just paint a big bulls-eye around Unicoi," another responded. Tom Dennison challenged a claim that the industry would create a lot of high-paying jobs in Unicoi County, while Frances Lamberts of the League of Women Voters, said a contact person in Germany told her that Urenco "was very good at promising a lot of jobs. He said they had [been] promised 1,000 jobs. After construction, 180 people are employed and he said most of the jobs are lower-paying." Dr. Stead said building the gas centrifuge facility boils down to one simple economic assumption: "Is there a market for the fuel they would be producing?" Newspaper and magazines have indicated there is going to be a growth in nuclear power plants in the United States, Stead said. "But from everything I know right now, that's just a very shaky assumption." U.S. Enrichment, in a letter posted Monday on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Website, also questioned the need for more enrichment services in the United States and asked the NRC to make LES back up its application for the new facility with proof of need. Stead said it also appears that the multiplier used to develop statistics on jobs and increased revenues is "a much higher multiplier than is typical for this region." Stead, who has conducted research in Homer, La., and who attended LSU, said, "If the people in Louisiana can turn this plant down, we can turn them down here." In 1989, LES canceled plans to build a gas centrifuge facility in Homer following seven years of challenges. "All we have to do is keep plugging away and chipping away and making them spend money, because when they start spending too much money, they're going to pack up and they're going to leave. ... And to heck with the Board of Mayor and Aldermen!" Stead said, to rousing applause. "The Board of Mayor and Aldermen has ostrich dynamics. When you see their head in the sand, you've got to realize what's sticking up in the air," he said. Sykes told the group that if the property owners developed their own businesses on the Tinker Road site, "it's going to provide jobs for the people of Unicoi County" and the profits will be returned to the county, rather than some town in Germany. Sykes said that through the years his office building in Elizabethton has been "a grocery store, a farm store, a shoe store, it's been an office supply store. Time after time, that property has been used and redeveloped ... and it's helped the citizens." If an enrichment plant comes and goes, he said, "All we have left of that factory is a Superfund site." Dr. Close told the group that from an environmental standpoint, the uranium the company would handle would not be as big a concern as the heavy metals that would be produced. Another problem, he said, "is there is an enormous amount of waste." Copyright © 1996 - 2002 Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc. ***************************************************************** 30 *Opponents Of Locating Uranium-Enrichment Plant In Unicoi To Meet Monday * *125 West Summer Street - Greeneville, TN - (423) 798-0545* By: /By BILL JONES/Staff Writer/ Source:/ The Greeneville Sun / Opponents of efforts to locate a uranium-enrichment plant in Unicoi County have scheduled a protest meeting Monday afternoon outside the town hall in Unicoi. Johnny Lynch, a Unicoi alderman who is a leader of a group called ?Citizens for the Preservation of the Valley Beautiful,? said during a Friday afternoon telephone interview that the group plans to hold a protest rally in the parking lot of the Unicoi Town Hall at 5:30 p.m. Monday. Lynch said the group is protesting the cancellation of Monday?s regular monthly meeting of the Unicoi Board of Mayor and Aldermen. Lynch had hoped to use the Unicoi board meeting as a forum for discussion of efforts by Unicoi County leaders and Louisiana Energy Services, a European-led consortium, to possibly locate a uranium-enrichment plant on 100 acres along Tinker Road in the town of Unicoi. The plant would be located near a stream that flows into the Nolichucky River, which then flows south to and through Greene County. Following the protest meeting outside Unicoi Town Hall, Lynch said, members of the citizens group are scheduled to return to his business, the Farmhouse Gallery and Gardens, for another meeting. The group has met there twice before. He said a meeting on Tuesday drew about 150 people who were seeking information about the recently announced project. Billion-Dollar Companies ?The consortium consists of several billion-dollar companies, with Urenco being the principal one involved,? state Rep. Zane Whitson, R-5th, of Unicoi, told the Associated Press recently. Other companies attending a Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting April 30 about the project with LES were Duke Energy Corp. and Exelon Nuclear. Unicoi County leaders have said the proposed uranium enrichment plant could provide about 400 jobs during construction and 250 permanent full-time jobs once it is operational, possibly as early as 2006. The plant would enrich uranium used in generating electricity, the press release stated. Other potential plant sites previously mentioned by Urenco officials are Piketon, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky. Urenco?s World Wide Web site indicates that the company was founded after the German, Dutch and British governments signed the Treaty of Almelo, an agreement under which the three partners would jointly develop the centrifuge process of uranium enrichment. Company?s Background Urenco Limited was established in 1971 (as a result of the treaty), according to the company?s World Wide Web site. ?This agreement was effectively the cornerstone of the close cooperation between the enrichment enterprises in Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, which today, along with a presence in the U.S., form the Urenco Group,? the Web site states. ?In 1993 Urenco Limited, based in Marlow (England), became the holding company for the group. This merger of the formerly independent companies has led to greater efficiency and higher standards of management and safety.? Urenco?s existing uranium enrichment sites, according to the Web site, are located at Capenhurst in the United Kingdom (Urenco Capenhurst Ltd.) at Gronau in Germany (Urenco Deutschland), and at Almelo in The Netherlands (Urenco Nederland). Research and Development is carried out in Jülich, Germany (also part of Urenco Deutschland). Urenco also has a marketing office in Washington D.C. (Urenco Inc.), according to the company?s Web site. The Urenco-led consortium in 1998 abandoned similar plans to build a U.S. uranium enrichment plant in northern Louisiana after a nine-year effort and the expenditure of some $34 million, after the project met stiff local resistance there. © 2002 East Tennessee Network - R.A.I.D. ***************************************************************** 31 Utilities to press for Utah nuclear waste dump - 7/11/2002 - ENN.com Thursday, July 11, 2002 By Leonard Anderson, Reuters SAN FRANCISCO — A plan to ship 40,000 tons of radioactive nuclear waste to an Indian reservation in Utah will go forward despite the U.S. Senate's vote Tuesday approving an underground nuclear dump next door in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, the project sponsor said Wednesday. Private Fuel Storage, a group of eight electric utilities, is pushing to store the deadly waste in outdoor canisters on the Utah Indian land until Yucca Mountain opens as the nation's first permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. "Our aim is to continue moving forward, and we are hopeful that the licensing process can be completed by the end of this year or early next year," said Sue Martin, spokeswoman for the $3.1 billion Utah project. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board held month-long hearings on the plan in Salt Lake City in April and is expected to make a recommendation to the NRC by the end of the year. The Utah project, led by utility holding company Xcel Energy of Minneapolis, would store the waste fuel for up to 20 years, with a 20-year extension, on 820 leased acres of reservation land belonging to the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians. The reservation is about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Unlike Yucca Mountain, where the waste would be interred deep inside a mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, used fuel rods in the Utah project would be packed in 175-ton steel and concrete canisters called dry casks and stored outside. The containers would be shipped by rail to Utah to sit on thick, above-ground concrete pads until Yucca Mountain is ready. 10,000-YEAR STORAGE The Senate vote yesterday effectively clears the way for the U.S. Department of Energy to apply to the NRC to license the $58 billion Yucca Mountain project. The facility, which still faces legal challenges, is scheduled to open in 2010 and hold 70,000 tons of waste fuel that the Environmental Protection Agency says must be isolated for 10,000 years. Nuclear power plant operators, which generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity, face shrinking waste storage space at their reactors. About 44,000 tons of used fuel rods now are stored in fuel pools and casks in the United States — enough to cover a football field 15 feet deep — and the nation's 103 reactors produce another 2,000 tons each year. Xcel Energy is leading the Utah project because it will run out of storage room at its twin-reactor Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota by 2007, said Scott Wilensky, director of state government affairs for the utility. Other Utah project members are American Electric Power, Edison International the Southern Nuclear unit of Southern Co., FirstEnergy, Entergy, FPL Group's Florida Power &Light, and privately held Genoa Fuel Tech. Utah opponents, led by Gov. Mike Leavitt, argue that the 1982 federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act bars private waste storage away from nuclear plants. Copyright 2002, Reuters ***************************************************************** 32 Nuclear Waste, More Than a Backyard Issue New York Times Opinion A Critical Vote on Nuclear Waste (July 9, 2002) To the Editor: Re "A Critical Vote on Nuclear Waste" (editorial, July 9): To say of nuclear waste shipments that they have gone on in the United States and Europe for three decades "without incident" is ridiculous in the wake of the events that afflicted the nation on Sept. 11; the rules of the game clearly have changed. You say that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will examine the scientific issues. Why should anyone trust the commission when the past 20 years have revealed that the nuclear industry will do whatever it must to get what it wants, and the current administration clearly will do its bidding? You seem to think that Nevadans are merely parochial about not wanting nuclear waste in their backyard. In fact, we simply want to hear the truth. And we are still waiting, as we have been already for a very long time. MICHAEL GREEN Las Vegas, July 9, 2002 /The writer is a professor of history, Community College of Southern Nevada./ ***************************************************************** 33 Uranium experts deliver hard facts at Black Falls meeting* Navajo-Hopi Observer- *News* By S.J. Wilson The Observer Black Falls ? The hardest task Perry Charley faces in interpreting uranium-related meetings is telling people they may die. ?I dread telling Native Americans that their water sources are contaminated, that they have the risk of developing cancer.? ?What are the special implications to Native American populations, the psycho-social impacts? What is the difference in the implications of certain words to non-Indians and Native Americans, such as ?seep?. To a non-native, a seep is just a seep. But to a Hopi or Navajo, it may be a source of drinking water, or perhaps a sacred site.? Then there is the violation of a serious taboo of speaking about death for tribes such as the Navajo. Speaking of these issues has become an everyday affair for Charley, who works for Diné College. ?I have spent the last 30 years ? my whole professional life ? working on this issue. I have to tell you, in that time I?ve seen little change,? he said. Once again Charley, along with Carl Holiday, Health Physicist for the Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation Program of the Navajo Nation, faced translating morbid news. Uranium experts gathered at the Black Falls home of Milton Yazzie on June 29. Yazzie has spent a great deal of time at his own expense verifying his long-held suspicion that the water from nearby wells was contaminated by uranium. Many of his neighbors did not initially believe Yazzie?s seemingly outrageous claims that the water they?d been drinking all their lives could make them ill. In the face of disbelief, Yazzie went up the chain of command, so to speak. Since then, many organizations have gotten involved, and joined to distribute their results. Glynn Alsup of the Army Corps of Engineers began his presentation by offering his condolences to family and friends of former Cameron Chapter President, Seymore Tso. Tso, he said, had been involved in the mapping and collection of water samples. A former uranium miner himself, Tso was working in the infamous Yazzie 12-3 pit when it filled with water. Harry Goldtooth was also remembered for the three months of his life he?d dedicated to the collection of samples in the Coalmine area. ?Because of his efforts, this chapter had the most samples.? The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), Public Law 101-426, authorized the payment of $100,000 to uranium miners with associated health problems. Alsup pointed out that this bill was unique. The language he referred to reads, ?[t]he Congress apologizes on behalf of the Nation to the individuals?and their families for the hardships they have endured.? Nonetheless, miners were not to receive their payments for years ? and many lost their lives to cancer before then. ?I was shocked to learn that people were given IOUs for these compensation payments,? Alsup admitted. These funds have since been distributed. Alsup explained that sites chosen for testing were selected from historical research for mining permits, water sources surrounding those areas, compounded by interviews with chapter officials. Water, rather than wind, was the scope of this research because alpha and beta particles are more easily absorbed into the body through water, thus affecting the body more quickly. Wenona Wilson and Andrew Bain, the Remedial Project Manager for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ? Region 9, Superfund Project, presented maps and lists of sample results from the Cameron and Coalmine Chapters. ?U.S. EPA is in the middle of its study. The next phase is to conduct tests further into the Eastern Agency and insert those results into the map, chapter by chapter,? Bain said. Wilson and Arlene Luther of Navajo Nation EPA were instrumental in bringing Cameron Chapter to the attention of their respective agencies according to Yazzie. ?They were both very vocal in our support, ? he said. USEPA?s goal, Bain explained, was to listen to the concerns of the community and work together to address them. ?We want to make this information more understandable to you.? The information on USEPA maps were distressing. Added to data provided by Northern Arizona University?s Environmental Outreach Program, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, area wells are indeed unsafe for human consumption. Thirty micrograms of uranium per liter and below is considered safe for human consumption by EPA standards. Anything higher is not potable water. A list of wells tested read much higher ? 69, 63, 53, 52, and so on. Considering the gravity of the information provided, attendees voiced their disappointment that most chapter officials invited did not show up. ?It seems that money is more important to them than the issues,? said Gibson Jones, a Tuba City resident. Jones, the president of the Navajo Vietnam Veterans Organization, said that he?d learned that veterans afflicted by Agent Orange are also being tested for radiation. ?Many veterans are involved in this meeting,? he said. ?They are a part of this issue. ?That is why I wanted to be here to post the colors, to show all who attended that we are a part of this.? Jack Colorado, Chapter Delegate for Cameron, rose to personally thank Yazzie. ?He?s worked on this for some time,? he said. ?I know it?s not been easy, but he?s taken us this far.? Admitting the serious nature of the problem, Colorado urged the experts, all whom traveled to Black Falls on their own time and expense, to help Cameron Chapter get safe drinking water as soon as possible, before more studies were conducted. ?Cameron Chapter is one of the hardest hit,? he said. Providing drinking water to the Nation, he continued, was one of the reasons why the Navajo Nation planned to construct a water line, a project Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl stalled in a bill asking that a two-year water study be completed before approval. ?We are hoping Kyle will accept our studies as well on the Cameron/Black Falls Chapter,? Colorado said. (EDITOR?S NOTE: Milton Yazzie wishes to thank everyone who came to the meeting; all the government and private presenters, elected chapter officials, the Black Falls community members who donated their time to attend, helping make this meeting a reality. ?I can?t thank everybody enough for this support and help in this personal project which has taken a lot of time, effort and personal expense,? Yazzie said. ?I particularly want to thank Vicky Rosen and Patty Collins of USEPA ? Region 9, Superfund Project.?) . * All Rights ***************************************************************** 34 State begins defense in nuke dump lawsuit BY KEVIN O'HANLON / The Associated Press Lawyers for Nebraska are finally getting their turn in the trial accusing state officials of conspiring to thwart plans for a nuclear waste site in Boyd County. The state began its defense this week in U.S. District Court in Lincoln. Lawyers for the group of states suing Nebraska ended their case Monday after some five weeks of testimony. "They've been trying to spin this conspiracy theory," said John Wittenborn, one of the lawyers representing Nebraska. "You can have a conspiracy with two or three people. This was not a conspiracy. This involved so many people -- public servants who were simply doing their jobs." At stake for Nebraska taxpayers in the case is $200 million -- the high-end estimate of what Nebraska could be ordered to pay if it loses the trial. The lawsuit accuses Nebraska of acting in bad faith by not licensing the facility in 1998. Nebraska officials said they denied the license because of concerns over possible pollution and a high water table near the proposed site. The site was meant to store low-level radioactive waste from Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Brad Reynolds, who is leading Nebraska's defense team, told U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf that the license decision was "based on sound science and compelling facts." Nebraska has rejected allegations that former Gov. Ben Nelson, now a U.S. senator, and other officials conspired to submarine plans for the dump. "We're going to defend the process," Wittenborn said. The lawsuit initially was filed by utilities that generate radioactive waste. The four other states slated to use the dump later joined the lawsuit. The battle had its genesis in 1970, when Nevada, South Carolina and Washington grew tired of accepting low-level radioactive waste from the rest of the country. Congress told states in 1980 to build their own dumps or join regional groups to dispose of the waste, which includes contaminated tools and clothing from nuclear power plants, hospitals and research centers. Nebraska joined Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana in 1983 to form the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact. The other states voted in 1987 to locate the dump in Nebraska. The fight began soon after, with both sides wrestling in court on several issues. Reynolds said the state expects to take about three weeks to present its case. Most of the lawyers involved in the case expect it to eventually end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Copyright © 2002, Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 35 S.C. Appeals Plutonium Shipments By CHRIS KAHN Associated Press Writer July 10, 2002, 1:50 PM EDT ABINGDON, Va. -- Lawyers for South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges told an appeals court Wednesday that the federal government should have conducted more environmental studies before targeting his state for plutonium storage. Hodges attorney William L. Want said the Energy Department didn't know enough about the Savannah River Site's long-term storage capacity before it decided in April to store weapons-grade plutonium there indefinitely. An attorney for the government disagreed, telling the three-judge panel for the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals that a study conducted in February was sufficient. "You don't need a new environmental assessment as long as you studied a range of options," said Jeffrey B. Clark, the deputy assistant U.S. attorney general. The panel did not rule after the two-hour hearing. The Energy Department plans to transfer six metric tons of plutonium from the former Rocky Flats nuclear facility near Denver to the Aiken, S.C., site. Federal officials hope to convert the material into commercial nuclear fuel called mixed oxide, MOX. Fearing that the storage will become permanent, Hodges has fought the plan since last summer, holding highway roadblock exercises and vowing to lie in front of trucks to keep the shipments from crossing the state line. He sued the federal government in May. It was unclear whether the DOE has begun shipping plutonium into South Carolina. The department keeps that information classified, and Hodges said he doesn't know. The Savannah site currently stores about two metric tons of plutonium. * __ On the Net: Savannah River Site: http://www.srs.gov Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press ***************************************************************** 36 UK: Nuclear waste may traverse Worcester Worcester Telegram & Gazette - World/Regional Thursday, July 11, 2002 By John J. Monahan Telegram & Gazette Staff WORCESTER-- Trains and trucks loaded with high-level radioactive waste may roll regularly through downtown Worcester on their way to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository in Nevada. Congress gave final approval Tuesday for the waste to be disposed of in the mountain. Department of Energy plans identify Interstate 290, the Massachusetts Turnpike and freight lines that run through downtown Worcester as principal routes that may be used once high-level radioactive waste shipments to the mountain begin in 2010. The plans show used fuel rods and other high-level nuclear waste from Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth may be shipped along CSX freight lines through the center of Worcester. They include the line that runs along Worcester Center Boulevard, through the new freight tunnel that passes through Worcester Medical Center, as well as freight lines that run behind Union Station and over trestles and rail lines along Southbridge Street. High-level nuclear waste from Maine Yankee and Seabrook Station in New Hampshire may also be shipped on I-290, according to map routes identified in planning studies for Yucca Mountain. Waste from Maine and New Hampshire nuclear plants could also be shipped on the rail lines that run across Northern Massachusetts along the Route 2 corridor. Risks of major accidents in transporting the radioactive cargo were among reasons cited by both of Massachusetts' senators, John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy, for opposing final approval of the Yucca Mountain disposal site. The Senate gave the final nod to use the Nevada underground facility for disposal of the nation's highly radioactive waste by a vote of 60-39. The plan had previously been approved by the House. If approved by President Bush, the facility would proceed to federal licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and go into use as early as 2010. Federal officials have estimated that nuclear waste shipments in Massachusetts over the life of the facility would require as many as 2,268 truck shipments or 773 train shipments. While nuclear proponents say the waste will be shipped in highly secure containers, critics say shipments of waste to Nevada from nuclear plants across the country will inevitably result in some accidents. “Serious questions continue to be raised about the safety of the site and the safe transportation of nuclear waste to the site. These are major questions of profound importance and it makes no sense to approve a permanent site until they are answered more effectively,” Mr. Kennedy said. Mr. Kerry said he could not “in good conscience” vote to approve the Yucca Mountain plans, “when the overwhelming scientific information urges caution and further study.” He complained that the decision could plague residents of Nevada as well as those in 40 other states, including Massachusetts, one of the states where waste will be transported. Mr. Kerry said the proposed shipping routes pass through major cities and there remains “an enormous question of trust” that must be addressed before the shipments and use of Yucca Mountain can proceed. Mr. Kerry, noting that the Bush campaign suggested in 2000 that it would not move forward with Yucca Mountain, said citizens will need to know the details of how nuclear wastes will be handled and transported. “And they need to know that those promises by the administration will not evaporate the way their Yucca campaign pledge did.” While much of the previous planning for waste shipments dealt with potential danger from accidents, since last year, new concerns are being raised about the vulnerability of nuclear waste shipments to terrorist attacks. Mr. Kerry said the public is going to have to be convinced on the safety issue. “We need to develop a policy that protects the health and safety of local communities...There are too many unanswered questions about the long-term effects of storing the waste at Yucca Mountain, and the means by which we transport the waste there,” he said. Robert T. Sullivan, a spokesman for CSX, which operates the freight lines that run through Worcester, said the company will have no say in whether high-level nuclear shipments could be accepted for shipment on their rail lines. “We are a common carrier, and we are required to transport shipments tendered to us as long as they meet safety requirements,” he said. The Department of Energy, he said, would have the final say on what routes would be used. He said the question of high-level radioactive shipments comes at a time when CSX is focused on improving rail safety, having reduced the number of rail accidents by 39 percent from 2000 to 2001. Trains have been used for limited shipments of nuclear materials in the past, he said, and CSX has never had a train accident involving radioactive shipments. Last year, Mr. Sullivan said, CSX handled about 445,000 carloads of hazardous materials and had “only” 17 major accidents or derailments involving those shipments, a safety record of more than 99.9 percent. Critics of the transportation plan, including the Environmental Working Group, however, said there have been 380 train accidents and mishaps in Massachusetts since 1990 and 218 fatal truck accidents in the state since 1994. They calculated that more than 1.3 million people in Massachusetts live within one mile of the routes planned for high-level nuclear waste shipments. Nuclear industry leaders, meanwhile, celebrated the decision to approve Yucca Mountain. Nuclear Energy Institute President Joseph E. Colvin said it was a great day for the nation's nuclear industry. He said that the industry fully realizes the importance of safely transporting waste for disposal, and that during the last 38 years, more than 3,000 other shipments of radioactive materials have been completed with no accidents that resulted in release of radiation. The Department of Energy has estimated that nationally more than 100,000 high-level radioactive waste shipments would be made to Yucca Mountain over 38 years, and has estimated it would result in about 100 accidents. The state of Nevada, however, says its studies project about 400 accidents would occur with those shipments. www.telegram.com ***************************************************************** 37 Newspapers report vote on front page Thursday, July 11, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal TV newscasts give Yucca action little airtime By RICHARD LAKE REVIEW-JOURNAL The U.S. Senate's decision Tuesday on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository received only cursory attention on national network newscasts, but made the front page of newspapers across the country Wednesday. "It is important national news," said Leonard Downie Jr., The Washington Post's executive editor. Like many other large metropolitan newspapers, the Post had a staff-written story about the decision on the bottom half of its front page. "Senate approves storage of nuclear waste in Nevada," the headline read. The story, which was about 900 words, recounted the history of the Yucca Mountain Project, as well as intense lobbying efforts by Nevada's two senators, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign. The New York Times also ran a 900-word, front-page story on the decision, though it was relegated to a small box with a four-word headline: "Site for Nuclear Waste." The story, written by a Times staff writer, continued on the paper's inside pages. It called Tuesday's decision "pivotal." The Chicago Tribune, which is published in Illinois, the state with the most commercial nuclear power plants in the country, also played the story at the bottom of its front page. The 700-word story said Illinois has about 7,100 tons of nuclear waste stored at various sites around the state. If all that waste were shipped to Yucca Mountain, it would represent about 9 percent of the total of 77,000 tons expected to be stored at the repository. Many papers in the West played the story more prominently on their front pages than the Eastern papers did. The Los Angeles Times ran the story with a large headline at the top of its front page. "Senate OKs Nevada Nuclear Waste Site," the headline read. The decision was "a landmark action that could open the door to a new era of growth for the long-stalled nuclear energy industry," the story's first paragraph said. Smaller Western papers also played the story big. The Arizona Republic in Phoenix ran a short front-page story about the vote, and the Reno Gazette-Journal ran several stories about Yucca Mountain in its edition. The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., home to many committed environmentalists, ran an Associated Press story at the bottom of its front page. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 38 The waste that waits Philadelphia Inquirer | 07/09/2002 | Posted on Tue, Jul. 09, 2002 [story:PUB_DESC] In Utah, radioactive dirt sits dangerously close to parks and highways. By Seth Borenstein Inquirer Washington Bureau MOAB, Utah - John Elmer stands on a mound along the west bank of the Colorado River. Beneath his feet are nearly 12 million tons of radioactive dirt that the federal government inherited from a bankrupt uranium mill. While the U.S. Senate plans to vote this week on whether to approve Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the nation's dump for the highly radioactive end products of nuclear power, the action will not do anything about the radioactive dirt in the town of Moab, in southeast Utah. The waste site is at the juncture of two main highways, two national parks, one state park and the Colorado River. Near the area is a rare Utah wetland, an oasis in this desert for 200 species of birds. Also nearby, the picturesque buttes of Arches National Park reach for the sky. Below the radioactive mound, two earthquake faults meet. In addition, the Colorado River is likely to change course someday and run directly into the radioactive dirt pile, according to a June study by the National Academy of Sciences. The river supplies water to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson. Although Yucca Mountain gets more attention, the federal government still has nearly two dozen old uranium mining and milling sites like Moab, where cleanup costs could approach $400 million. "You're on top of Yucca Mountain Junior here," said Elmer, a project manager for a firm the government hired to clean up the uranium site. Unlike the waste that would go to Yucca, the stuff here is of low-level radioactivity. But there is a lot of it - 11.9 million tons in a 140-acre pile, more than six times the amount of debris trucked away from the World Trade Center in New York. The site's two biggest environmental concerns are ammonia, a toxic pollutant, and radon, a cancer-causing substance given off by decaying radium. In a recent study, the federal government kept fish in cages within 1,000 feet downriver of the Moab site; they all died from ammonia poisoning. But scientists agree that, because the contamination gets diluted quickly, there is not a problem farther downstream. The radon risk is limited for now to workers on the waste site, who wear protective boots and whose exposures are carefully limited. A shift in the river's course or an earthquake could change all that, however. The Uranium Reduction Co. opened a mill here in 1956. Atlas Minerals Corp. took over in 1962 and ran it until 1984. About half the milled uranium went to nuclear power plants; the other half went to nuclear weapons work. In 1996, Atlas planned to bury the tailings in the current location, but the company went bankrupt in 1998, and the federal government took over. The government has two options: Leave the waste where it is and seal it, or move the waste to a remote desert site about 18 miles from the river. Scientists and engineers agree the second option is safer, but it is also more expensive. Leaving the pile in place would cost $137 million. Hauling it away would cost $386 million and take 10 years, the government reckons. While the Department of Energy will not make a decision until next year, it is more likely to move the waste than to store it where it is, Elmer said. That is what the federal government has done with 20 out of the 22 similar sites it has taken over. "It's hard for me to imagine that capping it in place is going to be acceptable," said Joel Berwick, project manager for the department. "Everybody who looks at it acknowledges that it would be a lot better to get it away from the river, away from the wetland, away from the town," said Moab activist Bill Hedden, Utah director of the Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental group based in Arizona. Contact Seth Borenstein at 202-383-6102 or sborenstein@krwashington.com [sborenstein@krwashington.com] . ***************************************************************** 39 Yucca foes shift focus to NRC Las Vegas SUN July 11, 2002 Activists aim to poke holes in licensing application By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- Anti-Yucca Mountain activists said they plan to sustain their effort to derail the project, despite a crushing blow to their cause in the Senate this week. "One thing is for certain: Yucca Mountain is not over," said Jim Warren, of the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network. Senators on Tuesday voted 60-39 to approve the plan to construct a permanent burial ground for high-level nuclear waste at the Nevada site. The vote marked the end of years of legislative battles in Congress over the desert mountain. It was a profound disappointment to project foes because it was the last time elected lawmakers would vote on it. Now it will be up to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether the site is safe enough to license as a national nuclear waste dump, a process that could take years. But leading activists said they aim to keep their anti-Yucca infrastructure intact, shifting focus from Congress to the NRC. They plan to poke holes in the Energy Department's proposals, as well as the NRC's licensing process. They intend to make high-profile appearances at public NRC hearings. "It's our role to watchdog the federal agencies, and we'll continue to do that," said Diane D'Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., also plan to shift their focus to the NRC. Congress still has budgetary, and indirectly, some regulatory authority over the project, they said. Ensign said public pressure on the NRC to keep the Yucca review process fair will snowball as people continue to learn about the project. "The reason (the activists) are so important is because this is going to be a constant public relations battle," Ensign said. Reid, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said he plans to continue his annual effort to slash the Yucca budget Congress allocates each year. The House just voted to approve $525 million for Yucca Mountain next year, which Reid will attack in a conference committee. Reid is also chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the NRC, which gives him a bird's eye view of the NRC's Yucca review process. Reid also plans to begin a series of committee hearings within weeks that examine nuclear waste and Yucca issues, he said. "We have oversight responsibilities," Reid said. "We aren't going to do anything that appears punitive (to the NRC), but we are going to be very pro-active." Activists said that in the months before Tuesday's closely watched Senate vote, grassroots anti-Yucca groups mobilized like never before in opposition to Yucca. National news media attention, coupled with a glut of both pro- and anti-Yucca advertising that ran in local markets nationwide focused a spotlight on the issue, activists said. More people than ever are familiar with the 20-year-old plan to establish a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, they say. "It's very important that we take advantage of all the attention on this issue and keep people informed, and that we get senators, including the ones who voted against us, to ask tough questions, and to keep them accountable for their votes to move all this waste through people's neighborhoods," said Anna Aurelio, a scientist with U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Aurelio said the public can continue to pressure Congress in other ways, including a call for an independent review of terrorism risks involved with shipping waste across the nation to Nevada. It's important to sustain a public dialogue about Yucca because congressional approval was a mere first step, said Ed Rothschild, a paid Democratic lobbyist who helped Nevada in its effort in the Senate fight. People should remember that the Energy Department has a long history of spectacular failures, including the $11 billion Superconducting Supercollider, and the modernization of a nuclear fuel facility in Portsmouth, Ohio -- both massive-scale projects that were scrapped after billions had been invested, Rothschild said. The public should re-awaken to the long list of reasons the Yucca project is similarly doomed, Rothschild said. "To think that the DOE can manage (Yucca) and get NRC approval -- that's a (risky) bet," Rothschild said. The NRC's licensing process will feature public hearings that should draw large crowds of Yucca critics, Rothschild said. "There are lots of opportunities to question what the DOE is doing," he said. One avenue is federal court. Washington-based Public Citizen, which took a lead role in anti-Yucca efforts, along with several other groups, joined the state of Nevada in a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, which sets Yucca safety standards. "Yucca still has 10 years to go and it will probably sink under its own weight," said Joan Claybrook, Public Citizen president. "It's a $58 billion project now, it'll probably be a $158 billion project in the not too distant future." Local environmental groups also vow to keep Yucca near the top of their priority lists. Groups may file more lawsuits against the NRC as the licensing process heats up, said Grant Smith, an activist with Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, which has worked with Public Citizen on its EPA lawsuit. "I'm sure that there will be (DOE) issues that contradict what the statutes say, which the NRC will ignore," Smith said. Meanwhile this week, lobbyists on the other side of the Yucca issue said they too plan to sustain their own momentum, and call on Congress to provide adequate funding for the project each year, said Mitch Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. He shrugged off activists who plan to watchdog the NRC. "The NRC is one of the most scrutinized agencies in the government," Singer said. "If that's what those groups intend to do, that's their business." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 40 Three federal judges hear nuclear waste storage case from South Carolina in Abingdon Bristol Herald Courier - BristolNews.com The decision to hear arguments in Abingdon was made to expedite the case, officials said. Widener is from Washington County. by KATHY STILL Bristol Herald Courier Jul 11, 2002 ABINGDON -- Three judges of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals met here Wednesday for only the second time in the past 13 years. The men heard a South Carolina case that could determine whether nuclear waste may be stored in the Palmetto State for at least the next half-century. "Most arguments are held in Richmond," said Peg Bishop, secretary for one of the judges, Emory Widener. "We meet once a month in Richmond, then each judge goes to their home district to write opinions." The 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, covers Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. Arguments may be heard in any of the states, especially when a case needs to be examined quickly, court officials said. The decision to hear arguments in Abingdon was made to expedite the case, officials said. Widener is from Washington County. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges wants to stop Department of Energy plans to store weapons-grade plutonium at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, but so far no court has ruled in his favor. The 4th Circuit is one of 12 federal appeals courts in the nation. The court hears appeals from the various district courts in the five states. The next level of appeal is the Supreme Court. Security at the federal courthouse seemed tighter than usual Wednesday. U.S. marshals carefully scrutinized each person entering the building and scanned all briefcases and purses. The case, which has received nationwide attention since the governor threatened to block the plutonium shipments, drew just a handful of spectators and reporters. Each side was given 30 minutes to present arguments, but the judges were lenient with the time restriction. As is the case with most appeals courts, the judges frequently peppered the attorneys with questions and often interrupted them mid-sentence. Kathy Still may be reached at [kstill@bristolnews.com] or (423) 502-3892. ***************************************************************** 41 S.C. Appeals Plutonium Shipments Newsday.com - By CHRIS KAHN Associated Press Writer July 10, 2002, 1:50 PM EDT ABINGDON, Va. -- Lawyers for South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges told an appeals court Wednesday that the federal government should have conducted more environmental studies before targeting his state for plutonium storage. Hodges attorney William L. Want said the Energy Department didn't know enough about the Savannah River Site's long-term storage capacity before it decided in April to store weapons-grade plutonium there indefinitely. An attorney for the government disagreed, telling the three-judge panel for the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals that a study conducted in February was sufficient. "You don't need a new environmental assessment as long as you studied a range of options," said Jeffrey B. Clark, the deputy assistant U.S. attorney general. The panel did not rule after the two-hour hearing. The Energy Department plans to transfer six metric tons of plutonium from the former Rocky Flats nuclear facility near Denver to the Aiken, S.C., site. Federal officials hope to convert the material into commercial nuclear fuel called mixed oxide, MOX. Fearing that the storage will become permanent, Hodges has fought the plan since last summer, holding highway roadblock exercises and vowing to lie in front of trucks to keep the shipments from crossing the state line. He sued the federal government in May. It was unclear whether the DOE has begun shipping plutonium into South Carolina. The department keeps that information classified, and Hodges said he doesn't know. The Savannah site currently stores about two metric tons of plutonium. * __ On the Net: Savannah River Site: http://www.srs.gov Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press ***************************************************************** 42 EWG Asks Private Fuel Storage To Declare Intentions EWG Nuclear Waste Route Atlas July 10, 2002 Contact: Ken Cook Utility Group Says White House Deal With Utah’s Senators Won’t Halt Nuclear Waste Dump At Skull Valley Nuclear Consortium Says It Never Intended to Seek Federal Funds That Energy Secretary Pledged To Eliminate In Return for Pro-Yucca Votes Washington, July 10 — Utah’s Senators emerged triumphant from a White House meeting with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham late Monday afternoon, and announced a deal that they claimed would be a significant blow to a proposed nuclear waste dump in their state, in Skull Valley on the Goshute Indian Reservation. The key to the deal, the three men said, was a promise by Abraham to deny federal funding for the Skull Valley Project. “In my view, this [denied funding] would greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the chances that this material will end up in Utah,” Abraham said in a letter to Senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett, In return, both of the senators agreed to support President Bush the next day by voting in favor of proceeding with a permanent nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada. But even as the Yucca Mountain vote was underway in the Senate on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Private Fuel Storage (PFS), the consortium of power companies behind the Skull Valley nuclear dump, was telling reporters that the project would likely proceed. PFS spokesperson Sue Martin told the Provo Daily Herald that she was “confused” by the Hatch-Bennett announcement. “It has never been Private Fuel Storage’s intent to seek Department of Energy Funding,” she said. Martin added: “We have always said that while we desperately need Yucca Mountain, there is no way Yucca Mountain can be done in time to meet the needs of some of the utilities. Some type of interim solution is necessary,” Martin told Provo Daily Herald reporter Tad Walch. Prior to the announced deal, both Senators had said they were “wavering” in their past support for Yucca Mountain, and might vote against it. Their position was seen as pivotal to the outcome of the Yucca Mountain vote, and their announcement was a boost for the nuclear industry and a blow to Nevada Sen. John Ensign, who hoped to convince members of his own party to oppose Yucca. In their joint statement on Monday, Hatch and Bennett stated that the Energy Secretary “makes it clear that the Department of Energy will not reimburse the nuclear industry for storing nuclear waste at Skull Valley.” “By not funding the Skull Valley site, the Department of Energy provides a significant incentive for generators of high level nuclear waste to find solutions to storage problems on-site or send material directly to the permanent site proposed at Yucca Mountain,” Hatch and Bennett said in their joint statement. The conflicting stories prompted Environmental Working Group (EWG) President Ken Cook to write Private Fuel Storage, and Utah’s Senators, asking them to clarify their understanding of the White House deal. (The letters are posted at www.ewg.org.) “EWG opposes the license application for Skull Valley out of the same concerns about nuclear waste transportation that compelled us to urge a ’no’ vote on the Yucca Mountain resolution before the Senate,” Cook said. “It appears that Senators Hatch and Bennett traded their vote to proceed with Yucca Mountain for an empty promise from the White House to halt Skull Valley,” he added. “If the Skull Valley dump proceeds, it amounts to yet another Washington lie about nuclear policy to the people of Utah,” Cook said. “The wonder is why Senators Hatch and Bennett bought this ’deal’ without confirming first that Private Fuel Storage was seeking and depending upon federal funding to make the Skull Valley dump viable financially.” In his letter to PFS, Cook asked the consortium to make public any plans it may have had for financial reimbursement from the Department of Energy. He also asked the consortium if they planned to withdraw their application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the Skull Valley nuclear dump. “PFS says they will proceed on schedule with Skull Valley and that the ’withheld’ federal reimbursement is not a factor,” Cook stated. “The tragic irony is, Skull Valley is far more likely to gain NRC approval, and open as a ’temporary’ site, now that the Senate has voted to proceed with a permanent waste dump at Yucca Mountain,” Cook said. “From a regulatory standpoint, proceeding with Yucca is a pre-condition for Skull Valley, not a substitute for it, as Abraham, Hatch and Bennett have implied. So this ’deal’ may well mean bad news for all of us who opposed Skull Valley. ” EWG is non-profit environmental research organization that uses the power of information to protect public health and the environment. EWG developed an Internet site that enabled Web users to type in a street address or zip code and receive a map displaying their proximity to proposed nuclear waste transportation routes to Yucca Mountain (at www.mapscience.org [http://www.mapscience.org] ). The site is a joint project of EWG and EWG Action Fund. Copyright 2002, Environmental Working Group and EWG Action Fund. All Rights Reserved. 1718 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 600 | Washington, DC 20009 || mapinfo@mapscience.org [mapinfo@mapscience.org] ***************************************************************** 43 Money talks in Yucca Mountain vote Thursday, July 11, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Group: Senators side with contributors By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The nuclear industry's campaign contributions proved to be money well-spent on the Yucca Mountain Project, a watchdog group said Wednesday. The Center for Responsive Politics released an analysis of contributions to senators who on Tuesday voted 60-39 to send the nation's nuclear waste to Nevada. That study indicated those who supported the Yucca Mountain Project received substantially more in campaign contributions from utilities and nuclear trade groups than those who opposed the project. "The nuclear power industry had a lot more money, and they marshaled their money better," CRP analyst Vikki Kratz said. "The Nevadans never had a chance." The nuclear power industry has contributed $30 million to politicians since 1997, the report said. Except for Sen. John Breaux, D-La., every one of the 25 senators who received at least $50,000 from the nuclear power industry during that time voted for the repository at Yucca Mountain, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. However, some of those who voted against the Yucca Mountain Project have received sizable contributions from the nuclear power industry in prior years. For instance, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., voted against the respository despite receiving $132,000 since 1989. Kratz said the most telltale finding involved Democrats. The 15 Democrats who voted for Yucca Mountain received an average $35,900 in donations since 1997 from companies with significant nuclear power holdings, industry trade groups such as the Nuclear Energy Institute or companies that build nuclear plants. By contrast, the 35 Democratic senators who voted against Yucca Mountain received an average of only $18,345 in industry donations. Republican senators who voted to send nuclear waste to Nevada received an average $50,585 from the industry, while the three who voted against the repository averaged $11,116. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the analysis was telling. "What strikes me about that is that some people couldn't be bought," Reid said, referring to those who voted against the project. Officials at the Nuclear Energy Institute had not seen the study, spokesman Mitch Singer said. "I don't think there was a quid pro quo relationship between campaign contributions and the vote," Singer said. "Senators voted on whether they believed the Yucca program was viable and whether they had nuclear waste in their state." Reid said his analysis of Tuesday's vote was simple: Nevada needed more support from Republican senators than the two who joined Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., in opposition to Yucca Mountain. "Had I gotten more Republicans, I could have gotten more Democrats," Reid said. He explained that if the vote had been close he had pledges of support in his pocket from three Democrats if he really needed them. In the end, the vote was not close enough. Following the vote, pro-Yucca Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said the vote had more to do with local concerns than anything else. "In the end, this was a local issue," Craig said. "If you had nuclear waste in your state you wanted it moved to a secure place, and that was out of your state." Among the 39 states with nuclear plants, 51 senators voted for the repository while 26 voted against it. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., did not vote. Those who backed Nevada's position also were among the most liberal, including Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. In February, the National Journal ranked senators along an ideological scale based on their voting records. Using the rankings that study produced, nine of the 10 most liberal members voted against Yucca Mountain. Sixteen of the top 20 liberals voted against the repository. "It's painfully obvious that what you would call liberal forces voted with us," said Michael Green, a history professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada. Green said a senator's political leanings in a number of cases appeared to trump the presence of nuclear waste in his or her state. That would explain why Boxer and Feinstein, Minnesota Democrats Wellstone and Mark Dayton, and Massachusetts liberals Kennedy and John Kerry voted against Yucca Mountain even though their states house nuclear plants, he said. "Personal ideology does have something to do with it," Green said. CCSN political science professor Mark Peplowski said support came from some senators not so much because they sympathized with Nevada's plight but because they opposed the expansion of nuclear power. "Wherever the nuclear waste issue was going, they were going to stand against it," Peplowski said. Following Tuesday's vote, Nevada's senators also explained the unusual process that completed the Senate's action on Yucca Mountain. Seeing the end approaching, Reid and Ensign began negotiating with opponents late in June on a way to bring the fight to finality. The result was the somewhat unorthodox process that played out, where the most important vote was a procedural one and the final Yucca Mountain decision was taken by voice vote. Both sides claimed to benefit from the arrangement. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the 1982 law that guided the Senate's consideration, allowed for 10 hours of debate after the Yucca resolution was called up for action. But Nevada's senators planned to force a procedural vote to challenge whoever called up the resolution. That procedural vote would become such a key test vote that if Nevada lost it would have been a waste of time to debate further. "What would have been the point?" Ensign said. So Reid and Ensign agreed to a single roll call vote on Senate procedure that would take place after 4 1/2 hours of debate. While formally a process vote, all senators understood it was the vote that would count, Reid said. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 44 *Nuclear waste* The Copenhagen Post Despite previous assurances that Denmark will solve the problem of nuclear waste at Risø Power Plant 'here and now,' Minister of Science, Technology and Development Helge Sander is now hoping to defer the problem indefinitely. Sander has requested the participation of consultancy firm Cowi, to investigate the possibilities of just closing down the facility and letting the nuclear plant (and its waste) remain where it is. All previous investigative reports on the Risø Power Plant have concluded that the best solution is to clear up the waste as soon as possible. However, the Minister has been unable to persuade any local authority to accept the 5,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste from Risø. All rights reserved CPHPOST.DK ApS *CPHPOST.DK ApS * Store Kongensgade 14 * 1264 Copenhagen K * Denmark * Tel: 33 36 33 00 * Fax: 33 93 13 13 * E-mail:info@cphpost.dk * ***************************************************************** 45 Russia: Cleanup of World's Worst Nuclear Wastes Funded [http://www.ecoisp.com] BRUSSELS, Belgium, July 10, 2002 (ENS) - A fund to tackle environmental and nuclear waste problems in Northern Europe was launched Tuesday in Brussels at a pledging conference that raised €110 million (US$108.8 million). The Support Fund of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership will be used to leverage loans to tackle the legacy of environmental problems and nuclear waste in northwest Russia. [nuclear reactor] Kola nuclear power plant in the Russian Arctic (Two photos by Thomas Nilsen courtesy [http://www.bellona.no/] ) This is a first step towards dealing with the legacy of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste in the Barents Sea region, which is the largest repository of such waste in the world, the European Commission said. Russia's Kola Peninsula contains the largest repository of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste in the world. The storage facilities are obsolete and overflowing. The disposal of spent nuclear fuel is a key bottleneck to plans for a safe dismantling of the nuclear vessels of Russia's fleet. The contamination that has its source there spreads far beyond Russia's borders, and is a matter for international concern, throughout the areas around the Baltic and Barents seas, and beyond, the Commission warned. The scale of the challenges, combined with the limited ability to pay and the transboundary effects of the environmental problems necessitates support from grant funds, Russia and the European Union agree. [waste] The storage tanks for liquid radioactive waste at the Kola nuclear power plant. The Partnership's Steering Group is made up of the European Commission, Russia, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Nordic Investment Bank, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will manage the Fund on behalf of its contributors. The Steering Group has agreed on 12 priority projects with a total cost estimated at €1.3 billion. In each case, a lead international financial institution has been identified. These 12 projects will improve the environment in northwest Russia and the surrounding area by reducing water and air pollution, protecting the marine environment, and reducing the spread of air pollutants in Northern Europe. The Steering Group has also prepared a priority list of nuclear waste management projects, with an estimated cost of approximately €500 million. Of the total amount pledged, €62 million is earmarked for nuclear projects. [Patten] EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten of Great Britain was the last British Governor of Hong Kong. (Photo courtesy [http://europa.eu.int/comm/] ) At the pledging conference - co-chaired by External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, Russia's Vice-Minister of Finance, Sergey Kolotukhin, and Jean Lemierre, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - the European Commission pledged €50 million, while Russia, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden each pledged €10 million. A number of other countries indicated that they may soon be able to come forward with additional contributions. The launch of the fund was conditional on €100 million being raised. This target was exceeded. The launch of the support fund is a milestone in the process of improving the environment in the Northern Dimension Area. The Northern Dimension was initiated in 1997 to address the specific challenges of the Baltic Sea region, the Arctic Sea region and northwest Russia. The Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership was launched in 2001 as an aspect of the Northern Dimension. The support fund will also be an important step in the context of the G8 Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction that was announced in the G8 Declaration June 27 in Canada. [Lemierre] Jean Lemierre, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Photo courtesy [http://www.eu2001.se] of the European Council) There will be two "windows" to the fund, the pledging conference agreed. The Environmental Window will exist to provide sufficient capital to soften the conditions under which commercial loans can be granted to Russia to address the projects identified. Here, money pledged to the fund can be expected to have a multiplier effect of roughly 400 to 500 percent. The Nuclear Window will operate differently, since experience shows that commercial loans are rarely available for this kind of project. Donors stressed that the conclusion of the Multilateral Nuclear Environment Programme in Russia is a crucial precondition to initiation of Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership nuclear related operations. According to a 1999 working [http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/waste-mngment/9679.html] on securing radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in the Russian counties of Murmansk and Archangelsk published by the Bellona Foundation of Norway, radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel on the Kola Peninsula is stored at: the Kola Nuclear Power Plant, Murmansk Shipping Company's nuclear icebreaker base Atomflot, the civilian Radon storage and at most of the naval bases and shipyards of the Northern Fleet. Radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel are also stored at the naval yards in Severodvinsk outside of Archangelsk. Until 1992, Bellona reports, most of the solid and liquid radioactive waste was dumped in the Barents and Kara Seas. Sixteen reactors, some with and some without spent nuclear fuel, were also dumped into the Kara Sea. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 46 Nuke-shelter for armed personnel developed ** ** Press Trust of India * New Delhi, July 11: * In a major breakthrough, Indian scientists have developed an integrated field shelter to provide collective protection to about 30 armed forces personnel from nuclear, biological and chemical agents in a nuclear warfare scenario, a top DRDO official said on Thursday. "The scientists of Defence research and development organisation (DRDO) have developed the shelter under qualitative requirements of the Indian Army having multifarious uses," Dr R.V. Swamy, DRDO's Chief Controller, said. The self-contained shelter, which can be used as command post, observation post, regimental aid centre and communication centre, can house 30 men for a period of 96 hours and protect them from biological and chemical agents besides nuclear particles, provided it is situated at a specific distance from 'Ground Zero' (the point of blast). Successful trial runs have been carried out near the sea, in deserts and mountains and different conditions and "we have met the requirements of the Army", Swamy said. He parried questions whether the shelters would be used for providing cover to VIPs or the nuclear command centre, saying no request has been made from the civilian side on their usage for other purposes. Swamy, who was accompanied by scientists from other defence laboratories, said the DRDO had also developed sensors of three kinds?mounted on vehicles, for reconnaissance purposes and personal protection from nuclear, chemical and biological attacks, which were also being used by the armed forces. ***************************************************************** 47 Assessing the nuke threat from Russia's arsenal By JAMES ROSEN July 10, 2002 In February, three men traveled to the Siberian city of Zheleznogorsk, one of 10 still-closed "nuclear cities" that designed the missiles, produced the plutonium and built the bombs for the Soviet arsenal during the Cold War. As the men neared the mammoth complex of the Mining and Chemical Combine, two guards gave them a glance and drove on. Within an hour, the men had gone through a hole in the dilapidated fence, scaled a wall and entered a building that stores highly radioactive spent fuel from a nearby reactor. The infiltrators were not terrorists. But they could have been. Ten and a half years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the fate of nuclear weapons and materials in Russia has acquired fresh urgency in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Warheads aimed at the United States for decades and the deadly pools of plutonium that fueled the bombs now pose a different threat: the threat of falling into the hands of anti-American terrorists or governments. Adding to the concern about Russia are the breakdown of central controls, a decline in military morale, crumbling physical facilities, economic woes and official contacts continued from the Soviet era with Iran, Iraq and other nations that are deemed in Washington to be rogue states. "The accumulation of a large volume of weapons-usable fissile material in the territory of the Russian Federation continues to post an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States," President Bush told Congress on June 18. The Americans and the Russians are once again in an arms race, only now they are on the same side, working together to avert a catastrophe. The focus on Russia as a giant toolbox for terrorists arises from two main concerns: the breakdown of totalitarian weapon controls since the collapse of communism and the volume of nuclear materials spread over a vast territory. Sergey Mitrokhin, a member of the Russian parliament from the Yabloko opposition party, was among the group that infiltrated the Zheleznogorsk nuclear complex. When Mitrokhin returned to Moscow, he sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin, who then met with Grigory Yavlinsky, the opposition-party leader. Putin promised, according to Yavlinsky, to arrange a meeting on nuclear security with Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Minatom, the Russian atomic energy ministry. That meeting has yet to take place. Russia's nuclear materials cover a broad spectrum of potency, from assembled warheads, through plutonium and highly enriched uranium, spent fuel and an array of radioactive junk from hospitals, factories and military bases. One hundred decommissioned nuclear submarines are docked in the Arctic seas of northern Russia and in the Russian Far East, each with enough uranium to make a small armory of weapons. "You're worried about terrorists getting the nuclear bomb or nuclear material?" asked Joseph Cirincione, an arms-control analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "Go to Russia." Bush and his homeland-security team appear to have gotten the message. The first budget Bush sent to Congress decreased annual spending on U.S. programs to secure and reduce Russian weapons of mass destruction to $800 million; his second budget, submitted after Sept. 11, seeks to boost such spending to $1.2 billion. Meeting in Washington and Texas last November, Bush and Putin said stopping terrorists from securing such weapons had become their governments' top priority. And in Moscow six weeks ago, they set up a group of experts to accelerate control of Russia's nuclear stockpiles. On June 27, Bush and Putin persuaded other leaders of the G-8 group of industrialized nations to fund a $20-billion initiative to help Russia reduce its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons stockpiles over the next decade. Since the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991, the United States has spent about $8 billion helping Russia consolidate and gradually reduce its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, with the bulk going for security. There is a broad consensus that Russia's nuclear stockpiles, thanks in large measure to the U.S. aid, are more secure than they were a decade ago. And there is general agreement that Russian warheads are better protected than the large stores of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. But the consensus breaks down over how much of a threat Russia still poses as a nuclear grocery store for terrorists or unfriendly governments. Much of the concern in the West over Russia's "loose nukes" dates to a claim in 1996 by Gen. Alexander Lebed, then President Boris Yeltsin's national security adviser, that 84 suitcase-size nuclear weapons were missing from Russia's arsenal. However, there are no acknowledged cases of missing warheads of any size or type, from Russia or any other nuclear power. Since Sept. 11, a number of U.S. government officials and arms-control analysts have cited alleged attempts by al Qaeda operatives of Osama bin Laden to acquire bomb-making material. But experts who track the nuclear black market are puzzled by their inability to prove such a link. "You need to see some kind of connection between the willing seller and the interested buyer, but we see evidence of a lack of connection between buyers and sellers," said Rensselaer Lee, a Congressional Research Service analyst who wrote a 1999 book on the topic. Lee added, however, that intelligence officials and analysts such as himself simply may not have enough information. "It's what we don't see that is disturbing," he said. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, who was responsible for developing Russian strategic nuclear forces before his retirement last year, is an optimist. Sitting in a conference room of the Center for Policy Studies, a Moscow think tank where he now works, Dvorkin declared that Russia's warheads are every bit as secure as the United States'. And even if terrorists obtained a warhead, he said, they could not detonate it. "A nuclear explosion is impossible," he said. "You need to know the codes. There are many protection stages. It's a very complicated process, and it is better not to discuss the details." But Maj. Gen. Alexander Frolov gave a less heartening assessment to a nonproliferation conference in Moscow. He is deputy director of the 12th Main Directorate, the Defense Ministry agency that oversees nuclear weapons security. "We are facing a growing threat of the use of nuclear materials by terrorists," Frolov said. "They may even go so far as capturing nuclear facilities." (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.) The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 48 Lawmakers Appeal Pasko Conviction www.moscowtimes.ru Thursday, Jul. 11, 2002. Page 3 The Associated Press Prominent lawmakers and activists appealed to the Supreme Court chairman Wednesday to reconsider a treason conviction against Grigory Pasko, a military journalist whose case has angered international media freedom groups. The appeal, organized by Yabloko, denounced a ruling last month by the Supreme Court's military wing that upheld the verdict against Pasko. The journalist was sentenced to four years in prison in December by a military court in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok for attending a meeting of naval commanders and taking notes while there. The court said his intent was to pass the notes to Japanese media, with whom he had worked. On Wednesday, the lawmakers and activists asked Supreme Court chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev to protest the military wing's ruling and consider the case in the court's presidium, its highest body. Pasko's lawyers have said they would appeal the June ruling to higher levels at the court. "The ruling of the Military Board cannot be called the result of objective consideration of Pasko's case by an independent and unbiased court," the letter reads. "We are urgently requesting you to protest this ruling and ... on these grounds consider this case at the presidium of the Supreme Court." The letter was signed by Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky; the head of the Union of Right Forces party, Boris Nemtsov; the head of the media freedom monitoring group Glasnost Defense Fund, Alexei Simonov; Lev Ponomaryov, head of the All-Russian Movement for Human Rights; and other prominent figures. Pasko has called the case retaliation for his reports uncovering alleged environmental abuses by the navy, such as dumping of radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has called Pasko's conviction unjust and embarrassing to Russia, and Western countries have criticized it as part of an apparent wider crackdown on media freedom. ***************************************************************** 49 Gorbachev warns of Cold War legacy BBC News | UK POLITICS | Wednesday, 10 July, 2002, [Mikhail Gorbachev] Mr Gorbachev was in London for a news conference Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned of the dangers of leaving intact tonnes of chemical weapons dating from the Cold War. Stockpiles of nerve gas, skin blistering agents and chemical warheads are widely feared to be vulnerable to theft or to leakage. Our project is aimed at eliminating the environmental consequences of the Cold War and the arms race Mikhail Gorbachev At a news conference in Westminster Mr Gorbachev urged political leaders from across the world to address the problem. He called for billions of dollars to tackle Russia stockpiles which are estimated to exceed 40,000 tonnes. As well as chemical weapons Mr Gorbachev warned that there were 200 obsolete submarines which needed their nuclear reactors decommissioning - but the full scale of the task was still not known. Arms race "Our project is aimed at eliminating the environmental consequences of the Cold War and the arms race. "It is a terrible legacy we are trying to deal with." He added: "We are still learning. We will have to know exactly how many tanks with chemical weapons or chemical agents were buried underwater in the seas and the oceans. "There are more than 200 submarines that are out of commission that still contain nuclear reactors that have to be disposed of." Mr Gorbachev said that the Soviet Union and the US each spent the equivalent of $10,000bn on the arms race. "Now tens of billions, perhaps hundreds of billions, of dollars will be needed to destroy these weapons." The former Soviet leader was appearing in his capacity as president of the Green Cross - an organisation concerned with the clean-up of chemical and biological weapons. 11 September He said he had noticed a greater sense of urgency in the wake of the 11 September terror attacks. [Russian submarine] Dumped submarines are just one problem He acknowledged the desire of the US to defend itself but warned of the dangers of new arms races. "I think we should understand that the government of the US, the president of the US, are responsible for the security of the nation - we understand that. "But at the same time, as the friends and allies, partners, of the US, should be in a position to say to them that while doing that, don't re-launch a new arms race. "We are still dealing with the consequences of the old arms race, without starting a new one." Mr Gorbachev was having lunch at the Foreign Office before holding talks with Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. ***************************************************************** 50 Japan and South Korea to urge the North to accept inspections Go Asia Pacific Breaking News Asia - [http://abc.net.au/ra/] Japan and South Korea will jointly urge North Korea to accept inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Japan's Foreign Minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, will meet South Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister, Choi Sung-Hong, in Seoul on Saturday to discuss issues including the Agency's inspection of the North. North Korea has refused to allow the Agency full access to its facilities and denies it harbors ambitions to make nuclear weapons. But Tokyo and Seoul are worried that Pyongyang's continued refusal could wreck a 1994 accord with the United States in which the North pledged to halt its weapons program in return for two light water nuclear power reactors. The 4.6-billion-dollar light water nuclear project was due to be commissioned by 2003, but delays have pushed back completion until at least 2008. 11/07/2002 21:46:22 | ABC Radio Australia News ***************************************************************** 51 [EMMAS] [EmNz] Radioactive Recycling! (fwd) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 00:13:42 -0500 (CDT) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 18:55:46 -0700 From: Viviane Lerner Subject: [EmNz] Radioactive Recycling! http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/JA02/radioactive_recycling.html Radioactive Recycling If the Department of Energy has its way, the nation's nuclear garbage could end up in everyday items like bicycles, frying pans, and baby strollers. by Susan Q. Stranahan July/August 2002 From the air, the East Tennessee Technology Park looks like clusters of enormous Wal-Marts, sprawling across 4,700 acres in the rural countryside west of Knoxville. But for decades the Oak Ridge complex had a more ominous name -- the K-25 site. Its mission: to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Today, the facility contains tons of contaminated junk -- machinery, metal, concrete, and tools -- some of which will remain radioactive for generations. Faced with a massive cleanup, the Department of Energy has come up with an ingenious plan to get rid of the slightly radioactive scrap: "recycle" the metal and sell it for reuse. Both the DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are quietly revising rules that would allow millions of tons of radioactive garbage at the nationUs weapons facilities and nuclear reactors to be converted into consumer products and building materials. Under the plan, the leftover metal could end up in baby strollers, bikes, frying pans, engine blocks, and I-beams. "This scrap is an asset," says Val Loiselle, former director of the Association of Radioactive Metal Recyclers. "Until now, we've literally been burying our assets." Most low-level radioactive materials are currently disposed of in secure, government-licensed landfills. But as former weapons plants are cleaned up and aging reactors are decommissioned, the volume of nuclear junk is expected to soar. The DOE already has 1.6 million tons of slightly radioactive metals at weapons installations across the country, and the NRC expects to have 8.9 million tons of contaminated steel and concrete to dispose of by 2030. In the past, both the DOE and NRC have recycled such materials on a case-by-case basis. At K-25, for example, approximately 6.6 million pounds of slightly radioactive material left Oak Ridge's gates before sales were halted in 2000. The material was treated no differently than any other scrap, and nobody made any effort to keep track of where it ended up. But with the nuclear scrap heap mounting, federal agencies and industry officials want a formalized recycling program in place to speed up the disposal. The plan calls for setting an exposure standard below which irradiated metals would be deemed "safe" and suitable for release. Because radiation levels would be low, the reasoning goes, there would be no need for labels identifying that the materials came from nuclear reactors or weapons facilities -- even if they end up in homes, offices, and schools. If the changes are implemented, they would end a decades-long policy against the intentional release of radioactivity into the general populace. Opponents of the plan say it could jeopardize public health, exposing consumers to materials previously deemed too contaminated to use. "One day it's hazardous, the next day it's safe," says David Ritter, a policy analyst with the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen in Washington, D.C. "They just change the definition." Some of the most vocal opponents of the plan are those who would be on the receiving end of the "released" materials. "The DOE and the nuclear community cannot use us as a dumping ground for their waste," says Thomas Danjczek, president of the Steel Manufacturers Association, which processes 70 million tons of recycled material a year. "We worry about damaging the public perception of steel being a safe material. If this goes through, it would kill our market." In the past, such concerns have been enough to block attempts to redefine what constitutes radioactive waste. Since 1980, the NRC has twice proposed rule changes declaring some irradiated material as "below regulatory concern," meaning there would be no limits on its reuse or disposal. Congress eventually intervened to block the rules. In 2000, hoping to gain support for its newest recycling plan, the NRC contracted with the National Research Council to convene a panel to review its recommended changes. But in March the panel declined to endorse the wholesale release of radioactive materials, observing that the NRC has "failed to convince any environmental and consumer advocacy groups that the clearance of slightly radioactive solid material can be conducted safely." Radioactive recycling efforts at the DOE have also run into sharp criticism. In 1999, a federal judge in Washington ruled that not enough was known about the dangers of releasing radioactive materials at the K-25 site. "The potential for environmental harm is great, especially given the unprecedented amount of hazardous materials which [officials] seek to recycle," U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler declared. Despite the widespread opposition from consumer advocates, steel manufacturers, and scientists, federal officials appear determined to proceed with recycling. The reason? Dollars and cents. If decommissioned debris from the nation's 103 nuclear plants must be buried in secure landfills, costs to the utility industry may hit $12 billion. If the rubble can simply be carted to the nearest landfill or scrap metal broker, the price could be as low as $300 million. History offers some indication of what can happen when radioactive materials find their way into consumer goods. In the early 1980s, contaminated metal from unknown sources was fabricated into jewelry (wearers developed cancer and lost their fingers) and restaurant table legs (most were detected prior to delivery, but some patrons and employees may have been exposed to radioactive cobalt 60). In 1998, occupants in Taiwanese apartment buildings made with radioactive steel beams began reporting health problems, and a Michigan manufacturer was forced to recall hundreds of La-Z-Boy recliners after learning that the rocker springs contained radioactive metal. Despite the health risks, global trade in radioactive materials is thriving. The European Union has already set standards allowing the release of materials contaminated with what it calls "trivial" amounts of radiation, and industry trade groups like the Nuclear Energy Institute are pressuring the United States to follow suit. "Consistency with standards set by other nations and international agencies is important," the NRC declared in a 1999 report, "because materials can be both imported and exported between the U.S. and other countries, and differing standards could create confusion and economic disparities in commerce." Officials at the Department of Transportation are currently revising rules on radioactive shipments to conform to international guidelines. But with so much of the current regulatory focus on economics and commerce, consumer advocates worry that a simple fact of physics is being overlooked: Any dose of radiation, no matter how small, increases the risk to public health. And if a host of recycled products _oods the market, there will be no way to measure the effects of multiple doses. "When it comes to ionizing radiation, you can't draw some line and say anything above that line is dangerous and anything below is safe," says Ritter, the policy analyst with Public Citizen. "You have to ask: What is avoidable, what is preventable?" ========= *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.*** ################################################################# "My faith is in the individual and in the capacity of free individuals for united endeavor." Emma Goldman This message comes to you from the emmasnews list. Send appropriate email to To SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE to the emmasnews list send email to with the message in the body as follows: subscribe/unsubscribe emmasnews. [No subject is needed.] ################################################################# ################################################################# " Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass." Emma Goldman To SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE to the emmasdance list send email to with the message subscribe/unsubscribe emmasdance. [No subject is needed.] "If I can not dance, I want no part in your revolution." Emma Goldman ################################################################# ***************************************************************** 52 Technology:Lawyers argue SRS' capacity Augusta Georgia: Web posted Thursday, July 11, 2002 By Chris Kahn Associated Press [http://wire.ap.org/] ABINGDON, Va. - Attorneys for South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges told an appeals court Wednesday that the federal government should have conducted more environmental studies before targeting his state for plutonium storage. "We want a good, safe environmental consideration," Hodges attorney William Want told a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Want said the Energy Department didn't know enough about Savannah River Site's long-term storage capacity before it decided in April to move weapons-grade plutonium to it from the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver. An attorney for the government disagreed, saying a study conducted in February was sufficient. "You don't need a new environmental assessment as long as you studied a range of options," said Jeffrey B. Clark, the deputy assistant U.S. attorney general. The panel did not rule after the two-hour hearing. The Energy Department plans to transfer six metric tons of plutonium to the Aiken site. Federal officials hope to convert the material into commercial nuclear fuel called mixed oxide, but they have not committed to doing so. Fearing that the storage will become permanent, Mr. Hodges has fought the plan since last summer, holding highway roadblock exercises and vowing to lie in front of trucks to keep the shipments from crossing the state line. U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, of Aiken, last month denied Mr. Hodges' request to stop the shipments. If his appeal fails, Mr. Hodges has promised to press his case to the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the appeals panel questioned the lawyers about the extent of the environmental study and the potential ramifications of storing plutonium in South Carolina indefinitely. When Mr. Want suggested DOE did not sufficiently examine how long the Aiken site could hold plutonium after 10 years, Judge Paul Niemeyer asked him to prove it. Mr. Clark said the February study by DOE examined the storage risks for a 50-year period. [http://augusta.com] . ***************************************************************** 53 Speeding Nuclear Cleanup Is Seen as a Way to Reduce Work The New York Times *July 12, 2002* *By MATTHEW L. WALD* WASHINGTON, July 11 ? The Bush administration plan to clean up highly radioactive military wastes more quickly may actually be an effort to reduce the government's work sharply, two senators and the attorney general of Washington State said today at a Senate hearing. A top Energy Department official did not contradict them. Under the plan, the administration offered an extra $800 million in cleanup money for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 to states that could reach agreement by Aug. 1 on how to spend it. Some officials in Washington State fear that the plan would violate a longstanding agreement to clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation in Richland. Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, said today that the money could be seen as an incentive to states to lower their environmental standards in exchange for a larger share of the cleanup budget. The Energy Department, Ms. Cantwell said at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was telling the states, in effect, "if they'll agree to a change, they'll get X number of dollars for cleanup." Senator Jeff Bingaman, the New Mexico Democrat who is chairman of the committee, also said the $800 million could be seen as an incentive to relax standards. Ms. Cantwell was addressing Jessie H. Roberson, assistant secretary for environmental management in the Energy Department, who said the department would live up to an 1989 agreement to clean up the Hanford site. The department has more than 53 million gallons of military radioactive sludge and salts in aging tanks at Hanford, where some waste has leaked into the Columbia River. In 1989, the department reached an accord with the Environmental Protection Agency and Washington to empty the tanks of at least 99 percent of their contents and embed the wastes in glass, a process called vitrification. Those glass logs, in steel containers, are supposed to be buried, possibly at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where nuclear wastes from civilian reactors are also supposed to go. But in 1999, the department published a rule to let it redefine some wastes so they would not have to be vitrified. This year, it proposed to build just one vitrification plant instead of two and finish the work more quickly. The department has decided against completely emptying similar tanks at its Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C., and to leave some waste in place, mixed with concrete. That has caused "terrible consternation," Attorney General Christine O. Gregoire of Washington told the energy panel today. Ms. Gregoire, who in 1989 was head of her state's Ecology Department and helped negotiate the pact that year, said she would refuse to sign further agreements with the Energy Department until the issue was clarified. Asked repeatedly whether the department planned to redefine the wastes at Hanford, Ms. Roberson refused to promise that it would not do so. "It's not our intent to avoid compliance with any of our regulatory agreements," she said. The policy of allowing the redefinition of the wastes is the subject of a suit against the Energy Department by the Yakima Indian Nation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Oral argument is scheduled for July 22 in Federal District Court in Boise, Idaho. Ms. Gregoire said Washington would try to enter the suit on Monday as a friend of the court. Even the accelerated cleanup would be lengthy, lasting 35 years instead of 70. The wastes are left from the production of plutonium, beginning in World War II and ending in the 1990's. ***************************************************************** 54 GOP senator scorns Livermore as national anti-terror center Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau [eepstein@sfchronicle.com] Thursday, July 11, 2002 --> Washington -- A powerful Republican senator attacked the idea Wednesday of making the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory the new Homeland Defense Department's base for anti-terrorism research and development. The Bush administration has designated Livermore as the main "center of excellence" among federally financed labs for working with the new department that President Bush has proposed to Congress. But that idea drew the ire of Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, a senior Senate Republican whose state is home to two other major nuclear weapons labs, at Los Alamos and Sandia. "For the life of me, I can't see why Lawrence Livermore is offered the lead over its two sister labs," Domenici said at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee meeting. "Let's hope it borders more on equality when we're finished." Domenici said he was upset about the designation in light of delays in Livermore's National Ignition Facility, a multibillion-dollar laser research project. Congress is moving swiftly to consider Bush's proposal to create the new Department of Homeland Security, which would have 170,000 employees and an initial $37 billion annual budget. Committees are taking preliminary votes this week on the complicated plan, which would shift all or bits and pieces of dozens of agencies to the new department. Only a small piece of Livermore's operations will formally move to the new department, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said at the hearing. The 75,000- employee lab is run by the University of California for the Department of Energy and has a $1.2 billion annual budget. Feinstein said that only $40 million to $50 million of programs, involving chemical and biological weapons, nuclear smuggling and intelligence analysis, will be switched to the new department's management. Scientists working on these projects will be unaffected, promised Linton Brooks, acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency that oversees Livermore. "Scientists most probably won't know they've been transferred," he said. "They will do the same work, but the work will be for a different Cabinet secretary." Brooks said Livermore will probably get the "oversight and management" functions for the new department's research. But with members of Congress like Domenici trying to protect their turf, he assured them, "There will be a mechanism at each lab to make sure the department can reach into them." "There's nobody in the Department of Energy who thinks we're going to put one lab over another. There was some early confusion," Brooks added. But on Tuesday, Bush homeland security director Tom Ridge appeared before a House committee and repeated that Livermore would be the main locale for the new department's research functions. Livermore has already done lots of anti- terrorism research on subjects from air-monitoring systems used at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City to detect radiation and chemical and biological agents, to a mechanical device that can stop hijacked trucks. Asked whether Livermore is still designated as the new department's lead facility, lab director Michael Anastasio was noncommittal. "We have been in discussions with the Department of Homeland Security," he said. "We feel we have a lot to offer, . . . but our exact role is still unclear, " Anastasio added. Anastasio and the other lab directors who testified Wednesday before the Senate panel said bureaucratic red tape has to be cut if the new department is to get the most out of research at their facilities. They suggested, for instance, that work for the new department get top priority, even though the labs will remain under the Energy Department. They also said the homeland security work at the labs could be viewed as joint projects of the Energy and Homeland Security departments, allowing each agency's paperwork to be accepted by the other, avoiding duplication and delay. E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com [eepstein@sfchronicle.com] . ***************************************************************** 55 SNS funding at $225 million The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- Thursday, July 11, 2002 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Support and enthusiasm are still going strong for the Spallation Neutron Source, with the project's fiscal year 2003 funding expected to be around $225 million. Late Wednesday night, the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee voted in favor of its 2003 spending bill that includes funding for the SNS as well as several other Oak Ridge projects. The full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to vote on the bill next week and then it will proceed to the House of Representatives for consideration. U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, said the $225 million was the full funding request for the SNS. Although that figure is technically down from other years, the congressman said there is a good reason for that. "We're over the top of the bell curve," Wamp said in a phone interview this morning. "The project is on its way to completion." The $1.4 billion research facility, under construction atop Chestnut Ridge, is expected to be completed by 2006. The SNS will fire an ion beam down its linear accelerator tunnel toward a mercury target; a beam that, at 80 percent of the speed of light, could reach the moon in 1.5 seconds. The resulting protons will bombard a mercury target, generating neutrons for use in research. Neutron scattering research has been responsible for improvements in jets, compact discs, shatterproof windshields, satellite information for weather forecasts and stronger, lighter plastics. Neutrons have also been used in medical research for such studies as determining how bones mineralize during development and how they decay during osteoporosis. Other items that are included in the 2003 Energy and Water Development spending bill are: + $242 million for modernizing the facilities and infrastructure at America's weapons facilities. Although the Y-12 National Security Complex is expected to receive a large portion of these funds, Wamp said this morning that he did not have a specific amount. + $24 million for the construction of a nanoscience research facility. In nanoscience, objects are measured in nanometers, 1 billionth of a meter. For comparison, the smallest features on current computer chips measure about 200 nanometers. And a human hair is 100,000 nanometers thick. "The passage of this spending bill by the Energy and Water Subcommittee means great news for science and energy research, nuclear weapons stewardship and environmental management programs, not only in Oak Ridge but across the entire country," said Wamp. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or [pparson@oakridger.com] . [http://www.oakridger.com/contact/index.html] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************