***************************************************************** 06/12/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.148 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Swedish parliament ratifies nuclear phase out 2 Taiwan: Nuclear components to be rebuilt 3 Lithuania to close ageing N-plant NUCLEAR REACTORS 4 Japan: Koizumi under a nuclear smokescreen NUCLEAR SAFETY 5 German plutonium thief gets four and half years in prison 6 US: How Close Are You To A Nuclear Accident? 7 US: Rep. Markey Seeks Information on Materials 8 US: Potassium Iodide a Hot Seller 9 US: Cops Halt Radioactive Cargo 10 US: Few answers for public's questions on dirty bombs 11 US: Opinion - Cold War vets don't deserve more failures 12 The kitchen table atom bomb 13 US: Lost radioactive material could be used in `dirty bomb' NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 14 US: Legislative Alert on nuclear waste dumping 15 Rail crash 'shows nuclear waste risk' 16 UK: Nesbitt on Sellafield mission 17 US: Nuclear disposal splits state, U.S. 18 US: Science, not politics, blocked waste-site license, Nelson testif 19 US: Activists Worry About Nuclear-Waste Transport Plan 20 US: Nevada airs N-shipment concerns 21 US: YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Judge rejects government water claim 22 US: OP: Nuclear waste still 97 percent waste 23 US: Editorial: Taking a 'byte' out of apathy 24 US: Judge rejects Yucca water injunction 25 US: State hopes site boosts Yucca fight 26 US: Diablo: Devil's kitchen in the open 27 US: SRS radioactive waste spills NUCLEAR WEAPONS 28 US: Alleged Nuclear Plot 29 Chronology of Nuclear Rivalry 30 US: Videomakers dip into Cold War nuclear stockpile 31 American media winking at nuclear terror 32 US: America's Easy Targets 33 US: Markey, antinuclear activists look to revive movement for arms f 34 Chances of N-conflict 'completely zero': Karamat US DEPT. OF ENERGY 35 Editorial: Homeland Security’s Role At Lawrence Livermore Lab OTHER NUCLEAR 36 G-8 ministers plan statement on terrorism 37 WNA NEWS BRIEFING 02.24 | 6 - 11 June 2002 ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Swedish parliament ratifies nuclear phase out AFP - 6/12/2002 STOCKHOLM - Sweden's parliament on Tuesday endorsed the government's plan to phase out nuclear power in the Nordic country over the next 30 to 40 years. The bill was voted through parliament by the Social Democrats and the ex-communist Party of the Left, who together form the ruling coalition, as well as the Centrists. Modeled on Germany's plans to phase out nuclear energy, the program says existing plants should continue running as long as they contribute economically, in effect to the end of their normal operating lives. The amount of energy lost by the gradual phasing out of nuclear plants is to be replaced by other sources, the program stipulated. Consumers will be obliged to buy a pre-determined amount of electricity produced from so-called "clean" sources such as wind and sun in order to promote the use of such energy. The conservative and liberal opposition, a majority of whom are favorable to nuclear energy, opposed the program, while the Greens denounced what they called "a step backwards" in Sweden's nuclear policy. Nuclear energy currently makes up about half of the country's electricity production. Experts say it is likely to fall to 44 percent by 2010, or 31 percent of total energy consumption. The program passed on Tuesday maintains the 1997 agreement to close two nuclear reactors at Barseback, near the capital Copenhagen. The first was shut in 1999 and the second is due for closure in 2003. The country has 10 other remaining reactors in three separate centers. © Copyright 2002 AFP ***************************************************************** 2 Taiwan: Nuclear components to be rebuilt The Taipei Times Online: 2002-06-12Wednesday, June 12th, 2002 Two workers at Taipower's construction site in Kungliao yesterday help build part of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant. PHOTO: LIU HSIN-TE, TAIPEI TIMES SAFETY CONCERNS: Following a tour by an investigative task force, China Shipbuilding officials say they will fix construction problems with parts of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant By Chiu Yu-tzu STAFF REPORTER, WITH AGENCIES China Shipbuilding Corp officials said yesterday that they will reconstruct segments of a reactor pedestal for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, but will have to work hard to find the staff to do the job. Yesterday was the first day of a three-day investigation by a task force established by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) and the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) to look into China Shipbuilding's work on the plant. The investigation is a follow-up of a report filed in April by a retired engineer from one of the company's subcontractors. The engineer sent an e-mail message to AEC Chairman Ouyang Min-shen (¼Ú¶§±Ó²±) claiming that inferior materials were used in the construction of the reactor pedestal's second to fifth layers. "We now desperately need at least 40 skilled workers to do the welding [to repair the construction flaws." Fan Kuang-nan, China Shipbuilding's deputy managing director The pedestal will support the reactor pressure vessel for Unit 1 of the plant. Under pressure from the AEC, Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) demanded earlier this month that the four layers of the pedestal be reconstructed. To ensure that Unit 1 of the plant can enter commercial operation as scheduled, China Shipbuilding officials said that the company will do its best to remedy the construction flaws. "However, we now desperately need at least 40 skilled workers to do the welding," said Fan Kuang-nan (­S¥ú¨k), China Shipbuilding's deputy managing director. Investigators, led by the executive-general of the MOEA's Commission of National Corporations, Wu Feng-sheng (§dÂײ±), examined the company's sites where components of the reactor pedestal were produced. During the inspection, investigators will also look into how construction contracts were awarded to subcontractors. In addition, China Shipbuilding officials will have to explain to investigators why inferior construction materials were used. According to the AEC, about 52 percent of materials were replaced by inferior goods which are less pressure-resistant. Meanwhile, high-ranking Tai-power officials inspected the construction site of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Kungliao township, Taipei County, yesterday. A supporting plate for the first layer of the reactor pedestal, where a hairline crack was discovered, was placed aside so that the welding on the layer could be redone. According to Taipower, about 38 percent of the plant's construction is now complete. Reconstructing the second to the fifth layers of the pedestal, however, might take three months. Officials said yesterday that the pedestal reconstruction would not affect the completion date of the plant. Taipower's vice president Lee Ziin-tyan (§õÀA¥Ð) added that the reactor for Unit 1 would not be imported from Japan to Taiwan until next March. The unit, Lee said, would not be assembled until September next year, but is still scheduled to enter commercial service on July 15, 2006. In addition, Lee said, a list of officials deserving punishment would be released after a comprehensive investigation into the factors that led to the construction defects is complete. This story has been viewed 342 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/06/12/story/0000140014] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 3 Lithuania to close ageing N-plant BBC News | EUROPE | 11 June, 2002, 14:04 GMT 15:04 UK Ignalina's reactors will now be closed by 2009 Lithuania has formally agreed to close an ageing Soviet-built nuclear power station under pressure from the European Union. The Ignalina plant is of the same design as Ukraine's Chernobyl power station, scene of the world's worst civil nuclear disaster in 1986. "This brings more nuclear safety for EU citizens. This is precisely what our citizens want," said European commissioner Guenter Verheugen, who is overseeing enlargement negotiations. He said the decision to shut down the plant improved Lithuania's chances of early entry into the EU, making it a "frontrunner". Electricity price rise Lithuanian Foreign Minister Antanas Valionis said one of the two reactors at the plant would be closed by 2005, and the other by 2009. The reactors have been upgraded since 1991 The EU will help to pay for the decommissioning, which is expected to cost at least 2.4 billion euros ($2.6bn). The plant, 130 kilometres (80 miles) north-east of the capital, Vilnius, provides more than 70% of the country's electricity. Both its reactors have had major safety upgrades since the country broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991. Closing the plant will push up the price of power supplies - but if Lithuania had not agreed to close the plant it would have had to shoulder the eventual costs of decommissioning alone, at some time in the future. Referendum proposal A refusal to close the reactors might also have jeopardised the country's hopes to complete negotiations for EU entry by the end of this year, and to join in 2004. "The best thing is to take the money from the EU instead of shifting the costs on to Lithuanian citizens," said Juozas Olekas, the head of the Social Democrat faction in the coalition government. But not all Lithuania's political parties agree with the closure plan. One, the Farmers and New Democracy Union, wants to hold a referendum on postponing the move until at least 2015. Talks are to continue on the precise size of the EU's contribution to the cost of decommissioning. The EU is expected to agree to the accession of up to 10 new members at a summit meeting in Copenhagen at the end of this year. © MMII | News Sources | Privacy ***************************************************************** 4 Japan: Koizumi under a nuclear smokescreen June 13, 2002 atimes.com By Axel Berkofsky "Fukuda has to go," demanded Japan's political opposition after the Liberal Democratic Party's chief cabinet secretary Yasuo Fukuda questioned the so-called three non-nuclear principles that ban the country from producing, possessing and introducing nuclear weapons into Japan. "Depending upon the world situation, circumstances and public opinion could require Japan to possess nuclear weapons," said the influential LDP politician in an off-the-record conversation with Japanese reporters last week, causing an uproar in Japan and indeed all over Asia. Initially, it was reported that it was a "high-ranking official LDP official" who made the controversial remarks on Japan's nuclear policy, although the choice of LDP politicians with the nerve to question the fundamentals of Japanese defense policy was very quickly narrowed down to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi himself and a few defense hawks around him. Koizumi, though, was on his way to South Korea to watch the opening of the soccer World Cup, and two days later Fukuda admitted that he was the official in question, who, on condition of anonymity, had spoken to Japanese journalists, reportedly "trying to get young reporters to begin thinking differently about their country's future". The journalists thanked Fukuda for the lesson on Japanese constitutional rights, yet another verbal gaffe from Japan's policy-making elite and a spectacular headline for the next morning's newspapers had been made. During the administration of former lame duck and scandal-ridden prime minister Yoshiro Mori, the articulate and ambitious Yasuo Fukuda was named the "exculpatory chief cabinet secretary" for his impressive skills in explaining Mori's frequent gaffes and incompetence to the public. Now, it seems, Fukuda has to sort out his own verbal blunders, and talking himself out of trouble will certainly be as challenging as it can get when Japan's sacred three non-nuclear principles, established in 1967, are the issue. Koizumi stood up for his embattled colleague, and reportedly had no problem whatsoever with Fukuda's gaffe, saying it was "nothing serious", and he casually dismissed the opposition's call for Fukuda's head. "The opposition is always requesting someone to resign, but I wonder how effective such tactics are," Koizumi said in his usual nonchalant manner. Fukuda, for his part, set about rephrasing his remarks, claiming that they in no way represented a shift in Japan's nuclear policy. This proved to be a very challenging task, even for the eloquent Fukuda, who found himself explaining to a special committee of the Diet's House of Representatives why his remarks and the announcement that "the revision of Japan's non-nuclear principles is likely now that the revision of the constitution is under way" still conformed to the government's non-nuclear principles. Koizumi jumped in quickly to stress that no review of the principles was planned, hoping to lay the issue to rest. The same special committee is currently discussing Japan's so-called national emergency laws that would enable the armed forces to defend Japanese territory effectively, and Koizumi fears that interrogating Fukuda could further delay the implementation of the bills beyond the current Diet session that is scheduled to end on June 19. Koizumi received support from Japan's biggest daily newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, which right after Fukuda's "this is not what I was really trying to say" line published a couple of editorials pointing out that the government, at least for now, did not recommend a change in nuclear policy. "Given an ordinary interpretation, this [Fukuda's] statement is simply an observation that any basic policy of a country can be reviewed depending on changing times and circumstances," the paper said, hinting, nevertheless, that the nuclear policy could be changed. The timing to question Japan's sacred non-nuclear principles couldn't have been worse, with Koizumi attending the opening ceremonies of the World Cup in South Korea, and Japan's foreign minister calling on India and Pakistan to pledge not to use nuclear weapons against each other. "At a time when Japan should be urging caution over rising tensions between India and Pakistan, it is criminal to utter such a comment," said an official of the Hiroshima Council against Atomic Bombs in a recent interview with the New York Times, joining Japan's second-biggest daily newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, which wrote that "Japan cannot complain if Asian nations suspect Japanese ambitions to become a military power". The three non-nuclear principles were established during the administration of Eisaku Sato and are considered to be untouchable tenets of Japanese defense policy. Only in theory, however, as revelations of recent years seem to suggest. Roughly two years ago, Japan's Communist Party presented the Japanese public with the so-called "US-Japan Secret Agreements" documenting that visiting US warships calling at Japanese ports during the Cold War had regularly been equipped with missiles carrying nuclear weapons. These once-classified documents seem to confirm earlier suspicions that consecutive Japanese governments were never really overly interested in finding out whether US warships were violating one of the sacred principles. According to the documents and secret conversations between then US ambassador to Japan Edwin Reischauer and the Japanese government in the 1960s, the US government claimed that ships with nuclear warheads on board calling Japanese ports could not be classified the "introduction" of nuclear weapons into Japan, and therefore there would by no violation of the non-nuclear principles. The Japanese government reportedly gave in to this US linguistic interpretation, and so with the revelations of nuclear-armed US warships refueling at Japanese harbors critics have some cause to say that in fact the three non-nuclear principles were a long time ago reduced to two - indicating a "half-compliance" with the principle of not introducing nuclear weapons into Japan. The Japanese government is vehemently denying all of this, calling the revelations "leftist propaganda" and calling the documents fake, although Fukuda's comments were certainly not at all helpful in assuring the Japanese public that Japanese governments are as allergic to nuclear weapons as they have made out over the decades. Fukuda, however, is by far not the only influential Japanese politician to question nuclear policy, sending shock waves throughout Japan and Asia in recent years. The country's policy-makers, it seems, have brought the once-taboo nuclear issue on to the agenda on a regular basis, and "Japanese politicians have indeed remarkable skills in putting Japan's pacifist and non-nuclear principles in jeopardy whenever they open their mouths off the record", as one Japanese political commentator suspects. In May, deputy chief cabinet secretary Shinzo Abe said that Japan's pacifist constitution and the war-renouncing Article 9 would not stand in the way of Japan possessing nuclear weapons as long as they were "small", adding that "in legal theory Japan could have intercontinental ballistic missiles and atomic bombs". A few months earlier, Ichiro Ozawa, an influential opposition leader and one of Japan's most outspoken advocates of expanded the country's regional and global military role, went even beyond the theoretical and announced that Japan could easily go nuclear if China continued to threaten Japanese territory. "If China gets too inflated, the Japanese people will become hysterical in response. We have plenty of plutonium in our nuclear power plants, so it's possible for us to produce 3,000-4,000 nuclear warheads," he declared, indicating that Japan would have no trouble whatsoever in turning its nuclear power plants into production sites for nuclear warheads. In October 1999, Shingo Nishimura, then the newly appointed vice minister of defense in the cabinet of Keizo Obuchi, suggested in an interview with the Japanese Playboy that Japan should consider arming itself with nuclear weapons to avoid being "raped by China", as he put it. Unlike Fukuda, Nishimura did not even bother to explain his remarks, did not fall on his knees to apologize in the typical Japanese-style career-saving move, and was forced to resign still insisting that equipping Japan with nuclear weapons would become necessary sooner rather than later. Nishimura was already notorious for his political gaffes and adversity toward China even before he took office, and why he was appointed in the first place and chose a magazine that specializes in men's sexual fantasies to end his short three-week career as vice minister remain a mystery. No discussion on Japan's defense is possible without comments from Tokyo's nationalist and outspoken mayor, Shintaro Ishihara, who thanked Fukuda personally for his "courageous" remarks about nuclear weapons, as the Tokyo Shimbun reported last week. The controversial governor and self-declared defender of Japanese national interests is also known for his antagonism toward China and his desire to see the US troops stationed in Japan booted out so that the country can take care of its own defense. More sound bites from Ishihara might be in the offing since he is widely considered a possible candidate to succeed the prime minister should sinking public approval rates and opposition from within his own party force Koizumi out of office. And in this regard, Koizumi is counting on his influential chief cabinet secretary Fukuda to help him hang on to his job, and he cannot afford to lose his close ally within the LDP. So, given Koizumi's own appetite for high-sounding rhetoric and enthusiasm for defense matters, Fukuda is very unlikely to face any consequences beyond advice to take a break from generating negative headlines. Fukuda's political ambitions beyond his current post and the number of verbal gaffes coming from Japanese policy-makers in recent years, however, might very easily turn this into a case of wishful thinking. (©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact ads@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.) ©2001 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd. Room 6301, The Center, 99 Queen's Road, Central, Hong Kong ***************************************************************** 5 German plutonium thief gets four and half years in prison Tuesday, 11-Jun-2002 4:36PM Story from AFP Copyright 2002 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet) KARLSRUHE, Germany, June 11 (AFP) - A German court gave a nuclear waste storage plant worker a four-and-a-half-year prison term Tuesday for stealing plutonium and contaminating his girlfriend and her daughter with radiation. The man was convicted of stealing plutonium from the storage plant where he worked and "causing grievous bodily harm," said the court in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe. The 47-year-old janitor, who was not named by the court, admitted to stealing a test tube containing the highly radioactive substance in October 2000 from the facility and taking it home to the apartment where he lived with his girlfriend and her daughter. The 51-year-old girlfriend was exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation and was considered to be at risk of developing cancer. Tests showed the daughter and the defendant had a lower degree of exposure. The defendant cast himself as a whistle-blower, saying he had stolen the materials to demonstrate security lapses at the site and without knowing exactly what the tube contained. The presiding judge called this version of events "a flat lie" and said it was more likely that the man had been trying to poison his girlfriend based on evidence she had ingested plutonium. The environment minister in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg acknowledged that surveillance at the plant was insufficient. Authorities terminated nuclear waste reprocessing operations at the Karlsruhe plant in 1990 and have ordered it dismantled. It is currently used for storing radioactive substances. ***************************************************************** 6 How Close Are You To A Nuclear Accident? Detroit Free Press | WDIV ClickOnDetroit.com Wednesday June 12 10:22 AM EDT Some metro Detroiters may think that the only potential of danger from a nuclear accident would come from the Fermi Nuclear Power Plant in southeast Michigan, Local 4 reported. But, a Web site by the Environmental Working Group and EWG Action Fund is saying that one-in-seven Americans live within 1 mile of a proposed route to ship highly radioactive nuclear waste. The routes would bring the waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the nation's primary nuclear waste dump, Local 4 reported. The group has designed a Web site where you can type in your address and see how close you are to one of those routes. The Map Science site also shows how close waste routes are to local schools and hospitals. Proponents of the routes said that the travel is completely safe, but opponents are writing to their representatives in Washington to complain about the proposal, Local 4 reported. Local 4 typed in some local addresses, including the Local 4 building in Detroit. It is located within 5 miles of a proposed site, according to the Web site. Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! and WDIV ClickOnDetroit.com. ***************************************************************** 7 Rep. Markey Seeks Information on Materials Las Vegas SUN: June 12, 2002 WASHINGTON- Hundreds of medical and commercial facilities across the country have radioactive materials that could be used for a "dirty bomb" attack, a congressman says. A requirement to track the material by serial numbers was scrapped in 1985 and in many cases monitoring has been left to state health officials, according to Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-chairman of a bipartisan congressional task force on nuclear nonproliferation. Forty-eight states have at least one facility using radioactive materials and 17 states have at least one facility that uses more than 1 million curies of the material for irradiation or sterilization, Markey's office said. Nuclear experts say about 1,000 curies is viewed as a sizable radiation source. The locations of the materials include industrial food and medical irradiation and sterilization units, hospitals and research institutions. Concern about the security of radioactive materials used in medicine and industry increased this week with the announcement that an alleged terrorist, linked to al-Qaida, had been taken into custody, suspected of planning an attack using a radioactive bomb. The Justice Department said there was no indication that the suspect, Jose Padilla, ever obtained the radioactive material for such a device. Markey asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide detailed information on the tracking and security of cobalt 60, used to irradiate food, and cesium 137, used to sterilize medical equipment. "It's not clear that anyone tracks the material at all," Michal Freedhoff, a science adviser to Markey, said Tuesday. A dirty bomb uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials. Most nuclear experts say such an attack would cause radiation contamination over several city blocks, but probably no deaths from radiation because of the low doses as the material is dispersed. But such an attack could unleash panic, said the experts, and have significant economic fallout. It would require lengthy cleanup, although these materials are fairly easily detected. Markey asked the NRC for information on whether background checks are required for people handling shipments of radioactive materials to irradiation and sterilization facilities; what security measures are in place where the material is stored; and how frequently NRC or state officials inspect the facilities. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry's trade group, discounted the likelihood that a dirty bomb might be made from used reactor fuel kept at commercial or power plants or research facilities. Used nuclear fuel assemblies are highly radioactive and under tight security, said NEI president Joe Colvin, adding that a terrorist probably would be killed by the radiation if he tried to use one as a weapon. "Even if terrorists were able to gain access," said Colvin, "the fuel assemblies ... (are) built in a way that would prevent terrorists from wrapping it around an explosive charge." On the Net: Rep. Ed Markey: http://www.house.gov/markey/ Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov/ All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 8 Potassium Iodide a Hot Seller Las Vegas SUN: June 11, 2002 WASHINGTON- It's a cheap tablet that does one thing: protect the thyroid gland from one type of radioactive fallout. But with concern over radiological terrorism growing, potassium iodide is hot - even though it's not a cure-all. One Internet site, NukePills.com, reported orders for 10,000 packs of the pills on Monday alone. People who live near nuclear reactors have been stocking up since Sept. 11, in case of an attack or accident. But don't assume you need the drug because of "dirty bomb" scenarios now making headlines, experts caution. Potassium iodide would be helpful only if a dirty bomb used radioactive iodine instead of other radioactive substances, and then only for people close to the explosion. "You shouldn't go, 'Oh my god, I just heard there was a dirty bomb 20 miles away so I'm automatically going to take it,'" says radiation expert Jonathan Links of Johns Hopkins University, who is helping Baltimore officials prepare for the possibility of dirty bombs. "Just because you're in the same town with a dirty bomb doesn't mean you take potassium iodide," agrees Dr. David Orloff of the Food and Drug Administration. "Wait 'til you hear instructions from public health officials." Potassium iodide, chemical symbol KI, is the only medication for internal radiation exposure. But it has just one use - to prevent thyroid cancer by shielding the thyroid from radioactive iodine. It blocks no other type of radiation, and protects no other body part. Sheltering and evacuation remain the cornerstones of protection. Still, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is offering states enough KI to treat every resident within 10 miles of a reactor, because radioactive iodine is likely to be released during a serious reactor accident or attack. Many people are buying their own, largely through Internet sites like NukePills.com that also point out reactor locations. FDA-approved KI is sold without a prescription, for about $1 a pill. A dose is one tablet a day for adults, smaller amounts for children. A traditional explosive releases small amounts of radioactive material. Experts say a dirty bomb would probably use a substance other than radioactive iodine. How would people know? In Baltimore, emergency officials who respond to explosions are being trained to operate credit card-sized radiation detectors, Links said. Laboratory testing of any radioactive samples could tell what kind and how much of a substance was present in a few hours. On the Net: Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov/ Food and Drug Administration: http://www.fda.gov/ NukePills.com: http://www.nukepills.com/ All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 9 Cops Halt Radioactive Cargo New York Daily News Online Wednesday, June 12, 2002 An NYPD counter-terrorism cop equipped with a radioactivity detector stopped a car on the FDR Drive yesterday after an alarm activated, police said. The alert was accurate, but the vehicle was delivering medical supplies used to diagnose cancer, police said. Lt. Steve Donahoo was driving southbound on the FDR Drive near E. 90th St. about 7 a.m. when his radiation gauge began vibrating, police said. He identified the car emitting the radiation and with other cops pulled the vehicle over as it exited at E. 63rd St., police said. An inspection revealed four lead canisters that the driver, an employee of Eastern Isotopes of Virginia, was delivering to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai Medical Center and a medical imaging center, police said. "Everything was legitimate, and he was set free," said Deputy Chief Michael Collins, a police spokesman. An Eastern Isotopes official said the metal canisters contained fluorodeoxy glucose, a "nuclear medicine" used in diagnosing cancer that emits a low level of radiation. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week the NYPD has been outfitting some cops — chiefly those in the Counter-Terrorism Bureau and Emergency Service Unit — with radiation detectors on a trial basis. Richard Weir ***************************************************************** 10 Few answers for public's questions on dirty bombs sunspot.net - Official advice scarce on what to do after blast By Ellen Gamerman Sun National Staff Originally published June 12, 2002 WASHINGTON - When word of a plot involving a radioactive dirty bomb emerged this week, people around the nation's capital were left with many questions but few answers. If such a bomb were to explode at a target such as the White House, what should they do? Should they flee buildings and clear the streets? If so, how far should they go? If they stayed put, what then? State and local officials in the Washington-Baltimore area have yet to tell people how to respond in case of a dirty bomb strike: Officials say they are loath to give the public detailed guidance about a possible attack whose scope, size and likelihood are unknown. In general, though, authorities say that in a radiological strike, people on the streets in the immediate area would be the most likely victims. In most cases, those inside buildings or outside the contaminated area would be urged to stay where they are and to await instructions on radio or television. Their biggest fear, officials say, is not widespread exposure to radiation but rather panic and chaos that would put people at risk and complicate the work of emergency crews. But the uncovering of the dirty bomb plot revealed how little information the public has been given about such a threat. "Part of the fear out there is that no one's telling people what to do if this should happen," said Michael Levi, director of the strategic security program at the Federation of American Scientists. "To have no idea what to do with something people perceive as catastrophic is very scary." Not nuclear blast Part of the problem is that when people hear the word "radioactive," they might not understand how different a dirty bomb explosion would be from a nuclear blast, which would cause far greater death and devastation and spread contamination across a wide area. Maryland and district government officials say they have been training emergency teams to prepare for a dirty bomb strike. Even before Sept. 11, crews staged dirty bomb drills. Since the terrorist attacks last year, local authorities say, they have intensified preparations for such an attack. In addition, local officials say that their overall anti-terror preparations, as well as drills for dealing with disasters at the region's nuclear power plants, give them solid grounding in responding to the risks of a dirty bomb strike. But some of them contend that a public information campaign can accomplish little in the absence of a specific threat. "Until it happens, depending on if the device were a small little suitcase or a car bomb, we won't necessarily know how to educate the public," said Don Lumpkins, the anti-terrorism officer at the Maryland Emergency Management Agency. "To educate the general public on the thousands of possible scenarios that exist in terrorism, even if 900 aren't applicable to Maryland, would be a daunting task." Heightening fears Others suggest that a government effort to warn people about the threat might only heighten existing fears, making the public wonder if the government knew of some imminent danger but was withholding details. "We have no plans to do public education on dirty bombs," said Tony Bullock, spokesman for Mayor Anthony A. Williams of Washington. "We want people to be prepared to take instruction from the officials should the need arise, but we don't want people to be obsessed with concern and worry. We want people to go about their business with the knowledge that the federal and local governments are doing their best." Some officials question how far public education can go to protect people in an attack. "Remember as a youngster being put underneath tables in school, covering your head for a nuclear bomb. Was that any good? No," said Lt. Ronald Addison, hazardous materials coordinator for the Baltimore City Fire Department. "It's the same here - the best thing we can do is detect this threat early." Preparation for crisis But some analysts say the public needs to be prepared long before a potential crisis in order to stay calm and respond correctly if a dirty bomb were to explode. "Everybody knows you go to your storm cellar in a tornado and you don't run out of a theater if there's a fire, but people have no idea what to do in a case like this," said Leonard Spector, a terrorism specialist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "People can be familiarized with this so that if an event occurs, it's not a bolt from the blue but part of a universe we're used to thinking about." To that end, some analysts say, the government needs to take the lead in teaching people about the effects of dirty bombs - which scientists sometimes call weapons of mass disruption because they are thought to do more psychological than physical harm. "A dirty bomb explosion is a hypochondriac's dream - the emergency rooms could be overflowing if people aren't educated about this," said John Parachini, a terrorism analyst at the RAND Corp. "Once you understand what, in the most likely case is a low level of radiation, you have to be able to effectively communicate with the people in the affected area - that's where we need to get much better." Getting word out Maryland officials say they are working on ways to keep the public and emergency workers informed about response plans for terrorist attacks. By next year, every public and private school in the state will have a weather radio that will automatically broadcast government announcements in an emergency. Baltimore City and county officials also are considering installing reverse-911 systems, by which authorities can phone residents with emergency instructions. In their own internal preparations, authorities have also taken steps to contend with radiological attacks. In May 2000, Maryland authorities joined a federal exercise at the US Airways Arena in Landover, simulating the response if a dirty bomb were to explode in a car outside the building. In December, Maryland officials staged a drill in Hagerstown involving a mock nuclear detonation to further test their disaster plans. Not long ago, emergency officials in Baltimore City and many counties received a supply of radioactivity monitors to carry on emergency vehicles. And the state's counter-terrorism authorities are working with medical specialists to gauge the possible effects of a dirty bomb. Call for training Federal and state officials - and even the military - would undoubtedly lead the response to a radiological attack. But some local emergency officials, noting that they would probably be the first into a scene and the last out, are eager for training. Although some Maryland counties have staged dirty bomb drills, others have not. "With all the recent information that's come out about the dirty bomb threat, I'm sure we'll be considering doing those drills now," said Joseph Herr, chief of the Howard County Fire and Rescue Department. "We are looking into committing additional funding resources toward training our personnel better." Maryland officials say such training will increase in the wake of the dirty bomb plot. Even so, the worries don't end there. Some suggest that dirty bombs do not necessarily pose the most chilling scenario. "People think they're immediately in jeopardy, but it's a much easier threat to handle than some chemical and biological agents," said Mike Sharon, chief of the emergency response division at Maryland Department of the Environment. "There's a great fear about it, and that's the toughest thing to deal with." Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun ***************************************************************** 11 Opinion - Cold War vets don't deserve more failures The Oak Ridger Online - 06/12/02 Glenn Bell Guest Column On Monday, June 3, a meeting was held in Oak Ridge to discuss the shortcomings of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Plan Act. This plan was enacted almost a year ago to provide compensation and medical benefits for those made ill in the production of America's nuclear arsenal. The very fact that the meeting was necessary provided both a warning sign and a chance to correct the shortcomings of this important Act. Comments and testimonies were little different from the Department of Energy public meetings held two years ago. The details of where the EEOICPA falls short are well documented through a number of sources, including the government agencies which put the package together. Citizen comments from the public meetings of 2000, the Thompson Senate hearings of March 2000, the National Economics Council report of March 2000, Workers' Compensation hearings in Columbus, Ohio, in May 2000, and scores of written comments point out the inadequacies. Labor unions, such as PACE, the Machinists' Union (IAM), AFL-CIO, and others have presented workable routes to resolution. Professional organizations, such as the Physicians for Social Responsibility, have provided input. All follow a common thread: the EEOICPA, in its present form, is inadequate, and will cover only a small minority of deserving claimants. I have collected several thousand pages of supporting documents which verify these opinions. We are faced with two challenges: one, to make the present plan work as well as possible, and two, to expand both coverage and benefits. The present plan has shown resolution for a small percentage of claimants. However, even Special Cohort Cancer and Chronic Beryllium Disease claimants have been denied or delayed, when their cases were obvious, documented, and within the guidelines of the Act. Other sites are experiencing similar problems. I became personally involved in establishing communication with the powers involved, and resolving some of the stalled cases late last year. I will give much credit to our local office, and the director of the Jacksonville regional office, in helping resolve some of these cases. However, the extremes taken by these claimants should have been unnecessary. It took requesting congressional intervention, input from several medical experts, support of a number of the DOE team which helped develop the bill, my request for Contempt of Congress proceedings against the Department of Labor's Adjudication Board, and almost a year of frustration to reach this point. If this "most-provable" of the illnesses meets these kinds of obstacles, claimants with other illnesses will never live to see resolution. The original, "as likely as not caused by the workplace," intent of the EEOICPA must be followed. As a chronic beryllium disease victim, I do not feel fortunate as a qualifier for this compensation. This is not a lottery prize. I have devastated my attendance record at work, cannot make even short-term plans for family or social events, see my own health worsening, and wonder about the future. However, I do not feel I, or any other person or group, should qualify, while others, who may have even worse health conditions, do not. All sites, and all illnesses, should receive equal compensation. Testing should be made available for every employee or former employee who believes his or her condition is work-related. Special aid should be provided to those who are seeking survivors' benefits, and may have little to no knowledge of a deceased spouse or parent's work exposures. I am emphatically opposed to writing everyone who drove by one of these sites a check, but if the claimant reaches the "as likely as not" qualifier, then the compensation should be theirs. We all know state workers' comp will not work in these cases, I have no discussion here. Neither will dose reconstruction, in its present form, records, classification, and time will prevent it. It is being said that this is another program which was designed to fail. I truly hope this is not the case, and through further congressional action, justice will prevail. One speaker at the meeting rightly compared the EEOICPA to the environmental laws of the 1970s, which were a good first effort, but had to be revised to work properly. The Cold War veterans deserve no less. Glenn Bell is a member of Beryllium Victims Alliance. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 12 The kitchen table atom bomb BBC News | SCI/TECH | Low GraphicsTuesday, 11 June, 2002, 15:28 GMT 16:28 UK Nagasaki in 1945: Cities today are vulnerable By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent British researchers say it would be frighteningly easy for terrorists to make a nuclear bomb. They say the chemistry involved is simpler than in making illicit designer drugs. They believe making a device would be no harder than building the bomb that destroyed the Pan Am aircraft over Scotland in 1988. And they say the UK should stop reprocessing spent nuclear fuel soon, to prevent it being stolen. The claims are made in a paper by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) called The Production Of Primitive Nuclear Explosives From Mox Fuel (Mox is a mixture of uranium and plutonium oxides). It describes the ease with which a determined but technically unsophisticated group could make, not a "dirty bomb", but a genuine nuclear explosive. The paper says a terrorist organisation could "relatively easily extract the plutonium and fabricate a nuclear explosive, having first acquired Mox fuel". Accessible instructions Both the 1988 Lockerbie bomb and the nerve gas weapon used in the Tokyo subway in 1995, it says, "required considerable planning and scientific skills". It adds: "It is a sobering fact that the fabrication of a primitive nuclear explosive using reactor-grade plutonium, obtained from Mox, would require no greater skill. A nuclear fuel vessel at sea "None of the concepts involved in understanding how to separate the plutonium is difficult. "A second-year undergraduate would be able to devise a suitable procedure by reading standard reference works, consulting the open literature in scientific journals and by searching the world wide web." ORG says enough plutonium to check and refine procedures can easily be extracted from mud from the Ravenglass estuary in northwest England, which it says is contaminated by discharges from the nearby Sellafield reprocessing plant. It would be easy, the paper says, for the bombmakers to refine their methods without arousing suspicion "by using environmental chemistry as a front". Small and deadly A plutonium oxide bomb would be an effective weapon, but one made of metallic plutonium might produce a bigger explosion. The paper says it would be a job for two or three people. The emergency services... would find it difficult even to deal effectively with the dead Oxford Research Group The completed bomb - the plutonium, a beryllium shell, and a plastic explosive container - would have a diameter of about 80 centimetres (31 inches). ORG says: "The size of the nuclear explosion from such a crude device is impossible to predict. "But even if it were only equivalent to the explosion of a few tens of tonnes of TNT, it would completely devastate the centre of a large city. Sellafield's Mox plant "Such a device would, however, have a strong chance of exploding with an explosive power of at least 100 tonnes of TNT. Even 1,000 tonnes or more equivalent is possible, but unlikely." A 100-tonne equivalent explosion would be "catastrophic", with anyone caught in the open within 600 metres (650 yards) likely to be killed by the direct effects of radiation, blast or heat. Out of bounds "An explosion of this size, involving many hundreds of deaths and injuries, would paralyse the emergency services. They would find it difficult even to deal effectively with the dead." The report adds: "Even if the device, when detonated, did not produce a significant nuclear explosion, the explosion of the chemical high explosives would disperse the plutonium widely." So much of the stricken city would remain uninhabitable until decontaminated, which could take years. ORG concludes that the risk of terrorists stealing the material for a nuclear device is "a terrifying possibility". It is urging a halt to reprocessing at Sellafield as soon as possible. Two vessels returning rejected Mox fuel from Japan are due to set sail for Sellafield this week. © MMII | News Sources | Privacy ***************************************************************** 13 Lost radioactive material could be used in `dirty bomb' Chicago Tribune | Nuclear waste route maps (MapScience project) June 11, 2002 By Frank James Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- The United States is awash in radioactive material used for legitimate purposes, with roughly 2 million sources, not counting nuclear power plants and smoke detectors, regulators said Tuesday. Licensed uses of radioactive material range from medical therapies and research to food irradiation to the measuring of highway surfaces. In Illinois alone, 704 entities are licensed to work with radioactive materials. The most dangerous materials, such as cesium 137 and cobalt 60, would be extremely difficult to obtain, at least inside the U.S., according to state and federal regulators. Tight security, their lethal nature, and the physical shielding around these substances would make thefts unlikely, they said. Less comforting, however, is that some of the more portable radioactive material goes missing every year, experts said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledges these losses, though it says much of the material is later recovered. Much potential for harm Still, some experts worry that the amount of material whose whereabouts are unknown each year exceeds the amount reported to the NRC. And they believe a good deal of damage could be done with stolen or lost material that is not recovered. "Radiological attacks constitute a credible threat," said Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, in written testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this year. "Radioactive materials that could be used for such attacks are stored in thousands of facilities around the U.S., many of which cannot be protected against theft by determined terrorists," he said. "Some of this material could be easily dispersed in urban areas by using conventional explosives," a so-called dirty bomb. Such worries got fresh impetus this week when the Justice Department announced that authorities had taken an ex-convict into custody on suspicion he was conspiring with Al Qaeda to detonate a dirty bomb. Nuclear substances that could go into a dirty bomb can be found in virtually every city, suburb and rural area. Many industrial uses Radiation sources are widespread in industry, used to monitor how much beer goes into aluminum cans at breweries and to measure the thickness of paper during manufacturing. Road construction contractors use portable nuclear devices containing cesium to measure the thickness of road surfaces and the soil beneath or their moisture and density. Some of the strongest radioactive sources are used to irradiate food to kill germs and extend shelf life or to sterilize medical equipment. "People would be surprised at the wide use" of radioactive materials in such ways, said Joe Klinger, chief of the radioactive-materials division of the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety. Medical applications represent some of the best-known uses of radioactive materials. Radioactive isotopes also are used as markers to measure the absorption of certain substances by organisms and in scientific research by physics and chemistry departments at universities. Illinois is one of 32 states that have an agreement with the NRC to license and inspect companies and universities that handle radioactive substances. Such inspections, Klinger said, are taken seriously. And the state's large universities have their own radiation-safety committees, he said. "They inspect themselves, and then we inspect them." The NRC has similar national inspection programs. Those inspections lead federal and state regulators to believe that much of the nation's radioactive material is properly accounted for. They also insist that while the smaller radioactive devices have a level of risk, it is the larger ones that are the most dangerous but least likely to fall into the wrong hands. Worrisome isotopes Even so, the NRC each year receives about 300 to 350 reports about missing radioactive sources. About half are recovered, said Victor Dricks, an agency spokesman. And of those that are not, only a small fraction have the worrisome radioactive isotopes. Michael Levi, an analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington think tank, said a small fraction is still cause for worry. His organization's analysis indicated a dirty bomb using those isotopes could cause decades of contamination and elevated risk of cancers where it was detonated. But Levi does not suggest increasing security to the maximum for every radioactive source. "If you try to protect everything, you wind up protecting nothing," he said. He thinks the federal government should focus on taking radioactive materials out of the hands of those licensees that have no more use for them. Levi also said security could be increased at sites beyond the largest industrial operations where security is already high. The NRC's Dricks agrees. "I don't want to overly diminish the threat of dirty bombs. . . . It is something we're very concerned about ...and we want to do everything possible that this material is tightly controlled and doesn't fall into the wrong hands," Dricks said. Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune ***************************************************************** 14 Legislative Alert on nuclear waste dumping Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 18:12:50 -0700 Message-ID: <007001c21268$fe184f60$1801a8c0@sierraclubsac.org> Problem: Regulators are allowing radioactive materials into consumer products and municipal landfills. Department of Health Services' Radiological Health Branch, using lax standards and without legislative approval, has deregulated toxic radioactive waste, allowing it to be shipped to landfills and to metal recyclers. Once this radioactive metal enters the recycling stream it could end up anywhere: radioactive spoons, earrings, belt buckets, surgical pins, IUD's. When radioactive waste is sent to regular garbage landfills, which are not designed to safely handle them, the workers, along with local communities, are put at risk without their knowledge. Radiation is known to cause cancer and birth defects. Solution: SB 1623 would bar these harmful radiation releases, restricting the disposal of radioactive material to those licensed facilities permitted to receive that particular type of radioactive waste. The bill would prohibit dumping of radioactive waste into garbage landfills, recycling contaminated metals into consumer products, and selling radioactive tools or equipment to the general public. Radioactive waste should be isolated from the environment in licensed and specially designed disposal facilities, not placed into intimate human contact with the entire population. Action Needed: Send a fax to your state senator asking for a vote in favor of SB 1623, authored by Senator Gloria Romero, by Monday, June 17. The powerful Appropriations Committee will vote on the bill on Monday; if they approve it, the entire Senate could vote on it soon, so we need to contact all senators. Companies that generate nuclear waste are fiercely opposing the bill, so grassroots support is vital to our success. You can read the bill at www.leginfo.ca.gov Deadline for responding: Please take action by Friday, June 17, 2002. Bill Magavern Senior Representative Sierra Club California Marianne Batchelder Legislative Aide Sierra Club California Ph: (916) 557-1100 ext. 107 Fax: (916) 557-9669 ***************************************************************** 15 Rail crash 'shows nuclear waste risk' Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Steven Morris Wednesday June 12, 2002 Fresh concerns about the movement of radioactive material by rail in Britain were raised yesterday after a train transporting a nuclear flask collided with a lorry at a level crossing. Firefighters and emergency teams from Dungeness A power station, where the train was heading, rushed to the scene amid fears of a nuclear accident It quickly emerged that the flask was empty but anti-nuclear campaigners claimed the crash highlighted the potential dangers of moving nuclear material by rail. The accident happened on the unmanned Brenzett level crossing, which has traffic lights but no barrier, near the village of Brookland in Kent, about eight miles from Dungeness. A 40ft flatbed lorry collided with the train, which was made up of two locomotives and the 50 tonne steel fuel flask, at 8.40am. The area was sealed off and BNFL, which operates Dungeness, instigated its emergency procedure, which included scrambling a health physicist to check that no radioactive material had escaped. Forty firefighters stood by. The flask had been picked up from Willesden train yard in north London, and was being transported to Dungeness A, where it was due to be filled with up to five tonnes of radioactive spent uranium fuel rods. The train was then to take the material back to Sellafield in Cumbria for reprocessing. Such journeys are made about once a week. Because the train was travelling at no more than 5mph, damage was minimal. A light was broken on one of the locomotives and the lorry was dented. The train was not derailed and the flask was not harmed. Nobody was hurt. But anti-nuclear campaigners said the accident should serve as a warning. A spokeswoman for Greenpeace said the collision highlighted the dangers of transporting radioactive waste by rail. She added: "If the train had been going in the other direction it would have been carrying spent nuclear fuel." Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for South East England, called the trains "ticking time bombs". Transportation of spent nuclear fuel has long caused con troversy. Campaigners have often expressed concerns that such material is moved through heavily built up areas. Spent uranium fuel rods are transported to Sellafield from three nuclear reactor sites in the south east, including Dungeness. The trains, operated by BNFL's own transport company, Direct Rail Services, are marshalled at Willesden before heading north. A spokesman for BNFL said the public had not been in any danger in yesterday's incident. He said the flasks were built to withstand train impacts of 100 mph and had been used on road and rail since 1962 without a single leak of radioactive material. The rail inspectorate will examine the circumstances of the accident. A British Transport police spokesman said the lorry driver was reported for road traffic offences. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 16 UK: Nesbitt on Sellafield mission Library picture WEDNESDAY 12/06/02 14:10:10 Environment Minister Mr Dermot Nesbitt today completed a major two day fact finding visit to Sellafield. He saw the THORP and MAGNOX reprocessing plants, the Mixed Oxide (MOX) plant and also took the opportunity to visit the Pacific Sandpiper ship at Barrow on Furness, which is used to transport spent nuclear fuel from overseas countries to Sellafield. Dermot Nesbitt Commenting on his visit, Mr Nesbitt said: “ There is widespread public concern in Northern Ireland about the Sellafield site. People are concerned about radioactive material being shipped to and from Sellafield. People are concerned about discharges into the Irish Sea. Above all, after September 11, people have fears about the safety and security of the site. “ I share these concerns. Indeed, one of my first actions as Environment Minister was to raise at the British Irish Council the need for a strategic approach to be taken to Sellafield. I am reassured that the comprehensive monitoring programme that the DOE has in place to assess the impact of discharges from Sellafield is very adequate. However it was extremely important that I took this extensive tour of the site to see things for myself. “ I have seen much. I have heard much. There is no doubt that I am now better informed. My initial impressions of Sellafield are of a site well run and well managed by thoroughly professional and dedicated staff. It has also given me direct insight into the approach taken to safety and security at the plant. “ I now though wish to reflect on the detail of what I have seen and what I have heard. There is after all a very important meeting of the British Irish Council being held in Belfast later this year. It involves all British Isles Environment Ministers. “ A major item on the Agenda will be Sellafield. This visit has given me a wealth of knowledge to influence the debate on future activity at Sellafield. I look forward to engaging UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher and my colleagues throughout the British Isles in that Sellafield debate.” ***************************************************************** 17 Nuclear disposal splits state, U.S. South Carolina targeted to convert plutonium June 12, 2002 BY DAHLEEN GLANTON CHICAGO TRIBUNE AIKEN, S.C. -- When President Harry S. Truman asked residents in the Aiken area to join the Cold War against the Soviet Union in 1950, they gave up their land so the U.S. government could build a massive nuclear plant on the banks of the Savannah River. People who had once farmed cotton went to work making atomic bombs. For some, it was the ultimate sacrifice for freedom, made willingly and without question. In return, they enjoyed prosperity that for decades rained down in the form of high wages, brick homes and shiny new Chevys. More than a half-century later, residents face a new challenge. After the government said that it needed a place to process tons of plutonium left from the Cold War, and no one would take it, people around Aiken offered the Savannah River site for a project converting the discarded weapons material into fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. This time, however, taking on a new nuclear project won't be as easy. The conversion plan, which would result in the shipment of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium from Colorado, Texas, Washington state and New Mexico, has thrust small towns clustered in the area to the center of a national debate over the disposal of nuclear material. The issue highlights growing tensions between federal and state governments as the United States moves toward a 2007 deadline to comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear arms and convert leftover plutonium into less volatile forms that cannot be used to make bombs. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges has filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction halting the shipments until the state obtains a legal commitment that the Bush administration will not renege on plans to build a $1.5-billion processing facility, leaving South Carolina stuck with piles of plutonium. Fueling a political war during an election year, the Democratic governor has rejected Republican proposals to set a 2017 deadline for the United States to remove the plutonium from South Carolina if it goes unprocessed. The federal government would be fined up to $100 million a year if it does not meet strict processing schedules. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in U.S. District Court in Aiken. Barring an injunction, the 18-wheelers could begin rolling two days later with 6 metric tons of plutonium from the former nuclear weapons plant at Rocky Flats outside Denver, Department of Energy officials said. Hodges has ordered the State Police on alert and vowed to "lie down in front of the trucks" to block them from entering the state. "It raises serious health and safety concerns if South Carolina is to become a dumping ground for the nation's plutonium waste," Hodges said. "The federal government has scared people into supporting them. . . . It's blackmail." Officials from the Energy Department, which owns the Savannah River site, insist that they are committed to the plan to extract plutonium from nuclear bombs and recycle it into high-octane mixed-oxide, or MOX, used to fuel commercial power plants. All content © copyright 2002 Detroit Free Press and may not be ***************************************************************** 18 Science, not politics, blocked waste-site license, Nelson testifies Omaha.com June 10, 2002 BY ROBYNN TYSVER LINCOLN - U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson said Monday that while he may have opposed a low-level radioactive waste facility on political grounds, he never used his political power to deny the facility a license. Nelson testified for 31/2 hours in support of decisions he made as governor on a controversial low-level radioactive waste facility near Boyd County. Ben Nelson The state's denial of a license for the site is at the heart of a $100 million lawsuit in U.S. District Court. The five-state compact that sought to build the facility has accused Nelson of using his political power to torpedo the plan. During his testimony, Nelson denied ever referring to himself as a "deranged governor" to intimidate the site developer. He also denied: strong-arming state regulators to deny a license for the facility; telling a supporter that a person could "stall the license forever"; or ordering a legal opinion favorable to the site quashed. Finally, he denied saying on the campaign trail in 1990 that it was unlikely that the site would be built. "I said I will make sure it is not built in the state of Nebraska unless it is safe," Nelson said. "I said that time and time again." Nelson, a Democrat, often said he could not recall specific meetings in the 1990s. Far from pulling strings, Nelson indicated that he was out of the loop on certain key decisions. For example, Nelson said he did not know at the time that his former chief of staff, Kim Robak, withdrew a request for a legal opinion. It was later learned that the opinion was favorable to the facility. Robak testified last week that she did not know what the opinion said at the time she asked it to be withdrawn. Nelson also denied that he had former policy researcher Kate Allen fired. He said Allen was dismissed without his knowledge. He also said he did not know that Allen was an avid opponent of the site when she was hired to oversee research into the low-level radioactive waste issue. Allen testified last week about extensive notes she kept in 1991 and 1992. The state maintains that Allen was fired because she had become too emotionally involved in the issue and was becoming too close to opponents. In notes taken the day she was fired, Allen indicated that she was told by her boss that the governor thought she had become a "legal liability." "No, I don't recall saying she was ever a legal liability," Nelson said. He also denied ever saying in meetings with site opponents that he wanted the proposed developer of the facility, US Ecology to think of him as a "deranged governor." Nelson said he used the phrase often to warn aides that any action or rule adopted by his administration must be clear to his successors, because he or she could be a "deranged governor." But, he said, he never used the term to describe himself. Nelson said he did not try to lobby state regulators to deny the license on political grounds. He said he always made it clear that sound science would be the determining factor. A key element of the compact's case is that Nelson used regulatory interpretations to kill the license. "When I hired Randy Wood (the head of the Department of Environmental Quality), I made it clear he was to site this by the book," Nelson said. For the most part, the questioning was low-key. There were no heated exchanges. However, Peterson ended his questioning with a veiled reference to Nelson's safari hunt in the summer of 2001 in which he wounded a lion that was later killed by his guide. It was noted that after a 2000 debate with Attorney General Don Stenberg, Nelson was quoted as saying "I kept the nuclear waste out of Nebraska and he lost the case." Nelson explained the remark in the context of a heated campaign, saying he may have overstated his case. He noted that he did not keep the facility out of Nebraska, but his regulators did, using "sound science" to deny the license. "During my watch, the decision was made," Nelson said. "So, you get credit for it?" Peterson asked. "If I'm going to get blamed for it, I should get credit for it," Nelson replied. "That's like someone who goes out on a safari, hires a guide and that person shoots a lion. You're still the one who gets to put its head on the wall of your cabin?" Peterson said. The lawyer for the state objected. U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf sustained the objection. Nelson did not have to answer. ©2002 Omaha World-Herald. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 19 Activists Worry About Nuclear-Waste Transport Plan WJXT News4Jax.com Tuesday June 11 05:56 PM EDT A plan by the U.S. Department of Energy to ship nuclear waste from the nation's power plants -- including 1,200 metric tons from the three nuclear plants in Florida -- to a storage facility in Nevada is drawing fire from environmental and some citizens' groups The activists say the designated shipping routes -- including interstate highways I-10, I-95 and I-75 -- would bring the potentially dangerous cargo close to 2 million people in Florida. The Department of Energy's preferred method of shipping the spent nuclear rods -- by rail -- would also pass through many of Florida's largest cities, including Jacksonville. Critics say potential routes would pass within a mile of 1,000 schools and 57 hospitals. "We're talking about shipping one of the most deadly substances known to humankind through hundreds of Florida communities ... within a half mile of millions of Floridians," Florida Public Interest Research Group's Mark Ferrulo said Tuesday. The Nuclear Energy Institute insists it is safe, pointing out that there has never been a leak or a spill in the nearly 40 years of transporting radioactive waste. Florida transportation officials say the movement of such waste is highly regulated. "As long as all of the safeguards are in place -- which they will be -- it's a very safe move," Lt. Kenny Morris of the Division of Motor Carrier Compliance said. Emergency managers agree that it would take an immense impact to cause a catastrophe. "An explosive blast or even a train hitting that has to be able to break it open," Jacksonville's director of emergency preparedness, Chip Patterson said. It's up to the U.S. Senate to decide whether the Department of Energy gets the green light to transport the nuclear waste. A vote is expected by next month. Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! and ***************************************************************** 20 Nevada airs N-shipment concerns [deseretnews.com] Tuesday, June 11, 2002 By Jerry Spangler Deseret News staff writer PARK CITY — It's only a matter of time before an accident involving shipments of high-level nuclear waste causes massive radioactive contamination, cancer deaths and clean-up costs in the billions of dollars. And the clock is ticking. That's according to Bob Loux, executive director of Nuclear Projects for Nevada, who was in Park City on Monday pitching to highway safety experts from around the nation Nevada's opposition to a permanent nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain. "The real risk is not at reactor sites but in transporting the waste," Loux told Multi-State Highway Transportation Agreement. Citing Department of Energy estimates and Nevada state studies, Loux said there will be at 161 accidents involving truck shipments of high-level nuclear waste and 390 accidents involving rail shipments. Nevada officials have warned there is a high likelihood that accidents will happen in Utah, where about 90 percent of the 70,000 tons of waste will pass on its way to Yucca Mountain. The shipments will come from 131 waste sites in 43 states, passing through 109 cities with a population greater than 100,000. Loux explained to highway experts that Nevada's opposition to nuclear waste was based in large part on safety hazards and the premise that Yucca Mountain is not a safe or appropriate place to store the nation's stockpile of spent nuclear fuel rods now sitting at reactor sites around the country. After Sept. 11, experts are now considering the threat of terrorist attacks on waste shipments. "They are an attractive target," Loux said. "They are mobile and difficult to defend." Once the nuclear waste begins its trek to Nevada in about 10 years, there will be about 108,000 truck shipments and 19,000 rail shipments. That compares with 3,120 shipments by the Department of Energy over the past 40 years — a period of time that saw 11 accidents, four of which released radioactivity, Loux said. Add to that disturbing number that there are 127 facilities that handle nuclear waste and 124 have reported safety failures. "The DOE's track record is not good," Loux said. President Bush determined that Yucca Mountain is an appropriate site for the waste and that shipping the waste to Nevada is safer than leaving it where it is now. Under current law, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn was allowed to veto that decision. That veto has already been overridden by the House and the matter is now awaiting a Senate override vote, which must happen before July 26 or the project is dead. Loux noted that Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev., have vowed to kill the measure in the Senate. "We think we have a fighting chance," Loux said. E-mail: spang@desnews.com [spang@desnews.com] © 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 21 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Judge rejects government water claim Wednesday, June 12, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Energy Department's temporary permits for Nye County wells expired in April By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL Nevada attorneys prevailed Tuesday in the first round of a legal fight over using the state's water for the federal government's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project. In a two-hour hearing, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt denied a Department of Justice request for an injunction aimed at forcing the state to extend temporary permits for 140 million gallons per year from five Nye County wells near the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "The United States has failed to establish sufficient evidence to show they are facing irreparable harm at this time," Hunt said at the hearing's conclusion. Early in the hearing, Hunt had said his calculations showed the more than 1 million gallons that the Department of Energy had stockpiled in tanks before temporary water permits expired in April was enough to support the Yucca Mountain Project's current needs beyond July 25. The date is the deadline for the U.S. Senate to act on Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the project. The nonpotable water stored in tanks at the site is enough to last more than a year, Hunt estimated. Justice Department trial attorney Stephen Bartell had no comment after the hearing. Nevada's Deputy Attorney General Paul Taggart and Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said they thought all along that the Energy Department's claims about using all of the water in storage or losing it through leaks or some unforeseen problem were speculative. "I think he did the right thing," Taggart said about Hunt's decision. "They didn't have a case." They said during the hearing that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's recommendation of the site in February ended the site characterization process for which temporary use of the water had been granted. Adams said she was encouraged that Hunt understands that until a Senate decision on Guinn's veto is made, using the water for studies to prepare for submitting a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is premature. "The court fully understands the NRC regs don't apply," she said. In a related matter, no date has been scheduled for Hunt to hear arguments on the Department of Justice's appeal of the state engineer's denial of permanent water rights for the project two years ago. Former state engineer Michael Turnipseed rejected the Energy Department's application to withdraw water from the five Nye County wells because using the water for operation of a nuclear waste repository was not in the state's interests. Nevada attorneys have argued that a hearing now on the permanent water rights case is unwarranted because if the Senate fails either to act on Guinn's veto or override it, the need for water to build and operate a repository will be moot. That case was sent back to Hunt by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. At Tuesday's hearing on the government's request for an injunction, Hunt said he did not see any imminent problem with the Energy Department's water supply at Yucca Mountain despite Bartell's claim that the supply, particularly potable water needed for drinking and sanitation, is continually dropping. Bartell said the potable supply is vulnerable to contamination that would require the system to be drained and sanitized, and Energy Department has no source to refill the potable system. "We don't feel we should have to wait until the very last drop of water is used," he said. He wanted Hunt to agree to craft an injunction in anticipation that water for the Yucca Mountain Project will become a dire situation. Hunt said, "It is difficult to deal in terms of potentials or possibilities." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 22 OP: Nuclear waste still 97 percent waste BYU NewsNet - 11 Jun 2002 Dear Editor, The nuclear industries would love to have everyone believe that nuclear waste is valuable. Because spent fuel has lost its fissile efficiency, it is replaced with fresh fuel. However, it is still radioactive. But the material that allows it to be fuel, the fissile isotope U235, becomes so small a ratio of the spent fuel, it is no longer capable of criticality and sustaining the required chain reaction. Recycling has been proven and demonstrated to be unsafe and still produces a large waste stream anyway, because 97 percent of the spent fuel is made up of the non-fissionable isotope, U238. So even after recycling, you will still be left with 97 percent of the waste that you started with. The nuclear industries are trying their best to convince the public that this is spent fuel, that this waste is valuable nonetheless. This is their design, because that way they can still claim this 'waste' as a valuable asset in reserve for their company's bottom line. And to date they have been doing a very good job of it. Of course they want to 'store' it in places like Yucca Mountain and Skull Valley for the next 10,000 years. Who wouldn't, when billions of dollars are being manipulated for their benefit, while disguised as what's best for 'national interest' and 'national security.' Recycling nuclear waste is not the answer. Uranium deposits are not rare. Just make more fuel. But for goodness sake lets get rid of the 100 of 1000's of tons of the waste that we now have. And in time, such will be the treatment of choice because such processes are now available and ready for implementation. Privately funded research has already developed it. William Simmons Holladay, Salt Lake County Copyright ©2002 BYU NewsNet ***************************************************************** 23 Editorial: Taking a 'byte' out of apathy Las Vegas SUN June 12, 2002 We sense that in most American homes, there's a sense of personal security about the proposed burial of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Oh, it's being buried "way out in the Nevada desert." We can just hear millions of people saying that in dismissing the news. What other reason could there be for the House to have overwhelmingly approved this dangerous plan and for it to be considered a slam dunk when the Senate votes in a few weeks? The nuclear power industry has used an infinite amount of money and political influence to support Yucca Mountain, while most people outside of Nevada are apathetic. So far that's been a winning combination for the pro-Yucca forces. An interactive website that came online Tuesday, however, might just rattle that equation. Created by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization, the site -- www.mapscience.org -- allows anyone to discover how close shipments of nuclear waste will come to their homes if Yucca Mountain is ultimately approved. All people need to do is type in their home addresses and ZIP codes. A wealth of information they may have not thought much about, including the number of recent tractor-trailer and rail accidents in their state, is all there. The site also allows people to immediately e-mail their senators. Major foundations contributed money for the site, as did Brian Greenspun, whose family owns the Las Vegas Sun. We believe the site provides an important public service and we hope word of it spreads in the weeks remaining before the Senate vote. We'd like to think millions of e-mails from the American people could have as much influence as the millions of dollars spent by the nuclear power industry in lobbying for Yucca. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 24 Judge rejects Yucca water injunction Las Vegas SUN June 12, 2002 By Jace Radke Attorneys for the state recorded a victory Tuesday with the rejection of an Energy Department request for a preliminary injunction to override the state's denial of water at the Yucca Mountain site, but noted that a greater battle is looming. "One way or another everything changes in a month," Nevada Deputy Attorney General Paul Taggart said. The Senate is expected to vote in July on whether Yucca will become the permanent site for the nation's nuclear waste. The upcoming Senate vote played a role in U.S. District Court Judge Roger Hunt's denial of the government's request. Hunt ruled that the Energy Department has sufficient water stored at the site to enable the agency to meet its responsibilities into the fall, and at the very least until the Senate makes a decision. "The government has a legitimate concern, but it is also an anticipatory concern," Hunt said. "There does not appear to be an imminent danger of the government running out of water." Bob Loux, director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects for Nevada, said the decision by the federal judge was "very helpful." "Any time you win against the federal government, it's a good one," he said. The Energy Department suit to overturn the denial by the state of a permanent water right and the refusal by the state to extend temporary water permits will go forward. According to court documents, more than 1.3 million gallons of non-potable water and about 146 thousand gallons of potable water is available at the site. Stephen G. Bartell, a Justice Department Attorney, argued that if anything were to go wrong with the water being stored at the site the Energy Department would be unable to continue the scientific tests or continue working toward Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing. Bartell said that contamination, leaks and fires are all possibilities that could deplete the stored water supply at the proposed dump. Hunt did leave the door open for the government to file future motions if the water situation becomes dire. "There may come a time when the situation becomes urgent, and the water reaches a point where it is at a dangerously low level," Hunt said. "If it gets to that point and it appears that the Department of Energy cannot meet its responsibilities a temporary restraining order can be filed and a preliminary injunction can again be sought." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 25 State hopes site boosts Yucca fight Las Vegas SUN June 12, 2002 Data puts issue in many Americans' back yards By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- Nearly 39 percent of the nation lives within five miles of proposed truck and train routes that could be used to haul high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, according to a research organization website launched Tuesday. The website, www.mapscience.org, unveiled by the Environmental Working Group, allows users to pinpoint exactly how close their homes are to waste routes. The Washington-based nonprofit group opposes the Energy Department's attempt to seek congressional approval for Yucca. Energy Department and nuclear industry officials say the website is merely a final-hour plot by anti-Yucca forces to kill the project in a Senate vote expected this month or next. But Nevada officials say the interactive website is the first close-up look people have been given that shows where waste would travel. They hope the website generates a new debate about the risks of shipping nuclear waste, especially given news reports Monday that the government had thwarted a radioactive "dirty bomb" plot in its early stages. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the website on Tuesday focused more media attention on Yucca than on any single day he could recall. "I'm not sure how many people have seen it up here (in the Senate), but if there is enough of a buzz back home, there will be a buzz here," Reid said. Still, Reid said he wasn't sure whether there was enough time for the website to affect a Senate vote. "We'll find out," the majority whip said. About 100 newspapers across the nation ran stories Tuesday about the website, Environmental Working Group spokesman Mike Casey said. At least a dozen local radio stations, including stations in Gainesville, Fla.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Minneapolis; and Columbus, Ohio, called Tuesday for interviews, he said. Casey said users at 29,126 unique computers had visited the website as of 7 a.m. today, 34 hours after its launch. Some of the website hits had come from Senate office computers, Casey said. About 1,000 users had sent e-mails to their senators from the site. Former National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall, now a hired consultant for Nevada, plugged the website during an appearance on Fox's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren." Hall told Van Susteren that waste would pass near the Fox studio as it traveled on a rail line that runs through the heart of the nation's capital. "Some 200,000 people (in Washington), over a hundred schools, and three hospitals are within a one-mile distance of the transport of this, of the nuclear waste on this rail line," Hall said. "We have never looked at moving this volume of nuclear waste over this distance," he added. Hall noted the terrorism threat, calling the proposal to send 77,000 tons of nuclear waste on the country's highways and railroads the "ultimate dirty bomb." "After 9/11 I think that is irresponsible," Hall said. Several Senate aides said the website had not created an immediate stir in their offices. "We haven't heard about it," said Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., spokesman David DiMartino. Staffers for Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., read about the website in a Capitol Hill publication, a spokesman said. DiMartino said Nelson is undecided about voting on Yucca Mountain. Connecticut Democratic Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Christopher Dodd are among those senators who have not publicly said how they intend to vote on Yucca. Staffers in the two senators are aware of the website, their aides said today. Dodd "continues to study the issue," spokesman Tom Lenard said. In Illinois, Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, has sided with ally Reid in opposition to Yucca in previous votes, but he and Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, this year have been under intense pressure from nuclear power plant operators to approve Yucca. Illinois has 11 nuclear reactors, more than any state. Utah Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett are expected to approve Yucca. According to the website, the states with the highest population of people within five miles of proposed transportation routes are: Utah (79.5 percent); Connecticut (67.2); Nevada (66); Illinois (62.5); and Nebraska (61.5). Nevada officials are hoping the website starts a grassroots effort to build opposition to the dump. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Hererra held a joint press conference to encourage use of the site. Hererra said he hopes the information on the site will spark a "grass-roots, word-of-mouth campaign" among U.S. families of the grave dangers of transporting nuclear waste. "When people are made aware of the dangers of transporting nuclear waste they will be as opposed to Yucca Mountain as we are," Hererra said. "It's time for a grassroots, kitchen-table, word-of-mouth campaign." Hererra urged the public to call their friends and families in other states to use the site and then lobby their delegation to oppose plans for Yucca Mountain. Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director for Citizen Alert, called the web site "the most important tool to come out of this fight." The website cost between $400,000 and $450,000 to build. The site was paid for by contributions to the Environmental Working Group's project fund as well as a $200,000 contribution from Sun Editor and President Brian Greenspun. The group compiled reams of data, to show the potential dangers of shipping nuclear waste, such as: the nation has 14,510 schools and 933 hospitals within one mile of a route, according to Environmental Working Group; Nevada has 144 schools and seven hospitals within that distance. Nevada had 201 truck accidents from 1994 to 2000, according to the website. The state had 200 train accidents between 1990 and 2001, the website said. Ensign, who has yet to convince more than one other Republican senator to vote against Yucca, remains on the offensive this week and is hammering his message that waste transport is dangerous. Ensign argued the topic with nuclear industry lobbyist John Sununu on CNN's "Crossfire" Tuesday night. "When (waste) is shipped, that is when it is most vulnerable," Ensign said. Ensign argued that waste is more secure stored as it now sits at nuclear plants in concrete-encased waste containers, away from terrorists looking for dirty bomb targets. Sununu argued that burying the nation's waste in one highly secure, underground repository makes more sense. Nevada officials say waste shipping containers are vulnerable to accidents and terrorist attacks, but Sununu stressed that the containers are "virtually impregnable." Ensign, who has met privately with 35 GOP senators in the last few months, today planned to make his arguments at the Republicans' weekly policy luncheon, held in the Capitol and typically attended by about 40 of the Senate's 49 Republicans. Ensign planned to argue that Yucca is a financial boondoggle and that waste transportation is unsafe. Ensign also planned to urge his GOP colleagues not to call for a vote on Yucca, which would break a long-standing Senate tradition of allowing only the Senate Majority Leader to call for votes. Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has vowed not to call for a vote. Sun reporters Diana Sahagun and Mary Manning contributed to this story. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 26 Diablo: Devil's kitchen in the open [http://www.sfgate.com] David Lazarus [dlazarus@sfchronicle.com] Wednesday, June 12, 2002 All this talk of "dirty bombs" got me thinking about a potential supermarket for radioactive materials -- PG's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo. Plans are afoot to move spent fuel rods at the plant out of underwater containment pools and into open-air storage facilities, where they would remain for years, possibly many decades, until being transported to a permanent disposal site. Critics say that both open-air storage and transportation of nuclear waste are virtual invitations to terrorists to either cause a catastrophic disaster or make off with plutonium for later use. "The place where PG wants to put the waste is right under a bunch of transmission lines," Rochelle Becker of the antinuclear group Mothers for Peace in San Luis Obispo said. Now, before anyone accuses me of giving bright ideas to bad people, I just want to point out that any terrorist capable of doing serious damage is smart enough to figure out all this on his own. Moreover, part of the problem here is how easily one can obtain information about either deadly weapons or potential targets. When the dirty-bomb story broke on Monday, I did a Google search for "dirty bomb how to make." It produced 167,000 related Web pages. Here's just one tidbit from a Washington Post article that ran last December: "Find some radioactive material, wrap it around a core of ordinary high explosive and detonate it so that contamination spreads over the widest possible area." Moreover, not only are details of PG's open-air storage plans readily available online, but you can download a map from the utility's own site showing the exact location where nuclear waste would be stored outdoors. There aren't any easy choices here. Diablo Canyon will run out of room in its storage pools by 2006. Each pool contains about 800 fuel assemblies. Each assembly contains 64 fuel rods, and each rod contains hundreds of uranium pellets. The two reactors at Diablo Canyon produce about 110 assemblies per year and will continue to do so until the plant finally reaches the end of its life span in 2025. Moving the spent fuel into 138 so-called dry casks sitting exposed on a nearby hillside is seen by PG as the sole viable measure until a permanent disposal site becomes available. Jeff Lewis, a spokesman for the utility, said PG has already applied to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval to begin making the switch. "It's a process that takes a couple of years," he said. Lewis said PG also plans to seek permission next year to transfer spent fuel rods at its Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant into dry casks. The Humboldt Bay facility was shut down in 1976. Its 390 assemblies now rest in a pool at the site, 4 miles south of Eureka. Activists have grown increasingly edgy about open-air storage of nuclear waste since Sept. 11. "It's definitely not sufficient to protect from a 9/11 type of attack," said Klaus Schumann, who serves on the San Luis Obispo County Nuclear Waste Management Committee. "Dry casks are basically sitting ducks for any kind of attack." In fact, in a study for a Utah nuclear waste facility, physicist Marvin Resnikoff determined after Sept. 11 that if an airliner were to strike the sort of dry casks PG plans to use at Diablo Canyon, the steel-and-concrete containers would be torn to pieces. But Schumann and other activists are even more concerned about transporting spent fuel rods from Diablo Canyon to a permanent facility, probably a sprawling underground complex at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert favored by federal authorities. PG hasn't revealed its shipment plans due to security considerations. However, Schumann has analyzed the utility's options and believes the most likely route would be to transport the dry casks, each weighing more than 125 tons, by barge along the coastline to Point Hueneme in Ventura County. From there they would be loaded aboard trains for the journey, probably in the dead of night, to Nevada. It's during shipment, of course, that nuclear waste is most vulnerable to attack or theft, although the system would hopefully be running more smoothly by the time PG gets around to cleaning house. "We're further back in the queue because there are many other plants that are older and would go first," the utility's Lewis said. This means all that radioactive waste could be expected to remain on its perch above the central California coast well beyond Diablo Canyon's closure 23 years from now. Just sitting there. Waiting. PG won't go into its post-Sept. 11 precautions. But it's a safe bet that the plant's black-clad, gun-toting security personnel have taken refresher courses in antiterrorism tactics and are keeping even closer tabs on Diablo Canyon's 10-mile exclusion zone. Diagrams of U.S. nuclear facilities were found in al Qaeda's caves in Afghanistan. "Civilian nuclear power plants are at the top of the list of targets," Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said in Congress last week. So we've caught an al Qaeda member with plans to build a radioactive weapon and cause some harm. As President Bush said, the would-be bomber is "a bad guy and he is where he needs to be -- detained." But what about all those other bad guys behind him? ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.   Page B - 1 ***************************************************************** 27 SRS radioactive waste spills Augusta Georgia: Technology: Web posted Wednesday, June 12, 2002 By Preston Sparks Staff Writer A blockage in a transfer line at Savannah River Site's Salt-stone facility Tuesday caused a 100-gallon spill of low-level radioactive waste mixed with a grout compound. Dean Campbell, a spokesman for Westinghouse Savannah River Co., which operates SRS for the Department of Energy, said the spill occurred at about 11 a.m. "There was no threat to the workers, the public nor the environment," he said. Mr. Campbell said the transfer line was immediately stopped after the spill was noticed by workers. The cleanup was expected to be completed by Tuesday night. An investigation has opened to determine why the blockage occurred. "At this point, we don't know why the line plugged," Mr. Campbell said. As the waste backed up in the line, he said, it spilled onto the roof of the facility's housing building and the ground below. The housing building is where the waste is mixed with the grout compound. Mr. Campbell said that at the Saltstone facility, which is at the center of SRS, low-level radioactive waste is fed into a building through a transfer line as another transfer line sends cement grout to be mixed with the waste. The combination of grout and waste hardens and deteriorates over time, he said. Tuesday's blockage occurred at the point where the grout and waste mix together. Mr. Campbell said it was the first spill he could recall at the Saltstone facility, which was built in the early 1990s. However, two spills from underground radioactive waste tanks occurred last year in a different area of SRS. Reach Preston Sparks at (706) 828-3904. All contents © 1996 - 2002 The Augusta Chronicle. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 28 Alleged Nuclear Plot Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 23:25:50 -0500 (CDT) Institute for Public Accuracy 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org ___________________________________________________ PM Monday, June 10, 2002 Interviews Available on Alleged Nuclear Plot JAY TRUMAN, hermit@downwinders.org, http://www.downwinders.org Director of the Downwinders organization, a group made up of people exposed to nuclear tests, Truman is one of the nation's foremost analysts of the effects of nuclear weapons testing. He said today: "A radiological warfare agent is not a nuclear bomb, rather it uses a conventional explosion to spread radioactive material. There would be severe panic and chaos and possibly long-term cancer problems, depending on what isotope was used. 'Dirty bomb' is a misleading label -- the U.S. government's nuclear tests with 'clean bombs' have done far more massive damage than a 'dirty bomb' could.... The U.S. government has been so tardy on dealing with proliferation issues..." ROBERT NELSON, rnelson@princeton.edu, http://www.fas.org/faspir/2002/v55n2/index.html A researcher at the Science and Global Security Program at Princeton University, Nelson said today: "A radiological weapon, or 'dirty bomb,' would use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material over a wide area with the intent to create panic. The immediate radiation effects would likely be minimal and would not kill, or even make sick, large numbers of people. It could, however, slightly increase the incidence of long-term cancers in a densely populated urban environment. The economic damage to a large city could be severe from the evacuation and decontamination procedures that EPA standards would require." ALICE SLATER, aslater@gracelinks.org, http://www.gracelinks.org Slater is director of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment. LLOYD J. DUMAS, jatmas@earthlink.net Author of "Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous Technologies," Dumas is an expert on terrorist activities involving weapons of mass destruction and a professor of political economy and economics at the University of Texas at Dallas. KARL GROSSMAN, kgrossman@hamptons.com Author of "Cover Up: What You ARE NOT Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power," Grossman said today: "This underlines the dangers of widespread proliferation of nuclear materials -- from the tens of thousands of pounds of lethal spent fuel produced yearly in every atomic power plant to the deadly radioisotopes used in food irradiation systems the U.S. government is now promoting." Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York, is the author of "Power Crazy" and writer and narrator of the award-winning TV documentary "The Push To Revive Nuclear Power." For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 ***************************************************************** 29 Chronology of Nuclear Rivalry Las Vegas SUN: June 11, 2002 A chronology of past and coming events in the nuclear rivalry between Washington and Moscow: June 15, 2002 - The United States will break ground at an army base near Fairbanks, Alaska, on the first actual construction of a missile defense system that will eventually protect all 50 states - and possibly allies - against limited attack from intercontinental ballistic missiles. June 13, 2002 - Barring a last-minute court decree, the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty will occur, six months after President Bush invoked a provision of the treaty enabling either Washington or Moscow to withdraw on six months' notice. June 11, 2002 - Thirty-one House members file suit against President Bush in a last-ditch effort to block the president from taking the United States out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. May 24, 2002: President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin sign a proposed treaty in Moscow under which each side would cut its nuclear arsenals by roughly two-thirds over the next decade, to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads, and an agreement to cooperate on the development of missile defenses. March 15, 2002 - The Pentagon's latest missile defense test was successful. A prototype interceptor slammed into a dummy warhead 140 miles above the Pacific, destroying both. It was the sixth test of a ground-based missile defense prototype and the fourth successful destruction of the dummy warhead. December 2001: President Bush alerts Russia and congressional leaders that he will withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty. November 2001: During a U.S.-Russia summit, Bush and Putin emphasize their shared commitment to nuclear arms reductions, but fail to reach a compromise on Bush's plans for a national missile defense, which would violate the 1972 ABM Treaty. Putin promises the issue would not harm relations between the two nations as it had in the past. October 2001: The Pentagon announces it has put off several missile defense tests scheduled for the fall to avoid being accused of violating the ABM Treaty. Bush and Putin also hold separate talks after the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders, in preparation for their November summit. August-September 2001: Several Bush administration Cabinet members and officials meet intermittently with their Russian counterparts but have little success in breaking down Russian opposition to the notion of scrapping the ABM Treaty. July 2001: Bush and Putin agree to tie U.S. plans for building a missile defense shield to talks on reducing both nations' nuclear stockpiles. May 2001: Bush declares, "We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world." 2000: President Clinton decides not to authorize work to begin on deploying national missile defense. 1999: Under pressure from Republicans, President Clinton drops his opposition to missile-defense legislation and signs a bipartisan measure to deploy a limited national missile defense whenever technologically possible. 1998: North Korea tests a surprisingly sophisticated multistage long-range rocket capable of carrying a nuclear payload, rekindling some support in the United States for missile defenses. 1997: Members of a congressionally chartered panel chaired by Donald H. Rumsfeld are named to examine missile threats to the United States. 1993: President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign START II treaty. 1991: Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sign the START I Treaty. Soviet Union disbands. 1989: Berlin Wall falls. Soviet Union cuts conventional forces in Europe. 1987: President Reagan and Gorbachev sign the INF Treaty, which bans ground-launched, medium-range nuclear missiles. 1986: An agreement to reduce strategic nuclear arms drastically collapses at the Reykjavik summit because of Soviet opposition to American Strategic Defense Initiative development. 1983: Reagan announces during a nationally televised speech that the United States will embark on an extensive research and development program to examine the feasibility of a missile defense program, with a space-based component. He names it Strategic Defense Initiative, but critics quickly label it "Star Wars." 1982: Soviets and United States begin Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). 1979: In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter withdraws the SALT II treaty from Senate consideration. 1972: President Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I agreement, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 1968: President Johnson says the United States and Soviet Union will discuss limits on strategic nuclear arsenals and ballistic missile defenses. Talks are canceled when Moscow invades Czechoslovakia in August. 1962: Cuban missile crisis. 1961: Berlin Wall built. Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba fails. 1957: Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first manmade Earth-orbiting satellite. 1950s: Cold War accelerates. 1949: The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb. 1945: The United States drops atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to end World War II. Sources: Associated Press reports, Center for Defense Information, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 30 Videomakers dip into Cold War nuclear stockpile [deseretnews.com] Wednesday, June 12, 2002 By John Beifuss Scripps Howard News Service "Let us face without panic the reality of our times — the fact that atom bombs may someday be dropped on our cities." So says the narrator of the 1951 Civil Defense short "Survival Under Nuclear Attack," although his remark doesn't seem likely to calm listeners. The narrator of the infamous "Duck and Cover" is hardly any more reassuring, despite his rah-rah delivery. "Always remember, the flash of an atom bomb can come at any time, no matter where you may be," he reminds his audience (which, at the time this was shown a half-century ago, would mainly have consisted of petrified schoolchildren). As we see a young boy riding a bicycle down an all-American street, the narrator continues: "Here's Tony going to his Cub Scout meeting. Tony knows the bomb can explode any time of the year, day or night. He is ready for it." The screen then turns white, as if from a sudden flash, and Tony jumps off his bike and cowers beside a curb. "Duck and cover! Attaboy, Tony!" And, hey, if some of that pesky fallout does get through to contaminate your genes, it's not the end of the world (unless it really is the end of the world). As the narrator reminds viewers in the 1950 government short "Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation": "Besides, a mutation can be a good variation — an improvement." These now campy yet somehow chilling Cold War instructional films are among the bonuses included on the latest amazing DVD release from Image Entertainment and Something Weird Video, the "Duck and Cover Double Feature" of "Atomic War Bride" (1960) and "This Is Not a Test" (1961). Several other video companies also have dipped into the nuclear stockpile. Synapse Films has just released an "Atomic Special Edition" of "Invasion, U.S.A." (1952), an ultracheap "Joseph McCarthy fever dream" (to quote the DVD's liner notes) that imagines (mostly through old World War II stock footage) a Soviet invasion of America. "It's a nightmare — this can't be happening," says blond bombshell Peggie Castle. "It was a cinch to happen," responds tough-guy newshound Gerald Mohr. "Last time I met a girl I really liked, they bombed Pearl Harbor." Actually, the invading nation — which drops atom bombs on San Francisco, New York and Boulder Dam — isn't identified in the dialogue. Still, it's pretty obvious who the enemy is supposed to be when fifth columnists denounce the "capitalist rats" and "Wall Street warmongers" of America and soldiers declare "Bombs away!" in Boris Badenov accents ("Bums avay!"). The Reds are lustful and loutish, too. "Ah, whisky — whisky good. Da!" affirms one sweaty comrade, who tries to subject Castle to a fate worse than death after getting soused on a few slugs from her liquor cabinet. She throws herself from her high-rise window rather than allow herself to be pawed by a card-carrying Party member. "Invasion, U.S.A." — directed by Alfred E. Green and produced by mogul extraordinaire Albert Zugsmith ("Touch of Evil," "High School Confidential") — isn't exactly educational, but it does offer a helpful hint on how to expose a Communist: Quiz him about baseball. When a Soviet soldier in a U.S. Army uniform approaches the Capitol in Washington, the guard on duty asks where he's from. When the sneak says "Chicago," the guard asks: "You ever go see the Cubs play?" Responds the confused comrade: "Cubs? A cub is a young animal — a bear." And the jig is up! Rat-a-tat-tat! The "Invasion, U.S.A." DVD has some great bonus features, including a list of "the Top 100 Best Atomic Films Ever Made," and the half-hour "Red Nightmare" (1962), a slick bit of anti-Communist propaganda hosted by Jack Webb, who materializes out of the decor to narrate the story like a McCarthyite version of Rod Serling. In the movie, Jerry Donovan (Jack Kelly) regrets blowing off all those democratic PTA meetings for bowling after he awakens to discover he is the only remaining free-thinking American in a town that has turned Red. His teenage daughter, for example, is now eager to join a "people's collective" to "free myself of the lingering bourgeois influence of family life," while the neighborhood church has been converted to "The People's Museum." (Jerry is outraged to discover that the exhibit "Soviet Inventions" includes a telephone, which — as he yells at the curator — was invented by "Bell, Alexander Graham Bell — and he was an American. Get that, comrade?!") The Image/Something Weird DVD double dose of radioactive entertainment begins with "Atomic War Bride," a grim and clever Yugoslav satire directed by Veljko Bulajic that offers a fascinating look from the Communist perspective at the possibility of nuclear annihilation. "War Bride" — a sort of modest "Dr. Strangelove" as experienced by those outside the military bunkers and the corridors of power — concerns a naive, patriotic young man whose wedding is interrupted by air raid sirens and explosions. He is taken from his bride, coerced into military service and ultimately sentenced to die for criticizing the war effort. His execution is postponed, however, when a firing squad rifleman points out that the bombs have knocked down all the walls, so there's nothing for the condemned to stand against. The second feature, "This Is Not a Test," is a no-budget, "Twilight Zone"-esque tale in which a group of "average" Americans — a trucker, a floozy, a deputy sheriff, a psycho, an old-timer, a boozer — find themselves isolated on a mountain road, waiting for the missiles to strike. The movie's sudden ending concludes the poverty row proceedings on a note of bleak, pre-"Fail Safe" integrity. © 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 31 American media winking at nuclear terror The Frontier Post From Peshawar Pakistan Norman Solomon Updated on 6/12/2002 10:45:54 AM Two countries, each with dozens of atomic bombs, are threatening to make war on each other. Large numbers of troops have mobilised. Deadly cross-border clashes are intense. And people in charge of both governments have become more bellicose by the day. Maybe you think this situation calls for US officials and American media outlets to focus on ways of preventing the outbreak of a war that could quickly turn into a nuclear conflagration. If so, your mode of thinking is distinctly out of step with the “war on terrorism.” You see, as the summer of 2002 begins, what matters most is the Pentagon’s determination to kill as many Al-Qaeda fighters as possible. Some of them are located in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and perhaps also Kashmir, the region that’s under bitter dispute by India and Pakistan. Since the leaders in New Delhi and Islamabad have their fingers on nuclear buttons, their escalating threats ought to concentrate our minds on the very real perils of the situation. An attack with a single 10-kiloton atomic warhead could cause immediate deaths numbering in the hundreds of thousands. “American intelligence estimates put the toll in the event of a full exchange of the two nuclear arsenals at 12 million dead with maybe seven million wounded, an instant slaughter unprecedented in the history of mankind,” Henry Porter wrote in the London-based Guardian. Such figures, applied to human carnage, may be impossible to grasp. You might think of the World Trade Center catastrophe occurring simultaneously about 4,000 times (leaving aside widespread radiation sickness and longer-term agonies). Such comparisons may be needed to galvanise much attention from the US media, still transfixed as it is with stories related to September 11. By now, America’s “war on terrorism” often seems to be a war of narcissism. The worldview is so extremely self-engrossed, and so widely accepted by news media, that the movers and shakers of the Fourth Estate usually don’t bat an eye even when rationales get positively loopy. There was a remarkably myopic, no, let’s not beat around the bush, there was a remarkably deranged moment on May 28 when Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke voiced concern about the increasing chances of war between the two nuclear-armed states. Why? Because, in order to confront India with additional ground forces, Pakistan was about to pull troops away from its border with Afghanistan and thus weaken efforts against Al-Qaeda fighters. Noting that Pakistani troops at the Afghan border have been “enormously, enormously helpful” to the US government, Clarke worried aloud. “Attention and troops that cannot be focused there because they’re focused elsewhere, that’s a concern for us because we need as much assistance as possible in guarding that very porous border,” she said. Those comments didn’t raise many eyebrows in America’s newsrooms. Hello? While events are rapidly careening in the direction of a war that could bring nuclear disaster to the Indian subcontinent, the Bush administration contends that a brake must be applied, because of the importance of killing Al-Qaeda members this summer? Like quite a few other regimes, the fanatical Hindu fundamentalists running India’s government have echoed the US “war on terrorism” mantra to harmonise with their own militaristic intentions. While the Pentagon was complaining that a slippery slope to nuclear war between India and Pakistan would be inconvenient for Washington’s policymakers, the Indian foreign minister employed a familiar lexicon. “The world recognises that today the epicentre of international terrorism is in Pakistan,” said Jaswant Singh. “Terrorists targeting not only India but other countries, too, receive support from state structures in Pakistan.” Although the consequences of any nuclear detonation in the conflict between India and Pakistan would be a horrific cataclysm, the predictable results are apt to get little advance media attention from major American outlets. In the current war of narcissism, despite all the self-congratulatory froth after September 11 about the global vistas flung open by the newly enlightened US media, the news world still revolves largely around the USA and Washington’s line of the day. But perhaps, under the news-you-can-use category, some angles can grab appreciable coverage: If a faraway nuclear exchange takes place, Americans who feel that Strontium-90 would not be appropriate for their current lifestyles should forget about consuming dairy products (that includes lattes and cappuccinos) for at least a few years. They would be wise to cultivate indoor gardens in a hurry. And they’d be well advised to stay indoors with all windows tightly sealed. © Copyright 2001 The Frontier Post ***************************************************************** 32 America's Easy Targets TOMPAINE.com - Op Ads In light of the Jose Padilla "dirty bomb" plot, where else is our country vulnerable? The nation's nuclear weapons complex, of course. The Chronic Insecurity Of The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex The nation's nuclear weapons complex is vulnerable to terrorist attack. Security failures at ten sites where nuclear materials are stored and used are "systemic, constant and recurring," according to an investigation by the Project on Government Oversight (www.POGO.org). The Department of Energy (DOE) hires private security firms to guard these sites. It tests site security with mock attacks, often using U.S. military forces as attackers. Unclassified evidence provided to POGO by insiders shows that in more than half the tests security forces fail to protect the facilities (the exact failure rate is classified). In a test at the Rocky Flats facility in Denver, Navy SEAL "terrorists" successfully "stole" enough nuclear material to make several weapons. At DOE's Los Alamos, New Mexico lab, "terrorists" gained entry and had time to construct an "Improvised Nuclear Device" -- a homemade atomic bomb. DOE's Transportation Security Division, which moves nuclear weapons and radioactive materials on public highways, failed six out of seven security tests in 1998. In real life, such failures mean plutonium and highly enriched uranium are subject to theft and sabotage. DOE security failings are nothing new. A 1999 review by former Senator Warren Rudman concluded, "More than 25 years worth of reports, studies and formal inquiries... have identified a multitude of chronic security and counterintelli-gence problems at all of the weapons labs.... The Department of Energy is a dysfunctional bureaucracy that has proven it is incapable of reforming itself." Perhaps DOE will be forced to change given the post-9/11 emphasis on "homeland security." We might soon find out: In response to POGO's report, Representatives Chris Shays and Ed Markey have each initiated Congressional investigations. Published: Jan 14 2002 ***************************************************************** 33 Markey, antinuclear activists look to revive movement for arms freeze Boston Globe Online / Nation | World / By Bret Ladine, Globe Correspondent, 6/12/2002 WASHINGTON - Alarmed by the increased dangers of nuclear warfare in the post-Sept. 11 world, Representative Edward J. Markey and a group of veteran antinuclear activists are seeking to revive an old initiative - the movement for a nuclear freeze - to reinvigorate a worldwide campaign against the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. In a news conference yesterday, Markey urged President Bush to renounce proposals that the US adjust its strategic doctrine to allow the first use of nuclear weapons, and said the United States should agree to a permanent end to the testing of nuclear warheads. ''The Bush administration is leading the country in the wrong direction in almost every aspect of nuclear policy,'' Markey said. Markey has introduced a joint resolution that calls for an end to the development, testing, and production of nuclear weapons, the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and greater efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear technologies to rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran. The resolution is being offered 20 years after Markey played a major role in the nuclear freeze movement. Jonathan Schell, a leader in the original movement and a cofounder of Urgent Call to end nuclear danger, said the world faces ''a second nuclear age,'' with dangers that are ''springing up all over.'' [Markey also said yesterday that radioactive materials for a ''dirty bomb'' can be found in almost every state at hundreds of medical and commercial facilities, the Associated Press reported. He said some facilities have more than a million curies of radioactive material that could be a target of terrorist theft or sabotage. A requirement to track the material by serial numbers was scrapped in 1985, and in many cases monitoring has been left to state health officials, he said. ''We need to make sure these materials are secure,'' he added.] Conservatives dismissed the efforts of Urgent Call and Markey as holdovers from another era. ''Every criticism Markey has is predicated on the attempt to avert nuclear war between Russia and the US,'' said Jack Spencer, senior analyst for national security at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. ''We have to move totally away from that sort of thinking.'' But Schell said the Bush administration's policies actually heighten the nuclear danger by sending the wrong message to rogue nations. Among the more troublesome positions, Schell said, are plans for nuclear ''bunker-busting'' bombs for use in preemptive strikes. ''Neither the United States nor any nuclear power can go before the world with the message, `We have these weapons but you can't, and if you try to get them, we'll blow you to kingdom come with ours,''' Schell said. Adding to the risk, said Cambridge activist Randall Forsberg, is Bush's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The change takes effect tomorrow. House members - 30 Democrats and one Independent - filed suit against President Bush yesterday in an effort to block the president from withdrawing from the 1972 treaty, the Associated Press reported. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio and the lead plaintiff, said the president does not have the authority to withdraw unilaterally from a treaty and should first seek the consent of Congress. The lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia, also names Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as defendants. The lawsuit states that while the Constitution does not address the role of Congress in treaty terminations, treaties have the status of ''supreme law of the land'' equivalent to federal laws. Laws can be repealed only by Congress, the suit says. Forsberg also cited Bush's refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the administration's inability to negotiate a test ban on North Korea. Forsberg's perception of the increasing nuclear threat has prompted her, Schell, and others to help found Urgent Call, a new organization dedicated to reducing nuclear dangers. Eventually Forsberg and Schell hope to gain support at levels seen in 1982, when nearly one million people gathered in Central Park to call for reductions in nuclear arsenals. ''Nuclear danger is back, but we're back, too,'' Schell said. ''And we're not going away.'' Markey's resolution, submitted to the House yesterday, has 11 sponsors. He said he expects that number to grow and hopes that it surpasses the 172 votes he obtained on a recently failed amendment to remove funding for the bunker-busting bomb from a defense authorization bill. This story ran on page A3 of the Boston Globe on 6/12/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. © Copyright 2002 New York Times Company ***************************************************************** 34 Chances of N-conflict 'completely zero': Karamat Updated on 2002-06-12 11:00:53 PARIS, June 12 (PNS): Special envoy of President General Pervez Musharraf and former army chief General (retd) Jehangir Karamat on Tuesday confirmed that the threat of conventional war between Pakistan and India has shrunk, and that the odds of a nuclear conflict were now "completely zero". Addressing a press conference here a day after meeting French President Jacques Chirac he said, "It was never logical that someone would start a war in that part of the world." "I have never rated the nuclear option very highly, and in the present scenario, it is completely zero. "Right now, with the situation de-escalating, the chances of a conventional war are also receding," he said. General Jehangir Karamat is one of two envoys sent by President General Pervez Musharraf to Europe and the Middle East to spread Islamabad's point of view and options. His trip has so far taken in Rome and Madrid, and, after Paris, he was scheduled to arrive in Copenhagen. The second envoy, former president Farooq Ahmed Leghari, was dispatched to Germany and Egypt End. ***************************************************************** 35 Editorial: Homeland Security’s Role At Lawrence Livermore Lab The Daily Californian Tuesday, June 11, 2002 National security has rarely been as worrisome for the United States as it is now. But does it justify President Bush's plan to potentially alter the scope and focus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? Expanding the UC-managed lab's role in protecting the nation is one thing. Potentially leaving the lab's non-defense research operations in a neglectful wastebin is clearly another, more dangerous option Unfortunately, we do not know what we can expect from the proposal reorganization which is precisely the problem. Bush's reorganization plan calls for placing the lab under the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures Division of the Department of Homeland Security. But the name of the lab's new bureaucratic division is all anyone knows about it. The vagueness of the plan rightfully leaves many wondering exactly what the new role of the laboratory will be. Laboratory oversight will ultimately fall on the shoulders of Homeland Security adviser Tom Ridge, whose primary concern is homeland security. Under Ridge it seems unlikely that the lab would prioritize federal funding for research outside homeland security. That includes atmospheric science, astrophysics, environmental science and the 14 other important research fields that have no concern with war countermeasures. Currently under the Department of Energy, the lab devotes much of its research to security issues while enjoying the freedom to branch out into more non-defense related scientific fields. UC professors and students benefit academically from the broad research undertaken at the UC-managed lab. But from what little Bush has made clear so far, it is uncertain if UC and the pursuit of pure academic research will reap such a benefit. President Bush and the UC Board of Regents need to clarify the parameters of the new relationship between and the lab and the Department of Homeland Security. It is very troubling that even top lab officials were not informed about the potential changes. Such a reorganization with far-reaching effects demands facts about what is actually going on. Livermore valley residents deserve facts so they can at least prepare for any environmental changes that may occur as a result of the lab's impending new focus. Bolstered national security may result from the change in lab oversight, but UC students and faculty will have to deal with making everything happen. Everyone deserves to know more. Email: dailycal@dailycal.org [dailycal@dailycal.org] ***************************************************************** 36 G-8 ministers plan statement on terrorism Daily Yomiuri On-Line Yomiuri Shimbun The Group of Eight foreign ministers, who will meet in Canada on Wednesday and Thursday, will adopt a 10-point recommendation calling for international antiterrorism efforts, including a comprehensive counterterrorism pact, government sources said Monday. A draft of the recommendations obtained by The Yomiuri Shimbun also calls for a coordinated G-8 program for working out a model plan concerning specific measures to prevent terrorist attacks targeting nuclear and biochemical facilities and related structures. The planned international antiterrorism treaty would spell out a set of steps that the G-8 nations--Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States--should address to eliminate terrorism. At the two-day meeting in Whistler, British Columbia, the G-8 foreign ministers also are likely to agree on beefing up current international operations to create a more effective worldwide cooperative effort for clamping down on terrorists and their backers, the sources said. The recommendations to emerge from the foreign ministerial conference are expected to call on countries other than the G-8 nations to join their efforts to enforce the counterterrorism measures to be incorporated into the pact, they said. The sources said other key items in the recommendations will include: -- Creating a global system under which countries would be able to exchange information about airplane passengers. -- Conducting joint G-8 studies on effective ways to detect explosives. -- Boosting international cooperation to minimize across-the-border moves by terrorists, according to the sources. In light of the rapid increase in Internet-related offenses, the foreign ministers will call on all members of the international community to take part in a cybercrime prevention treaty that the United States, European countries and Japan currently are discussing with a view to putting it into effect as soon as possible. Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 37 WNA NEWS BRIEFING 02.24 | 6 - 11 June 2002 A weekly summary of international news relevant to the nuclear energy industry. [NB02.24-1] US: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 13-10 in favour of a joint resolution approving Yucca Mountain for the development of a national spent fuel repository. The committee's approval now means the resolution will be moved to the full Senate for a final vote by 25 July. (NucNet News, 203/02, 6 June; Nuclear Market Review, 7 June, p2; SpentFUEL, 10 June, p1; see also News Briefing 02.20-1) [NB02.24-2] Canada: Bruce Power will invest almost C$1.8 billion (US$1.2 billion) in upgrades and improvements at six of the eight Bruce reactors over the next three years. The company has already spent C$625 million (US$406 million) as an initial payment under its deal to lease the Bruce B reactors from Ontario Power Generation (OPG). Over the next three years, C$800 million (US$520.2 million) will be spent to replace turbines and make other upgrades to the four PHWRs at Bruce B. A further C$340 million (US$221.1 million) will be spent to return to operation the mothballed units 3 and 4 at the four-unit Bruce A plant. Bruce A-3 and -4 are expected to be operating by summer 2003. (NucNet Business News, 34/02, 10 June; Nuclear Market Review, 7 June, p3; Nucleonics Week, 6 June, p3; see also News Briefing 02.08-8) [NB02.24-3] Zambia: A new US$450 million copper mine - the Lumwana Copper Project - is being proposed by Australia's Equinox Resources Ltd in partnership with Phelps Dodge Inc of the US. The project is expected to start production in 2006. Besides copper production, the venture would produce by-products, including uranium in the third to fifth year of operation at a rate of 1200 tonnes U3O8 (1018 tU). (Ux Weekly, 10 June, p4) [NB02.24-4] US: FirstEnergy plans to use the reactor pressure vessel head from Consumers Energy's abandoned Midland plant as a replacement for that on the Davis-Besse reactor. However, when FirstEnergy replaces the steam generators at Davis-Besse in 2010 or 2012, the pressure vessel head will be replaced with a newly-manufactured one, the company announced. The company also plans to apply for licence renewal for Davis-Besse, whose current licence expires in 2017. (Nucleonics Week, 6 June, p3; see also News Briefing 02.21-7) [NB02.24-5] US: Energy Northwest will not sell its Columbia Generating Station and, for the time being, will not hire an outside operator for the plant, the company has decided. The utility will now consider other ways of reducing the costs of operating a single nuclear power plant. (Ux Weekly, 10 June, p3; see also News Briefing 02.23-8) [NB02.24-6] US: The operating licences of Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point-3 and -4 nuclear power reactors have been renewed for an additional 20 years by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The licence for unit 3 was due to expire in 2012 and that of unit 4 in 2013. Such 20-year licence renewals have now been granted for a total of 10 US nuclear reactors at five sites. A further 13 applications are currently being reviewed. (NucNet News, 206/02, 10 June; Nuclear Market Review, 7 June, p2; see also News Briefing 00.50-14) [NB02.24-7] US: Carolina Power & Light (CP&L) has received approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to increase the generating capacity at its Brunswick-1 and -2 nuclear power reactors by 15% each. Work will begin immediately at unit 1, increasing capacity from 841 MWe to 958 MWe, while work on unit 2 will start in 2003, raising its capacity from 835 MWe to 951 MWe. (Nuclear Market Review, 7 June, p2; Ux Weekly, 10 June, p4; see also News Briefing 02.18-10) [NB02.24-8] Bulgaria: Kozloduy-3 and -4 must close by 2006 as a pre-condition for Bulgarian entry into the European Union (EU), the EU enlargement commissioner has stated. He said the decision is not open to negotiation, as Bulgaria had sought to close the reactors between 2008 and 2010. The announcement follows the decision by the EU enlargement commission that Bulgaria would not be ready to join the EU during the first wave of new members in 2004. (NucNet News, 201/02, 5 June; see also News Briefing 02.16-10) [NB02.24-9] Lithuania will close Ignalina-2 by 2009, provided that it can come to an agreement with the European Union (EU) regarding funding, according to a statement released by Prime Minister Brazauskas' office. However, the estimated cost of decommissioning the Ignalina nuclear power plant is 3 billion euros (US$2.6 billion), and the EU and Lithuania have not yet agreed on how much funding the EU will provide. The statement said 'the economic and political logic is simple: if there is no solidarity, there will be no closure in 2009'. (Nuclear Market Review, 7 June, p2; Ux Weekly, 10 June, p4; see also News Briefing 02.21-12) [NB02.24-10] Russia plans to bid for the construction of Finland's fifth nuclear power reactor, Russia's minister for atomic energy, Alexander Rumyantsev told the Itar-Tass news agency. A call for bids is expected to take place in the next three to four months for the construction of the reactor for an estimated cost of some US$1.5 billion. Russia will be bidding against the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the US. Mr Rumyantsev said that Finnish experts recently visited the site of a Russian-built reactor under construction in China. (Agence France-Presse, 10 June; see also News Briefing 02.22-1) [NB02.24-11] Hungary: Tenders to extend the lifespan of the Paks nuclear power plant for 20 years will not be invited before 2005, according to Gyorgy Meszaros, the plant's president. He confirmed, however, that the tenders would be open to prospective international bidders. The plant consists of four Russian-designed VVER?400/213 reactors, the first of which will complete its 30-year life period in 2012. Work to extend the plant's life will begin in 2007 at the earliest. (East European Energy Report, May, p20; see also News Briefing 01.48-12) [NB02.24-12] Romania: The government has appointed French banks Societe Generale and Credit Lyonnais to arrange US$350 million in financing for a series of equipment contracts signed by SN Nuclearelectrica for completion of Cernavoda-2. The two banks are to arrange financing for equipment provided by: Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL), worth C$316 million (US$204 million); Italy's Ansaldo and France's Alstom and Nexans, worth a total 141 million euros (US$133 million); and, General Electric of the US, worth US$24 million. Romania aims to finalise works at Cernavoda-2 by 2004, at an estimated total cost of some US$700 million. (East European Energy Report, May, p21; see also News Briefing 02.02-10) [NB02.24-13] Japan: The experimental Fugen advanced thermal reactor (ATR) will close in March 2003. Fugen - which produces 165 MWe - is the only reactor in Japan that can use natural uranium, LEU or mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel. The reactor began operations in 1979. (Ux Weekly, 10 June, p3; see also News Briefing 97.49-7) [NB02.24-14] Japan: Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) plans to improve its operating procedures and shorten the time spent on inspections in order to increase the percentage of capacity used at its nuclear power plants from the current 80% to 85%. The time mandated for inspections will be cut from 40 days to 32 days. The improved procedures should be in place at all of TEPCO's reactors by March 2004. (Ux Weekly, 10 June, p3) [NB02.24-15] Russia's atomic energy ministry, Minatom, plans to construct an US$80 million storage facility for low- and intermediate-level waste (LLW and ILW). The proposed facility - which would only be used to store waste from the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk regions - will be built on the island of Novaya Zemlya off Russia's Arctic coast. Minatom said the siting of the facility had been agreed with the Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish governments. (NucNet News, 202/02, 5 June; SpentFUEL, 10 June, p4; see also News Briefing 96.19-7) [NB02.24-16] US: A new nuclear education programme - Innovations in Nuclear Infrastructure and Education (INIE) - has been unveiled by energy secretary Spencer Abraham. The programme has been established at the recommendation of the Department of Energy's independent advisory committee, the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee (NERAC). Under the INIE programme, universities are encouraged to make new investments in their research reactor and nuclear engineering programmes, and to establish strategic partnerships with national laboratories and industry. An initial US$5.5 million has been awarded to four university consortia. (NucNet News, 207/02, 11 June; see also News Briefing 01.19-14) [NB02.24-17] Ukraine: Serhiy Tulub has been appointed as the new president of state-owned nuclear utility, Energoatom. Mr Tulub succeeds Yuri Nedashkovsky. (NucNet Business News, 33/02, 7 June; see also News Briefing 01.17-20) [NB02.24-18] US: The Department of Commerce (DOC) has designated Russia as a market economy under US law, as of 1 April 2002. This follows a similar designation by the European Union (EU) in May. Russian Economics and Trade Minister German Gref said that the Russian economy had suffered annual losses of as much as US$1.5 billion and that several Russian industries would benefit from the new designation, including nuclear fuel producers. The new market economy designation is expected to have an impact on the ongoing Administrative Review of the Russian Suspension Agreement by the DOC. (FreshFUEL, 10 June, p1; Ux Weekly, 10 June, p2; see also News Briefing 01.46-5) [NB02.24-19] US: An al-Qa'eda terrorist plotting to build and explode a radioactive 'dirty bomb' in a US city, possibly Washington, was arrested on 8 May when he flew into Chicago from Pakistan. A 'dirty bomb' consists of conventional explosives laced with radioactive material. Officials said the man had not begun assembling any device and that the materials he intended to use would have been acquired in the US. (Daily Telegraph, 11 June, p1; see also News Briefing 02.13-3) Previous News Briefing NB02.23 All news and views are those of the publications cited, whose staffs have undertaken the research to enable this compilation for WNA members. 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