***************************************************************** /12/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.293 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Ontario set for energy retreat 2 Inspectors need months on Iraqi arms 3 Iraq war 'could kill 500,000'* 4 US: Continuation of Emergency Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction 5 Study warns of high toll in war - 6 US: Bush: Iraq Conflict May Be Necessary 7 Saddam's Son Backs U.N. Resolution 8 Iraqi Lawmakers Vote Down U.N. Plan 9 Nuclear capability becoming easier -- 10 A triumph for Taliban's tutors -- 11 US: Echoes of the Energy Crisis / Nuclear power -- the wrong fix 12 Ontario set for energy retreat 13 Tokyo, Seoul: KEDO vital, North must give up nukes 14 Pro Nuke propaganda push 15 U.S., Allies Grapple with N.Korea Nuclear Issue 16 [Editorial]A crack in alliance? 17 Report foresees 'human catastrophe' in Iraq if U.S. invades 18 Canada: Energy plan needs more brain power* NUCLEAR REACTORS 19 US: NRC Issues Finding of Low to Moderate Safety Significance To 20 US: Nuclear accident report faulted* 21 UK: Inquiry into nuclear plant's future NUCLEAR SAFETY 22 CANCERS, BIRTH DEFECTS BLAMED ON U.S. DEPLETED URANIUM 23 Experts find traces of depleted uranium from NATO ammunition on 24 US: Bush ups number of compassion payments (to industry workers) 25 Bosnian Radiation Blamed on NATO 26 Experts find traces of depleted uranium from NATO ammunition on 27 Hot stuff, chilling danger: Cold War leftovers sow seeds of worry 28 US: Thyroid at Root of Many Symptoms 29 UK: Ministers play down ferry bomb threat 30 Weapons inspectors count on new technology 31 Other uranium hot spots 32 US: Dirty Bomb Drill Tests Boston Preparedness 33 Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium 34 Experts find traces of depleted uranium from NATO ammunition on 35 War with Iraq could lead up to four million deaths: 36 US: US fears groups may get radiation devices - report NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 37 Germany: Where Now for Atomic Waste? 38 Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant; Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion 39 US: Group calls for surcharge on wastes sent to Hanford 40 US: Wash State is seeking pact on radioactive trash 41 Contolled Burn - 42 US: Yucca Mountain and the Nuclear-Waste Problem in the United State NUCLEAR WEAPONS 43 The nuclear physicist who could give peace another chance in Iraq 44 US: Expert on A-bomb flights preserves history 45 Chief nuclear inspector tells Iraq to cooperate and come clean 46 UN puts Blix in invidious position by handing him the trigger for US DEPT. OF ENERGY 47 K-25 cleanup pact signed 48 DOE backs Bechtel Jacobs, but 49 INEEL receives $6.2 million in research project funding 50 State might fight imports of waste to Hanford 51 Deal in works on waste for Hanford OTHER NUCLEAR 52 A Big Victory by California in Energy Case ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Ontario set for energy retreat FT.com Sunday Nov 10 2002. All times are London time. By Dan Westell in Toronto Published: November 11 2002 22:22 | Last Updated: November 11 2002 22:22 Canada The government of Ontario on Monday ended its short-lived electricity deregulation programme, replacing market rates with price caps and rebates. The move followed a disastrous summer for the energy police of Ernie Eves, the premier, and effectively ends his Progressive Conservative administration's deregulation of electricity prices that began on May 1. For proponents of a free market for electricity, the announcement fulfilled their worst fears by putting the government back in control of the business. Mr Eves said the government will cap prices at the pre-deregulation level of C$4.3 cents (US$2.75) a kilowatt hour and hold the price there until 2006. It will then refund the difference between C$4.3 cents and the market price, if it is more than C$6 cents in July and August and over C$8 cents in September, months when prices were at their highest. Electricity prices had become a volatile political issue. As electricity charges mounted and stories circulated of pensioners who were facing selling their homes because they could not pay their bills, the government gave in. Last week, there was speculation that if Mr Eves called an election next year, as expected, the Progressive Conservatives would lose because of the electricity issue. The price increase was largely due to a long run of exceptionally hot summer days that drove prices up. Electricity has been a public monopoly in Ontario for most of the past century, with generation and long-distance transmission in the hands of a Crown corporation. The corporation ran up a C$38bn (US$24.4bn) debt by the 1990s, for which the province of Ontario is responsible. Much of that debt was accumulated in the corporation's programme of building expensive nuclear plants. But successive administrations in Toronto, including those controlled by the Conservatives, then imposed rate freezes, leaving the company effectively bankrupt. When most of the rate freezes ended in May this year, the price of electricity increased, spurred on by the hot weather. "Now they see what electricity costs and they don't like that," said Peter Budd, an energy lawyer who has been active in deregulating the market. The price jump was exacerbated by an unexpected supply shortage at Ontario Power Generation, the government-owned generator. By June, it was supposed to have refurbished the first of four units at the 2000-megawatt Pickering A nuclear reactor east of Toronto, which supplies about 9 per cent of Ontario's electricity. But last month Mr Osborne said the first units to be refurbished would not be completed before next year - behind schedule and over budget - and the other three units would take up to 2006 to be back in service. trademarks of the Financial Times. Privacy policy ***************************************************************** 2 Inspectors need months on Iraqi arms Swiss Radio International. November 12, 2002 5:15 AM By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iraq had few weapons left when inspectors were last in the country but to find new dangerous arms may take months, despite pressure for quick results, a former chief U.N. arms inspector said. Rolf Ekeus, who led the inspectors from 1991 to mid-1997, said on Monday the arms experts, expected to resume work later this month, could find Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction, if they were given enough time. A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted last Friday, gives the inspectors until February 21 at the latest to file an initial report but they must tell the council of any serious violations sooner. Many believe the United States, if it attacks Iraq as it has threatened if Baghdad does not fully disarm, wants to do so before March when the weather begins to get hot. "It will work but only if they are allowed to take their time. And I am not quite sure that the political scenario is organised so that we have time," Ekeus told the "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" public television program. He said he fellow Swede Hans Blix, the current chief inspector, and his Egyptian counterpart from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, had a "terrible burden" on their shoulders as their word could mean war. "They are fine, reflecting men with good minds," he said. "I think we must give them time, and with time I think they will be successful." Ekeus, like Blix earlier this month, questioned a crucial declaration Iraq has to submit by December 8. Ekeus said Iraq could meet the deadline in drawing up a list of dangerous weapons it still might have. But the declaration also demands Iraq list civilian chemical and biological components, which Ekeus characterised as a "vague and complex" operation, ranging from ingredients in soap detergents to petrochemical and medical industries. The United States, at Blix's urging, had considered giving Iraq more time for this part of the declaration but did not. "SPACE FOR DISPUTE" Ekeus said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would probably make a relatively sound declaration of weapons issues. "But on the other area, which is huge, there will be a very selective approach and space for a lot of dispute." Ekeus said most of the weapons were discovered during his term in office and those of his successor, Australian Richard Butler. But in the nearly four years inspectors had been out of the country, Iraq could have "anything from zero to quite a considerable quantity of weapons." Before inspectors can go back to Iraq, the Baghdad government by Friday has to accept the resolution. The Iraqi parliament, currently meeting on the resolution. has heaped scorn on its provisions but not issued a decision. The first teams of about two dozen technicians, are scheduled to leave for Cyprus, a staging base, on Friday. Blix and ElBaradei plan to accompany this group, which is to set up offices, laboratories, communications and transport, to Baghdad on November 18. About a week later, on November 25, a dozen inspectors are expected to arrive and make some spot checks. Another 250 potential inspectors around the world have undergone training courses and are on call. Of this group about 80 to 100 are expected to be in Iraq by December 23. When the inspectors left in December 1998, the eve of a U.S.-British bombing raid, they had accounted for or destroyed equipment and materials that could be used in making nuclear bombs, 817 of 819 Scud missiles, 39,000 chemical munitions and more than 3,000 tonnes of agents and precursors. But unaccounted for were 500 mustard-gas shells, 150 aerial bombs, 20 tonnes of complex growth material that could be used to nourish biological weapons and 200 tonnes of chemicals for the nerve agent VX. Reuters © Copyright swissinfo SRI Swiss Radio International - an enterprise of SRG SSR idée suisse ***************************************************************** 3 Iraq war 'could kill 500,000'* NewScientist.com 14:00 12 November 02 NewScientist.com news service A war against Iraq could kill half a million people, warns a new report by medical experts - and most would be civilians. The report claims as many as 260,000 could die in the conflict and its three-month aftermath, with a further 200,000 at risk in the longer term from famine and disease. A civil war in Iraq could add another 20,000 deaths. /Collateral Damage/ is being published on Tuesday in 14 countries and has been compiled by Medact, an organisation of British health professionals. It comes as the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, is deciding how to respond to a series of deadlines on weapons inspections imposed by the United Nations. If he fails to meet any conditions, the US and the UK have threatened to destroy Iraq's presumed weapons of mass destruction using military force. The report has been commended by both medical and military specialists. "It is really important that people understand the consequences of war," says Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association. "All doctors look at war with a very large degree of horror because they know the meaning of casualties," she told *New Scientist*. "Even in the cleanest, most limited conflicts, people die and people suffer." General Pete Gration, former Chief of the Australian Defence Forces and an opponent of a war on Iraq, adds: "This is no exaggerated tract by a bunch of zealots. It is a coldly factual report by health professionals who draw on the best evidence available." *Nuclear attack* The report assumes an attack on Iraq will begin with sustained air strikes, followed by an invasion of ground troops and culminating in the overthrow of Baghdad. It concludes that the resulting death toll will be much higher than either the 1991 Gulf War, which killed around 200,000 Iraqis, or the war on Afghanistan, which has so far left less than 5000 dead. In the report's worst-case scenario, nuclear weapons are fired on Iraq in response to a chemical and biological attack on Kuwait and Israel, leaving a massive 3.9 million people dead. But the report states that even the best-case estimates for a short war would initially kill 10,000 people, "more than three times the number who died on September 11". The report argues that the 1991 war led to the severe weakening of the health of Iraq's people and the country's healthcare infrastructure, and that this would mean higher casualties in any new war. "Casualties, the cycle of violence and other consequences continue to affect generation after generation," says the report's author, health consultant Jane Salvage. Rob Edwards This story is from NewScientist.com's news service - for more exclusive news and expert analysis every week ***************************************************************** 4 Continuation of Emergency Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction FR Doc 02-28857 [Federal Register: November 12, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 218)] [Presidential Documents] [Page 68493] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr12no02-164] Presidential Documents Title 3-- The President [[Page 68493]] Notice of November 6, 2002 On November 14, 1994, by Executive Order 12938, President Clinton declared a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States posed by the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons (weapons of mass destruction) and the means of delivering such weapons. On July 28, 1998, the President issued Executive Order 13094 to amend Executive Order 12938 to more effectively respond to the worldwide threat of weapons of mass destruction proliferation activities. Because the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, the national emergency first declared on November 14, 1994, and extended on November 14, 1995, November 12, 1996, November 13, 1997, November 12, 1998, November 10, 1999, November 12, 2000, and November 9, 2001, must continue in effect beyond November 14, 2002. In accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared in Executive Order 12938, as amended. This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress. (Presidential Sig.)B THE WHITE HOUSE, November 6, 2002. [FR Doc. 02-28857 Filed 11-08-02; 8:45 am] Billing code 3195-01-P ***************************************************************** 5 Study warns of high toll in war - theage.com.au November 13 2002 By Mark Forbes More than 260,000 Iraqis could be killed in the first three months of any attack on Baghdad by US-led forces, according to an international report from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War. Former Australian Defence Force chief General Peter Gration has endorsed the study as "coldly factual", facing the human consequences of attempting to topple Saddam Hussein's regime. The report is based on an analysis of the deaths caused by the 1990-91 Gulf War, which it says resulted in an estimated 205,000 casualties. If nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction were used, the possible death toll in a new war against President Saddam would rise to up to 3.9 million, it says. Association president Sue Wareham challenged the Federal Government to respond to the report. "If Prime Minister Howard already understands the human effect of modern warfare, then he has a responsibility to justify to the Australian people our likely involvement in this carnage," she said. The minimum toll in the first three months of conventional war would be between 48,000 and 261,000, the report said. Post-war health effects could claim up to another 200,000 lives. Greens Senator Kerry Nettle, who launched the study with Dr Wareham, said she would seek to have the Senate endorse its findings. Copyright © 2002 The Age Company Ltd advertise ***************************************************************** 6 Bush: Iraq Conflict May Be Necessary Las Vegas SUN November 12, 2002 By MATT KELLEY ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON- Four days before a deadline that could trigger war with Iraq, President Bush told veterans of past conflicts that America was prepared for a battle to remove Saddam Hussein's "tools of mass murder." Bush used two Veterans Day addresses to underscore his impatience with the Iraqi leader as Saddam's rubber-stamping parliament denounced a U.N. resolution demanding Iraq's disarmament. "The time to confront this threat is before it arrives, not the day after," he told several dozen veterans during an East Room ceremony. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, meanwhile, said he doubted Saddam would agree to give up his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. He said Saddam has already started hiding his banned weapons at secret sites across Iraq, including underground. "They've gone so far underground that the only way they can be found is through defectors," Rumsfeld told a business executives' forum sponsored by Fortune magazine. Finding all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would take months, Rumsfeld said. Behind the scenes, Bush has approved tentative Pentagon plans for invading Iraq should a new U.N. arms inspection effort fail to rid the nation of weapons of mass destruction. The strategy calls for a land, sea and air force of 200,000 to 250,000 troops, administration officials said, as they sought to build up pressure on Saddam to relent. "We have to keep, in a sense, a gun pointed to the head of the Iraqi regime because that's the only way they cooperate," Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told National Public Radio's "The Tavis Smiley Show." The talk of war grew to a crescendo just three days after the U.N. Security Council approved a tough new resolution with an unexpected 15-0 vote. Iraq has until Friday to accept the resolution that would send U.N. inspectors back to Baghdad after an absence of nearly four years with broad new powers to go anywhere at any time backed by the threat of force. With the clock ticking, Bush traveled across the Potomac River to visit Arlington National Cemetery, lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, praise America's veterans and pledge his resolve against terrorism and Iraq. "This new kind of war also requires us to confront outlaw regimes that seek and possess the tools of mass murder," the president said. "We will not permit a dictator who has used weapons of mass destruction to threaten America with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. This great nation will not live at the mercy of any foreign plot or power." Standing beneath the marble dome of the cemetery's flag-draped amphitheater, the president drew cheers and whistles of approval when he declared, "The dictator of Iraq will fully disarm or the United States will lead a coalition to disarm him." Rumsfeld said he had no doubt that the United States would prevail in the event of war. He said a postwar Iraq would have to remain a single country and have "some sort of representative government." "It will be something that is distinctly Iraqi," he said, like the new interim government of Afghanistan was chosen by the Afghan tradition of the loya jirga. Iraq without Saddam and the U.N. sanctions on his regime would be an economic boost to the Iraqi people and the entire region, Rumsfeld said. In Baghdad, Iraq's parliament condemned the U.N. resolution as full of lies, and a senior lawmaker urged that it be rejected - a prospect that likely would bring on war. Rice dismissed the response and the parliament itself. "I don't think anyone believes this is anything but an absolute dictatorship and this decision is up to Saddam Hussein," she told reporters at the White House. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 7 Saddam's Son Backs U.N. Resolution Las Vegas SUN November 12, 2002 By SAMEER N. YACOUB ASSOCIATED PRESS BAGHDAD, Iraq- Saddam Hussein's son recommended Tuesday that Iraq accept a U.N. resolution on arms inspectors but told parliament the teams should have Arab members and Iraqis should be prepared for war nonetheless. Odai Saddam Hussein made the recommendation in a letter distributed to parliament as it reconvened Tuesday to consider the issue before advising whether Saddam should accept the Security Council resolution. The letter was also distributed to reporters in Baghdad by the Information Ministry. "We have to agree to the U.N. Security Council resolution with limits on certain points, but not, we say, conditions," the president's son said. "There should be Arab experts or technicians and monitors (on the inspection teams) who are familiar with the nuclear, chemical and biological side," he said. Iraq has until Friday to accept or reject the resolution, which threatens "serious consequences" if it does not comply with it provisions to disarm. The United States and Britain have made clear they will attack if Iraq balks. On Monday, Iraqi lawmakers strongly condemned the U.N. resolution but said they would leave the decision how to respond to Saddam. Odai Saddam Hussein said acceptance would not necessarily ward off war, and spoke of a call to have Arab countries cut oil supplies to countries who attack Iraq. "We have to know our enemy and that the U.N. resolution does not mean stopping him from committing military action," he said. "We also have to take precautions and measures and here we have to ask the Arab countries to immediately cut oil supplies to those countries that launch a military strike or aggression on Iraq and to any country that allows foreign war planes to use their airports or offer logistic support for them for refueling," his letter said. Arab oil producers have ignored similar calls from Iraq in the past, saying stopping sales was not in their interest. Lawmakers were expected to vote late Tuesday on how to advise the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, headed by Saddam, which will decide how Iraq responds to the U.N. Security Council resolution. Lawmakers On Monday denounced the resolution, the latest in a long effort to ensure Iraq scraps its weapons of mass destruction, despite the risk of war if Iraq rejects it. The first legislator to speak Tuesday renewed the condemnation, calling the resolution "a roadmap for invading Iraq." "Why do we discuss it when it is trap to create a pretext to attack Iraq," lawmaker Adnan Rashid asked. The parliament's foreign relations committee has already recommended that Iraq reject the resolution. However, lawmakers have said they would ultimately trust any decision Saddam makes. The Iraqi president has used parliament's action as cover for difficult decisions in the past, and the harsh rhetoric did not necessarily mean parliament would reject the proposal. In Washington, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, rejected the legitimacy of parliament's debate on the resolution. "One has to be a bit skeptical of the independence of the Iraqi parliament from Saddam Hussein," she said Monday. "I don't think anyone believes this is anything but an absolute dictatorship and this decision is up to Saddam Hussein." She also said Iraq has no right to accept or reject the resolution. "They are obligated to accept, but the U.N. thought it best to ask for return-receipt requested," Rice said. Parliament is stacked with Saddam's allies, and Monday night's speeches were aired live on Iraqi television. Lawmakers applauded every mention of Saddam's name in speeches, praising "His Excellency Mr. President, the holy warrior leader Saddam Hussein." On convening Tuesday's session, Parliament speaker Saadoun Hammadi told lawmakers the resolution "does not have the minimum of fairness, objectivity and balance." "This resolution includes many impossible demands that can't be executed," Hammadi said. Iraq maintains it no longer has any weapons of mass destruction, and lawmaker Ismail Nasif Jassim called the 30-day period for Iraq to provide documents on its weapons programs "illogical and a way to provoke Iraq." The U.N. resolution gives inspectors unrestricted access to any suspected weapons site and the right to interview Iraqi scientists outside the country and without Iraqi officials present. Jassim described the provision for interviewing scientists outside Iraq as "a violation of human rights because it demands of any Iraqi they want to interview to travel abroad with their family." Iraq has insisted on respect for its sovereignty, an argument it has used in the past to restrict access to Saddam's palaces. "Whoever formulated the text of that resolution deliberately chose (points) that contradict Iraq's sovereignty and conflict with the dignity of the people," Hammadi said. State-controlled newspapers castigated the resolution Tuesday, but their editorials did not say the government should reject it. One paper, Al-Iraq, said the resolution demanded "quiet wisdom." Tuesday's session of parliament was not broadcast live on Iraqi television, leaving Iraqis unaware of how the parliament was likely to vote. It was carried live by Al-Jazeera, the Qatari-based Arabic satellite channel. Iraqis cannot receive Al-Jazeera as the government bans satellite dishes. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 8 Iraqi Lawmakers Vote Down U.N. Plan Las Vegas SUN November 12, 2002 By SAMEER N. YACOUB ASSOCIATED PRESS BAGHDAD, Iraq- Iraq's parliament unanimously recommended rejection of a tough U.N. resolution on arms inspections Tuesday, but said the final decision would be left to Saddam Hussein. The United Nations has asked Iraq to respond by Friday. Tuesday's vote by the rubber-stamp parliament could be seen as strengthening Saddam's hand if he wants to take a hard line. The vote came hours after Saddam's son - whose voice carries weight in Iraq - recommended accepting the resolution, but with the condition that inspection teams have Arab members. According to a parliamentary resolution read during the session, the 250-member parliament accepted Monday's recommendation by its foreign relations committee to reject the U.N. resolution. It also said the "political leadership" should "adopt what it considers appropriate to defend the Iraqi people and Iraq's independence and dignity and authorizes President Saddam Hussein to adopt what he sees as appropriate expressing our full support for his wise leadership." Parliament speaker Saadoun Hammadi asked deputies to vote on the first clause of the resolution by a show of hands and announced it had been accepted unanimously. It was not clear how many members were present. Hammadi then called for a vote on the second clause referring the matter to Saddam, and again announced unanimous approval. A third vote was held for the entire proposal, and it also was approved unanimously. Iraq has until Friday to accept or reject the resolution the U.N. Security Council approved unanimously last Friday. If it does not, or falters afterward in following the tough provisions of the resolution, the United States and Britain have made clear they will attack Iraq. Saddam had asked lawmakers to convene an emergency session to advise the ruling Revolutionary Command Council he heads on how to respond to the United Nations. The debate began Monday night. Tuesday's session of parliament was not broadcast live on Iraqi television, leaving Iraqis relying on international radio to follow the parliament session. The U.N. resolution demands inspectors have unrestricted access to any suspected weapons site and the right to interview Iraqi scientists outside the country and without Iraqi officials present - issues that could become points of dispute. Iraq has insisted on respect for its sovereignty, an argument it used in the past to restrict access to Saddam's palaces. Saddam's son, Odai Saddam Hussein, distributed a letter to parliament as it reconvened Tuesday recommending the acceptance of the U.N. ruling with the condition that Arab members have a greater role. The letter was also distributed to reporters in Baghdad by the Information Ministry. "We have to agree to the U.N. Security Council resolution with limits on certain points, but not, we say, conditions," the president's son said. "There should be Arab experts or technicians and monitors (on the inspection teams) who are familiar with the nuclear, chemical and biological side," he said. Odai Saddam Hussein said acceptance would not necessarily ward off war, and spoke of a call to have Arab countries cut oil supplies to countries that attack Iraq. "We have to know our enemy and that the U.N. resolution does not mean stopping him from committing military action," he said. "We also have to take precautions and measures and here we have to ask the Arab countries to immediately cut oil supplies to those countries that launch a military strike or aggression on Iraq and to any country that allows foreign war planes to use their airports or offer logistic support for them for refueling," his letter said. Arab oil producers have ignored similar calls from Iraq in the past. Arab League foreign ministers who met over the weekend in Egypt and urged Saddam to accept the resolution but also demanded that Arab arms experts be included on the U.N. teams. The United States has portrayed similar calls in the past from Baghdad as unacceptable attempts to manipulate the United Nations. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice has warned Iraq to bow to the resolution without wasting "the world's time with another game of cat and mouse." Odai Saddam Hussein, who won 99.99 percent of the vote in his constituency in the last parliamentary elections in 2000, has a high profile, running an influential newspaper and a television station. Flamboyant and said to have a violent temper, he was considered the main candidate to succeed his father as leader of Iraq until he was badly injured in a 1996 assassination attempt. His younger and lower key brother, Qusai, is now believed to hold a stronger position and has several important posts, including head of the Republican Guards, the country's best-trained and equipped troops. In Washington, Condoleezza Rice, rejected the legitimacy of parliament's debate on the resolution. "One has to be a bit skeptical of the independence of the Iraqi parliament from Saddam Hussein," she said Monday. "I don't think anyone believes this is anything but an absolute dictatorship and this decision is up to Saddam Hussein." She also said Iraq has no right to accept or reject the resolution. "They are obligated to accept, but the U.N. thought it best to ask for return-receipt requested," Rice said. Iraq maintains it no longer has any weapons of mass destruction, and lawmaker Ismail Nasif Jassim called the 30-day period for Iraq to provide documents on its weapons programs "illogical and a way to provoke Iraq." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 9 Nuclear capability becoming easier -- The Washington Times November 12, 2002 By Ralph Joseph THE WASHINGTON TIMES      ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A prominent Pakistani nuclear scientist who has criticized his nation for developing nuclear weapons says he doubts North Korea needs Pakistan's help to make its own atom bombs.      Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at the Quaid-i-Azam University, said: "Nuclear technology is not very difficult. In a few years, almost every country in the world is going to have it."       His remarks follow reports that Pakistan supplied North Korean with equipment, including centrifuge machines used to make weapons-grade uranium in exchange for rockets and missile technology.      President Pervez Musharraf denied the reports.      Mr. Hoodbhoy, who has criticized his own country and India for their game of nuclear brinkmanship in the recent military standoff, conceded that U.S. officials had a seemingly plausible theory of a Pakistani-North Korean exchange in the 1990s.      "You know, the Pakistani Ghauri missile is based on the North Korean Nodong," he said.      It was conceivable that Islamabad paid for the missile technology by supplying Pyongyang with uranium-enrichment technology, but the nuclear programs of the two countries are so small that it would be easy for both sides to hide any collaboration. "Only those who are involved would know," he said.      North Korea recently shocked the world by admitting to U.S. officials that it had begun refining bomb-grade uranium in violation of a 1994 agreement to give up nuclear weapons.      Mr. Hoodbhoy said there are sources other than Pakistan for the North Koreans to acquire uranium-enrichment technology. "There are the Chinese, for example," he said.      An Indian analyst, meanwhile, suggested that Pakistan had earlier acquired its uranium-enrichment technology by stealing it from the Russians.      B. Raman, director of the Institute of Topical Studies in Chennai, India, said in an article reprinted in the Lahore newspaper the Weekly Independent that a Pakistani intelligence operative, retired Maj. Gen. Sultan Habib, "had distinguished himself in the clandestine procurement and theft" of nuclear material while posted as defense attache in the Pakistani Embassy in Moscow from 1991 to 1993.      Mr. Raman does not provide his sources but said Gen. Habib was later "posted as ambassador to North Korea to oversee the clandestine nuclear and missile cooperation between North Korea and Pakistan." All site contents copyright © 2002 News World Communications, Inc. ***************************************************************** 10 A triumph for Taliban's tutors -- The Washington Times November 12, 2002 Arnaud de Borchgrave      One of Pakistan's most notorious homegrown terrorists was elected to parliament — from prison. As      Azam Tariq emerged from confinement a free man, he stepped into a limousine and was driven away by his own armed guards. His pro-Taliban, pro-al Qaeda outlawed party, Sipah-e-Sahaba (Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet), was one of five extremist groups banned by President Pervez Musharraf last January as he tried to dulcify U.S. concerns. The Pakistani police blame Tariq's Guardians, the country's most violent group, for some 400 killings in the last year alone.      The U.S. also bustled Mr. Musharraf on free elections. The unanticipated result was the emergence of a coalition of six politico-religious extremist parties as a key partner in the horse-trading for a national coalition government. If excluded, Islamist extremists would then become a disloyal opposition dedicated to sabotaging Pakistan's post-9/11 links with the U.S. The Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA, or United Action Council) is led by Fazul-ur-Rehman, a fiery antediluvian demagogue, friend of both Mullah Mohammed Omar, the former Taliban leader, and the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden. Mr. Rehman suddenly became the other two major political factions' choice for prime minister. His campaign appearances were festooned with "Osama bin Laden the Liberator" and "U.S. Go Home" posters and banners. One of the Bush administration's ranking national security officials confided privately, "Better to have the crazies in than out of government." The U.S. State Department praised the Pakistani elections as "an important milestone in the ongoing transition to democracy." Apparently unbeknownst to the State Department, democracy was the big loser in Pakistan. So much for the idea of free elections in a Muslim country with a population of 145 million that is more than half illiterate.      To call Pakistan an ally in the war against terrorism has become an oxymoron. Mr. Rehman and his cohort Sami ul-Haq were the tutors to most of Taliban's top leadership. Two years ago, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden delivered joint commencement addresses at the University for the Education of Truth — one of Pakistan's principal madrassas — in the township of Khattak near Peshawar. Now Taliban cadres are free again to come and go into Afghanistan as they please without fear of arrest. Because the Oct. 10 elections also gave control of the regional governments of two of Pakistan's four provinces — Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan — to those who guard the friends of the prophet. The entire length of the Pakistan-Afghan frontier is now once again the dominion of anti-American religious extremists. From the provincial capitals of Peshawar and Quetta, they will run police forces, border guards and paramilitary scouts. Sharia law will be strictly enforced.      Everything appears to be in place for a rebirth of Taliban — on both sides of the border. In Afghanistan, letters have been found tacked to trees urging an uprising against American "occupation" forces that have made "our Afghan sisters their servants and slaves." Several girls schools have been attacked, two by rocket-propelled grenades. Religious conservatives are still the law outside of Kabul. Warlords use the sharia and opium and heroin smuggling to buy weapons and consolidate their hold. Opium production, banned by Taliban in 2000, was down to 185 tons last year. This year, opium is expected to yield 3,500 tons, on its way up to peak production of 5,000 tons in 1999. "Afghan brown sugar" is the country's only cash crop that doesn't require much water, a boon in a country that has suffered from drought for four consecutive years. Taliban's infamous Ministry for the Protection of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice still holds sway in distant provinces. In Kabul, Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah says the Karzai government is losing credibility because little of the $1.8 billion in emergency reconstruction aid pledged in Tokyo last January for 2002 by some 60 nations and 20 international organizations has made it into the country, let alone the $4.5 billion through 2007.      The man who engineered the victory of Pakistan's fundamentalist parties was Hamid Gul, a retired former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) who acted as "strategic adviser" to MMA. Gen. Gul's reward: a Senate seat. Some 300 ISI officers who had been working with Taliban prior to September 11 and were transferred to regular army units have now been returned to the intelligence agency. NWFP and Baluchistan are once again privileged sanctuaries for al Qaeda — a clear and present danger for President Bush's war on terror." This week, Gen. Gul publicly praised MMA's top leaders as "saints just like [former Taliban leader] Mullah Omar" and hailed Saddam Hussein, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, Fidel Castro, the Assads (father and son) in Syria, China and Iran for "standing up to America's new world order, the cruelest system on earth. But we have the nuclear capacity, a gift from God, to resist its imposition on us."      The unholy nexus between Mr. Musharraf, the mullahs and the terrorists was clearly not the result the president had anticipated. But there is little doubt it was the key objective of Gen. Gul and his ISI cronies. The two dozen arrests of al Qaeda types in Pakistan were the result of FBI coordination with the Interior Ministry, not ISI.      By keeping Pakistan's two most prominent political leaders — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — out of the political contest and in exile abroad, Mr. Musharraf ensured major extremist gains (from 5 percent to 20 percent; from two seats in the old parliament to 60) as well as 116 seats for the "king's party," PML-QA (Pakistan Muslim League-Qaid-e-Azam), where retired army friends and ISI officers were recruited to run. This pro-Musharraf spinoff of Mr. Sharif's PML scored the largest single gain of any party.      If the U.S. goes to war against Iraq, Pakistan may well go the way of Yugoslavia. It could easily blow into four deadly parts and where the country's nuclear arsenal would wind up is anyone's guess. Mr. Musharraf is not an Islamist, but a number of jealous, ambitious generals are. The president has survived six assassination plots. In the event of Mr. Musharraf's demise, ISI would play a major role in the struggle for succession.      ISI's role in supplying North Korea with nuclear know-how for its missile warheads in return for North Korean missile technology for Pakistan's nuclear delivery vehicles had been a closely guarded state secret. So when the New York Times broke the story, it was yet another awkward pause in the make-believe world of a Pakistani-U.S. alliance. The chief of the North Korean Air Force has been a frequent visitor to Islamabad since September 11, 2001. He stays at the Marriott Hotel and doesn't even bother to conceal his identity; he wears his uniform.      Scanning editorials from Buenos Aires to Bombay, it is hard to find anyone who believes war on Iraq has anything to do with the war on terror. They concluded months ago what Forbes magazine headlined in its Oct. 28 issue — "Bomb Baghdad, hit OPEC" — with this explanation: "Defeating Saddam means opening up Iraq's oil reserves. Bad news for oil producers and good news for everyone else." Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large for The Washington Times, a position he also holds with United Press International. All site contents copyright © 2002 News World Communications, Inc. ***************************************************************** 11 Echoes of the Energy Crisis / Nuclear power -- the wrong fix [http://sfgate.com] [chronfeedback@sfchronicle.com] Tuesday, November 12, 2002 --> The corollary of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" might be "If it's broke, don't make it worse." Clearly, our national energy policy is broken. America's increasing reliance on fossil fuels leaves us with a litany of serious problems ranging from poisoned air to a national security dilemma. One solution to our dependence on these polluting, foreign sources of energy promoted by the Bush administration and some in Congress working on the energy bill is an increased reliance on nuclear power. But nuclear power presents a whole host of dangers that pose even more serious problems than fossil fuels. No one in this country has ordered a new nuclear power plant since 1978. The industry and its allies in Washington hope to change that. The proposed energy bill would create the Nuclear Power 2010 program, which uses taxpayer dollars to subsidize nuclear licensing applications and site permitting for new reactors with the goal of having new reactors up and running by the end of this decade. The energy bill would also reauthorize the Price-Anderson Act, which exempts nuclear plant operators from full liability to the public in the event of a serious nuclear accident. The events of Sept. 11 have raised serious concerns about security at nuclear plants. Prior to the attacks, nearly half of the nation's nuclear power plants failed to repel small groups of intruders on foot in "force-on- force" exercises conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This dismal performance would have been even worse if the mock attacking forces had been assigned capabilities comparable to those of the Sept. 11 terrorists. Yet, the NRC suspended these tests indefinitely after Sept. 11. In addition, a new study by the nonpartisan group Project on Government Oversight shows that security personnel at nuclear plants are understaffed, undertrained and underequipped to deal with existing threats. Recent media reports that senior al Qaeda operatives still consider U.S. nuclear plants targets underscore the extent of the safety risk. Nuclear waste is recognized as the most dangerous substance known. The industry recently convinced Congress to bury the problem in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, even though the geological characteristics of Yucca Mountain do not lend themselves to permanent nuclear waste storage. Problems include the 33 earthquake faults intersecting the area; much faster water flows through the mountain than anticipated; and the proposed storage site is situated above an aquifer that provides drinking water to a nearby community. To offset anticipated problems with radioactive containment, the Environmental Protection Agency's radiation protection standards were weakened by the Bush administration. Moving the waste to Yucca Mountain will involve extensive truck, rail and barge shipments. An estimated 14,000 shipments of fuel could be trucked through California over a period of almost 40 years. Terrorism experts refer to this scenario as a "target rich" environment. Reactor cooling systems devastate marine life and ecosystems. A cooling technology called "once-through" is used at the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear plants in California. These plants, situated on coastal waters, draw in as much as a billion gallons of water per reactor a day, devastating marine life, including endangered sea turtles and seals, which are sucked into the cooling system and trapped against filters and grates or drown. Nuclear power is also singularly expensive. Most of the cost is hidden in the form of government subsidies and tax breaks. During its nascent period (1947 to 1961), the nuclear power industry was subsidized to the tune of $15. 30 per kilowatt-hour. By the same token, from 1975 to 1989, wind power received a subsidy of 46 cents per kilowatt-hour. There can be no doubt that our energy policy is broken, but new reactors are definitely not the fix we need. The long-term solution lies in renewable energy sources, such as wind, geothermal, biomass and solar. Initiatives such as California's 20 percent by 2017 Renewable Portfolio Standard, which Gov. Gray Davis signed into law in September, is the solution to our problems. Lynn Woolsey is the representative from the Sixth Congressional District and a member of the House Subcommittee on Energy. Bernadette Del Chiaro is the energy advocate for CalPIRG, the state environmental and consumer advocacy organization. ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.   Page A - 19 ***************************************************************** 12 Ontario set for energy retreat "FT.com"> [http://www.ft.com] [http://www.hoovers.com/uk] By Dan Westell in Toronto Published: November 11 2002 22:22 | Last Updated: November 11 2002 22:22 [Canada] The government of Ontario on Monday ended its short-lived electricity deregulation programme, replacing market rates with price caps and rebates. The move followed a disastrous summer for the energy police of Ernie Eves, the premier, and effectively ends his Progressive Conservative administration's deregulation of electricity prices that began on May 1. For proponents of a free market for electricity, the announcement fulfilled their worst fears by putting the government back in control of the business. Mr Eves said the government will cap prices at the pre-deregulation level of C$4.3 cents (US$2.75) a kilowatt hour and hold the price there until 2006. It will then refund the difference between C$4.3 cents and the market price, if it is more than C$6 cents in July and August and over C$8 cents in September, months when prices were at their highest. Electricity prices had become a volatile political issue. As electricity charges mounted and stories circulated of pensioners who were facing selling their homes because they could not pay their bills, the government gave in. Last week, there was speculation that if Mr Eves called an election next year, as expected, the Progressive Conservatives would lose because of the electricity issue. The price increase was largely due to a long run of exceptionally hot summer days that drove prices up. Electricity has been a public monopoly in Ontario for most of the past century, with generation and long-distance transmission in the hands of a Crown corporation. The corporation ran up a C$38bn (US$24.4bn) debt by the 1990s, for which the province of Ontario is responsible. Much of that debt was accumulated in the corporation's programme of building expensive nuclear plants. But successive administrations in Toronto, including those controlled by the Conservatives, then imposed rate freezes, leaving the company effectively bankrupt. When most of the rate freezes ended in May this year, the price of electricity increased, spurred on by the hot weather. "Now they see what electricity costs and they don't like that," said Peter Budd, an energy lawyer who has been active in deregulating the market. The price jump was exacerbated by an unexpected supply shortage at Ontario Power Generation, the government-owned generator. By June, it was supposed to have refurbished the first of four units at the 2000-megawatt Pickering A nuclear reactor east of Toronto, which supplies about 9 per cent of Ontario's electricity. But last month Mr Osborne said the first units to be refurbished would not be completed before next year - behind schedule and over budget - and the other three units would take up to 2006 to be back in service. © Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2002. "FT" and "Financial Times" ***************************************************************** 13 Tokyo, Seoul: KEDO vital, North must give up nukes asahi.com : ENGLISH Asahi Shimbun www.asahi.com [http://www.asahi.com/] JAPANESE The Asahi Shimbun SEOUL-Japan and South Korea called Monday on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program in a ``prompt and verifiable manner'' while agreeing to continue to support an international project to build Pyongyang two light-water nuclear reactors. While expressing concern about Pyongyang's recent nuclear revelations, visiting Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and Choi Sung Hong, her South Korean counterpart, decided it is vital to maintain the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO). They met on the sidelines of the Second Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies, which started Sunday and ends Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was due to meet Kawaguchi and Choi but had to cancel his trip to Seoul citing the Iraq situation. The KEDO project had seemed in jeopardy since Pyongyang's admission last month that it clandestinely continued a uranium enrichment program in violation of a 1994 agreement with the United States. Kawaguchi and Choi said KEDO offers the most realistic way to stop the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) from continuing with nuclear weapons development. They reaffirmed the need to closely coordinate with Washington, which has adopted a hard-line policy against North Korea under the Bush administration. KEDO, headquartered in New York, is comprised of Japan, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), the United States and the European Union. The consortium was established in 1995 after the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework was concluded in October 1994. Under that agreement, KEDO pledged to fund and build two light-water nuclear reactors to help North Korea stave off energy shortages. In return, the North was supposed to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Kawaguchi and Choi also discussed a possible U.S. freeze on supplies of heavy oil to North Korea in retaliation for Pyongyang's brazen violation of the 1994 agreement under which the United States agreed to ship 500,000 tons of heavy oil to North Korea annually until the first reactor is completed. Kawaguchi and Choi expressed concern the freeze of oil shipments could jeopardize the KEDO framework and decided to ask Washington to carefully consider how it handles the shipment scheduled for November. They agreed to try to find a common ground between Tokyo, Seoul and Washington before a scheduled KEDO meeting in New York on Thursday. Whether to continue the shipments will be a focus of the meeting. Later Monday, Kawaguchi met with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. They both reiterated their desire for the North's nuclear issue to be handled in close coordination among the three allies.(IHT/Asahi: November 12,2002) (11/12) [Copyright Asahi Shimbun. All rights reserved. No reproduction ***************************************************************** 14 Pro Nuke propaganda push Carly's Seat Just Got Hotter An Israeli Newcomer's Bold Peace Plan In March, 1979, leaking coolant at Three Mile Island Reactor Unit 2 in Pennsylvania brought the nuclear power plant within 30 minutes of a catastrophic meltdown. The accident was contained, and only small amounts of radioactive gas escaped from the damaged reactor. The near disaster marked the beginning of the end of America's romance with atomic fission. Yet it didn't curtail the growth of nuclear power. Indeed, ever since Three Mile Island, efficiency improvements have helped nuclear-power generation to grow steadily, even as the number of functioning commercial reactors in the U.S. has fallen to 103, from a peak of 109. And over the next decade, nuclear output will grow an additional 10%, says Tom Christopher, CEO of Framatome ANP Inc., the U.S. unit of Paris-based Framatome ANP, the world's largest provider of nuclear-engineering services. The result will be an additional 10,000 megawatts' worth of electrical capacity -- the equivalent of 8 to 10 big nuclear facilities -- without requiring the construction of a single new plant. The surge in capacity growth, Christopher says, is a result of the ongoing relicensing of the nation's commercial nuclear fleet. Today's power plants were commissioned to split atoms for not more than four decades. Starting in the late 1990s, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) began to extend that term to 60 years on a plant-by-plant basis. The extensions have opened the door to major capital investment, much of which is funneled through Framatome. Plants pay the engineering company to upgrade their key systems, replacing clunky, '70s generators, mechanical switches, and manual gauges with high-efficiency motors and digital controls. The upshot is not just increased output but improved safety, says Christopher, a 29-year veteran of the nuclear-power business. BusinessWeek Industries Editor Adam Aston met with Christopher to learn more about the surprising growth of the nation's nuclear capacity. Edited excerpts from their conversation follow: Q: Why have the operating extensions made such a difference to the industry? A: Under NRC guidelines, the operators can submit an application for a renewed license within three years of a facility's 30th year. The renewal adds 20 years to the plant's original 40-year license. The life extensions open the door to capital improvements and make it possible for operators to take advantage of the lessons learned over the past 30 years, and to retool and upgrade for another 30. Q: What kinds of changes are taking place? A: Every year, our ability to upgrade a plant improves. Productivity gains have been so high over the past 20 years that our costs to upgrade a plant have fallen by half. For instance, when a nuke [plant] refuels, which is every 15 to 18 months, it's required to do an intensive inspection. In the past, that was done by people -- even in high-risk radioactive areas. Now in practically every instance, we have a robot do the work. These machines can even do repairs -- they can weld and grind. So now, labor counts for only about 30% of the value we provide in an upgrade. Q: What's the scale of these upgrades? A: It depends on what the operator is willing to spend. And that, in turn, depends on the average price of power over the plant's remaining years. If you assume a conservative price -- say $2.50 to $3.50 per megawatt hour -- a typical facility could justify $100 million to $200 million in spending per reactor and still recover that over 20 years. These refits can be big operations. Picture a Navy ship that comes into a shipyard for a refitting, with hundreds of workers fixing and upgrading the ship. We do the reverse. We take the shipyard to the ship. During a fueling outage, it's not unusual for a plant to have 900 contractors on site. Q: How do you decide what to replace? A: The majority of U.S. plants were designed in the late '60s and '70s. In many ways, they're crude by today's standards. But they were designed very conservatively, with lots of redundancy, so there are parts that don't need to be changed. Also, it varies with the unit. If the plant is on a lake and cannot increase its discharge of cooling water, then upgrading its generating capacity isn't an option. If a plant is able to boost its output, then we can replace the steam turbines and generators. A lot of little things can also increase efficiency -- and power output. Thousands of detectors in a nuclear plant measure things like temperature and pressure. Each is connected to an electromechanical control panel. You can replace those analog detectors and gauges with microprocessors that will do more. And you can integrate the controls into a simpler system that requires fewer engineers to monitor. We can also reduce the house load power -- the electricity the plant needs to operate. The cuts can be significant -- say, 40 to 60 megawatts. It's not unusual for a plant to have 3,000 motor-operated valves. We can replace these valves and pumps with more efficient variable-speed motors, cutting the house load by 10%. And all that [saved] power can be sold to market. Q: What's the net effect of these upgrades? A: You will hear industry people say we've begun a period of pseudo-construction of new nuclear plants in the U.S. On average, we'll see a 10% capacity increase from the nuclear plants here, so you're talking 10,000 megawatts in the next 10 years. Q: What sorts of efficiency gains have we already seen? A: Think of it in terms of capacity factor, which is the industry's actual production as a percentage of its potential maximum. The average for the U.S.'s 103 nuclear plants is 91%, the highest such rating in the world. It means that a typical plant is down only 9% of the year, or 33 to 35 days. That's remarkable, especially since, in the early '70s, that measure was 60% or so -- around eighth place compared with other national nuclear fleets. The improvement began before the current round of relicensing. It's due partly to the efforts of the industry associations to share operating practices. Q: Yet U.S. investment in new nuclear plants and technology has all but stalled. So where are these updated systems coming from? A: The U.S. industry designed and constructed its plants in the '60s and '70s. At the time, the Germans and particularly the French took the U.S. plant designs, modified them, and then began the creation of this large French fleet. But they built their units using mostly late '70s and early '80s technology. Since then, France has religiously been going back and backfitting those plants. So when Framatome talks to a U.S. customer today, we say, "Before you rebuild, we will be your window on the world." We can take U.S. customers to a European plant that started with American designs and then optimized them. Q: Will the U.S. build any new nuclear plants? A: Given the volatility of power prices, nuclear operators look at the near term -- say, three to five years. In that time, is anybody going to need a big base-load nuclear plant [i.e., a large-capacity facility that is run continuously]? Not likely. In 5 to 10 years, there may be a window. If so, the decision will probably be driven by other issues, such as environmental constraints. You might see the value of nuclear facilities rise if the world moves toward some sort of carbon tax. Since nuclear power emits no greenhouse gases, it could be used to offset dirtier sources. It's impossible to predict what sort of energy technology will be available then. Perhaps we'll have a hydrogen economy, where nuclear power will be used to split water into hydrogen gas. Q: What are your thoughts on radioactive waste? A: It's important to put the problem in context. I've seen data that say if you take all of the spent fuel rods generated in nuclear plants in the U.S. and stack them up, you'll have a pile that's 10 yards high and fits inside a football field. That's it. Now, the issue is how do we deal with it. To us, Yucca Mountain [a waste-storage facility in Nevada] is the ideal solution. And frankly, the tax that's currently in the electricity rates -- two-tenths of a cent per kilowatt hour -- would be more than enough to build and operate Yucca Mountain. Q: In 1998, Germany voted to phase out its existing nuclear plants. Does this mean few nukes will be built abroad? A: Some countries are backing away from nuclear energy. But the news is more positive than negative. Finland just approved a public referendum to build a new nuclear plant. And in the former Soviet Union, they are determined to go back and complete a number of their plants that were never finished. Framatome is completing work on two plants in China. South Korea, of course, also continues to build nuclear plants. And Japan has a robust construction program -- maybe six or eight more plants are planned over the next decade. Edited by Patricia O'Connell BusinessWeek Online story. [http://www.mcgraw-hill.com] Copyright 2002, by The ***************************************************************** 15 U.S., Allies Grapple with N.Korea Nuclear Issue ABCNEWS.com : Nov. 11 — By Paul Eckert SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) - Japan and South Korea reiterated demands Monday for a verifiable halt to North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but failed to work out a shared approach with the United States on ways to end it. The three states put off a decision on halting deliveries of oil to Pyongyang until an allied meeting in New York this week. In the intensifying triangular diplomacy to preempt a second North Korean nuclear crisis in a decade, South Korea hosted Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and James Kelly, the top U.S. negotiator for North Korea. Officials said Kawaguchi's talks with South Korean counterpart Choi Sung-hong and Kelly's separate meetings in Seoul had failed to work out a shared approach to ending North Korea's uranium enrichment program for nuclear arms. At issue is how to halt the program and whether to penalize Pyongyang for violating the 1994 Agreed Framework pact under which North Korea pledged to end an earlier drive for nuclear arms by extracting plutonium. Japan and South Korea said the issue "should not be decided in a hasty way, but that a careful approach will be needed," a Japanese government official said of the ministers' talks. "They decided to leave these issues to KEDO," he said, referring to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization. U.S. officials have been taking a more hard-line tack. In Russia, one of the few countries with any influence on North Korea, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Moscow had no evidence Pyongyang had acquired nuclear weapons. "We have no concrete information that North Korea has produced any nuclear developments or nuclear weapons," Interfax news agency quoted him as telling reporters in Moscow. "It is unimportant who provides information about North Korea having such nuclear developments, but we need clear proof." Russia has asked North Korea for information on its nuclear weapons program since Pyongyang's acknowledgment it was proceeding with it. Russia has been rebuilding Cold War-era ties with North Korea and developing warmer relations with the South. UPHOLDING THE 1994 DEAL KEDO is implementing the 1994 deal, under which North Korea agreed to freeze its program in exchange for 500,000 tons of fuel oil each year and construction of two light-water reactors that cannot easily be converted to produce weapons material. The decision on whether to deliver the latest shipment of oil is expected at a meeting of KEDO's executive board of KEDO Thursday and Friday. The New York meeting will be attended by U.S., Japanese, South Korean and European Union officials. The United States has not announced a decision on the oil shipments, but there are growing calls in Washington to freeze them -- even going as far as recalling the latest shipment of fuel oil that left Singapore for North Korea last week. Tokyo and Seoul believe an end to deliveries would be used by Pyongyang to ignore the deal and proceed with the program. Indirectly stating that concern, the Japanese official said Tokyo and Seoul "agreed on the point that the KEDO arrangement has been effective so far" in freezing North Korea's plutonium-based weapons program. Kelly, who met Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun and other officials, made no public comment. Seoul media quoted Jeong as saying: "North Korea's nuclear program can never be tolerated, but it is desirable to resolve problems peacefully, so the two Koreas should not stop dialogue." In Seoul last week, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith stopped short of criticizing South Korea's engagement with North Korea, but said Pyongyang should not be allowed to conduct "business as usual" after breaking its nuclear pledges. photo credit and caption: A South Korean man wearing a mock radiation suit holds a sign criticising both North Korea's nuclear weapons program and its leader Kim Jong-il (L, on sign) during a protest in Seoul Nov. 13, 2002. South Korea's unification minister said on Wednesday South Korea favoured keeping heavy fuel oil shipments to North Korea going for three months despite Pyongyang's declared nuclear weapons program. Photo by Lee Jae-Won/Reuters Copyright 2002 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 16 [Editorial]A crack in alliance? welcome to Korea Herald!!_Oped http://www.koreaherald.com It is to a worrisome level that tension is building between Seoul and Washington over how to handle Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. Their intense dispute is leading to a question about whether or not it is a sign of a chink in their long alliance against North Korean security threats. As a senior U.S. defense official put it last week, the two sides have a "fundamental disagreement" in their approaches to the uranium enrichment program to which North Korea recently admitted. Washington is calling for penalty, but Seoul is insisting on solving the problem through dialogue while maintaining the current level of engagement with Pyongyang. This difference came to the fore when assistant foreign minister-level officials from South Korea, the United States and Japan met in Tokyo over the weekend to coordinate their policies on North Korea's nuclear program. The key issue at the talks was whether or not to continue to provide North Korea with heavy fuel oil, part of the energy assistance exchanged for a promise to freeze and then remove its nuclear facilities, suspected of producing plutonium, under a 1994 agreement with the United States. The United States called for an immediate order to a tanker carrying the November delivery of heavy oil to turn around before reaching North Korea. But South Korea and Japan voiced strong opposition to the U.S. demand, fearing that a decision to suspend fuel oil deliveries could lead North Korea to completely disregard the 1994 accord and proceed to develop plutonium-based atomic bombs without any inhibition. With the North Korean leadership having proven to be deceptive again, this time with uranium enrichment, the United States made a convincing case about why it wanted to play hardball against Pyongyang together with its allies. Still, South Korea found it extremely difficult to embrace the U.S. desire with open arms for several reasons. First of all, a halt in the delivery of heavy oil could prompt North Korea to reprocess the sealed spent nuclear fuel to produce plutonium and lift its self-imposed moratorium on the test-firing of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which would certainly invite U.S. retaliation. Such an escalation could lead to an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula, which South Korea wishes to avoid at all costs. In addition, it would not be surprising if South Korea suspected the demand for penalty against North Korea was signaling the Bush administration's launch of unilateralism in the wake of the impressive Republican victory in the midterm elections. Ignoring international opinion calling for moderation, the White House might now believe it was given an electoral mandate to further strengthen its hard-line policy against the three nations it grouped in an "axis of evil" - North Korea, Iraq and Iran. Another problem is that prolonged hostility, not to mention an outright war, between Washington and Pyongyang would undo much of what President Kim Dae-jung has achieved in inter-Korean relations since he held a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000 - huge increases in business and sports exchanges and reunions of separated families, to name only a few. Backpedaling on inter-Korean relations would be most unfortunate not only for the two Kims but also for the entire Korean people. When President Kim met with Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Mexico last month, they agreed on this much - to try to solve North Korea's nuclear problem by peaceful means. But it is an open question whether to put concerted diplomatic pressure on or start dialogue with North Korea for a peaceful settlement of the issue. The United States prefers diplomatic pressure, with a White House spokesman quoted as saying, "It's not a question of talking. It's a question of action." But what can it lose if it should take a shot at dialogue first, as recommended by South Korea and Japan? If dialogue should prove to be ineffective, then the United States would gain the authority to demand the use of such diplomatic leverage as denying North Korea heavy oil. It looks all the more worthwhile to try dialogue, with North Korea sending signals through a former U.S. ambassador to Seoul, who recently visited Pyongyang, and other channels that it is ready for a peaceful solution to its nuclear problem. To attain their ultimate goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, the three nations are advised to agree to try dialogue with North Korea and provide it with heavy oil as scheduled when they meet in New York on Thursday. 2002.11.13 (C) Copyright 2000 Digital Korea Herald. All rights reserved. [http://www.seattletimescompany.com/] ***************************************************************** 28 Thyroid at Root of Many Symptoms Women are five to seven times more likely than men to experience thyroid problems, and half do not know it. By Star Lawrence WebMD Medical News Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD Gaining weight, losing weight, exhaustion, the blahs, anxiousness, insomnia, constipation, hair loss, dry skin, pounding heart, infertility -- just about any ailment that can plague a woman often can be traced back to a small, butterfly-shaped gland in the neck called the thyroid. More than 13 million Americans have thyroid problems, and half do not know it. There is a laundry list of symptoms associated with both hypothyroidism (underactive) and hyperthyroidism (overactive). However, Elizabeth Lee Vliet, MD, an internist in Dallas and author of Screaming to be Heard: Hormone Connections Women Suspect, and Doctors Still Ignore and Women, Weight and Hormones, says none of this is as clear cut as many doctors think. For one thing, she says, the thyroid regulates every cell in the body, including the ovarian hormones, and the secondary effects of an imbalance in these hormones can exacerbate problems with the hormones secreted by the thyroid. What Goes Wrong Perhaps for this reason, women are five to seven times more likely than men to experience thyroid problems. As many as 10% develop a thyroid problem after giving birth. The most common single disorder is an autoimmune problem (in which the body "fights" itself) called Hashimoto's disease, which results in underactive thyroid. Women with other autoimmune disorders are at prime risk for some form of thyroid dysfunction. "There is also evidence," Vliet says, "that pollutants such as PCBs and dioxin can damage the thyroid gland [in the womb]." Other culprits are radiation to the neck area and certain medications. Symptoms Most women suffering from hypothyroidism, says Mary Shomon, author of Living Well With Hypothyroidism: What the Doctor Doesn't Tell You ... That You Need to Know, go to the doctor because they are fatigued. "You sleep 10 hours and then need a nap," she says. Other symptoms are weight gain or inability to lose weight, feeling cold, constipation, dry skin, dry hair, hair loss (eyebrows, too), high cholesterol that doesn't submit to drugs or diet, drastically reduced sex drive, and brain fog. Hypothyroidism can also prevent you from getting or staying pregnant and cause a full-feeling neck, swollen hands and feet, muscle pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, or other tendinitis. In short, you may feel lousy. In the case of an overabundance of thyroxin flooding through the system and supercharging every cell to an unhealthy degree, the result can be another autoimmune disorder called Grave's disease. Although late in the progression you may lose weight, Vliet says, at first you will be gaining just as with hypothyroidism. Other symptoms apart from the dry hair and skin and hair loss include a restlessness, inner tension, tossing and turning, and an agitated sort of depression. Despite the misdirected energy, fatigue is a symptom of an overactive thyroid, too. Having hyperthyroidism, Vliet says, is like sitting in park with your foot on the accelerator. Sometimes Grave's disease causes the eyes to bulge slightly. (Graves, Vliet says, is also related to postpartum psychosis in which the ovarian hormones join with the thyroid hormones to produce psychiatric symptoms.) Art of Testing Shomon urges women not to drag (or rev) around feeling bad but to consult a doctor. Probably the first test that will be done is a TSH test for thyroid stimulating hormone, a substance produced by the pituitary gland that regulates the thyroid gland. If the TSH is greater than the upper level of normal (4.5 to 5 mU/L), many doctors will check the "free" T4 level (thyroxin), which costs less than a T4 index, which tests both T3 and T4. A TSH above 2 can mean fertility is impaired, Vliet says. Kenneth R. Blanchard, MD, an endocrinologist in Newton, Mass., says what he learned in medical school -- to test only TSH -- was flat wrong. He always tests for T3 and T4. "I have seen people living in misery with 100% T4," he emphasizes. Vliet also tests for T3 and T4, as well as antibodies that can cause autoimmune problems. "You can have shortages of T3 and T4 before the TSH goes up or down," she says. "Women with significantly elevated antibodies may need medication before the TSH reaches 4 or 5." "We're patients, not lab values" is Shomon's motto. She says the range of "bad" test results is too small and that doctors will dismiss the same set of symptoms in one woman as hypochondria if the test readings are a few tenths of a point lower than in another woman with the same complaints. Vliet and Blanchard specialize in nailing down and treating thyroid dysfunction at varying levels for each woman. Treatment Treatment of both hypo- and hyperthyroidism is not totally benign. A careful diagnosis is important. Hypothyroid is an underproduction of thyroxin, so levothyroxine sodium (Synthroid, Levoxyl) is given. "They used to tell you one pill a day and you'll be fine," Shomon says. Now, she and Blanchard recommend giving T3. "In a low dose," Vliet says. "High-dose T3 can cause heart attacks." As for treating hyperthyroidism, radioactive iodine is sometimes used or the gland is surgically removed. Treating hyperthyroidism is tricky. Vliet herself immediately defers to an endocrinologist. Shomon urges baseline testing for women at 35, as well as at least a TSH test before getting pregnant, four months postpartum, and before starting on antidepressants or hormone replacement therapy. "If your HMO won't cover the test, you can get an FDA-approved home test." With the fine-tuning required with this delicate gland, however, a doctor's supervision is highly recommended. Star Lawrence is a medical journalist based in Chandler, Ariz. Published Nov. 11, 2002. © 1996-2002 WebMD Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 29 UK: Ministers play down ferry bomb threat BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Tuesday, 12 November, 2002, 23:11 [Dover coastline] Dover officials have stepped up searches The Home Office has moved to calm fears about the UK's ports being targeted by terrorists. Ministers said intelligence about possible threats had been general rather than specific. And they urged passengers not to abandon their travel plans, despite an increase in security checks and searches. The increased security measures came after a leaked intelligence report suggested a lorry packed with explosives would be driven on to a ferry. The BBC's Frank Gardner on why terror threat has deepened Media warning Security sources were quick to say this particular report was "unreliable". But they insist there is clear evidence al-Qaeda wants to attack the UK, which is why extra security measures are needed. The prime minister's official spokesman said: "There is a lot of intelligence around. "Every piece of it in the hands of certain journalists could, no doubt, lead the news. "But I think we have to ask whether that is, in the circumstances we find ourselves, necessarily a helpful way to conduct the debate." High alert Ferry ports, as well as other transport operators, were warned last week of the continued need to be watchful, it has emerged. News of the alert came as Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Britons to be vigilant against the high risk of terrorist attack - saying there were threats received almost every day. The information about a terrorist threat to a ferry is believed to have come from the FBI. The state of alert is at its highest level since the current warning system was introduced two years ago, although it is not at the top state of alert possible. However a security source told the BBC that the threat was being given too much credence. The UK's transport security warning service, Transec, told ports on Friday there was no "credible information and intelligence" to support recent alerts from the French and Dutch authorities of a possible terrorist act against ferries. "Threat levels to British maritime interests remain unchanged," said Transec. Lorry drivers questioned However, at about the same time all British ports with roll-on roll-off ferry services were ordered to a level of alert described as "heightened emergency" - the highest state they have been on since the current alert system was introduced. Robin Dodridge, head of operations and security at Dover, said ports around the country had been told "to further tighten up their security levels to Christmas and particularly at this time". Tony Blair warns Britons to be vigilant Searching of lorry traffic and other security measures had been stepped up, said Mr Dodridge. The whole port area had also been searched from "top to toe" on Friday morning after a general bomb threat - but nothing was found. That threat, received by the Immigration Service, was "not actually specific to Dover but Dover as a port was implicit in it", added Mr Dodridge. The AFP news agency said several Nordic ferry companies including Color Line, which operates routes to the UK, had boosted their security at the weekend following the warning. Travel advice Home Office Minister John Denham sought to reassure travellers that there was no need to alter their arrangements in the light of the advice. "From time to time, things are done at ports and other places to switch ships' security arrangements or whatever. "But this is part of the general programme of ensuring they keep their awareness at a high level," he said. "There is no basis here for anybody thinking they should not travel," he said. © MMII | News Sources | Privacy + ***************************************************************** 30 Weapons inspectors count on new technology Mercury News | 11/11/2002 | By Lisa M. Krieger and Dan Stober The GeneChip or DNA Chip developed by Santa Clara's Affymetrix detects biological specimens that could help identify biological weapons. Some of the world's best scientific detectives soon will be shipped off to one of the planet's harshest environments, with the prospect of war hanging over every move they make. Armed with some of the latest sleuthing technologies, international inspectors will be searching through Iraq, looking for weapons that may or may not exist. What they discover amid Iraq's heat, dust and hostility could not only determine whether that country comes under attack from the United States, but also could have global implications for arms control and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Inspectors will come equipped with state-of-the-art sensors -- but they will face challenges never confronted in a scientific lab. There could be delays, obstructions, bugging, obscured evidence and a succession of manufactured crises designed to complicate a search. They have a deadline: They must report back to the United Nations within three months. It will be hot and dirty, with electricity in short supply. The stakes will be global, the pressure intense. It's like no other science project. The U.N. Security Council on Friday backed a tough resolution that gives the inspectors ``immediate, unimpeded and unconditional'' rights to search anywhere for weapons of mass destruction, including Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces. An advance team of U.N. weapons inspectors will arrive in Baghdad the last week of November. Iraq denies it has any such weapons. ``The tougher the inspection, the greater will be its chance of success,'' said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. ``And, perhaps paradoxically, the tougher the inspections, the greater the likelihood that war can be avoided. If it's easy for Iraq to evade inspection, the more likely it is that Americans will think it's all a sham -- and will feel that our only recourse is to go to war.'' There are many new detection tools available to the inspectors since they last visited Iraq in 1998, then left after repeated disputes about access to suspected sites, prompting Desert Fox, a U.S. bombing campaign. These include: • Permanent stationary cameras that will monitor everything from Iraqi stores of natural uranium ore to tests of short-range rockets. • Portable X-ray devices that can instantly determine the composition of specialized metal parts, which may be a tipoff to the true use of a piece of industrial machinery. • Hand-held detectors that use advanced Polymerase Chain Reaction technology to identify anthrax and other organisms. • Laptop computers equipped with global-positioning systems to help the inspectors get around the desert quickly, while encrypted communications allow them to plan surprise inspections without the Iraqis eavesdropping. Old-fashioned intelligence work is just as important, answering questions such as: Who are Iraq's key scientists? Where do they work? Where were they trained? While there are many places to hide a lab in a nation the size of California, relatively few people know the inner workings of these labs. Since inspectors last visited, the CIA says, there is good evidence that Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons efforts, energized its missile program and invested more heavily in biological weapons. How quickly Iraq will obtain its first nuclear weapon depends on when it acquires sufficient weapons-grade material. Some production facilities are thought to be concealed; others may be mobile. Still others are likely to be dual-use, meaning they can be readily diverted from peacetime chemicals to chemical weapons production. ``A realistic goal of the U.N. inspection regime is not to eliminate every last weapon, which is probably impossible, but to deny Iraq a militarily significant weapons capability, which I believe is probably do-able,'' said Jonathan Tucker, a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and a 1995 biological weapons inspector in Iraq, at a Washington, D.C., press briefing last month. Once in the field, inspectors will seek evidence of: Nuclear weaponsIraq retains its cadre of nuclear scientists and technicians, its program documentation and sufficient dual-use manufacturing capabilities to support a reconstituted nuclear weapons program, according to the CIA. It has growing access to nuclear-related technology and materials and potential access to foreign nuclear expertise. The nuclear inspection teams are ultra-specialized. First, they will look for familiar faces -- are the Iraqi nuclear scientists still working together, and where? Although President Bush has publicly drawn attention to satellite photographs of new construction near former Iraqi nuclear sites, the action team places as much importance on face-to-face conversations with Iraqi scientists as on construction sites. ``They fly around in helicopters with radiation detectors, but it's of limited value,'' said one U.S. intelligence analyst, who asked that his name not be used. ``They would only find large, industrial-scale nuclear process, which Iraq is not dumb enough to have.'' On the ground, he added, ``hand-held radiation detectors aren't that useful. The chances of accidentally stumbling upon something with a radiation detector are nil. . . . Carrying a radiation detector is extra weight in the backpack.'' So, inspectors will look for the 40-odd specific components in nuclear bomb-making, such as uranium-processed fuel or certain types of machinery. And they will establish monitoring stations to sample air, water and vegetation for signs of radiation. Chemical warfare Baghdad is presumed to have begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard gas, sarin, cyclosarin and VX. While some capability was reduced during past inspections and it is probably more limited now than it was at the time of the gulf war, VX production and agent storage life probably have been improved. Certain chemicals that can be used to make weapons are completely off-limits because of an international ban, said Fred Milanovich of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who headed up the program to develop detectors in the early 1990s. More complicated will be how to handle the hundreds of tons of chemical warfare agents thought to hide within Iraq's civilian chemical industry, such as the chlorine and phenol plants at the Fallujah II facility near Baghdad. Both chemicals have legitimate civilian uses -- but also are raw materials used to produce blister and nerve agents. The installation of closed-circuit video cameras and air-sampling devices by U.N. inspectors at these facilities could monitor the use of these labs. The U.N. teams also will track chemical procurement efforts both inside and outside Iraq by Iraqi diplomats abroad. They suspect that many covert transactions have occurred between Iraq and hundreds of private companies from more than 40 countries. Biological weapons Iraq acknowledged in 1995 that prior to the gulf war, it had produced large quantities of anthrax spores, botulin toxin and a fungal poison called aflatoxin; filled them into at least 166 aerial bombs and Scud missile warheads; and stockpiled them, ready for use. Although Iraq claimed to have destroyed its biological arsenal after the war, U.N. inspectors believe that Iraq may still be hiding a cache of anthrax spores and germ-filled warheads, or planning to make more. The country's castor oil production plant, for example, can produce ricin toxin. The toxin can cause multiple organ failure within one or two days after inhalation. Iraq admitted to the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq that it manufactured ricin and field-tested it in artillery shells before the gulf war. Because biological weapons are so potent, yet much cheaper and easier to produce than nuclear weapons, they have been called ``the poor man's atomic bomb.'' Like chemical weapons, biological weapons can be produced in legitimate medical and agricultural labs. Iraq has the capability to quickly convert vaccine and bio-pesticide plants to biological warfare production. For example, UNSCOM learned that during 1988 alone, Iraq had imported nearly 39 tons of a complex growth medium suitable for growing large quantities of bacteria such as anthrax -- but could only account for 22 tons of the medium in Iraq, leaving 17 tons unexplained. This provided strong circumstantial evidence for large-scale production of anthrax and other biological agents. Further, biological agents are abundant in nature, making detection more difficult, Milanovich said. ``A lot of the stuff is naturally occurring, right? . . . So detection of biological weapons is just a little more difficult.'' Therefore, any detection system is dependent on knowing the signatures of organisms likely to be used in biological weapons. These signatures are telltale bits of DNA unique to pathogens. It is equally important to rule out the hordes of harmless germs -- often the close relatives of pathogens. So scientists also are characterizing natural microbial backgrounds, collecting background microbial samples in air, water and soil, as well as in human blood, urine and saliva. Since the last time inspectors visited Iraq, biological weapon detection tools have gotten faster and more definitive, said Pat Fitch, director of Lawrence Livermore's Chemical and Biological National Security Program. ``They've gotten smaller, they can do more tests, and they typically are cheaper and easier to operate,'' he said. ``They don't require a three-letter degree after your name.'' Scientists are also working with the Santa Clara-based company Affymetrix to develop gene chips similar to computer chips that can store genetic information on unique diagnostic regions for various pathogen strains, allowing for quick analysis of unknown agents. ``This time around, it should be possible to do much more rapidly, to see what kind of organism they're dealing with and get much more definitive answers,'' said Stanford biophysicist Steven Block, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies and a biochemical weapons expert. ``The more accurately you can measure,'' Block said, ``the more you can say, `Something was here yesterday but might have been removed.' '' Contact Lisa M. Krieger at lkrieger@sjmercury.com [lkrieger@sjmercury.com] or (408) 920-5565. ***************************************************************** 31 Other uranium hot spots Post-Intelligencer] Tuesday, November 12, 2002 SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- U.N. experts said yesterday they found three radioactive hot spots in Bosnia resulting from ammunition containing depleted uranium used during NATO air strikes in 1995. The tests found radiation at two sites in the Sarajevo suburb of Hadzici and one in Han Pijesak, in the Bosnian Serb republic, according to preliminary results released by the United Nations Environmental Program. During its 1995 bombings of Serb positions around Sarajevo, NATO used munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal that is used to pierce armor. The Bosnian government said about 10,800 rounds with the material were fired in its territory. Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create an up to 100-fold increase in uranium levels in groundwater, according to the U.N. Environmental Program. "We are concerned about the situation at the Hadzici tank repair facility and the Han Pijesak barracks," said Pekka Haavisto, chairman of the U.N. agency's task force. The areas where radiation is detected should not be used until the sites are decontaminated, Haavisto said. The U.N. team advised Bosnia to start decontaminating the three sites and educating people about potential hazards. A full report is to be published by the U.N. Environmental Program in March 2003. -- The Associated Press [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) 542-0820 Send comments to [newmedia@seattlepi.com] ©1999-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer ***************************************************************** 32 Dirty Bomb Drill Tests Boston Preparedness on January 24, 1873. Published on Tuesday, November 12, 2002 By HANA R. ALBERTS Crimson Staff Writer A dirty bomb exploded at Logan Airport last week and emergency personnel rushed to the scene and transported victims to local hospitals to be treated for radiation exposure. This simulation drill was enacted throughout Boston to test emergency response procedures in the event of the detonation of a dirty bomb, a device that contains radioactive material that is released into the air upon explosion. “September 11th was an indication to us,†said Jeff D. Ventura, spokesperson for Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “What if, instead of New York, it happened here? How prepared are we to handle disaster on a large scale?†The drill, dubbed Operation Prometheus, began at Logan Airport on Thursday with the simulated explosion of a dirty bomb on an inbound United Airlines flight from France, and continued on Friday when 10 hospitals in the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals received victims coming in for treatment. The main objective of the drill was to facilitate communication and cooperation among all emergency response agencies involved. Over 50 agencies participated in the drill, including the Massachusetts National Guard, FBI, American Red Cross, United States Coast Guard and Harvard School of Public Health. Girl Scout troops, schoolchildren and Harvard Medical School students joined in on the effort, as well. “With all the federal, state and local agencies, it was alphabet soup,†said Stephen Morash, Boston Emergency Management Agency deputy director. “The immenseness of this exercise is something you wouldn’t see before in this city.†Prior to the drill, all the agencies gathered in a conference hall to perform a tabletop exercise, in which they ran through a fake dirty bomb scenario so that all involved could communicate and ask questions, according to Ventura. At 8:15 on Friday morning, the teaching hospitals were notified of the dirty bomb explosion. Their role in the drill was to assess the procedures in place for diagnosing and treating contaminated patients. Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center were the three Harvard teaching hospitals involved in the functional part of the drill—testing hospital care—said Sarah J. Hamilton, director of area planning and development for the Medical Academic and Scientific Community Organization (MASCO). “We executed a code amber, like a code blue on television,†Ventura said. “The hospital is locked down, we go into emergency response mode, and prepare for incoming casualties.†Nonessential appointments are canceled and patients are relocated to other parts of the hospital to free bed space. Twelve radioactive passengers were assigned symptoms, accepted for treatment, decontaminated and then evaluated, said Jean M. Hickey, head nurse in the Brigham and Women’s emergency department. Harvard Medical School students volunteered to act as victims and wore tattered clothes to act their parts convincingly. Brigham and Women’s also received 60 “worried but well†patients, who were not on the aircraft but feared exposure to the radiation. In addition to treating the victims of the explosion, the hospitals also had to send all the evidence they discovered on to law enforcement agencies, Hamilton said. “It’s a crime investigation as well,†she said. “It was also a test to see whether we could get patient information back to the airlines, find out where passengers went and confirm the status of victims.†Because the airlines would be fielding phone calls from worried family members, it is vital that this patient information be relayed back to them. Drills like these are done regularly in Boston, but this is the first time radioactive scenarios have been involved. “All of this is relatively new to the hospital, and we felt like we did well,†Hickey said. Morash agreed that the drill was a success but said improvements will need to be made in order to improve the efficiency of the response to radiation emergencies. Two issues that will be addressed are protection of hospital employees from radiation and the handling, storage and transport of radioactive material or clothing. “We need to do more with radioactive activities. You can’t see it, feel it or touch it, but we have to be wary of it,†Morash said. A debriefing of all parties involved will be held in two weeks in order to critique the drill. Medical students and hospital staff were not the only Harvard affiliates to help out with the simulation. Stephen O’Connor, a Harvard University Police Department officer stationed at the Longwood Medical Campus, volunteered at MASCO’s Joint Operating Center, which is a central command unit that runs during emergencies. “It was good to see that the organization went well, and how different services in the Longwood area came together for a common cause,†he said. Recent articles by this author: Copyright © 2002, The Harvard Crimson Inc. | Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 33 Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium [seattlepi.com] Tuesday, November 12, 2002 By LARRY JOHNSON SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR SOUTHERN DEMILITARIZED ZONE, Iraq -- On the "Highway of Death," 11 miles north of the Kuwait border, a collection of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other military vehicles are rusting in the desert. They also are radiating nuclear energy. Six-year-old Fatma Rakwan, being held by her mother at the Basra Hospital for Maternity and Children, was recently diagnosed with leukemia. In 1991, the United States and its Persian Gulf War allies blasted the vehicles with armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium -- the first time such weapons had been used in warfare -- as the Iraqis retreated from Kuwait. The devastating results gave the highway its name. Today, nearly 12 years after the use of the super-tough weapons was credited with bringing the war to a swift conclusion, the battlefield remains a radioactive toxic wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions remain a mystery. Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans. Depleted uranium is a problem in other former war zones as well. Yesterday, U.N. experts said they found radioactive hot spots in Bosnia resulting from the use of depleted uranium during NATO air strikes in 1995. With another war in Iraq perhaps imminent, scientists and others are concerned that the side effects of depleted uranium munitions -- still a major part of the U.S. arsenal -- will cause serious illnesses or deaths in a new generation of U.S. soldiers as well as Iraqis. THE DANGERS Depleted uranium, known as DU, is a highly dense metal that is the byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5 billion years. Uranium, a weakly radioactive element, occurs naturally in soil and water everywhere on Earth, but mainly in trace quantities. Humans ingest it daily in minute quantities. [Dr. Khajak Vartaanian] [Zoom] Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I Dr. Khajak Vartaanian, a radiation expert, holds a Geiger counter next to a hole in an Iraqi tank destroyed by depleted uranium weapons in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The shell holes show 1,000 times the normal background radiation level. DU shell holes in the vehicles along the Highway of Death are 1,000 times more radioactive than background radiation, according to Geiger counter readings done for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Dr. Khajak Vartaanian, a nuclear medicine expert from the Iraq Department of Radiation Protection in Basra, and Col. Amal Kassim of the Iraqi navy. The desert around the vehicles was 100 times more radioactive than background radiation; Basra, a city of 1 million people, some 125 miles away, registered only slightly above background radiation level. But the radioactivity is only one concern about DU munitions. A second, potentially more serious hazard is created when a DU round hits its target. As much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn up on impact, creating a firestorm of ceramic DU oxide particles. The residue of this firestorm is an extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can be spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain. Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to the U.N. Environmental Program. Studies show it can remain in human organs for years. The U.S. Army acknowledges the hazards in a training manual, in which it requires that anyone who comes within 25 meters of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and skin protection, and states that "contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption." Just six months before the Gulf War, the Army released a report on DU predicting that large amounts of DU dust could be inhaled by soldiers and civilians during and after combat. Infantry were identified as potentially receiving the highest exposures, and the expected health outcomes included cancers and kidney problems. The report also warned that public knowledge of the health and environmental effects of depleted uranium could lead to efforts to ban DU munitions. But today the Pentagon plays down the effects. Officials refer queries on DU munitions to the latest government report on the subject, last updated on Dec. 13, 2000, which said DU is "40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium." The report also said, "Gulf War exposures to depleted uranium (DU) have not to date produced any observable adverse health effects attributable to DU's chemical toxicity or low-level radiation. . . ." In response to written queries, the Defense Department said, "The U.S. Military Services use DU munitions because of DU's superior lethality against armor and other hard targets." It said DU munitions are "war reserve munitions; that is, used for combat and not fired for training purposes," with the exception that DU munitions may be fired at sea for weapon calibration purposes. In addition to Iraq and Bosnia, DU munitions were used in Kosovo and Serbia in 1999. [Hamdin and brother Amhid] [Zoom] Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I Hamdin and his brother Amhid are receiving follow-up treatment after being treated successfully for leukemia two years ago at the Basra Hospital for Maternity and Children. Also in 1999, a United Nations subcommission considered DU hazardous enough to call for an initiative banning its use worldwide. The initiative has remained in committee, blocked primarily by the United States, according to Karen Parker, a lawyer with the International Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project, which has consultative status at the United Nations. Parker, who first raised the DU issue in the United Nations in 1996, contends that DU "violates the existing law and customs of war." She said there are four rules derived from all of humanitarian law regarding weapons: + Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle, defined as legal military targets of the enemy in war. Weapons may not have an adverse effect off the legal field of battle. + Weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A weapon that is used or continues to act after the war is over violates this criterion. + Weapons may not be unduly inhumane. + Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment. "Depleted uranium fails all four of these rules," Parker said last week. On Oct. 17, 2001, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., introduced a bill calling for "the suspension of the use, sale, development, production, testing, and export of depleted uranium munitions pending the outcome of certain studies of the health effects of such munitions. . . ." More than a year later, the bill -- co-sponsored by Reps. Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Barbara Lee, D-Ca.; and Jim McDermott, D-Wash. -- remains in committee awaiting comment from the Defense Department. THE STUDIES Gulf War veterans faced a wide array of potentially toxic materials during the war: smoke from oil and chemical fires, insecticides, pesticides, vaccinations and DU. Of the 696,778 troops who served during the recognized conflict phase (1990-1991) of the Gulf War, at least 20,6861 have applied for VA medical benefits. As of May 2002, 159,238 veterans have been awarded service-connected disability by the Department of Veterans Affairs for health effects collectively known as the Gulf War Syndrome. [Saddam Teaching Hospital] [Zoom] Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I The woman in the foreground shares a room with four other cancer patients at the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra. The patient lying on the bed behind died earlier in the day on which this photograph was taken. There have been many studies on Gulf War Syndrome over the years, as well as on possible long-term health hazards of DU munitions. Most have been inconclusive. But some researchers said the previous studies on DU, conducted by groups and agencies ranging from the World Health Organization to the Rand Corp. to the investigative arm of Congress, weren't looking in the right place -- at the effects of inhaled DU. Dr. Asaf Durakovic, director of the private, non-profit Uranium Medical Research Centre in Canada and the United States, and center research associates Patricia Horan and Leonard Dietz, published a unique study in the August issue of Military Medicine medical journal. The study is believed to be the first to look at inhaled DU among Gulf War veterans, using the ultrasensitive technique of thermal ionization mass spectrometry, which enabled them to easily distinguish between natural uranium and DU. The study, which examined British, Canadian and U.S. veterans, all suffering typical Gulf War Syndrome ailments, found that, nine years after the war, 14 of 27 veterans studied had DU in their urine. DU also was found in the lung and bone of a deceased Gulf War veteran. That no governmental study has been done on inhaled DU "amounts to a massive malpractice," Dietz said in an interview last week. THE ACTIVIST Dr. Doug Rokke was an Army health physicist assigned in 1991 to the command staff of the 12th Preventive Medicine Command and 3rd U.S. Army Medical Command headquarters. Rokke was recalled to active duty 20 years after serving in Vietnam, from his research job with the University of Illinois Physics Department, and sent to the Gulf to take charge of the DU cleanup operation. Today, in poor health, he has become an outspoken opponent of the use of DU munitions. "DU is the stuff of nightmares," said Rokke, who said he has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts and kidney problems, and receives a 40 percent disability payment from the government. He blames his health problems on exposure to DU. Rokke and his primary team of about 100 performed their cleanup task without any specialized training or protective gear. Today, Rokke said, at least 30 members of the team are dead, and most of the others -- including Rokke -- have serious health problems. Rokke said: "Verified adverse health effects from personal experience, physicians and from personal reports from individuals with known DU exposures include reactive airway disease, neurological abnormalities, kidney stones and chronic kidney pain, rashes, vision degradation and night vision losses, lymphoma, various forms of skin and organ cancer, neuropsychological disorders, uranium in semen, sexual dysfunction and birth defects in offspring. "This whole thing is a crime against God and humanity." Speaking from his home in Rantoul, Ill., where he works as a substitute high school science teacher, Rokke said, "When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy, and we got trashed." Rokke, an Army Reserve major who describes himself as "a patriot to the right of Rush Limbaugh," said hearing the latest Pentagon statements on DU is especially frustrating now that another war against Iraq appears likely. "Since 1991, numerous U.S. Department of Defense reports have said that the consequences of DU were unknown," Rokke said. "That is a lie. We warned them in 1991 after the Gulf War, but because of liability issues, they continue to ignore the problem." Rokke worked until 1996 for the military, developing DU training and management procedures. The procedures were ignored, he said. "Their arrogance is beyond comprehension," he said. "We have spread radioactive waste all over the place and refused medical treatment to people . . . it's all arrogance. "DU is a snapshot of technology gone crazy." BIRTH DEFECTS IN IRAQ At the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra, Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, a British-trained oncologist, displays, in four gaily colored photo albums, what he says are actual snapshots of the nightmares. [Birth defects in Iraq] [Zoom] This picture is from one of four albums shown by Dr. Jawad Al-Ali that are filled with photos of deformed infants -- examples, he says, of the surge in birth defects in southern Iraq that he blames on depleted uranium. The photos represent the surge in birth defects -- in 1989 there were 11 per 100,000 births; in 2001 there were 116 per 100,000 births -- that even before they heard about DU, had doctors in southern Iraq making comparisons to the birth defects that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII. There were photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and the list of deformities went on and on. There also were photos of cancer patients. Cancer has increased dramatically in southern Iraq. In 1988, 34 people died of cancer; in 1998, 450 died of cancer; in 2001 there were 603 cancer deaths. On a tour of one ward of the hospital, doctors pointed out boys and girls who were suffering from leukemia. Most of the children die, the doctors said, because there are insufficient drugs available for their treatment. There was one notable exception, a young boy whose family was able to buy the expensive drugs on the black market. Al-Ali said it defies logic to absolve DU of blame when veterans of the Gulf War and of the fighting in the Balkans share common illnesses with children in southern Iraq. "The cause of all of these cancers and deformities remains theoretical because we can't confirm the presence of uranium in tissue or urine with the equipment we have," said Al-Ali. "And because of the sanctions, we can't get the equipment we need." + For earlier stories on the P-I's trip to Iraq, go to seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq2002/ [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq2002/] OTHER LINKS + U.S. Department of Defense: www.defenselink.mil/ [http://www.defenselink.mil/] + The National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc.: www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm [http://www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm] + Uranium Medical Research Centre: www.umrc.net/ [http://www.umrc.net/] Dr. Doug Rokke, a U.S. Army health physicist assigned to help clean up depleted uranium after the Persian Gulf War, will speak in Seattle on Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. at University Baptist Church, Northeast 47th Street and 12th Avenue Northeast. Rokke is on a six-state speaking tour sponsored by The Interfaith Network of Concern for the People of Iraq, and co-sponsored by the Traprock Peace Center in Deerfield, Mass. P-I foreign desk editor Larry Johnson can be reached at 206-448-8035 or larryjohnson@seattlepi.com [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) 542-0820 Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com [newmedia@seattlepi.com] ©1999-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Terms of Service/Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 34 Experts find traces of depleted uranium from NATO ammunition on three sites in Bosnia - 11/12/2002 - ENN.com Tuesday, November 12, 2002 By Aida Cerkez-Robinson, Associated Press SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — U.N. experts have found three radioactive hotspots in Bosnia resulting from ammunition containing depleted uranium used during NATO airstrikes in 1995. The team found a presence of radioactivity at two spots in the Sarajevo suburb of Hadzici and one at Han Pijesak in the Bosnian Serb republic, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) said Monday in a statement. The experts found the spots after using highly sensitive instruments to investigate 14 sites in Bosnia for a month. They advised the Bosnian government to start decontaminating the three sites and educating the population about the hazard. During the 1995 bombings of Serb positions around Sarajevo, NATO aircraft used munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal that is effective for piercing armor. According to the Bosnian government, some 10,800 of such rounds — 30 mm armor-piercing projectiles — were fired in Bosnia. Buried in the soil, such ordnance can contaminate ground water, leading to up to a 100-fold increase in uranium levels in drinking water. "We are concerned about the situation at the Hadzici tank repair facility and the Han Pijesak barracks," said Pekka Haavisto, the chairman of the UNEP task force. The team detected depleted uranium-related materials and dust inside buildings that are currently used by local business or, like in Han Pijesak, by Bosnian Serb army troops as storage facilities, he said. Before using facilities targeted by ammunition containing depleted uranium, the area has to be properly cleaned up to prevent unnecessary health risks. Such decontamination should be done by experts, Haavisto said in his statement. The 17 international experts were invited by the Bosnian government to investigate rumors claiming depleted uranium still present in the environment may have adversely affected the health of not only the local population but also of the international peacekeepers in Bosnia. The rumors had prompted several governments to investigate their troops serving in this Balkan country. A medical sub-team composed of experts from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Army also visited several hospitals in Bosnia, collecting medical data and statistics. A full report is to be published in March 2003. Copyright 2002, Associated Press ***************************************************************** 35 War with Iraq could lead up to four million deaths: report. 12/11/2002. ABC News Online Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online"> [http://abc.net.au/] An anti-war group has predicted a war against Iraq could lead to half a million deaths with the figure reaching as high as four million if nuclear weapons are used. A report compiled by the Medical Association for Prevention of War has been released in Federal Parliament this morning and will also be unveiled at the Washington Press Club and in London today. It estimates the Gulf War in the early 1990s saw the deaths of up to 120,000 Iraqi military personnel and 15,000 civilians, and a war in the current climate would be much worse. Greens Senator Kerry Nettle says deaths of coalition forces, including Australians and Americans, could also be in the thousands if a strike against Iraq proceeds. "The report goes into some detail to stipulate regarding what sorts of military action might take place, that there will be coalition deaths potentially up to 5,000 and certainly looking at more than that coalition forces being wounded in any potential invasion." © 2002 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 36 US fears groups may get radiation devices - report Planet Ark : USA: November 12, 2002 WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is concerned that devices used in the former Soviet Union to measure the effects of radiation on plants may fall into the hands of terror groups that could use the material to make so-called dirty bombs, The Washington Post reported yesterday. U.S. and international nuclear experts are searching the former Soviet republics for the lead-shielded canister devices that contained radioactive cesium 137 in the form of pellets or a fine powder, the newspaper said. Some of the tests the devices were used for were to determine farming conditions after a nuclear attack. The total number of experimental devices put in the countryside by Soviet scientists during the 1970s range from 100 to 1,000, an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency told the Post. Only nine of the devices have been found so far. A few ounces of cesium 137 put into a conventional explosive would make a "dirty bomb" that could contaminate a large area with radiation. A computer simulation showed a "dirty bomb" attack on New York City with about 1.75 ounces (50 grams) of cesium could spread radioactive fallout over 60 city blocks, the paper said. Victims nearest the blast would be the initial casualties, but the relocation of people and businesses and the cleanup could cost tens of billions of dollars, the paper said. REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 37 Germany: Where Now for Atomic Waste? [http://dw-world.de/select_html/] 12.11.2002 Demonstrators take to the streets to oppose nuclear waste transport The biggest transport of radioactive waste ever starts its journey from France back to Germany on Monday night. The government doesn’t know where to store it, though, and it can’t afford to find a final disposal site. Twelve nuclear waste receptacles are scheduled to start their journey back from La Hague in the French state of Normandy to Gorleben in Germany's Lower Saxony on Monday. Sent abroad for reprocessing by German nuclear plants, the radioactive material is now returning back home for storage. The event is being met with protests in the form of a costumed carnival parade on the market square in the town of Dannenberg. Demonstrating against castor transports (an acronym for “cask for storage and transport of radioactive material") has become a tradition for people in Lower Saxony. Not only that, but over the past several decades the anti-nuclear movement has shaped Germany’s culture of protest. In 1979, for example, 100,000 protesters forced the government to drop its plans to build a processing plant in Lower Saxony. Another high point was reached in April 1995, when the first castor transport rolled through Lower Saxony, accompanied by the then biggest police presence in German postwar history. Still, demonstrators have never managed to turn a castor transport back. Ever since Germany’s coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens and the country’s energy providers agreed to scrap nuclear power plants, the number of protesters has shrunk considerably. Nevertheless the Saturday demonstration against the current castor shipment was attended by between 2,000 and 5,000 people, according to estimates from police and organizers. The wrong place Germany's problems of nuclear waste disposal are still far from being solved. Although the last nuclear power plant in Germany will be turned off in 2021, the issue of waste disposal has yet to be resolved. Gorleben, the country’s main storage facility for radioactive materials, wasn’t designed to be a permanent depot. But it may still end up that way. “Above all the people here are afraid that with every new transport the decision for Gorleben as a final disposal site is cemented,†Heiner Bartling, the interior minister of Lower Saxony, told a Berlin newspaper. Bartling thinks the government is moving too slowly in the search for a permanent nuclear waste depot. Exploring possibilities His fears seem warranted. The energy companies will already have spent 1.3 million euro on exploring the possibilities of developing Gorleben into a final disposal site by the end of 2002. Environmental Minister Jürgen Trittin of the Green party, however, has put a stop to any further investigation into Gorleben, with the aim of finding an alternative final site. In 1999, Trittin set up a working group of 16 scientists, called AK End, to deal with the issue. By the end of this year AK End is supposed to present a list of safety criteria and rules of procedure for the search. According to Rainer Baake, state secretary in the Environmental Ministry, a final disposal site should be ready for use by 2030. The decision for Gorleben was a political one, made in 1977. The then premier, Ernst Albrecht, saw the potential for creating jobs and attracting investment to Lower Saxony. Two years earlier a governmental study had already determined that Gorleben was not a good place for a final depot. In 1985 the first nuclear transport arrived in the town. No money The problem is that the cost of finding a different final site would be at least as much as the energy companies have spent on looking into Gorleben so far. The federal government, hindered by a stagnant economy, doesn’t have the money to search. And the energy companies aren’t interested in paying. Besides, Gorleben has Germany’s only pilot conditioning plant, used for packing radioactive waste into containers for permanent storage. The facility would be useless without a nearby final depot. In the meantime, 151 castors of German nuclear waste will make the trip back from the reprocessing plants in La Hague and Sellafield, England, to Germany. The majority of it will go to Gorleben. alt="Campus Germany "> [http://www.campus-germany.de/] © DW 2002 ***************************************************************** 38 Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant; Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant; United States Enrichment Corporation; Notice of Approval of Request for Exemption FR Doc 02-28669 [Federal Register: November 12, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 218)] [Notices] [Page 68699-68701] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr12no02-132] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket Nos. 70-7001 and 70-7002] AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice of approval of request for exemption. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Commission) is approving, upon publication of this notice, a request for an exemption from the requirement to submit written event follow-up reports within 30 days for the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant operated by the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC). The exemption will allow up to 60 days for submitting written event follow-up reports, instead of the 30 days specified in 10 CFR 76.120(d)(2). The NRC has prepared an environmental assessment with a finding of no significant impact on the request. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dan E. Martin, Project Manager, Fuel Cycle Facilities Branch, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555, telephone: (301) 415-7254, e-mail [dem1@nrc.gov] . SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Commission is approving the issuance of an exemption from the requirement to submit written event follow-up reports in 30 days, pursuant to 10 CFR part 76, for the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) and the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS), both operated by USEC. Both facilities are authorized to use Special Nuclear Material (SNM) in the enrichment of natural uranium to prepare low-enriched uranium to be used by others in the fabrication of nuclear fuel pellets and fuel assemblies, although enrichment operations have ceased at PORTS. The PGDP facility is located near Paducah, Kentucky, and the PORTS facility is located near Piketon, Ohio. Pursuant to 10 CFR part 76.120(a), (b), and (c), certain events are required to be reported to the NRC within 1, 4, or 24 hours, respectively. For example, an inadvertent criticality event must be reported to NRC within 1 hour. In such cases, Section 76.120(d)(2) requires that a written event follow-up report be submitted within 30 days of the initial [[Page 68700]] report. Written event follow-up reports must include: (1) A description of the event, including the probable cause and the manufacturer and model number of any equipment that failed; (2) the exact location of the event; (3) a description of the isotopes, quantities, and chemical and physical form of the material involved; (4) the date and time of the event; (5) the causes, including the direct cause, the contributing cause, and the root cause; (6) corrective actions taken or planned and the results of any evaluations or assessments; (7) the extent of exposure of individuals to radiation or to radioactive materials; and (8) lessons learned from the event. Because of the comprehensive nature of event follow-up reports, the initial 30-day report is often incomplete because event analysis and root cause determinations are not completed within 30 days. In these cases, a supplemental report must be submitted when information is complete. In recognition of this, the NRC revised 10 CFR part 50, for nuclear power reactors, to allow 60 days for submitting event follow-up reports (Federal Register, October 25, 2000, Volume 65, No. 207, pp. 63769-63789). Considerations mentioned in connection with revising Part 50 included that the increased time would allow for completion of required engineering evaluations after event discovery, provide for more complete and accurate event reports, and result in fewer event report revisions and supplemental reports. Similar considerations apply to the Paducah and Portsmouth GDPs and the NRC staff has determined that the exemption should be granted. The NRC staff has prepared an environmental assessment of the proposed action and made a finding of no significant impact. Environmental Assessment Identification of the Proposed Action The proposed action would allow written event follow-up reports required pursuant to 10 CFR 76.120(d)(2) to be submitted within 60 days instead of the 30 days specified in the regulation, for the Paducah and Portsmouth GDPs operated by USEC. The proposed action is in accordance with USEC's request for exemption dated September 5, 2001. Need for the Proposed Action The proposed action is needed to reduce the number of revised and supplemental written event reports made necessary because complete information is not available within the 30 days allowed by the regulation. USEC has provided data for the Paducah GDP indicating that, since NRC began regulating the facility in March 1997, 21 of a total of 84 written event follow-up reports would have been unnecessary if the requirement for submittal of written event follow-up reports had been 60 days instead of the current 30-day requirement. USEC stated that these 21 reports were submitted only to meet the 30-day requirement, and, in each case, the root cause analysis was ongoing at the time the 30-day report was submitted and a subsequent report was required when the root cause analysis was completed. Similar data for the Portsmouth facility has not been requested or provided since it would not be useful in view of the recent termination of virtually all NRC-regulated operations at the Portsmouth facility. However, the same general considerations apply for Portsmouth, but at a reduced scale since the number of reportable events is expected to be decreased but not eliminated altogether. Environmental Impacts of the Proposed Action The proposed action would not materially affect the responsiveness of USEC or the NRC to events that do occur and are reported. Changing the time limit from 30 days to 60 days for events reported under Part 76 does not imply that USEC should take longer to develop and implement corrective actions, which should continue to be taken on a time scale commensurate with the safety significance of the issue. It has no impact on initial notifications to the NRC as the change only applies to written event follow-up reports. Also, the NRC will continue to have resident inspectors at the Paducah facility to provide monitoring and evaluation of USEC's responses to events as they are implemented. One reason the NRC scrutinizes written event reports is to evaluate the potential for generic safety concerns that might exist at other, similar facilities. Since the Paducah facility has no comparable counterpart other than the Portsmouth facility, which has terminated all enrichment and most other operations, the potential for identifying generic safety concerns is severely limited. On balance, the NRC believes the reduction in burden on USEC and NRC achieved by reducing the number of revised and supplemental event reports will be the primary impact of granting the requested exemption. The proposed exemption should have no impact on the effectiveness of USEC's response to reportable events. The proposed action should not increase the probability or consequences of accidents as there is no change in the time period for taking corrective action. No changes are being made in the amounts or types of any effluents that could be released offsite, and there is no increase in individual or cumulative radiation exposure. Accordingly, the Commission concludes that there are no significant radiological impacts associated with the proposed action. With regard to potential nonradiological impacts, the proposed action does not affect nonradiological plant effluents and has no other environmental impact. Accordingly, the Commission concludes that there are no significant nonradiological impacts associated with the proposed action. Alternatives to the Proposed Action As an alternative to the proposed action, the staff considered denial of the proposed action. Denial of the proposed action would result in no change in environmental impacts and would result in hardship to USEC. The environmental impacts of the proposed action and the alternative action are similar. Alternative Use of Resources The proposed action does not involve the use of any resources beyond those already necessary to prepare and submit event follow-up reports, and would likely reduce the expenditure of such resources by reducing the number of revised and supplemental event reports required to be submitted. Agencies and Persons Consulted In accordance with its stated policy, the NRC staff consulted with: (1) State of Illinois official Thomas Ortciger, Director, Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety; (2) State of Kentucky official Janice H. Jasper, Radiation Health and Toxic Agents Branch, Cabinet for Health Services; (3) State of Ohio official, Carol O'Claire, Supervisor, Radiological Branch, Ohio Emergency Management Agency; and (4) U.S. Department of Energy official Randall M. DeVault, Group Leader, Transition and Technology Group, Office of Nuclear Fuel Security and Uranium Technology, regarding the environmental impact of the proposed action. No objections were received. Consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the State Historic Preservation Officer were not performed because of the lack of any conceivable impact to fish and wildlife or historic assets. Finding of No Significant Impact Based on the environmental assessment, the Commission concludes that the proposed action will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment. Accordingly, the [[Page 68701]] Commission has determined not to prepare an environmental impact statement for the proposed action. List of Preparers This document was prepared by Dan E. Martin, Project Manager, Fuel Cycle Facilities Branch, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. Mr. Martin is the Project Manager for the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. For further details with respect to the proposed action, see the USEC letter request dated September 5, 2001, and USEC's response to a request for additional information, dated October 2, 2002, available for public inspection at the Commission's Public Document Room at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, MD, and accessible electronically through the ADAMS Public Electronic Reading Room link at the NRC Web site ( [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=li nklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html] ). Dated at Rockville, Maryland this 24th day of October, 2002. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Daniel M. Gillen, Chief, Fuel Cycle Facilities Branch, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 02-28669 Filed 11-8-02; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 39 Group calls for surcharge on wastes sent to Hanford This story was published Mon, Nov 11, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer If the Department of Energy ships transuranic wastes to Hanford for temporary storage, Mid-Columbia governments want to put a surcharge on each barrel to defray the costs to Hanford or the communities. Hanford Communities, a coalition of city and county governments, sent that request recently to DOE as part of its environmental impact study on shipping those wastes to Hanford, Pam Brown, Hanford analyst for Richland, told the Hanford Advisory Board on Friday. The idea is that DOE sites shipping transuranic wastes to Hanford should pay a fee either to cover Hanford's costs for handling the wastes or pay for roads and other infrastructure that handle the extra truck traffic and storage. Hanford Communities plans to approach the state next week to discuss the idea. There is a precedent. US Ecology runs a commercial low-level radioactive waste site in central Hanford for 11 Western states. US Ecology pays a surcharge of $6.50 for each cubic foot of waste it accepts -- $4.50 to a Mid-Columbia economic development fund and $2 to Benton County. Washington and DOE still are negotiating conditions under which the state won't oppose DOE's plan to soon ship transuranic wastes from Ohio to Hanford. The two sides talked Friday without reaching an agreement. They plan to meet again sometime next week. Transuranic wastes are essentially junk on barrels that have been contaminated by transuranic substances, such as plutonium or neptunium. These wastes are highly radioactive and have decay rates that stretch across tens of thousands of years or longer. Hanford has thousands of barrels of these wastes. DOE wants to send all transuranic wastes from Hanford and other DOE sites to a federal underground storage site at Carlsbad, N.M. However, the New Mexico site has strict standards for accepting the wastes and the barrels that contain them. Hanford has one of the nation's few facilities that can check barrels of transuranic wastes to see if they meet the New Mexico site's standards, fix any problems and repack the wastes properly. Consequently, DOE wants to funnel transuranic wastes from its small sites to Hanford for temporary storage and checking before eventually being sent to New Mexico. DOE is poised to send 150 barrels of transuranic wastes from a Battelle site in Columbus, Ohio, to Hanford. But the state said it will file a lawsuit against DOE if it ships the Columbus wastes to Hanford before providing Washington with a list of information and assurances. The state wants DOE to provide information on how much transuranic waste it has nationwide, its plans and timetables for shipping those wastes to Hanford, how the wastes will be stored at Hanford, and when they will go to New Mexico. Also, the state wants a legal agreement with DOE with which it can enforce the timely processing and shipment of Hanford's transuranic wastes -- in return for accepting other sites' waste, said Sheryl Hutchison, state Ecology Department spokeswoman. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 40 Wash State is seeking pact on radioactive trash The Seattle Times: Local News: November 12, 2002 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific By Linda Ashton The Associated Press YAKIMA — The U.S. Department of Energy will not send any out-of-state shipments of radioactive trash to the Hanford nuclear reservation without giving the state five days' notice, state Attorney General Christine Gregoire said yesterday. The state and the Energy Department discussed the matter late last week and will do so again next week to try to work out an agreement on the proposed shipments of radioactive trash — called transuranic (TRU) waste — from Ohio and California. The shipments of contaminated items such as clothing, tools and rags were scheduled to begin early this month. "My concern about bringing more waste into Hanford is, 'What about cleaning up the waste we've already got there?' " Gregoire said. "What about satisfying the citizens of the state of Washington you're going to clean up the TRU waste you've already got there?" Hanford has thousands of barrels of highly radioactive transuranic waste. "At this point we have said 1), 'We don't want the transportation of that waste under terms and conditions that we understood were at play,"' Gregoire said. "And, 2), 'We want a commitment from Energy to clean up the TRU waste that is already at Hanford.' There is nothing on the books currently to dig it up, to process it, to treat it and to ready it for transportation to WIPP," the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a federal underground repository at Carlsbad, N.M. Fluor Hanford, the contractor managing Hanford for the Energy Department, could not comment on the transuranic-waste matter yesterday, said Michael Turner, a spokesman for Fluor. No one from the Energy Department was available for comment yesterday. Gregoire and Gov. Gary Locke wrote to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham Oct. 29, threatening legal action over the importation of transuranic waste for temporary storage. The letter asked how much transuranic waste there is at Energy Department sites across the country; how much would come to Hanford; how it would be stored and processed there; and how quickly it would be moved to the federal repository. Hanford has one of the country's few facilities that can check barrels of transuranic waste to make sure they meet the storage standards, and where problems can be taken care of and the barrels repacked. Seattle Times Company [http://www.seattletimescompany.com/] ***************************************************************** 41 Contolled Burn - by Van Rose Pike County News Watchman Piketon, Ohio Novermber 10, 2003 PIKETON - A local environmental activist is labeling a planned burning of vegetation at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant as dangerous. Government agencies associated with the plant have been planning a controlled burn of the X-611A prairie, an 18-acre plot on the east side of the facility which covers a capped sludge lagoon. The process is considered to be a safe practice by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Vina Colley, a former plant worker and president of Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security, is objecting to the burn, stating that contaminants present in the soil could be released into the atmosphere. Colley bases her judgment on an independent environmental study of plant contamination released last February by Marvin Resnikoff, Ph.D. , a senior associate with Radioactive Waste Management Associates in New York, N.Y. It focused primarily upon the plant's Quadrant II, but some attention was given to Quadrant IV, where X-611A is located. According to Resnikoff's findings, traces of plutonium and neptunium exist in that area of the site. "How can the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies give the Portsmouth plant contractor permission to burn this contaminated land?" asked Colley. "Plutonium is the most dangerous substance on earth. Haven't the Southern Ohio residents and plant workers been harmed enough?" If grass in the prairie habitat is burned, contaminants will get into the air, said Resnikoff during an interview on Friday. He said residents in the area surrounding the enrichment facility would not "be falling out and dying," but would still be at risk. "If you inhale plutonium and other materials, it increases the chances of cancer to occur," he stated. Brian Blair, a supervisor with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's Division of Emergency and Remedial Response Southeast District Office, doesn't see the burn as a hazard to the environment. "It just burns the vegetation itself," he said. "It doesn't burn down to the ground." Blair explained that the burn was scheduled by the U.S. Department of Energy and contractor Bechtel Jacobs Company for November 2 in an effort to control weeds and stimulate the growth of plant life. However, the operation has been postponed due to rain. X-611A was once the location of three lagoons, installed in 1954 and used for the disposal of lime sludge waste generated by the enrichment plant. Land was capped in 1999 and a developed into a prairie environment after low levels of chromium, beryllium and uranium were detected. "It was a concern," said Blair regarding contamination present on the land. "But it was in the lime material. It's covered and beneath the vegetated zone." The detected materials, he added, existed at concentrations which did not pose an immediate threat to the environment. The Ohio EPA denies the presence of contaminants in the soil. Despite concern by Colley and her organization, Bechtel Jacobs Spokesperson Sandy Childers announced that the controlled burning should proceed as planned. "We haven't rescheduled it yet," she said, "but the window of opportunity is through December 31." Resnikoff does not plan to take an active role in the issue and said he leaves all action against the operation to Colley. ***************************************************************** 42 Yucca Mountain and the Nuclear-Waste Problem in the United States YUCCA MOUNTAIN: IS IT A SOLUTION TO THE NUCLEAR-WASTE PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES? Roger B. Morrison, PhD Formerly, U.S. Geological Survey (retired) Golden, Colorado USA Martin D. Mifflin, PhD President, Mifflin and Associates, Las Vegas NV April 19, 2002 SUMMARY A fundamental decision point has arisen with President Bush’s recent endorsement of the U. S. Department of Energy’s recommendation of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to be the sole permanent repository for all U. S. high-level nuclear waste. The problem of high-level radioactive waste can never be solved as a normal waste problem. Such waste cannot be destroyed, nor has science or engineering credibly proven that it will stay out of the biosphere if buried. Nonetheless, those of us now living must try our best to ensure its safe disposal storage and management, because future generations will be confronted, perhaps severely limited, by decisions we make now. High-level nuclear waste can’t be disposed of like other kinds of waste because it contains plutonium (half-life 24,000 years) and even longer-lived radionuclides such as uranium-235 (half-life 704,000 years). This waste will remain dangerously radioactive for at least 200,000 years, and presents other hazards for a million years. To leave a legacy that unnecessarily risks severe endangerment of future generations would constitute an act of irresponsibility unparalleled in all human history. Few public officials, members of Congress, and most informed citizens comprehend the gravity of the political decisions that are soon to be made. These decisions could affect countless future generations, not only in southern Nevada, adjoining California, Arizona, and Utah, but even globally. If the Yucca Mountain repository becomes operational, future populations will have to live with the ever-present possibility of leakage from the storage canisters due to eventual corrosion, leading not only to lethal local ground-water contamination, but especially to possible accumulations of fissionable radionuclides within or close to the repository until they concentrate enough to induce chain reactions leading to nuclear explosions. The primary reason that Congress selected Yucca Mountain as the sole site for permanent storage of nuclear high-level waste (chiefly spent reactor rods) was its presumed unique "geologic integrity". The U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) offered a plan to bury this long-lived extremely dangerous material deep within Yucca Mountain. Objective studies since then have discredited Yucca Mountain as a permanently safe long-term geological repository. Serious issues include earthquake hazard and especially, ground-water intrusion along fractures and faults in the unsaturated zone above the water table during future pluvial (rainier than now) episodes. This ground-water intrusion, together with radioactive heat buildup in the tunnels, likely will promote eventual corrosion of the waste canisters, leakage of their contents, and migration of fissionable radioactive elements (radionuclides) such as plutonium and uranium 235 into the aquifer system. There is the possibility of ground-water transport and accumulation of these radionuclides at sites within or outside the repository in amounts sufficient to become criticality hazards that could progress to chain reactions and nuclear explosions. The repository will contain more than enough radioactive material, at the culmination of the storage plan, if released into the biosphere, to wipe out all higher life forms on earth, akin to the effect of a large asteroid colliding with Earth. These serious questions about its supposed geologic integrity eliminate the chief justification for selecting Yucca Mountain over other candidates. If highly engineered canisters, drip shields and other barriers must be relied upon, the repository could be put almost anywhere! These issues far transcend other currently politically expedient issues, such as the issue of transporting the nuclear waste from more than 100 sites around the U. S. to Yucca Mountain. These grave, unresolved issues and their importance for future generations demand that Yucca Mountain NOT become a nuclear-waste repository for permanent disposal. INTRODUCTION Safe permanent disposal of nuclear waste is a tremendous challenge. An adequate solution must last for millennia, not just a few centuries. High-level nuclear waste can’t be disposed of like other kinds of waste because it remains extremely radioactive and hazardous for countless millennia. Many engineers, scientists, and most politicians do not fully understand the magnitude of this problem and the importance of decisions on U.S. high-level nuclear-waste disposal that will be made soon. Among nations of the world, the United States has perhaps the most dismal history of mismanaging nuclear-waste issues. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) have persistently and rigorously swept aside and tried to ignore key nuclear-waste issues, from the end of WWII until today. Yet, back in 1957, a National Academy of Sciences panel cautioned, "Unlike any other type of waste, the hazard related to radioactive waste is so great that no element of doubt should be allowed to exist regarding safety." The United States still obtains about 20% of its electricity from nuclear plants (France gets 73%). Although nuclear power has been on decline in the U.S. since the Carter administration (no new plants have been built in the US for two decades), 103 nuclear plants still operate. A key constraint on construction of new plants has been safe long-term disposal of nuclear waste, which is chiefly spent reactor power rods. They are being stored temporarily at the power plants, but such storage is brimful to overflowing. The rods, being irradiated during energy production, contain highly radioactive elements. These include both short- and long-lived radionuclides, including plutonium and uranium 235. While nuclear reactors generate electricity for 25-40 years, their radioactive legacy will remain for many millennia. "Disposal" versus "storage" at Yucca Mountain There are differences of opinion among engineers, scientists, members of Congress, and informed public whether the objective for the Yucca Mountain repository should be long-term "disposal" or "storage" of nuclear waste. Most of these people vote for "disposal": They just want this dangerous stuff out of the way, buried anyway so that it can be forgotten. Nonetheless, we advocate that this "waste" be regarded as just "stored" at Yucca Mountain (or at other sites), because it remains a huge energy resource that future generations may treasure when other energy resources are depleted. It should not be buried in a way where it becomes irretrievableable, as could happen with Yucca Mountain in a matter of a few hundred years. Basic facts about U.S. nuclear waste The Yucca Mountain repository is proposed to receive all commercial and some weapons program high-level nuclear "waste" produced in the U. S. (plus much from Russia). This waste is projected to finally total at least 77,000 metric-ton units of uranium (about two million kilograms of fissionable material), becoming the largest concentration of such material in the world. It is charged with plutonium and other highly radioactive elements with long half-lives. Plutonium is considered to be the most lethal of the radioactive elements with long half-lives. It has intense beta emission and does not decay away to a safe level for about 170,000 years. It also is thermally fissile (fissions with enormous heat product), making it a favorite "nuclear bomb" component, as is uranium 235 (half-life 704,000 years). For a time-perspective, consider that Homo sapiens evolved only about 200,000 years ago, agriculture and the earliest villages began ~10,000 years ago, and the beginnings of modern chemistry and physics only several centuries ago. Nonetheless, the U.S. repository program has adopted 10,000 years as the benchmark time span for repository performance assessment, disregarding the fact that plutonium remains radioactive for ~170,000 years, and that uranium 235 remains a criticality hazard in porous geologic media for a million years. Safe disposal of high-level radioactive waste can never be accomplished by relying upon man-made barriers. Such waste cannot be destroyed, nor has science and engineering credibly demonstrated that it would not eventually contaminate the biosphere if emplaced at Yucca Mountain. Those of us now living must try our best to ensure its safe storage and wise management, because future generations will be confronted, perhaps severely limited, by decisions we make now. To leave a legacy that unnecessarily risks endangerment for future generations would constitute an act of irresponsibility unparalleled in all human history. HISTORY A viable plan for permanent storage of U.S. high-level nuclear waste has been elusive. As nuclear waste was generated during the Manhattan Project during WWII, the problem of suitable disposal became evident. After four decades of scientific and political controversy, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) was passed in 1982. It proposed to establish two deep geologic repositories for high-level nuclear waste, one east, the other west of the Mississippi River. Early on, Congress eliminated the probability of an eastern site. Then the Department of Energy (DOE) recommended to Congress three western candidate sites that would meet site-selection criteria. The three recommended sites were Hanford, Washington, and Yucca Mountain, Nevada (both associated with large weapons-development facilities overseen by DOE), and a bedded salt site in west Texas. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) failed to intervene in the site-selection process, although Hanford and Yucca Mountain failed to meet key site-selection requirements. The NWPA intended for the three finalist candidate sites to have exhaustive site-characterization studies prior to the selection of one for licensing and construction. However, Congress (using the justification of the huge costs for study of three separate candidate sites) immediately (1987) passed the "Screw Nevada" bill, amending the NWPA to authorize site-characterization study only at the Yucca Mountain site, and also established the independent Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB). At this point, the opportunity for an objective, scientifically credible effort to evaluate ("characterize") the Yucca Mountain site ceased, because DOE now had only one site and had already assured Congress that this site could pass licensing requirements. The original advocate for the Yucca Mountain repository and chief supporter of DOE’s position was the U.S. Geological Survey. Another advocate was Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) that received lush DOE contracts. During the site-selection period (1982 through 1986), NRC and the State of Nevada identified a host of site-performance issues that were passed over by DOE. Since 1989, the NWTRB has held the primary independent technical oversight role. After the Yucca Mountain site was selected, DOE generally avoided funding the types of studies that might have resulted in unfavorable answers to a number of site-characterization issues. It selectively funded studies whose results were general enough or so limited as to have high promise of favoring certification of Yucca Mountain. Nonetheless, a few site-performance issues came into focus through site-characterization studies by DOE contractors that produced unanticipated results (e.g., databases that refuted favored conceptual models). Thus, we believe that the Yucca Mountain site remains poorly characterized from the perspective of engineered barrier performance and from the fundamentals of the release and fate of nearly all of the radionuclides (except for the very short-lived ones such as strontium 90 and cesium 137), over the many millennia while actinides such as plutonium, uranium 235, neptunium, etc. remain highly radioactive. DOE reports are like bikinis—they cover up essential features! Political and industrial pressures override science. The DOE policy of avoiding comprehensive, objective site-characterization studies has backfired. DOE’s first official site-suitability report, on the "extreme erosion issue", was deemed unacceptable, first by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1994), and then after perfunctory revision, by the National Research Council (1995). An editorial in the British scientific journal Nature (1995) summed up the reason for rejection: "DOE did not present the right data and did not present it in the right way." On May 1, 2000, President Clinton vetoed a Congress bill that would arbitrarily certify the Yucca Mountain repository. As of now, a Yucca Mountain certification by legislation has not occurred, but is assumed by many to be likely. If this happens, "it will be a victory of expedient politics over objective applied science" (Reid, 2002) and a terrible legacy for our children, grandchildren and countless future generations. DOE has spent more than $8 billion on Yucca Mountain site-selection, "characterization" studies, and on repository preparation, including 5+ miles of huge drifts ("tunnels") into the mountain, scheduled to grow by an additional 35 miles. We know from program-expenditure audits and oversight reviews that a very small percentage of the total expenditures have funded systematic, carefully focused and designed studies to develop site-specific and regional databases for resolution of key geologic-hydrogeologic issues. For too many of the site-performance issues, highly optimistic postulates have been made and used in the absence of adequate databases. All the key issues ought to have been fully resolved long ago at a cost between one and two orders of magnitude less over the same time period, two decades. We conclude that DOE, with Congress’ blessing, determined during the site selection period that Yucca Mountain was THE (only) politically feasible solution to the nation’s high-level nuclear-waste problem—and therefore managed the characterization program on a mission-oriented ("must prove, must do") basis. DOE cut off funding for alternative studies, including those proposed by the State of Nevada, in order to buy "science" that would "prove" that Yucca Mountain will be a safe repository for at least 10,000 years. The remarkable overall accomplishments of the costly repository program to date are: 1. All of the key issues regarding the Yucca Mountain repository remain unresolved. 2. Not a single key issue (vadose-zone water intrusion during pluvials, potential criticality, etc.) has been thoroughly examined in a site-specific context; complicated computer programs are preferred to real science. 3. The program scientists and most of the scientific/engineering community involved in this project have failed to establish and execute a scientifically credible site-selection, site-characterization, repository performance program, after more than two decades and billions in expenditures. US nuclear-power industry sues DOE for breach of contract. Because a permanent repository site has not yet been certified, the storage problem at US nuclear plants has become acute. Beginning in 1998, DOE refused to accept spent fuel as per contract with nuclear utilities. A consortium of nuclear-power utilities has sued DOE for costs associated with this breach of contract. DOE is negotiating a "settlement" (surely several $ billion). Finding a home for spent nuclear fuel has become a charged political and economic issue, ripe for a political solution with a new set of players in Congress and a different Administration. KEY CONCERNS ABOUT FEASIBILITY OF YUCCA MOUNTAIN FOR LONG-TERM STORAGE OF NUCLEAR WASTE Climate change The only natural waste-isolation characteristic offered by Yucca Mountain is the current aridity of the climate. DOE has striven to show that this condition is likely to continue with little change far into the future. Discredited studies. DOE, with U. S. Geological Survey assistance (e.g. Whitney and Harrington, 1993; Winograd et al., 1988, 1992) and support-management contractors such as Science Applications International Corporation (Younker et al., 1992), tried to "prove" that climate change, with associated changes in all hydrologic processes, has been insignificant in the Yucca Mountain region for the last few hundred thousand years, and that the climatic trend is toward increasing aridity. Therefore, there is no need to worry about problems caused by future pluvial episodes. This finding, as a purposeful circumventing of very specific NRC site-selection guideline criteria, was necessary to keep the Yucca Mountain site on the initial selection list—and continues to be a key issue area, where both pre-site selection and current evidence indicate that Yucca Mountain is a very poor site in terms of natural waste-isolation properties. Adopting the premise that future climate won’t change much from present conditions, and ignoring long-established geologic evidence to the contrary, the DOE program has focused on present ("modern") climate and surface-water and ground-water hydrology in the Yucca Mountain area, involving scores of scientists and engineers and hundreds of millions of dollars. Valid, objective research. DOE has assiduously ignored a large body of knowledge that documents the Quaternary Period as characterized by many high-amplitude cyclic climatic changes, resulting in about 44 glacial-interglacial (G-IG) cycles and a comparable number of pluvial-interpluvial (P-IP) cycles in the arid and semiarid regions of the world. (Morrison, 1991a; Kukla, 1991). P-IP cycles are somewhat out-of-phase with G-IG cycles, with pluvial maxima tending to precede significant ice buildup on continents, and to decline before glacial maxima. There is no basis to believe that these climatic cycles have stopped and that pluvials have weakened systematically in the Great Basin. The coming pluvial episode. A huge increase in precipitation (a pluvial episode) is due to begin within the next several thousand years in the Yucca Mountain region. The geologic record of the last few hundred thousand years of this region shows that its climate has fluctuated repeatedly between periods of aridity similar to present conditions, changing to "pluvial" episodes with order-of-magnitude increases in rainfall, surface runoff, floods, and ground-water infiltration. More than 50% of the last 500,000 years in the eastern Mohave Desert has been rainier than now. The rainiest times (pluvial maxima) have been at the transitions between interglacial into glacial episodes. A world-renowned astronomer-paleoclimatologist (Berger, 1994, 1995) forecasts from Milankovitch earth-orbital cyclic parameters (that strongly influence Earth’s major climatic cycles) that within the next 5,000 years the present interglacial episode will have ended with significant buildup of ice sheets in northern Europe and North America. Somewhat earlier a major pluvial episode will begin, particularly effecting arid regions such as eastern Mohave Desert and Yucca Mountain. This forecast brings the issues discussed here well within the 10,000-yr into-the-future time frame that is of chief concern to DOE. Importance of climatic interglacial to glacial transitions. Transitions from interglacials to glacials are times of climatic chaos—and we are due for one within the next few thousand years (Berger, 1994, 1995; Morrison, 1991a, 2002). Judging from the last IG-G transition (110 – 40 ka), the coming climate transition will have frequent, within decades, large-amplitude global changes in temperature and precipitation regimens. The last IG-G transition produced order-of-magnitude increases in hydrologic processes in the Death Valley-Yucca Mountain region and the Great Basin in general (Morrison, 1991b, 1999; Morrison and Mifflin, 2000). This means in today’s terms, that a "dry" emplacement tunnel segment in today’s climate may become a partially flooded tunnel, as perched water drains down via pervious fracture zones that provide sustained localized flow. Such adverse conditions are likely to happen within the next few thousand years, definitely within DOE’s and NRC’s time frame of 10,000 years. Future ground-water problems. A considerable elevation above the regional water table was deemed necessary to assure safe storage far into the future in ‘dry tunnels’. This is why the Yucca Mountain repository level is about 200-370 m above the present water table (Quade et al., 1995). However, there are concerns about ground-water incursions into these tunnels, especially during pluvial episodes. Augmented infiltration through the vadose zone. At least an order-of-magnitude increase in vadose (unsaturated zone above the water table) groundwater incursion rate into the repository is likely during future pluvial episodes. This will take place chiefly through the fractures and faults that will be cut by the ~40 miles of drifts ("tunnels") for the final repository. Ground-water recharge during the last pluvial episode, 110 to 30 kyr ago, caused the water table beneath Yucca Mountain to rise about 115 m (Quade et al., 1995). The big question is: Can engineered barriers based on today’s technology cope over countless centuries with the huge ground-water influxes during future pluvial episodes? After two decades of study, DOE has not yet issued a formal site-capability report on groundwater issues at Yucca Mountain. This key topic may be so hot and controversial that DOE doesn’t choose to confront it on scientific terms---political means can serve better. Upwelling ground water due to earthquake shocks. This possibility has been investigated by USGS and others (e.g., Quade and Cerling, 1990). The investigation hinges upon whether carbonate vein deposits near the Yucca Mountain repository were due to upward epigene or downward pedogenic or vadose water movement. Consensus opinion is that the vein deposits are pedogenic and/or vadose and show no evidence of deposition (or likelihood of repository intrusion) from upwelling water. Key hydrogeologic questions that remain unanswered. Accurate knowledge of the hydrogeology of the vadose (unsaturated) zone in Yucca Mountain is essential to evaluation of Yucca Mountain as a potential repository. This knowledge should include an understanding of vadose-zone processes at varying flux rates over time scales of centuries and millennia and under the full range of pluvial-interpluvial climate fluctuations known from the geologic record. The DOE/USGS conceptual research models have changed somewhat during the two decades of study, albeit slowly and at great cost. They began considering ground-water flow above the water table as if the rock is unfractured, disregarding the many faults, rubble zones, and countless joints that the repository tunnels will encounter. They now contemplate possible fractured-rock flow two orders of magnitude greater than originally postulated during site selection. However, they now rely solely on a complicated mathematical model, the "Total System Performance Assessment" (TSPA), as the chief method of predicting "exposure risks" over the next 10,000 years. The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB), which Congress established as an independent federal agency charged with reviewing DOE’s work on the Yucca Mountain project) concluded that the TSPA is so badly flawed by uncertainties, unwarranted assumptions, and bureaucratic bias that "Total System Performance Assessment by itself may never be able to show repository safety with confidence" (Senator Harry Reid, 2002). It appears that the TSPA model is a product of the "must prove, must do" attitude that has pervaded this project from its inception. Criticality issues Criticality issues relate to fissionable material entering configurations that produce spontaneous fission reactions. They are the most serious among all the issues concerning the long-term safety of the Yucca Mountain repository, yet DOE has tried to minimize worries about them in its public statements, even in Congressional hearings. However, consider these facts: (1) The repository is planned to hold by far the largest concentration of fissionable material in the world, at least two million kilograms of uranium 235. (The Hiroshima bomb contained about 15 kg of U235 ). (2) DOE no longer expects that climatic and geologic conditions alone will contain the radioactive material; thus the current emphasis on "engineered barriers" (Reid, 2002). It is very doubtful that engineered barriers, such as special-alloy (new, untested) waste canisters, titanium drip shields, etc. will resist corrosion and leakage for many centuries (certainly not for 10,000 years, as claimed by DOE) in the superheated steam environment caused by radioactive heat buildup in the "tunnels". (3) DOE wants to finalize the repository assessment before deciding whether to operate the repository at low or high temperature (below-boiling vs. superheated). This means that there will be critical uncertainty about the long-term performance of the new alloys used to cover the containers (and all other chemical reactions, including those in the surrounding rock). Basic laws of chemical reactivity dictate that corrosion proceeds faster under higher temperature. (4) There will be at least 10 times greater-than-current ground-water inflow into the tunnels during pluvial episodes. The next pluvial episode, lasting thousands of years, is destined to begin within a few centuries. (5) Over centuries, leakage from the corroded waste canisters, augmented by large groundwater inflow during pluvials, will migrate through joints, faults, and rubble zones down to the water table. Then, this radionuclide-bearing fluid will travel through the local aquifer system to discharge sites, likely springs and seepages in the nearby Amargosa Desert. The nearest such area is only 10.5 miles from the repository. However, depending upon complex geochemical conditions, the deposition and concentration of radionuclides also can occur any place along the hydrologic transfer route, including within and below the repository. (6) At the discharge sites the radionuclides, including plutonium and uranium 235, along with non-lethal compounds, will be deposited and reconcentrated at and just below ground-water level. This is the way most uranium-ore deposits were formed. (7) If the transport and concentration process continues long enough, over centuries, enough fissile material is likely to be concentrated at certain sites to become critical. (8) Criticality then might progress to nuclear chain reactions and explosive events involving large bodies of reconcentrated enriched uranium and/or plutonium material, and possibly the whole radioactive inventory within Yucca Mountain. The total inventory of fissionable material in the repository will be many times over the amount necessary to wipe out all higher life forms on Earth. If this material is released into the biosphere, its effect will be akin to that of a large asteroid colliding with Earth. Details. (A) Although plutonium is relatively insoluble and does not transport readily by water, uranium 235’s (half-life 704 kyr) is much more soluble and transports readily. Due to the solubility of uranium in oxidizing water, most of the U235 inventory (finally to be about 2 million kg) eventually will be dissolved and transported down gradient in porous geologic media to be precipitated at discharge sites in the Amargosa Desert as oxides in reducing environments or carbonates in evaporation/transpiration environments. If such reconcentrations of uranium are enriched to more than 2% 235U, they may attain criticality, with the likelihood of a nuclear chain reaction. (B) The criticality hazard associated with the proposed enriched uranium inventory at the repository could be eliminated by having enough depleted uranium mixed with the enriched uranium. Correcting the plutonium hazard will be more difficult. Plutonium is almost totally insoluble in water, but tends to partition into small particles and colloids, and thus transport (and reconcentrate) mechanically in porous media. Colloids tend to travel faster than solutes in porous media because they are large enough to be forced to travel via the larger pathways and therefore the most rapid flow paths. Also, plutonium colloids tend to concentrate in select environments because they are attracted to certain substances, such as organic matter. (C) Exactly where plutonium will reconcentrate is a mystery. Depending upon complex physiochemical conditions, it may reconcentrate in the remains of canisters, elsewhere in the tunnels, in underlying fractures, at the water table below the repository, at ground-water discharge sites in Amargosa Dessert, etc. (D) Based on past climatic cycles, more than 50% of the future is forecasted to be in a pluvial climatic state. During past pluvial maxima, precipitation and consequent hydrologic processes increased roughly ten times above modern values. The majority of the soluble radionuclides, with uranium and plutonium, will be subjected to dissolution and transport during the pluvial episodes. (E) Rather than being dispersed though a large regional flow pattern that may extend to Death Valley, the most likely chief radionuclide concentration sites will be at the closest discharge areas, in nearby areas of the Amargosa Desert. Future severe erosion The "severe erosion" issue was supposed to be a pushover that could be disposed of easily. Of course, no geologist believes that the mountain ridge intended for the repository is likely to be seriously affected by any kind of erosion within the next 10,000 years or even the next few hundred thousand years. Nonetheless, DOE managed to "lose the bank." The first two of DOE’s "Site Characterization" reports on Yucca Mountain and following field reviews were on the "extreme erosion" issue. DOE and USGS gave such strongly slanted non-objective data and conclusions the reports were rejected as unacceptable by both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1994) and National Research Council (1995). DOE still has not issued a final "site characterization/site capability" report on ground-water issues at Yucca Mountain, which are far more important and controversial. In several reports addressing the climate change and severe erosion issues, a DOE-financed USGS-Science Applications International Corporation consortium presented "scientific" evidence that negligible erosion had occurred in the Yucca Mountain area during the last ½ to 1 million years, and that a trend toward increasing aridity is established---so there is no need to worry about effects of future pluvials (e.g., Yonker et al., 1992; Whitney and Harrington, 1993). On the contrary, the stratigraphic records of pluvial lakes Tecopa, Lahontan, and Bonneville (all in the Great Basin) demonstrate an upward trend in their lake maxima (Morrison, 1991b) during the last several hundred thousand years; in other words, pluvials in this region have strengthened, not weakened. Furthermore, the geologic record in Tecopa Valley (about 60 miles south of Yucca Mountain) demonstrates that within the last 200,000 years there were two episodes of widespread regional erosion (deep stream dissection followed by kilometers-wide lateral fluvial planation). To produce these erosional features required repeated very large long-lasting floods, with order-of-magnitude greater-than-modern flood volumes (Morrison, 1999; Morrison and Mifflin, 2000). Similar extreme-erosion episodes surely will affect Yucca Mountain and its surroundings during the next pluvial episode, due within a few millennia. Future tectonism The Yucca Mountain repository is just 26 miles east of Death Valley, one of the most highly tectonic areas in the U.S. Much of the downdropping of Death Valley took place during the last 10,000 years. Tecopa Valley’s stratigraphic and geomorphic record also demonstrates that significant Holocene faulting occurred only 60-70 miles south of the repository (Morrison, 1999; Morrison and Mifflin, 2000). It is clear that this whole area is prone to earthquakes, but of course, their timing and severity is unpredictable. A 3.5 magnitude earthquake epicentered in the Death Valley area spring 2000. Future volcanism Yucca Mountain is in an area with a long volcanic history, with many eruptive centers and eruptive cycles. Yucca Mountain itself is a huge pile of volcanic ash deposited over millions of years from tremendous eruptions from seven different caldera between 22 and 9 Ma. Within the last few hundred thousand years several small cinder-cone-building events took place close to Yucca Mountain. (The last one occurred only 12.5 miles southeast of the repository site about 20 kyr ago.) These were trivial compared to earlier eruptions that caused regional burial under tens of meters of hot volcanic ash and local lava flows. No one knows whether, where, or when another eruption will take place in this long-term, still active volcanic region, nor whether it will be a major regional wipeout or just a local cinder-cone-building event. HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE IS A HUGE ENERGY RESOURCE THAT OUGHT NOT BE MADE IRRECOVERABLE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS The spent reactor rods and other nuclear material now residing within the U.S. shouldn’t be regarded as just highly undesirable, dangerous waste. It is a potential huge energy resource for future generations that hopefully have acquired the knowledge and social development to utilize safely the great amount of its remaining potential energy. The projected final contents of the Yucca Mountain repository will be a potential energy resource perhaps greater than all the petroleum and natural gas fields ever discovered! We shouldn’t put all of this precious resource deep inside the mountain, where in centuries to come it might become irretrievable due to intense concentration of radioactivity. A few other countries have at least partly solved this problem with reprocessing plants. However, the U.S. does not have an operational reprocessing plant. France has several, and it has even started reprocessing all of Germany’s and Italy’s spent reactor fuel. RECOMMENDATIONS The proposed high-level nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain is NOT acceptable as a permanent disposal facility for several reasons: 1. It has no lasting waste-isolation properties. 2. Only engineered barriers, which have a finite life, will isolate the waste. 3. The large proposed inventory of thermally fissile material presents a large, poorly researched risk of criticality events once the engineered barrier fails. The longer-lived radionuclides that become transported by ground water are likely to become reconcentrated at various sites depending on complex local physiochemical conditions, perhaps within and/or below the repository, but especially in ground-water discharge areas in the Amargosa Desert. If the reconcentrations in porous media exceed 2% uranium 235, they will become critical, with the possibility of a chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion. 4. DOE site characterization has not been credible. Numerous independent, highly qualified scientists have questioned its methods, results, and conclusions. 5. The site-selection and licensing guidelines were changed in an attempt to accommodate the characteristics of the site, therefore establishing a credibility problem with licensing for both DOE and NRC. 6. The general plan requires very substantial costs for both repository construction and transporting the waste to the site, as well as creating unnecessary risks for "dirty bomb" terrorist attacks during the several decades of shipments across the US during an era when capable terrorist attacks are credible. In view of the above realities, we offer the following recommendations, in the hope that they will help to define and structure future US policy as to nuclear waste: + Develop a new US policy with respect to all high-level nuclear waste that is rich in thermally fissile material. This includes spent commercial fuels plus defense waste, including neutered warheads. Frances’ leadership can be instructive. There is no credible evidence that thermally fissile material can be safely disposed of in any kind of geologic environment. The safest, most feasible, and cost-effective option is to reprocess it without having to store this dangerous material for long periods, as the US is doing now and is planning to do into infinity at Yucca Mountain. Unfortunately, the US has no operational reprocessing facilities, because of concerns about their ability to produce fissionable material that can be applied for military use or used by terrorists. + Institute an intensive in-depth review of applied science and technology to determine the options that are currently available for: 1. Retrievable storage of high-level nuclear waste. 2. Permanent disposal of thermally fissile material and all other high-level radioactive waste. 3. Beneficial uses of high-level nuclear waste currently available and in development. 4. The programs necessary to implement the above options. This review should be managed by the National Academy of Sciences, and should be structured to directly fund and involve a broad spectrum of the university-based scientific community, as well as the National Laboratories. The National Labs have been the primary technical support for the weapons program, but they do not constitute the broader-based scientific community and resources, including the earth sciences, which are key to geological disposal. DOE’s reliance on a small group of captive technical-support contractors (the National Labs, U.S. Geological Survey, and others) led to failure of the current program. + Immediately establish a program for secure interim storage of the spent fuel that is now on site at commercial reactors, and that continues to be generated. The federal government has contracted to take title of this material but has no place to put it. Even if the Yucca Mountain repository is certified, completing its construction will take 10 to 20 years, and completing the transportation of waste from the nuclear power plants probably even longer. The most cost-effective and safest approach is to construct subregional interim storage facilities. They should be underground vaults, probably using the dry-case concept, and designed to be secure from sabotage but for foolproof retrievability. Could some of the abandoned Titan and Minuteman missile sites be modified for this purpose? This general approach moves the material the shortest distance, takes it out of densely populated areas, and allows time to study and adopt any option, ranging from reprocessing, to permanent disposal, or to moving it to centralized sites for long-term retrievable storage. + Bring about an in-depth review of options for both interim and long-term storage (or permanent disposal) of nuclear waste within the context of national commitments. The United States leadership should not assume that the voluminous reports on Yucca Mountain represent credible research on this problem. DOE has managed them so that they are strongly slanted and biased in favor of Yucca Mountain. Unless there is credible research and associated repository design that demonstrates that the issue of criticality can be managed in the geologic environment, there is no scientific or moral basis for permanent geologic disposal of fissionable nuclear material + Separate the long-lived radionuclides from short-lived nuclides, such as strontium 90 and cesium 137, from the spent nuclear fuel. With this segregation the volume and nature of nuclear waste is much reduced and the removed material will become safe within a few centuries, compared to 200,000 years without such removal. This could markedly alter the strategies required for storage and disposal. + Last, but not least, take DOE out of the management role for any future efforts that deal with applied earth sciences and geologic disposal. DOE has not established scientifically credible results for the proposed Yucca Mountain site. CONCLUSION We believe that, regardless of how Yucca Mountain site plays out politically, that sub-regional interim storage sites that are secure against terrorist attacks will continue to be necessary for decades. We also believe that the Yucca Mountain proposed repository is a political solution that has no lasting future as a viable permanent geologic repository. It also may carry too much other baggage, particularly the transportation problem, to become a lasting political solution even if selected, licensed, and constructed, once the nuclear-waste shipments begin from more than 100 sites around the U.S. If there is just one even partly successful terrorist attack on a shipment, the general plan likely will unravel. REFERENCES Kukla, G. J., 1991, Pleistocene stratigraphy of deep-sea sediments and loess in Morrison, R. B., ed., Quaternary nonglacial geology; conterminous U. S.: Geological Society of America, The Geology of North America, v. K-2, 26-35. Morrison, R. B., in press, Quaternary erosion-deposition-stability (EDS) cycles: Quaternary Research . Morrison, R. B., 1991a, Introduction in R. B. Morrison, ed., Quaternary nonglacial geology; conterminous U. S.: Geological Society of America, The Geology of North America, v. K-2, p. 1-12. Morrison, R.B., 1991, Quaternary stratigraphic, hydrologic, and climatic history of the Great Basin, with special emphasis on Lakes Lahontan, Bonneville, and Tecopa. Chapter 10 in Morrison, R.B., ed., Quaternary nonglacial geology, conterminous U.S.: Boulder, Colorado, Geological Society of America, The Geology of North America series, v. K- 2, p. 353-371. -------- 1999, Lake Tecopa: Quaternary geology of Tecopa Valley, California, a multi-million-year record and its relevance to the proposed nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, in Wright, L. and Troxel, B., eds, Cenozoic basins of the Death Valley Region: Geological Society of America Special Paper 333, p. 301-344. Morrison, R. B., and Mifflin, M. D., 2000, Lake Tecopa and its environs: 2.4 million years of exposed history relevant to climate, groundwater, and erosion issues at the proposed nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, in Lageson, D. R., Peters, S. G., and Lahren, M. M., eds., Great Basin and Sierra Nevada: Geological Society of America Field Guide 2, p. 355-382. National Research Council, 1995, Review of U. S. Department of Energy Technical Basis Report for surface characteristics, preclosure hydrology, and erosion [at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and vicinity]: Washington, D. C., National Research Council, December, 1995, 106 p. Nature, 1995, Report on U. S. nuclear repository "needs effective peer review" (editorial): Nature, v. 378, 7 December 1995, p. 526. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1994, NRC Staff Review of the U. S. Department of Energy Topical Report on Extreme Erosion [at Yucca Mountain, Nevada]: Washington, D.C., Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 20 p. Quade, Jay, and Cerling, T.E., 1990, Stable isotopic evidence for a pedogenic origin of carbonates in trench 14 near Yucca Mountain, Nevada: Science, v. 250, p. 1549-1552. Quade, Jay, Mifflin, M. D., Pratt, W. L., McCoy, W., and Burckle, L., 1995, Fossil spring deposits in the southern Great Basin and their implications for changes in water-table levels near Yucca Mountain, Nevada, during Quaternary times: Geological Society of America Bulletin v. 107, p. 213-230. Reid, [U.S. Senator] Harry, 2002, Yucca Mountain: politics over sound science: Geotimes, March 2002, p. 5. Slesinger, Audrey, 2000, A safer way to store high-level nuclear waste: Geotimes, Oct 2000, p. 31. Whitney, J.W., and Harrington, C.D., 1993, Relict colluvial boulders as paleoclimate indicators in the Yucca Mountain region, southern Nevada: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 105, p. 1008-1018. Younker, L.A., Andrews, W.B., Fasano, G.A., Herrington, C.C., Mattson, S.R., Murray, R.C., Baflou, L.B., Revelli, M.A., Ducharme, A.R., Shephard, L.E., Dudley, W.W., Hoxie, D.T., Herbst, R.J., Patera, E.A., Judd, B.R., Docka, J.A., and Rickertson, L.D., 1992, Report of early-site suitability; evaluation of the potential repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada: Las Vegas, Nevada, Science Applications International Corporation, SAIC 91-8000; work performed under Contract No. DE-AC08-87NVIO576, 330 p. ***************************************************************** 43 The nuclear physicist who could give peace another chance in Iraq Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | UN inspector insists he will not compromise Ian Traynor in Vienna Tuesday November 12, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] In the countdown to war on Iraq, Jacques Baute could yet persuade the White House to give peace another chance, although no one is betting on it. When the French physicist flies into Baghdad next Monday, he will inaugurate a more rigorous regime of inspection of Saddam Hussein's alleged illicit weapons programmes. Issues of war and peace will hinge on what Mr Baute finds and on whether Saddam Hussein lies to him. Given Washington's bullish mood, Mr Baute's mission is a race against time. But the chief arms inspector for the nuclear wing of the United Nations detectives insists he won't be rushed into premature conclusions. "We're fully conscious that we are under time pressure," he said in his office on the 23rd floor of the UN tower in Vienna that is headquarters for the International Atomic Energy Agency. "As the leader of the team, I have to understand the pressure, but I have not to bend so much that we would lose in technical credibility. We're going to implement everything we feel we need to implement as fast as we can. But one thing we won't compromise on is the credibility of our conclusions. If we draw conclusions, it's because we've done everything we need to." After months of preparations, negotiations with the Iraqis, pressure from the Americans, and haggling over commas and adjectives at UN headquarters in New York, the inspectors got the green light to return to Baghdad last week. President Saddam has until Friday to agree that they can operate unhindered in Iraq. On the 23rd floor, the air is one of controlled excitement. And if Mr Baute appears an unlikely sleuth, he can take much of the credit for "neutralising" Saddam's secret nuclear project in the mid-90s, an inspection success that saw the UN team dismantle a research reactor, wreck the ancillary facilities and take 20 kilos of weapons-grade uranium out of Iraq as well as 5.5 grams of plutonium. Uniquely among the teams returning to Baghdad, Mr Baute has been involved in the Iraq crisis since 1991. This time, thanks to American pressure, the terms for Mr Baute's mission are much tougher, empowering the UN inspectors to go anywhere, any time in Iraq, to interview any Iraqi expert or technician they want, and demand all the documentation they require. It will be a battle of wits with Saddam. "We need to be unpredictable so the other side can't take countermeasures," Mr Baute says. "So we won't provide an advance list [to the Iraqis] of who's coming until one hour before landing." If the Baghdad regime can't vet the inspectors, nor will it be notified in advance, unlike last time, about what sites are to be examined. The Iraqis are not allowed to open the inspectors' luggage at Baghdad airport or have a look at their equipment on arrival. If they so choose, the inspectors will also be able to place parts of Iraq under quarantine, sealing off districts and roads if they find suspect sites. Mr Baute has headed more than 20 arms inspections in Iraq in the years up to December 1998 when the mission was aborted. He says he never felt intimidated, that the biggest risk he faced was the Baghdad traffic. Of course, there were plenty of political problems with the regime during the 1992-98 inspections, but the 50C heat in summer, the lack of air conditioning, the gruelling pace of work and the constant travel were the biggest problems, necessitating a rotation of the inspectors every few weeks. "In the field, it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are no breaks. It's quite demanding. But we're definitely very eager to return." For the past four years, the experts have been holed up in offices in Vienna and New York poring over satellite imagery, spy pictures and computer data, trying to work out what has been going on in Iraq. Now they are getting the chance to check their hunches against their forensic skills. "We don't trust. We verify. Nothing is taken at face value," says Mr Baute. "If we can't get practical proof of what we're told, we have a problem. "We're starting with a big gap of four years. The issue is understanding what may have happened in Iraq since December 98. We 're suspicious on principle. We're returning with the intention to try to identify or detect an activity that could have happened after 98. "We work with the assumption that Iraq wants the weapons. That's not an accusation, it's an assumption which allows us to develop all the tools that could be useful." New equipment for the inspectors includes portable gamma radiation detectors, handheld tools that conduct instant spectrometry and others that analyse alloys in machinery for their compatibility with nuclear work. All being well, says Mr Baute, it will be two months before the inspectors will report to the security council in New York. "No one should expect any conclusions in this report. It's impossible to imagine that after 60 days we could say Iraq is clean." Useful links Arab Gateway: Iraq briefing [http://www.al-bab.com/arab/countries/iraq.htm] Middle East Daily [http://www.middleeastdaily.com/] Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq [http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/casi/] Iraq sanctions - UN security council [http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/indexone.htm] UN special commission on Iraq [http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/index.html] [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 44 Expert on A-bomb flights preserves history SouthBendTribune.com: November 11, 2002 Memorabilia includes more than 1,000 photos VETERANS DAY 2002 By JIM MEENAN Tribune Staff Writer Bob Krauss, of Buchanan, displays memorabilia of Charles Donald Albury's flights with the atomic bombs dropped over Japan during World War II. Tribune Photo/BARBARA ALLISON 1,000 veterans of World War II dying each day A lunch break years ago turned Buchanan's Bob Krauss into a historian/archivist on a most unique and, at times, controversial subject. Krauss found he needed a break from the pressures of his job as a purchasing agent back in the 1980s. So while he was working for Universal Cooperatives in Goshen, he would head to the Goshen Public Library for lunch and do some reading. He began reading books on World War II and soon found himself enthralled with the story of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, and the servicemen who were involved in it. He wanted to learn more and started looking for the crew and the special division they were in. And so began a hobby that has turned into a full-time interest. Now some 17 years later, Krauss runs reunions for the 509th Composite Group that once totaled 1,800 men who were part of the secret missions that resulted in not only a 9,700-pound uranium bomb being dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, but also a 10,000-pound plutonium bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. The two atomic bombs killed 110,000 people, injured another 130,000 and led to Japan's surrender on Aug. 14, 1945. "The more reading I did of these fellows, I found that nobody was preserving the history of this group," Krauss said. "In the late 1980s, I made it my mission to do that." For Krauss, who never served in the military himself, it's a labor of love, and he flies to keep alive the memory of a group that has come to know appreciation, controversy and even at times, scorn, in the many years since the historical events that brought an end to the war. He has collected more than 1,000 photos of the group. He has his own memorabilia collection including the flight suit worn by Charles "Don" Albury, one of nine men to be a part of both atomic bomb missions. Even the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, has referred television producers and authors to Krauss over the years seeking facts. "The Smithsonian did not have the archives that I had," Krauss said. And it would like to get him to donate his photos, but he says he likely never will because the Smithsonian would then sell them to the veterans' children, which he does not believe should be done. He believes they should be given copies for free. As it is, he annually prepares a 200- to 250-page book complete with many photos for 509th's reunions that he runs. His latest, entitled "Wendover Memories," has not only photos, but recollections written by the veterans themselves. Wendover, Utah, is where the men trained for 12 months prior to the mission. Krauss just came back from their most recent reunion in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in October. He is disappointed more Americans don't share his appreciation for their group. "You would think they would have a much greater following than what they do," he said. "I think revisionist history has probably made it an unpopular thing." But he thinks even that is starting to change. President Harry S. Truman had a decision to make, Krauss said, noting 500,000 to a million American soldiers would have been needed for an invasion of Japan in 1945. Many veterans still thank the men when they run into them, Krauss said, likely because the dropping of the two atom bombs saved them from that plight. "I have seen veterans and children and grandchildren of veterans thank these guys," Krauss said. "I have never seen any of the protests myself, but in the late 1960s, a lot of them had to get unlisted numbers and they were very, very hard to find. A lot of them got hate mail and phone calls back then." To Krauss, 59, who has always held veterans from that era in high regard, noting many of them were his scoutmasters, teachers and mentors of his youth, history of the event is pretty clear cut. "They ended the war is what it should say," he said. "They brought us many years of peace. A lot of veterans would not be alive had it not been for these guys. "As time goes on, we are finding out that the Japanese had an atom bomb project themselves. If they had gotten it first, they would have used it. The Germans also had a project. Somebody I am sure would have accomplished it." Revisionist history cites that the bombs were dropped on heavily populated cities, Krauss says, ignoring the fact that they were also legitimate military targets. "I think people have forgotten that," he said. "Hiroshima had 18 points within the city that all encompassed what this (military) target was. The largest thing was a military barracks. "Nagasaki, was where the Mitsubishi Steel Works was, where they made torpedoes," he added. "They didn't just pick a city to drop a bomb on. It's not like today's terror where they just go after citizenry." Having talked to many of the men in the 509th, Krauss says they do not apologize for what they did. "I know most of them fairly well," he said. "They never apologized for what they did. They felt they did the right thing. They were soldiers, not politicians." Albury, now 82, backs that up. "I feel this way," he said from his home in Orlando, Fla. "We did a job, and I am glad we did it. I don't regret ever dropping it or being a part of it. "Paul Tibbets (the commander of the 509th), said, 'It could take out an entire city and it could end the war,' " Albury said. "I thank the Lord that it did." Albury notes people never talk about all the Chinese people that the Japanese were killing, or other wrongdoing, such as the Korean "Comfort Girls" they supplied their troops with. Albury is appreciative of Krauss' efforts with 509th. Albury himself is one of the few so heavily involved in the missions who never wrote a book. "I have a lot of respect for Bob," he said. "I think he's doing a pretty good job of trying to educate a few people, but there are too many people out there trying to make a profit off the pictures he sells. "He's done a wonderful job with the reunions." Albury does believe schools need to teach more about World War II and what happened back then. He says the unit was so secretive, even he, who co-piloted the instrument plane -- the Great Artiste, which dropped instruments to record the effectiveness of the Hiroshima blast -- did not know exactly what the first mission was about when they took off. By the time he co-piloted Bockscar on the second mission, which dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, he did know. And he's pleased some recognition is finally coming the way of the World War II vets with the planned monument in Washington. "I think they need recognition," he said. "Finally after World War II, more than 50 years, they are going to build us a monument. I am very happy they are." Krauss is happy to keep their names and bravery alive. "I have a lot of admiration for those who served our country," he said. Contact the southbendtribune.com Web staff [http://www.southbendtribune.com] unless otherwise specified. ***************************************************************** 45 Chief nuclear inspector tells Iraq to cooperate and come clean The Daily Camera: Nation/world By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press November 12, 2002 UNITED NATIONS — With just a few days left before Iraq must decide whether to cooperate with the United Nations, the chief nuclear inspector told Iraq Monday it's time to cooperate and urged Saddam Hussein to come clean on weapons of mass destruction. Mohamed ElBaradei delivered the message during an animated 30-minute meeting with Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri, who said afterwards that he doesn't know whether his government's decision will be positive or negative. The two spoke in Arabic in a lounge near the General Assembly hall as Iraq's parliament met in Baghdad and denounced the resolution. Al-Douri echoed the view of parliamentarians, declaring: "This is a very humiliating resolution which affects all our dignity, sovereignty and independence. This is a cover for war." Nonetheless, despite the "negative" discussion in the National Assembly, the ambassador said it's up to the Revolutionary Command Council, Iraq's top executive body headed by Saddam, to decide whether to accept the resolution by the Friday deadline. "I am very much hoping that the decision will be positive because the alternative is definitely not a good one," said El Baradei, an Egyptian who heads the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. The resolution adopted unanimously on Friday by the U.N. Security Council demands that Iraq cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors, who can go anywhere at any time to search for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. It warns that Iraq faces "serious consequences" if it doesn't comply — and the United States has made clear that an Iraqi failure to cooperate will almost certainly mean a new war. ElBaradei said he told Al-Douri it is in Iraq's interest to move forward with inspections, which could lead to the suspension of sanctions imposed after Saddam's forces invaded Kuwait in 1990. "What I was trying to impress on him is that it should be a completely new phase with demonstration of full cooperation and full transparency," ElBaradei told The Associated Press. ElBaradei said he also urged Al-Douri to be candid about the declaration Iraq must make by Dec. 8 of any programs related to weapons of mass destruction. "I said this is very important. Try to come with a declaration which is comprehensive, accurate, complete, because that's again part of this new phase," he said. "We need to establish credibility. ... If they still have anything that needs to be declared, they ought to declare it now," he said. ElBaradei and U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix, who is in charge of chemical and biological inspections, are expected to arrive in Baghdad on Nov. 18 with an advance team to start preparing for a resumption of inspections after nearly four years. "We need at least two to three months to put ourselves fully in operation and have our system to be fully operational," ElBaradei said. In the meantime, nuclear inspectors will do some inspections, take some photos, look around, and conduct some surprise searches, he said. "But we need a few months. And again, it depends on what we see. ... It's like probing surgery. We just have to probe first and see what we find out when we go," ElBaradei said. ElBaradei and Al-Douri met privately after the IAEA chief presented his annual report to the 191-nation General Assembly. In the report, ElBaradei said the success of new inspections will depend on five prerequisites: immediate and unfettered access to all sites; access to all sources of information including all information given to U.N. member states; continued support from a unified Security Council; an impartial inspection process free from outside interference; and "active cooperation from Iraq" to assist inspectors and be transparent. At a meeting this weekend in Cairo, foreign ministers of the Arab League predicted Iraqi compliance, rejected war on Iraq, and demanded Arab experts be involved in the inspections. Blix's office said it has trained inspectors from 49 countries, including six Jordanians, one Moroccan and five Turks. [http://web.dailycamera.com/aboutus/index.html] ***************************************************************** 46 UN puts Blix in invidious position by handing him the trigger for war [Guardian Unlimited] Tim Trevan Tuesday November 12, 2002 [http://www.guardian.co.uk] The security council resolution on Iraq passed unanimously on Friday provides Saddam Hussein with a last chance to avert a war to remove him from power. He can do so by convincing the weapons inspectors that Iraq has fully accounted for its holdings of and capabilities to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and offensive ballistic missiles. Iraq had seven days to accept the resolution, and 30 days to make full declarations about its past and present capabilities. Once inspections have begun the head of the inspectors, Hans Blix, will be required to keep the security council informed of Iraq's compliance. This places Mr Blix in an invidious position on two levels, technical and political. Technically, the job is now more difficult than when I was an inspector. Iraq has had seven years to learn the methods and capabilities of the inspectors, and to adapt its countermeasures accordingly. Iraq is certainly now much better at guessing what a particular inspection team will be looking for, and making sure that relevant illegal items are spirited away before the inspectors get close. Iraq has also had four years without inspection, during which to build new production and storage facilities which will be harder to detect. For example, facilities could be designed to be less identifiable from the air as weapons factories, by disguising the exterior of the building, not erecting military-style perimeters, or locating them underground. Furthermore, it will be harder to track down new capabilities, as Iraq's new suppliers know that sales to Iraq have been made illegal. This means they will not cooperate with the current UN inspection body, Unmovic, as they might have with its predecessor, the UN special commission for Iraq (Unscom). Thus one key outside source of information against which to check Iraqi declarations will not be available to Mr Blix. Mr Blix's task is to report whether Iraq has any banned weapons capabilities, but it is highly unlikely that the inspectors will be allowed to catch Iraq red-handed. Even if the inspectors overcome Iraqi countermeasures and get close, Iraq would block the inspectors at gunpoint before they get "smoking gun" evidence. And it is impossible to prove a negative - that Iraq has no weapons capabilities. What Unscom tried to do was to prove a positive - that all Iraq's capabilities had been accounted for. But this, too, is impossible without the cooperation of Iraq's suppliers. So the most tangible evidence likely to come from inspections is Iraqi obstruction. But lack of obstruction does not mean that Iraq has nothing to hide. More likely it means they are better at hiding things. The political bind facing Mr Blix is, if anything, even worse than the technical one. Many security council members now consider that the issue of Iraq's compliance rests solely in his hands. Given that there is a good deal of "automaticity" in the new resolution - leading to military action if Iraq is found not to be complying - some see Mr Blix as the one who will decide whether or not to pull the trigger for war. He will be damned if he does, and damned if he does not. This is an abrogation of the security council's responsibilities, and unfair to Mr Blix. As there will be no absolute technical proof of Iraq's weapons capabilities or lack of them, so the decision on its compliance will, perforce, be a political one - and that is the security council's responsibility, not Mr Blix's. This is, in part, why the US is stressing disarmament more than inspections. President Bush has said that there can be no return to business as normal, with "cat and mouse" inspections. He has stressed Iraq's obligation to disarm itself. Indeed, international disarmament law is not like domestic law. It is up to the inspected party to prove its compliance to the satisfaction of the inspectors, not for the inspectors to prove the guilt or innocence of the state in question. Taking this view, the inspections are entirely moot - they are used not to prove the guilt of a determined cheat, but to verify the innocence of a cooperative state. If Iraq does not make honest and complete declarations by December 8, and convince the inspectors and the security council that they are indeed honest and complete, it will have failed to comply with its obligation to prove its own disarmament. Thus Mr Blix has a choice: to seek to use ineffective inspections to prove Iraq's guilt or innocence and report sometime in February 2003; or to pass a judgment on the credibility of Iraq's declarations sometime shortly after 8 December 2002. Expect the US to pressure him to take the latter line. Expect Mr Blix to be very cautious in his choice of words. · Tim Trevan was the political adviser and spokesman for Unscom from 1992 to 1995. The body's main task was to monitor compliance with UN resolutions Useful links [http://www.al-bab.com/arab/countries/iraq.htm] [http://www.middleeastdaily.com/] [http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/casi/] [http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/indexone.htm] [http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/index.html] [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 47 K-25 cleanup pact signed The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- Tuesday, November 12, 2002 R. Cathey Daniels Oak Ridger staff It may be a small step when it comes to overall cleanup, but it's a "major" step toward reaching both accelerated cleanup and reindustrialization goals. The Department of Energy, the state of Tennessee and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday signed off on the $26 million cleanup of areas outside the fence at the K-25 site. "This would be the first big ROD (record of decision) that takes on a big portion of cleanup of the site to meet our end state," said Jim Kopotic, DOE project manager. "It also gives reindustrialization an opportunity to move out to the areas outside the fence." The end goal is to clean the 1,400 acres that wind around the northern, eastern and southeastern boundaries outside the K-25 security fence, so that the property can be used as unrestricted industrial sites. Under the administration's accelerated cleanup goal, the site is slated to be closed by the end of fiscal year 2008. The area is known as Zone 1 at the East Tennessee Industrial Park, or the K-25 site, where uranium was enriched for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel until the mid-1980s. Kopotic said this record of decision was the flagship for a series of decisions that will come down the cleanup river in the next several years, and it is hoped that the experience will prove useful in streamlining the process. "This was a jointly developed ROD between all three agencies," said Kopotic. "We all had input from the beginning and drafted it together." Though this time around the process took more than a year, it is hoped the wrinkles will be ironed out for future agreements. "It's something that took a long time, and we are proud we have signed an ROD at ETTP that will get DOE moving in direction of cleanup there," said John Owsley, director to the DOE oversight division for the state's Department of Environment and Conservation. Owsley said there were negotiations as to compliance with Comprehensive Environmental, Response, Compensation and Liability Act regulations. "Obviously DOE takes the position that a good deal of this property hasn't been used and therefore is not contaminated," said Owsley. "But CERCLA requires some type of verification, so that was part of the discussions as to how much verification is necessary. It will be a dynamic process because they will take samples in the field as they do excavation." A total of 84,000 cubic yards of soil is expected to be remediated by fiscal year 2006. Included in the cleanup plan are: * Blair Quarry, where about 26,400 cubic yards of debris contaminated with uranium and polychlorinated biphenyls will be removed. * The K-895 facility, used to destroy cylinders that contained uranium hexafluoride and hydrogen fluoride, where about 3,950 cubic yards of soil contaminated with uranium, thorium and radium will be excavated. * The K-770 Scrap Yard, where about 21,000 cubic yards of scrap metal and debris contaminated with uranium, cesium and asbestos will be removed and about 3,000 cubic yards of wood waste contaminated with chromium and arsenic will be removed. * The K-710 Imhoff Tank facility and sludge beds, contaminated with PCBs, will be demolished and the sludge removed. * The K-725 Powerhouse, where about 32,050 cubic yards of soils contaminated with uranium will be excavated. Additional areas my be identified that require remediation, according to Kopotic. In that case, the record of decision may need amendment, and the public process would be in place for those changes, he said. Waste from the site will go to the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility near the Y-12 National Security Complex. A second goal of the project is to control leaching and migration from contaminated soil, minimizing further impacts to groundwater. Owsley noted that the record of decision "provides cleanup requirements to meet protection of industrial workers and also provides groundwater protection." Bechtel Jacobs is the cleanup contractor for the DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office. ORO oversees cleanup of DOE facilities mainly in Oak Ridge, Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio. R. Cathey Daniels can be contacted at (865) 220-5515 or danielsrcd@oakridger.com [danielsrcd@oakridger.com] . [http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 48 DOE backs Bechtel Jacobs, but The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- Tuesday, November 12, 2002 R. Cathey Daniels Oak Ridger staff The Department of Energy does not at this time plan to request a change of the fixed-price contracting scheme scheduled for the behemoth cleanup of Buildings K-25 and K-27. But the agency has left itself room to change the approach by procuring the contract on its own. Last week BNFL, the company that has the most experience in local cleanup at the K-25 site, shook the contracting community when it announced it would not bid on further cleanup work under the Bechtel Jacobs fixed-price scenario. Bechtel Jacobs Company manages cleanup for the DOE Oak Ridge Operations office. Gerald Boyd, assistant manager for environmental management for DOE, said this morning that the department at this time would not consider asking Bechtel Jacobs to alter the scheme. "We would do that only after sufficient information that their approach is flawed and we do not at this time believe they have a flawed approach," said Boyd. "DOE has reviewed the technical approach proposed by BJC and believe there is a sufficient technical basis for the approach they are taking. "As always," Boyd added, "DOE is watching this project carefully and will ensure a sound project approach is used." When asked whether he is concerned that a major player in the cleanup community will not bid on the project when the request for proposals emerges later this month, Boyd said: "DOE is always concerned when a major contractor is not interested in DOE work. BNFL has done quality work for DOE in the past and we would welcome their participation on this job. "However, we understand they have to make business decisions based on their priorities and assessments." BNFL General Manager Jeff Stevens told The Oak Ridger that the company would bid fixed price only if the scope of work could be fixed. Many in the contracting community have said that a scope of work on the cleanup of a gaseous diffusion operations facility would be heavy on the risk end and light on definition. Contractors say there are too many front-end unknowns on such a project. Bechtel Jacobs spokesman Dennis Hill said the scope of work has been well-defined on the two-building project. However, Stevens said that the company has proved that that is not the case with their current cleanup efforts of Buildings K-29, K-31 and K-33. Stevens said the company would lose at least $150 million on that $238 million contract. The contract for the two-building project is expected to be worth at least $350 million. When asked whether the DOE would consider procuring the contract themselves, Boyd said the agency had given that idea consideration. "We have considered that approach and do not at this time see the necessity or the benefit of a separate contract with different conditions or technical approach," said Boyd. "As stated earlier, we will continue to watch this effort carefully during the procurement phase." Boyd said the fixed-price scenario will work on the upcoming project. "DOE believes fixed-price contracting will work for this project," said Boyd. "This approach has been used extensively in the decontamination and decommissioning field over the past years. "We believe there will be sufficient technical information provided to the bidders to ensure they can submit a proposal that gets the work done in the best interest of the government and does not put the bidder at undue risk of success." Boyd stressed that the DOE would be watching the situation carefully. "I say again, we will watch this project carefully over the next few months as BJC moves into the contracting phase and ensure the approach continues to be technically and financially sound. We do not want to put environmental remediation firms at high risk and we commit to guard against that as we move forward." Bechtel Jacobs is awaiting word on an extension of its contract with the DOE. The two-building project is expected to be awarded in May, with work to start in June. The K-25 site is a former gaseous diffusion facility, where uranium was enriched for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel until the mid-1980s. R. Cathey Daniels can be contacted at (865) 220-5515 or danielsrce@oakridger.com [danielsrce@oakridger.com] . [http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 49 INEEL receives $6.2 million in research project funding Idaho State Journal Idaho facility has more projects funded than any other laboratory 11/12/02 By Emily Jones — Journal Writer Respond to this story [ejones@journalnet.com] IDAHO FALLS — Researchers at the INEEL received $6.2 million for seven Department of Energy Environmental science program projects. The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory received funding for more projects than any laboratory. INEEL researcher Michael McIllwain said Bechtel BWXT, the contractor at the site, has taken an interest in the subsurface science at the site, budgeting $20 million for the program. “They’ve made it a priority,” he said. The projects focus on the movement of contaminants through the ground. The information gleaned from the experiments will help clean up not only the INEEL, but other laboratories and commercial sites, McIllwain said. “These are very fundamental studies trying to gain a basic knowledge,” he said. In addition to the seven projects at the INEEL, scientists from the site will also be involved in three projects at other institutions. - Microbiologist Rick Colwell and his team will study the environmental effects of a process being used to remove trichloroethylene, or TCE, from the groundwater under Test Area North at the site. Trichloroethylene is often found in degreasers and solvents, and has also been found in the Portneuf River aquifer beneath Pocatello. Scientists are currently injecting carbon tetrachloride and added nutrients into the contaminated areas, stimulating the growth of certain microorganisms. The microorganisms break down the TCE. Colwell will study how quickly the microbes break down contaminants and the effects on the ecology of the area. - Geologist Mariana Adler-Flitton and her team will study samples of stainless steel that have been buried for more than 30 years. Adler-Flitton will evaluate the metal’s long-term integrity, soil microbiology and corrosion mechanisms. Stainless steel is used for many waste storage containers, including those that will be used to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. - Geochemist George Redden and his team plan to create particles of solvent-degrading material 50,000 times smaller than the width of human hair. The team will modify the surface area so the particles will migrate toward the solvent. They will also study how well the particles can be controlled and how they move underground. - Microbiologist William Apel and his team will study the use of metal-reducing microorganisms to create a barrier to immobilize heavy metals. - Geophysicist Russel Hertzog and his team will adapt a measurement technique called nuclear magnetic resonance to locate solvents underground. The technique uses magnetic fields and pulsed radio waves to measure the hydrogen content in fluids and their pore-space environment. - Physicist Paul Meakin and his team will study how fluids flow through the subsurface, and how cracks and flow conditions affect the rate of movement. - Hydrologist Carl Palmer will use the INEEL’s geocentrifuge to see if soil moisture content controls the chemical reactivity of contaminants in the vadose zone. The vadose zone is the section of earth between the groundwater and the surface. Emily Jones covers Bingham County, Fort Hall and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory for the Journal. She can be reached at 239-3175 or by e-mail at ejones@journalnet.com. [http://www.mywebpal.com ***************************************************************** 50 State might fight imports of waste to Hanford Northwest -The Olympian [http://www.theolympian.com] Tuesday, November 12, 2002 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS YAKIMA -- The U.S. Department of Energy will not send out-of-state shipments of radioactive trash to Hanford nuclear reservation without giving the state five days' notice, state Attorney General Christine Gregoire said Monday. The state and the Energy Department spoke late last week and will do so again next week to try to work out an agreement on the proposed shipments of radioactive trash -- called transuranic waste -- from Ohio and California. The shipments of barrels of contaminated items such as clothing, tools and rags were scheduled to begin early this month. "My concern about bringing more waste into Hanford is, 'What about cleaning up the waste we've already got there?' " Gregoire said. "What about satisfying the citizens of the state of Washington you're going to clean up the TRU (transuranic) waste you've already got there?" Hanford has thousands of barrels of transuranic waste. "At this point we have said, one, 'We don't want the transportation of that waste under terms and conditions that we understood were at play,' " Gregoire said. "And, two, 'We want a commitment from Energy to clean up the TRU waste that is already at Hanford.' There is nothing on the books currently to dig it up, to process it, to treat it and to ready it for transportation to WIPP," the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a federal underground repository at Carlsbad, N.M. Fluor Hanford, the contractor managing Hanford for the Energy Department, could not comment on the transuranic waste matter Monday, said Michael Turner, a spokesman for Fluor. No one from the Energy Department was immediately available for comment Monday, which was a federal and state holiday. Gregoire and Gov. Gary Locke wrote to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Oct. 29, threatening legal action over the importation of transuranic waste from other states for temporary storage. "We are writing to express our opposition to this plan in the strongest possible terms," their letter said. Locke and Gregoire also said they are worried about the interstate transport of dangerous materials, given an FBI alert about possible threats targeting the U.S. rail system and hazardous waste in transit. ©2002 The Olympian Return to Northwest section ***************************************************************** 51 Deal in works on waste for Hanford [seattlepi.com] Tuesday, November 12, 2002 State demands federal assurances on radioactive trash By LINDA ASHTON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS YAKIMA -- The U.S. Department of Energy will not send any out-of-state shipments of radioactive trash to Hanford Nuclear Reservation without giving the state five days' notice, state Attorney General Christine Gregoire said yesterday. The state and Energy Department officials talked late last week and will do so again next week to try to work out an agreement on the proposed shipments of radioactive trash -- called transuranic waste -- from Ohio and California. The shipments of barrels of such contaminated items as clothing, tools and rags were scheduled to begin early this month. "My concern about bringing more waste into Hanford is, 'What about cleaning up the waste we've already got there?' " Gregoire said. "What about satisfying the citizens of the state of Washington you're going to cleanup the TRU (transuranic) waste you've already got there?" Hanford has thousands of barrels of highly radioactive transuranic waste. "At this point we have said, one, 'We don't want the transportation of that waste under terms and conditions that we understood were at play,' " Gregoire said. "And, two, 'We want a commitment from Energy to clean up the TRU waste that is already at Hanford.' There is nothing on the books currently to dig it up, to process it, to treat it and to ready it for transportation to WIPP," the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a federal underground repository at Carlsbad, N.M. Fluor Hanford, the contractor managing Hanford for the Energy Department, could not comment on the transuranic waste matter yesterday, Fluor spokesman Michael Turner said. No one from the Energy Department was immediately available for comment yesterday. Gregoire and Gov. Gary Locke wrote to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Oct. 29, threatening legal action over the importation of transuranic waste from other states for temporary storage. "We are writing to express our opposition to this plan in the strongest possible terms," their letter said. The letter asked how much transuranic waste there is at DOE sites across the country, how much would come to Hanford, how it would be stored and processed there, and how quickly it would be moved to WIPP. The Energy Department wants to send all transuranic waste from its sites to WIPP. Hanford has one of the country's few facilities that can check barrels of transuranic waste to make sure they meet WIPP storage standards, and that can take care of problems and replace barrels. Additionally, Hanford Communities, a coalition of local governments near the south-central Washington reservation, has asked the Energy Department to study the possibility of charging some kind of handling fee or surcharge to sites that send transuranic waste to Hanford. Locke and Gregoire also said they were worried about the interstate transport of dangerous materials, given an FBI alert about possible threats targeting the U.S. railway system and hazardous waste in transit. "We question the wisdom of unnecessary shipments of dangerous materials coming across the country until we have assurances that the risks associated with these shipments have been adequately addressed," the letter said. Gregoire said the Energy Department has indicated it hopes to come up with a response that would convince the state that the federal government can safely move waste to Hanford from California and Ohio, and get it processed and sent to WIPP. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) 542-0820 Send comments to [newmedia@seattlepi.com] ©1999-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer ***************************************************************** 52 A Big Victory by California in Energy Case The New York Times *November 12, 2002* *By DAVID BARBOZA* In the first major settlement to come out of the California energy deregulation debacle, the Williams Companies agreed yesterday to pay more than $400 million to settle accusations that it helped drive up prices and overcharged customers during the state's electric power crisis. Williams, one of the nation's biggest suppliers of electricity and natural gas, said it would settle a broad set of civil claims with three West Coast states ? California, Oregon and Washington ? and also resolve class-action lawsuits. As part of the settlement, California said it would not seek customer refunds. Williams also agreed to restructure a 10-year, $4.3 billion power contract it signed with California at the height of the energy crisis last year, when power prices were soaring. The settlement is considered an important victory for California state officials, who have insisted that some of the biggest energy companies manipulated prices and the state's complex power system in 2000 and 2001, creating widespread shortages and causing electricity prices to soar. State officials say that by renegotiating the power contract with Williams, they could save more than $1 billion. Williams is also expected to make huge cash payments to the states, to help California reduce its energy consumption and to provide equipment for new power plants to serve the West. "This is an important victory for ratepayers," said Gov. Gray Davis of California, who has called some of the big energy companies pirates for their actions during the energy crisis. "The new contract provides us with reliable power delivered at more favorable terms." Williams officials had once called California's accusations that the company withheld power or helped contribute to the power shortages "erroneous" and "patently false." But yesterday, officials at Williams said they were tired of fighting in California. "At some point it's best to simply cease striving and make peace," said Kelly Swan, a spokesman for Williams, which is based in Tulsa, Okla. "We've always tried to act in good faith in California. But we need to get some legal issues behind us." The announcement comes at a time when federal and state officials are stepping up their investigations into whether some of the biggest power marketers conspired to manipulate West Coast power and natural gas prices in 2000 and 2001. Last week, Duke Energy Reliant Resources and Williams said they had received subpoenas from federal officials seeking information about their involvement in the California electricity market, which depends largely on natural gas generating plants in the state, along with nuclear energy installations and hydroelectric dams in California and elsewhere in the West. Yesterday, two other companies ? Mirant and AES ? said they had also received federal subpoenas regarding energy they supplied to California. The announcements come less than a month after Timothy N. Belden, a senior power trader at Enron agreed to plead guilty to federal charges that he participated in a conspiracy to manipulate the California power market during the energy crisis. He also agreed to cooperate in the investigation. Profits at most major energy trading companies ? those that deal primarily in power and natural gas ? have collapsed in the aftermath of the bankruptcy of Enron, once the nation's biggest energy trader. Several suppliers have decided to get out of the energy trading business entirely. Others, like Williams and Dynegy once energy trading behemoths, are now trying to stave off bankruptcy and return to concentrating on their traditional roles as energy suppliers and pipeline distributors. Robert McCullough, who runs an energy consulting firm in Portland, Ore., that has been investigating the California energy crisis for major energy users, said that, all in all, Williams appeared to be getting off relatively lightly. "The value seems low to me," he said. "Williams had one of the biggest footprints in California. They appear all over the place with possible antitrust issues. So I'm not surprised they'd want to settle." Williams shares, which had fallen in trading during the day, rose 12 percent in after-hours trading, after the settlement was disclosed, to $2.60. Williams is one of the most troubled energy traders. Not long ago, it represented a highflying array of energy providers branching out also into telecommunications. *Continued* 1 | 2 Copyright The New York Times Company ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************