***************************************************************** 04/14/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.94 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Bulgaria joins race to become Balkan energy hub 2 US: Ruling paves way for EPA transfer 3 US: Judge Won't Block Official's Transfer NUCLEAR REACTORS 4 US: After Security Breaches at Nuclear Plant, Fallout Would Help 5 US: Security at Millstone heightened to thwart terrorist attacks 6 US: Nuclear plant tries to keep workers 7 Ukrainian nuclear plant shut down for emergency repairs 8 US: The Hole in the Reactor (Davis-Besse) 9 US: A 10,000-year hazard 10 Ukrainian nuclear plant shut down for emergency repairs NUCLEAR SAFETY 11 AU: Radioactivity too high for housing development: Greens. NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 12 US: DOE Could Ship Plutonium Over South Carolina Objections 13 US: S.C. may fight U.S. over plutonium 14 US: Conference tackles nuclear issues 15 Irish plan postcard protest over Sellafield 16 US: Casino offers drink to boost anti-Yucca Mountain campaign 17 US: Yucca: This check is already in the mail 18 US: Artist wants ‘Looking at You’ to send shock waves 19 US: New debate erupts over volcanic threat at Yucca Mountain 20 New USEC deal may help local plant 21 US: Some see few risks in moving waste 22 US: Film recounts trip along route waste would likely travel 23 US: LETTER: Fact or left-wing spin? 24 US: EDITORIAL: Missing the boat on Yucca 25 US: Official: Lawmakers ill-informed on Yucca 26 US: The Road to Yucca (Large) 27 US: Nevada Sues Over Yucca Mountain - Again 28 US: DOE Could Ship Plutonium Over South Carolina Objections 29 US: Jon Ralston: It's no surprise the king lied 30 US: Columnist Erin Neff: Political underdog goes for Yucca gold 31 US: Letter: Feds alienate us over Yucca issue 32 US: Fighter Pilots Testify at N-Waste Hearing 33 US: Using Yucca Mountain 34 US: Incline woman donates to Yucca Mountain battle 35 Japan processes Russian plutonium into MOX fuel - 36 Japan processes dismantled Russian nuclear weapons into MOX fuel NUCLEAR WEAPONS 37 US: Gore Vidal's War on War (Book Review) 38 Taiwan considered using small N-bombs against China 39 UK: N-SUBS ARE FOR THE CHOP 40 Netanyahu's nuclear warning 41 US: Groups Urge Countries to Oppose Bush's Nuclear Plans 42 UN nuclear watch says Iran has stopped giving it data 43 U.S. envoy urges N.K. to hold talks on nuclear, conventional weapons 44 Iran: No stop in cooperating with nuclear watchdog 45 Taiwan considered using small N-bombs against China US DEPT. OF ENERGY 46 Crackdown on nuclear protesters promised 47 Hodges, Abraham wrangle over SRS OTHER NUCLEAR 48 April 2002 Nuclear Energy Agency Online Bulletin ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Bulgaria joins race to become Balkan energy hub BULGARIA: April 12, 2002 SOFIA - Bulgaria joined Greece yesterday in a race to become the main energy hub for the Balkans. Unveiling its new energy strategy, the Bulgarian government said it hopes to maintain its leading position as a power exporter in the region while opening the domestic market for power and gas imports in coming years. Earlier yesterday Greece unveiled an eight-year plan to establish predominance in the region, envisaging construction of a Greek-Turkish natural gas pipeline, a trans-Balkan oil pipeline, production increase of renewable energy sources and the deregulation of the domestic energy market. Under its new policy, Bulgaria would begin liberalising the energy sector by allowing some local power and gas consumers to sign contracts and negotiate prices with local producers from 2003. Later, when domestic players get used to liberalised conditions, the market would be opened to foreign power and gas suppliers, the document said, without giving exact dates. Bulgaria has often been criticised by the European Union, which it is striving to join, and the International Monetary Fund for being slow in reforming its energy sector. Currently, the state-owned National Electricity Transmission Company (NETC) is the single buyer of power from producers and the country's only exporter. State natural gas monopoly Bulgargas is the only Bulgarian gas importer and owns the entire 2,200 km (1,380-mile) pipeline network. The long-term contract with Bulgaria's only gas supplier, Russia's giant Gazprom would limit the gas market liberalisation, the strategy said. Bulgaria would seek to increase Russian gas supplies through its territory to neighbouring Turkey, Greece and Macedonia as well as actively participate in the construction of Balkan oil pipelines to become a regional energy distrubution centre. It would also seek to strengthen its role as a major power exporter, covering some 45 percent of the region's deficit, by relying on domestic nuclear and coal power production, the document added. Earlier this week, Sofia said it planned to resume construction of a nuclear power plant in Belene to compensate for the early closure of reactors at the 3,760-megawatt Kozloduy plant, which produces 45 percent of the country's power. The decommissioning of the old reactors is a key pledge in Bulgaria's accession talks with the EU but has triggered public protests in recent months. Some 3,000 people gathered in Sofia yesterday, seeking a referendum on Kozloduy's fate. Bulgaria bowed to EU pressure in 2000 and agreed to shut down Kozloduy's two oldest 440-megawatt reactors, number one and two, by 2003. It is still not clear when it would close the other two 440 MW reactors, numbers three and four. According to a 1999 deal with the European Commission, Bulgaria should close them in 2008 and 2010 respectively, but in the last two annual reports on Bulgaria the Commission has insisted this should be in 2006 at the latest. A final decision over the closure will be taken after negotiations with the EU this year. REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 2 Ruling paves way for EPA transfer Denver Post.com Whitman wins round in ombudsman fight Mike Soraghan [msoraghan@denverpost.com] Denver Post Washington Bureau Saturday, April 13, 2002 - WASHINGTON - Not much happens in the federal bureaucracy on Saturday, but Environmental Protection Agency officials will be hurrying this weekend to transfer the EPA's national ombudsman, a move that critics say will destroy the in-house watchdog office. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman announced that the transfer of Ombudsman Robert Martin to the EPA's office of inspector general would be effective today. Her announcement came Friday, hours after U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts dismissed Martin's lawsuit against the agency and dropped a restraining order blocking the transfer. Roberts ruled that Martin had not exhausted all administrative remedies before going to court. Whitman praised the decision, saying: "I am pleased with today's decision because it allows us to proceed with our efforts to make the ombudsman function more independent." Martin and the public-interest law group representing him in the case plan to appeal the case administratively. But Martin's spokesman, Hugh Kaufman, said he and Martin are worried that such swift action by the EPA may interfere with his ability to appeal. "They won this round on a technicality," Kaufman said. "But they clearly demonstrated that the government does not want a real ombudsman anymore." Whitman announced Martin's transfer from the EPA's Superfund division last year in response to a congressional audit that said EPA should strengthen the independence of the ombudsman. But Martin quickly called it a ruse, because he won't have power over his budget or staff. And according to an affidavit filed last week by the U.S. Department of Justice, Martin won't be able to talk with reporters or lawmakers without coordinating his comments with the inspector general's congressional and media liaison office. The government said the inspector general's office needs "to speak with one voice." The ombudsman now talks freely with reporters, citizens and lawmakers. Kaufman said most of Martin's investigations are done at the request of lawmakers, so if he can't talk freely with a senator, he won't be able to do his job. For example, Martin's investigation into the Shattuck Superfund site in Denver's Overland Park neighborhood was requested by U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Loveland. Martin's investigation prompted EPA to remove radioactive waste from the neighborhood, making him a hero in the community. Martin charged that Whitman's transfer was retaliation for comments his office made to The Denver Post in a March 2001 article about Whitman's conflict of interest regarding the Denver Superfund site. Martin's supporters say top EPA officials going back to the Clinton administration have tried to muzzle him because his investigations of Superfund cleanups have embarrassed the agency. Late last year, Allard asked Whitman to delay the transfer until Martin's independence could be assured. On Friday, Allard spokesman Sean Conway said the senator's office had not received the ruling and would not be able to comment until it could be reviewed. All contents Copyright 2002 The Denver Post ***************************************************************** 3 Judge Won't Block Official's Transfer Las Vegas SUN April 12, 2002 DENVER (AP) - A federal judge refused Friday to block the Bush administration's plan to transfer the Environmental Protection Agency's hazardous waste ombudsman to another office. U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts ruled that Robert Martin had not exhausted all administrative remedies before going to court. Martin, who handles citizen complaints on waste and Superfund matters, had asked the court to block EPA Administrator Christie Whitman from moving his office to the EPA Inspector General's Office. The ruling lifted a temporary restraining order preventing the transfer; Whitman said the transfer was under way. Martin and his supporters, including members of Congress, say the transfer from the Superfund section is meant to rein him in and weaken his independence. He says it is being done in retaliation for his criticism of Whitman's corporate ties in Superfund cases involving large-scale hazardous waste cleanups. Whitman said in a statement that the decision will allow the agency "to proceed with our efforts to make the ombudsman function more independent." Martin has clashed with EPA administrators while heading an investigation into the agency's 1991 decision to leave a radioactive dump in Denver. Martin and the Government Accountability Project, which is representing him, plan to appeal the case administratively and ask for a stay to prevent the move. On the Net: EPA Inspector General: [http://www.epa.gov/oigearth] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 4 After Security Breaches at Nuclear Plant, Fallout Would Help April 14, 2002 Dana Parsons: Want some terrifying bedtime reading? Don't bother with Stephen King or Dean Koontz. Just curl up with a recent edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and let Daniel Hirsch scare you to death. Hirsch, who heads an anti-nuclear group in Los Angeles, writes that many of the nation's nuclear reactors, including the two at the San Onofre plant in south Orange County, remain vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Some congressmen agree. And why am I not particularly soothed when the federal agency that regulates the nuclear industry says all is well? Could it be because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said right after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that U.S. nuclear plants were built to withstand airplane impact, only to say a few days later they were referring only to small airplanes, not necessarily commercial jets? It didn't improve Hirsch's mood that, when I spoke to him a couple of days ago, a federal review of the San Onofre plant had found two security breaches--both occurring after the Sept. 11 attacks. The government said the breaches--two unescorted people trying to enter a control room and an inadequate inspection of a San Onofre firetruck near a protected area--were relatively minor. Hirsch begs to differ. "I was troubled, because they occurred within weeks of Sept. 11, at a time when the reactors were supposed to be at their highest state of alert," he says. "The entire safety of the reactors is based on access restrictions." The maddening thing is that average citizens don't know whether what Hirsch writes and thinks is closer to fact or fiction. Do we believe him or the government that regulates the industry? Hirsch, whose group is called the Committee to Bridge the Gap, alternately laughs ruefully and laments as he describes the NRC's long-standing oversight of nuclear plants. "The problem is, the regulations for protecting nuclear power plants are a quarter-century old," he says. "They were established in the mid-1970s. They required only a security system capable of repelling an attack by three terrorists." So when federal officials or plant operators say the facilities were designed with terrorists in mind, Hirsch isn't consoled. The two post-Sept. 11 breaches only deepened his concern. "The one moment on Earth when you'd think they wouldn't have a problem ... [and] they were having these kind of lax controls ... makes me extremely nervous about the longer term." Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, a longtime critic of the nuclear industry, alleged in a report two weeks ago that the nation's 100 or so commercial nuclear reactors remain vulnerable to terrorism, with little done to reduce the threat. Federal officials disagreed and said they'd offer a detailed rebuttal at a later date. Hirsch wrote in the scientists' journal that security regulations in the nation's nuclear plants are "dismally inadequate and outmoded." And because of the damage that would result from the release of radioactivity from even one of San Onofre's reactors, the stakes are immense, Hirsch says. "I've agonized over this issue for 15 years," he says. "To go public, [I thought] that might give ideas to the terrorists. For 15 years, through back channels, we've tried to get the NRC to fix this [security] problem." Now, Hirsch says, it's common knowledge that terrorists know a lot about U.S. nuclear power plants and see them as potential targets. In his article, Hirsch wrote, "The press has focused on the vulnerability of reactor containment buildings to airborne attack.... Excessive emphasis on the risk of air attack obscures the far larger and more frightening possibility of ground assault or the threat from insiders [on "soft targets" inside plants that protect against radioactive release].'' That's pretty scary, I tell him. Turns out, he says, I scared him. "I was nervous when you called me," he says. "I'm terrified every day I'm going to get a call from a reporter saying there has been a true attack on San Onofre." Dana Parsons' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times' Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com. Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 5 Security at Millstone heightened to thwart terrorist attacks TheDay.com: Extreme Measures for Extreme Dangers By Paul Choiniere Published on 04/14/2002 Waterford — Anyone intent on attacking Millstone Power Station faces a formidable challenge, but if the intent is to terrorize, the prize for success could hardly be better: radiation contamination over a wide area; mass evacuations; possible death and destruction. However, Millstone – like all nuclear plants in this country – was designed to keep the bad guys away from the controls of the two nuclear reactors, which together generate enough juice to meet about one-third of Connecticut's electricity needs. If able to elude guards on the road leading to the plant and patrolling the grounds, an attack force would encounter a gamut of impediments. The first, at the perimeter of the station's high-security zone, are boulder and concrete barriers, set up to prevent a vehicle from ramming its way inside. Next come the two barbwire-topped fences, running parallel several feet apart. Motion detectors situated between the fences would sound an alarm and activate security cameras if an intruder gets that far. Divers sneaking in from Long Island Sound would face concrete walls, rising out of the water. More fences, lined with tripwires ready to sound alarms, top the sheer 12-foot seawalls. Parachuters into the complex would be greeted with rooftop alarms. And everywhere are the security cameras, capturing images that are monitored around the clock. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, nuclear plants have been under a Nuclear Regulatory Commission order to remain on highest alert. At Millstone, that has meant, in part, more guards, increased patrols and an end to the fishing, hiking, Boy Scout camping and picnics the public once enjoyed at Millstone Point, a scenic jut of land at the mouth of the Niantic River. Critics of the nuclear power industry say that high alert is not enough. They point to reports showing security has been breached during drills by NRC teams posing as attackers at plants across the country. Those drills were done before Sept. 11. They also note that the reactor containment buildings were not engineered to handle the kind of attacks seen on Sept. 11, when large passenger jets were used as missiles. Most vulnerable, critics say, are the spent fuel pools. The storage pools contain far more nuclear waste than they were designed for – there is no national facility to store the stuff – and the buildings housing them were not engineered with the same strength as the massive domes covering the nuclear reactors, according to critics. On Feb. 25, the NRC gave nuclear utilities 20 days to provide a plan for additional security in light of terrorist threats. Nuclear operators were also given an Aug. 31 deadline to complete any needed changes. Last week, the non-profit nuclear watchdog group Nuclear Control Institute, citing letters between the industry and the NRC, said three out of four nuclear stations – including Millstone – have asked for extensions. Frequently cited in their requests was the need for more time in analyzing the damage a truck bomb could cause, according to the group. Millstone spokesman Peter Hyde said the station has given a partially completed plan to the NRC and will meet the Aug. 31 deadline. Currently at Millstone, arriving trucks are directed to a fenced-in coral and they are searched while drivers wait in an office. To quell security concerns, the nuclear industry has stepped up its efforts to educate the public about the plants. For this story, Millstone gave extensive access to its security systems. Several guards were interviewed, though they were told not to give their last names. Jeffrey S. Campbell, manager for security and fire operations, said the more the public knows about the level of security, the less worried people will be. Defenses debated Some contend it is time for nuclear plants to go well beyond traditional security measures to thwart infiltration and sabotage. The plants, they say, must be ready to confront a Sept. 11-type attack. The Nuclear Control Institute has called for radar-directed, anti-aircraft systems around nuclear reactors. The missile system, it argues, would be a last-resort protection if jet fighters could not stop an airborne attack. Connecticut's Nuclear Energy Advisory Council, a public agency that advises the governor and legislature on nuclear issues, has urged that “serious consideration” be given to a mobile air defense system. Land- or ship-based, it could be used to deter attacks on Millstone and on other targets such as the Naval Submarine Base and Electric Boat, both in Groton, said John Markowicz, co-chairman of the council. “There is still within the greater community a feeling of unease about the vulnerability of Millstone, and particularly the spent fuel pools, to the type of incident that happened Sept. 11,” Markowicz said. The NRC has rejected the idea. Installing air defense batteries could lead to an accidental downing, the commission warns. Tighter airport security is the best way to prevent jet hijackings, according to the commission. That view is shared by Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, owner of the Millstone station, and by others in the nuclear industry. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have been looking at another alternative: passive defense systems. A series of cables, suspended from huge balloons or giant stanchions, might send any would-be attacking jet or plane out of control, causing it to miss its target. While rejecting anti-aircraft systems as impractical, Dominion does want its guards to be better armed. It has urged the legislature to make an exception to the state ban on automatic weapons. “We at least want to be able to match the firepower of the bad guys,” Campbell said. The proposal has stalled in the General Assembly but could be resurrected before the session ends. It has the support of local lawmakers. Guards are now armed with shotguns and handguns. A pistol team from Millstone took first place last year in a shooting-accuracy competition among nuclear station security forces in the Northeast. The Millstone guards are employed by Burns International Security Services, which has a contract with Dominion. A proposal now in Congress would replace all private guards at nuclear power plants with a federal force. The cost for that force would be passed onto the industry. Both the industry and the NRC oppose the overall plan. Guards at Millstone must complete 10 weeks of training, according to Burns, and about three out of four have military or law enforcement experience. Training includes instruction in such things as irradiated environments, company policies, NRC regulations, and the operations of the X-ray, metal and bomb-detecting equipment. One guard, Ed, a 10-year veteran, said the job has taken on greater urgency since Sept. 11. He endorsed the security at Millstone. “If you think about it, if we don't protect it, everything around here is going to be wasted,” he said. “So what would be the sense in not protecting it?” Changing perceptions Before Sept. 11, the nuclear industry was enjoying a public relations upswing. President Bush included the expansion of nuclear power in his energy policy. Surveys a year ago indicated that the California's energy crisis had made the idea of new nuclear plant construction palatable to much of the public for the first time since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident halted new plant orders. Now, most of the press coverage of nuclear plants is focused on them as possible terrorist targets. The president, in his State of the Union Address, said that nuclear plant documents were found in al-Qaida hideouts in Afghanistan. Nowhere has the debate about nuclear plant safety been more heated than in Buchanan, N.Y., home to the two reactors at Indian Point, about 35 miles north of New York City. A growing number of public officials, environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists are calling for the facility to be shut down, saying the potential for widespread disaster is too great. Recently some in the business community there have rallied to support Indian Point. They cite the jobs and the energy it produces. Three weeks ago, more than 700 people jammed a meeting – the group was divided about equally between opponents and proponents of a shutdown – and about 300 others had to be turned away. Observers of the debate in New York speculate that if Indian Point were shut down, anti-nuclear activists would almost certainly turn their attention to other plants. An industrial-looking complex, Millstone station is about 90 miles east of New York City at the end of a peninsula along Long Island Sound at the mouth of the Niantic River. Between Route 156 and the nuclear station itself, there are more than 500 acres of open space, much of it wooded and all owned by Dominion. The three reactor domes of Millstone 1, 2 and 3 and the boxy, nondescript buildings attached to them and housing the turbines and generators, are all located within a high-security area of about 20 acres. (Only Millstone 2 and 3 are still in operation, while Millstone 1 has been permanently shut down.) Administrative buildings and power lines are also in the security zone. To get almost anywhere within the security area, authorized people must use special passkeys. Security also requires scanning analysis of handprints. Armed guards are prevalent. Testing security To further heighten protection, guards do not receive their assignments until each shift begins. Also, they move to new workstations hourly. This scrambling of duties is one of the measures to prevent any insider breach of security. The constant change, according to William Bessette, who is a manager for Burns International, also keeps the guards alert. To test security at all nuclear plants, the NRC uses so-called Operational Safeguards Response Evaluations. An equivalent of war games, the drills pit pretend bad guys against guards and plant security systems. No one is armed, and the participants are clearly marked. The process has been much debated. According to critics, the results of the drills show security is lacking. The NRC sees it differently, concluding that the process has identified weaknesses, but that overall protection has stood up to the test. Paul Levanthal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, said the “attackers” win about half the time by breaching security and demonstrating an ability to destroy key targets and, in some cases, by entering critically sensitive areas. At a NRC regulatory information conference last month, NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan Jr. took direct aim at Levanthal's contentions. The mock attack forces, he said, know the plants' defenses and layouts. That approach is akin to giving a football team the opponent's playbook, he said. Yet, in only nine of 59 drills in the last two years have targets been reached, he said. “And reaching target sets does not equate to core damage, for operators could still recover the plant,” he said. Attack drills at power plants have been suspended since Sept. 11, because the NRC said it is better to focus attention on real threats. At Dominion, Campbell said that there might be no good way of capturing in a drill all that could happen during a real attack. “It's a flawed method,” he said, “but it's the best method we have.” © 1998-2002 The Day Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 6 Nuclear plant tries to keep workers Journalstar.com: Nebraska Sunday, Apr. 14, 2002 The AssociatedPress BROWNVILLE -- The Nebraska Public Power District is trying to keep the Cooper Nuclear Station staffed, even as it decides the future of the plant, which has been cited five times in 17 months for procedural deficiencies. Spokeswoman Marcia Cady said the retention effort is ``a preventive measure'' for the plant, which employs 760 people. Last year's 7.2 percent turnover rate, or about 50 people, compares with a 10-year average of about 10 percent, she said, but the plant's uncertain future has increased concerns. ``There's been a history of difficulty in attracting professional people to the plant,'' Cady said. The district also wants to retain long-term employees in other positions, she said. Cooper's rural location has made recruiting and retaining management personnel challenging, and many want their spouses to work, Cady said. The Cooper Coalition, an effort by local economic development officials to save the plant, is trying to help address those concerns, she said. The utility has formed focus groups to hear employees' concerns, especially regarding the housing market. Senior management officials have checked with county assessor offices in the surrounding area to see if uncertainties have had an impact on property values, she said. ``Any time when one of the largest employers in the area is uncertain about its future, I think that has a psychological effect on the housing market,'' Cady said. ``Have there already been some effects?'' NPPD provides $56 million in salary and benefits to employees in Southeast Nebraska, she said. Meanwhile, NPPD is working to improve the plant's performance, Cady said. ``The plant is safe and we're doing everything we can to improve our performance down there. That's our No. 1 priority,'' she said. Copyright © 2002, Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 7 Ukrainian nuclear plant shut down for emergency repairs Sun Apr 14, 5:43 AM ET KIEV - Authorities shut down a reactor at Ukraine's Rivne nuclear power plant because of a leak in the generator's cooling system, news reports said Sunday. Reactor No. 3 at the plant in western Ukraine was shut down for emergency repairs because of the hydrogen leak, the ITAR-Tass news agency said. The reactor was expected to be running again by Tuesday. Ten of the 13 reactors at the country's four nuclear power plants are currently functioning, the agency said. Other repairs were already underway at Rivne's Reactor No. 1 and at Reactor No. 6 at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. Ukraine was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident when a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded and caught fire in 1986. The plant was closed for good in 2000. (tv/sk) AP Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 8 The Hole in the Reactor (Davis-Besse) April 13, 2002 By DANIEL F. FORD This week the FirstEnergy Corporation, owner of the 25-year-old Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Toledo, Ohio, proposed welding a steel Band-Aid to the top of the plant's cracked nuclear reactor, now so corroded that 70 pounds of steel have been eaten away. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission expressed skepticism that this patch-up would be adequate to prevent a dangerous leak in the reactor, but given this plant's history, skepticism is hardly enough. Problems at Davis-Besse aren't new. In 1986, after the nuclear reactor meltdown at Chernobyl, Tom Brokaw asked me on NBC television which American nuclear power plant I thought was most likely to experience a catastrophic accident. One of my top picks was Davis-Besse — a unit with the same design as the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania that had a partial meltdown in 1979. Davis-Besse's current troubles began when technicians fixing a cracked control rod nozzle earlier this year stumbled on a far more astonishing safety lapse — the corrosion in the supposedly fortress-quality reactor. But for this chance discovery and the immediate shutdown of the plant, the stage was set for the hemorrhaging of cooling water and a possible meltdown of the reactor, which could have led to a release of a large plume of radioactive material. I was not making a wild guess when I pointed to Davis-Besse in 1986. For more than a decade I had studied the records of American nuclear reactors with the M.I.T. physicist Henry Kendall. Davis-Besse's underlying problems — the plant was frequently cited for substandard safety practices — were legendary, yet nuclear safety officials did little to rectify them. That large steel pressure vessels might develop dangerous cracks after years of operation was recognized in the 60's and 70's, yet the Atomic Energy Commission forged ahead. It required all nuclear plants to install emergency cooling systems for pipes connected to the reactor. But there was no such protection possible for the reactor itself, and the commission simply ruled that the rupture of these vessels was an "incredible event." Many at the commission knew differently and were concerned about this and other safety issues. It's appropriate now, I think, several years after his death, to identify the Deep Throat who helped acquaint Henry Kendall and me with the problems in American nuclear power plants. In 1974, at the Cosmos Club in Washington, Kendall and I were handed a briefcase full of papers by John F. O'Leary, the director of licensing of the A.E.C. He believed in nuclear energy, he said, but only if it were done right. And it wouldn't be unless more details of the problems got out and better regulation was demanded. We studied the papers and distributed them to journalists. Major reports ran in the national press. Maintenance, quality control, equipment testing and inspection — these had been described as bywords of nuclear safety. But most nuclear plants, according to the commission's own internal audits, were failing badly on all counts. When we asked O'Leary how he could possibly sign off on more and more plant licenses, he offered his personal rationale: Things would leak before they broke. There would be some warning, and the surrounding area could be evacuated in time. Today we have dozens of aging (and corroding and creaking) nuclear plants, licensed in the 1970's, operating close to our major cities. The reactor with a hole in its head at Davis-Besse is proof that the reforms and safety upgrades promised after O'Leary's revelations and Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have not, to put it delicately, had full success. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has let Davis-Besse operate year in and year out with documented bad maintenance. It may seem melodramatic but is probably accurate to say the N.R.C. safety inspection program is on a par with our hit-or-miss airport security. With federal regulation having proved ineffective, it may now be time for the attorneys general in states with trouble-plagued nuclear plants to take potential meltdowns seriously. They could join together, as they did in litigation concerning cigarettes, and some of those plants might just find their licenses revoked. Daniel F. Ford was executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists from 1971 to 1979 and is author of "Three Mile Island" and "The Cult of the Atom: The Secret Papers of the Atomic Energy Commission." Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information ***************************************************************** 9 A 10,000-year hazard PalmBeachPost.com: Sunday, April 14 Florida Power & Light Co.'s St. Lucie nuclear plant got rave reviews from neighbors recently as FPL began a four-year process of renewing licenses on the two Hutchinson Island nuclear reactors. But the company, which local residents praised for providing jobs, generating cheap electricity and upholding environmental responsibilities, faces a big challenge. It must find ways to store more spent fuel rods, which contain radioactive uranium, until a federal facility opens. If the proposed federal Yucca Mountain site in Nevada becomes available, it won't accept nuclear waste until at least 2010 or 2015. The Energy Department and President Bush have endorsed plans to make Nevada the storage site for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. But Nevada objects, and Congress must decide in the next few months whether to side with the state or the president. The St. Lucie plants will run out of storage space for used fuel in 2005 and 2007, and FPL's two reactors at Miami-Dade's Turkey Point facility can last to 2009 and 2011. FPL can add storage racks in St. Lucie's used fuel pool to extend the time by up to four years. And the firm has joined other electric utilities that want to build a temporary storage facility in Utah to open in 2003-04. The plant sites were not designed to store used fuel, which was supposed to be moved to a federal storage facility. But the feds failed to come through. So the St. Lucie and Turkey Point plants store the rods on site -- a practice questioned after Sept. 11 because the fuel ponds have less structural protection than the reactors. An accident that drains the ponds could result in a radiation release or an explosion. FPL insists the ponds are safe and security adequate to protect them. The license renewal process itself has begun decades before licenses expire. The plants originally were designed to last up to 40 years. The license on St. Lucie I, built in 1976, runs out in 2016, and on St. Lucie II, built in 1983, in 2023. The company is seeking 20-year renewals that would allow them to operate through 2036 and 2043, respectively. The St. Lucie and Turkey Point plants provide about 24 percent of all the power FPL generates annually, enough to serve 1 million customers. Disposing of waste that remains dangerously radioactive for 10,000 years always has been nuclear energy's dirty little problem. If the promised federal solutions fall through again, extending licenses even for a "good neighbor" is a bad idea. FPL must make good on its plans to find places other than the plant sites to store used fuel. Copyright © 2002, The Palm Beach Post. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 10 Ukrainian nuclear plant shut down for emergency repairs AP Sun Apr 14, 5:43 AM ET KIEV - Authorities shut down a reactor at Ukraine's Rivne nuclear power plant because of a leak in the generator's cooling system, news reports said Sunday. Reactor No. 3 at the plant in western Ukraine was shut down for emergency repairs because of the hydrogen leak, the ITAR-Tass news agency said. The reactor was expected to be running again by Tuesday. Ten of the 13 reactors at the country's four nuclear power plants are currently functioning, the agency said. Other repairs were already underway at Rivne's Reactor No. 1 and at Reactor No. 6 at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. Ukraine was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident when a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded and caught fire in 1986. The plant was closed for good in 2000. (tv/sk) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. ***************************************************************** 11 AU: Radioactivity too high for housing development: Greens. 12/04/2002. ABC News Online [Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online] Greens MP Robin Chapple says new testing of radiation levels at a waste disposal dump south of Bunbury shows they are too high to allow housing in the near vicinity. Mr Chapple says the Dalyellup housing estate will come to within 25 metres of the dumps, which are still being rehabilitated by Millennium Inorganic Chemicals. The company can use the site until 2010. Mr Chapple says he is not pinning the blame on the company, which has complied with Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) guidelines. However, he says it should be realised that erosion could one day expose the radioactive material, which remains toxic for about 50,000 years. "What I really come back to is the fundamental issue that the shire and the EPA should not have allowed two totally different competing usages to go next to each other, the area is allowed to continue to take waste for a considerable amount of time at the same time as a housing development is going up next to it," Mr Chapple said. The Shire of Capel says it took advice from Government authorities before approving the subdivision plans. A spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection says Mr Chapple's concerns are being examined. In the meantime, the developers have agreed not to develop land within 75 metres of the disposal ponds. © 2002 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 12 DOE Could Ship Plutonium Over South Carolina Objections Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 08:17:39 -0500 (CDT) Environment News Service DOE Could Ship Plutonium Over South Carolina Objections COLUMBIA, South Carolina, April 12, 2002 (ENS) - The Department of Energy intends to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons grade plutonium by the end of 2019, through the conversion of the material to a mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) for use in commercial nuclear power reactors. But these plans have hit a snag in the office of South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges. Hodges, a Democrat, said the federal government has promised not to store the plutonium in his state, where it would be processed, but has failed to make a legally binding pledge. He is demanding a court decree enforcing the federal government's promise. Without that, the governor warned, he will physically stop plutonium shipments from entering South Carolina. But Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham Thursday threatened to transport the plutonium into South Carolina without the governor's agreement. He wants the highly radioactive material to be shipped to the federal nuclear processing facility known as the Savannah River Site. It is on the Savannah River at the Georgia border, and is close to several major cities, including Augusta and Savannah, Georgia as well as Columbia, Greenville, and Charleston, South Carolina. The weapons usable plutonium is now located at Rocky Flats, Colorado, which the federal government is legally bound to close in 2006, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, and at the PANTEX Facility in Amarillo, Texas. The shipments and construction of a MOX production facility are necessary for two reasons - first, to fulfill a U.S. plutonium disposition agreement with Russia, and also to meet the closure date of 2006 for the DOE's Rocky Flats Facility where nuclear weapons were produced for nearly 50 years. The Energy Department intends to construct two major facilities at the federal Savannah River Site: the nation's first MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (FFF), to be in operation by July 2007, and a Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility, to be in operation by October 2009. Pits are the classified components at the core of nuclear weapons. Citing an "overriding national security interest in disposing of surplus plutonium in a prompt, effective, and safe manner," Energy Secretary Abraham sent a letter to Governor Hodges Thursday offering a written agreement and, for the first time, legislation to back it up. He promised that the plutonium would not be permanently stored in South Carolina after it was processed at the Savannah River Site or in case the two facilities were never built. Abraham's proposal includes a "firm commitment to fully fund and carry out this program" at the project cost of $3.8 billion over 20 years, and establishment of annual funding targets. The energy secretary offered, "A commitment to maintain a pathway out of South Carolina for any plutonium brought into the state, including firm dates by which such material would be removed from the state if, for any reason, full funding necessary for the plutonium disposition program were not secured." If the governor cannot accept those assurances by Monday, Abraham wrote, he will revoke them and "direct issuance of the requisite a 30 day notice of our intent to begin shipping." Jay Reiff, spokesman for Governor Hodges, says the governor's position on the plutonium issue has never changed. He wants a legally enforceable agreement in the form of a consent decree filed in federal court, or he wants the federal government to hold off on the plutonium transport until the newly offered legislation is enacted. "The governor wants to support the legislative process," Reiff said, "but the problem is that the Department of Energy wants to start shipping plutonium here before that legislation is passed and gets the presidential signature. That's like moving your furniture into a house before you go to closing." Abraham said, "We have gone to extraordinary lengths to accommodate South Carolina's concerns.== "The Secretary's characterization of our negotiations is not accurate," Reiff told ENS. "We could take the agreement that the secretary has offered up, get a consent decree from a federal judge, and start shipments immediately. That would meet our needs, and that would keep the '06 closure timeline on track in Colorado. The Department has been unwilling to do that." "This is not about this governor or this secretary or energy," Reiff explained. "This is about whoever is going to be governor of South Carolina 10 years down the road. Governor Hodges wants to give that governor the ability to have some leverage to make sure that plutonium leaves the state in a timely manner. If we don't have a legally enforceable agreement, South Carolina simply has no leverage to do that." Secretary Abraham offered that if unforeseen technical, fiscal, international, legal or other circumstances preclude completion of the MOX FFF, the Energy Department would package the plutonium and remove it from the state. Secretary Abraham offered to proposed legislation providing that, "If the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility is not producing at least one metric ton of MOX per year by January 1, 2009, the Secretary of Energy shall, consistent with the NEPA and other governing laws and subject to the availability of appropriations, remove at least one ton of weapons-usable plutonium by January 1, 2011, and shall remove an amount of weapons usable plutonium equal to the amount of weapons usable plutonium transferred to the Savannah River Site after April 15, 2002 by January 1, 2017.== If such legislation is not enacted by October 15, 2002, DOE will halt plutonium shipments and the parties will immediately consult to determine an alternative path forward, the secretary wrote in his letter to Governor Hodges. But the governor wants a consent order in federal court or legislation in place before the shipments begin. Reiff says, "Our track record with the Department of Energy is such that promises aren't enough. We want to make sure that promises are kept." "Our experience here with the plutonium issue is that plans within the last two years have already changed, and this process could take 10 or 15 years. What the governor wants to be assured that future governors have a legal remedy that's enforceable if funding or timelines or even the whole program is scrapped, that South Carolina doesn't end up holding the plutonium bag." If the DOE attempts to force plutonium shipments into South Carolina before a legally binding agreeement is in place, Reiff says any truck carrying the plutonium would be turned around at the border and would not be permited to enter the state. ***************************************************************** 13 S.C. may fight U.S. over plutonium sunspot.net - State seeks accord before accepting toxic shipments Knight Ridder/tribune Originally published April 14, 2002 COLUMBIA, S.C. - The federal government will begin shipping deadly plutonium to South Carolina as soon as mid-May, even if the state has not agreed to accept the material for processing into atomic fuel. Gov. Jim Hodges vowed to fight the shipments unless there is an accord. In a letter to Hodges, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he would formally notify the state tomorrow of the federal plutonium shipment plans. The letter says the energy department intends to start sending excess plutonium by May 15, according to department spokesman Joe Davis. All told, the energy department would truck about 34 metric tons of plutonium from nuclear facilities across the country for processing at the Savannah River Site. Plutonium is a highly toxic atomic material used to make nuclear bombs during the Cold War. The government, as part of nuclear nonproliferation agreements with Russia, plans to convert the material into fuel so plutonium can't be used for atomic weapons. It would be blended with uranium to make mixed oxide fuel and be burned in some Duke Energy nuclear power plants in the Carolinas. But the energy department and South Carolina have been locked in a dispute since last year over the shipments. While Hodges supports the fuel-blending program, he questioned whether the federal government will abandon or delay building the facilities needed to process the material - thus leaving tons of plutonium at Savannah River. The governor said Thursday he wants a legally binding agreement that the plutonium will be shipped out of South Carolina if the federal government doesn't complete the fuel-blending program. Federal officials offered a written agreement Thursday, but Hodges said it wasn't good enough. Abraham's proposal said the federal government would get rid of the plutonium if it can't be processed on schedule. The federal government also would seek congressional approval for the plan. The letter indicated the government would remove the plutonium within a decade if the processing program isn't done according to plans. The Bush administration has said the government would commit nearly $4 billion in 20 years to build two plants to process the plutonium. Both fuel plants are to be operational by fall of 2009, federal documents show. Hodges said Thursday he could accept, in principle, Abraham's proposal. But Hodges said he wants the assurances put into a formal consent order filed in federal court in South Carolina. Davis said the energy department would not agree to a consent order because the matter shouldn't be decided in court. He said Hodges continues to change his demands. "The governor keeps moving the goal posts in these discussions," Davis said. Hodges said his demands have been consistent. Thursday, he renewed his pledge to block the shipments, either with state troopers or through a lawsuit, if the federal government does not reach an accord with the state. "All options are open," he said after receiving Abraham's letter. Abraham's announcement is the first time the energy department has given a date for sending plutonium from the Rocky Flats nuclear site in Colorado to Savannah. His letter said shipments could begin within 30 days of April 15, but the government would not send more than 3.2 metric tons of plutonium before Oct. 15. The letter said that if, by then, Congress doesn't enact a law that requires the plutonium to be processed, the energy department will halt all shipments. In any case, Abraham said, he can't wait much longer. "As I have repeatedly assured you, no plutonium will move into the state of South Carolina without a pathway for that plutonium to come out," he wrote. "If you are unable to accept this agreement, I will proceed to take the steps I believe necessary to meet our national security and environmental cleanup objectives," the letter said. A key concern is the Rocky Flats nuclear site in Colorado. Colorado lawmakers are pressuring the Energy Department to clean up Rocky Flats. But the agency needs a place to send leftover plutonium that was not used for atomic weapons. Rocky Flats, which like SRS was a key component of the Cold War atomic weapons program, is supposed to close by 2006. The Rocky Flats shipments would be the first to Savannah. The government intends to ship about 6 metric tons of plutonium from Colorado for blending into fuel, the energy department said Thursday. "Our inability to reach agreement is ... jeopardizing cleanup activities across the nation," Abraham wrote. Abraham's letter was sent to Hodges at about the same time the governor held a news conference decrying the federal government's failure to strike a deal. Hodges offered a proposed agreement and challenged the federal government to sign it. That agreement said the energy department would take back the plutonium if it didn't follow through on its fuel-blending plans at Savannah. Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun ***************************************************************** 14 Conference tackles nuclear issues The Herald 14 April, 2002 By LAURA KENNEDY Staff Writer MIDDLETOWN -- "The People's Summit on High-Level Radioactive Waste: Rethinking the Waste Crisis" drew about 120 people from 20 states this weekend. The summit, sponsored by the Haddam-based Citizens Awareness Network -- a non-profit volunteer organization which educates people on nuclear power issues -- and co-sponsored by more than 20 other similar groups, was held at Wesleyan University from Friday through Sunday. Saturday featured group discussions. One group, of about 20 people, reached the conclusion that storing waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is not a good solution to the waste storage problem, but couldn't decide what was the best way to get rid of spent fuel from nuclear power plants. They also said all nuclear power plants should be closed. People discussed the Native Americans living around the mountain, which is less than 100 miles away from Las Vegas. "The will of these people is not being heard," said Anne Sward, from the Environmental Justice Foundation in Utah referring to one of the tribes. "They do not want it there." Steve Frishman, a technical-policy coordinator for the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Nuclear Waste Project Office, said there have already been four lawsuits issued about the siting and he expects more. Others were concerned with issues closer to their backyard. Katra Faust, a member CAN who lives near the Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company in Haddam, said she has visited and interviewed people in Texas and Nevada. In Texas, she watched as people involved in a civil action suit suffered from cancers and other "heartbreaking illnesses." She doesn't want to see more suffering from the highly radioactive material. Faust has also felt the damage terrorist can do, as her best friend died on the plane which went down in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11. "I know that it's not over," she said, as she mentioned hearing planes overhead searching for the decommissioning power plant only days after the attacks. The group was concerned that public awareness about the issue is limited. One member of the group mentioned that no African Americans were at the conference. He also said that some people, especially those who are of lower socioeconomic status, are not aware of the issues. Faust contested his point. "If you live in a reactor community, you still know what's sitting outside your door," she said. The group also believed that Sept. 11 has prompted people to take notice of spent fuel issues, including the threats possible transportation to Yucca Mountain presents. Connecticut Yankee, which is working to establish a dry cask storage facility in Haddam, was turned away from the summit, said Kelley Smith, a media and public relations representative of the company. She claims she was told industry was not welcome. "I was a little disappointed considering all the advertising that's been done," she said. The summit will continue today with attendants building consensus on issues and developing strategies. ©The Herald 2002 ***************************************************************** 15 Irish plan postcard protest over Sellafield Independent News © 2002 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd By Severin Carrell 14 April 2002 Tony Blair and Prince Charles are being targeted by a mass protest campaign against the Sellafield nuclear plant, led by a host of international pop stars and Premiership footballers. In one of the largest environmental protests ever directed against the British government from abroad, all 1.3m households in Ireland have been given a free pre-paid postcard to send to Mr Blair this week calling for the Cumbrian nuclear reprocessing plant to be shut down. The campaign, which is being masterminded by Ali Hewson, the wife of the U2 lead singer Bono, is selling a further 2.7m pre-paid postcards in shops, post offices and supermarkets across the republic addressed to the Prince of Wales and Norman Askew, the head of the plant's operator, British Nuclear Fuels. The postcards to Mr Blair, which carry an image of a female eye and reads "Tony, look me in the eye and tell me I'm safe", are due to be delivered to Downing Street in 12 days, on the 16th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. For Mr Blair and the nuclear industry, the intensification of the campaign marks a worrying change in the long-running dispute between Ireland and Britain over the future of the trouble-hit plant. The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, Irish environmentalists and stars such as Bono have objected regularly to the plant's discharges into the Irish Sea, under which two million gallons of mildly radioactive waste water are released each day. Dublin has also legally challenged the discharges under the Ospar convention on ocean pollution, and alleges that Sellafield presents a major safety risk from accidents or terrorist attack. But the campaign's endorsement by so many of Ireland's biggest pop and sporting stars, including its entire World Cup football squad and rugby team, threatens to give the issue far greater popular appeal. Irish newspapers have featured daily photocalls with the postcards involving Samantha Mumba, Ronan Keating, the Corrs, the Cranberries, the U2 drummer Larry Mullen, footballers such as Roy Keane and Matt Holland, and the snooker player Ken Docherty. Tomorrow, British Green MEPs are to launch a highly critical report on Sellafield's discharges. It alleges that Sellafield's radioactive releases are equivalent to a large-scale nuclear accident each year. The strategy has exposed mounting frustration at the Department of Trade and Industry. DTI officials privately accuse the Irish media of bias against Sellafield. Ms Hewson said the greater security risks of terrorist attack against Sellafield after 11 September and concerns about Sellafield's outdated high-level liquid waste tanks increased public concerns about the plant. "Everyone in Ireland totally respects Tony Blair for all he's done in Northern Ireland but they don't like the fact that he's standing behind BNFL and Sellafield, putting our children at unnecessary risk," she said. The DTI insists, however, that Britain is making "good progress" towards cutting discharges to close to zero by 2020, and disputes the alleged link to cancers. "Discharges from the UK don't cause any environmental damage to neighbouring countries. Monitoring shows the level of radioactivity is barely detectable," a spokesman said. ***************************************************************** 16 Casino offers drink to boost anti-Yucca Mountain campaign April 14, 2002 Associated Press [online@rgj.com] Bellying up to the bar at Jerry's Nugget Casino will get you more than just a hangover. It'll help a campaign to keep nuclear waste out of Nevada. The casino is offering a specialty drink called"The Yucca Mountain Meltdown."The $2.50 drink, served in a souvenir glass, is a blend of Curacao, rum and pineapple. Jerry's Nugget will donate $1 from each sale to the Nevada Anti-Nuclear Waste Task Force, a nonprofit public advocacy organization. Gov. Kenny Guinn has vetoed President Bush's approval of the Yucca Mountain project, a site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas where 77,000 tons of the nation's high-level nuclear waste would be entombed. © Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett ***************************************************************** 17 Yucca: This check is already in the mail April 14, 2002 Guy Clifton [gclifton@rgj.com] RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL Gov. Kenny Guinn is asking every Nevadan to donate at least a dollar to help the state keep the nation’s nuclear waste out of our home state. Many have already stepped up to answer the call, including Dorothy Lemelson of Incline Village. She handed the governor a check for $75,000 on Wednesday. “I’m with you all the way,” she told Guinn as she presented the check. Me too, Gov. Please accept this check for $20 to the Nevada Protection Fund. All of us who oppose having a nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada have our reasons. Here’s 16 of mine: Miller Clifton, Lorraine Clifton, Debbie Elizalde, Sherry Meeks, Larry Meeks, Val Clifton, Brett Clifton, Beth Clifton, Joe Clifton, Dameon Meeks, Barron Peterson, Bry Meeks, Shane Longworth, Bobby Clifton, Charlie Clifton and Nathan Clifton. This is my family — dad, mom, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, in-laws and outlaws. We all call Nevada home and have for most of our lives. Please accept a dollar for each of them, one for myself, and one each for my cocker spaniels, Cleo and Minnie, both Nevada natives who enjoy digging up dirt not contaminated with nuclear waste. That’s $19 and I hope it helps. The governor said that the nuclear power industry has more than $100 million to promote the Yucca Mountain Project. The Nevada Protection Fund has about $6 million. It’s going to be one tough battle. My 20th dollar is donated on behalf of a fellow Nevadan who would like to help but can’t make a donation because they simply can’t afford it right now. In this fight, we’re all family. Anyone who would like to donate to the Nevada Protection Fund can do so in the following ways: o Call (800) 366-0990. o Mail donations to Nevada Protection Fund, c/o Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, 1802 N. Carson St., Suite 252, Carson City, NV 89701. ***************************************************************** 18 Artist wants ‘Looking at You’ to send shock waves April 14, 2002 [fhartman@rgj.com] RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL 4/12/2002 05:24 pm [DIGITAL: Brian Bird created this image, which is a political statement about Yucca Mountain. - Photo provided by the artist] News organizations claim President Bush is pushing for more small nukes, Yucca Mountain is poised to become a radioactive dump, and Brian Bird has seen enough. About a month ago, the 30-year-old artist sat down at his computer and started scheming. The result was “Looking At You,” a digitally produced print with something to say. The black-and-white work features a desert landscape partially obscured by a mushroom cloud. In the foreground, a clock reads five to midnight, and a melting child stares sorrowfully at the viewer. “I hope it’s offensive,” Bird said. “I hope it’s extremely offensive, in a good way.” A lot of artists, Bird said, produce troubling images that are either introspective or obscure; but “Looking at You” is neither. It’s designed to shock with a purpose. “Most of the art that I come in contact with is pretty, or is disturbing in a way that is not beneficial,” he said. “This is not esoteric art. . . . It’s political art.” As marketing director for New Medium Art Gallery, Bird does a lot of work with graphics. He created “Looking at You” by blending and manipulating a number of royalty-free photographs. The resulting collage is a world apart from the individual elements, and he hopes it makes a crystal-clear point. “As far as nuclear weapons go, or the storage of anything nuclear goes,” he said, “the people who get affected most are the children.” Bird chose black and white over color because he liked the impact and the symbolism. “You’re either black or you’re white on the issue,” he said. New Medium is selling framed prints of “Looking At You” for $65, but Bird said money was never the point. “I’m hoping it has more of a political impact than a financial impact,” he said. “It shouldn’t be in people’s homes. It should be exposed.” “Looking at You” and two other Bird works will be on display at New Medium Art Gallery, 940 Matley Lane, Suite 16, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays through Friday. © Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a [http://www.gannett.com ***************************************************************** 19 New debate erupts over volcanic threat at Yucca Mountain April 14, 2002 Martin Griffith [online@rgj.com] ASSOCIATED PRESS TONOPAH — At one time, they spewed ash and lava. Now, they slumber in the southern Nevada desert where President Bush wants to build the nation’s nuclear waste dump. Eight cinder cones have erupted within 30 miles of the proposed Yucca Mountain site over the past 1 million years, and the desert is dotted with more than a dozen older volcanoes. The last eruption was about 77,300 years ago at the Lathrop Wells Cinder Cone nine miles south of Yucca Mountain, itself a much older volcanic ridge. Although some federal scientists downplay the volcanic threat to the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, a new state-funded study questions the wisdom of entombing 77,000 tons of radioactive waste in what geologists consider a dormant volcanic field. “There’s a good likelihood there will be another eruption. It could be tomorrow or it could be sometime in the future,” said Eugene Smith, a University of Nevada Las Vegas geology professor who headed the study under contract with the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency. The repository is strongly opposed by top Nevada elected officials, who have accused the federal government of ignoring safety concerns. The Nuclear Projects Agency is a branch of the Nevada governor’s office. Federal Department of Energy scientists insist there’s only a 1-in-70 million chance of volcanic activity at Yucca Mountain during the 10,000 years that the radioactive waste must be contained for safety reasons. But in an article in the current edition of the Geological Society of America’s journal GSA Today, Smith advances a new theory that suggests the Energy Department might be underestimating the volcanic risk. Citing rock chemistry as well as recent geochemical and geophysical studies by other scientists, Smith contends the Yucca Mountain area is linked by a belt of abnormally hot mantle to the more active Lunar Crater Volcanic Field 60 miles to the northeast. At least 14 volcanic eruptions have occurred in the Lunar Crater area in the past 1 million years, with the last two forming lava fields about 38,100 years ago. Lunar Crater and Yucca Mountain have been Nevada’s most active volcanic fields over the past 6 million years, according to Smith’s studies, which date back to 1986. If the two fields share a common area of hot mantle, Smith argues, volcanic recurrence rates of 11 to 15 events per million years in the Lunar Crater field are possible at Yucca Mountain. The Department of Energy now bases it volcanism probability models on recurrence rates of 3.7 to 12 events per million years at Yucca Mountain, he says. Smith acknowledges his findings about hot mantle will generate considerable controversy among volcanologists. “This is the first time someone has proposed linking the two volcanic fields and it will be debated for a while by scientists,” Smith said. “If accepted, the likelihood is this will significantly boost the probability of a volcanic eruption at Yucca Mountain,” he added. A UNLV team is expected to issue new probability figures based on the findings later this year. Energy Department scientists dispute Smith’s findings, saying they interpret the information differently and view Yucca Mountain and Lunar Crater as two distinct fields. Even if Lunar Crater’s higher rate of volcanism is factored into probability models, the chance of volcanic activity at Yucca Mountain still would be unlikely, they said. “We believe the two volcanic fields come from different source zones and operate independently of each other,” said DOE geologist Eric Smistad, who heads a federal team studying volcanism at Yucca Mountain. “We think we’ve got to the point in our volcanism studies that we’re on solid ground. … We’re confident that volcanism won’t jeopardize the long-term safety of the repository.” But Bruce Crowe, the Energy Department’s top volcanic investigator at Yucca Mountain from 1980 to 1995, said Smith is a credible researcher whose findings should not be ignored. Like other geologists, Crowe said the matter is so complex that he would need more time before rendering an opinion on the findings. His studies concluded Lunar Crater and Yucca Mountain are separate fields. “Obviously, some scientists will say Gene is bringing some bias into the study,” Crowe said. “But I respect Gene for maintaining neutrality and fairness, even though he was under contract with the state of Nevada. I think he falls under the realm of sound science.” Smith’s findings will stir controversy partly because of the difficulty in interpreting volcanic data, Crowe said. “To a large extent, the uncertainty of information allows for multiple permissive interpretations,” Crowe said. “That’s why you have to acknowledge the credibility of a permissive alternative interpretation. … I consider Gene’s speculations to be credible. They should be looked at carefully.” Duane Champion, a U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist in Menlo Park, Calif., said a link between the Yucca Mountain and Lunar Crater fields is possible. Another researcher found that volcanic eruptions in the Great Basin have occurred at the same time in places separated by up to 100 miles, he said. The Great Basin is a vast expanse that covers nearly all of Nevada and includes parts of California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Smith’s findings “lead me … to be curious about the chemistry arguments he’s bringing to bear,” Champion said. “It’s just a theory now. But I’m quite intrigued he could have merit to the argument.” Smith’s study also found that volcanism in the Yucca Mountain-Lunar Crater zone has been episodic, with three peaks of volcanism over the past 9.5 million years and quiet periods in between lasting 1 million to 2 million years. Smith said it’s been nearly 1 million years since the last peak of activity, but it’s unclear whether the zone now is at the beginning, middle or end of the current period of low activity. There have been three eruptions in the past 77,300 years. “Speculatively, these observations may indicate the end of the current period of low activity and an increase in the rate of eruption in the near future,” he wrote. Smistad said the Department of Energy already has factored the area’s episodic volcanism into its probability models and doesn’t view it as a threat. The department has conducted volcanism studies at Yucca Mountain for more than two decades. “Gene is trying to suggest that volcanism is waxing and becoming more active in the Great Basin,” Smistad said. “But our 10 experts took all that into consideration and concluded that volcanism in the Great Basin is waning and dissipating.” Both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a federal technical oversight panel will take a position on Smith’s findings after hearing from both sides. “It’s surely something we would expect DOE to address,” said Bill Reamer, deputy director of the commission’s waste management division. “Volcanism and the probability of volcanism is a key issue. And this (study) seems to be information potentially relevant to the probability of volcanism.” © Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett ***************************************************************** 20 New USEC deal may help local plant - chillicothegazette.com Saturday, April 13, 2002 By RAMI YOAKUM [ryoakum@nncogannett.com] Gazette Staff Writer PIKETON -- USEC, Inc., and Russia have agreed to terms on a new deal that will allow shipments of low enriched uranium to the United States to continue, but how that will affect 440 jobs here remains to be seen. The Department of Energy has reportedly been using USEC's role in that lucrative deal as leverage to persuade the nation's only domestic enrichment company to keep the shipping and transfer jobs in place at the Piketon uranium enrichment plant. USEC recently announced it planned to move those operations to its Paducah, Ky. plant. "USEC and Tenex came to an initial agreement in Russia, now we're waiting on the two governments to approve it," said USEC spokesperson Elizabeth Stuckle, adding that shipments of the low enriched uranium from Russia will resume this month. USEC acts as the government's sole executive agent on the "Megatons to Megawatts" deal, which is designed to keep weapons grade uranium out of the hand's of terrorists. The Russian uranium shipped to this country is removed from nuclear warheads and "downblended" for use in U.S. nuclear reactors. The loss of the shipping and transfer operations in Piketon also could affect cold standby operations there. "There has been lengthy conversations with the DOE on the scope of cold standby and whether it will change or not," Stuckle said. "We're certainly not through discussing it, but there's not much we can say. It's premature at this point." USEC and the Energy Department also are at odds over who is responsible for 9,500 metric tons of uranium that the DOE gave to USEC when it became a private company in 1998. Some of the uranium has been found to be contaminated with technetium - making it useless as a nuclear fuel. The market value of the uranium is more than $230 million. "That's part of our negotiations," said Stuckle. "How that will be worked out remains to be seen. They (DOE) can pay us for it, it can be replaced, or it can be cleaned up somewhere." The only site in the U.S. that can perform that cleanup appears to be the Piketon plant. The shipping and transfer operation in place there removes contaminates from out of specification uranium produced at Paducah because, said Stuckle, the Kentucky plant doesn't have the ability to do it itself. (Yoakum can be reached at 772-9364, or via e-mail at ryoakum@nncogannett.com) [ryoakum@nncogannett.com] Originally published Saturday, April 13, 2002 ***************************************************************** 21 Some see few risks in moving waste Jeff Benjamin, vice president for licensing and regulatory affairs at Exelon Nuclear, explains why Yucca Mountain is important to the industry at Exelon headquarters in Warrenville, Ill. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Sunday, April 14, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Proponents say used nuclear fuel has been shipped safely in U.S. for decades By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL WARRENVILLE, Ill. -- Ask Exelon Nuclear's Jeff Benjamin how important it is for the government to move quickly to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and he'll tell you the project's not only overdue but vital to the nation's energy security. "This issue is very important to us," Benjamin said in a February interview, three days after President Bush recommended that a maze of tunnels be carved into the Nevada ridge to hold 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear material, most of it spent fuel from the nation's power reactors. "The thing has been studied more than twice as long as we studied sending people to the moon," said Benjamin, Exelon Nuclear's vice president for licensing and regulatory affairs. The nuclear-waste disposal issue, he said, will go "from very important to critical in the next five to 10 years." The need for a single place to consolidate the nation's spent nuclear fuel has increased exponentially since Sept. 11, in Benjamin's opinion. "I share the view that a single, secure repository has benefits over 100-plus sites secured individually," he said. Nevada officials argue that consolidating nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain doesn't reduce the terrorist threat at the plant sites. In fact, with shipments beginning in 2010 and with continued operation of commercial power reactors for 36 years -- when Yucca Mountain's capacity is reached -- there will be more spent fuel at reactors then than there is now: roughly 70,000 tons compared with 46,000 tons, according to Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency chief Bob Loux. State officials contend the greatest terrorist risk would come in moving it from the heavily guarded plant sites via thousands of miles of highways and train tracks that span vast, unguarded areas of the nation. Any railroad tie, bridge or tunnel where the shipments would travel would be subject to sabotage. Twenty-four sites where spent fuel currently is stored don't have rail access. Spent fuel at 17 of those sites would have to be barged to railheads. And, some new rail lines would have to be built, particularly in Nevada under the government's preferred plan. If waste casks are hauled by rail, shipments would total 10,000. If legal-weight trucks are used, instead, the shipment total would be 50,000, according to the Department of Energy. Each shipment would be tracked by satellites and armed guards would escort the trucks through urban areas. Plans, which ultimately would have to be reviewed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, allow for the waste to be shipped along with general freight instead of requiring dedicated trains. "We anticipate a lot of questions and a lot of dialogue around transportation and rightfully so," Benjamin said. "I believe we will show transportation is safe," he said. "But will additional safeguards be taken for other (terrorist) acts? I certainly anticipate additional safeguards." In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the National Guard was called to assist in security at Exelon Nuclear plants. Since 1964, used nuclear fuel has been hauled more than 1.7 million miles in 3,000 shipments between sites, and to and from storage facilities in the United States, according to Eileen Supko, a nuclear engineer with Energy Resources International, a Washington, D.C.-based energy consulting firm. In a nine-minute video on safe shipment of spent fuel, Supko notes there has never been a release of radioactive material from the lead-lined, steel transportation containers. "The record of safety is unparalleled when compared to other hazardous materials transportation shipments," she said. Officials at the American Nuclear Society, which is an organization of scientists and engineers devoted to peaceful applications of nuclear science, support the government's plans for Yucca Mountain and stress the importance of removing waste stored at decommissioned reactors near population centers. Harry Bradley, executive director at the society's headquarters in LaGrange Park, Ill., and scientist Donald Eggett say transporting used fuel can be done safely but the idea of reprocessing fuel, as is done in France, should be re-examined in the United States. "Without a doubt, it's definitely an option. ... The advantage to reprocessing fuel is there is less waste," Bradley said. Eggett, who represents a division in the society that has examined the issue, said even if spent fuel is put in Yucca Mountain, it could be retrieved and reprocessed later. "Who knows in 50 or 100 years? ... Later on there could be multiple options. Then the fact that we have everything stored in one place allows you to keep those options open." As for transportation, Eggett said he doesn't see any technical hurdles. "We have been moving spent fuel for years," he said. Society President Gail Marcus agrees. "I really don't see terrorism as a significant threat as far as transportation," she said. "I think right now the public's mind is probably fixated on airplanes flying into everything." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 22 Film recounts trip along route waste would likely travel John Sorensen, shown March 28 in his Washington, D.C., office, made a documentary about the Yucca Mountain Project that premiered March 23 at American University in Washington, D.C. AP Photo Sunday, April 14, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal How much people trust government key issue in Yucca controversy, documentarian concludes By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The controversy over burying nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain has less to do with complicated matters of science and much more to do with a single question: How much do Americans trust their government? That's what Washington, D.C., filmmaker John Sorensen concluded in creating a 52-minute documentary, "Road to Yucca Mountain." The film chronicles a 1997 road trip he took from Chicago to Las Vegas along one of the likely routes that would carry radioactive spent fuel to a Nevada nuclear waste repository. Sorensen, 30, put together the low-budget film as his thesis project for a master's degree in fine arts from Columbia College in Chicago. He earned his degree last year and continued to polish the film until it premiered March 23 at the 2002 Environmental Film Festival in Washington, D.C. Sorensen became intrigued with the Yucca Mountain Project after learning of it from a brief report on National Public Radio early in 1997. He became particularly interested in the number of spent fuel shipments that would be heading out of Illinois. He wondered if people knew about that and what they thought. He borrowed a camera and sound equipment from Columbia College and enlisted a fellow student to serve as a cameraman. Over 12 days in July 1997, the duo traveled west along the Interstate 80 corridor in Sorensen's 1981 Toyota Tercel. Near the film's outset, Sorensen raises a question about nuclear waste burial. "I'm no expert," he says in a voice-over. "How can I judge for myself if this is the best way of getting rid of nuclear waste? Ultimately, it comes down to, when scientists or the government say something is safe, do we trust them?" As Sorensen makes his way through Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and into Las Vegas, an answer seems to take shape through interviews he conducts with people at laundromats, campgrounds and highway rest stops. It seems to crystallize in a filmed interview with Claudia Peterson, an advocate in St. George, Utah, for downwind victims of government-conducted atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s. After telling Sorensen she lost her father, father-in-law, sister and 6-year-old daughter to cancers she believes were linked to nuclear fallout, she says, "I want to believe the government cares about us, but we've never been shown that, so far." On the road, Sorensen filmed interviews with state emergency response officials. He filmed an Energy Department-conducted tour of Yucca Mountain and interviews with Nevada anti-Yucca activist Judy Treichel and Steve Frishman, a state consultant. Sorensen said he found government workers at Yucca Mountain to be "very sincere and hardworking," people trying to meet a challenge to determine if the mountain can safely hold radioactive material. But on balance, he said, "I was just so overwhelmed with the depth of emotion of people who believe the government hadn't dealt straight with them" in the past. Sorensen put together the film in his spare time as he began developing his career. He now lives in Washington, D.C., and produces the weekly PBS program "Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg." "Road to Yucca Mountain" cost less than $10,000, mostly charged to Sorensen's credit cards. The audience at the March 23 premiere filled the 104-seat American University theater and sat in the aisles and onstage. Environmental activists, former Energy Department officials and a scientist from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were among those attending. Sorensen said the NRC has expressed interest in a screening for officials who handle nuclear waste issues. The Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program has scheduled a viewing in Washington, D.C., on Monday, the night before a big anti-Yucca rally on Capitol Hill. Sorensen would like to arrange showings in Las Vegas. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 23 LETTER: Fact or left-wing spin? Sunday, April 14, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal To the editor: After hearing our local and state politicians' reaction to the recent nuclear disaster in Idaho, I did a little checking and dug up a few details that may be relevant ("Myers: `West Wing' no plant," April 5). First, President Bartlett is not really the president! He is actually actor Martin Sheen, a vociferous opponent of all things nuclear and frequent guest of the Nye County Sheriff's Department because of his many trespassing violations at the Nevada Test Site. Second, the "nuclear disaster" never actually occurred! That's right, it was really just a work of fiction on a television show called "The Left Wing" (excuse me, that should be "The West Wing" -- you can understand my confusion). I hope that this will clear up any misunderstandings or misconceptions held by Nevada's politicians, who all seemed to be rather confused and experiencing great difficulty distinguishing scientific fact from left-wing propaganda. Now, about those pesky Martians in "War of the Worlds" ... JIM RIDDLE LAS VEGAS Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 24 EDITORIAL: Missing the boat on Yucca Sunday, April 14, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Journal nuke waste editorial overlooks a few salient points In an editorial headlined "Nuclear War," The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday congratulated President Bush and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham for "finally making a decision" on Yucca Mountain, while dismissing Gov. Kenny Guinn's "veto" of the decision (their quotation marks) as "a political sop made possible by an earlier Congress." Characterizing the length of time it's taking to impose the site on largely unwilling Nevadans as "ridiculous," the esteemed financial daily did get part of the issue right. "The real debate here is less about Yucca than it is about nuclear power," the paper editorialized. "Some 20 percent of U.S. electricity is generated by nuclear plants, but we haven't built a new one since 1978 and without a waste site we won't ever again. ... But a big, if puzzling, obstacle is the environmental lobby. On the one hand, it deplores the greenhouse gases released by coal and oil plants, but on the other it won't abide nuclear." In this, the Journal is entirely correct. Not only the greens, but many a politician intent on currying favor with them, has now adopted an "energy policy" which should get them laughed out of any fifth grade science fair. Our own Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., says reducing America's dependence on foreign oil should be a major foreign policy goal -- but that the answer is neither more nuclear power (since that might seem to justify Yucca Mountain) nor drilling the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil (anathema to the greens). Rep. Berkley instead envisions America's economy continuing to expand thanks to the miraculous possibilities of "solar, wind, geothermal and biomass." Yet without disparaging the potential of bamboo and chicken dung, many attempts to harness these more expensive energy sources on any major scale to date has met with a lawsuit from -- you guessed it -- environmentalists. But the rest of the Journal's screed is either ignorant or disingenuous, and seems to flee from political and economic principles the paper has evinced in other circumstances. Eight billion dollars have already gone to "studying sites," the paper huffs impatiently. An interesting plural, that. Yucca Mountain has been seriously studied, no doubt. Name us a few others. The country's nuclear waste is currently cooling at 131 sites in 39 states, the newspaper points out, each of which presents a huge danger of contamination in the event of a "storage pool fire." That "waste has to go somewhere, and better one site than 131." Perhaps ... if the one site would really eliminate the 131. But do the Journal's editors really not understand that spent fuel rods are too hot to transport for at least five years after being removed from the reactor cores ... and thus will continue to sit for years at those 131 separate sites, for as long as nuclear power plants continue to operate, whether Yucca Mountain goes into service or not ? The Journal does acknowledge that transportation of the waste is a legitimate concern -- though it promptly responds that, "In more than 30 years the U.S. has moved more than 2,700 shipments of used nuclear fuel without one case of public harm." That's a good point. But in characterizing the transportation risks as "the best, perhaps the only, argument against Yucca," does the Journal really intend to go on record dismissing any concerns about the transparent sham that "science" has chosen Yucca Mountain? (Surely "science" would just as convincingly deem the basement of the Wall Street Journal's temporary offices in scenic South Brunswick, N.J. to be the best possible site for such waste storage ... if that were the only site studied.) And what about state sovereignty and the 10th Amendment? The world has no shortage of periodicals that regularly advise running roughshod over such constitutional safeguards in the interest of "the common good," though we've rarely counted The Wall Street Journal among them. None of our eastern brethren have to deal with the arrogance of federal bureaucrats claiming to "own" a majority of the land mass of their states. But even if the federal government does "own" 87 percent of Nevada, how is it any more exempt from state regulations concerning hazardous waste than any private landowner would be? There are places over which the central government does exercise just such "plenary" authority, as the Journal editors well know. There would be no question at all of the central government's authority to site such a dump in Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa ... or the District of Columbia. Finally, the Journal -- often deemed a champion of the free market -- might have pointed out that but for an earlier congressional intervention freeing nuclear operators from having to seek free-market liability insurance, some actuary from the Travelers or John Hancock would doubtless have sat down across a desk from the folks building Yankee Atomic 50 years ago, insisting, "Wait a minute. You mean to say you guys don't have a signed contract for waste disposal? Don't you think that's something you might want to have wrapped up before we talk about turning this thing on?" They might have pointed that out. But they didn't. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 25 Official: Lawmakers ill-informed on Yucca COMING SUNDAY: The Road to Yucca The Review-Journal tracks the 1,750-mile route from the United States' oldest nuclear power plant to Yucca Mountain Saturday, April 13, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Effect of shipments on legislators' districts not being made clear, consultant for Nevada says By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Representatives for House lawmakers were told Friday that their bosses are about to vote on sending nuclear waste to Nevada without adequate information about how shipments of the radioactive material may affect their districts. Robert Halstead, a transportation consultant for the state of Nevada, said at a staff briefing that the Energy Department has provided limited information about likely truck and rail routes to a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "When members of Congress will be asked to vote to endorse Yucca Mountain, they will be asked to make that vote in most cases not knowing how their vote is going to affect their state, or in the case of a member of the House, to affect their district," Halstead said in an earlier meeting with reporters. Aides who attended the session for staff members said he made the same point. Maps included in DOE's final environmental impact study show the location of state capitals and nuclear power plants along possible routes, but little else, Halstead said. For instance, he said Missouri's map doesn't locate St. Louis or Kansas City. Halstead was among presenters at a House staff briefing organized by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. The session was part of Nevada's stepped-up campaign to draw attention to its criticisms of the nuclear waste program. The House is expected to vote in early May on legislation to override Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of Yucca Mountain's repository designation. A Senate vote could occur in midsummer. When lawmakers ask the Energy Department about nuclear waste transportation, they're told that governors will have input on final shipping routes and that proposed shipments will be handled safely, Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said. "The shipping routes, especially for trucks, are an ongoing process that the states and the federal government will work on," Davis said. Routes will be finalized five years before a repository opens, which would be in 2005 under the the Energy Department's current schedule. As for the maps, DOE spokesman Allen Benson said they were intended to be preliminary. "What does he want them to show?" Benson said. "The purpose of the map is to show routes. That's what it's for and that's what it does." The 90-minute Friday afternoon session on Capitol Hill was attended by staff members representing about 50 House lawmakers, a mix of mostly Democrats and two or three Republicans, Berkley aides said. The House itself was out of session, so many lawmakers, including Berkley, were not in town. Berkley's staff declined to release the names of lawmakers who sent staff, saying the publicity might hurt efforts to do follow-up lobbying. Berkley spokesman Michael O'Donovan said the turnout was more than expected and shows "a lot of members are focusing on the Yucca issue." Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, environmental policy analyst Lisa Gue of Public Citizen, and Allison Macfarlane, a geologist and senior research associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also spoke. Gilinsky outlined objections to the Energy Department's site recommendation of Yucca Mountain. Nevada officials say the department "changed the rules" to get around a discovery the mountain was too porous to contain leaking radioactivity. Energy Department officials contend the change was authorized in updates to nuclear waste law and by direction of federal agencies. Macfarlane spoke about Yucca's geological shortcomings, and Gue gave a presentation on how Yucca Mountain came to be singled out by Congress in the late 1980s, according to an aide who attended. webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 26 The Road to Yucca (Large) Sunday, April 14, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL Nevada leaders are pinning their hopes on one issue above all others in their effort to prevent Yucca Mountain from becoming the nation's nuclear waste burial ground: transportation. A few days after President Bush recommended the ridge, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the site for the nation's most lethal radioactive material, the Review-Journal set out on a 1,750 mile journey from the oldest U.S. nuclear power reactor site to the back yard of the Western Shoshone in Nevada. The government hasn't designated transportation routes to haul the 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, but the selection of highways and railways, including an analysis on terrorism risks, will be forthcoming if Congress overrides Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto in the next three months. The hypothetical route, across the heart of the Midwest, passed near five active nuclear plant sites and one decommissioned site where spent fuel would eventually be extracted before being brought to Nevada. The path is the most direct by freeway to Southern Nevada and parallels rail lines as well. To reach Yucca Mountain from Morris, Ill., we crossed 120 bridges, some over water supplies for millions of people. We passed through a half-dozen tunnels and came within a mile of cities and towns where 2.7 million people live. We took the pulse of Americans along the way. Their opinions proved as varied as the terrain we crossed. On a drizzly February morning, as Kathy Hammen backed her car out of her garage on her way to work, a dozen white-tailed deer nibbled on grass in a nearby field. Several Canada geese honked as they landed on the Kankakee River, near her little hamlet of Goose Lake Township, Ill. A yellow school bus picked up students in rain gear. A little more than a football field away, men with assault rifles were guarding the nation's oldest nuclear power reactor site. Life was proceeding as normal. The quiet operation of the Dresden Generating Station has become an accepted part of the community in the 43 years since the first reactor fired up on Oct. 15, 1959. Hammen and her husband, Nick, have lived for 10 years in the one-story, brown-and-beige home in the shadow of the plant. Once a month, they hear the sirens that sound off during emergency drills. They've become accustomed to that as well. "I know it's a chance we take," she said of her proximity to the plant. "We make our living here." Yucca Mountain, 1,750 miles to the west, is on their radar screen. Just days earlier, they learned from TV reports that President Bush had approved the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for burial of the nation's spent nuclear fuel. Hammen said she has faith that the Dresden plant's nuclear waste is stored securely on-site. And although it means 1,245 tons of waste would be removed from her back yard, Bush's decision still gives her pause. Her nephew and some friends live in Las Vegas. "What if there's an accident or some sort of problem?" she said. Some 44,000 tons of metal-tube assemblies containing highly radioactive used fuel pellets are stored at 131 sites across the nation. The Energy Department's plan is to load 77,000 tons of the nation's most lethal toxic waste from commercial power reactors, some from Navy submarines and ships, in thick-metal casks and haul that material across 45 states on trains and trucks before placing it in a maze of tunnels at Yucca Mountain. Like Hammen, many others who live in towns and cities across the Midwest are beginning to realize that over the next three or four decades, the power that produces electricity for one in every five light bulbs will also produce tens of thousands of trucks and railcars laden with leftovers from that process that could be rolling through their communities. Their opinions run the gamut. Some say they fear terrorist attacks and accidents, as if responding perfectly to Nevada's playbook. Others are ready to see the toxic material go to a single site. Many have a general distrust that the government can handle such an undertaking. Officials for the Department of Energy and the nuclear power industry believe the task can be done safely. Nevada leaders, who are trying to sway colleagues in Congress against making the Nevada ridge the waste's final resting place, are convinced that the prospect will have terrorists "licking their chops," as Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., once said. Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed the plan Monday. Illinois holds the highest concentration of spent fuel of any state: 5,900 tons alone at Exelon Nuclear's six operating plants and one shutdown plant. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican whose home is 20 miles from the Dresden plant, is pushing to open a repository at Yucca Mountain. Fourteen miles west of Hammen's home, over the Illinois River and through Morris, population 11,928, Nancy Buell, a bartender and real estate associate, serves customers at Piggy's Pig Pen inside the Holiday Inn. She has lived in the area about five years and isn't alarmed about the waste produced at Dresden or at the LaSalle nuclear reactor site, about 20 miles away. But she has second thoughts about hauling it to Nevada. "It's not whether it's in your back yard or my back yard. It's the transportation that worries me," she said. "Anything can happen on the road." Folks in the nearby town of Seneca, which sits closest to the LaSalle plant, at first battled plans to put a reactor there. Ronnie Patton, eating lunch in a booth at the Seneca Family Restaurant, remembered how leery residents once were about nuclear power invading their rural lifestyle. But Patton said it gradually became accepted as the course set by elected leaders. That, the 61-year-old said, should be the reaction to President Bush's approval of Yucca Mountain. "Our president said, `yes.' He's our leader." In a booth behind him sat Larry Walker, superintendent of Seneca Community Consolidated School District, who leads teachers and a student body of more than 600 preschool to eighth-graders. His view: "We live with that nuclear thing all the time. People don't get too excited about it." Although the community fought the power plant at first, he said, the benefits eventually became apparent. "It's bread and butter for our school district," said Walker. "I've been here 20 years and they've never had a problem." A nuclear waste truck traveling west on Interstate 80 from Morris would pass near seven cities and towns where more than 50,000 people live, and cross bridges over 13 streams and rivers before reaching the Mississippi River. On this February evening, it is raining and there are no boats plying the waters in front of Exelon's Quad Cities nuclear plant, on the river's east bank. The plant sits 13 miles upstream of I-80's route on the outskirts of East Moline, Ill., and a 3,483-foot bridge supported by 27 piers crosses the Mississippi into the Iowa cities of Bettendorf and Davenport. Some 150,000 people live along this stretch of the route. It is the kind of data Nevada officials will compile in their effort to fight the repository. They argue that sabotage is a possibility at any point along a transportation route. Under foggy conditions, the 66-mile drive to Iowa City can take more than two hours. Trucks hauling waste across the country would be required to have two drivers, each driving in shifts. Twenty-five miles north, past Cedar Rapids, the stack from the Alliant Energy Duane Arnold nuclear plant juts from the surrounding farmland along some railroad tracks near Palo, a community of 614. Alliant Energy Nuclear Business Manager Bruce Lacy has been to Yucca Mountain and he knows what nuclear power means to Iowans. The 590-megawatt, boiling water plant produces 12 percent of the state's electricity, about half of Iowa's total reliance on nuclear power. At his plant, spent fuel assemblies from nearly three decades of operation -- about 317 tons -- sit in a 20-foot-by-40 foot pool that is 40 feet deep. It would be lethal, without shielding, to stand near a spent fuel bundle fresh out of a reactor, but hundreds of tons of the material can be safely stored in a small body of water. "All the fuel produced in 27 years is in the pool and it's not full yet," he said. Lacy took a Department of Energy tour of the tunnel that loops through Yucca Mountain. He said he has faith that the hurdles scientists face to safely contain nuclear waste will be overcome. He sees a parallel between the improvements that made the Duane Arnold facility a more efficient power generation plant and the work at the Yucca Mountain Project. "I'm confident that people committed to doing it right will prevail. It worked here. It will work there," he said. With rail access, spent fuel leaving the Duane Arnold plant would pass through an emergency planning area that includes Cedar Rapids, population 120,758. The route followed by waste trucks would probably travel south through the city, across the Cedar River, and on to Coralville, population 15,123. Heading west on I-80, trucks or trains on a parallel route would soon reach Malcom, a community of 350 in the heart of corn and pheasant country where the snow is blowing on the afternoon of Feb. 20. It was three days after the weekly square dance at the American Legion Hall. The weekend's TV news about Yucca Mountain was vaguely on the minds of some of the town's folk, where opinion about transporting highly radioactive material is mixed. Just outside the office of the Heartland Co-op, grain elevators that can hold 1 million bushels of corn and soybeans tower along the railroad tracks. Inside, Zach Bott said he has heard about "the nuclear waste stuff." "Bring it on," he said. "It's got to go somewhere. It might as well go somewhere where it's safe." But at the post office a couple blocks away, Audrey Reitzler said transporting nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain doesn't bode well for Malcom. "It's dangerous for the people," she said. Gerald Duncan, 67, agreed. "I don't like it either," he said, clutching some letters and magazines in one hand. "With all the train wrecks -- we've had two in the last several years -- it makes you skittish. After all, who knows when that thing's going to happen again?" Duncan doesn't need to be reminded about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to draw the connection that Nevada officials want to make. "With all the terrorists and stuff, who knows with the interstate," Duncan said. "It makes you cringe." Heading through Des Moines, population 198,682, to the Nebraska side of the Missouri River, 19 miles north of Omaha, motorists can see the Omaha Public Power District's Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant. In operation since 1973, the reactor facility, along with Nebraska Public Power's Cooper station near Brownville, generate 30 percent of the state's electricity. Officials for the Fort Calhoun plant declined to be interviewed. Like all operators of U.S. nuclear power plants, Fort Calhoun officials tightened security after Sept. 11, posting armed guards and setting up road blocks. The measures stem from a Nuclear Regulatory Commission advisory based on information the FBI received from an al-Qaida member that plans had been discussed to hijack a jetliner and crash it into a nuclear plant. Because of security hassles coupled with potential risks involved with transporting radioactive waste, longtime trucker Ray Betts said he is content to haul meat from the East Coast, even if he stands to earn more money as a nuke-waste hauler. "Some guys would probably do it for the same price for hauling meat. I wouldn't want to be around it," said Betts, a former Marine and a trucker since 1962. For nearly 200 miles across the flat Nebraska landscape, Interstate 80 crosses more than two dozen more waterways. Thousands of snow geese, Canadian honkers and sandhill cranes can be seen winging along them and standing in droves in fields of corn stubble. At Cozad, grain silos stand along a confluence of train tracks, dwarfing some of the many locomotives and railcars that routinely roll past the city's 4,000 residents. At the City Barber Shop, 30-year resident Don Berry is busy trimming Scott Breon's hair. Berry surrenders to the momentum of what is estimated to be a $47 billion Department of Energy effort to transport nuclear waste across the country and entomb it in a volcanic-rock ridge in Nevada. "I don't know what we can do about it," Berry said. "Don't seem like we count too much out here. Out of sight, out of mind." Breon wonders about the safety of numerous flatbed rail cars, each loaded with a waste cask weighing up to 130 tons. "We just had a derailment in Lexington last week, about half a train," he said, referring to a community about 25 miles east. "You're not talking about coal. You're dealing with something that can affect a whole town. Especially with our Platte River going through here, Nebraska's most historic river." In recommending the Yucca Mountain site, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham cited "compelling national interest," and the potential terrorist targets posed by 161 million Americans living within 75 miles of one or more of the 131 sites where spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste is stored in 39 states. These population centers are essentially sitting ducks compared to the moving targets that Nevada officials worry about, according to Energy Department officials. "I think we're at their mercy," Breon said. "The railroad and the government, they're so powerful." Using the transportation issue as leverage, Reid is hopeful that as majority whip he can muster enough support in the Senate to sustain Guinn's veto. "This stuff is going to pass by people's homes, schools, churches and businesses," he said. Reid said his challenge is to educate residents and officials along nuclear waste routes about potential dangers. "First of all, people generally don't know much about nuclear waste," he said. "What we have found is once they're told about it, they're opposed to it." He said the Department of Energy has underestimated the task and risks involved with transportation. "We've got problems with transportation that are separate and apart from nuclear waste," Reid said. The hypothetical route through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada "is only one route. There are 35 more (states) with bridges in disrepair. Fifty percent of the bridges in America are in a state of disrepair." Just before the Nebraska-Colorado state line, the route turns south from I-80 onto Interstate 76. Railroad tracks can be seen flanking the freeway on the way to Hudson, a Colorado town of 1,565 situated nearly a mile above sea level. Every hour, one or two trains carrying everything from coal to people on the Burlington-Northern rails thunder past the Main Street crossing. It is 6:30 a.m. on Feb. 22 and school bus driver Linda Gerstner is warming up the engine. Her yellow Labrador retriever, Maggie, and a black dog named Trouble bark wildly as a freight train 40 yards from Gerstner's blue mobile home heads into a pink sunrise. Gerstner said she and her husband laughed a few days earlier while they watched a television report on Yucca Mountain. "It's got to end up someplace and nobody's going to be happy where it ends up," she said. "Living right here by this train track, I'm sure there's lots and lots of stuff that goes through here we have no clue about. Am I going to protest against it? Probably not." A half-hour drive northwest stands the Fort St. Vrain facility, a one-of-a-kind nuclear reactor that was converted to a power plant fired by natural gas after the reactor was shut down in 1989. "It had a history of under performance," station manager Marty Block said. Winds blowing from the Rocky Mountains cool the 1,482 blocks of uranium-thorium fuel kernels that were put in a tall concrete ventilated building near the plant to await disposal in Yucca Mountain. About half the fuel used in the gas-cooled reactor was trucked to an Energy Department facility in Idaho, where it awaits disposal. About 35 miles south of Fort St. Vrain, 74-year-old Al Richardson leaned on a parking meter in front of his gift shop near downtown Denver. He contemplated the notion of hauling nuclear waste through the Rocky Mountain state. "If they'd be bringing it, I'd be fighting it," he said. "I think it would have an effect (on business) and I'd definitely be concerned." His solution is less serious: Ship it overseas "to one of those countries with wide open spaces," such as Afghanistan. "They got a lot of tunnels to hide it in." But 30 miles west of Denver, where the ice was 2 feet thick on Georgetown Lake, Jimmy Olson and Dave Smith of the Our Gang four-wheel-drive club had a different perspective. They were preparing for an ice race that weekend. "You got to do it," Olson said, about hauling spent fuel to Yucca Mountain. "They're going to do it by (Department of Transportation) regs, so it's going to be safe." Smith, who used a long-handled ax to chop a divot in the ice for a course marker, echoed that view. "It's not like anybody's dumping it out of their cars and it ends up in the back yards." Colorado is one of 14 states with preferred routes for hazardous waste shipments. Under its plan, no nuclear waste would pass through the Eisenhower Tunnel, which at 1.7 miles is the longest in the United States. Instead, shipments would head north from Denver. By rail, however, they could continue west on a route parallel to I-70. Nevada officials estimate more than 6,000 truckloads could pass by road through Colorado just from the six nuclear sites -- from Dresden to Fort St. Vrain -- during 38 years of loading a repository at Yucca Mountain. For 100 miles, the route leaves the peach, apple and pear orchards of western Colorado and enters the plateau region of south-central Utah. At Green River, Utah, population 973, gift shop owner Shirley Horn, 72, fears that nuclear waste coming near the city by road or rail "would make a big difference" in her town, which thrives on raft trips and history about explorer John Wesley Powell's expeditions through Paiute land after the Civil War. "We've got a hard enough time getting tourists here," she said. During a college baseball game at Richfield, 126 miles west on I-70, Danny Pawelek, 49, watches his son's team, the Snow College Badgers, play the Eagles from the College of Southern Idaho. Pawelek, a traveling salesman, is familiar with the nuclear waste issue. "You know what's secure about life? Nothing," he said. "If the country decides they're going to use nuclear power, then there should be a way to dispose of it." Traveling south from I-70 to Interstate 15, the route winds through Cedar City and St. George -- two cities that were downwind of atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in Nevada 50 years ago -- and on through a slice of northern Arizona where the road is a ribbon shadowed by the steep walls of the Virgin River Gorge. From the Nevada state line, it's a mile to Mesquite and about 80 more miles, past the Moapa Band of Paiutes reservation, to the Spaghetti Bowl in the Las Vegas Valley. The route, U.S. Highway 95, then swings northwest for the last 100-mile leg to Yucca Mountain. About halfway there from Las Vegas lives Ian Zabarte, secretary of state for the Western Shoshone National Council and an outspoken opponent of the Yucca Mountain Project. Passing about 20 yards from his Cactus Springs home, waste trucks could be delivering their radioactive cargo to the ridge Shoshones regard as "the snake." On the west side of the mountain, a band of dark-colored rock appears as a stripe, dividing the top of the snake and its belly, explains Zabarte. "It is alive and moving and does have poison," Zabarte, 37, said on a visit there last month. "You don't want to disturb it. It teaches us respect for the land." The mountain, like all the land in what his native people refer to as "Newe Sogobia," covers a wide swath of Nevada that has been part of Western Shoshone culture for thousands of years. Although the federal government has taken over much of it -- the sprawling Nevada Test Site and Nellis Air Force Range -- Zabarte says that the Western Shoshone never surrendered their claim to the land. The millions of dollars that the United States has tried to pay them for it never has been accepted. Zabarte argues that the federal government has no standing to turn Yucca Mountain into a nuclear waste repository. "Property is not the thing," Zabarte said, climbing a rocky hill to a traditional gathering spot where Yucca Mountain overlooks Crater Flat in a remote part of Nye County. "It's our relationship with the land that is being interfered with. "We look at this as native people. We lose, and lose and lose. We have a symbiotic relationship with sage grouse, rabbits, smaller critters and the land. This isn't history. This is life." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 27 Nevada Sues Over Yucca Mountain - Again Environment News Service: AmeriScan: April 12, 2002 CARSON CITY, Nevada, April 12, 2002 (ENS) - The state of Nevada has filed another lawsuit challenging the legality of the proposed high level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The suit filed Thursday against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) challenges the legality of its Yucca Mountain licensing rule issued last November. "Nevada will leave no stone unturned in our attempt to remind the nation why the Yucca Mountain project is a bad idea," said Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa. "The Yucca Mountain project will not achieve the geological isolation required by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and the transportation component of the program will potentially expose 123 million Americans to unacceptable risks as this material is moved continuously by truck and rail through 43 states and many of the nation' s major cities over a 38 year period." The NRC's Yucca Mountain Licensing Rule establishes the parameters for licensing the Yucca Mountain repository system to meet the health and safety requirements established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Nevada suit charges that while the NRC rule embodies the Department of Energy's (DOE's) "total system performance assessment" approach for licensing the repository, it ignores the fundamental requirements in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that, regardless of design, the repository must serve to isolate radioactive waste primarily by geologic means. "Under the Part 63 rule, NRC could issue a license for the repository even though it is fundamentally unsafe from a long-term geologic perspective," said Joe Egan, Nevada's lead nuclear lawyer and a former nuclear engineer. "This violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and departs radically from the recommendations of the global scientific community." The statutory timeframe for licensing is three years with a possible one year extension. NRC's licensing rule for Yucca Mountain requires only that DOE demonstrate that radioactive emissions from the repository will meet EPA's emission standards for 10,000 years, the hoped for life of the manmade waste packages inserted into the mountain. Radiation emissions are projected to increase after that time, when the waste packages are presumed to have failed. Due to geologic deficiencies discovered by DOE in the late 1990s and outlined by former Yucca Mountain director John Bartlett, Yucca Mountain is no longer expected to isolate radioactive waste when the waste packages fail. "When Congress considered disposal alternatives, it spoke of isolation for 250,000 years, which only good geology could provide," said Egan. "The National Academy of Sciences recommended a million years. NRC's Yucca Mountain rule would allow the repository to be licensed on the shores of Lake Tahoe, since it really only considers the projected performance of a manmade waste package. This is legally and scientifically unsound." The state of Nevada has also filed legal challenges against the DOE's use of water for the Yucca Mountain site. Cases pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit include Nevada's challenge to the Yucca Mountain radiation standard and the state's, Clark County's and Las Vegas' consolidated geology case challenging DOE's siting guidelines and the secretarial and presidential decisions recommending the Yucca Mountain site. The state is also expected to file claims related to the DOE's environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain. © Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. ***************************************************************** 28 DOE Could Ship Plutonium Over South Carolina Objections Environment News Service: COLUMBIA, South Carolina, April 12, 2002 (ENS) - The Department of Energy intends to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons grade plutonium by the end of 2019, through the conversion of the material to a mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) for use in commercial nuclear power reactors. But these plans have hit a snag in the office of South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges. [Hodges] Governor Jim Hodges of South Carolina (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor) Hodges, a Democrat, said the federal government has promised not to store the plutonium in his state, where it would be processed, but has failed to make a legally binding pledge. He is demanding a court decree enforcing the federal government's promise. Without that, the governor warned, he will physically stop plutonium shipments from entering South Carolina. But Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham Thursday threatened to transport the plutonium into South Carolina without the governor's agreement. He wants the highly radioactive material to be shipped to the federal nuclear processing facility known as the Savannah River Site. It is on the Savannah River at the Georgia border, and is close to several major cities, including Augusta and Savannah, Georgia as well as Columbia, Greenville, and Charleston, South Carolina. The weapons usable plutonium is now located at Rocky Flats, Colorado, which the federal government is legally bound to close in 2006, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, and at the PANTEX Facility in Amarillo, Texas. The shipments and construction of a MOX production facility are necessary for two reasons - first, to fulfill a U.S. plutonium disposition agreement with Russia, and also to meet the closure date of 2006 for the DOE’s Rocky Flats Facility where nuclear weapons were produced for nearly 50 years. The Energy Department intends to construct two major facilities at the federal Savannah River Site: the nation's first MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (FFF), to be in operation by July 2007, and a Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility, to be in operation by October 2009. Pits are the classified components at the core of nuclear weapons. [Abraham] Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham at his desk (Photo courtesy Office of the Secretary) Citing an "overriding national security interest in disposing of surplus plutonium in a prompt, effective, and safe manner," Energy Secretary Abraham sent a letter to Governor Hodges Thursday offering a written agreement and, for the first time, legislation to back it up. He promised that the plutonium would not be permanently stored in South Carolina after it was processed at the Savannah River Site or in case the two facilities were never built. Abraham's proposal includes a "firm commitment to fully fund and carry out this program" at the project cost of $3.8 billion over 20 years, and establishment of annual funding targets. The energy secretary offered, "A commitment to maintain a pathway out of South Carolina for any plutonium brought into the state, including firm dates by which such material would be removed from the state if, for any reason, full funding necessary for the plutonium disposition program were not secured." If the governor cannot accept those assurances by Monday, Abraham wrote, he will revoke them and "direct issuance of the requisite a 30 day notice of our intent to begin shipping." Jay Reiff, spokesman for Governor Hodges, says the governor's position on the plutonium issue has never changed. He wants a legally enforceable agreement in the form of a consent decree filed in federal court, or he wants the federal government to hold off on the plutonium transport until the newly offered legislation is enacted. "The governor wants to support the legislative process," Reiff said, "but the problem is that the Department of Energy wants to start shipping plutonium here before that legislation is passed and gets the presidential signature. That's like moving your furniture into a house before you go to closing." Abraham said, "We have gone to extraordinary lengths to accommodate South Carolina’s concerns.” [MOX] MOX nuclear fuel assembly at Cogema's Melox plant in France. The state owned company has been fabricating MOX fuel assemblies for nuclear power plants since 1995. (Photo courtesy Cogema) "The Secretary's characterization of our negotiations is not accurate," Reiff told ENS. "We could take the agreement that the secretary has offered up, get a consent decree from a federal judge, and start shipments immediately. That would meet our needs, and that would keep the '06 closure timeline on track in Colorado. The Department has been unwilling to do that." "This is not about this governor or this secretary or energy," Reiff explained. "This is about whoever is going to be governor of South Carolina 10 years down the road. Governor Hodges wants to give that governor the ability to have some leverage to make sure that plutonium leaves the state in a timely manner. If we don't have a legally enforceable agreement, South Carolina simply has no leverage to do that." Secretary Abraham offered that if unforeseen technical, fiscal, international, legal or other circumstances preclude completion of the MOX FFF, the Energy Department would package the plutonium and remove it from the state. [Savannah River] Sunset at the Savannah River Site (Photo courtesy DOE) Secretary Abraham offered to proposed legislation providing that, “If the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility is not producing at least one metric ton of MOX per year by January 1, 2009, the Secretary of Energy shall, consistent with the NEPA and other governing laws and subject to the availability of appropriations, remove at least one ton of weapons-usable plutonium by January 1, 2011, and shall remove an amount of weapons usable plutonium equal to the amount of weapons usable plutonium transferred to the Savannah River Site after April 15, 2002 by January 1, 2017.” If such legislation is not enacted by October 15, 2002, DOE will halt plutonium shipments and the parties will immediately consult to determine an alternative path forward, the secretary wrote in his letter to Governor Hodges. But the governor wants a consent order in federal court or legislation in place before the shipments begin. Reiff says, "Our track record with the Department of Energy is such that promises aren't enough. We want to make sure that promises are kept." "Our experience here with the plutonium issue is that plans within the last two years have already changed, and this process could take 10 or 15 years. What the governor wants to be assured that future governors have a legal remedy that's enforceable if funding or timelines or even the whole program is scrapped, that South Carolina doesn't end up holding the plutonium bag." If the DOE attempts to force plutonium shipments into South Carolina before a legally binding agreeement is in place, Reiff says any truck carrying the plutonium would be turned around at the border and would not be permited to enter the state. © Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. ***************************************************************** 29 Jon Ralston: It's no surprise the king lied Las Vegas SUN April 12, 2002 Jon Ralston hosts the public affairs program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the Ralston Report. Ralston can be reached at ralston@vegas.com [ralston@vegas.com] or (702) 870-7997. ••• WHEN YOU COVER politics, partisan operatives call all the time to spin, praise or hector. Some are engaging, some are heavy-handed, some are clueless. But in all the years I've covered politics, I don't remember being as astonished as I was to receive the call I took last week. The man on the other end of the line was in Washington and was calling from the Republican National Committee. I didn't catch his name -- and, frankly, he's lucky, as you will see. Seems the man from the RNC was upset about a column I had written suggesting that when he announced his veto of George W. Bush's dump decision, Gov. Kenny Guinn should call the president a liar. RNCman told me, "You can't call the president of the United States a liar." And he also informed me that the decision had been made on science and not politics because the "EPA" had informed the president that the site was scientifically safe. (I think he meant the DOE, but his ignorance was confirmed when he clearly didn't know what I was talking about when I asked him about the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board's deriding of the science at the site and those nearly 300 scientific questions raised by the General Accounting Office.) The conversation stunned me for several reasons, not just why this GOP drone thought it was a good idea to challenge me on something he knew nothing about. First, the attitude was scary. In the wake of the president's post-9/11 leadership and stratospheric poll numbers, these folks seem to think Bush is King George and that we commoners should bow down to his greatness. And should you dare to criticize our new monarch, the palace guard shall be at your door. The imperiousness, the haughtiness here is breathtaking. But the second reason is that the Bushies continue to be in denial about what their man did here in Campaign '00. Call him King George or call him President Bush, but, my dear RNCman, he lied. Bush made two statements during the campaign -- both written statements because he didn't want to answer questions and both sent only because of fears about Al Gore getting traction on the issue: In May 2000 the Bush statement declared: "I believe sound science and not politics, must prevail in the designation of any high-level nuclear waste repository." Then at the end of September, as Gore was gaining momentum here, the local Republicans panicked and elicited a letter to Guinn that said: "As I've said before, I believe the best science must prevail in the designation that would send nuclear waste to any proposed site -- either on a permanent or temporary basis -- unless it has been deemed scientifically safe." Shortly after he took office, Bush's DOE designated the site and he quickly rubber-stamped it, after patronizing the state's governor and senators with an audience with the king. So, to be specific, Mr. RNCman, Bush actually lied twice. And he lied in the way a man lies when he is after one thing and is willing to say anything to get what he wants, even expressing love. And in this case, Bush romanced the state, had his one-election stand and got what he really lusted after: the presidency. Just to fully inform my new GOP friend, it went something like this: Bush to state: "Baby, I love you. I want your electoral votes. I promise I'll stay with you afterward on that dump thing." State: "Oh, George, there's no one like you. Here, take me, take my votes." Months later: Bush to state: "Sorry, but my heart has always belonged to someone else." State: "Who is she, you must tell me?" Bush: "You know. You've always known. I cannot resist her -- she's rich, she's always been with me and she just keeps on giving. She's the nuclear industry." State: "You lied to us, how could you lie, Mr. President." Bush: "Sorry, baby. You read my lips. You should have read my contributor list." To be fair, and to put this in context, Bush did what most federal politicians have done for two decades on this issue. He came to Nevada (or sent statements) and used the "sound science" shibboleth to try to curry favor. And for Bush, it worked. The state gave up its electoral votes. He's just one of the few who proved that he was lying when he said it. (Speaking of lying, it will be fascinating to watch the flip side if the battle ultimately is lost. Will voters who believed the promises of state and local politicians, and then were left with nothing, think those elected officials similarly were looking only to bed them for their own career gratification?) Now the state's Republicans, who gave their love to Bush after his campaign statements, refuse to act like partisans scorned. They are meek and mute, having gotten screwed but refusing to tell anyone. As this comes to a head on Capitol Hill, Sen. John Ensign should ask his GOP colleagues how they would feel if the president had treated them like political whores. So, yes, Mr. RNCman, it is true: King George lied. Feel free to call if you want to talk some more about it. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 30 Columnist Erin Neff: Political underdog goes for Yucca gold Las Vegas SUN April 12, 2002 PSSSST. A congressional candidate believes there's a little secret that Nevada's political leaders don't really want you to know about Yucca Mountain -- there's gold in them thar hills. That's because a little knowledge about benefits could go a long way to derailing the anti-Yucca Mountain express -- a locomotive bursting with the state's "official message" about the Energy Department's dirty little secrets. Independent congressional candidate Pete O'Neil is a maverick engineer who, unlike most Nevada politicians, isn't afraid to switch tracks from the state's fight against Yucca Mountain to his idea that great benefits (read: money) lie ahead for the state if it starts to deal. "Now is not the time to pontificate on the issue and stall it until you're no longer in office and there's nothing we can do about it," O'Neil said. "We need to negotiate while we still can." With that, O'Neil becomes the first person actually running for office to campaign on that notion. Granted, he's an underdog, and he's only raised $3,500 against the huge warchests the Democrats and Republicans are mounting for Nevada's new congressional seat. But O'Neil isn't trying to gain notariety by being contrary: He truly believes this is the right thing to do. To the state's political establishment, it is political heresy to accept Yucca Mountain in exchange for benefits similar to the way Alaskans receive checks for oil fields and pipelines. "The way our political leaders have set this up, we're going to get screwed," O'Neil said. "We will have no input on the program's implementation and no resources to make sure it's safe." The O'Neil Las Vegas Valley Protection Act is sitting on Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons' desk and has already been condemned by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. The governor's staff has called, asking him to stay away. Other leaders have told him he's committing political suicide. Here's his plan: + The state of Nevada would cease its legal efforts to obstruct Yucca Mountain. + A safety commission would be created to monitor the safety of the site, the transportation routes, personnel and Nevada citizens. + Nevada would get 50 percent of all charges that utilities with nuclear plants assess to their customers for the storage of waste. An estimated $900 million is currently in the coffers, which O'Neil thinks could result in $500 million to Nevada by the time Yucca Mountain accepts its first waste. + The federal government would spend $500 million to build new roads to transport waste to Yucca outside of the Las Vegas Valley. Since O'Neil isn't getting anywhere with Nevada's pols, he's shopping his proposed legislation to congressmen in New York, Florida, California and Texas. "I call up some of these congressional offices and ask if there's a way to stop Yucca Mountain and they say, 'Peter, what are you drinking?' " O'Neil's opponents in the 3rd Congressional District also think he's punch drunk. "If you reduce this argument to the common denominator of buying a car, and you go in and start negotiating, you're sending a message that you're going to buy," said Jon Porter, a Republican state senator. "We don't want to buy a waste dump." Democrat Dario Herrera, chairman of the Clark County Commission, not only thinks the state should not negotiate. He thinks Nevada should spend money to fight the dump. "I strongly believe that the health and economic security of Nevadans is not for sale at any price," Herrera said. "I also strongly believe that this is the time when Nevadans should be speaking with one voice in opposition to this ill-suited, incredibly dangerous project." O'Neil said he doesn't care what his opponents or the rest of the political establishment thinks. "I don't need polls," O'Neil said. "I've been out door-knocking for seven months and the people I talk to want their leaders to start negotiating." Last week Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed President Bush's recommendation that Yucca Mountain store 77,000 tons of the nation's nuclear waste by saying this issue is "not a bargaining chip." "I think he's completely wrong," O'Neil said. "The right decision is a tough decision." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 31 Letter: Feds alienate us over Yucca issue Las Vegas SUN April 12, 2002 All you folks who believe the government, which told you in the '50s that nuclear testing was safe, and who actually believe there is a benefit of any kind to nuclear storage in Nevada, have forgotten the past. I personally have two friends whose parents died miserable deaths due to the fallout in Utah and the Test Site in Nevada. Of course, we were all told how safe nuclear testing was. How can we as a state, knowing the lies and promises of our government better than any state, in good conscience, or sound science, allow them to do this again to any other state en route to this magic mountain? Nevadans should worry and they should protest Yucca Mountain, an atrocity and burden being put on us. We don't even have one nuclear power plant in our state. We do not want one either because of our past experiences with radiation. You may pay for this with your life, your families, your job, your money, and the equity in your home. One thing for sure: there will be no payments to Nevada if a dump is built here. The U.S. government is alienating us from our own country, which is meant to treat all its citizens equally. This government makes me feel like I have moved to another country, living in Nevada. Send in your money to help this fight. This is the wrong solution for Nevada and for the rest of the people in the United States. This highly toxic radioactive trash should not be hauled through anyone's neighborhood. SUE BRNA All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 32 Fighter Pilots Testify at N-Waste Hearing The Salt Lake Tribune -- Saturday, April 13, 2002 BY JUDY FAHYS Federal regulators enlisted a cadre of Air Force fighter pilots Friday to help them answer a critical question about potential risks at a proposed high-level nuclear waste facility proposed for Skull Valley, about 45 miles from Salt Lake City. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a panel that reports to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, requested first-person testimony from pilots as part of its microscopic analysis of F-16 crashes over the past decade. In Salt Lake City for hearings this week, the panel's job is to ensure that the facility is "safe enough" to store up to 44,000 tons of lethal radioactive nuclear waste for 20 years or longer. Ret. Air Force Col. Hugh Horstman took the witness stand on behalf of the state Friday. His testimony went to a question the panel puzzled over all week: How likely would it be that F-16 pilots who traverse Skull Valley between Hill Air Force Base and the Utah Test and Training Range could prevent a crashing F-16 from careening into the Skull Valley waste casks. Earlier in the day, Col. Mike Cosby, speaking via tele-conference call, shared his experience with the board. He recounted an experience in 1993 when, knowing he would have to eject from his failing fighter jet, he was able to turn the aircraft to avoid plowing into a Detroit-area apartment complex. "What we are trying to do [during an imminent crash] is mitigate the risk to civilians," said Cosby. The pilots said they often can take measures to prevent a failing aircraft from careening into a certain facility, but there are lots of factors -- such as weather, speed, the location, the aircraft's condition -- that figure into an emergency. The licensing board spent much of last week trying to discern whether it is realistic to factor military aircraft crashes into a complex formula being used to evaluate the waste storage plans proposed by a consortium of out-of-state utilities called Private Fuel Storage. The formula will ultimately be used in deciding whether the facility, as proposed at Skull Valley, on the reservation of the Goshute Band, is safe enough for the federal government to license. Ret. Air Force Col. Frank Bernard also appeared before the panel Friday to tell about his experiences flying fighter jets in Skull Valley. The staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stood by their belief that the facility would be relatively safe, posing less than a 1-in-1 million likelihood of seeing a crash in any given year. Built into the aircraft-risk formula are such questions as how many aircraft fly over the proposed nuclear site, how often their engines fail, how pilots know what to avoid, and, after a pilot ejects, how far an unguided aircraft might drift off course. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 33 Using Yucca Mountain A Boston Herald editorial Sunday, April 14, 2002 As expected, Gov. Kenny Guinn of Nevada last week refused to approve the selection of Yucca Mountain by President Bush as a nuclear waste repository. The governor's veto throws the issue to Congress for a decision in the next 90 days. Congress should give the go-ahead. Almost 50,000 short tons of spent reactor fuel is stored at 131 commercial, university and government reactors. It will be a lot less dangerous inside this mountain, with almost 1,000 feet of earth over it than where it is now, offering the Osama bin Ladens of the world 131 targets for crashing an airliner. Nuclear power supplies 20 percent of the nation's electricity. If environmentalists are right and fossil fuels are dangerously warming the globe, the world will want much more nuclear power, which can't be provided without good places for the waste. The Energy Department has spent 15 years and $7 billion investigating the geology of Yucca Mountain, isolated on the nuclear weapons test range adjacent to Nellis Air Force Base. Questions remain, but none poses any disqualifying issues. One untruth already is being peddled is the claim that the shipping containers have never been tested. These massive steel cylinders in fact have been dropped from great heights and put through infernos and have passed all tests. More than 3,000 shipments of waste have been made, mostly for the military. Spent fuel now must remain at the reactor for five years to cool enough to handle. Opponents of Yucca claim there is thus no gain in safety in moving waste into the mountain. But some reactors have accumulated more than 30 years' worth of spent fuel and it is piling up everywhere; limiting each reactor to five years' worth of waste brings a major reduction in risk through major reductions in the amount that could be liberated. Nevada's opposition is the ``not in my back yard'' reaction of every homeowner who hears that his town needs a landfill or garage in the neighborhood. It may seem a little strange coming from a state that was host to hundreds of nuclear weapons test explosions near Yucca Mountain, but such is the emotional power of the phrase ``nuclear waste'' and the knowledge that the repository has to be engineered to last 10,000 years. Congress must act for the nation on the basis of facts and reasoned judgment, not react in misplaced sympathy to scare stories. BostonHerald.com ***************************************************************** 34 Incline woman donates to Yucca Mountain battle April 12, 2002 by staff reports An Incline Village woman handed the state of Nevada a $75,000 check on Wednesday to help fight the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. "The storage of nuclear waste threatens all of us," Dorothy Lemelson told state legislators. Lemelson's donation is the largest contribution from an individual yet received for the state's effort to prevent Congress from locating the high-level nuclear waste dump in Southern Nevada. But Gov. Kenny Guinn said it's far from the only contribution. "We are receiving numerous checks like this," he said holding up another donation of $200 he received. Bob Loux of the state Nuclear Projects Office said he has received hundreds of inquiries about donating money to the cause. Loux said there were some donations earlier, but the real flood started when Guinn issued a plea for help during a Monday press conference. He could not say how much money is rolling in, since some of it is from credit cards and they haven't cleared the bank. Guinn established the Nevada Protection Fund during his 2001 State of the State Address. He has asked Nevada's residents and other governments to contribute. Brown & Partners Advertising and Public Relations was retained last fall to create a national public information campaign to educate people in other states of the risks of transporting nuclear waste. Copyright North Lake Tahoe Bonanza. ***************************************************************** 35 Japan processes Russian plutonium into MOX fuel - Japan Today Japan News - News - Saturday, April 13, 2002 at 11:00 JST MITO The Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute announced Friday it has successfully refined plutonium removed from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons into plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, which was then burned in a Russian nuclear reactor. Officials of the institute said it is the first international cooperation effort under which a Japanese institute dismantled Russian nuclear weapons (Kyodo News) ***************************************************************** 36 Japan processes dismantled Russian nuclear weapons into MOX fuel BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Apr 13, 2002 Mito, Japan, 12 April: The Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute announced Friday [12 April] it has successfully refined plutonium removed from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons into plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, which was then burned in a Russian nuclear reactor. Officials of the institute said it is the first international cooperation effort under which a Japanese institute dismantled Russian nuclear weapons The institute has processed about 20 kg of plutonium, taken from Russian nuclear weapons in cooperation with Russia's Research Institute for Atomic Reactors (RIAR), into MOX fuel since 1999. The institute then burned the fuel in the Russian BN600 fast reactor, and confirmed there were no abnormalities in the fuel, the officials said. The institute is expected to dispose of 20 tonnes of plutonium to be extracted from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons by 2020, the officials said. MOX fuel is designed to be used in light-water reactors in the so-called "pluthermal process", which the Japanese government has deemed necessary for its nuclear fuel cycle policy. BBC Monitoring/ ¸ BBC ***************************************************************** 37 Gore Vidal's War on War (Book Review) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 16:58:29 -0500 (CDT) Gore Vidal's War on War (Book Review) Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - "Mark Graffis" http://www.lewrockwell.com/harris/harris9.html Gore Vidal's War on War by Franklin Harris We are, as George the Younger tells us, "at war," and having unpopular opinions during times of war is likely to get one shouted down, or worse. Fortunately, the War on Terror isn't a real war; it is a "new kind of war," otherwise its critics might find themselves in jail, as did critics of Lincoln's and Wilson's wars, never mind that pesky First Amendment. Yet the chilling effect is real, so real that when Gore Vidal, America's greatest living man of letters, weighed in on the War on Terror, not even his friends at The Nation would publish him. Vidal holds a view that is beyond the pale, or so the Conventional Wisdom would have us believe. He believes that the United States may actually have done something to provoke the hatred of the Islamic world. He explores that possibility in fine detail in his new book, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated," a slim but substantial collection of essays, including the one that The Nation wouldn't touch. His central (and reasonable) thesis is that, contrary to what President Bush told a joint session of Congress, the Islamic world doesn't hate us because of our freedoms. Rather, it hates us for exactly the reasons Osama bin Laden himself claimed: our military presence in Saudi Arabia, our continuing war of sanctions against Iraq and our "unconditional" support of Israel. Vidal writes, "Since V-J Day 1945..., we have been engaged in what historian Charles A. Beard called 'perpetual war for perpetual peace.' I have occasionally referred to our 'enemy of the month club': each month we are confronted with a new horrendous enemy at whom we must strike before he destroys us." Saddam Hussein's longevity has made him the "enemy of the month" for a decade, replaced only temporarily by the Serbs. Ironically, we bombed the Serbs into submission, in part, for their war against the very same Islamic terrorists we now face. Our friend today is our enemy tomorrow and vice versa, and both are our enemies the day after that. Saddam was our ally against Iran. Then, briefly, Iran was our ally against Saddam. Now, both are two-thirds of the Axis of Evil, and the North Koreans are as perplexed as anyone. Vidal also provides a "scoreboard" of American military adventures, many of which are ongoing "even though many of us have forgotten about them." Of course, our leaders tell us that these military engagements are all justified. However, those bearing the brunt of our bombs don't necessarily see it that way. Nor should the American taxpayer, who is paying to a vast arsenal and getting even less security in exchange. Ultimately, it is hard to imagine that Islamic terrorists spend much time worrying about the freedom Americans enjoy to eat at McDonald's or watch MTV. As it is, Americans are losing their freedoms, Vidal writes. Following 9-11, Congress passed and the president signed so-called anti-terrorist legislation that gives the federal government sweeping new police powers. The perception that the United States is becoming a police state breeds hatred on the home front, too. So, Vidal moves on to the case of our indigenous terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, who was forged in the fires of the Gulf War, where so many of our recent troubles began. McVeigh, a decorated veteran, became a mass murderer in order to retaliate against what he saw as the federal government's own acts of murder, directed at the Branch Davidians and others. Vidal maintains that McVeigh's concerns were justified, although his actions were not. But those who approve of America's current foreign and domestic policies like to wave bin Laden and McVeigh like bloody shirts, implying, and sometimes saying flat out, that to criticize American policies is to take the side of the terrorists. This guilt by association is meant to keep critics silent. But just because bin Laden is evil doesn't mean that the United States' policies toward the Arab world are justified, nor does McVeigh's evil mean that America should become the police state he feared. Hopefully, Vidal's little book will prompt more of us to reflect upon our country's role in the world. It was, after all, no less than George Washington who warned us of the dangers of overseas entanglements. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcov-04.14.02-14:42:54-26715 ***************************************************************** 38 Taiwan considered using small N-bombs against China theage.com.au, Breaking News TAIPEI, April 14 AFP|Published: Sunday April 14, 7:36 PM Taiwan considered using small nuclear weapons against China in the 1960s but did not proceed after the United States rejected the idea, press reports said today. The United Evening News quoted a recently declassified military document saying the former Kuomintang (KMT) government commissioned a study on April 4, 1961, to determine the feasibility of the attacks. According to the paper, the then chief of the general staff, General Peng Meng-chi, ordered the study to look into firing small nuclear bombs from the offshore island of Kinmen at and around the Chinese city of Xiamen. The study was made following a bloody battle in 1958 in which the communist army showered Kinmen with about 500,000 shells in 44 days to drive the Nationalist troops off Kinmin and other frontline islands. The KMT troops fled to Taiwan and some of the offshore islands after they were defeated in 1949 at the end of a civil war. China has since regarded Taiwan as a renegade province to be reunified by force, if necessary. According to the United Evening News, the declassified report showed the study suggested firing small nuclear bombs from 20-centimetre howitzers on Kinmen, which is only two kms from the mainland. The howitzers have a range of 17 kms and Kinmen is more than a hundred kilometres from Taiwan's mainland. According to the newspaper, the report said the intended bombs would have had about one-twentieth of the power used in the US nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Possible targets included Chinese harbours or troops or naval fleets and the main aim was to stop communist forces from amassing and invading Kinmen. The study said troops stationed on Kinmen would barely be affected by the subsequent nuclear fallout, much of which was expected to fall on the Chinese mainland. But the paper said the United States eventually rejected the plan and did not provide Taiwan with the nuclear weapons, fearing it would prompt Russia to offer more military aid to the mainland. Taiwan said for the first time last month it opposed any use of nuclear weapons by the US against China, the paper quoted a defence ministry's written reply to a parliamentary question as saying. Copyright © 2002 John Fairfax Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 39 UK: N-SUBS ARE FOR THE CHOP thisisDevon : Plymouth Evening Herald : JAMES GARNETT DEFENCE REPORTER 12:00 - 13 April 2002 The Ministry of Defence is looking for firms to carve up nuclear submarines and possibly bury them in Plymouth. Old submarines currently stored on the water could be chopped up for disposal on land within the next 20 years. The MoD has accepted almost all the recommendations contained in a newly-completed independent consultation on plans to store decommissioned submarines on land. It paves the way for private firms, such as DML, to bid for the work later this year, when potential disposal sites will be discussed. Plymouth looks certain to be considered a prime site for disposal of the submarines, which would contain 'intermediate' levels of radioactive waste, said Devonport Naval Base. The base has four submarines earmarked for scrap - HMS Conqueror, HMS Courageous, HMS Warspite and HMS Valiant. An MoD study in 2000 concluded that, because of space restrictions, storing decommissioned submarines in the ground - known as project Isolus (Interim Storage of Laid-Up Submarines) - was better than keeping them afloat. The just-finished independent study by Lancaster University, which tested public reaction to the idea, recommended the submarines should be stored in areas where there was already nuclear activity, such as Plymouth. It also raised concerns about the public's trust in the Ministry of Defence, radiation risks, and the profit motive if the private sector was involved in the disposal of the boats. The Campaign Against Nuclear Storage and Radiation (Cansar) has opposed the land storage of nuclear submarines and claims the MoD will put profit above safety concerns. But the MoD today said it would make sure safety would take priority over costs. Defence Minister Dr Lewis Moonie said: "We have been open and consultative from the start on this important project, and will expect our industry partners to be prepared to take the same bold approach that has been the mark of the work so far." He said the ministry would take forward the majority of Lancaster University's recommendations. He added: "Key among these are the need to continue with our policy of openness and trust with the public, and to consider nuclear and environmental safety over cost. "We will consider further another five recommendations, which concern how future consultation will be carried out." In the MoD's response to the Lancaster University study, it said: "No site has yet been chosen, but it is recognised that it may be more practical to use a site that has previously been used for nuclear activity." The four methods of land storage being considered include: removing the intact reactor compartment - the method adopted by the US Navy - and disposing of the submarine hull dismantling the reactor compartment into major components, disposing of more material, and storing the remainder as unpackaged waste further dismantling the major components and storing as packaged waste. A spokeswoman from Devonport Naval Base said any storage of radioactive waste would be subject to civilian or MoD monitoring, depending on its location. DML, the private firm which runs Devonport Dockyard, said today it was a candidate for work on the separation of reactor compartments. But a spokesman added: "We currently have no facilities suitable for the storage of reactor compartments in our site, and no plans to create one. "Therefore, as things stand, it is difficult to see a role for DML beyond the separation of compartments." St Budeaux ward councillor Brenda Jones (Lab) said she was outraged by the news that firms would be invited to chop up the submarines. She said: "There are a number of questions that need to be asked. How are these firms going to be vetted? You cannot let any Tom, Dick or Harry do this. "Will they have some kind of strict safety guidelines to follow as they have in the dockyard?" She said there were also concerns about where to bury the submarine parts and how deeply, and added: "People who live in the area will be enraged." ***************************************************************** 40 Netanyahu's nuclear warning The Union Leader & New Hampshire Sunday News Apr. 14, 2002 Robert D. Novak: FORMER Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in secret briefings of U.S. senators in Washington this past week, warned that Iraq's Saddam Hussein not only is acquiring nuclear weapons but may have the means of delivering them against the United States. Netanyahu, who is positioning himself to succeed Ariel Sharon as prime minister, warned that the Iraqi weapons could enter the U.S. in satchels carried by terrorists. U.S. intelligence has minimized the likelihood of such an approach. A footnote: Netanyahu is the favorite Israeli politician among conservative Republicans. Who runs California? Presidential political operative Karl Rove laid it on the line Wednesday in a sometimes heated White House meeting with Bill Simon, California's Republican nominee for governor, and his advisers: Gerald Parsky is still President Bush's principal political agent in the Golden State. Members of Simon's campaign team have been unhappy with venture capitalist Parsky ever since he was quoted as referring to some of Simon's backers as "extremists." Parsky had urged the candidacy for governor of former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan as a means of helping Bush's 2004 re-election, but Riordan was badly beaten in the GOP primary by political neophyte Simon. Parsky has strongly endorsed Simon, and Bush will visit California later this month to campaign for the GOP nominee. The undecided Hoosier Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a senior Republican who supports the Bush administration on nearly everything, has refused to commit himself to the President's most embattled energy initiative. Lugar has informed the White House that he remains undecided on proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The outlook in the forthcoming Senate vote is too close to call. Lugar, one of the most cerebral of senators, is not the kind of lawmaker who can be brought into line by lobbying pressure. A footnote: The Senate Democratic leadership is going all-out to defeat ANWR drilling. The environmentalist movement trails only organized labor and the trial lawyers as a power source for Democrats. Targeting South Carolina Rep. Lindsey Graham, considered a relatively safe prospect to keep 99-year-old Sen. Strom Thurmond's South Carolina seat in the Republican Party this year, is being targeted by national Democratic operatives as a surprise loser in the national contest for Senate control. Polls show Graham comfortably ahead of Democratic candidate Alex Sanders, a former state senator and judge who most recently was president of the College of Charleston. Nevertheless, one prominent Democratic U.S. senator who keeps close tabs on campaigns across the nation is offering all takers a bet that Graham will lose in November. Graham has been attacked on television talk shows for releasing alleged intelligence information about a U.S. attack on Iraq and for President Bush's use of Air Force One to campaign for him in South Carolina. Bill Clinton's old political handlers never have forgiven Graham's performance as an impeachment trial prosecutor and intend to keep the heat on him. Jeb's bucks Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a heavy favorite for re-election against former Attorney General Janet Reno, was back in Washington Wednesday night for another big fund-raiser — an event much more exclusive than his previous efforts. While Bush's Washington fund-raiser a month ago took place at the Capital Hilton Hotel, the latest effort was held in the mansion of Republican lobbyist Wayne Berman (who happens to be Sen. Hillary Clinton's next-door neighbor). The $5,000 price for attending is estimated by supporters to have added $400,000 to the governor's war chest. Florida's election laws limit individual contributions to $500. Consequently, his supporters — many of them Washington lobbyists — were urged to collect $500 apiece from 10 people. The alternative was a $5,000 "soft-money" contribution to the Florida Republican Party. Robert D. Novak is a Washington political writer and commentator on CNN. The Union Leader. ***************************************************************** 41 Groups Urge Countries to Oppose Bush's Nuclear Plans Fri Apr 12, 1:52 PM ET Beth Bolitho,OneWorld US [http://www.oneworld.net/us/front.shtml] As country representatives enter the second week of discussions on a treaty aimed at limiting the spread of nuclear arms around the world, peace groups are urging them to oppose a possible United States policy shift that could mean a new role for nuclear weapons as part of the "war against terrorism." International delegates, who are currently meeting in New York to prepare the ground for a 2005 review of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), are under pressure from lobby groups to take a stand against controversial U.S. nuclear defense proposals which have been publicized in recent months. David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which has a representative at the NPT meeting, says the U.S. is in danger of violating international law if it goes ahead with proposals to make nuclear weapons a legitimate part of the country's portfolio of defense options. "That the U.S. is making contingency plans and preparations to use nuclear weapons is revealed in its secret Nuclear Posture Review," said Krieger, referring to a confidential policy report, partially declassified in January, which outlined the case for the weapons in the post-September 11 security climate. "Just as planning and preparation for aggressive war was held to be a crime at Nuremberg, U.S. planning and preparation to use nuclear weapons constitutes...a crime under international law," said Krieger, noting a 1996 International Court of Justice ruling that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be illegal. Leaks to the media last month revealed that the Posture Review named seven states--Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Russia, and China--against which nuclear weapons could be used. Of those states, only Russia and China are known to possess nuclear weapons. Since the second bomb was dropped by the U.S. on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, nuclear weapons have not been used. However, the Review raises the prospect of the development of smaller and more functional nuclear weapons that could be more easily deployed, according to media reports. Jan Øberg, director of the Sweden-based Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, believes that the new U.S. posture signals a change in how nuclear weapons will be perceived in the future. "Morally and politically nuclear weapons are not something you just throw around, but now there is the prospect they could be used against a government we don't like, and in particular, a list of countries that don't have the capacity to invade or who don't have nuclear weapons at all," Øberg explained. The posture is consistent with the lack of enthusiasm demonstrated by the administration of George W. Bush for multilateral efforts to controls arms, said John Isaacs, head of Council for a Livable World, pointing to the U.S. government's reluctance to support the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. "We hope the rest of world does not do the same thing because the more the U.S. goes against world opinion, the more likely it will weaken treaties, leading other countries to withdraw and to begin to develop nuclear capabilities," said Isaacs. The preparatory committee session, which began Monday, is scheduled to end April 19. The NPT itself, which includes 187 member states, has led international initiatives on non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament, and other nuclear treaties, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, since 1970. yahoo.com Copyright © 2002 OneWorld.net ***************************************************************** 42 UN nuclear watch says Iran has stopped giving it data IPA 17-Mar Issue Saturday, April 13, 2002 - 2002 IranMania.com VIENNA, April 12 (AFP) - Iran has stopped providing information to a UN watchdog charged with verifying a worldwide ban on nuclear tests, the agency concerned said on Friday. Tehran stopped sending data to the CTBTO, the Vienna-based body which monitors compliance with the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), in January, said a spokeswoman. "We were told by the Iranian authorities that the Iranian parliament started to ask itself whether it was a legal obligation to forward the data before the CTBT entered into force," said spokeswoman Daniela Roskonova. "We are not informed about any political reason for this decision," she added. The CTBT has still not entered into force and appears unlikely to do so in the near future, due to a crucial clause which requires its ratification by 44 nuclear-risk states. The agency, which has a global network of stations worldwide to verify that no nuclear tests take place, said the station in Iran, which began working in December 2001, had stopped transmitting information at the end of January. Iran's suspension does not endanger the effectiveness of CTBTO's monitoring network overall, Roskonova said, adding that monitoring stations in neighbouring countries could detect any seismic activity related to a nuclear test. "Should anything take place in Iran we would know it immediately... We have stations elsewhere which can monitor Iran," she told AFP. Key countries on the list of 44 states which must ratify the CTBT for it to come into effect including the United States, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Nuclear powers France, Britain and Russia have ratified it. Iran signed the CTBT in September 1996 but has not yet ratified. ©1999-2002 IranMania Copyrights ***************************************************************** 43 U.S. envoy urges N.K. to hold talks on nuclear, conventional weapons Korea Herald!!_National http://www.koreaherald.com JEJU - U.S. Ambassador to South Korea 3* on Saturday called on North Korea to open dialogue with the United States to discuss its nuclear and conventional weapons. Delivering a luncheon speech at the Jeju Peace Forum, Hubbard said the Bush administration is deeply concerned with the North's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and human rights abuses. "North Korea could eventually develop missiles capable of reaching as far as the United States. The United States genuinely seeks to resolve our concerns about North Korea through dialogue," Hubbard said. The ambassador said Pyongyang should understand the new context in which the United States views threats posed by WMDs and their proliferation in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "President George W. Bush reiterated that the United States will not permit the world's most dangerous nations to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons. That is not a threat - it is a statement of fact," Hubbard said. As an important step toward resolving the North's nuclear issue, Hubbard emphasized North Korea should comply with the 1994 Agreed Framework by allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its nuclear facilities. Hubbard said the United States will fully abide by the agreement as it recently took necessary steps to provide 500,000 tons of heavy oil to the North this year as stipulated in the agreement. Touching on the issue of the North's human rights abuses, the ambassador said the matter is one of Washington's main concerns and will be addressed accordingly. "We are genuinely concerned about the lack of freedom and respect for human rights in North Korea. Our values as Americans do not allow us to ignore the situation," Hubbard said. The ambassador estimated that a South Korean presidential envoy's recent visit to Pyongyang gained "fruitful" results for maintaining peace and security on the Korean Peninsula, but remained cautions about the North's true intention. "We are encouraged by the fruitful mission of President Kim's special envoy Lim Dong-won to North Korea last week," Hubbard said. "Only time will tell whether the North is truly ready to move forward and better relations with the South, the United States and Japan," he added. North Korea expressed its willingness to open dialogue with the three countries when presidential envoy Lim made a four-day trip to Pyongyang to restart inter-Korean talks after a five-month hiatus. The ambassador cited positive signs in improving Pyongyang-Washington relations such as U.S. Amb. Jack Pritchard's meetings in New York with Pak Gil-yon, the North's envoy to the United Nations, and a recent visit to Pyongyang by Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to Seoul. "Our view is that inter-Korean dialogue is the key to reducing tensions, establishing peace and improving the lives of the North Korean people," Hubbard said. "For our part, we are and have been prepared to meet with DPRK representatives at any time and place." (shj@koreaherald.co.kr) By Seo Hyun-jin Staff reporter 2002.04.15 (C) Copyright 2000 Digital Korea Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 44 Iran: No stop in cooperating with nuclear watchdog IPA 17-Mar Issue Sunday, April 14, 2002 - 2002 IranMania.com TEHRAN, April 14 (AFP) - Iran denied Sunday that it had stopped cooperating with a UN watchdog charged with verifying a worldwide ban on nuclear tests. A spokeswoman for the Vienna-based Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), said Friday that Tehran had stopped sending it data in January. "The information is erroneous," Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations in Vienna, Pirouz Hosseini, was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA. "The Islamic republic, one of the first signatories of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, has always supplied data to the agency since the beginning of The CTBTO, which has a global network of stations worldwide to verify that no nuclear tests take place, said the station in Iran, which began working in December 2001, had stopped transmitting information at the end of January. CTBTO spokeswoman Daniela Roskonova said, "We were told by the Iranian authorities that the Iranian parliament started to ask itself whether it was a legal obligation to forward the data before the CTBT entered into force. "We are not informed about any political reason for this decision," she added. The 1996 treaty has still not entered into force and appears unlikely to do so in the near future, due to a crucial clause which requires its ratification by 44 nuclear-risk states. Key countries on this list which have signed the treaty but not ratified it include the United States, China, Israel and Iran -- which Washington accuses of seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction -- while India, Pakistan and North Korea have refused to sign it. Nuclear powers France, Britain and Russia have ratified the pact. Iran's suspension does not endanger the effectiveness of CTBTO's monitoring network overall, Roskonova said, adding that monitoring stations in neighbouring countries could detect any seismic activity related to a nuclear test. "Should anything take place in Iran we would know it immediately... We have stations elsewhere which can monitor Iran," she told AFP. ©1999-2002 IranMania Copyrights . Terms & Conditions . Privacy ***************************************************************** 45 Taiwan considered using small N-bombs against China theage.com.au, Breaking News TAIPEI, April 14 AFP|Published: Sunday April 14, 7:36 PM Taiwan considered using small nuclear weapons against China in the 1960s but did not proceed after the United States rejected the idea, press reports said today. The United Evening News quoted a recently declassified military document saying the former Kuomintang (KMT) government commissioned a study on April 4, 1961, to determine the feasibility of the attacks. According to the paper, the then chief of the general staff, General Peng Meng-chi, ordered the study to look into firing small nuclear bombs from the offshore island of Kinmen at and around the Chinese city of Xiamen. The study was made following a bloody battle in 1958 in which the communist army showered Kinmen with about 500,000 shells in 44 days to drive the Nationalist troops off Kinmin and other frontline islands. The KMT troops fled to Taiwan and some of the offshore islands after they were defeated in 1949 at the end of a civil war. China has since regarded Taiwan as a renegade province to be reunified by force, if necessary. According to the United Evening News, the declassified report showed the study suggested firing small nuclear bombs from 20-centimetre howitzers on Kinmen, which is only two kms from the mainland. The howitzers have a range of 17 kms and Kinmen is more than a hundred kilometres from Taiwan's mainland. According to the newspaper, the report said the intended bombs would have had about one-twentieth of the power used in the US nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Possible targets included Chinese harbours or troops or naval fleets and the main aim was to stop communist forces from amassing and invading Kinmen. The study said troops stationed on Kinmen would barely be affected by the subsequent nuclear fallout, much of which was expected to fall on the Chinese mainland. But the paper said the United States eventually rejected the plan and did not provide Taiwan with the nuclear weapons, fearing it would prompt Russia to offer more military aid to the mainland. Taiwan said for the first time last month it opposed any use of nuclear weapons by the US against China, the paper quoted a defence ministry's written reply to a parliamentary question as saying. Copyright © 2002 John Fairfax Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 46 Crackdown on nuclear protesters promised KnoxNews: Local Offenders to be hit with federal charges By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer April 12, 2002 OAK RIDGE - The government plans to get tough with Oak Ridge protesters, and that strategy may become evident at a demonstration this weekend at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. For the first time protesters arrested for trespassing or other acts of civil disobedience will be charged with federal offenses, according to a top official at the nuclear installation. "We have seen a pattern of escalating aggressiveness, so it is important that we draw the line," said Bill Brumley, who heads the National Nuclear Security Administration's office in Oak Ridge. "The rules haven't changed. We have always had this option available to us. But the circumstances have changed." Federal trespassing charges carry a maximum sentence of a year in jail, with potential fines up to $100,000. In the past Oak Ridge protesters have been charged with trespassing under a city ordinance or state statutes, but those provided little deterrent, Brumley said. The city's maximum fine is $50, and the attorney general in Anderson County has thrown out most of the state cases, refusing to prosecute protesters on trespassing and other nonviolent offenses. The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance has used the low cost of arrests to help drum up participation at Y-12 protests, including a rally scheduled Sunday afternoon at the plant's entrance. "The price of acting on your conscience has never been lower!" the group proclaimed in its newsletter earlier this year. The newsletter is distributed to peace groups and anti-nuclear organizations around the country. At the time the Oak Ridge alliance said there was only a slim chance plant officials would invoke federal charges. "The federal courts are not anxious to have protesters and there is no precedent in Oak Ridge for that kind of enforcement," the newsletter states. Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the peace alliance, said Thursday some acts of civil obedience would be carried out Sunday to protest Y-12's continuing role in the production of nuclear weapons. Hutchison said the latest information regarding federal charges would be shared with protesters. Stiffer penalties may cause some would-be participants to rethink their plans, but Hutchison said the overall mission of peace activists will not change. "In terms of weakening people's resolve, I don't think so," he said. Hutchison said protesters have a right under international law to enter Y-12 and pursue the disarmament of the nuclear arsenal. "We have lawful authority," he said. Brumley said federal officials want to deter protesters before they threaten security at the Oak Ridge installation. Although historically there have been good relations between protesters and plant protectors, Brumley said the situation has changed over the past couple of years. As part of the "Stop The Bombs" campaign, activists upped the number of protests and began using surprise tactics to leverage the impact. Brumley said several actions have caused concern, including the use of aircraft cable to block a road and vandalism on the plant's entrance sign. He also noted that protesters started entering the plant at unannounced locations, putting more of a strain on the protective force. He said the government's intent is to stop the protesters at the initial boundary and enforce violations there rather than deal with intruders who could potentially reach more sensitive areas of the Y-12 plant. Security guards are authorized to use "deadly force" if intruders pose a threat to certain operations, he said. The events of Sept. 11 pushed plant protection to a new level, Brumley said. Hutchison said it's ridiculous to suggest that protesters pose a threat to the nuclear weapons housed at Y-12. "But we are a threat to the nuclear policy that puts those weapons there," he said. Brumley acknowledged that nuclear protesters have not shown any intent to disrupt operations at Y-12, but he added: "When they start to violate our security perimeters, we have to enforce it." The peace alliance has vowed to multiply the number of protesters, with predictions of up to 7,000 for future demonstrations, and Brumley said authorities take those pronouncements seriously. "We have been following their Web site. It's pretty good intelligence in terms of their plans," he said. The federal official praised the Oak Ridge Police Department for its long-time cooperation, but he said the city is not equipped to handle the response if the number of protesters exceeds 400. Police Capt. Bill Moehl said police would be on hand Sunday to ensure the events are safe. Moehl said large protests strain the city's resources and the city has encouraged federal agencies to become more involved in the response. Brumley said federal officials would be on hand to make arrests, if necessary, at Sunday's events. If protesters are arrested, they will be processed and transported to the Blount County Jail, which has a contract for federal prisoners, he said. Frank Munger may be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. Copyright 2002 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 47 Hodges, Abraham wrangle over SRS Augusta Georgia: Technology: 04/13/02 By Brandon Haddock [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] Staff Writer After months of bickering, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges have agreed to a schedule for shipping plutonium to and from Savannah River Site. Now they're arguing about how to make it final. The governor continued to push Friday for the U.S. Department of Energy to enter the agreement, reached in principle Thursday, through a consent order in federal court. The order would legally bind the department to live up to its end of the deal, Mr. Hodges said. But Mr. Abraham said such an order is out of the question, calling it "of dubious legality and propriety." An order would give the courts power over a U.S.-Russian accord to dispose of excess plutonium, a dangerous radioactive metal used in nuclear weapons, Mr. Abraham said. It also would give third parties a chance to derail the agreement in court, the secretary said. "It would be wholly irresponsible for the country to attempt to conduct its national security and foreign policy affairs through the judicial process, but that is what we effectively would be committing ourselves to doing," Mr. Abraham wrote Friday to Mr. Hodges. Instead, the secretary wrote, the two sides should get Congress to make their agreement law. Mr. Abraham's letter ended with a handwritten request for the two sides to "work together to get this legislation done in the next 30 days." But that solution is unacceptable to the governor because shipments could begin before a law is passed, said a spokeswoman for Mr. Hodges. "That's just not something that Governor Hodges would stand for," Cortney Owings said. "A consent order would allow the situation to be resolved in no longer than two weeks. Legislation could take several months. "Governor Hodges' proposal is far more reasonable." Mr. Abraham said he would issue an order Monday for shipments to begin in 30 days, whether the agreement had been signed or not. Mr. Hodges said he will block those shipments - lying in the road, if necessary - if the Energy Department tries to make them before the deal is finalized. The two sides have feuded since last summer over the plans to send surplus plutonium to SRS. The radioactive metal, which can cause cancer if inhaled or ingested even in relatively small doses, would be sent from the Energy Department's Rocky Flats site in Colorado. The agency must close that site by 2006. The Energy Department wants to build new plants at SRS to turn 37.4 tons of plutonium, once intended for weapons, into fuel for nuclear-power plants. But Mr. Hodges said he feared that his state would become a permanent storage site for the metal if the Bush administration reneged on plans to build the new plants. The governor wrote Friday to the congressional delegations of South Carolina and Colorado, asking for help in getting Mr. Abraham to enter a consent order. Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409 or bhaddock@augustachronicle.com [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] . 1996 - 2002 The Augusta Chronicle. ***************************************************************** 48 April 2002 Nuclear Energy Agency Online Bulletin [http://www.oecd.org] The April bulletin covers the following items: New publications Nuclear development Nuclear safety Radiation protection Nuclear science Legal affairs Data Bank New publications Publications on sale can be ordered at the OECD bookshop: [http://www1.oecd.org/scripts/publications/bookshop/redirect.asp] . [http://www1.oecd.org/scripts/publications/bookshop/redirect.asp?662002071P1] Regulatory and Institutional Framework for Nuclear Activities ISBN 92-64-19743-5. Price: 40, US$36, £25, ¥4000. 180 pages. Disponible également en français : [http://www1.oecd.org/scripts/publications/bookshop/redirect.asp?662002072P1] Réglementation générale et cadre institutionnel des activités nucléaires ISBN 92-64-29743-X. Prix : 40, US$36, £25, ¥4000. 200 pages. [http://www1.oecd.org/scripts/publications/bookshop/redirect.asp?662002011P1] ISBN 92-64-19664-1. Price: 37, US$33, £23, ¥3700. 160 pages. Disponible également en français : [http://www1.oecd.org/scripts/publications/bookshop/redirect.asp?662002012P1] ISBN 92-64-29664-6. Prix : 37, US$33, £23, ¥3700. 172 pages. Free publications are available at [http://www.nea.fr/html/pub/webpubs/] . Paper copies may be requested by sending an e-mail to [nea@nea.fr] . [http://www.nea.fr/html/ndd/reports/nea3676-externalities.pdf] Workshop Proceedings, Paris, France, 15-16 November 2001 ISBN 92-64-18481-3. 244 pages (2.1 mb). Nuclear development The NEA and the International Energy Agency (IEA) have published the proceedings of an international workshop "Externalities and Energy Policy: The Life Cycle Analysis Approach", jointly organised by the two agencies in Paris on 15-16 November 2001. Incorporating external costs ("externalities") into energy prices is important to sustainable energy policy. This represents a key challenge and an important step towards "getting the prices right". Life cycle analysis (and assessment) is a process that seeks to identify and assess the environmental, economic and social impacts associated with a product, process or activity, and it provides a conceptual framework for a detailed and comprehensive comparative evaluation of energy supply options. More information is available at [http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2002/2002-04.html] Nuclear safety The Working Group on Risk Assessment (WGRisk) held a workshop on "Passive System Reliability - A Challenge to Reliability Engineering and Licensing" on 4-6 March 2002. The workshop was hosted by the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA) and took place in Cadarache, France. Participants at the workshop agreed that: 1. Passive systems and passive probabilistic safety assessments are becoming more important as reactor technology evolves. The key element in the development and use of passive systems is the decision as to whether new nuclear power plant designs will be licensed or built. 2. As a corollary to (1), continuing research into passive systems is essential for both nuclear regulators and operators, thereby preparing them for any future challenges newly designed and licensed reactors may present. Regular features + The list of all nuclear safety documents produced since 1973 by the CSNI is available at [http://www.nea.fr/html/nsd/reports/csnirepindex.html] . Documents produced by the CNRA are available at [http://www.nea.fr/html/nsd/docs/indexcnra.html] . + Information regarding forthcoming workshops and seminars may be found at [http://www.nea.fr/html/nsd/calendar.html] . Radiation protection The Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health (CRPPH) approved a new two-year programme of work at its annual meeting on 11-12 March 2002. The new programme will focus on the overall radiation protection framework and examine the emerging issue of radiological protection of the environment. The CRPPH will also address the possible implications of further reducing radioactive effluent releases and how to better integrate societal aspects into radiation protection decision making. The CRPPH's operational undertakings will again include the Information System on Occupational Exposure (ISOE) and International Nuclear Emergency Exercises (INEX). INEX 3, currently under development, will address assessment and decision-making mechanisms following a serious contamination. More information is available at [http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/welcome.html] . Nuclear science The Working Party on Nuclear Criticality Safety's Expert Group on Burn-up Credit has just published the results of the phase III-B benchmark on burn-up calculations of boiling water reactor fuel assemblies for storage and transport. This report, prepared by H. Okuno, Y. Naito and K. Suyama, presents an analysis of the 16 results submitted by the benchmark exercise participants. Paper copies of the report can be obtained upon request from Ali Nouri (nouri@nea.fr). The report, and others in the burn-up credit criticality benchmark series are available at: [http://www.nea.fr/html/science/wpncs/Publications/] . Legal affairs The first update of the 1999 Edition of the Analytical Study on Nuclear Legislation in OECD Member countries has just been published. As with the 1999 edition, data is organised in a standardised format for all countries, thus facilitating information search and comparison. The 2001 update provides new chapters for Australia, Canada, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway and Spain. There is also a chapter for the Slovak Republic, Member of the OECD since December 2000, and not previously covered by this publication. An information note on Poland is included, pending the adoption of legislation to implement the new Polish Atomic Act. The update, also available in French, may be ordered from the OECD Online Bookshop at the following address: [http://www1.oecd.org/scripts/publications/bookshop/redirect.asp?662002071P1] . Data Bank Computer program services A page listing all new programs in the last 12 months can be found at [http://www.nea.fr/html/dbprog/cpsnew.html] . Detailed news concerning the computer program service is available at: [http://www.nea.fr/html/dbprog/Newsletter/Whatsnew.htm] . New software packages available from the Data Bank 26-MAR-2002 NEA-1561 CHEMENGL/CHIMISTE, Chemical and Physical Properties of Elements (Now tested) 26-MAR-2002 NEA-1492 NUCLEUS-CHART, Interactive chart of nuclides (Now tested) 26-MAR-2002 IAEA1287 SHIELD, MC code for simulating interaction of high energy hadrons with complex macroscopic targets (Arrived) 25-MAR-2002 NEA-1554 ZZ PWR-MSLB, PWR Main Steam-Line Break Benchmarks, Coupled Neutronics Thermal Hydraulics (Now tested) 25-MAR-2002 NEA-1657 ANL-BPB, Argonne National Laboratory Code Center Benchmark Problem Book (Now tested) 14-MAR-2002 NEA-1581 ART MOD2,Fission Product Migration in Primary System and Containment (Now tested) 14-MAR-2002 NEA-1313 BWRDYN, Thermal Hydraulic Analysis of a BWR plant (Now tested) 14-MAR-2002 NEA-1577 SKETCH-N 1.0, Solve Neutron Diffusion Equations of Steady-state and Kinetics Problems (Now tested) 14-MAR-2002 NEA-1578 COMRAD96, Nuclear Fuel Burnup and Depletion Calculation (Now tested) 14-MAR-2002 IAEA1240 HEXAB-3D, 3 - D Few-group Diffusion for Hexagonal Core Geometry (Now tested) 14-MAR-2002 NEA-1593 TRAC-PF1/EN MOD 3, Best Estimate Coupled 3D Neutronics-thermalhydraulics (Now tested) 01-MAR-2002 NEA-1517 SINBAD REACTOR, Shielding Benchmark Experiments (Now tested) 01-MAR-2002 NEA-1553 SINBAD FUSION, Neutronics Benchmark Experiments (Now tested) Instructions on retrieving material from the NEA may be found at [http://www.nea.fr/] . Please note that scientific database access is only available to residents of OECD/NEA Data Bank member countries. Distribution: all users of online services; NOS Bulletin subscribers. To unsubscribe, please send an e-mail to [nea@nea.fr] . ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************