***************************************************************** 06/15/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.151 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: The U.S. Senate prepares to release the nuclear genie 2 Legislators seek probe into work on nuclear plant 3 US: NASA Returning To Nuclear Programs 4 Prosecutors want three arrested for alleged corruption at nuclear 5 Legislators seek probe into work on nuclear plant NUCLEAR REACTORS NUCLEAR SAFETY 6 US: UConn's Radioactive Material Under Wraps 7 Radioactive Market Booms in C. Asia 8 Pop a pill and prevent N-radiation? NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 9 US: Statement of Senator Harry Reid About Today's Earthquake Near 10 US: Quake jiggles Yucca Mt.; jolts nuke foes* 11 US: Nuclear Waste May Be Transported Through Iowa 12 US: S.C. governor bars federal plutonium* 13 US: Troopers in Place to Stop Plutonium 14 US: Quake Near Planned Nuke Waste Site 15 US: DOE downplays risk after earthquake near Yucca Mountain 16 US: S.C. Watches for Plutonium Shipments 17 US: Nuclear shipments delayed; South Carolina orders blockade 18 US: No damage, injuries in earthquake near Yucca Mountain, Nevada 19 US: Paths to nuclear dump crisscross Iowa 20 US: Quake near Yucca Mountain rattles lawmakers 21 US: Anti-Yucca Mountain ad airs on Iowa stations 22 US: Judge Throws Out Case Against Plutonium Shipments 23 Ship arrives to transport nuclear fuel to Britain 24 US: US state bars plutonium shipments 25 US: Las Vegas SUN: 4.4 earthquake hits near Yucca 26 US: YUCCA: Bad Proposal 27 US: Provo May Target Yucca Traffic 28 US: Moderate Quake Rattles Desert Near Yucca, Nerves in Utah 29 US: Quake Stirs Opposition To Nuclear Waste Plan 30 US: Berkley Statement on Earthquake at Yucca Mountain 31 US: S.C. closes borders to plutonium 32 US: Earthquake Near Yucca Mountain Highlights Dangers of Dump Propos NUCLEAR WEAPONS 33 US: Antinuclear Activists Look to Revive Movement for Arms Freeze; 34 US: [generalnews] U.S. Withdraws From Missile Treaty 35 Re: [toeslist] End the Nuclear Danger: An Urgent Call 36 US: US tries to block sale of Hiroshima bomb parts 37 US: Why dirty bombs are the new nuclear threat 38 US: Hiroshima bomb parts cleared for sale 39 Israel Has Sub-Based Atomic Arms Capability 40 US: Fear Factor 41 US: U.S. Tries to Stop Atomic Bomb Sale 42 London conduit was nuclear scientist 43 US, North Koreans discuss sending Washington envoy to Pyongyang 44 A-bomb confab organizers to invite kin of Sept 11 victims US DEPT. OF ENERGY 45 Lab hosts week of films for workers 46 Pantex: Ordinary people can catch polluters 47 BWXT Pantex ready for Day of Volunteering 06/14/02 OTHER NUCLEAR ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 The U.S. Senate prepares to release the nuclear genie By Roy Farrell | Special to the Sentinel Posted June 15, 2002 When the United States leads, other nations follow. This is precisely why our country should not lead the way in building a new generation of nuclear weapons even as we retire the old ones. As the world agonizes at the prospect of nuclear war in South Asia, some otherwise-rational scientists and elected officials here speak calmly of "usable" nuclear weapons. But, we must always remember that nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapons of mass destruction; they destroy homes, medical facilities and all life in their path. There is no such thing as a "usable" nuclear weapon. As a physician, I am horrified that the 57-year-old moral and ethical imperative against the use of nuclear weapons is at risk of disappearing. As soon as next week, the U.S. Senate will vote up or down on research money for a new precision nuclear weapon called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. The RNEP will be a prototype of a weapon designed for jobs such as the destruction of underground bunkers and other hardened targets like chemical-weapons storehouses. This "bunker-buster" and weapons like it would burrow underground before exploding and would have variable "yields," or explosive power, from 5 kilotons on up to several megatons. (The bomb that levelled Hiroshima had a yield of 12.5 kilotons.) The Senate should say no to the RNEP. From a public-health perspective, the detonation of even a "low-yield" nuclear weapon would be catastrophic, with long-term radioactive contamination and increased birth defects, leukemia and other cancers. The immediate blast and burn deaths from an underground explosion would be fewer than the 65,000 deaths outright at Hiroshima. But a nuclear explosion at or near ground level will propel such a huge volume of irradiated debris into the atmosphere that the long-term health and environmental effects of heavy metals and radioisotopes in the atmosphere are likely to be even worse than those resulting from a high airburst. As an emergency-care physician, I am aware that the health-care system, even in a developed country like the United States, is woefully unprepared to deal with the injuries and especially the subsequent radioactive contamination that would result from even a Hiroshima-sized nuclear explosion. Our EMS system and hospital emergency departments would quickly be overwhelmed. An initial flow of funding for the RNEP this year could be the camel's nose under the tent. The recent /Nuclear Posture Review/, an assessment of nuclear policy by the current administration, envisions a primary and ongoing role for nuclear weapons in our national defense. During the Clinton years, the United States adopted a nuclear-use doctrine that allowed the preventive destruction of chemical or biological weapons. The 2001 NPR broadens and codifies this policy under the name of Counter-Proliferation, the essence of which is that use of nuclear weapons is permissible against "enemy combat forces," including any state or sub-national group harboring facilities that manufacture these weapons of mass destruction. The NPR also specifies that nuclear weapons are to be developed for use in regional conflicts that may involve non-nuclear states, thus obscuring the distinction between nuclear and conventional war, as well as violating in spirit and letter the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Finally, a return to nuclear-weapons production means a return to nuclear testing. In fact, Congress also is considering this summer an administration request to ready the Nevada Test Site for a possible resumption of testing of new nuclear weapons within two years. It would be hard to overstate the damage that would be done by a U.S. return to testing. A single U.S. test would almost certainly unleash a cycle of testing by China, Pakistan, Russia and other nuclear powers and could deliver the final blow to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It would unquestionably motivate non-nuclear states to develop nuclear capabilities in response. The nuclear genie, which has been bottled up since August, 1945, could once again be released, with catastrophic results for mankind. The U.S. Senate will vote soon on whether to fund the development of new nuclear weapons and initiate preparations to restart nuclear weapons testing. Let's hope the Senate votes to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle. /Dr. Roy Farrell is an emergency-room physician in Seattle, Washington, and the president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 22,000 physicians and health professionals founded 41 years ago to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons./ Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel ***************************************************************** 2 Legislators seek probe into work on nuclear plant The Taipei Times Online: 2002-06-15 Saturday, June 15th, 2002 CONSTRUCTION FLAWS: Taipower's supervision of its contractors came under fire again yesterday as lawmakers and concerned citizens raised safety fears By Chiu Yu-Tzu STAFF REPORTER Both lawmakers and residents of Kungliao township, Taipei County, yesterday demanded an independent task force be created to review Taiwan Power Company's (Tai-power's) lapses in supervising construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant. Their demands were prompted by the recent exposure of construction defects in a reactor pedestal for the plant. Inferior welding materials were secretly used for the second to the fifth layers of the pedestal. According to the Atomic Energy Council, about 52 percent of materials were replaced by less pressure-resistant ones. At a press conference at the Legislative Yuan, lawmakers from across the political spectrum stressed the need for an independent task force to look into details of Taipower's awarding of contracts. The task force, lawmakers said, should include residents of Kungliao -- where the reactor is being built -- lawmakers, environmental groups and others. Eugene Jao (»¯¥Ã²M), an independent lawmaker from Taipei County, yesterday released a list of Taipower's contractors for the project. Jao said the large number of contractors raises doubts about Taipower's ability to coordinate and integrate work on the nuclear plant. "Each of Taipower's contractors has its own subcontractors, making it impossible for Taipower to supervise each part of the construction," Jao said. Taipower has had difficulties in providing lawmakers with a list of subcontractors and details of its mechanism of supervision, according to Jao. PFP Legislator Lee Hung-chun (§õÂE¶v) from Taipei County also questioned the company's ability to supervise construction. "The intentional use of inferior welding materials in the pedestal's construction implies that Taipower's mechanism of construction supervision was questionable," Lee said. DPP lawmakers Chiu Chuang-chin (ªô³Ð¶i) from Changhua County and Chen Chao-lung (³¯´ÂÀs) from Taipei County called for an immediate halt to plant construction to eliminate people's doubts. Anti-nuclear residents of Kungliao said that they had reported construction defects several times but received no response. Activists with the Kungliao-based Yenliao Anti-Nuclear Self-Help Association said yesterday that in 2000 they reported to the Environmental Protection Administration that construction waste was dumped illegally into the sea. The waste was from a site for a wharf, where heavy machines would be transferred. "Moreover, when we snuck into the construction site to photograph the inferior materials being used, no supervisor was there," association spokesman Wu Wen-tung (§d¤å³q) said. "The supervisor from Taipower was found later singing karaoke with friends." Wu said that the case was reported to Taipower but they received no response. Saying that the government has ignored the voices of Kungliao residents for two decades, Wu sobbed at yesterday's press conference when he recalled the passing of anti-nuclear activist Chen Ching-tang (³¯¼y¶í). Chen, who helped pioneer the anti-nuclear movement, died last month at the age of 70 still worried about the plant's threats to Taiwanese people, Wu said. Lawmakers said President Chen Shui-bian (³¯¤ô«ó) would attend Chen Ching-tang's public farewell tomorrow in Kungliao. Anti-nuclear activists view President Chen as a capricious figure for his failure to fulfil his promise to scrap the plant. This story has been viewed 155 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/06/15/story/0000140438] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 3 NASA Returning To Nuclear Programs *BY STEFANO COLEDAN* *Illustration by NASA* The /Kuiper Express/ spacecraft may be sent to Pluto. NASA may go nuclear again to provide power for both instruments and propulsion to spacecraft flying on deep-space missions. With Sean O'Keefe as its new chief, and the blessing of the Bush administration, the space agency plans to bring nuclear fission reactors back in style. Besides getting all the electricity they need from radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), spacecraft propelled by nuclear engines will cut considerably the travel time to distant planets, says Ed Weiler, NASA's chief scientist. "For 40 years NASA has been doing planetary science in the same way. That is, you accelerate for 5, 10, 15 minutes, and then you stop. And you coast, and you coast, and you coast," Weiler says. "That's not the way to do exploration." The first to take advantage of NASA's new nuclear trend could be /Kuiper Express,/ a spacecraft designed to take the first closeup look at our solar system's outermost planet--Pluto. Even though the mission was recently killed, it could come back to life as a candidate for nuclear propulsion. The last time NASA launched a nuclear-powered spacecraft was in 1997, when it sent /Cassini/ and 72 pounds of plutonium toward Saturn. Since then, the space agency has let its RTG inventory dwindle down to one. Unlike chemical rockets, which burn for only a few minutes, nuclear engines can burn for months. That means spacecraft can go much faster, conceivably turning a round trip to, say, Mars from a 3-year affair into a cruise that would last only about 12 weeks. ***************************************************************** 4 Prosecutors want three arrested for alleged corruption at nuclear power plant AP World Politics Sat Jun 15, 8:43 AM ET TAIPEI, Taiwan - Prosecutors have called for the arrest of three nuclear power plant construction workers for allegedly trying to cover up shoddy work, a spokesman for the prosecutors said Saturday. Work on the base of one of the reactors at the plant in the northern Taiwanese fishing village of Kungliao was halted a week ago when it was discovered that welding work was substandard. Discovery of the flaw stirred fresh debate over the safety of the 185.8 billion Taiwan dollar (U.S. dlrs 5.45 billion) facility, set to become the fourth nuclear plant in earthquake-prone Taiwan when completed in 2006. Chou Chin-chang, a spokesman for the district prosecutors office in the southern city of Kaohsiung, told reporters that the manager of a subcontractor and the welder responsible for the faulty work bribed a plant construction supervisor to hide it. "They've seriously threatened the safety of the fourth nuclear plant," Chou said, adding that prosecutors have filed papers with the Kaohsiung district court asking for permission to arrest the three. Kaohsiung is the headquarters of state-owned China Shipbuilding Corp., which oversees the plant's construction. The Economics Ministry has publicly criticized the head of China Shipbuilding and over 20 others in the company for failing to prevent the problem at the plant in Kungliao, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) outside of the capital, Taipei. The manager of the subcontractor allegedly treated the plant supervisor — a China Shipbuilding employee — to hostess bars to gain approval for the cover-up, Chou said. ***************************************************************** 5 Legislators seek probe into work on nuclear plant * Saturday, June 15th, 2002* CONSTRUCTION FLAWS: Taipower's supervision of its contractors came under fire again yesterday as lawmakers and concerned citizens raised safety fears *By Chiu Yu-Tzu* STAFF REPORTER Both lawmakers and residents of Kungliao township, Taipei County, yesterday demanded an independent task force be created to review Taiwan Power Company's (Tai-power's) lapses in supervising construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant. Their demands were prompted by the recent exposure of construction defects in a reactor pedestal for the plant. Inferior welding materials were secretly used for the second to the fifth layers of the pedestal. According to the Atomic Energy Council, about 52 percent of materials were replaced by less pressure-resistant ones. At a press conference at the Legislative Yuan, lawmakers from across the political spectrum stressed the need for an independent task force to look into details of Taipower's awarding of contracts. The task force, lawmakers said, should include residents of Kungliao -- where the reactor is being built -- lawmakers, environmental groups and others. Eugene Jao (»¯¥Ã²M), an independent lawmaker from Taipei County, yesterday released a list of Taipower's contractors for the project. Jao said the large number of contractors raises doubts about Taipower's ability to coordinate and integrate work on the nuclear plant. "Each of Taipower's contractors has its own subcontractors, making it impossible for Taipower to supervise each part of the construction," Jao said. Taipower has had difficulties in providing lawmakers with a list of subcontractors and details of its mechanism of supervision, according to Jao. PFP Legislator Lee Hung-chun (§õÂE¶v) from Taipei County also questioned the company's ability to supervise construction. "The intentional use of inferior welding materials in the pedestal's construction implies that Taipower's mechanism of construction supervision was questionable," Lee said. DPP lawmakers Chiu Chuang-chin (ªô³Ð¶i) from Changhua County and Chen Chao-lung (³¯´ÂÀs) from Taipei County called for an immediate halt to plant construction to eliminate people's doubts. Anti-nuclear residents of Kungliao said that they had reported construction defects several times but received no response. Activists with the Kungliao-based Yenliao Anti-Nuclear Self-Help Association said yesterday that in 2000 they reported to the Environmental Protection Administration that construction waste was dumped illegally into the sea. The waste was from a site for a wharf, where heavy machines would be transferred. "Moreover, when we snuck into the construction site to photograph the inferior materials being used, no supervisor was there," association spokesman Wu Wen-tung (§d¤å³q) said. "The supervisor from Taipower was found later singing karaoke with friends." Wu said that the case was reported to Taipower but they received no response. Saying that the government has ignored the voices of Kungliao residents for two decades, Wu sobbed at yesterday's press conference when he recalled the passing of anti-nuclear activist Chen Ching-tang (³¯¼y¶í). Chen, who helped pioneer the anti-nuclear movement, died last month at the age of 70 still worried about the plant's threats to Taiwanese people, Wu said. Lawmakers said President Chen Shui-bian (³¯¤ô«ó) would attend Chen Ching-tang's public farewell tomorrow in Kungliao. Anti-nuclear activists view President Chen as a capricious figure for his failure to fulfil his promise to scrap the plant. This story has been viewed 156 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/06/15/story/0000140438] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 UConn's Radioactive Material Under Wraps CONNECTICUT June 15, 2002 By GRACE E. MERRITT, Courant Staff Writer After Sept. 11, security was tightened at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington and the UConn campus in Storrs to safeguard radioactive material in laboratories and clinics. Officials say it would be difficult to obtain material needed to make a so-called dirty bomb. Suspects in an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive bomb in the United States apparently planned to steal radioactive material from a lab at an unidentified American university, it was reported recently. The school and the health center do have a few large sources of radioactive material, such as 137-cesium at the health center. But those sources are kept under even tighter security and are protected under massive, metal shields so heavy that a forklift and a team of four or five men would be needed to move them. UConn recently moved one of its sources and put it under triple-lock protection. "Besides the fact that these are locked up and access is restricted, it would be very difficult for someone to get into the building to move these sources," said Kenneth W. Price, director of the Office of Research Safety at the UConn Health Center. The health center also closely monitors radioactive material, such as iodine, used in its clinical areas for cancer treatment and research purposes. Most of the radioactive material found in labs at the health center and the school is diffuse and low-level, such as radioactive phosphorous, radioactive sulfur , tritium and radioactive carbon. "Like most university campuses, the radioactive material used here is low-dose radiation and there would not be enough to cause any kind of health disaster or bioterrorism," said Leslie M. Delpin, biological health and safety manager at UConn. "It could be used in a dirty bomb, but to get the quantities necessary, it would be next to impossible." Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, UConn and the health center have beefed up already tight security that included locked labs, spot checks and restricted access. UConn changed its procedures governing who can use radioactive materials. The health and safety office on campus now has a sign-out sheet and monitors keys used to gain access to materials. The health center, meanwhile, has heightened security awareness and conducts more frequent inspections to check on the materials. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission official who monitors the health center and the Storrs campus said both have "pretty safe" programs, but noted that the health center was cited for a violation in December. During an inspection, the NRC found a lab containing radioactive material had been briefly left unlocked and unattended, said Jim Dwyer, NRC senior health physicist for Region 1. The health center attributed the lapse to a misunderstanding about safety rules and has corrected the problem, Price said. UConn also has begun to tighten its procedures for handling biological agents. The university made headlines in October when a graduate student refused to follow orders to destroy vials of anthrax found in a lab. The student, Tomas Foral, had found two vials of containing anthrax-infected tissue in a freezer in an equipment room in the pathobiology building on the Storrs campus. Instead of destroying the vials as ordered by professors, he saved them in another lab freezer. The incident happened around the time of the anthrax attacks, including the death of Ottilie Lundgren of Oxford, but investigators have found nothing to link them. The case is still pending as federal authorities continue to investigate whether to charge Foral, of West Hartford, with possession of anthrax, a crime under the U.S.A. Patriot Act. As a result, UConn has ordered laboratories and freezers to be kept locked and the school does background checks on everyone who works in labs that deal with the most dangerous biological agents at UConn, including the West Nile virus. In addition, anyone who wants to purchase a select agent must get approval from the health and safety office. Labs with the select agents are now inspected at least twice a year and comprehensive inventories on campus are conducted twice a year, Delpin said. "Negative things tend to have a positive outcome," Delpin said. "University officials took notice a lot of gaps in bio control and bio security and have been making an effort ever since so we have enough staff and equipment to do our job." ctnow.com is Copyright © 2002 by The Hartford Courant Powered by ***************************************************************** 7 Radioactive Market Booms in C. Asia Las Vegas SUN June 14, 2002 A passenger toted a 20-pound stash of radioactive thorium powder onto a bus in his luggage. Another smuggler, unwisely, stuck a highly radioactive capsule in his trousers pocket as he boarded a flight. Chechen rebels were the apparent customers for stolen radium in a third case. The new nations of Central Asia have become a traffickers' marketplace for radioactive materials. It was the place Jose Padilla headed to, Pakistani investigators say, when the al-Qaida suspect sought the stuff of a "dirty bomb." Confronting the threat is a big job, but the U.S. government has begun sending detection equipment to border posts in the vast region and training customs officers in intercepting nuclear contraband. Pakistani officials said Padilla, now in U.S. custody, traveled to a Central Asian country in April hoping to buy radioactive materials. The American convert to Islam had conferred with senior members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network about detonating a radiation weapon, or "dirty bomb," in the United States, U.S. authorities say. Such a device would not be a nuclear bomb, with its devastating fission explosion, but instead would set off conventional explosives to scatter harmful radioactive material, contaminating and panicking people and forcing abandonment of parts of cities. The Pakistani officials would not say whether Padilla was successful in obtaining radioactive substances, nor would they identify the country he was said to have visited. In Washington, U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States had no such information and questioned whether the reported mission took place. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly independent Central Asian states - Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan - have dealt with a legacy of abandoned nuclear materials and of facilities left poorly staffed after Russian specialists went home. The only nuclear weapons in the region, in Kazakhstan, were withdrawn to Russia in the early 1990s. In 1994, a half-ton of highly enriched uranium - raw material of nuclear bombs - was spirited out of Kazakhstan in a U.S. operation. But material for possible "dirty bombs" remains scattered and often poorly controlled in the region - the cesium, strontium, cobalt and other radioactive substances used in medicine and industry, the low-grade uranium and radioactive waste of nuclear power plants. "Protecting against radioactive sources is much harder than securing nuclear materials," said Dmitry Kovchegin, a nuclear proliferation specialist at Moscow's Center for Policy Studies in Russia. "It's not so hard to create a dirty bomb, and it's not so hard to find the material. It's used everywhere." Some cases from the marketplace where Padilla allegedly shopped, based on local media reports: -In March, a radiation check of a bus crossing into Russia from Kazakhstan found a Russian passenger had packed at least 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of thorium-232 powder into his luggage. Its radiation was "hundreds of times" normal background levels, authorities said. Its origin and destination were not reported. -In Kyrgyzstan, airport guards grew suspicious of a man who looked ill as he boarded a flight to the United Arab Emirates. The Uzbek was found to have pocketed a smuggled capsule of what he was told was plutonium. Local media said it emitted fatal doses of radiation at close range. No subsequent reports emerged about the 1999 case. -In July 2000, two brothers from Kazakhstan were arrested after allegedly smuggling radium-226 into Russia to sell to Chechens. Chechen separatists in the mid-1990s had threatened to detonate "dirty bombs" in Moscow, but never did. -In Tajikistan, six residents were convicted in April 2000 in the theft from a uranium processing plant of 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds) of uranium mixed with highly radioactive cesium-137. It was not reported how enriched - suitable for nuclear weapons - the uranium was. All of those substances theoretically could be used for a radiation dispersal bomb. Reports indicate that Pakistan and Afghanistan, until eight months ago a hub for international terrorism, were the destination in some nuclear trafficking cases in recent years. Those monitoring the situation have no way to judge how many other such operations succeeded in smuggling radioactive substances. The U.S. Customs Service last year conducted a three-week course in Texas for 80 border officers from the five Central Asian republics, focusing on radioactive contraband. The Americans also have dispatched detection equipment to the Russian-Kazkh border and Uzbekistan. Last month, Washington and Moscow announced formation of a joint task force to study securing radioactive sources in Russia. This "shows how serious this issue is and that we're ready to solve it," said the Russian atomic energy minister, Alexander Rumyantsev. No similar comprehensive approach has been organized yet for Central Asia. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 8 Pop a pill and prevent N-radiation? INDIATIMES KALPANA JAIN TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 2002 12:04:01 AM ] NEW DELHI: Pop a pill and be safe from nuclear radiation, is the message being given through advertisements by companies seeking to rake in profits from the threat of a nuclear war in the South Asian region. The claim flies in the face of established medical facts that there is no known pharmacological agent to prevent radiation effects. One such US-based company has advertised potassium iodide tablets for protection from radiation of nuclear weapons. The company claims that the pill is "safe and effective" and can be used by children as well. To lend credence to its claim, it adds that it was proven effective at Chernobyl. The company can be reached through its advertised website. While Indian medical scientists are prompt in dismissing the claims, it seems New Yorkers, perhaps due to more money and a higher anxiety level over a possible war, are not averse to popping the pill. An article in /The New York Times/ describes it as "The Pill for the age of al-Qaeda", which seems to at least treat people for their anxiety if not a possible thyroid cancer. Of course, medically speaking, it is not even an anti-anxiety pill. Nuclear scientist at the All India Institute of medical Sciences, Rakesh Kumar, says iodine compounds are used for treating patients of thyroid cancer. But in the event of a nuclear war, such a compound could at best reduce the chances of intake of radioactive iodine through water or food; it would not be able to prevent a cancer of the thyroid as the sources of radiation would be external and not just in water and food. A senior faculty member in the department of radiotherapy at AIIMS, B K Mohanti, supports this view. "Thyroid is prone to radiation effects, but the beneficial effects of the intake of such a drug are doubtful," he said. Mohanti said the compound does figure on the long list of chemicals deemed to be radioactivity protectors, but nothing has been proven till date. In fact, these medical scientists explain that a nuclear war would produce several types of radiation: Those near the epicentre would suffer acute reactions, which could range from bleeding of the gastrointestinal tract and eventual death to burns and diarrhoea. Those who do not suffer from any immediate effects could get exposed to the chronic effects of radiation. For instance, says Kumar, ti could lead to several kinds of cancers. And even thyroid cancer could be a possibility if a person gets exposed to radiation. Radiation basically leads to cellular damage in the form of DNA breakage. This leads to abnormal cells, which then replicate and produce more of such deformed cells and lead to cancer. The pill could, at best, block some oral ingestion, adds Kumar. The manufacturers of this pill claim on their site that the drug is the "only FDA approved, radiation protective, thyroid blocking product sold to the general public." Friday, June 14, 2002 "Today, we saw more proof that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump site is not safe. An earthquake happened this morning. It was centered just 15 miles from the place where the Department of Energy wants to put tons of the deadliest material ever known to humanity. It was a magnitude of 4.4, which is large enough to potentially cause structural damage to buildings and other manmade objects. We also need to remember that this was not an isolated incident. Yucca Mountain is a region of frequent earthquake activity. Earlier this week our national attention was focused on terrorists and the threat of dirty bombs. I have spoken about the danger of transporting nuclear waste, the risk of sending 100,000 truckloads or 20,000 trainloads of deadly waste through 43 states, the threat of accidents that could become catastrophes, and the easy targets these "mobile chernobyls" would be for terrorists looking for material for dirty bombs. But we cannot forget that there's another danger - that after the waste arrives at Yucca Mountain, it would still not be safe. There is no need to rush to build a nuclear repository when there are so many unanswered questions about its safety and security. The Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirmed that yesterday when he spoke at an agency conference. Richard Meserve said that if Yucca Mountain were to fail because of Congressional action, it would not mean that the country would be at a stalemate or confronting imminent danger. We should not rush into creating this monstrosity. It could haunt us forever." ***************************************************************** 10 Quake jiggles Yucca Mt.; jolts nuke foes* Published 6/14/2002 8:45 PM LAS VEGAS, June 14 (UPI) -- A modest earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter scale rolled through the Nevada desert with little notice early Friday, but it shook up the opponents of plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, less than 13 miles from the quake's epicenter. While some residents of western Nevada described the temblor as a gentle rolling motion, it was enough to awaken scores of startled desert residents shortly before 6 a.m. and further fuel arguments against the controversial plan for a national nuclear waste repository. "If anyone ever wondered about the wisdom of locating an underground radioactive dump site on an active fault line, this shows why," Rep. Shelley Berkeley, D-Nev., fired off in a release. "The Yucca Mountain project is inherently dangerous." The White House and Energy Department selected Yucca Mountain earlier this year as the final resting place for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste that would be transported in from around the United States. The administration and the energy industry has said that something needs to be done with the materials currently stored in dozens of temporary depots, but Nevada lawmakers are vehemently opposing the project and have urged the Senate to block the project. "This earthquake is a wake-up call for the U.S. Senate," Berkeley said. The Energy Department reassured Nevadans that the geology of Yucca Mountain was such that it could withstand the pounding of much stronger earthquakes, and the containers in which the material will be held would add yet another sturdy layer of protection. "There is no story here," Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis told the Las Vegas Sun. "This is a dog bites mailman story." But other opponents warned that "the Big One" was another story and could result in the storage facilities being breached and possibly flooded with groundwater, which would be contaminated for generations. "We also need to remember that this was not an isolated incident," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Yucca Mountain is a region of frequent earthquake activity." (Reported by Hil Anderson in Los Angeles) Copyright © 2002 United Press International View printer-friendly version *Copyright © 2002 United Press International. All rights reserved.* ***************************************************************** 11 Nuclear Waste May Be Transported Through Iowa Contact KCCI 8: /Environmental Groups Say It's Too Dangerous/ POSTED: 8:23 a.m. CDT June 14, 2002 UPDATED: 12:35 p.m. CDT June 14, 2002 *DES MOINES, Iowa -- *According to some environmental groups, Iowa may soon have a lot of nuclear waste on the roads headed for Nevada, KCCI NewsChannel 8's Erin Kiernan reported Thursday. Video Nuclear Waste On Highways? Could Nuclear Waste Travel On Iowa's Highways? Kiernan said that if the plans goes into effect, it will mean that thousands of tons of nuclear waste will be transported through the state. "About 334,000 people in Iowa will actually live within one mile of highways with nuclear waste on them," said Nick Getzen of Iowa Public Interest Research Group. Getzen said that most people have no idea what the Yucca Mountain proposal means. In February, President George W. Bush named the Nevada mountain as the nation's nuclear dump site. "It's ridiculous considering the potential health and environmental consequences," Getzen said. Kiernan reported that some environmental groups say that more than 200 Iowa schools and 20 hospitals will also be within one mile of proposed truck and train routes. Supporters of Yucca Mountain said that tons of high-level nuclear waste have been transported across the country with no major accidents. Opponents said that the United States should stop producing waste that will remain radioactive for over 1 million years. "There's no technological solution to handle that. But it would be safe to keep nuclear waste where it's located," Getzen said. Kiernan reported that some people are also concerned about transporting nuclear waste in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They said that the risks may outweigh the benefits of shipping all the waste to one site. /Copyright 2002 by TheIowaChannel.com ***************************************************************** 12 S.C. governor bars federal plutonium* United Press International Published 6/14/2002 9:07 PM COLUMBIA, S.C., June 14 (UPI) -- South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, citing the risk that radioactive material could be used by terrorists, declared a state of emergency Friday and issued an executive order barring federal shipments of surplus plutonium from entering the state. The order, which prohibits the transportation of plutonium on South Carolina roads and highways, was issued one day after a federal judge rejected Hodges' attempt to block the government from shipping 34 tons of plutonium from various nuclear weapon plants to the 310 square mile Savannah River Site near Aiken. "Any persons transporting plutonium shall not enter the state of South Carolina," the order said. The U.S. Department of Energy plans to send trucks loaded with bomb-grade plutonium from the Rocky Flats nuclear plant near Denver, Colo., possibly as early as this weekend. Hodges said he is ready to take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court. "I know the folks in Washington will not like this action. And we will follow any court order regarding the shipment of this plutonium. But until ordered otherwise, I will continue to exercise any and every lawful power I possess to keep this plutonium from threatening the safety of our citizens," Hodges told reporters at a news conference. Noting that Jose Padilla, an American detained last month for allegedly trying to build a radiation dispersal bomb, is being held at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station in Hanahan, Hodges warned that the plutonium could be used by terrorists. "According to the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of Homeland Security, this radioactive material is coveted by terrorists for a 'dirty bomb.' One of these terrorists is sitting in the Charleston naval brig at this very moment," he said. The Energy Department has designated SRS as the nation's long-term plutonium storage site. Hodges, who led state troopers in a practice blockade of the road leading into the site last month, said he fears the federal government plans to abandon the nuclear material in South Carolina. "The Department of Energy has broken promises, offered no assurances, and left few options. Once plutonium arrives, it will never leave. They want South Carolina to quietly become the nation's plutonium dumping ground," Hodges said. Hodges sued the Energy Department on May 1 in an effort to block the plutonium shipments. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie dismissed Hodges' request for an emergency injunction and rejected his claims that the environmental impact of the storage had not been assessed. The Energy Department said it needs to store the material as part of its plan to convert plutonium into MOX fuel. Critics say the $3.8 billion MOX fuel program will create more nuclear waste. "As part of our international agreement with Russia, DOE plans to fabricate surplus plutonium it ships into South Carolina into MOX fuel for nuclear reactors," the department said. Copyright © 2002 United Press International ***************************************************************** 13 Troopers in Place to Stop Plutonium *WXIA-TV ATLANTA* Provided By: The Associated Press Modified: 6/14/2002 5:16:58 PM COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Gov. Jim Hodges ordered state troopers and other authorities to South Carolina's borders Friday to stop government shipments of plutonium that could begin arriving from Colorado as early as this weekend. "I order that the transportation of plutonium on South Carolina roads and highways is prohibited," Hodges said. "I order that any persons transporting plutonium shall not enter the state of South Carolina." Hodges, who has vehemently opposed the shipments, read a statement declaring a state of emergency but refused to answer any questions about specific plans for roadblocks or other barricades at South Carolina's Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons complex near Aiken. On Thursday, a federal judge refused to block the shipments of weapons-grade plutonium. Hodges appealed the ruling and asked for an injunction to delay the plutonium until the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could hear the case. The Energy Department plans to move the material from the Rocky Flats weapons installation in Colorado, which is being cleaned up and closed, to the Savannah River Site, where the material would be converted into nuclear reactor fuel over the next two decades. But Hodges has said he fears the government will end up leaving the plutonium permanently in South Carolina, making the state a tempting target for terrorists. Hodges, a Democrat who is up for re-election in the fall, has been threatening for weeks to use state troopers to block roads into the Savananna River Site and has vowed to lie down in the road if necessary to stop the plutonium-carrying trucks. Sid Gaulden, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety, said traffic would still flow along the state's roads. He acknowledged the department does not have enough resources to close every entry point to the state. About 6 1/2 tons of plutonium are to be shipped from Colorado. /(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)/ ***************************************************************** 14 Quake Near Planned Nuke Waste Site Las Vegas SUN June 14, 2002 LAS VEGAS- A mild earthquake rumbled beneath the desert early Friday near Yucca Mountain, the federal government's proposed site for a nuclear waste repository. No damage or injuries were immediately reported. The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 4.4 and hit about 5:40 a.m., 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas and about 3 miles beneath the surface, said scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. Allen Benson, a federal Department of Energy spokesman for the Yucca Mountain project in Las Vegas, told The Associated Press that about 100 scientists and employees at the site on Friday were not reporting any damage. Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the site that President Bush picked in February to store the nation's spent commercial, industrial and military nuclear waste beginning in 2010. Benson said that while operations have been scaled back since February, employees and scientists are continuing to monitor scientific studies and a five-mile tunnel bored about 1,000 feet beneath the volcanic ridge. Nevada opposes the Yucca Mountain project, and Congress is debating whether to override Gov. Kenny Guinn's April veto of the presidential selection. President Bush in February approved building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, saying 20 years of study had found the ridge of volcanic rock to be a safe place to store nuclear material. Opponents of the project have cited the possibility of earthquakes as one reason to reject Yucca Mountain as the site. The waste, expected to remain radioactive for more than 10,000 years, would be buried 1,000 feet below ground. The Energy Department has said the earliest the Yucca facility could open is 2010. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 15 DOE downplays risk after earthquake near Yucca Mountain Las Vegas SUN June 14, 2002 LAS VEGAS (AP) - Federal officials insisted Friday that the site of a proposed national nuclear waste repository in the Nevada desert is safe, despite an early morning earthquake that rumbled nearby. No damage or injuries were reported after the magnitude 4.4 temblor struck at 5:40 a.m. near Little Skull Mountain. The epicenter is about 12 miles southeast of the Yucca Mountain site and 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. The quake was felt at the Nye County Sheriff's Office in Pahrump, 40 miles to the southeast, but not in hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. About 100 scientists and employees found no damage Friday at Yucca Mountain, said Allen Benson, a federal Department of Energy spokesman in Las Vegas. However, the minor quake reverberated in Washington, D.C., where the Senate is due before July 26 to vote on whether to entomb highly radioactive waste at the site. "The earthquake is a wake-up call for the U.S. Senate," declared Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who raised the specter of radioactivity contaminating groundwater if an earthquake were to strike an active Yucca Mountain repository. The House already has voted to support President Bush's selection of Yucca Mountain to store the nation's radioactive waste. "Today, we saw more proof that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump site is not safe," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who along with Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has been trying unsuccessfully to drum up 51 votes to block the project in the Senate. The federal Energy Department plans to bury 77,000 tons of spent commercial, industrial and military nuclear waste in a grid of underground tunnels beneath the ancient volcanic ridge. The site would remain radioactive for more than 10,000 years. Benson, at the Energy Department office in Las Vegas, released a statement calling the area "a known and studied geologic zone" that project scientists have monitored for 24 years. He said a magnitude 5.6 earthquake hit in 1992 in the same area - near Little Skull Mountain in the Nevada Test Site - but didn't dislodge boulders at Yucca Mountain. "In fact, Yucca Mountain scientists have used earthquakes greater in magnitude than this morning's quake to study and design a nuclear waste repository," he said. "Scientific studies show that an underground repository at Yucca Mountain would perform safely in accordance with regulatory standards, including during an earthquake." David von Seggern, a seismologist at the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno, said Friday's earthquake came as no surprise because the entire state is seismically active. "Earthquakes have happened and will continue to happen in this area," he said. Von Seggern said Yucca Mountain is in a 6-mile zone in which scientists found no documented evidence of a temblor greater than magnitude 3 since the 1800s. UNR has been monitoring the site since 1978, he said. A quake of magnitude 4.4 or even 6.4 would not damage a well-designed nuclear repository, von Seggern said. But he declined to comment on the Energy Department declaration that the repository would be safe. Opponents of the project seized on the quake as a reason to reject Yucca Mountain. "If you're out looking for sites, three things you want to avoid are earthquakes, the potential for volcanoes and contamination of a pristine and valuable aquifer," said Judy Treichel, an executive director of the Las Vegas-based Nuclear Waste Task Force and an opponent of the project. "Yucca Mountain gives you all of those." Yucca Mountain is at the western edge of the Nevada Test Site, a vast federal reservation the size of Rhode Island where the federal government conducted nuclear weapons testing from 1952 to 1992. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 16 S.C. Watches for Plutonium Shipments Las Vegas SUN June 15, 2002 COLUMBIA, S.C.- State troopers ordered to stop traffic outside the Savannah River Site didn't find any plutonium destined for the former nuclear weapons complex. But that could change next weekend, when the U.S. Department of Energy says it can start shipping the nuclear material to the site near Aiken. One day after Gov. Jim Hodges' request to block the shipments from the Rocky Flats facility in Colorado was denied in federal court, the governor read a statement Friday declaring a state of emergency and sent troopers to block roads near the site. Hodges ordered state police to prevent anyone transporting plutonium into South Carolina starting Friday, even though the Energy Department said it couldn't start shipping the weapons-grade plutonium until June 22 because of logistical problems. Legally, the shipments could have begun Saturday. The Energy Department wants to move 6 tons of plutonium to South Carolina as part of its ongoing effort to close down the Rocky Flats site. The radioactive material would be converted into fuel for nuclear reactors, then shipped out of the state, the agency said. But Hodges worries the program will never be funded and plutonium will never leave South Carolina. "I am pleased to learn that the Department of Energy will not begin plutonium shipments until June 22," Hodges said. "Fundamentally, however, little has changed. The plutonium still presents a threat to our state, and my executive order stands." Sid Gaulden, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety, said troopers were sent to New Ellenton to begin checking vehicles entering the Savannah River Site. Gaulden admits there aren't enough troopers to block every entry point into the state. The Highway Patrol has been ordered to pay closer attention to the state line, but no extra troopers have been assigned to watch the borders. Along with declaring the emergency Friday, Hodges also appealed to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. He wants the judges to overturn a Thursday ruling that allowed the shipments to begin as scheduled. While U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie dismissed Hodges' suit, she refused an Energy Department request to declare the road blocks illegal. "We will follow any court order regarding the shipment of this plutonium," Hodges said. "But until ordered otherwise, I will continue to exercise any and every lawful power I possess to keep the plutonium from threatening the safety of our citizens." Vice President Dick Cheney, in South Carolina on Friday for a fund-raiser, said the fuel-conversion program is important to ensure that plutonium "never falls into the wrong hands." "This administration is totally committed to helping pass legislation to guarantee that South Carolina does not become a permanent storage site for plutonium," Cheney said. Federal officials have said the nuclear material would be under constant guard, and its path and time of arrival would be kept secret. They also say security at the Savannah River Site is sound. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 17 Nuclear shipments delayed; South Carolina orders blockade The Seattle Times: Saturday, June 15, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific By Jennifer Talhelm and Bruce Henderson Knight Ridder Newspapers COLUMBIA, S.C. — If a standoff between Gov. Jim Hodges and the Department of Energy over scheduled plutonium shipments is going to happen, it has been delayed a week. The shipments originally were scheduled to begin as early as today. But a day after the energy department received the go-ahead from a U.S. district court to begin moving the weapons-grade plutonium to South Carolina, the agency said it won't be geared up to make shipments until next Saturday. Nevertheless, Hodges moved yesterday to stop the highly toxic substance at the state's borders. The governor issued an executive order that all shipments of plutonium be blocked from entering the state and said the energy department's delay did not change his plans. "The plutonium still presents a threat to our state, and my executive order stands," he said. Department of Energy spokesman Joe Davis said the department still intends to ship plutonium to the Savannah River Site near Aiken, 160 miles southwest of Charlotte. And it will ask the Department of Justice for legal help in response to Hodges' blockade. "The court's decision allows DOE to move forward with plutonium shipments to South Carolina from Rocky Flats, Colo., and the department intends to proceed with those shipments," said a statement issued by Davis. As a part of a nuclear-disarmament agreement with Russia, the energy department plans to transform the plutonium into mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel to be used in nuclear reactors in North Carolina. The governor is afraid that the federal government will not build the MOX facility and instead store plutonium in South Carolina indefinitely. He has said he wants a court-enforceable agreement that the plutonium will be removed. Hodges sued in May, asking for a judge to halt shipments while the department finished environmental studies he said were not done. But U.S. District Court Judge Cameron Currie ruled Thursday that Hodges was wrong and that a delay would interfere with the federal government's plans to shut down the Rocky Flats site. That night, Hodges sent his appeal via overnight delivery to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. A date for the appeal had not been set as of last night. Hodges held a press conference yesterday to announce his executive order. In an uncharacteristic move, he did not take questions and only read from a statement. "I know the folks in Washington will not like this action," he said. "But until ordered otherwise, I will continue to exercise every lawful power that I possess to keep plutonium from coming to our state and threatening our citizens' safety." Public Safety Director Boykin Rose said state police are deployed. "We're under orders from the governor." Rose would not say how he plans to identify trucks carrying plutonium or how many troopers he had dedicated to the job. Hodges has vowed to lie in the road if necessary to stop the trucks. In April, Hodges supervised a widely publicized drill in which troopers practiced stopping a truck. Davis, of the energy department, said Hodges can't legally prevent the department from shipping plutonium to the state. He said Currie made that clear in her Thursday ruling. "We are extremely disappointed the governor has chosen to totally disregard the court's admonition," Davis said. University of South Carolina law professor Eldon Wedlock said the energy department is probably right. "(Hodges) is just trying to get press over the fact and trying to impress people with the gravity of the situation," Wedlock said. The first shipments are coming from the Rocky Flats plant, near Denver. In all, 34 metric tons of plutonium are to be sent to South Carolina over several years. The plutonium will be shipped in heavily armored tractor-trailers, escorted by a convoy of armed guards and tracked by satellite. Shipping routes and schedules won't be revealed to state and local authorities. Edwin Lyman, a physicist who heads the anti-proliferation Nuclear Control Institute, said the plutonium oxides to be shipped from Rocky Flats could be the makings of a radioactivity-spreading dirty bomb or, in trained hands, a nuclear explosive. Hodges raised this concern in his press conference. The federal government announced Monday that it had arrested a man suspected of being involved in a terrorist plot to build such a dirty bomb. The man, Jose Padilla, is being housed in a military jail in Charleston, 130 miles from the Savannah River Site. Said Lyman: "The whole thing's silly, given that the MOX facility won't be built and ready to accept waste for another four years. There's absolutely no reason to go ahead with these shipments when we're in a heightened state of alert." Information from The Associated Press is included in this report. Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company ***************************************************************** 18 No damage, injuries in earthquake near Yucca Mountain, Nevada Associated Press [online@rgj.com] 6/14/2002 07:25 am No damage or injuries were immediately reported after a pre-dawn earthquake Friday in the desert about 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas and 30 miles southeast of Beatty. The temblor, centered about 3 miles beneath the surface, struck at 5:40 a.m. not far from the site of the federal government's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, said scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. Geophysicist John Minsch said the magnitude 4.4 earthquake might not have been felt in Las Vegas. Darwin Morgan, an Energy Department spokesman, said he had no immediate reports of damage or injuries at the vast federal Nevada Test Site reservation north of Las Vegas. Officials at the Yucca Mountain project were not immediately available. A security supervisor at the Stratosphere hotel-casino and its 1,068-foot tower in Las Vegas said he was unaware of the earthquake. © Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett ***************************************************************** 19 Paths to nuclear dump crisscross Iowa [DesMoinesRegister.com] The state is a top pass-through point for trucks heading to Nevada, environmentalists warn. By JANE NORMAN [normanj@news.dmreg.com Register Washington Bureau 06/11/2002 Washington, D.C. - Iowa would be one of the top pass-through states in the nation for trucks carrying nuclear waste headed to Nevada's Yucca Mountain, according to an influential environmental group. The Environmental Working Group has designed a Web site that shows possible routes for waste. It projects 70,768 truck shipments of nuclear waste traveling through Iowa over the 38-year life of the Yucca Mountain project - if trucks are the chosen mode of transportation. The main routes by road would be Interstate Highways 35, 80 and 29. Iowa would rank sixth in the nation among states when it comes to truck shipments of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants passing through its borders, the group says. If trains are used instead, there would be 6,142 shipments by rail through the state over the life of the project, according to the group's calculations based on Department of Energy documents. That would place Iowa 16th in the nation for those kinds of shipments. The Environmental Working Group says there are 219 Iowa schools and 20 hospitals within one mile of proposed truck and train routes, as well as the homes of 330,040 Iowans. "Iowa would get hammered," said Ken Cook, president of the group, because it sits between Nevada and states where much of the waste would originate. States originating most of the truck shipments would include Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York, the group said. It's most likely that a combination of train and truck routes would be used, the group says. No decisions have been made on routes or the mode of transportation. President Bush in February named Yucca Mountain the nation's nuclear dump site, maintaining the step was necessary to "protect public safety, health and the nation's security." The Environmental Working Group caused a stir in the farm community last year by publishing how much in federal subsidy payments every farmer in the nation received. Cook said his group has no position on the Yucca Mountain site, but believes Americans should know how much nuclear waste might be rumbling through their hometowns. He said little information has been disbursed by the government except in complex documents. "It's the most important transportation decision this country will ever make," Cook said. A few heavily protected nuclear waste shipments were sent through Iowa about a year ago, surrounded in secrecy. There were no accidents. Iowa has one nuclear power plant, Duane Arnold in Palo outside Cedar Rapids, and nearly 11 percent of the electricity used in the state is produced by nuclear power, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. The Senate is expected to vote this summer on whether to overturn the veto by the governor of Nevada of a plan to use Yucca Mountain. A favorable vote would allow the Department of Energy to begin the process of applying for a license for the site from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Ia., has been in favor of the Yucca Mountain site while Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., has been undecided. "Over the last 40 years, tons of high-level nuclear waste have been shipped throughout the country," said Jill Kozeny, Grassley's press secretary. "Regular shipments still occur, and there hasn't been an accident involving environmental contamination." Said Harkin: "We now know that terrorists are trying to attack us with radioactive materials. We must take every precaution to protect these deadly materials. Before we even consider approving a plan to transport thousands of tons of nuclear waste over Iowa's highways and through Iowa's communities, we must have real guarantees that it can - and will - be done safely." The House voted in May to overturn the Nevada governor's veto, with the four Republican members from Iowa all voting to overturn, including Harkin's opponent in this fall's race for the Senate, Rep. Greg Ganske. Ganske has said it will be difficult to continue nuclear power without Yucca Mountain. Rep. Leonard Boswell, the lone Democrat, backed the veto on the 306-117 vote. Supporters of the Yucca Mountain site say it would be better to have a single site for disposal of waste, rather than leaving it scattered around the country, where room is running out for storage. Opponents are worried about the safety of carrying so much nuclear waste on the nation's highways and rail lines, as well as vulnerability to terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The Environmental Working Group says that in a serious train or truck wreck, casks carrying spent fuel could be breached. The size of the Yucca Mountain project means shipments on a scale not contemplated in the past. The group says that from 1979 to 1997, there were 1,334 total shipments of spent nuclear fuel in the United States. That compares to a projected 2,700 shipments a year traveling several thousand miles each if the Yucca Mountain project goes forward, the group says. Copyright © 2002, The Des Moines Register. ***************************************************************** 20 Quake near Yucca Mountain rattles lawmakers Saturday, June 15, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL A small earthquake Friday that shook an area 12 miles southeast of the planned Yucca Mountain repository stirred a big reaction from Nevada leaders who claimed, again, the place is not safe for storing nuclear waste. Authorities reported no damage or injuries from the magnitude 4.4 earthquake that the Nevada Seismological Laboratory recorded on its statewide network at 5:40 a.m. It struck about seven miles beneath Little Skull Mountain at the Nevada Test Site, slightly west of where a moderate, magnitude 5.6 temblor rumbled through the sparsely populated area 10 years ago this month. That quake damaged a field operations building for the Yucca Mountain Project, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "Today we saw more proof that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump site is not safe," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement. Reid said though there also are risks with possible transportation accidents "from 100,000 truckloads and 20,000 trainloads of deadly waste through 43 states ... we cannot forget that there's another danger that after the waste arrives at Yucca Mountain, it will still not be safe." "There is no need to rush to build a nuclear repository when there are so many unanswered questions about its safety and security," Reid's statement says. His concerns were echoed by other Nevada officials as the Senate is poised to act on Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the Yucca Mountain repository site in a few weeks. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., was on a plane Friday afternoon heading to Nevada and could not be reached. But his spokeswoman, Traci Scott said, "This is something we've already known, that Yucca Mountain is not a safe place to store deadly nuclear waste." However, Troy Wade, chairman of the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business, an organization of Nevada Test Site contractors, said Friday's earthquake is "good news." "It (provides) very clear experimental data that shows the facility's design" can withstand an earthquake. David von Seggern, a seismologist at the state's laboratory in Reno, said scientists "we're not surprised. The region has had little earthquakes all along." He said instruments up until noon recorded "tens of aftershocks" up to magnitude 3 after the main shock hit. Some Southern Nevadans called the Nevada Seismological Laboratory to report the magnitude 4.4 quake. "We got a half dozen or so felt reports, from the Las Vegas area to Beatty," von Seggern said. In Amargosa Valley, south of Yucca Mountain, residents felt shock waves from the quake as it rattled through rural Nye County. "I was sitting in my living room drinking my coffee and my house started to shake," said Amargosa School Principal Faye Porche. "This one was a pretty good one. It lasted 10 or 15 seconds. It was more like shaking, not rolling," she said. No water sloshed out or leaked from a 1 million-gallon tank, a covered, plastic liner surrounded by a metal frame that was constructed and filled in February for the project, according to Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allen Benson. Friday's quake is considered to be at the high end on the scale of small earthquakes. Magnitude 4.5 and greater is considered to be moderate, according to von Seggern. The magnitude 5.6 Little Skull Mountain earthquake on June 29, 1992 knocked out windows, cracked walls and downed lights and ceiling panels in the Yucca Mountain Project field operations center. The 2 1/2-story concrete structure, built in the 1960s is located about 10 miles from Yucca Mountain, the volcanic-rock ridge where the Department of Energy wants to entomb 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in a maze of tunnels, 1,000 feet beneath the top of the ridge. Energy Department scientists have said a repository in Yucca Mountain could be built to withstand earthquakes registering up to 6.5 on the Richter scale on faults close to the mountain. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the nation's nuclear power industry, downplayed the significance of Friday's earthquake. A fact sheet released by the institute said the repository "will be designed to withstand earthquakes and avoid specific fault lines." "The design effort is backed by 20 years of scientific study of local fault movement, which is infrequent, occurring at intervals of many thousands of years," the institute's document reads. The repository, by law, must be able to safely hold canisters of highly radioactive, metal-clad spent fuel pellets for 10,000 years even though scientists estimate peak doses from some of the materials won't occur for 300,000 years to 800,000 years. © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 21 Anti-Yucca Mountain ad airs on Iowa stations Saturday, June 15, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal NEI plans ads supporting nuclear waste repository later this month By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- A commercial debating the merits of shipping nuclear waste to the proposed Nevada repository at Yucca Mountain is on the air in Iowa. A Nevada-produced 30-second commercial challenging the safety of moving spent nuclear fuel through the heartland state began running Thursday and will continue until July 3 on network stations in Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Des Moines. The ad, narrated by actress Anjelica Huston, also is airing on cable television systems that reach Omaha, Neb., and parts of Missouri, sponsors said. Anti-Yucca commercials also are being run again in Vermont, where a Nevada-backed television campaign made its debut in April. In response, the Nuclear Energy Institute plans pro-Yucca commercials in both states later this month. "We're going to follow Nevada in the states they're in now," said Sherry Reilly, director of the Alliance for Sound Nuclear Policy. She said she had no information on the cost of the industry's campaigns. Physicians for Social Responsibility, an environmental health group, bought $229,000 in Iowa television time to show the anti-Yucca commercial, research director Jaya Tiwari said Friday. The Vermont buy, on cable channels that reach into New York state and New Hampshire, cost $30,000, Tiwari said. The commercial itself was funded through Nevada's publicity contractor and produced at an undisclosed cost by Greer, Margolis, Mitchell, Burns and Associates, Washington political consultants. Physicians for Social Responsibility is among the anti-nuclear and environmental groups allied with the state in trying to kill plans to locate a nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Senate is expected to vote within weeks on the Yucca Mountain Project. Television campaigns, which also have been conducted in Utah and Wyoming by both sides, aim to persuade key senators. Tiwari said the Iowa ad targets Democrat Tom Harkin, who she said "has been more positive" lately to an anti-Yucca message. Iowa's other senator is Charles Grassley, a Republican who intends to vote for the project, said Jill Kozeny, communications director. In Vermont, Nevada strategists believe they still might nab the vote of Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat. Tiwari said officials also have continued to meet with representatives of Vermont independent Sen. James Jeffords, who has said he plans to vote in favor of the repository. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 22 Judge Throws Out Case Against Plutonium Shipments ENS, Environmental News By Cat Lazaroff AIKEN, South Carolina, June 14, 2002 (ENS) - A federal judge has rejected South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges' legal challenge to the Energy Department's plans to ship 34 metric tons of surplus, weapons grade plutonium for conversion to fuel in South Carolina. Although Governor Hodges immediately filed an appeal, plutonium shipments could begin as early as this weekend. Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed the suit filed by the Democratic governor, ruling that the Department of Energy (DOE) completed the proper environmental studies before deciding to ship tons of plutonium from Colorado's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons complex to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. [Hodges] Governor Jim Hodges of South Carolina lost the first sortie in his legal battle to block plutonium shipments to his state. (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor) "There were detailed studies," Currie said, "and the courts have consistently ruled that federal courts must defer to the judgment of the agencies." The Energy Department said it would move forward with plans to ship almost 2,000 containers of plutonium from Rocky Flats - about 650 containers are already sealed and ready for shipment. "We are very pleased with the court's ruling, which protects our national security as well as the people of South Carolina," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. "The court decision allows DOE to move forward with plutonium shipments to South Carolina from Rocky Flats, Colorado, and the Department intends to proceed with those shipments." Governor Hodges had argued that the DOE was required to complete a new environmental impact report after changing its plans for disposing of the surplus plutonium. Under a treaty with Russia, the United States is required to remove 34 metric tons of plutonium from circulation, rendering it unusable in nuclear weapons. The DOE originally planned to immobilize some of the plutonium in glass, and turn the rest into a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for nuclear power plants. That proposal was covered by environmental studies performed in 1996 and in at least two follow up reports. But in January 2002, the DOE officially killed plans to immobilize the plutonium, saying all the surplus material would be turned into MOX fuel. The agency plans to build a special plant at the Savannah River Site to turn the plutonium into MOX, but that project is now behind schedule, and funding for the program is not guaranteed. Governor Hodges fears that all 34 tons of plutonium could be stored in South Carolina indefinitely, and is seeking assurances that his state will not be turned into an ad hoc plutonium dump if the MOX project fails. He sought to block all plutonium shipments until additional environmental studies could be completed, and until the DOE provides a legally enforceable agreement to remove the plutonium if it is not turned into fuel by a negotiated deadline. [residue] Cleanup worker handles wet combustible radioactive plutonium residue at the Rocky Flats nuclear facility. (Photo courtesy U.S. Dept of Energy) The DOE wants to begin shipping plutonium from Rocky Flats immediately, to meet a 2006 six deadline for permanently closing the Colorado facility. The plutonium is destined to be stored in the K-area of the Savannah River Site, in a nuclear reactor built during the 1950s. Two tons of surplus plutonium used during nuclear weapons production and testing at Savannah River is already stored there, without the specialized packaging or treatment that new shipments must undergo. "The plutonium coming in from Rocky Flats is stabilized and packaged, so it is safer than Savannah River Site's plutonium," noted Judge Currie. Currie ruled that South Carolina will not suffer irreparable harm from the out of state plutonium shipments, and argued that delaying the shipments could cause trouble with Russia over the plutonium disposal treaty, and cost millions of dollars in cleanup expenses at Rocky Flats. The judge's ruling puts Governor Hodges, who has pledged in the past to use state troopers, and even his own body, to block the plutonium shipments, in a difficult political position. Hodges' lawyers said Thursday that the governor does not intend to break the law, and lawyers for the DOE argued that attempts to block the shipments could be unconstitutional. Moments after Judge Currie handed down her ruling, Hodges said his lawyers were filing an appeal at the federal appeals court in Virginia. [transport] Local officials trained by the DOE inspect the loading of spent nuclear fuel onto a tractor trailer along the route to the Savannah River Site. (Photo courtesy NEI [http://www.nei.org] ) "I'm disappointed with the decision of the judge," he told reporters. "But I will use every legal means to protect the people of South Carolina," including taking the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court. "This fight is not going to stop at a courthouse in Aiken," Hodges added. When asked whether he would order state troopers to block the plutonium shipments, Hodges said "we need to focus on our appeal," and quickly ended the news conference. "If we lose, then the nation's weapons grade plutonium comes to South Carolina for long-term storage, and that's simply unacceptable," Hodges said. "I will continue to use every legal power that I have to make sure South Carolinians are taken care of and that our health and safety is protected." The DOE said the court's decision "should help assure progress on the MOX program, which is vitally important to America's national security as well as the securing of nuclear materials in Russia." Secretary Abraham said the DOE has already agreed to provide South Carolina with legislative protection against the permanent storage of plutonium, and supports a bill now before Congress that would set deadlines and authorize millions of dollars in fines if the plutonium is dumped in the state. [McGuire] The McGuire Nuclear Power Plant in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina is one of two that the government plans to convert to burn MOX fuel. (Photo courtesy Nuclear Regulatory Commission) The bills would levy fines of $1 million a day against the federal government if it has failed to convert at least one ton of plutonium into MOX fuel by 2011. To stop these penalties, the government would have to accelerate its fuel conversion process or move the remaining plutonium to another state. "DOE intends that all of the plutonium coming into South Carolina will have a pathway out of the state," Abraham added. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All Rights ***************************************************************** 23 Ship arrives to transport nuclear fuel to Britain Daily Yomiuri On-Line [Daily Yomiuri On-Line] Yomiuri Shimbun A cargo ship arrived in Takahamacho, Fukui Prefecture, Friday morning, to transport plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel from a Kansai Electric Power Co. nuclear plant in the town. The fuel, which was to have been used for a plutonium thermal project, will be shipped back to a British nuclear fuel company from the port, which is exclusively used by the nuclear plant. Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 24 US state bars plutonium shipments BBC News | AMERICAS | Saturday, 15 June, 2002, 09:12 GMT 10:12 UK US state bars plutonium shipments [South Carolina State troopers stand at a highway intersection going into the Savannah River Site] State troopers have been placed on high alert South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges has declared a state of emergency and placed troopers on the state's borders in an attempt to block federal shipments of plutonium. They want South Carolina to quietly become the nation's plutonium dumping ground Jim Hodges, South Carolina Governor "I order that the transportation of plutonium on South Carolina roads and highways is prohibited," Mr Hodges was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying. "I order that any persons transporting plutonium shall not enter the state of South Carolina." His decision follows a refusal by a US federal judge to block the shipments of weapons-grade plutonium by the US energy department from a site in Colorado. Mr Hodges has appealed against the ruling and asked for a delay until the appeals court can decide. 'Dumping ground' The US energy department wants to move more than six tons of plutonium from the Rocky Flats installation in Colorado - which is being closed down - to South Carolina's Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons complex near Aiken. [South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges] Hodges said he would lie on the road if necessary Then it plans to convert the material into nuclear reactor fuel - a process which could take up to 20 years. But Mr Hodges expressed fears that the government would leave the plutonium permanently in his state. "The Department of Energy has broken promises, offered no assurances and left few options," he said. "They want South Carolina to quietly become the nation's plutonium dumping ground." Mr Hodges, a Democrat facing re-election in the autumn, said that, if necessary, he would lie on the road to stop the shipments. Assurances However, federal authorities tried to reassure the governor, saying the conversion programme would ensure that plutonium would never be in wrong hands. "This administration is totally committed to helping pass legislation to guarantee that South Carolina does not become a permanent storage site for plutonium," US Vice President Dick Cheney was quoted as saying by the AP. The shipments could have begun as early as this weekend, although the energy department said it was postponing the move. US federal officials said the plutonium would be under constant guard, and its itinerary and time of arrival would be kept a secret. ***************************************************************** 25 Las Vegas SUN: 4.4 earthquake hits near Yucca Photo: Planning the trip ----------------------------------------------------------------- Las Vegas SUN ----------------------------------------------------------------- June 14, 2002 4.4 earthquake hits near Yucca By Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning LAS VEGAS SUN A magnitude 4.4 earthquake this morning outside the Amargosa Valley rattled the fears of Yucca Mountain opponents, who argue that the site of the nation's proposed nuclear waste repository is unsafe. The earthquake hit about 5:40 this morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, in an area about 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Seismologists said the temblor hit Little Skull Mountain on the Nevada Test Site, about 12 1/2 miles southeast of Yucca Mountain. "All we need now is a volcano to erupt," deadpanned Bob Loux, director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects. Yucca Mountain, an ancient volcanic ridge about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, sits on the edge of the Nevada Test Site and has been studied as the nation's future nuclear repository. The Senate is expected to vote on approving the site in the next few weeks. Minor earthquakes that go unnoticed are common in the sparsely populated area. Nevada officials, in their long battle to kill Yucca Mountain in Congress and the courts, have argued that over time, the site is susceptible to larger earthquakes, groundwater leaks, even volcanoes. "Mother Nature is telling the people of the United States something," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said. "What she is telling them is don't mess with Yucca Mountain." The Energy Department, President Bush and the U.S. House have approved Yucca as a suitable site to permanently bury 77,000 tons of the nation's high-level nuclear waste. If the Senate approves Yucca Mountain, the Energy Department would then have to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to operate a repository. Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson today released a statement that said there was no damage at all to the Yucca site. He stressed that the earthquake was not at Yucca, but said it was 15 miles away in an area known for seismic activity. The statement said a normally scheduled tour of Yucca would go on as planned Saturday. Energy Department scientists and engineers at Yucca have studied earthquake risks for years, officials said. "Yucca Mountain respository designs could withstand a local earthquake with 1,000 times more energy than the one reported this morning and a regional earthquake with 30,000 times more energy than the one reported this morning," the statement said. "If felt, the vibrations of an earthquake like the one reported this morning are similar to those felt when a truck passes." Nuclear industry officials also stress that waste storage containers are robust enough to survive significant damage without releasing radiation. "There's no story here," DOE spokesman Joe Davis said. "This is a dog bites mailman story." This morning's temblor, centered about 7 miles beneath the surface, was followed by three smaller quakes, with the largest recorded as a magnitude 1.4. The quake was on the same fault that produced a magnitude 5.6 temblor on June 29, 1992, University of Nevada, Reno seismologist Diane de Polo said. The 1992 quake caused more than $400,000 in damage to Energy Department surface research facilities near Yucca Mountain, but did not impact the site itself, officials said. "Yucca Mountain is in a young, geologically active area, and it's probably going to be difficult to get licensed as a nuclear repository," Loux said. A series of minor quakes shook the desert northwest of Las Vegas in January 1999, with the biggest a 4.7 quake in the Frenchman Flat area in the Nevada Test Site east of Yucca Mountain. In March 1994, a 3.9 quake hit Rock Valley near the Test Site and Yucca Mountain. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the congressional delegation has tried to argue the potential threats of earthquakes and other dangers at Yucca Mountain. "We have presented all that to the senators, but it's like anything else, they just say, 'Oh, the DOE says it's safe,' " Ensign said. "We have known that there are a lot of earthquakes in the area, mostly minor," Ensign said. "But as we have learned over time, you never know when the next major earthquake will hit the area." Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., this week said the arrest of a "dirty bomb" suspect was a timely reminder that the Yucca plan is risky. "Today we saw more proof that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump site is not safe," Reid said in a written statement. "(The earthquake) was centered just 15 miles from the place where the Department of Energy wants to put tons of the deadliest material ever known to man." While the quake rumbled up north, there were no reports of it in the Las Vegas Valley. Metro Police did not receive any calls this morning from anyone reporting feeling the temblors, said Lt. Vincent Cannito, a department spokesman. But Amargosa Valley ranchers Debbie and Ralph McCracken felt it. "It scared the bejesus out of me and my cat," Debbie McCracken said. "It woke me up." Her husband described it as a "nice, gentle rolling motion." Sun reporters Erin Neff and Keith Paul contributed to this report. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Planning the trip Las Vegas SUN main page ----------------------------------------------------------------- Questions or problems? Click here. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 26 YUCCA: Bad Proposal The Salt Lake Tribune -- Saturday, June 15, 2002 Last month, Congress approved Yucca Mountain as a permanent, high-level nuclear waste dump. The Senate will vote in early July (S.J. Res. 34) and if approved, thousands of tons of nuclear waste will be shipped through Utah on route to southeastern Nevada. The United States produces 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste annually; Yucca Mountain will only hold 70,000 metric tons and will fill up in 10 years. Casks containing waste will be shipped through Utah on I-15, I-84, I-70 and I-80, and by rail. Transporting waste poses significantly more hazards than on-site storage and the casks have not been thoroughly tested. Here are some other reasons to oppose nuclear storage waste in Nevada: The site is in an active seismic zone and water contaminated with fallout from the 1950s has leaked inside. Government reports acknowledge that water will eventually degrade the casks and transport radioactive waste into the environment. Yucca Mountain sits on Western Shoshone lands, which by treaty belong to them and have been declared a nuclear free zone. We do not have the right to desecrate sacred grounds of any religion or peoples. Yucca Mountain will not handle all our nuclear waste. ROB MORRISON Logan © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on ***************************************************************** 27 Provo May Target Yucca Traffic The Salt Lake Tribune -- Saturday, June 15, 2002 BY MARK EDDINGTON THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE PROVO -- As much as they regard Provo as a beacon, some elected officials here do not want the city's glow to be fueled by radioactivity. That's why some Provo City Council members want to join their West Valley City counterparts, who passed a proclamation last week opposing the shipment of high-level nuclear waste across Utah to Nevada's Yucca Mountain. "I'm not just against nuclear waste passing through Provo," Councilman Mark Hathaway said Friday. "I don't want it see it passing through anywhere in Utah. I also don't want it stored at Yucca Mountain or at the Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah." Federal energy officials -- with President Bush's blessing -- are proposing to ship 67,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste to Nevada from about 100 sites across the nation. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission also is seeking a license for a nationwide consortium of utilities to set up a temporary storage site on Skull Valley Goshute Indian land 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. About 6,000 pounds of Yucca-bound waste would pass through Provo every week via truck or train. "Ninety percent to 95 percent of all shipments [to Nevada] will pass through Utah," said Steve Erickson, director of the nonprofit Citizens Education Project. Groups such as Erickson's are lobbying city and county officials across Utah to join their anti-storage crusade. Thus far, West Valley City represents their lone breakthrough, although the Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City and now Provo councils are considering similar resolutions. County Council members tabled their resolution two weeks ago to get more input from Yucca supporters. Meanwhile, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson is publicly opposing the Nevada site, and Erickson hopes the City Council will follow his lead. Anderson is scheduled to speak against the Yucca project today at a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Madison, Wis. He hopes to persuade the mayors to adopt a resolution urging the Senate to oppose the Yucca project. "Obviously, the more people understand the dangers of this project, the more they will speak out against it and the better chance we have of political leaders listening to the will of the people," said mayoral spokesman Josh Ewing. But the alarm from Yucca opponents may fall on some deaf ears in conservative Utah County. "I don't think our government leaders would ship waste through Utah County if it was going to harm anybody," said Provo resident Lorraine Reynolds. "We have to put this stuff somewhere." meddington@sltrib.com © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 28 Moderate Quake Rattles Desert Near Yucca, Nerves in Utah The Salt Lake Tribune -- Saturday, June 15, 2002 BY JUDY FAHYS A seismic shiver Friday near the planned site for a national nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., reverberated to Utah, where earthquakes have been a hot topic in the debate over a nuclear storage facility proposed on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation. The 5:40 a.m. magnitude 4.4 temblor shook a patch of Nevada desert. The earthquake was centered about 13 miles from Yucca Mountain, where the Bush administration wants to build an underground repository for lethally radioactive waste from commercial power plants and government facilities. While the U.S. Energy Department insisted the "light" quake had no effect on the disposal site, environmentalists and other opponents restated their doubts about the safety of parking nuclear waste in earthquake-prone areas such as Yucca Mountain or the Goshute Valley. "It highlights that these projects are reckless when we know of these risks," said Lisa Gue of Public Citizen, the Ralph Nader-affiliated watchdog group in Washington, D.C. Public Citizen has been a leading critic of both the Utah and Nevada waste sites. At Skull Valley, a consortium of eight out-of-state utilities has proposed building an above-ground facility to store power-plant waste for up to 40 years before it is permanently disposed of elsewhere, probably at Yucca Mountain. The waste would be contained in steel and concrete casks and set, unsecured, on 3-foot-thick cement-and-soil pads. The Skull Valley and Yucca Mountain proposals are alike in that both are surrounded by known earthquake faults, yet still considered safe enough for high-level nuclear waste. Friday morning's earthquake came about a decade after a 5.6 earthquake in the same vicinity. The U.S. Energy Department, sponsor of the Yucca Mountain facility, noted that the 1992 quake released about 30 times more energy than Friday's, but did not dislodge boulders on Yucca's slopes. "There was no damage to any Yucca Mountain project facilities, structures or the underground exploratory studies facilities," the department said in a news release. "And, the public tour of Yucca Mountain scheduled to take place on Saturday, June 15th, will occur." The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote within six weeks to push forward with Yucca over the objections of the state of Nevada. Meanwhile, the Utah government is in the midst of about 10 weeks of hearings by the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that have been largely devoted to a debate of earthquake safety at the proposed Utah site. The hearings, expected to resume in Washington later this month, center on questions about the severity of earthquakes likely to shake Skull Valley and the odds that the proposed storage facility could withstand the predicted quakes. If approved by federal regulators next winter, the storage site could be ready to take casks in 2004. The proposed Skull Valley storage site has two significant earthquake faults within two miles of its boundaries, one a mile from its eastern edge and the other less than two miles from its western edge. Geologists believe both could experience quakes of up to magnitude 7.0, or slightly worse than the damaging quakes that hit Oakland, Calif., in 1989, and Seattle early last year. The state has said the earthquake potential at Skull Valley is worse than proponents suggest and that the storage facility ought to meet tougher construction standards. Federal regulators say it is sufficient for the storage site to be designed to withstand the sort of earthquake that might be expected once every 2,000 years. But the state, noting that Utah highway bridges must be designed to endure the sort of earthquake anticipated once every 2,500 years, contends that the Utah storage facility should be built to be no less sturdy than a new nuclear plant, which must be able to withstand the sort of violent quakes likely to occur once every 10,000 years. "That's what this [Yucca quake Friday] reminds us," said Utah Department of Environmental Quality Director Dianne Nielson. "This [Skull Valley project] is not a place to be cutting margins and looking for exceptions to the rule," she said. "We need to pay attention to this issue." fahys@sltrib.com © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 29 Quake Stirs Opposition To Nuclear Waste Plan (washingtonpost.com) By Eric Pianin Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, June 15, 2002; Page A02 A mild earthquake early yesterday in the Nevada desert about 12 miles southeast of Yucca Mountain has added fuel to the controversy over the Bush administration plan to build a centralized nuclear waste repository beneath the mountain. The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 4.4, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The Energy Department reported that there was no damage to any of the Yucca Mountain facilities or exploratory tunnels. But opponents of the nuclear waste disposal project described the quake as a "wake-up call" for the Senate, which will vote this summer on whether to allow the administration to proceed with the multibillion-dollar project. "If anyone ever wondered about the wisdom of locating an underground radioactive dump site on an active fault line, this shows why," Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) said after the incident. Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who is leading the effort to block the project, said: "There is no need to rush to build a nuclear repository when there are so many unanswered questions about its safety and security." The Bush administration has declared Yucca Mountain "scientifically sound and suitable" for storing as much as 77,000 tons of radioactive waste from nuclear facilities in 39 states. Yet Yucca Mountain sits on one of the largest earthquake fault zones east of California. In 1992, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake caused tens of thousands of dollars of damage to DOE facilities at Yucca Mountain, although federal officials note that it did not dislodge the boulders on the mountain's slope. More than 600 earthquakes greater than magnitude 2.5 have been recorded at Yucca Mountain in the past two decades, state officials say. The proposed repository would be located about 1,000 feet underground in a relatively stable block of solid rock, which would keep its contents safe from any significant earthquake impact, according to administration officials. "Yucca Mountain repository designs could withstand a local earthquake with 1,000 times more energy than the one reported this morning," a statement issued by DOE's Yucca Mountain Project office in Las Vegas said. But critics say they are far more concerned about the potential for damage to above-ground storage facilities, where much of the waste brought to Yucca Mountain would be kept for decades while it cools. "This is where seismic activity would cause the most damage," said an aide to Berkley. In February, President Bush formally proposed moving ahead with the project and, in May, the House voted 306 to 117 to approve it. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee recently backed the project 13 to 10, but Reid has vowed to try to block the project on the Senate floor. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 30 Berkley Statement on Earthquake at Yucca Mountain Congresswoman Shelley Berkley - Legislation: Press Releases 2001 Earthquake at Yucca Shows Dangers of Radioactive Repository June 14th, 2002 (Washington, D.C.) This morning at about 5:40 PDT there was a 4.3 earthquake 20 kilometers (12 miles) SE of Yucca Mountain. The reading is considered a significant event by the seismology lab at the University of Nevada - Reno. Berkley offered the following statement after this morning's earthquake: This earthquake is a wake-up call for the U.S. Senate. If anyone ever wondered about the wisdom of locating an underground radioactive dump site on an active fault line, this shows why. The Yucca Mountain project is inherently dangerous. The site was chosen based on political expediency, and not scientific merit. Not only does the proposed repository sit on a live fault line, but the area is known for volcanic activity and groundwater movement. An earthquake disrupting a repository could not only cause a radioactive breach in its own right, but could open geologic fissures in the mountain, guiding rain and groundwater directly to the waste dump, and dramatically speeding the contamination of Western water tables. ***************************************************************** 31 S.C. closes borders to plutonium COLUMBIA, S.C. - Governor Jim Hodges ordered state troopers and other authorities yesterday to stop federal shipments of plutonium that could begin arriving in South Carolina from Colorado as early as this weekend. 5 A S.C. closes borders to plutonium 6/15/2002 By Jacob Jordan, Associated Press > "> By Jacob Jordan, Associated Press, 6/15/2002 [C] OLUMBIA, S.C. - Governor Jim Hodges ordered state troopers and other authorities yesterday to stop federal shipments of plutonium that could begin arriving in South Carolina from Colorado as early as this weekend. ''I order that the transportation of plutonium on South Carolina roads and highways is prohibited,'' Hodges said. ''I order that any persons transporting plutonium shall not enter the state of South Carolina.'' Hodges, who has vehemently opposed the shipments, read a statement declaring a state of emergency, but refused to answer questions about specific plans for roadblocks or other barricades at South Carolina's Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons complex near Aiken. On Thursday, a federal judge refused to block the shipments of weapons-grade plutonium. Hodges appealed the ruling and asked for a delay until the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals could hear the case. The US Energy Department plans to move the material from the Rocky Flats weapons installation in Colorado, which is being cleaned up and closed, to the Savannah River Site, where the material would be converted into nuclear reactor fuel over the next two decades. But Hodges has said he fears that the government will leave the plutonium in South Carolina permanently, making the state a target for terrorists. ''The Department of Energy has broken promises, offered no assurances, and left few options,'' Hodges said. ''Once plutonium arrives, it will never leave. They want South Carolina to quietly become the nation's plutonium dumping ground.'' The shipments could legally begin as early as this weekend, but US Attorney Strom Thurmond Jr. said that Energy Department officials told him they would not start until after June 22. A message left for an Energy Department spokesman was not returned yesterday afternoon. This story ran on page A5 of the Boston Globe on 6/15/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. ***************************************************************** 32 Earthquake Near Yucca Mountain Highlights Dangers of Dump Proposal Public Citizen */June 14, 2002/* */Statement of Joan Claybrook, Public Citizen President/* Today?s predawn earthquake near Yucca Mountain ? occurring just weeks before the Senate casts its key vote on the nuclear waste dump ? seems to be nature?s way of warning lawmakers to put the brakes on this bad plan. Yucca Mountain sits in an earthquake zone. More than 600 earthquakes of a magnitude of 2.5 or more have been measured within 50 miles of Yucca Mountain since 1910. Nevada ranks third in the nation in frequency of strong earthquakes. Today?s earthquake, which measured 4.4 on the Richter scale, although it did no damage, highlights one of the many reasons why a high-level radioactive waste dump should not be established at the mountain. Scientists have been unable to demonstrate that a repository at Yucca Mountain could safely isolate high-level nuclear waste throughout the thousands of years it remains dangerously radioactive. Over time, radioactivity is expected to leak into the aquifer beneath Yucca Mountain and contaminate this important source of drinking water. Radiation standards at Yucca Mountain had to be weakened by the Bush administration?s Environmental Protection Agency for the unsound project to proceed. Incredibly, lawmakers are ignoring the dangers; the U.S. House of Representatives has approved the president?s Yucca Mountain site recommendation. We strongly urge the Senate to take note of today?s incident and realize the sheer folly of the Yucca Mountain proposal. If they don?t, future generations will look back in disbelief. We can?t say we haven?t been warned. ### ***************************************************************** 33 Antinuclear Activists Look to Revive Movement for Arms Freeze; Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 00:21:03 -0500 (CDT) [All ads are inserted by Topica without our consent. Ignore them.] IN THIS MESSAGE: * Antinuclear Activists Look to Revive Movement for Arms Freeze * Hunger Spreads in Argentina * The Green Patriarch * Anti-Privatization Bill Advances ------------------------------------------------------ Markey, antinuclear activists look to revive movement for arms freeze By Bret Ladine, Boston Globe Correspondent, 6/12/2002 WASHINGTON - Alarmed by the increased dangers of nuclear warfare in the post-Sept. 11 world, Representative Edward J. Markey and a group of veteran antinuclear activists are seeking to revive an old initiative - the movement for a nuclear freeze - to reinvigorate a worldwide campaign against the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. In a news conference yesterday, Markey urged President Bush to renounce proposals that the US adjust its strategic doctrine to allow the first use of nuclear weapons, and said the United States should agree to a permanent end to the testing of nuclear warheads. ''The Bush administration is leading the country in the wrong direction in almost every aspect of nuclear policy,'' Markey said. Markey has introduced a joint resolution that calls for an end to the development, testing, and production of nuclear weapons, the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and greater efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear technologies to rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran. The resolution is being offered 20 years after Markey played a major role in the nuclear freeze movement. Jonathan Schell, a leader in the original movement and a cofounder of Urgent Call to end nuclear danger, said the world faces ''a second nuclear age,'' with dangers that are ''springing up all over.'' [Markey also said yesterday that radioactive materials for a ''dirty bomb'' can be found in almost every state at hundreds of medical and commercial facilities, the Associated Press reported. He said some facilities have more than a million curies of radioactive material that could be a target of terrorist theft or sabotage. A requirement to track the material by serial numbers was scrapped in 1985, and in many cases monitoring has been left to state health officials, he said. ''We need to make sure these materials are secure,'' he added.] Conservatives dismissed the efforts of Urgent Call and Markey as holdovers from another era. ''Every criticism Markey has is predicated on the attempt to avert nuclear war between Russia and the US,'' said Jack Spencer, senior analyst for national security at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. ''We have to move totally away from that sort of thinking.'' But Schell said the Bush administration's policies actually heighten the nuclear danger by sending the wrong message to rogue nations. Among the more troublesome positions, Schell said, are plans for nuclear ''bunker-busting'' bombs for use in preemptive strikes. ''Neither the United States nor any nuclear power can go before the world with the message, `We have these weapons but you can't, and if you try to get them, we'll blow you to kingdom come with ours,''' Schell said. Adding to the risk, said Cambridge activist Randall Forsberg, is Bush's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The change takes effect tomorrow. House members - 30 Democrats and one Independent - filed suit against President Bush yesterday in an effort to block the president from withdrawing from the 1972 treaty, the Associated Press reported. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio and the lead plaintiff, said the president does not have the authority to withdraw unilaterally from a treaty and should first seek the consent of Congress. The lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia, also names Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as defendants. The lawsuit states that while the Constitution does not address the role of Congress in treaty terminations, treaties have the status of ''supreme law of the land'' equivalent to federal laws. Laws can be repealed only by Congress, the suit says. Forsberg also cited Bush's refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the administration's inability to negotiate a test ban on North Korea. Forsberg's perception of the increasing nuclear threat has prompted her, Schell, and others to help found Urgent Call, a new organization dedicated to reducing nuclear dangers. Eventually Forsberg and Schell hope to gain support at levels seen in 1982, when nearly one million people gathered in Central Park to call for reductions in nuclear arsenals. ''Nuclear danger is back, but we're back, too,'' Schell said. ''And we're not going away.'' Markey's resolution, submitted to the House yesterday, has 11 sponsors. He said he expects that number to grow and hopes that it surpasses the 172 votes he obtained on a recently failed amendment to remove funding for the bunker- busting bomb from a defense authorization bill. This story ran on page A3 of the Boston Globe on 6/12/2002. ) Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. Post : mail to 'portside@yahoogroups.com' Subscribe : mail to 'portside-subscribe@yahoogroups.com' ========================================= Soup kitchens and Dumpster-diving; hunger spreads in recession-wracked Argentina ============================ Wed Jun 12, By BILL CORMIER, Associated Press Writer BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Jose Perez and his wife Maria have 11 hungry mouths to feed. So they travel each week to Argentina's biggest vegetable market to raid the Dumpsters. Rotten tomatoes, blackened potatoes, rubbery bell peppers --the throwaways from the central market are all the Perez family will eat today. Oblivious to trucks rumbling into the market with loads of fresh oranges, melons and other produce, they fend off the flies and claw through the mushy debris for anything edible. A four-year-old economic downturn has become the worst recession in Argentine history. The jobless rate has soared to 20 percent, the peso has devalued more than 70 percent against the dollar, and more than one-third of the 36 million people now live in poverty. "My husband hasn't been able to work a decent job in years, and we still have to eat," said Maria, hefting a paring knife in calloused hands as she hacked out black spots in rotting potatoes. Jose, a laid-off electrician, carried a plastic bucket of water to wash the vegetables that often give his family stomach aches. Nearby, a grizzled man in an old army jacket already had a meager pot of potatoes and cabbage bubbling over a smoky fire. "Tell Mr. Bush we still want to pay back the debt, but give us more time," he said with a laugh. He meant the dlrs 141 billion Argentina owes after January's default, when the crisis exploded. Hunger is becoming evident in Argentina--from the overrun soup kitchens to the streets of the capital where armies of people sift the trash each night for anything to recycle, sell or eat. On March 23 a truck carrying 22 cattle overturned near Rosario, 180 miles (290 kilometers) to the north. As hungry shantytown dwellers gathered around the injured animals, men appeared with butcher's knives and carted away dripping sides of beef. Sociologist Artemio Lopez, at the Equis consulting group, said the price for the government's "basic food basket" of essential goods like bread, rice and eggs soared 47.4 percent in the first five months of the year. "With each passing day there is more hunger in Argentina," said Lopez, who estimates the proportion of the population that cannot afford the basics has nearly doubled to 21 percent in a year. To properly feed a family of four cost 215 pesos in March and 252 pesos in April, government figures show. That's an increase from dlrs 61 to dlrs 72, and salaries haven't risen at all. The cash-strapped government has social programs for the poor, but critics say these can't keep pace with the spreading crisis. On May 17 the government started dispensing 150 pesos (dlrs 42) a month to 1 million unemployed heads of households. The critics say it should be double that amount. Community and religious groups struggle to fill the gap. Genia Skegin is supervising donations of foodstuffs like pasta and flour at a synagogue in northern Buenos Aires. "Every month there are more and more families coming here," she said. "People are losing jobs, it's just terrible." Across town, at a warehouse piled high with bags of pasta and rice, hundreds of women with plastic buckets wait outside a soup kitchen where 300 pounds (135 kilograms) of macaroni are boiling in a steel vat. At a guard's signal, they rush forward, frantically holding out plastic tubs. "Keep in line, one at a time!" the guard shouts. "This is my only meal of the day," said Catalina Pineyro, a 71-year-old grandmother, as she gulped her plate down. The soup kitchen is called Cara Sucias, Spanish for "Dirty Faces," as the homeless are known. The founder, Monica Carranza, said she gets 800 visitors on a big day, more than double that of a year ago. "It's always been hard," she said, "but nothing so bad as now." She said the soup kitchen has registered 95 especially malnourished families, up from 25 a year ago, who get extra food, iron pills for anemia and antibiotics for bronchitis. Those worst off see the soup kitchen's specialist, Dr. Javier Sary. Wearing a white smock, he listened with a stethoscope to the hacking cough of Daniel, not yet 2, his eyes slightly sunken. "Here is a case of malnutrition," the doctor said as Daniel's worried mother looked on. "He lacks the basics and is at risk of bronchitis or pneumonia if he isn't treated." He gave the mother antibiotics and shook his head as she left. "This is certainly not the hunger you see in Africa ... but this is an Argentina that didn't exist before: people going hungry, people malnourished ... If it weren't for the help these people receive, I'm afraid they'd simply die in the streets." Post : mail to 'portside@yahoogroups.com' Subscribe : mail to 'portside-subscribe@yahoogroups.com' ======================================== http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/europe/newsid_2040000/2040567.stm BBC News Online: World: Europe ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- Wednesday, 12 June, 2002, 18:57 GMT 19:57 UK The Green Patriarch - Bartholomew I According to the patriarch, the ecologically unfriendly are sinners By Daniel Howden Venice The spiritual leader of the world's estimated 300 million Orthodox Christians, Bartholomew I, is a man on an ecological, as well as a theological, mission. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- " There's very few references to the environment in what Protestants, Catholics say on Sunday what the Jews say on Saturday and what the Muslims say on Friday in their places of worship and I think it would be good if they used their platforms to sensitise individuals " The Aga Khan ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- The 270th successor to the Apostle St Andrew, dubbed the Green Patriarch, he was awarded on Wednesday Norway's $100,000 Sophie Prize for his environmental efforts. He said the prize money would be donated will go to street children in Athens and Istabul, and to preparations for a church-led seminar on the Baltic Sea environment. Patriarch Bartholomew is renowned for declaring that "crime against the natural world is a sin" four years after he assumed the ecumenical throne in Istanbul in 1991. Now he is challenging leaders of other faiths to raise environmental awareness among their believers, and this week succeeded in persuading Pope John Paul II to call for an end to the destruction of the environment. As the visibly frail Pope John Paul II signed the document via a live video link from the Vatican, Patriarch Bartholomew, in Venice, warned of a stark "social and environmental crisis which the world is facing." "We are concerned about the negative consequences for humanity and for all creation resulting from the degradation of some basic natural resources such as water, air and land, brought about by an economic and technological progress which does not recognise its own limits," said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UN Development Programme, and the guest speaker chosen to read the Venice declaration. Environmental baby This unprecedented initiative from the heads of the traditionally hostile Eastern and Western wings of Christianity came as the culmination of a week-long symposium, the fourth of its kind, that brought together top scientists, theologians and ecologists aboard a giant cruise ship sailing around the Adriatic Sea. The symposia are the patriarch's brainchild, designed to draw international attention to the pollution and ecological degradation of the areas they have visited - Aegean Sea, Black Sea and Danube River. "The symposium is a sort of symbol of what he's been able to do. Bringing as it were Church, science and the environment together is absolutely wonderful," said Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, who was one of the participants. The conclusion of the 1997 Black Sea trip led to an action plan to combat the destruction of Europe's most isolated marine area through eutrophication, over fishing, landscape and habitat destruction or pollution with solid waste and sewage. World Bank leaders were sufficiently impressed with the Black Sea Environmental Programme (BSEP) to break with standard practice of loans, instead donating $2 m to local clean up and education projects highlighted during the trip. "Environmental awareness is a matter of education and education does not only take place in school," the Patriarch told journalists on the Adriatic trip. Praying for the elements The Patriarchate, through its Religion, Science and Environment NGO has setup of an ecological institute on the Turkish island of Halki. The centre runs regular ecological education workshops bringing together junior clergy members and journalists. He has popularised 1 September as a day of prayer for the protection of the natural environment throughout the Orthodox world During the Adriatic symposium the Aga Khan called on other religious leaders to follow the Patriarch 's lead on environmental issues. "I think (religion) can play a crucially important role to propagate and encourage the dialogue generally, not only on what the general values are at a high level but also the priests, the imams to use their sermons to be able to preach to their flock. "There's very few references to the environment in what Protestants, Catholics say on Sunday what the Jews say on Saturday and what the Muslims say on Friday in their places of worship and I think it would be good if they used their platforms to sensitise individuals," he told the BBC. Green bridge The Patriarchate and the Vatican have been divided by bitter doctrinal and political disputes since the great schism of 1054. However, ongoing dialogue begun in the 1980s finds the two churches, whose combined flock is thought to exceed one billion, moving increasingly close. The pope has compared Orthodoxy and Catholicism to two lungs and has spoken of the church's need to breathe with both. Bartholomew has spoken of environmental cooperation as a "bridge" between the two churches. The Ecumenical Patriarch enjoys no formal authority over the leaders of the major national churches such as Russia, Greece and Serbia, instead he is officially recognised as the "first among equals" whose arbitration must be sought on disagreements. ========================================= Anti-privatization bill advances Published in the Home News Tribune 6/14/02 By DEBORAH YAFFE GANNETT STATE BUREAU TRENTON -- A union-backed bill that would make it harder for public schools and colleges to privatize noneducational services advanced on two fronts yesterday, passing the Assembly 61-15 and a state Senate committee 4-2. The bill is a longtime priority of the New Jersey Education Association, the powerful statewide teachers union, but virtually every other education, business and government lobby opposes it. One leading opponent, the New Jersey School Boards Association, says school districts have saved $40.8 million in recent years by hiring private companies to provide bus service, clean schools and serve cafeteria meals. With school aid frozen while the state copes with a budget crisis, that option is more important than ever, NJSBA lobbyist Robert DeSando told the Senate Labor Committee yesterday. The bill "would drastically restrict the ability of public schools and institutions of higher education to subcontract services and, in the process, control their costs, save taxpayers money and direct more funds to the education program," DeSando said. But supporters insist the legislation gives important protections to low-paid employees. 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You can temporarily suspend delivery by sending a request to the same address. Notify the moderator at the time you want delivery resumed. You can also manage this function yourself by going to the list at www.igc.topica.com/lists/Solidarity4Ever where you will have to register with Topica in order to administer your own subscription. _______________________________________________ ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: map@pencil.math.missouri.edu EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://igc.topica.com/u/?b1dc1A.b2zMgD Or send an email to: solidarity4Ever-unsubscribe@igc.topica.com T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================ ***************************************************************** 34 [generalnews] U.S. Withdraws From Missile Treaty Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 00:28:01 -0500 (CDT) ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/7gSolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> washingtonpost.com U.S. Withdraws From Missile Treaty Bush Presses Congress for $7.8 Billion for Defense System By Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 14, 2002; Page A28 The Bush administration formally withdrew yesterday from the 30-year- old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, but skirmishing continued between the administration and congressional Democrats over Bush's missile defense proposal. The withdrawal from the treaty was set on Dec. 13, when President Bush gave Russia six months' notice that the United States would withdraw to pursue a missile defense system. The administration warned it would veto the 2003 defense spending bill unless Congress restores $814 million cut from the missile defense program by the Senate Armed Services Committee. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote to the committee warning that he would recommend that Bush veto the $393 billion spending bill if the full Senate, which takes up the measure soon, does not restore the funding. Bush seeks $7.8 billion next year for missile defenses. The Democratic-controlled committee objected to plans by the administration to increase the secrecy of the testing program. On Wednesday, 30 Democrats sued Bush, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell seeking to block the treaty withdrawal. They argued the president cannot pull out of a treaty without Congress's approval. Ari Fleischer, the president's press secretary, said the lawsuit was "highly likely heading toward dismissal," based on precedents. Fleischer said it was typical that less information about the project would be made public as it develops. "These programs are going to receive classifications to prevent the information from going to people who would want to use that information against us," he said. The Defense Department plans to break ground Saturday in Alaska on six underground silos for missile interceptors. Such construction was prohibited under the treaty. Bush, in a statement formally announcing the withdrawal yesterday, said he would move "as soon as possible" to deploy a missile defense system. "With the treaty now behind us, our task is to develop and deploy effective defenses against limited missile attacks," Bush said. "As the events of September 11 made clear, we no longer live in the Cold War world for which the ABM Treaty was designed." Meanwhile, an interceptor rocket fired from a Navy ship in the Pacific slammed into a dummy warhead in space yesterday in a successful missile defense test. The exercise showed a rocket guided by a warship's radar system can hit a medium- or long-range missile under controlled conditions. Pentagon officials said the test would help gather data to guide development of ship-based anti-missile systems. ) 2002 The Washington Post Company Grassroots International News Association http://www.geocities.com/rootmedia o unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: generalnews-unsubscribe@egroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 35 Re: [toeslist] End the Nuclear Danger: An Urgent Call Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 00:33:22 -0500 (CDT) "melissa roberts" wrote in message news:...skip... > ' STRENGTHEN nonproliferation efforts by ratifying the Comprehensive Test > Ban Treaty, finalizing a missile ban in North Korea, supporting UN > inspections in Iraq, locating and reducing fissile material worldwide and > negotiating a ban on its production. > > ' TAKE nuclear weapons off hairtrigger alert in concert with the other > nuclear powers (the UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel) > in order to reduce the risk of accidental or unauthorized use. >...skip... This is nothing but a pathetic attempt. All these disarmament ideas should have been vigorously pursued when US was at its peak of power and when it was giving diktats to other nations having put its nuclear pistol to their head. Now time has changed and Pakistan has now put a nuclear pistol to US's head and it is the US which is receiving diktats. The harvest time has arrived and those who sowed wind or going to reap the whirlwind. And please do not bad-mouth India... If you read the following speech by India's PM Vajpayee you will understand what a great nation India is: http://www.asiasociety.org/speeches/vajpayee.html ***************************************************************** 36 US tries to block sale of Hiroshima bomb parts Times Online June 15, 2002 From James Bone in New York THE US Government failed last night to block the sale of the only surviving pieces of the atom bomb that devastated Hiroshima, after a judge ruled that they posed no threat to national security. A crew member living in retirement in Las Vegas this week auctioned two plugs from “Little Boy”, the bomb that killed as many as 140,000 people when it was dropped on the Japanese city by the Enola Gay on August 6, 1945. Clay Perkins, a former rocket scientist and collector, paid $167,500 (£113,446) for the devices at Butterfields auction house in San Francisco. “They are arguably the most significant historical objects to come out of the 20th century because they are tied directly to the first atomic bomb, which announced the nuclear era, for all its good and its bad,” he told The Times. The Government went to court in San Francisco to stop the sale, arguing that the plugs were official property and, what is more, classified as secret nuclear technology. “The sale of the bomb plugs to the public will effectively disseminate restricted data concerning the manufacture and design of atomic weapons,” David Shapiro, a federal prosecutor, said in court papers. “The Government has a strong public interest in protecting against dissemination.” But District Judge Susan Illston said: “There is not a national security issue involved.” Lieutenant Morris Jeppson, the Enola Gay’s armourer, said that he retrieved the plugs as keepsakes. The thumb-sized devices were part of the safety precautions designed to prevent the first atomic bomb used in combat from exploding prematurely. Green plugs effectively shorted the bomb’s circuitry, making it impossible for it to explode, while red “arming” ones completed the connections. It was Lieutenant Jeppson’s task to climb into the Enola Gay’s unpressurised bomb bay and switch the plugs to arm the bomb before it was dropped. He kept three of the green plugs, giving two away and taking one home. He also kept a red plug that was apparently a spare. For decades he kept the two surviving plugs in a safe deposit box. Now 79, he decided to sell them to raise money for his six children. Mr Perkins said that he bought the plugs because of the role that the Hiroshima bombing had played in his decision to become a scientist. He suspected that the Government was trying to save the plugs for the Smithsonian Institution, which plans to open an Enola Gay exhibition in December 2003. The Government did not disclose whether it would now seek to recover the artefacts. “The judge was pretty strong criticising the Government for the action,” he said after taking possession of the plugs. “I would hope they would say to themselves: ‘Let’s just forget about it’.” [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,549,00.html] Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 37 Why dirty bombs are the new nuclear threat Times Online June 12, 2002 The new nuclear age by Christopher Andrew In the aftermath of September 11 I wrote in The Times that there was “worse to come even than the destruction of the World Trade Centre and the attack on the Pentagon. The question, alas, is not whether the terrorists of the 21st century will use weapons of mass destruction but when and where they will do so.” Unlike the attacks on September 11 which took both the CIA and FBI by surprise, the al-Qaeda attempt to explode a dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to scatter radioactive material, has been both expected and, so far as possible, prepared for by the US Intelligence community. For some months sophisticated sensors designed to detect the movement of radioactive material have been in place at unmarked locations around Washington DC (the probable target of the al-Qaeda plot revealed on Monday). Al-Qaeda's plans for dirty nuclear bombs, however, are simply part of the much larger threat of the new nuclear age. With the end of the Cold War just over a decade ago, the threat of nuclear warfare seemed to have disappeared. It is now clear, however, that the threat remains. Six years ago I forecast that the early 21st century would face three new threats to its security from nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction (WMDs): from fanatical religious and cult-based terrorist groups determined to acquire these weapons; from rogue regimes (in particular, Iraq) which directly threaten the West; and from conflicts in the rest of the world in which the combatants are tempted to use WMDs against each other. All three of these threats are closer now than when I made that forecast in 1996. The determination of religious and cult-based terrorist groups to use dirty nuclear bombs and other WMDs against Western targets has been evident for some years. The fortunately incompetent use of nerve gas on the Tokyo subway in 1995 by the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo will be seen by future historians not as an isolated episode but as a major historical turning point — the moment at which religious and cult-based terrorist groups began to move from traditional weapons — the bomb and the bullet — to the new terrorism of WMDs which has now emerged as a major threat to the security of the 21st century. Though Osama bin Laden has declared that acquiring WMDs is a “religious duty”, al-Qaeda is almost certainly further away from producing dirty nuclear bombs than Saddam Hussein. Saddam’s nuclear ambitions go back 30 years. By the outbreak of the Gulf War his Atomic Energy Department had nearly completed the manufacture of a nuclear weapon. But, according to his chief nuclear scientist, Khidir Hamza, it was “about the size of a refrigerator — far too big to fit into a missile warhead”. In recent years, although Saddam has not abandoned his ambition of creating a full-scale nuclear arsenal, he has also ordered the preparation of dirty nuclear bombs (along with other WMDs). As far back as 1987-88 two such devices, using irradiated zirconium oxide, were tested at a weapons test site west of Baghdad. Recent US Intelligence reports indicate that Iraqi laboratories are currently preparing radioactive material for more dangerous dirty nuclear bombs. The third distinctive danger of the new nuclear age is the threat of the use of nuclear weapons in conflicts between non-Western powers. Only a few days before the suicide bombers’ attack on the Indian parliament last December provoked the most recent confrontation between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, Scientific American published a remarkably prescient article which concluded: “The Indian subcontinent is the most likely place in the world for a nuclear war.” Even if the current crisis is resolved, that threat shows no sign of disappearing. There is also no end in sight to nuclear proliferation. Since every previous human invention has spread around the globe, it is idle to suppose that WMDs will prove the first exception to this iron law of history — especially in an era when technology crosses national boundaries with unprecedented speed. The main priority of intelligence agencies will now be to monitor and slow down the ultimately unstoppable proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The author is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cambridge University. His most recent book, with Vasili Mitrokhin, is The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (Penguin, £9.99) [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,549,00.html] Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 38 Hiroshima bomb parts cleared for sale BBC News | AMERICAS | Saturday, 15 June, 2002 Clay Perkins holds two arming mechanisms from the Hiroshima atomic bomb ] Mr Perkins said he was inspired by the atomic bomb A US court has refused to block the sale of the only remaining parts of the atomic bomb that was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Two bomb plugs from the Little Boy atomic bomb A judge in San Francisco rejected a US Government request for the sale of two electrical plugs - used to test and detonate the first nuclear bomb ever used in war - to be stopped on the grounds that they were classified secret material. The plugs, from the Little Boy atomic bomb, had been sold at auction on Tuesday for $167,000 to a private collector. Tens of thousands of people died in Hiroshima, on 6 August 1945, when the US B-29 bomber the Enola Gay primed and released Little Boy. The plugs had been put up for sale by Morris Jeppson, a crew member of the Enola Gay who had taken the parts from the plane. [Enola Gay (Picture: Federation of American Scientists) ] 'Enola Gay': The B-29 bomber which flew the Hiroshima mission The US Justice Department had contended that the two plugs' internal mechanisms - a green one to test the bomb's fusing mechanism and another red device used as a spare - were still regarded as a classified military secret. However District Court Judge Susan Illston on Friday disagreed with the government's claims. "I don't think you've made any showing, literally coming in here at the last moment. There's not a national security issue involved," she said. The judge argued that the fact the plugs had been in the possession of Mr Jeppson for 57 years - and that only now had the US Government taken an interest - meant that the devices could not be regarded as a risk to national security if sold on. 'Inspired' Butterfields auction house will now release the two plugs to retired physicist Clay Perkins, the private collector from near San Diego, in California. Mr Perkins told local media that the creation of the atomic bomb had inspired him to become a physicist in his youth. He said he believed it was impossible for anyone to develop an atomic bomb by studying the devices' internal mechanisms. Mr Perkins said the artefacts would now go on private display in his home. ***************************************************************** 39 Israel Has Sub-Based Atomic Arms Capability (washingtonpost.com) By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, June 15, 2002; Page A01 Israel has acquired three diesel submarines that it is arming with newly designed cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, according to former Pentagon and State Department officials, potentially giving Israel a triad of land-, sea- and air-based nuclear weapons for the first time. The U.S. Navy monitored Israeli testing of a new cruise missile from a submarine two years ago off Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, according to former Pentagon officials. One former senior American official said U.S. analysts have studied the nuclear capability of the cruise missile. But, according to a former Pentagon official, "It is above top secret knowing whether the sub-launched cruise missiles are nuclear-armed." Another former official added, "We often don't ask." The possible move to arm submarines with nuclear weapons suggests that the Israeli government might be increasingly concerned about efforts by Iraq and Iran to develop more accurate long-range missiles capable of knocking out Israel's existing nuclear arsenal, which is primarily land-based. Although developing a sea-based leg would preserve the deterrent value of Israel's nuclear force, according to analysts, it would complicate U.S. efforts to keep other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere from seeking to acquire nuclear arms. It also could spur a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Israel has long refused to confirm or deny it has nuclear weapons. U.S. analysts say it has a modest arsenal of short- and medium-range nuclear-capable missiles, nuclear bombs that could be delivered from jet fighters and Harpoon missiles that could be launched from planes or ships. Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, confirmed that his country had recently acquired three submarines from Germany but would not comment on whether they were being outfitted with nuclear weapons. "There has been no change in Israel's long-standing position not to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East," Regev said. A book published this week by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reported that Israel was attempting to arm its diesel submarines with nuclear cruise missiles. "Probably the most important nuclear-related development in Israel is the formation of its sea-based nuclear arm," wrote Joseph Cirincione, director of the Carnegie Endowment's nonproliferation project and a former staff member of the House Armed Services Committee who served as chief author of the book. The U.S. government "favors" Israel's preserving the ambiguity surrounding its nuclear force, just as it has since the late 1960s, a former senior U.S. diplomat said. "It gives it a strategic deterrence," he said, adding, "If [Israel] were being explicit, that would create problems with its neighbors like Egypt and Syria . . . whose leaders years ago agreed that [ambiguity] did not pose an offensive threat to them." Iraq and Iran, he added, are different because "they are destabilizing" countries and could launch a first strike against Israel or U.S. forces in the region if they succeed in developing and deploying nuclear weapons. There have been published reports going back to 1998 that describe Israel's acquisition of the diesel submarines and its testing of a cruise missile. In an article two years ago in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Reuven Pedatzur, a former Israeli fighter pilot and director of the Galili Center for Strategy and National Security, wrote that Israel was motivated by "the need to find deterrence solutions . . . from the probability that during the next decade Iran, and maybe even Iraq, will acquire the nuclear ballistic capability to hit Israeli targets." Pedatzur said that faced with that threat, a submarine force armed with missiles is a reliable deterrent because Israel's enemies would not be able to locate and destroy them and thus "that it is impossible to avoid their lethal counterstrike." The Carnegie Endowment book said Israel "is believed to have deployed" 100 Jericho short-range and medium-range missiles that are nuclear-capable. In addition, it has nuclear bombs that could be delivered from U.S.-made F-16 jet fighters and U.S.-built Harpoon missiles that could be launched from planes or ships. Israel's nuclear-capable, sea-launched cruise missiles were tested in May 2000, the book said, and might have a range of more than 900 miles. With three submarines, Israel could "have a deployment at sea of one nuclear-armed submarine at all times," the book said. "Such a survivable deterrent is perceived as essential because of Israel's unique geopolitical and demographical vulnerability to nuclear attack, and one that no potential enemy of Israel could ignore," it said. Cirincione said Israel's possession of nuclear weapons and modernization of its systems creates an "extremely difficult situation" not just for the United States, but also for preventing other countries that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from breaking away. Israel's possession of weapons remains officially ambiguous, but Israel, along with Pakistan and India, did not sign the treaty. Israel is only one of 15 countries discussed in the book, which describes the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their missile delivery systems. It updates a similar volume produced by the Carnegie Endowment four years ago. Cirincione said at least eight countries have nuclear weapons -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India and Pakistan -- and three more are apparently seeking them -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Four countries, he said, have in recent years given up their weapons -- South Africa and the former Soviet republics Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. The book attributed Iran's decision to seek nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to its experience during its war with Iraq in the 1980s, when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iranian forces. Iran is influenced by its "extended neighborhood [where] it sees Israel, India and Pakistan with advanced nuclear weapons" and Iraq's weapons program no longer subject to inspection by the United Nations, the book said. The authors said U.S. sanctions against Iran, which have hurt its ability to build conventional military forces, "have likely worked toward reaffirming belief in the utility of unconventional weapons." Iraq's search for nuclear and biological weapons rests on Hussein's desire to be the "dominant power in the Middle East" and his belief that "a nuclear bomb would provide him with the ultimate symbol of military power," the book said. It said "Iraq may have a workable design for a nuclear weapon" and that if Baghdad "were to acquire material from another country, it is possible that it could assemble a nuclear weapon in months." © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 40 Fear Factor The New York Times Opinion June 15, 2002* *By BILL KELLER* During the maximum jitters of the Cuban missile crisis, the high school where I was an impressionable freshman happened to be holding an assembly. The star speaker was a priest from San Francisco, who arranged to have his remarks interrupted by a student delivering a note. The priest studied the note, then looked up with a somber face and announced that the Soviet Union and the United States had just launched nuclear missiles at each other. Forty years later, I can still hear the terrified whimper in that auditorium as we all considered our imminent doom. But I can't remember a word of what the speaker said afterward. That's the thing about fear: It gets your attention and then refuses to give it back. Fear has been on my mind a good deal lately, since this paper's Sunday magazine assigned me to survey the possibilities of nuclear terror, from stolen warheads and homemade nuclear explosives to dirty bombs and the sabotage of nuclear power plants. Some of the threats actually struck me as less alarming on close examination. Dirty bombs, for instance ? conventional explosives packed with radioactive contaminants ? are fairly easy to make but the radiation is unlikely to be very lethal. Sober analysis had a hard time competing with grisly scenarios, though, and readers were more likely to remember the one-kiloton nuclear weapon I detonated (hypothetically) in front of the World Wrestling Federation gift shop on Times Square. By coincidence, the article landed just as the Bush administration was trying to inoculate itself against further charges of insufficient vigilance. While the magazine was at the printer, Donald Rumsfeld was telling Congress that terrorists would "inevitably" be armed someday with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and New Yorkers were hearing vague warnings about the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. We now know that the government already had in custody a Chicago street punk turned jihad wannabe who allegedly talked about making a dirty bomb; the man was put forward this week by our hyperventilating attorney general as some kind of nuclear Jackal. As a fear-monger, I've had powerful company. Letters and e-mails have poured in. A few readers objected that I had published a "road map for terrorists." Rest assured, the technical information in the article would not surprise a sophomore physics major. The few useful details I learned that are not widely known I left out, thinking less about the next World Trade Center than about the next Columbine High School. A couple of readers suggested that I had abetted the evildoers by identifying targets; tragically, I'm not the first to think of New York City in this regard, and the other iconic destination that came up in the article, Disneyland, was actually suggested by an elderly Russian physicist. A more common complaint was that it is senseless, sensationalistic or just way too depressing to dwell on threats without offering answers. Not that the article was entirely without prescriptions, but it was not a to-do list, and there was perhaps an undertone of fatalism. Some readers pleaded for guidance. One mordant New Yorker wrote in asking for a list of neighborhoods likely to remain beyond the range of radioactive fallout ? "and please indicate which have the best school systems." The problem with threats like nuclear terror is that they are not solved but managed, not eliminated but faced, cut down to size and endured. We lived with our last great nuclear nightmare ? that hurricane of intercontinental ballistic missiles from the Soviet Union ? for nearly half a century, and we kept our fears in check by employing a range of defenses that were none of them foolproof. We fumbled for decades to find the right mix of military readiness, geopolitical calculation, negotiation and attitude so we could coexist with the danger of Armageddon. To a significant degree, we redesigned our society around the threat. The things that worked best ? a sufficient arsenal to deter attack, the diplomacy of containment, the painstaking business of arms control ? were imperfect and complicated. They also had unforeseen consequences, some of which haunt us now, like the black market in nuclear remnants and the cold-war blowback of places like Afghanistan. (Meet the new threat, son of the old threat.) But here we still are. The easy answers were expensive placebos, like President Reagan's fantasy of an impermeable defensive umbrella, or before that the brief national obsession with civil defense. Remember that? At one point President Kennedy, afraid of being politically outflanked by New York's shelter-crazy Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller, planned to create fallout shelter space for 54 million people, who were to survive the nuclear aftermath on barrels of crackers, water and hard candy. Civil defense succumbed to an astronomical price tag and, as the cold-war historian Lawrence Freedman dryly put it, "the basic unreality of the proposition that straightforward measures were available to survive a nuclear war." Now, too, there is no single leap of technology, no grand strategic gambit or fortification that can render us completely secure against a determined terrorist. That is not an argument for doing nothing, but for doing many things at the same time, with the right degree of urgency and a steadiness of purpose. People who worry about terror for a living will tell you that the first priority is prevention. That means repairing an intelligence network that was built for the last threat, and locking up (or diluting) the fissile stockpiles where the material for ultimate terror is available. Prevention of terror can be military, such as denying terrorists the conveniences of a host state, and it can be geopolitical, such as pressing our Arab allies to counter Islamist intolerance. A close second is interdiction ? securing routes and borders, inventing better detection technology and installing it at ports and other choke points, conducting stings to disrupt the market in fissile materials. And if prevention fails, third comes response and recovery. New York City, as befits the foremost target, has the most sophisticated response system in the country, enhanced and refined by sad experience. In the end, though, the question is not just how to fight terrorism, but how to live with it. Even if you give our leaders passing marks (or the benefit of the doubt) for dealing with the actual threat, they have been dreadful at dealing with the fear of the threat. The silly color-coded gimmicks, the pre-emptive we-told-you-so's, the hype and spin and bluster and political opportunism, the willingness to make terrorism a lobbying prop for every cause on the Republican agenda ? these are eating away at the administration's credibility. How much confidence can you have in people who contrived a bogus claim of a Cuban bio-weapons threat just to embarrass Jimmy Carter when he visited Castro? Sure, it is important to tell us if you arrest a suspect contemplating dirty-bomb terror. It's cynical overkill to stage a victory-over-terror press conference a month after the arrest ? from Moscow ? and to invoke a newly invented category of military justice, all because some loser dreamed of spraying Washington with gamma rays. I live in a city that has been, twice, successfully targeted for major acts of terror, and I believe that atrocities on a large scale remain well within the means of bad guys. And yet, here I stay. Personally, I worry less about a dirty bomb than about a suicide killer packed with Home Depot shrapnel. Personally, I don't lie awake over the vulnerability of nuclear power plants, though if I lived downwind of one I might keep some potassium iodide tablets on hand. I do have bad dreams about the big one, an actual nuclear explosion, but I practice what psychiatrists call healthy denial. I've ordered a potted Ohio spiderwort for my windowsill; it changes color when the radiation level increases. I plan to name it Tom Ridge. That's me. Maybe you cope with the fear by reading up on the world. Or maybe what works for you is a set of hazmat suits for the family, or a fallout shelter. The companies that sell shelters on the Internet report a surge of new business; makes a nice spare guest room, they say. The urge to do something is normal, but problematic. I know a man who was stricken with a serious case of doomsday anxiety during the cold war. He pored over climate maps and studied the trade winds, looking for a refuge beyond the reach of windborne nuclear fallout. The most promising haven he found was a small group of islands off the coast of South America where the radioactive poison would never reach. Fortunately for him, the fear passed before he moved to his new sanctuary, because a few years later it was under bombardment. The islands were the Falklands. *Forum:* Join a Discussion on Bill Keller's Columns (Moderated) Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company ***************************************************************** 41 U.S. Tries to Stop Atomic Bomb Sale ABCNEWS.com : June 11, 2002 (AP Photo) U.S. Tries to Stop Atomic Bomb Sale Government Tries to Halt Sale of Arming Devices From Hiroshima Atomic Bomb The Associated Press S A N F R A N C I S C O, June 12 — Parts from the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima were auctioned for $167,500 Tuesday but the government says the sale is a breach of national security and wants to block it. Pending the outcome of litigation by the Justice Department, Butterfields Auctioneers Inc. agreed to hold onto the arming mechanisms from the bomb dropped from the Enola Gay. The B-29 bomber dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, killing roughly 140,000 people. The Justice Department said in court papers Tuesday the internal configuration of the thumb-sized plugs one of which was used to activate the real bomb is classified. The mechanisms work similar to the pin on a grenade. "Their design is classified as secret, restricted data," said federal prosecutor Steven Saltiel. Butterfields spokesman Levi Morgan said the government's case is "without merit." The government is seeking a court order prohibiting a San Diego physicist-turned-real estate developer from taking possession of the plugs. A hearing was set for Friday. A federal judge denied the government's request Tuesday to block the auction from Butterfields' San Francisco office and over the Internet. Clay Perkins, who bought the two thumb-sized devices, said they have great personal and historical value. He said the idea of nuclear power inspired him to embark on his first career as a physicist. "They are arguably the most significant physical objects to come out of the 20th century," said Perkins, 68. "They are the only thing left of the first atomic bomb." Prosecutors also said the plugs are the government's property, not that of the Enola Gay crew member who put them up for auction. photo credit and caption: This an undated handout photo of two small plugs used on the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima that were auctioned for $167,500 on Tuesday, June 11, 2002. The federal government says the sale is a breach of national security and wants to block the buyer from claiming his purchase. Pending the outcome of litigation by the Justice Department, Butterfields Auctioneers Inc. has agreed to hold onto the arming mechanisms of the bomb dropped from the Enola Gay. The B-29 bomber dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, killing roughly 140,000 people.(AP Photos/Butterfields Auctioneers Inc.) Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 42 London conduit was nuclear scientist HindustanTimes.com Wednesday, June 12, 2002 Chandan Nandy (New Delhi, June 11) London-based Kashmiri expatriate Professor Ayub Thakur, who is one of many links through which Pakistan's ISI funnels money for terrorist outfits in Jammu and Kashmir, was a member of the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI). He has been under the scanner of Indian security agencies since the 1970s. Thakur was a lecturer in nuclear physics at Srinagar's Kashmir University before opting for a job at the King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah. He has also had a brief stint as a researcher at the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre in Srinagar. His links with Geelani and the ISI were revealed in intercepted telephone conversations with Dukhtaran-e-Millat head Asiya Andrabi during February-April this year. In the intercepts, Thakur and Andrabi were heard discussing ways to send money for the 'jehad' in J. Andrabi is now absconding. Till the early eighties, Thakur was the general secretary of the Islami Jamaat-e-Tulba, the student wing of the J JeI. As head of the Jamaat-e-Tulba, he would liaise with the Saudi-based World Association of Muslim Youth and made visits to Dhaka and Malaysia. He was held under the Public Safety Act after he tried to hold an international conference of the Jamaat-e-Tulba. Thakur, who continues to hold an Indian passport, moved to London in 1984 and founded the World Kashmir Freedom Movement six years later with the help of Birmingham-based immigrants from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. He is believed to be the driving force behind two controversial books authored by Alistair Lamb — Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy and Kashmir: The Birth of a Tragedy. Both challenge the authenticity of the Instrument of Accession signed by Maharaja Hari Singh in 1947. Besides being a fund-raiser for Kashmiri separatist outfits, Thakur has been trying to bring together over 15 UK-based Kashmiri organisations under one umbrella. Not favourably disposed towards the moderates in the Hurriyat, Thakur reportedly is in touch with Ghulam Nabi Fai, another JeI leader who lobbies with US politicians, and UK-based Naseem Geelani, who runs the J Human Rights Council. Three more arrested Three more persons were arrested on Tuesday from Jammu and Kashmir during the CBI-IT team raid against those receiving foreign funds for terrorist activities. Those arrested included special secretary of state Public Service Commission (SPSC), an employee of Public Works Department and computer operator of Syed Ali Geelani. From the house of Farooq Ahmad Peer, special secretary, SPSC, in Sopore “incriminating” documents were seized. Peer has been accused of collecting funds for militants. -HTC, Srinagar [feedback@hindustantimes.com] Hindustan Times House, 18-20, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001, India Phone[Board]91-11-3361234 ©Hindustan Times Ltd. 1997. Reproduction in any form is ***************************************************************** 43 US, North Koreans discuss sending Washington envoy to Pyongyang Friday, 14-Jun-2002 6:40PM Story from AFP Copyright 2002 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet) UNITED NATIONS, June 14 (AFP) - US and North Korean officials held "useful" and "businesslike" talks on Friday at the United Nations, diplomats said, after a senior US State Department official said Washington wanted to send an envoy to Pyongyang. US special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, Jack Pritchard, met with the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, Pak Gil Yon, "to discuss issues related to the resumption of US-North Korean dialogue," the State Department said. "The discussions were useful and conducted in a businesslike manner," it said in a statement released in Washington. "We expect our contacts to continue." Earlier, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage recalled that President George W. Bush "has made it very clear that we will meet any time, any place, without preconditions." Armitage was interviewed in Washington by the Korea Broadcasting Service on Thursday. A transcript of the interview was released Friday. No US envoy has been to North Korea since Bush took office in January 2001, and for the first five months, his administration suspended talks with the Stalinist state. But Armitage said: "We will travel to New York to meet with the North Korean delegation, and afterward, at a time convenient to the authorities in Pyongyang, we would like to travel to Pyongyang." Friday's talks were held in utmost secrecy. The US mission to the United Nations said it had no prior knowledge of them, while the North Korean mission even denied they were taking place. After the talks began, an official in Washington said Pritchard was "presenting them with our ideas for moving ahead with the resumption of the dialogue the president has talked about." But the official declined to elaborate on what the US proposals were. He said the North Koreans were unlikely to respond formally to Pritchard's suggestions until they had conferred with Pyongyang and would not speculate as to when an announcement of the results of the meeting might be made. In January, Bush dubbed North Korea part of an "axis of evil," together with Iran and Iraq. Asked whether North Korea had shown any change in behaviour, notably over missile exports, Armitage replied: "I haven't seen any change in their behaviour to the United States. However, I note that recently there have been changes in their behaviour with Japan, which I think is a good thing." The North Koreans had also shown "a slight bit more willingness" to resume negotiations with South Korea, he said. South Korea -- whose president, Kim Dae-Jung, has staked his legacy on engaging North Korea -- has been urging Washington to speed up its engagement with Pyongyang. Bush aides say they want to discuss a wide range of issues with Pyongyang, including possible troop reductions on the Korean peninsula, North Korea's past support for terrorism, and nuclear and missile proliferation. They also have expressed doubt over Pyongyang's adherence to a 1994 deal known as the Agreed Framework, which halted North Korea's nuclear weapons programme in return for the manufacture of reactors which produce little weapons-grade material. In his interview, Armitage said the United States would live up to "our end of the bargain, because a deal is a deal." But, he said, "there are many things that we don't know and understand about the North Korean project, because we have not been exposed to the information." Bush has in recent weeks faced pressure from Congress to suspend construction of the reactors until Pyongyang allows inspectors to scour its weapons facilities for signs of nuclear arms manufacturing. "If everything is as advertised and the North Koreas are living up to their agreement, there should be no problem at all," Armitage said. "If, on the other hand, they are not doing what they need to do, then we'll have to consult with our friends in Seoul and our friends in Tokyo and see what is the proper course of action," he added. ***************************************************************** 44 A-bomb confab organizers to invite kin of Sept 11 victims japantoday Saturday, June 15, 2002 at 10:00 JST TOKYO ? Family members of the victims of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in the United States will be invited to take part in international conferences in protest of atomic and hydrogen bombs to be held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, conference organizers said Friday. Among those invited to the conferences, which are being organized by several groups, including the Japan Council Against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo), is Lita Lasar, who lost her younger brother in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Lasar is critical of the U.S. government decision to use her brother's death as a reason to launch retaliatory attacks in Afghanistan, and contends there are means other than violence to resolve such global conflicts. Lasar is expected to describe her experience and sentiments at the conferences, which will run from Aug. 2-9 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The organizers also plan to invite Tekoti Rotan, who was exposed to radiation in 1958 when Britain tested a nuclear bomb on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean. The organizers intend to join with governments and nongovernmental organizations around the world to use the conferences as a platform to present their vision of a world without nuclear weapons. The proceedings will begin with an international conference in Hiroshima from Aug 2-4, to be followed by domestic annual gatherings in Hiroshima from Aug 4-6 and from Aug 8-9 in Nagasaki. (Kyodo News) ***************************************************************** 45 Lab hosts week of films for workers Tri-Valley Herald Saturday, June 15, 2002 - 3:05:52 AM MST By Glenn Roberts Jr. Staff Writer LIVERMORE -- Don't forget to bring popcorn and proper clearance: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is hosting a weeklong film festival. As part of the lab's 50th anniversary celebration this year, officials are treating employees to a daily 30-minute film in the lab's Building 123 auditorium from June 17-21. "We hope the films will help employees gain a more thorough understanding of what the lab's rich history is all about," said Don Correll, director of the Science and Technology Education Program and a coordinator for lab anniversary events. "We think the film festival will be interesting for all employees, no matter how long they've worked here," he added. On Monday, the first film -- titled "Extraordinary Science, Extraordinary Leadership" -- will feature clips of the lab's past directors. Livermore has had eight directors in its 50-year history. Michael Anastasio, lab deputy director for strategic operations, will become the lab's ninth director July 1. Tuesday: "A Journey Through Time: The History of Engineering at LLNL." Wednesday: "Orders of Magnitude -- 50 Years of Supercomputing at LLNL." Thursday: "NIF Programs Directorate Presents Lasers Then and Now." Friday: "Fifty Years of Innovation in Nuclear Weapons Design." Bruce Church, president of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation, will speak to employees before the film about progress on a new museum, the Nevada Atomic Testing History Institute museum in Las Vegas. ©1999-2001 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers ***************************************************************** 46 Pantex: Ordinary people can catch polluters 06/14/02 Amarillo Globe-News: Local News: By KEVIN WELCH kwelch@amarillonet.com Residents found out Thursday about a new way they can help catch polluters. The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission hosted two workshops on the ability of ordinary people to collect evidence that can be used in court to prove wrongdoing. However, there are strict requirements for how to collect that evidence - everything from establishing a chain of custody to using sterile jars and storing the samples at 40 degrees. "It might be good for an environmental group. Out there at Pantex the neighbors might want to get together and do this," said Brad Jones, regional director for TNRCC. "But there have been people who videotaped a septic tank pumper pumping waste into a bar ditch, and now we can use that." However, just one mistake could make the evidence unusable. Caution is appropriate for those who want to pursue gathering evidence, especially on someone else's private property. "If you have to cross a fence, don't. Not only are you liable to be shot, we can't use evidence collected illegally," said Jimmy Walker, an environmental investigator. If someone were to collect evidence, that person might be required to testify and could not remain anonymous. However, if a person were to file a complaint, and let TNRCC handle the rest, that person's identity can remain confidential. Call the Amarillo office during working hours or the 24-hour hotline at (888)777-3186 or by e-mail at cmplaint@tnrcc.state.tx.us 1996-2002 Amarillo Globe-News ***************************************************************** 47 BWXT Pantex ready for Day of Volunteering 06/14/02 Amarillo Globe-News: By Jenny Klein/jmklein@amarillonet.com [jmklein@amarillonet.com] BWXT Pantex employees are rolling up their sleeves and getting ready for the Day of Volunteering, June 22. "It's an exciting day," said Debra Halliday, BWXT Pantex community outreach coordinator. About 40 nonprofit organizations and projects in Amarillo, Panhandle, Canyon, Claude, Fritch, Groom, Clarendon and Pampa will reap the benefits of this project, Halliday said. From 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on June 22, Pantex volunteers will assist these communities and their organizations on projects that might not otherwise get done. Projects range from bathing dogs at the Animal Rescue Shelter to painting the Clarendon school district's bus barn, depending on what the communities and organizations need. Employees choose the projects they want to help with according to their interests, she said. Larrie Trent, environment, safety and health division manager at BWXT Pantex, is one of the 300 to 400 volunteers already committed to this year's Day of Volunteering. Working closely with Amarillo organizations and the surrounding communities builds relationships with the entities, Trent said. The organizations know they can rely on the volunteers. In addition to providing labor, Pantex also provides the supplies for the projects, Halliday said. "There are BWXT Corporate funds behind this, so, where we need to, we buy supplies," Halliday said. "One thing I've noticed, is that a little bit really goes a long way in a small town," she said. "They don't have the resources like a big city does." The Day of Volunteering is part of a community outreach program to introduce and encourage volunteerism, Halliday said. "So many jobs can't be done without volunteers," she said. Last year was the first year for the Day of Volunteering and was well-received with more than 700 volunteers, Halliday said. 1996-2002 Amarillo Globe-News ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************