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09/15/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.236
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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 Taiwan: Anti-nuclear activists seek clear rules for referendum
2 UK: Out of the pool, into hot water
3 UK: Nuclear is not the only way
4 UK: State plans takeover of BE
5 UK: Pressure grows for British Energy deal
6
7 US: Fight against nuclear plant should not be forgotten
8 Japan: Tepco not to be punished in reactor crack scandal*
NUCLEAR REACTORS
NUCLEAR SAFETY
9 Bnfl Dismisses Terror Claims over Nuclear Cargo
10 US: NAU prof believes mining of uranium hikes cancer rates
11 Illness remains from Marshalls' nuclear past
12 Canada: Nuclear danger alarms residents
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
13 UK: Massive protest at nuclear freighters
14 UK: Security alert as plutonium ships near
15 US: Utah: Garn to Promote N-Waste Tax Ballot Measure
16 US: N-Waste: Hot Material Piles Up With No Firm Solution in Sight
17 UK: Massive protest at nuclear freighters
18 US: Parks may get more for cleanup
19 US: Nuke waste site a political issue? Well, of COURSE it is
20 UK: Sellefield Protest environmentalists charged
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
21 [southnews] Iraq Wants Deal over Letting Inspectors Back
22 UK: COPS TRAINED FOR NUKE DIRTY BOMBS
23 Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
24 Report: N.Korea Plans to Halt Tests
25 Britain Backs U.S. on Iraq Demands
26 US: George W. enters Adlai's shadow
27 US: New nukes dig in deep, rattle pols Burrowing
28 Cuba to Adhere to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
29 Canada joins 18-country group at UN pushing for nuclear test ban
30 Comic book about Hiroshima A-bombing translated into Korean
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
31 Hanford cleanup project under way
32 Amarillo Globe-News: Local News: Agency to bolster Pantex's
OTHER NUCLEAR
33 New Radiation Protection Against Terrorism
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 Taiwan: Anti-nuclear activists seek clear rules for referendum
The Taipei Times Online: 2002-09-15
PUBLIC PRESSURE: President Chen Shui-bian says he backs moves by
former DPP chairman Lin Yi-hsiung to push for a referendum on the
Fourth Nuclear Power Plant
By Chiu Yu-Tzu STAFF REPORTER
Anti-nuclear activists yesterday demanded clear rules for a
referendum after President Chen Shui-bian (³¯¤ô«ó) sided with
former DPP chairman Lin Yi-hsiung (ªL¸q¶¯) on the Fourth Nuclear
Power Plant. Lin will lead activists on a 1,000km march across
Taiwan beginning Sept. 21 in an effort to rally support for a
national referendum on the future of the Fourth Nuclear Power
Plant.
Lin is expected to announce plans for the march on Sept. 18. He
and his followers will march 20km every weekend for at least 50
weeks. Lin intends to raise environmental awareness and is
seeking a national referendum on the future of the plant by 2004.
Lin's action was interpreted as a criticism of the ruling DPP,
which reversed its decision made in October 2000 to halt
construction of the nuclear plant after giving in to opposition
parties in January last year. On July 3, during anti-nuclear
activist Chen Ching-tang's (³¯¼y¶í) public farewell in Kungliao,
Lin said that a government which embraces the controversial
nuclear plant rather than seek alternative sources of energy was
a failure.
In addition, Lin said, political figures violating the people's
will were unqualified to serve in a democratic government.
Responding to Lin's plans for a march, Chen said on Friday Lin's
views were the same as his own. Chen said that essential issues
pertaining to people's livelihoods, including the Fourth Nuclear
Power Plant, would someday be decided by public referendum.
Anti-nuclear activists, however, were skeptical about Chen's
words, noting he signed an agreement promising to scrap the
nuclear plant in November 1999.
Wu Wen-tung (§d¤å³q), spokesman for the Yenliao Anti-Nuclear
Self-Help Association (ÆQ¼d¤Ï®Ö¦Û±Ï·|) in Kungliao, where the
controversial plant is situated, told the Taipei Times yesterday
that a referendum held by insincere political figures would be in
vain.
"What we Kungliao people are concerned about is the government's
attitude toward the referendum," Wu said.
Wu said that a referendum held by the Kungliao Township Office in
1996 showed that 96 percent of voters opposed the establishment
of the nuclear plant in Kungliao. Turnout was about 70 percent,
Wu said.
The spokesman said, however, that the then KMT-dominated
government was reluctant to follow the people's will and argued
that the referendum lacked any legal basis.
"What we Kungliao people doubt is not the democratic mechanism of
a public referendum but political figures' attitudes," Wu said.
Wu said anti-nuclear activists in Kungliao had been cheated by
the DPP for too long, adding residents' long-term support for the
party has yielded only "a series of lies."
"Now, from president, to premier, to Taipei County commissioner,
to Kungliao township chief, all are served by DPP members. Did
this change a thing with regard to the nuclear plant?" Wu said.
Lai Wei-chieh (¿à°¶³Ç) of the Green Citizen Action Alliance
(ºñ¦â¤½¥Á¦æ°ÊÁp·ù), said President Chen should also reveal his
attitude toward the referendum carried out by Kungliao people in
1996 to clarify his stance.
This story has been viewed 150 times.
URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/09/15/story/0000168104]
Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
2 UK: Out of the pool, into hot water
Guardian Unlimited | Archive Search
The government's new electricity pricing certainly didn't help.
But British Energy was the architect of its own misfortunes, says
Richard Wachman
Sunday September 15, 2002
The financial crisis at British Energy makes for an intriguing
mix of business and politics. After the debacle at Railtrack,
which the former trade secretary Stephen Byers forced into
insolvency earlier this year, Ministers are understandably
nervous about the idea of pulling the rug from beneath another
former state-run industry. Like Railtrack, BE was a controversial
and unpopular privatisation, pushed through by the Conservatives
towards the end of their 18 years in government. But there is a
big difference between Railtrack and BE: no one was ever in any
doubt that Britain needed a modern, efficient rail network - the
question was whether this was better achieved under public or
private ownership. But there are many interest groups that would
be delighted if the nuclear industry disappeared off the face of
the earth. Obviously, these include environmental organisations
such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, which have long
harboured concerns about the industry's safety record. But BE's
commercial rivals would also be happy if the company ceased
trading because of its financial difficulties.
Given that there is over-capacity in electricity generation,
there would be no danger of power failures if BE went bust - even
though it provides around 25 per cent of electricity supplied to
UK homes and businesses. In the early 1990s, a huge amount of
generating plant came on stream when wholesale electricity prices
were kept artificially high in the wake of privatisation. The
demise of BE would solve the current problem of weak prices,
which have fallen by about a third since new electricity trading
arrangements, dubbed Neta, were introduced last year.
By taking BE's capacity out of the market, prices could slowly
rise again, making the industry commercially viable once more.
This is a solution favoured by BE's critics, who argue that if
the company faces hard times because it cannot flourish in the
free market, then market forces must prevail, and the company
should be allowed to go under. But things are rarely this simple,
especially when it comes to electricity. BE employs thousands of
people in Labour-held constituencies, so it should come as no
surprise that trade unions lobbied hard to persuade the
government to throw BE a £400 million lifeline. A further
complicating factor is that Britain will soon become a net
importer of foreign gas - much of it from Russia - so the
existence of an indigenous nuclear power industry is viewed in
Whitehall as a good insurance policy in case we are one day held
over a barrel by foreign suppliers.
Unlike fossil-fired stations, nuclear plant does not emit
greenhouse gases - so energy minister Brian Wilson reckons
nuclear still has an important role to play as a future UK energy
source. None of this means that BE must remain in private
ownership, come what may. It is entirely conceivable that the
government will decide that the industry can be better managed
within the public sector, and that pushing the firm into
administration is a good way of achieving this. The big question
for the government is whether administration is a simpler option
than reforming Neta, which City analysts say lies at the heart of
BE's, and its competitors', problems. The Neta system, claim
these analysts, has made power generation uneconomic, especially
for BE, which is selling electricity for less than the cost of
production.
But scrapping or tinkering with the Neta system carries a certain
amount of political risk. After all, it was this government that
told industry regulator Callum McCarthy to reform the old
electricity spot market - known as the pool - which was deemed to
favour the generators by keeping prices high at the expense of
consumers.
But if Neta has failed, should someone pay with their jobs?
McCarthy, perhaps, or Wilson, one of the Ministers responsible?
Let's not forget that BE's management bears a huge burden of
responsibility for the group's predicament.
BE knew full well that the arrangements that were planned under
Neta would disadvantage the company more than its rivals.
Fossil-fired stations are more flexible and can be turned on and
off to meet demand, which can fluctuate widely. Nuclear power
stations have to be kept running all the time, so are more
expensive to operate. The old 'pool' system made concessions to
BE, but Neta treats BE in the same way as its competitors, so the
slump in wholesale prices has affected it disproportionately.
So why did the company not hedge against the risk of lower
prices?
Others did so. Ed Wallis, the former boss of PowerGen, bought
East Midlands; National Power acquired West Midlands; Scottish
Power bought Manweb - and so the list goes on.
Supply operations have prospered by paying less for electricity
from the generating companies; they are not required to pass on
the full benefit of lower prices to consumers and none has done
so, but that's business. To be fair, under Peter Hollins, who was
chief executive of BE until last June, the company did make an
effort to diversify. In 1998 it was involved in a fierce bidding
war for London Electricity, but was outbid by Éléctricité de
France, which is controlled by the French government.
It tried to buy Yorkshire Electricity, but, for reasons that have
never been clear, that deal was never consummated. Finally, in
the summer of 1999, Hollins bought South Wales Electricity, but
this was small fry and a year later it was sold after it became
clear that BE was never going to become a major player in supply.
It appears that Hollins was right to have pushed diversification
in order to provide BE with a cushion against reduced wholesale
electricity prices. Arguably, he should have pursued that
strategy more vigorously. But the spotlight now is on Robin Jef
frey, who took over from Hollins last summer. Unlike his
predecessor, Jeffrey wanted BE to stick to its knitting, by
focusing on its nuclear activities both in Britain and North
America. Analysts in the City say he should have alerted the
market much earlier to BE's problems. The company is fighting for
its survival but just a month ago Jeffrey told City brokers in a
conference call that there was no financial crisis. Evidently, he
was mistaken. His handling of the situation is now the subject of
an investigation by the Financial Services Authority. If British
Energy does have a future from here, it is unlikely that Jeffrey
will be at the helm.
[UP]
[http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/credits.html]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
3 UK: Nuclear is not the only way
Guardian Unlimited | Archive Search
The Big Issue: The generation game
Observer
Sunday September 15, 2002
Will Hutton's column (Comment, last week) provides an excellent
analysis of the inherent flaws in the privatisation of
electricity generation. However, the claim that 'the rational
approach' would include nuclear in the future energy mix must be
challenged. With both of Britain's major nuclear generators
essentially bankrupt, who is going to finance a new generation of
nuclear reactors? Have we got accurate figures for the cost of
waste management and decommissioning? Even more to the point, who
is going to insure against the risks of suicide bombers? It is
only when we ask about the real economics of nuclear and the
alternatives that we are likely to develop a rational energy
policy for the future.
David Chaytor MP House of Commons, London SW1
Will Hutton points out the residual responsibility of government
to plan and ensure future energy supplies, while elsewhere you
headline John Monks's comments as an attack on 'UK plc'.
It is time to stop using this sloppy description. Public limited
companies can operate as they do precisely because their
liability is limited. Beyond that someone else picks up the
responsibility and the tab. If private individuals can't, or
won't pick up the tab, that's what we need the state for. However
much it may seek to privatise the delivery of its functions, it
can't privatise its responsibility for them - whether for energy
supply, pension provision, or whatever.
John Old Nuneaton, Warks
Will Hutton is right that the Government must bail out British
Energy on environmental and security grounds. But cash injections
must be linked to a clear exit strategy so that this drain on
public funds can be blocked at some point.
For too long the industry has 'Enronned' its liabilities into the
future. Now the taxpayer must pick up the cost, but funds for
developing new generation capacity should be directed towards
cheap, reliable and clean alternatives such as wind power.
Martin Juckes Oxford
Useful links [http://www.british-energy.com/]
[http://www.dti.gov.uk/]
[http://www.bnfl.co.uk/website.nsf/default.htm]
[http://www.cnduk.org/] [http://www.hse.gov.uk/nsd/ilrwglos.htm]
[http://www.ukaea.org.uk/] [http://www.nrpb.org.uk/]
[http://www.uilondon.org/]
[UP]
[http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/credits.html]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
4 UK: State plans takeover of BE
Guardian Unlimited Observer | Business |
[UP]
Ministers favour debt swap to beat nuclear bankruptcy - BNFL
merger a radical option
Richard Wachman and Oliver Morgan
Sunday September 15, 2002 [http://www.observer.co.uk]
The government could take a majority stake in stricken British
Energy as part of a radical plan to prevent the firm going
bankrupt. The scheme is being viewed with favour by Ministers as
it would avoid the need for outright renationalisation of the
nuclear electricity generator - a move that would cause an outcry
similar to the one earlier this year when Railtrack was taken
back into public ownership.
It is among options drawn up secretly by Credit Suisse First
Boston, the investment bank hired by Ministers to advise it how
to rescue BE, which generates a quarter of Britain's electricity.
Under this scenario, lenders to the firm, which include the
Government, would swap debt for shares in BE, which was
privatised by the Tories in 1996. Even more radical options being
considered would try to resolve the crisis through a shake-up of
the whole nuclear industry. One idea is for the Government to
take a majority of shares, offering BE share holders a 49 per
cent stake in a combined nuclear group including British Nuclear
Fuels, the state-owned nuclear services and Magnox generation
group.
Such a solution would resolve an ongoing dispute over the £300
million a year BE pays BNFL to reprocess fuel burnt in its
reactors. A deal would reduce the central costs of running
nuclear stations, and would create an integrated group involved
in making nuclear fuel, generation and waste.
It would also achieve the Government's ambition to part-privatise
BNFL. A source close to the companies said: 'This would solve a
lot of the problems of contractual relationships and duplicated
and internalised costs, while strengthening the balance sheet of
BE.
The Government is considering it.' Two weeks ago, the Government
threw British Energy a £400m lifeline after it warned it needed
financial guarantees if it was to be able to draw on its existing
credit facilities. The company has been hammered by falling
wholesale electricity prices.
Shareholders may take legal action against British Energy for not
alerting the market to its problems before the situation
developed into a full-scale crisis.
Separately, it has emerged that AES Drax, owner of western
Europe's largest power station, is on the brink of insolvency.
The Yorkshire plant has become too costly to run at a time when
electricity prices are at rock bottom.
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
5 UK: Pressure grows for British Energy deal
BBC NEWS | Business |
Sunday, 15 September, 2002, 10:38 GMT 11:38 UK
[Dungeness B Power Station] British Energy provides a fifth of
the UK's power
The government is reported to be considering taking a majority
stake in British Energy to save it from bankruptcy. According to
the Observer newspaper, the scheme is being viewed with favour by
ministers because it would mean they could avoid renationalising
the nuclear power firm.
The scheme would mean the government and other lenders would swap
debt for shares in British Energy.
The company generates a quarter of the UK's power but has been
hit by a drop in the wholesale price of electricity and by a
shutdown at one of its power stations.
Unfair advantage
Last week the government gave it an emergency loan of £410m
($636m) so that it could stave off insolvency.
The loan will expire on 27 September and the two sides must agree
a longer-term package by that date if British Energy is to
survive.
British Energy's UK Nuclear Power Stations
Hinkley Point B Hunterston B Dungeness B Hartlepool Heysham 1
Heysham 2 Torness Sizewell B
Even if the government is considering taking a majority stake,
administration is also still a possibility.
Last week Jim Godfrey, an adviser to the trade &industry
secretary, said that the government was not ruling out
administration. British Energy's competitors are applying their
own pressure to the government.
They are worried that if the nuclear generator is bailed out then
the rest of the industry might suffer.
Financial investigation
A spokeswoman for British Energy said the company had yet to
finalise further funding plans.
She said the group was considering "all the best possible
options" at the moment.
There is speculation that the company could be the subject of a
takeover, and billionaire Warren Buffet is reported to be among
those interested in making a bid.
The UK's financial watchdog is conducting an investigation into
British Energy's finances.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is concerned that the
company might not have kept investors properly informed of its
worsening financial position. It is expected to publish its
conclusions next month.
© MMII | News Sources | Privacy
*****************************************************************
6
Daily Yomiuri On-Line
[Daily Yomiuri On-Line]
[news]
[SOCIETY]
N-agency won't file charges against TEPCO
Yomiuri Shimbun
The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's Nuclear and Industrial
Safety Agency has decided not to file a criminal complaint against
Tokyo Electric Power Co. over the allegation that the firm
falsified records on its voluntary inspections of nuclear reactors,
agency officials said Friday night. The officials said the agency
also would not punish TEPCO, because it found no
clear evidence to show the nation's largest power company violated
either the Electricity Utilities Industry Law or the Nuclear
Reactor Regulation Law. According to the officials, the agency's
investigation could not identify TEPCO's violations of the laws
with sufficient exactness, as the company already had replaced or
repaired the items in question, including core shrouds.
The decision, made shortly after the ministry announced TEPCO may
have violated the laws, probably will affect the policies of local
governments that host nuclear power stations, observers said.
Based on a tip-off from within the firm, TEPCO conducted internal
investigations for two years and two months, and found that in 29
cases TEPCO allegedly had falsified records to hide its own
discovery of cracks at its nuclear reactors.
Earlier Friday, the agency submitted a report to a government panel
on nuclear safety, saying that TEPCO may have violated the laws in
six of the 29 cases, and may have neglected to comply with agency
directives in another five cases. Later the same day, agency head
Yoshihiko Sasaki said, "There's a possibility that TEPCO failed to
meet technical requirements through continued use of
(nuclear reactor parts) without making sure they were strong
enough." At the same time, however, Sasaki said: "We can't see any
clear evidence indicating violations of the laws, because all of
the core shrouds in question have already been repaired or
replaced. We will neither lodge a complaint against TEPCO nor
punish it." The six cases in which TEPCO was suspected of violating
the laws took place at the No. 1 and No. 2 Fukushima nuclear plants
in Fukushima Prefecture. However, the agency was unable to conduct
a full investigation.
Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun
*****************************************************************
7 Fight against nuclear plant should not be forgotten
Chesterton
Tribune
NWILink.com
Dear Editor:
The 50th anniversary story by Vicki Urbanik honoring Herb and
Charlotte Read on their part in establishing the Indiana Dunes
into a National Park was very interesting and well written.
The Reads were and still are active in many public interest
matters. One that bears mention is about the nuclear generating
plant that was being built on the lake front several years ago.
The power company with no regard for the safety and well being of
the general population was erecting a facility on an unstable
footing. They could not sink the piling down to the required
depth. This could result in settling of the reactor and
subsequent dangerous radioactive leaks. They were building on a
bog!
Enter the Reads, the Bailly Alliance, David Canright, H.J.
Steiner and a host of others who were successful in getting this
project stopped.
I am sure the people of this area offer the best to the Reads for
their efforts to make Duneland a better place to live.
And thanks to Vicki Urbanik for writing about it.
Ray Carnes
*****************************************************************
8 Japan: Tepco not to be punished in reactor crack scandal*
Sunday, September 15, 2002 **
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has decided not to file
a criminal complaint against Tokyo Electric Power Co. for
allegedly running nuclear reactors it knew were cracked,
government sources said Saturday.
The agency also decided not to impose an administrative
punishment on Tepco for six incidents involving five reactors in
Fukushima Prefecture. It said there was no clear evidence the
utility had violated the law.
It was difficult for the agency to investigate the cases because
the equipment in question had already been repaired or replaced,
the sources said.
According to agency inspections, Tepco is suspected of violating
the Electric Utility Law by failing to replace core shrouds at
five reactors in the 1990s at its two plants in Fukushima
Prefecture, despite having discovered cracks in them between two
and five years earlier.
Tepco is also suspected of violating the Nuclear Reactor
Regulation Law in connection with cracks in the steam dryer of
the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 plant.
More violations found
Three more reported defects at Tokyo Electric Power Co. reactors
may have violated the law, sources close to the case said
Saturday. Six other such cases were revealed earlier.
Tepco is suspected of keeping the three reactors at three plants
on line without fully inspecting whether their shrouds had cracks
-- just as they had in the six other cases, the sources said.
Keeping the possibly damaged reactors in operation may be a
violation of the technical requirements of the Electric Utility
Law.
The three were identified as the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima
No. 1 plant, the No. 2 reactor of the Fukushima No. 2 plant --
both in Fukushima Prefecture -- and the No. 1 reactor of the
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture.
All the facilities are now scheduled to undergo emergency checks.
If cracks are found, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency,
which oversees Tepco, may face more criticism for laxness,
according to the sources.
The agency, affiliated with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry, said Friday the preliminary results of its
investigation found that five reactors at two plants in Fukushima
Prefecture continued running with cracks in shrouds for several
years in the six earlier cases.
Tepco also found signs of cracks in the three reactors as well as
the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima No. 2 plant from 1993 through
1997.
In these four cases, the agency only noted that the firm
neglected its obligations to report their findings to the
government, saying the investigation could not detect any cracks.
Tepco reported to the government that it found nothing wrong at
some of the reactors during inspections conducted on the agency's
orders between last October and May this year. But the firm did
not actually carry out full inspections of the weld lines in
question, the sources said.
Tepco admitted in August that it may have falsified facility
inspection reports. It later finalized a list of 29 inspection
reports from the late 1980s to the 1990s that may have been
falsified.
The reports cover 13 of the 17 reactors at the firm's Fukushima
No. 1 and No. 2 plants and its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.
*The Japan Times: Sept. 15, 2002* (C) All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
9 Bnfl Dismisses Terror Claims over Nuclear Cargo
Scotsman.com
Sun 15 Sep 2002
/By Laura Scott, PA News/
The energy company responsible for transporting two nuclear
shipments to Britain from Japan today hit back at claims that the
cargo was a target for terrorists.
British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) has received a storm of
criticism over the transportation of radioactive plutonium from
Takahama for recycling at its nuclear power plant in Sellafield,
Cumbria.
Environmental campaigners Greenpeace claim the ships? five-tonne
cargo contains enough plutonium to make 50 nuclear weapons should
it fall into terrorist hands.
A BNFL spokesman said Greenpeace was entitled to protest but
insist a terrorist attack on the nuclear shipments or a radiation
threat to other countries during transportation was ?far beyond
the bounds of reality?.
Greenpeace however claims the radioactive cargo has also
endangered the environment as the ships sailed across the globe
en route to a port at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, where they are
expected to dock tomorrow or Tuesday morning.
?There is plutonium within this fuel and that is why we are
taking the security measures that we are taking, but I think it
is misleading that Greenpeace say it could be used to make
nuclear weapons,? a BNFL spokesman said.
?It?s really whether or not you believe that somebody who wanted
to get their hands on the plutonium could do so, is credible or
not, and I would say that it?s not credible.
?Security assessments have concluded that there is no credible
threat to these shipments as we have multiple and many layers of
defence which would actually impede an attempt at removal of the
cargo.
?And even a terrorist would need something akin to a very large
assembly facility such as the one at Sellafield to then go on and
remove the plutonium, so saying that the plutonium is ?weapons
usable? is several stages from reality.?
Safety measures include the fuel on board the ships being stored
inside 100-tonne armoured casks, which are bolted down, and the
ships themselves being armed and escorted by armed police.
Fuel on board has not been used in a reactor which means its
levels of radiation are ?very low?, BNFL said.
The ships are also specially designed to withstand a collision
and remain buoyant while specific routes and sailing times are
kept secret to help protect from terrorist interception or posing
any radiation risk to the environment, BNFL said.
A spokesman added: ?Even if the MOX fuel itself was exposed to
the environment, then that would result in a radiation dose no
greater than one millionth of what people would receive from
normal background radiation.?
About 20 boats full of protesters, which make up the Nuclear Free
Irish Sea Flotilla, were led by Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow
Warrior at midnight ready to ambush the Pacific Pintail and
Pacific Teal when they enter the Irish Sea.
A BNFL spokesman added: ?We have no problem with peaceful protest
as long as Greenpeace and other members of the flotilla do not
impede the safe passage of the ships.
?The safety of life at sea is paramount and we would hope that
Greenpeace would respect it.?
Plutonium mixed oxide fuel (MOX) and uranium on board the BNFL
ships was originally shipped out to Japan in 1999 for Tokyo
Electric which wanted to load it into a nuclear reactor to
generate electricity.
But the shipments are now having to be returned after BNFL
admitted five staff at the old Sellafield testing facility
falsified quality checks on the consignment.
This meant the Japanese company could not be sure the nuclear
pellets they were sent from BNFL were the correct width and using
them may have caused a nuclear meltdown.
Greenpeace says its protest has global backing and claims 80
governments have condemned the BNFL convoy since it set sail from
Japan, denying the ships access to waters around their countries.
The countries are entitled to their opinion although much of it
stems from a misunderstanding over how dangerous the nuclear
shipments are, a BNFL spokesman added.
*****************************************************************
10 NAU prof believes mining of uranium hikes cancer rates
[http://www.azcentral.com]
Michael Marizco Arizona Daily Sun Sept. 15, 2002
FLAGSTAFF - With cancer rates higher for Native Americans than
any other population in this country, Michael Amundson, an
assistant professor of history at Northern Arizona University,
has one suggestion for the NAU scientists who received $4.5
million to study the issue.
Look at a map, find the uranium mines, then superimpose them on a
map of where the poorest people in the country live. The two
maps, he said, will be almost identical.
"People with the least amount of power get the most environmental
damage," said Amundson, who has detailed that damage in a new
book, Yellowcake Towns, published by the University Press of
Colorado. Yellowcake was the nickname given to processed uranium
ore.
NAU will use the grant to study why cancer rates are so much
higher for Native Americans than for other populations. Some
suspect the cancer rates are higher because of uranium. However,
nobody has yet made a direct correlation between high cancer
rates among Native Americans and old uranium mining towns.
Grant supervisor Roger Van Andel has said the possibility exists
because of the piles of radioactive ore that have survived on the
reservations. Dust from the tailings is inhaled, and stormwater
seepage increases the likelihood that the tailings have entered
the water supply.
Amundson said the uranium mining business has been big business
in this country dating to 1889. The business boomed on the
Colorado Plateau beginning in 1922.
The ore found north of Durango, Colo., contained carnotite, a
radioactive mineral. From this, mining companies were able to
separate three basic elements: radium, a steel alloy named
vanadium and uranium.
During the Manhattan Project, 14 percent of the uranium used for
the first atom bombs was pulled from the Colorado Plateau. What
Amundson called a "green sludge" was eventually refined and made
into the Hiroshima bomb.
After World War II, the government began rummaging through the
stockpiles of that same ore to pull out the uranium as part of
the Cold War nuclear buildup.
Uranium mining towns began sprouting throughout the Southwest,
including Moab, Utah; Grants, N.M.; and Tuba City, about 100
miles north of Flagstaff.
One of the byproducts of uranium decay was a little-known gas
called radon. A radioactive inert gas, it has been used in cancer
treatments.
These days, radon is known as the second-highest cause of lung
cancer after smoking, the U.S. surgeon general says.
The uranium industry boomed in the late 1940s and busted in the
1950s, then saw a resurgence in the 1970s after the oil embargo.
While it petered out in the mid-1980s, debris piles of the
uranium ore still exist on reservations.
But the National Cancer Institute has published its findings on
cancer incidence rates for 1995 to 1999. For gallbladder cancer
rates, the numbers for races and ethnic groups showed a drop for
each one except Native Americans, which rose about 10 percent.
Leukemia rose 10 percent for Native Americans while dropping 5
percent for Hispanics and rising only 1 percent and 2 percent for
Asian and Anglos, respectively.
Stomach cancer has gone down in every group except Native
Americans, where it has risen 10 percent.
Amundson wouldn't be surprised to find that uranium is a cause of
those higher cancer rates.
[http://www.arizonarepublic.com/] -
Copyright 2002, azcentral.com. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
11 Illness remains from Marshalls' nuclear past
September 15, 2002
Posted on: Saturday, September 14, 2002
By Derrick DePledge Advertiser Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Aruko Bobo was used to being evacuated from her home
on Rongelap Atoll when the United States conducted nuclear tests
nearby. But she was surprised one morning by a thunderous boom
across the sky and the strange shower that followed.
"It was like snowflakes," she said through an interpreter, her
hands lightly touching her hair and face to show how it fell. The
powder soon burned and blistered her skin and, by the time U.S.
officials moved people off the atoll a day later, she was
horribly ill.
"We thought we were going to die," Bobo said.
As the United States fights a war against international terrorism
and prepares for a possible military attack on Iraq, many people
in the Marshall Islands remain preoccupied with a threat from a
different era. U.S. nuclear tests in the 1940s and '50s left a
trail of illness and contamination that has influenced a
generation.
A 1986 compact between the Marshall Islands and the United States
established a $150 million trust fund to repair some of the
damage, including $2 million a year for healthcare. But the
compact expired last year and there has been no additional
federal money available for healthcare while the two governments
negotiate a new agreement.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands has asked Congress and the
White House for $4 million a year for healthcare outside the
scope of the compact talks, which should end with a new agreement
in the next year. In the meantime, the Marshall Islands is using
part of the $17 million remaining in the trust to pay for
healthcare.
Mattlan Zackhras, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of the
Republic of Marshall Islands, said people want to move on from
the nuclear tests but are still dealing with the aftermath. An
estimated 8,000 to 12,000 people qualify for federal healthcare
aid because of the tests. Others are awaiting personal injury
awards from the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, which was created
through the compact to weigh health complaints.
"Justice has not been done," he said. "The United States has not
fulfilled its obligation in full."
Congressional sources said it might be difficult to obtain even
$2 million for Marshall Islands healthcare because Congress is in
the final stages of the annual budget process. The Hawai'i
congressional delegation is working to secure the money.
The office of Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawai'i, invited a handful of
people from the Marshall Islands to tell their stories to
congressional staffers yesterday afternoon. In a small room at
the base of the U.S. Capitol, survivors told of watching loved
ones die or forced to leave their homes.
Letwan Talensa, of Majuro, said her mother must live in Hawai'i
because she requires constant medical attention that she cannot
receive at home. "My mother is very sick," she said tearfully,
"but she cannot come home."
Bobo described how both her parents and her husband died from
thyroid cancer and how the same fate probably awaits her. She is
haunted by children born with birth defects. "Some of the babies
that were born," she said, "their heads looked like an octopus,
but their bodies were in human form."
When they were done speaking, one man began to sing and the
others quickly joined him, their voices in soulful tune. An
interpreter explained afterward that the song had great meaning
and that everyone knew its words by heart.
It was their old national anthem.
© COPYRIGHT 2002 The Honolulu Advertiser, a division of
*****************************************************************
12 Canada: Nuclear danger alarms residents
[http://www.canoe.ca/] Inside CANOE.CA SLAM! Sports
September 15, 2002
Kincardine Mayor Larry Kraemer says ratepayers' fears of a
"pretty big powder keg" are unfounded.
By [scoulson@lfpress.com] -- Free Press Reporter
Americans living near the Great Lakes are waking up to the
potential dangers of a plan to expand storage of nuclear waste at
Bruce Power, a Kincardine community activist says.
Normand de la Chevrotiere of the Inverhuron and District
Ratepayers Association said that's why U.S. anti-nuclear
activists issued a call Friday for an international review of the
plan.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) wants to begin storing used,
highly radioactive nuclear fuel bundles above ground at Bruce
Power. The pools where the bundles have been sent for decades are
nearly full.
OPG also wants the storage facility to be designated a nuclear
installation, which would limit liability for damages to $75
million.
U.S. activists believe the enlarged storage site, combined with
the neighbouring reactors and the nearby freshwater drinking
supply could make the plant a terrorist target.
The Inverhuron ratepayers tried to get Canadian courts to order
a more in-depth review, but lost their case in March.
De la Chevrotiere said the 300-member association is not
anti-nuclear.
"But we want to know if the facility is going to be safe. Where
do you draw the line in terms of what's prudent?" the actuary
asked.
"It would make a pretty big powder keg."
American nuclear plants have been taking their spent fuel away
from the Great Lakes to the mountains of Nevada, he said.
But Kincardine Mayor Larry Kraemer said their concerns are
misplaced. "I don't think people quite understand the nature of
the facility."
Kraemer said low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste -- mainly
workers' protective gear or power plant parts -- are of no use to
terrorists.
The high-level waste would be sealed in 90-tonne containers
welded shut. "So they're thick and heavy and strong enough to
take the impact from a train or a supersonic jet and not even
fizz on them."
David Shoesmith, a professor at the University of Western
Ontario and an expert in nuclear-waste disposal, said
above-ground methods are no more dangerous than the pools that
have been used.
"I don't perceive this to be any more of a danger from a leakage
perspective than it would be no matter where they stored it . . .
" Shoesmith said.
"From a terrorist point of view, flying a plane into this kind
of above-ground storage of waste would be nowhere near as
dangerous as doing it to the reactor."
But he said a proposal that has been floated to store waste
permanently in caverns dug into the Canadian Shield "would be
untouchable by this kind of terrorist activity."
The ratepayers' group is afraid the Bruce Power site will
eventually become a centralized storage facility for 20 nuclear
plants. It could store 750,000 waste fuel bundles, each about the
size of a fireplace log.
Complicating the plan is the financial hardship of British
Energy, which leases the nuclear power plants at the Bruce from
OPG.
Bruce Power is still a profitable division for British Energy,
officials say. OPG runs the storage of nuclear waste separately.
But British Energy's financial difficulties leave open the
question whether it could cover its share of liability from an
accident.
"I think the community would like to see this financial problem
behind Bruce Power and British Energy," Kraemer said.
Copyright © 2002, The London Free Press. All rights
*****************************************************************
13 UK: Massive protest at nuclear freighters
Irish military mobilised as plutonium ship nears UK
By Rob Edwards Environment
Editor
Two armed British freighters carrying enough plutonium for up to
50 nuclear bombs were heading towards a confrontation with the
Irish navy and a flotilla of protest ships in the Irish Sea last
night.
There were rumours yesterday that the ships, the Pacific Teal and
the Pacific Pintail, might come within a few miles of southwest
Scotland in an attempt to avoid the confrontation. The last time
they were sighted, at 1pm on Thursday, they were in the North
Atlantic, on course to sail around the west of Ireland and into
the Irish Sea from the north.
The anti-nuclear group Greenpeace has been playing a prolonged
game of plutonium cat-and-mouse with the ships, which are due to
dock in the northwest English port of Barrow in Furness within
the next few days. They had been expected to take the most direct
route into the Irish Sea from the south, between Wales and
Ireland.
But Greenpeace has claimed that the ships could be planning to
use the north channel and pass close by the Mull of Kintyre and
the Mull of Galloway. This was denied, however, by the Scottish
Executive, which said that Scottish ministers had not been
consulted because the shipment had not been re-routed near
Scotland.
For security reasons no route has been confirmed by British
Nuclear Fuels, the state-owned company which owns the ships.
'They are somewhere en route from Japan to the UK,' said a BNFL
spokeswoman. 'That's all I can tell you.'
The advantage of taking the northern route would be that the Teal
and Pintail could avoid Irish waters. The Irish government is
fiercely opposed to the shipment and has ordered its navy and air
force to monitor its progress.
Irish premier Bertie Ahern, has personally backed a flotilla of
more than 20 protest ships, including the Greenpeace flagship,
the Rainbow Warrior, which were yesterday gathered off Holyhead
in North Wales to plan their next move.
Protesters have promised for safety reasons not to impede the
passage of the plutonium ships, but they are determined to show
their opposition.
'If the plutonium ships do not enter the Irish Sea from the south
it will be a huge victory for the flotilla movement and the
people who have already sailed hundreds of miles to be here,'
said Paul Barrett, skipper of the yacht Tuscair with the
flotilla.
'It is also a signal that the strong opposition from the Republic
of Ireland at all levels has had an effect. However, it means
that the people of the west and northern Ireland and west and
south of Scotland are now in the firing line for a plutonium
shipment that would devastate their environment if there was an
accident. Are BNFL seriously going to ignite such a political
bonfire?'
The Green MSP, Robin Harper, was worried that such a dangerous
cargo was a potential target for terrorists.
'The fact that the ships carrying this fuel will potentially pass
within a few kilometres of the Scottish coast without any
apparent warning is of immense concern,' he said.
The Teal and the Pintail are nearing the end of a three-month
journey, bringing faulty nuclear fuel containing 255kg of
plutonium oxide back around the world from Japan.
The shipment, which has been shadowed by naval forces and dogged
by controversy, has been condemned by 80 governments along its
18,000-mile return route.
The two ships are each equipped with two 30mm cannons and crewed
by armed police officers. They will arrive at Barrow amid the
region's biggest-ever security operation, and the plutonium fuel
will then be transported to the Sellafield nuclear complex in
Cumbria for storage.
/
©2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
14 UK: Security alert as plutonium ships near
Guardian Unlimited Observer | UK News |
Mark Townsend Sunday September 15, 2002 The Observer
[http://www.observer.co.uk]
A massive security operation was underway in the North West of
England last night as two ships carrying enough plutonium to make
50 nuclear bombs neared the Cumbrian coastline.
About 700 anti-terrorist personnel - as well as police in the
biggest ever single deployment by the Cumbrian force - were
guarding the port of Barrow-in-Furness, where the vessels are
expected to arrive late tomorrow. Campaigners warned that the
ships constituted a major terrorist target and condemned their
arrival as 'foolhardy' so soon after the anniversary of 11
September.
The Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal, carrying 225kg of
weapons-useable plutonium from Japan, were last night about 300
miles off Land's End. A flotilla of 20 vessels, led by the
Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, was trying to 'intercept'
the vessels, which are owned by British Nuclear Fuels.
The Observer has learnt that the boats, described by Greenpeace
as 'slow, lightly armoured and vulnerable to attack', are being
tracked by two British nuclear submarines. A Royal Navy surface
vessel is also expected to escort the ships today on the final
leg of their 18,000-mile journey to Barrow-in-Furness, from where
the cargo will be taken to the nearby Sellafield plant.
Last night it remained unclear whether the two merchant ships,
each armed with 30mm cannon, will follow the west English
coastline or navigate around the western coast of Ireland.
The Irish government has not accepted assurances from BNFL that
its shipping arrangements are safe and has ordered the ships to
avoid Irish coastal waters. Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime
Minister, has also publicly backed a protest flotilla of around
20 yachts from Dublin, Co Wicklow and Wales. Paul Doody, the
skipper of one of the yachts, the Noble Warrior, said: 'We will
make sure the UK Government hears us loud and clear - the Irish
Sea must not be a nuclear dumping ground, nor a nuclear highway.'
Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace said: 'It's an outrage that taxpayers'
money is being used to defend this morally and financially
bankrupt industry.' The Pacific Pintail and Teal are carrying Mox
fuel, a potential weapons-grade mixture of plutonium and uranium
from Sellafield. The fuel pellets were rejected by Tokyo after
BNFL admitted that its officials had falsified safety
documentation.
During their seven-week voyage from Japan the vessels have become
the most opposed nuclear transport in history, incurring warnings
from 80 governments not to enter their coastal waters.
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
15 Utah: Garn to Promote N-Waste Tax Ballot Measure
The Salt Lake Tribune --
Sunday, September 15, 2002
Backers of a waste-tax initiative have enlisted former U.S. Sen.
Jake Garn to rally voter support for the ballot measure, which
outlaws certain kinds of radioactive waste and sets rates for
taxing approved waste, among other things.
In a news release, Garn said he believes the Radioactive Waste
Control Act will keep Utah from being "the bargain basement" of
the radioactive waste dumping industry.
Last month, the Utah Supreme Court ordered the initiative onto
the Nov. 5 statewide ballot. Acting on a motion by initiative
backers, the court ruled the Legislature's initiative law favors
rural voters over urban voters.
The initiative's main opponent, Utahns Against Unfair Taxes, is
backed by Envirocare of Utah, a company that operates a 640-acre
landfill for low-level radioactive waste in Tooele County.
Envirocare will be most immediately affected if voters pass the
proposed waste law.
Garn will be co-chairman of Utahns for Radioactive Waste Control.
The act, backers say, would deliver additional tax revenue to
schools.
-- Greg Burton
© Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on
*****************************************************************
16 N-Waste: Hot Material Piles Up With No Firm Solution in Sight
Sunday, September 15, 2002
[PHOTO]
The La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor in Genoa, Wis., on the banks
of the Mississippi River, has been shut down since 1987, and 42
tons of spent material still are stored there.
BY JUDY FAHYS © 2002, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Near the end of President Lyndon Johnson's final term, the United
States built the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor in Genoa, Wis.,
on the banks of the Mississippi River.
The plant was a demonstration model nuclear reactor designed to
convince a reluctant nation that nuclear fission had peacetime
benefits.
In 1973, Dairyland Power Cooperative paid the government $1 for
the reactor and produced electricity there until 1987, when the
plant was shut down with 42 tons of spent nuclear fuel locked
inside.
The highly radioactive waste is still there.
Dairyland customers in five Midwestern states have paid $4.5
million a year since then to tend the shut-down nuclear reactor.
Moving spent fuel from the defunct plant to Utah's Skull Valley
would finally solve what has been a long, expensive headache for
a half-million ratepayers.
"You get rid of the waste and those payments go away for our
customers," says Dairyland spokeswoman Deb Mirasola. "Frankly,
it's just not a good long-term environmental or security strategy
to use a closed storage site [to house nuclear waste] because it
was not designed for that purpose."
That is what makes Skull Valley so important to so many people.
And that is why Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a power company
consortium which includes Dairyland, is willing to pay the Skull
Valley Band of the Goshute Indians millions to build a $3.1
billion nuclear waste storage facility in Utah's West Desert.
One of the project's biggest obstacles comes this December, when
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to decide on
whether to draft a license for the Skull Valley storage proposal.
The Waste Piles Up: Back in the 1960s, private power companies
had only sketchy plans for what they would do with the waste if
nuclear-powered electricity generation became widely accepted.
Dairyland's small Genoa reactor, like many others, counted on
minimizing power-plant waste by reprocessing fuel, a process of
separating plutonium and uranium for other uses, including
re-burning for power production or making bombs.
But President Jimmy Carter dashed those expectations in 1977 by
banning reprocessing to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation.
Congress attempted to tackle the growing waste problem with the
1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, launching a search for repository
sites in six states.
Controversy over the sites forced Congress to change course just
a few years later. Waste policy amendments in 1987 scrapped most
of the recommended sites, including a proposal to bury nuclear
waste next to Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah's
San Juan County.
Those 15-year-old amendments named Yucca Mountain, Nev., as the
place where the U.S. Energy Department would open a national
repository by Jan. 31, 1998.
Lawmakers also created a new system for locating future storage
sites by inviting communities to volunteer to take the waste, a
procedure that allowed politicians to avoid a backlash from
constituents who didn't want the waste.
Still, it took Congress three years to fill the Nuclear Waste
Negotiator Office, which would oversee the volunteer program.
Let's Make A Deal: Boise attorney David H. Leroy still laughs
when he recalls getting a call about the job from then-President
George Bush's office. Leroy, having suffered back-to-back
gubernatorial and congressional defeats, considered the fact that
whoever took the job would be a pariah. He took it anyway.
Leroy invited 574 local governments, states, Indian tribes and
foreign leaders to consider storing the waste. By October 1991,
20 had accepted grants of $100,000 to explore the idea.
"The bottom line," Leroy says "was money in a variety of forms."
The Goshutes were among 16 curious tribes. A query from the San
Juan County Commission in far southeastern Utah was one of only
four that came from communities.
Given their county's history of uranium mining and milling,
county commissioners Bill Redd and Ty Lewis thought warehousing
waste in dry casks was a reasonable proposal.
Convinced the tightly packed power-plant waste posed little risk,
the community leaders focused on promises that the waste-storage
project would generate 250 jobs and produce up to $15 million a
year in tax revenues -- the type of by-products one of the
nation's poorest counties sorely needed.
San Juan's flirtation with power-plant waste ended with Gov. Mike
Leavitt's election in 1992.
Following their first meeting with the governor-to-be, Leavitt
held a news conference to announce he would support San Juan's
request for a phase-two grant "over my dead body." The county
never asked for his help seeking a $200,000 grant to examine the
idea further.
"We have never had the problem debated [but] we have had
emotional screaming," says Redd, still a commissioner.
While the San Juan struggle may not have made national headlines,
it served as a vivid example of the trouble policy makers
encounter when considering any sort of final destination for the
nation's nuclear waste.
"San Juan County does not have the responsibility to become the
nation's nuclear dump simply because uranium has been mined
here," says Bluff resident Gene Stevenson.
In 1995 -- two years after President Bill Clinton replaced Leroy
with former Idaho Rep. Richard Stallings -- lawmakers whose
states were in the running for second-step waste-site grants
teamed up to sack the Nuclear Waste Negotiators Office. Still
considering whether to take the waste were nine tribes, including
the Mescalero Apache in New Mexico, the Paiute-Shoshone on the
Oregon-Nevada border and the Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah.
All the while, a growing waste problem nagged at the nuclear
industry.
Whose Waste? Dairyland ratepayers will pay to secure and maintain
the Genoa plant until it can be decommissioned, which is
impossible while 333 nuclear fuel assemblies, submerged in a
cooling pool, are stored there.
In Minnesota, where the leader of the PFS consortium has three
reactors, the pressure is growing to move the waste off-site, but
people disagree on a local site for temporary storage.
"All [policymakers] are doing is using these stopgap measures to
keep the [nuclear] industry going," says Carol Overland, an
attorney who successfully deflected a storage site headed for her
rural Minnesota community four years ago.
The Minnesota Legislature has ordered Prairie Island shut down if
the stored waste is not gone by 2007.
The need to unload excess waste or face closure is similar at
many of the PFS sites, which produce electricity for nearly 32
million customers.
Although the federal government pledged to take the waste off
their hands in a few years, prospects for Yucca Mountain remain
very much in doubt. Just last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit declined to dismiss three of
five lawsuits filed by Nevada to prevent Yucca from accepting
waste.
Even though Congress and the Bush Administration have approved
plans for the repository, the earliest Yucca Mountain could begin
taking waste is 2010.
The nuclear industry, of which PFS is just one part, remains in a
bind. Its 103 reactors, which provide 20 percent of the nation's
electricity, are nearing the end of their current licenses. Many
utilities would like to extend their plant's lives by renewing
licenses for another 20 years, but lack of storage is a
significant hurdle.
By this fall, the industry is expected to have accumulated enough
spent fuel to completely fill the proposed Skull Valley site,
with its planned capacity of 44,000 tons.
"It's a national problem," says PFS Chairman John D. Parkyn,
suggesting that Yucca Mountain alone -- despite its 77,000- ton
capacity to store military and commercial waste -- will be unable
to solve it.
The nuclear industry is committed to safe, underground storage in
a central location away from the reactor sites, Parkyn says.
"They feel there's an obligation to provide public safety, and
that means finding a centralized storage facility for spent
fuel," he says. "The idea of letting it sit [at reactor sites] is
the worst option for regular ratepayers."
Because the DOE failed to develop a permanent storage site by
1998, as promised, nuclear companies have 18 pending lawsuits
against the Energy Department.
Tired of delays, the PFS consortium, led by what is now Xcel
Energy, began negotiating for its own site and struck a deal in
1995 to store about 22,000 tons of spent fuel on the Mescalero
Apache reservation.
Mescalero leaders pushed the project, touting its projected $250
million in benefits to the 3,000-member tribe over four decades.
But the deal quickly unraveled.
That left the Skull Valley Goshutes the last player in the game.
Welcome to Utah: The Utah tribe's executive committee signed a
deal May 20, 1997. So did Tooele County commissioners, who agreed
to cooperate with the consortium in exchange for payments
expected to top $200 million. But dissent has erupted within the
Skull Valley Band and spilled into the courts and executive
branch agencies.
The waste issue has set the state government against two counties
-- San Juan and Tooele -- and the Goshutes. In a federal case now
before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the state hopes to
penalize all the project proponents -- the Goshutes, Tooele
County and PFS -- for proceeding with the project.
And state leaders hope to have the federal licensing of the
PFS-Goshute site declared unconstitutional. Leavitt says the
federal nuclear-waste laws allowed private companies to buy the
Goshutes' sovereignty.
"If it was anywhere outside the tribal nation," he says, "I would
have the power to veto it."
The flap even appears to be testing the resolve of the PFS
consortium.
As part of an effort to secure the support of Utah Republican
Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, the Energy Department said it
would refuse to use any money from a $20 billion nuclear
ratepayers fund to help move waste to and from the Skull Valley
site. DOE also proffered a letter that said six of the eight PFS
members would not support the Skull Valley storage beyond
licensing as long as the Yucca Mountain project appeared to be
going well.
But PFS's Parkyn, for one, believes Yucca Mountain is no silver
bullet. "It doesn't change the need for Skull Valley in any way."
Just ask Leroy.
"We have a problem out there without a solution for the short
term or the long term," says the nation's former Waste
Negotiator. "One is still needed. It was needed yesterday and the
day before."
fahys@sltrib.com
© Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on
*****************************************************************
17 UK: Massive protest at nuclear freighters
Sunday Herald
Irish military mobilised as plutonium ship nears UK
By [rob.edwards@sundayherald.com] Environment Editor
Two armed British freighters carrying enough plutonium for up to
50 nuclear bombs were heading towards a confrontation with the
Irish navy and a flotilla of protest ships in the Irish Sea last
night. There were rumours yesterday that the ships, the Pacific
Teal and the Pacific Pintail, might come within a few miles of
southwest Scotland in an attempt to avoid the confrontation. The
last time they were sighted, at 1pm on Thursday, they were in the
North Atlantic, on course to sail around the west of Ireland and
into the Irish Sea from the north.
The anti-nuclear group Greenpeace has been playing a prolonged
game of plutonium cat-and-mouse with the ships, which are due to
dock in the northwest English port of Barrow in Furness within
the next few days. They had been expected to take the most direct
route into the Irish Sea from the south, between Wales and
Ireland.
But Greenpeace has claimed that the ships could be planning to
use the north channel and pass close by the Mull of Kintyre and
the Mull of Galloway. This was denied, however, by the Scottish
Executive, which said that Scottish ministers had not been
consulted because the shipment had not been re-routed near
Scotland.
For security reasons no route has been confirmed by British
Nuclear Fuels, the state-owned company which owns the ships.
'They are somewhere en route from Japan to the UK,' said a BNFL
spokeswoman. 'That's all I can tell you.' The advantage of taking
the northern route would be that the Teal and Pintail could avoid
Irish waters. The Irish government is fiercely opposed to the
shipment and has ordered its navy and air force to monitor its
progress.
Irish premier Bertie Ahern, has personally backed a flotilla of
more than 20 protest ships, including the Greenpeace flagship,
the Rainbow Warrior, which were yesterday gathered off Holyhead
in North Wales to plan their next move. Protesters have promised
for safety reasons not to impede the passage of the plutonium
ships, but they are determined to show their opposition.
'If the plutonium ships do not enter the Irish Sea from the south
it will be a huge victory for the flotilla movement and the
people who have already sailed hundreds of miles to be here,'
said Paul Barrett, skipper of the yacht Tuscair with the
flotilla.
'It is also a signal that the strong opposition from the Republic
of Ireland at all levels has had an effect. However, it means
that the people of the west and northern Ireland and west and
south of Scotland are now in the firing line for a plutonium
shipment that would devastate their environment if there was an
accident. Are BNFL seriously going to ignite such a political
bonfire?'
The Green MSP, Robin Harper, was worried that such a dangerous
cargo was a potential target for terrorists.
'The fact that the ships carrying this fuel will potentially pass
within a few kilometres of the Scottish coast without any
apparent warning is of immense concern,' he said.
The Teal and the Pintail are nearing the end of a three-month
journey, bringing faulty nuclear fuel containing 255kg of
plutonium oxide back around the world from Japan.
The shipment, which has been shadowed by naval forces and dogged
by controversy, has been condemned by 80 governments along its
18,000-mile return route.
The two ships are each equipped with two 30mm cannons and crewed
by armed police officers. They will arrive at Barrow amid the
region's biggest-ever security operation, and the plutonium fuel
will then be transported to the Sellafield nuclear complex in
Cumbria for storage.
[http://www.thesundayherald.com]
©2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
18 Parks may get more for cleanup
PittsburghLIVE.com -
By Mary Ann Thomas [mathomas@tribweb.com]
VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
Saturday, September 14, 2002
WASHINGTON: More federal money might be coming to support the
study and cleanup of the nuclear waste dump along Route 66 in
Parks. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, supported passage of
legislation in the House Appropriations Committee this week
providing a $10 million increase in environmental cleanup
programs covering the Parks site. The committee passed a $150
million budget for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action
Program. The legislation is only taking a first step on the way
to Congressional approval.
The Parks site is one of 46 contaminated sites in 14 states
covered by the program.
"With this level of funding, I'm confident that the work in Parks
Township will continue to advance," Murtha said Friday.
Frustrated with the slow pace of the cleanup of the Parks site,
Murtha pushed through legislation last year for the site cleanup
to be governed by sites program. That move took away the reins of
the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission which has jurisdiction
over the site. Radiological and chemical wastes were buried at
the Parks site in unlined trenches from the NUMEC nuclear fuel
facility in Apollo between 1960 and 1970. The Atlantic Richfield
Co. and BWX Technologies (formerly Babcock &Wilcox) became
subsequent owners of the site. "Congressman Murtha has come
through again for the citizens of the Kiski Valley with the
passing of this funding on the FUSRAP program," said Patty Ameno,
an environmental activist from Leechburg. "This waste dump is of
the highest priority for cleanup by its very nature," Ameno said.
She is referring to the unknown content of the trenches and site,
abandoned deep coal mines under the site and gas lines running
through the property.
The Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the sites program,
set a cleanup date for sometime in 2007. The agency is studying
the site and will present cleanup alternatives.
Corps officials have said that a cleanup might not mean the total
removal of contaminated soil. But Murtha is insisting on a
through cleanup.
Mary Ann Thomas can be reached at mathomas@tribweb.com
[mathomas@tribweb.com] or (724 )226-4691.
consent from PittsburghLIVE.
*****************************************************************
19 Nuke waste site a political issue? Well, of COURSE it is
Politics is at the heart of a lawsuit involving the siting of a
low-level radioactive waste dump in Nebraska.
In just a few weeks, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf will
decide whether politics unduly influenced Nebraska's refusal to
license a Boyd County site for a low-level radioactive waste
disposal site.
Did then-Gov. Ben Nelson's desire not to have the site in
Nebraska influence the lengthy licensing process and decision?The
Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact and its
partners say it did. And they want the $98 million they sent to
Nebraska to study the site, plus interest. They also are asking
that the licensing process of the Boyd County site be reopened.
The state contends the rejection of the site was based on genuine
environmental problems and legitimate worries about the financial
health of US Ecology, which would have developed the site.
No matter how Kopf rules, the truth is that building a dump
inherently is a political issue across the country.
Few people want one in their corner of the state, and elected
officials listen to their voters. So politics has permeated every
attempt to find a site for disposing of the waste created by
universities, hospitals and nuclear reactors.
Low-level waste disposal was a political issue when Congress
created the compact system in 1980 and mandated that states
either build their own waste site or join a compact that would be
responsible for finding and building a site.
"Theoretically, the country could live with one waste site, but
no state is willing to take all the waste for the whole nation,"
said Kathryn Haynes, executive director of the Southeast Compact
Commission for Low Level Radioactive Waste Management. "That's
what got us to this position in the first place."
Congress deliberately did not specify a number of sites, she
said, "because they recognized it is not a matter of capacity. It
is a matter of politics."
The compact system was to lead the way. Instead, there has been
foot dragging, finger pointing and sometimes litigation in states
where siting a facility got close to reality. In fact, no state
has built a waste disposal facility since Congress created the
compact system 22 years ago, and only one state, California, has
even licensed one.
"This is a political problem across the country," said Haynes.
Take California. A site was licensed on federally owned land
there, but the Clinton administration dragged its feet in turning
over the land to the state.
The politics of this scenario was explained in a 1995 e-mail
found during a lawsuit involving the site. The e-mail from the
White House Council on Environmental Quality chief staffer to
other Department of Environmental Quality staffers said the
California site was safe. Then it continued: "That said, they
(Interior Department officials) believe that as a political
matter, the administration simply cannot of its own volition
agree to hand over the site in exchange for a check and an
unpopular governor's promise to do the right thing."
"You have to realize that this is not a technical issue, it is
more a political issue," said Alan Pasternak, a California
consultant on energy and radioactive waste management policy.
Since the licensing system has not worked, it appears compact
commissions and utilities have turned to the courts to either
require states to honor their agreements or return the money.
Two states are involved in litigation with issues similar to
Nebraska's:
? North Carolina. The Southeast Compact Commission and its member
states are asking North Carolina (which was supposed to provide
the low-level waste site for that compact) to return $90 million
given to the state for the siting work, plus interest. The
plaintiffs are also asking the U.S. Supreme Court to determine
that the compact commission has the power to sanction the state
and thus have some control over the siting process. The court
will likely decide whether to take original jurisdiction of the
case this fall.
? California. U.S. Ecology Inc. is seeking, through the state
court system, more than $162 million in development expenses,
interest and other damages from the state for, among other
things, abandoning its obligation to buy a disposal site that had
met licensing requirements. The compact and the company have
given up on the site itself because of political opposition from
the current governor and many legislators.
"Politicians don't want to deal with this problem," said Haynes.
Nebraska's low-level lawsuit itself became embroiled in politics.
Attorney General Don Stenberg withdrew his agency from the case
because of politics after he became a candidate for the U.S.
Senate and it appeared the Boyd County decision might be an issue
in that race. Nelson was the Democratic candidate in that race.
And the issue will remain a political football after the verdict,
particularly if Kopf, who seems to favor the plaintiffs and not
the state, decides Nebraska must pay the compact and utilities
millions of dollars.
In fact, Republicans would love to see Nelson cast as the villain
who cost Nebraska taxpayers $98 million, maybe more, just a few
years before he must run for re-election to the Senate.
And Democrats will be quick to remind voters it was Republican
Gov. Kay Orr who acquiesced when the compact first decided
Nebraska should be the host state, and that it was Republican
Stenberg's withdrawal from the case that assured Nebraska would
depend solely on pricey out-of-state law firms.
Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or at nhicks@journalstar.com.
Copyright © 2002, Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
20 UK: Sellefield Protest environmentalists charged
Four members of an Irish environmental group have been charged
with public order offences over a protest at Sellafield visitor's
centre in Cumbria.
The activists chained themselves together on the roof of the
centre to protest against what they describe as the
disinformation about nuclear power it disseminates.
All four were released on bail after the protest and are due to
appear before Whitehaven Magistrates' Court on September 24.
A spokesman for the group said members had taken the action to
coincide with the return of a shipment of radioactive material to
Sellafield through Irish waters, after it was rejected by Japan.
He said they wished to highlight the fact that the nuclear
industry is "dangerous".
"This centre paints a very glossy picture of nuclear power and
its future when this plant, and indeed all their plants, are
losing phenomenal amounts of money (and) causing massive amounts
of pollution," he added.
Greenpeace activists have put to sea to search for the
radioactive shipment on its way back to Sellafield.
The group's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, led a handful of boats
from Dublin port while more vessels set sail further south from
Arklow in County Wicklow.
The flotilla of 10 craft were to sail to Holyhead in Wales and
then along the coast to Scotland where more small boats and
yachts will join the protest.
They plan to locate the cargo ships, the Pacific Pintail and the
Pacific Teal, which are due to arrive in the Irish Sea at any
time.
© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 15 September 2002
This Is London
*****************************************************************
21 [southnews] Iraq Wants Deal over Letting Inspectors Back
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 11:44:33 -0500 (CDT)
4 DVDs Free +s&p Join Now
http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/MVfIAA/7gSolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
----------
Iraq Wants Deal over Letting Inspectors Back
September 14, 2002 By Hassan Hafidh
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq
Aziz said on Saturday Baghdad would only let U.N. weapons Inspectors return
under a comprehensive deal that would prevent a U.S. attack and lift
crippling 12-year-old U.N. sanctions.
Aziz held a news conference to respond to President Bush's speech to the
United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. Bush said unspecified action
against Iraq would be inevitable unless the world body forced Baghdad to
eliminate weapons of mass destruction.
"If there is a solution which maintains Iraq's sovereignty, dignity and
legitimate rights and prevents aggression, we are ready," Aziz said.
But he said Iraq would prevent inspectors returning if "there is no honest,
balanced and credible formula that will take us to the truth."
What is being said (that Iraq should allow the inspectors back) is not a
solution," he added.
He accused Washington and London of blocking efforts to resolve the weapons
inspections issue.
Aziz said he feared if the inspectors were readmitted, a crisis over their
activities could soon arise that the United States would exploit as a
pretext to attack.
He cited the U.S.-British bombing campaign in December 1998 as an example.
Washington and London attacked Iraq for four days during that month for
Iraq's alleged failure to cooperate with U.N. arms experts.
The inspectors left Iraq on the eve of that attack and they have not been
allowed back since.
SITUATION "SAME AS 1998"
"We are facing the same situation as we faced in 1998. Continuos
accusations are being made in Washington and London against Iraq."
He said U.N. inspectors, responsible for accounting for Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction, were in Iraq for seven and a half years but they had
found no prohibited arms. "They made thousands of inspections...but they
did not find anything except what we presented to them and declared to
them."
Aziz renewed an invitation to U.S. members of Congress to visit sites
suspected of producing weapons of mass destruction.
"You can bring all the experts you need in those (suspected weapons) areas
and you can bring all the equipment you need to search for the truth," he
said.
Aziz also refuted Bush's charges that Baghdad was developing weapons of
mass destruction, harboring terrorist groups and posing threats to its
neighbors, saying Washington wanted to use as pretexts to attack Iraq.
"Those accusations are a pretext to justify unjustifiable aggression and
invasion of Iraq."
He said Baghdad had rebuilt sites destroyed by U.S.-led bombing during the
1991 Gulf War and in 1998, but was using them for civilian purposes.
Aziz denied any link with Osama's bin Laden's al Qaeda organization accused
by Washington of carrying out September 11 attacks in the United States
that killed more than 3,000 people.
"Iraq didn't have any kind of relations with (Afghanistan's) Taliban and
Iraq did not have any relationship with al-Qaeda," he said. But Aziz said
there was a group of Islamic extremists that "we don't know if they belong
to al-Qaeda or not" but they were in the Iraqi northern region of
Suleimaniya outside the control of his government.
Northern Iraq has been outside the control of the Baghdad government since
soon after the 1991 Gulf War. Kurdish factions rule the region.
Aziz said Washington wanted to attack Iraq to control "the riches of Iraq,"
a clear reference to oil, of which Iraq possesses the second largest
reserves in the world.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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*****************************************************************
22 UK: COPS TRAINED FOR NUKE DIRTY BOMBS
POLICE in Scotland are being trained to deal with radioactive
"dirty bombs".
It is feared terrorists could use the crude devices - which use
conventional explosive to spread radioactive material - in
British cities.
Ministry of Defence specialists have been working with
Strathclyde Police for three months on techniques to deal with
such an attack.
Officers from every division have undergone training dressed in
nuclear, biological and chemical protection suits.
They would be called in if a dirty bomb was detonated in Scotland
to contain any contamination and begin the clean-up process.
Pentagon officials put the mortality rate of a dirty bomb blast
at 75 per cent, meaning any explosion in busy areas would inflict
huge casualties.
A senior police source said: "A lot of the officers involved in
the training are younger guys who are single or don't have
families. The older guys are trying to give the whole thing a
wide berth."
Strathclyde Police last night said it was simply part of
contingency preparations which had been "added to in the wake of
September 11".
The spokesman said: "We have an ongoing commitment to train
officers to deal with a wide range of situations, including
incidents that may require officers to deal with suspect
packages, some of which may contain chemicals."
A MILITARY radar station to protect Britain against terrorist
attack has been installed in Scotland.
The new £500,000 Nato relay station in the Hebrides completes a
missing link in the UK's air and sea defences.
www.sundaymail.co.uk
*****************************************************************
23 Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
Straw tells UN: 'Saddam can't persistently mock you'
By James Cusick, Westminster Editor
The prize of winning full United Nations backing for swift
military action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq is almost within
the grasp of Tony Blair and George W Bush.
Seventy-two hours of unrelenting diplomatic pressure since the US
president's address to the UN general assembly last Thursday has
resulted in almost unprecedented fast-track unanimity within the
15-nation Security Council.
With the Iraqi regime showing no sign of allowing unconditional
access to weapons inspectors regardless of the hardline language
expected in a new Security Council resolution, the prospect is
now war: war in the same country and against the same dictator
that Bush's father, also the US president, engaged in back in
1990.
The uncertainty on Tuesday, when Blair addressed the TUC in
Blackpool, has all but disappeared with the UN appearing to fall
behind the Bush-Blair policy of giving Saddam no way out this
time.
The expectation inside the British and US diplomatic camps is
that a tough security council resolution, including a defined
deadline of compliance for Saddam, will emerge from the UN within
a week, two at most.
The UK Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, addressing the UN
yesterday, relayed and repeated the same arguments and the same
direct threat of action issued by both Blair and Bush. The
international community, he said, would not stand by and 'do
nothing' while Saddam 'persistently mocks' the UN.
Bush continued his own regime of pressure to win over a still
unsure American public, when his routine weekly radio message was
in effect turned into a call-to-arms.
Bush's broadcast told the American people that millions of lives
were at stake and that world peace was under threat if action was
not taken against Saddam.
Bush, who is in Camp David this weekend, left behind the
diplomatic language he used before the UN. Yesterday he warned:
'Make no mistake about it. If we have to deal with the problem,
we'll deal with it.'
With the silent voices of Gordon Brown and John Prescott finally
offering their full if late support for the way the Prime
Minister has set about winning the backing of UN action, there
appears to be little, at least diplomatically, now standing in
the way of military action.
That possibility appeared closer still when Iraq's deputy prime
minister, Tariq Aziz rejected any demands that would mean an
unconditional return of weapons inspectors. Aziz told the state-
controlled media in Baghdad that he had offered proposals for
weapons inspections but they had been dismissed. Aziz said that
as America and Britain were looking for reasons to attack Iraq,
compliance with any resolution would do nothing to alter the
situation.
It is now expected that over the next few days Saddam Hussein
will demand, as he has in the past, a sacrifice from the Iraqi
people to face war again.
The speed of the diplomatic gains within the UN is a spectacular
vindication of Tony Blair's UN- inclusive policy objective. His
performance alongside Bush at Camp David last weekend, and his
influence on Bush to go down the multilateralist path, has paid
off.
The Foreign Secretary reinforced the Downing Street message at
the UN yesterday when he praised the UN, stating: ' We cannot let
the United nations unique authority, leading the international
community, be undermined by those who have no respect for it.' If
the UN failed to deal with Iraqi problem, it would be -- as Bush
and Blair said in their own words -- 'seriously weakened.'
Even before Straw spoke, the five permanent members of the
security council who hold veto power -- the UK, US, France,
Russia and China -- had already agreed on the need to deliver
Iraq a new ultimatum. A series of meetings headed by the US
Secretary of State, Colin Powell, with each of the security
council ambassadors and their advisers, was being hailed as the
final piece of the jigsaw to bring the UN alongside US-UK policy
on Iraq.
The speed inside the UN, and the apparent rush towards a second
confrontation in Iraq, will make dismal reading for those inside
the Labour Party and beyond who believe all diplomatic
alternatives have yet to be explored.
The comments, due to be broadcast on the GMTV Sunday Show this
morning by the former culture secretary Chris Smith -- who
claimed that an attack on Iraq would mean 'the disintegration of
the international coalition on terrorism' -- are being seen as
the beginning of a now widely expected open revolt in Labour
ranks.
/
©2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
24 Report: N.Korea Plans to Halt Tests
Las Vegas SUN:
Today: September 15, 2002 at 1:35:19 PDT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOKYO- North Korea will agree to freeze missile tests and Tokyo
will apologize for its actions in World War II when Japan's prime
minister makes an unprecedented trip to the communist nation, a
Japanese newspaper reported Sunday.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong
Il are also expected to agree to resume talks on normalizing
diplomatic relations, the Mainichi newspaper said.
Koizumi was making final preparations Sunday before his trip
Tuesday. He will be the first Japanese prime minister to visit
North Korea and meet with its leader. Details of the agreement
will be finalized at the meeting, the Mainichi said.
Several thorny issues have prevented Japan and North Korea from
normalizing relations, and officials from the two sides have
negotiated the possible resolution ahead of Tuesday's summit.
Japan accuses Pyongyang of developing nuclear weapons and alleges
that North Korean agents abducted at least 11 Japanese citizens
in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies. A tentative agreement
was also to mention the North's "regret" about the alleged
kidnappings, the Mainichi said. North Korea has denied the
Japanese claims and said it is searching for the missing group.
Pyongyang wants Japan to atone for its militarist past and its
1910-45 occupation of the Korean peninsula. Pyongyang is expected
to provide information on some of the 11 Japanese, the Mainichi
said.
The North is also expected to agree to freeze missile tests
beyond 2003, which it has previously pledged, and promise to keep
its nuclear weapons programs within the international
nonproliferation framework, the report said. Koizumi is expected
to provide an apology to address Pyongyang's demands for wartime
compensation, to be paid as an economic package like Japan's 1965
settlement with South Korea, the newspaper said.
On Saturday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said
Kim wants to normalize ties with Japan during Koizumi's visit.
"This will be a turning point in normalizing (North) Korea-Japan
relations," Kim said in written interview with Japan's Kyodo News
agency, carried by KCNA. --
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
25 Britain Backs U.S. on Iraq Demands
Las Vegas SUN
Today: September 15, 2002 at 5:30:18 PDT
By JONATHAN EWING ASSOCIATED PRESS
UNITED NATIONS- Britain backed American demands for the United
Nations to hold Iraq responsible for its defiance of Security
Council resolutions, while Arab ministers and many other nations
called on Baghdad to end its intransigence. British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw, in his speech to the General Assembly on
Saturday, never referred directly to the use of force, but made
it clear that Britain believes there must be consequences if
Saddam Hussein refuses to admit U.N. weapons inspectors.
"We have not just an interest but a responsibility to ensure that
Iraq complies fully with international law," Straw said. "We have
to be clear to Iraq and to ourselves about the consequences which
will flow from a failure by Iraq to meet its obligations."
Britain's position closely mirrored President Bush's call to the
United Nations to confront the "grave and gathering danger" posed
by Iraq. At his Camp David retreat, Bush stood alongside another
ally, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, and pounded away at
challenges to the United Nations he outlined last week in his
U.N. speech. "The U.N. will either be able to function as a
peacekeeping body as we head into the 21st century, or it will be
irrelevant. And that's what we're about to find out," Bush said
Saturday.
"Make no mistake about it. If we have to deal with the problem,
we'll deal with it."
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with foreign
ministers from the 22-member Arab League on the sidelines of the
assembly. The ministers urged Baghdad to allow the immediate
return of inspectors to Iraq. "We said loudly and clearly that we
are for the integrity of Iraq, for the stability of Iraq, as well
as for the full implementation of all the resolutions regarding
Iraq," Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud said. "We would
like to see the observers going back to Iraq and with them will
come peace for the Iraqi people and stability for Iraq."
Annan told the Arab foreign ministers that he wanted them to
individually push for the return of inspectors to avoid another
major conflict in the region. The secretary-general later held
talks with Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and Arab League
Secretary-General Amr Moussa. Sabri said late Saturday that he
hoped the crisis could be resolved without a new U.N. resolution
that could threaten serious consequences. Diplomatic sources said
Arab ministers were pressuring Sabri to act quickly and allow
inspectors back under existing council resolutions which have no
deadline - and do not threaten force.
While key Security Council members said they would support
setting a deadline for the return of inspectors, none have so far
backed the use of force. Russia and China favor a political
settlement; France has proposed a two-step approach to get Saddam
to comply.
Germany remains opposed to military action and called for the
United Nations to intensify pressure on Iraq to admit inspectors
and find a political solution.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called Saddam's regime "a
brutal dictatorship," but he also advocated multilateral action
involving the United Nations to deal with Iraq.
Speaking after a meeting with Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri,
Fischer said: "I made it absolutely clear to him what our
position is. It is now in the hands of the Iraqi government to
avert a great tragedy." Malaysia's deputy prime minister,
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, warned that an attack against Iraq without
credible evidence of the threat it poses will only "swell the
ranks of the discontented in the Muslim world." Inspectors left
Baghdad four years ago ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes to
punish Iraq for its failure to cooperate with U.N. inspections.
Under Security Council resolutions imposed after Iraq's 1990
invasion of Kuwait, sanctions cannot be lifted until inspectors
certify that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been
dismantled.
The Bush administration claims Iraq is close to having nuclear
weapons and maintains a stockpile of chemical and biological
agents. Iraq wasn't the only issue at the General Assembly.
Malaysia's deputy prime minister reminded the world body that
terrorism was born from poverty and unaddressed grievances.
"We forget that, however unjustified, terrorism is often rooted
in political and economic grievances that have still not been
adequately addressed," Abdullah said. "There can be no
comprehensive victory against terrorism if the root causes of
terror are not eliminated." Britain's Straw discussed three
rising challenges: failing states, terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque spoke
against nuclear weapons, and said that Cuba has decided to adhere
to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. "The only way to
achieving world peace is through complete disarmament, including
nuclear disarmament, and the rechanneling of the money currently
spent on weapons to address the dire socio-economic problems of
humankind," he said.
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
26 George W. enters Adlai's shadow
[Las Vegas Review-Journal]
Sunday, September 15, 2002
COLUMN: John Brummett
Adlai Stevenson this wasn't.
As the Kennedy administration's ambassador to the United Nations
in October 1962, Stevenson displayed reconnaissance photographs
of Russian missile installations under development in Cuba,
little more than 90 miles off the American shore.
He detailed our country's case. He turned to the Soviet
ambassador and demanded that he answer, yes or no, whether his
country was systematically deploying intermediate-range weapons
in Cuba.
The Soviet ambassador declined to answer, saying he was not in an
American courtroom. Stevenson said he'd be happy to wait for an
answer until hell froze over.
Factually, morally, historically -- it was a triumphant American
moment.
Something has declined in our country in the past 40 years. It
might be the eloquence of our leadership or it might be the
factual and moral strength of our case.
Or it might be both.
President Bush stood before the U.N. delegate assembly on
Thursday and said that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is very bad
and must be taken out -- either by the United Nations or, if
necessary, the United States as a lone ranger.
His case? There were no photographs. There were no direct
challenges to Iraqi delegates. There was, again, a litany of
Saddam's flagrant noncompliance with a series of U.N. resolutions
that he submit to regular inspections to make sure that he is not
developing weapons of mass destruction -- biological, chemical or
nuclear.
A couple of hours later, Scott Ritter, the former Marine and U.N.
weapons inspection team leader, was managing to get a few words
in edgewise as a Fox News "reporter" shouted accusingly at him.
Ritter, once heated in his anti-Saddam rhetoric, now displays the
audacity, or temerity, to urge American restraint regarding Iraq.
He says no evidence exists sufficient to justify an American
invasion, certainly not a unilateral one.
The distinction Ritter was making seeped through the Fox
interviewer's shouts only if viewers listened closely.
It was this: Yes, Saddam has certain "capabilities" in regard to
weapons of mass destruction. But "capability" is a vague concept
at best, suggesting only what he might be able to develop and
deploy if he could get his hands on the right ingredients.
"Capability" is a far cry from solid evidence that he actually
possesses such weapons or the expertise to develop them
eventually, much less imminently.
George W. Bush's error, Ritter says, is making the extraordinary
leap that since Saddam has the "capability," and since he's given
us the runaround on letting us look, he actually has the weapons
and presents what the president described to the United Nations
as a "grave and gathering" danger.
Ritter's point was that the United States goes to war over what
it knows, not over what it can't prove. (Or, as retired Army Gen.
Wesley Clark likes to put it: America doesn't start wars; it
finishes them.)
Lest anyone wonder, Ritter proclaimed that he believes Saddam
Hussein to be demonic and that he wishes to high heaven the man
was dead.
But that Saddam is very bad is not sufficient in itself to send
unaided Americans into war. Others are very bad. We trade with
some of them. We wear blinders so that we see no evil.
In short, the Bush administration's case for a war on Iraq
remained unmade at week's end, particularly for the decidedly
un-American course of actually initiating hostilities without an
imminent provocation, and especially for doing so in a part of
the world so incendiary that it exports unspeakable horror.
Can the case be made? Possibly. Americans stand ready as always
to rise to the occasion. They need but two things: evidence and
eloquence.
John Brummett, an award-winning columnist and reporter for the
Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock, is author of "High Wire," a
book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail
address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.
This story is located at:
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2002/Sep-15-Sun-2002/opinion/19622770.html
*****************************************************************
27 New nukes dig in deep, rattle pols Burrowing
Tri-Valley Herald
Sunday, September 15, 2002 - 2:55:55 AM MST
By Lisa FriedmanWASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- A fight is mushrooming in Congress over the
Pentagon's desire for nuclear weapons that can burrow deep into
the ground before exploding.
Early design work on the so-called bunker busters already is
gearing up at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at Los
Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
But now lawmakers are battling over whether to authorize $15.5
million to further develop the weapons.
The debate is turning into a party-line standoff, with
Republicans backed by the Department of Defense insisting the
United States needs such weapons to defeat security threats, and
Democrats convinced that green-lighting the project could ignite
another nuclear arms race and create a justification for
returning to underground atomic testing.
"They'll end up with some very mushy compromise, but this system
is not going to be built," predicted David Culp, a lobbyist with
the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker group
that advocates for nuclear disarmament.
Not everyone is so sure that the weapon -- called in defense
parlance the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator -- is a bust.
Pentagon officials estimate that over the past decade more than
70 countries including Iran, Iraq and North Korea have built
thousands of underground military compounds that shelter nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons. They and many Republican
supporters in Congress argue that nuclear bunker busters, which
they say can be modified from existing warheads to penetrate deep
into the earth before radioactively exploding, must be considered
as a tool to destroy such hidden weapons of mass destruction.
"You need to use every tool at your disposal, so why not use it,"
said Michael Harrison, spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-San
Diego, a top advocate for developing nuclear bunker busters.
Critics -- including lawmakers who represent Lawrence Livermore
and Los Alamos national laboratories -- said the Pentagon already
has weapons that can destroy deeply buried targets and doesn't
need ones that spew radioactive dust.
"I think that there are certain people in this administration
that would like to have nuclear-tipped ice cream cones, but
that's not a good idea, either," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher,
D-Alamo.
Tauscher, whose district includes Livermore lab, is a member of
the conference committee negotiating the 2003 defense
authorization bill that could decide the fate of the bunker
busters this month.
She has aligned herself with Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and
other Senate Democrats who have been trying to block funding for
the weapons. Republicans who retain the majority in the House
have fully authorized $15.5 million to research the creation of
nuclear bunker busters. The Senate, controlled by Democrats,
passed a Bingaman amendment forbidding such funding until the
Pentagon reports to Congress specifically how the weapons would
be used.
"He wants to legitimately understand what the Pentagon needs. But
he's skeptical," said Bingaman spokeswoman Jude McCartin.
The Senate measure also would require congressional approval
before the Department of Energy even begins research into
modified or new weapons. Gen. John Gordon, former head of the
National Nuclear Security Administration, spoke out against such
proposed oversight this summer, saying it would hamstring nuclear
weapons scientists' creativity. Tauscher said she has asked
defense leaders "20 different times 10 different ways" why they
need nuclear earth-penetrators if they currently employ
non-nuclear ones.
"It's always the same answer. They would like to have this
because they need it. But they can't tell you one scenario where
they would use it." The Pentagon did not return calls regarding
the weapon. Other critics like Culp fear that if nuclear bunker
busters are developed the government will have to do something it
has avoided since 1990 -- perform an underground nuclear test.
"If we resume testing, the Russians will resume testing, the
Chinese will resume testing and we'll be back in a nuclear arms
race," he said. Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington
Institute, a pro-defense think tank, said arms control advocates
are probably correct that developing nuclear bunker busters will
lead to resuming nuclear tests. But, he said, "I don't find
testing to be this great abhorrent thing or the slippery slope."
Rejecting the arms control mantra that the United States should
send a message to the world by rejecting nuclear testing, Goure
said, "The world ain't stupid. The world goes after nuclear
weapons or not for its own reasons." Officials with the nation's
two nuclear weapons labs also are laying low on the subject,
maintaining they just do the work Congress asks of them. But
Energy Department officials and others also acknowledge that the
labs need new weapons design programs to retain scientists,
attract new ones and keep skills sharp in the post-Cold War era.
The White House plan for creating nuclear bunker busters calls
for modifying existing weapons rather than creating new ones.
Livermore lab is seeking to modify the B83, the most modern
nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal. Los Alamos intends to work on
the B61.
©1999-2002 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
*****************************************************************
28 Cuba to Adhere to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Yahoo! News Sun, September 15, 2002
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba announced on Saturday that it would sign
the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a contribution to peace in
the post-Sept. 11 world.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said his country had not
signed the treaty before because it allowed a club of nuclear
powers to exist with no commitment to disarming.
"As a sign of the clear political will of the Cuban government and
its commitment to a effective process of disarmament that
guarantees world peace, our country has decided to adhere to the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," he said.
Cuba will also ratify the Latin American and Caribbean
nonproliferation agreement, known as the Treaty of Tlatelolco.
Havana signed this treaty in 1995 but had not ratified it due to
the hostility of the United States, the hemisphere's only nuclear
power, he said. Communist Cuba has offered to cooperate on
terrorism with its longtime political foe, the United States, since
the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks in New York and
Washington. But Washington had ignored its proposals, Perez Roque
said. Washington has enforced economic sanctions against Cuba for
four decades and keeps Havana on a list of states that sponsor
terrorism, along with Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Syria and North
Korea. Perez Roque said Cuba firmly opposed what now seems to be an
"inevitable" war against Iraq and warned that the United Nations would
lose credibility if the United States imposed such a war on the
U.N. Security Council.
That would mean "the birth of a century of unilateralism and the
forced retirement of the United Nations," he said.
Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
29 Canada joins 18-country group at UN pushing for nuclear test ban
Monday, Sep. 16, 2002
September 14, 2002 Canada joins 18-country group at UN pushing for
nuclear test ban UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Eighteen countries,
including Canada, have promised a new push for a global ban on
nuclear test explosions, recognizing they face an uphill struggle
to win support from the United States and other holdouts.
The statement -- sponsored by Australia, Japan and the Netherlands
and signed Saturday by foreign ministers of 18 countries -- seeks
renewed efforts to persuade more countries to sign and ratify the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Australian Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer said he hopes "the Iraq debate will be a true
incentive for more countries to sign and ratify" the nuclear
test ban treaty, spurred by concern over Iraq's possible
development of nuclear weapons.
The treaty must be signed and ratified by all 44 countries that
possess nuclear weapons or have nuclear power programs in order to
take effect. While 31 countries -- including Britain, France and
Russia -- have ratified the treaty, there are important holdouts
including the United States, as well as India and Pakistan, whose
confrontation over Kashmir has raised the prospect
of war.
Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the group is "in
a long haul" trying to persuade Washington to ratify the treaty.
"We're hoping to convince the United States that ratification is
in...the interest of their national security," he added.
The treaty was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1996 after
three years of negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament in
Geneva. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton signed it that year but
the U.S. Senate refused to ratify it, with opponents saying it was
not enforceable. The United States has held to a self-imposed
nuclear testing moratorium since 1992. President George W. Bush has
said there is no immediate need to resume testing.
In the statement, the 18 countries promised they "will make
representations as appropriate, individually or together, including
at regional and multilateral meetings, in order to make the treaty
a focus of the highest political levels."
The 18 countries are Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Hungary,
Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, the
Philippines, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey and
the United Kingdom.
[http://www.canoe.ca/home.html] | We
*****************************************************************
30 Comic book about Hiroshima A-bombing translated into Korean
Saturday, September 14, 2002 at 20:00 JST
OSAKA ? A Korean translation of "Hadashi no Gen" (Barefoot Gen),
a long Japanese comic book about the U.S. atomic bombing of
Hiroshima, was recently completed by a Korean resident of Japan.
Kim Song I, a 55-year-old lecturer at Osaka's private Kinki
University, spent seven years translating the 10 volumes of the
story with the help of two South Korean students studying in
Japan.
"In South Korea, there is a positive view about the use of the
atomic bomb (on Japan) because it hastened Japan's surrender" in
World War II, Kim said.
"Through 'Gen,' I want to let (South Korean people) know the
horror of nuclear weapons and war, and how much disruption they
cause to human life," he said.
Kim, a second-generation North Korean living in Japan, read the
comic for the first time about 20 years ago after his son, then
in elementary school, suggested it.
It is a vivid autobiographical story about author Keiji Nakazawa,
who was only 7 when the U.S. atomic bomb fell on his hometown of
Hiroshima, and tells the tale of a family's struggle to survive
in and after the war.
Kim said that after reading the comic, which is popular among
elementary and junior high school students, he keenly felt the
foolishness of war, the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and
discrimination against Asians.
In 1995, Kim learned that Korean was not among the languages into
which the story had been translated. He met with Nakazawa and
received permission to translate it.
When Kim visited South Korea in spring 2000 in search of a
publisher, he was initially told only the first four volumes
could be printed due to lack of money for the project.
But he convinced a company to publish the entire 10 volumes to
convey Nakazawa's entire message.
Any inquiries about the Korean version of Hadashi no Gen can be
made to Kim by telephone and fax at 06-6736-3847. (Kyodo News)
Japan Today Discussion
*****************************************************************
31 Hanford cleanup project under way
Tribnet.com - News/Local
[Tribnet.com]
Linda Ashton; The Associated Press
RICHLAND - In the scrubby sagebrush desert, not far from the
Columbia River, the biggest environmental cleanup project in the
country is under way at Hanford nuclear reservation. After a
decade of fits and starts, the concrete and rebar are going in
for the $4 billion waste treatment complex that will turn the
lethal leftovers from Cold War-era plutonium production into more
manageable and stable glass cylinders.
The treatment process is called vitrification, in which
radioactive waste is mixed with glass-forming materials and then
melted at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to make a molten glass that is
poured into canisters for long-term storage.
The most radioactive glass will end up at some kind of national
repository, likely Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where it will take
10,000 years to decay. The lower-activity radioactive waste will
be buried in trenches in the central part of the Richland
reservation, where it will take about 300 years to decay to safe
levels.
"This is the fourth try at building a vit plant at Hanford," said
John Britton, a spokesman for Bechtel National, which was hired
to rescue the stranded project last year. "There's a lot at
stake."
One of the things at stake is the Columbia River, which borders
Hanford and is seven miles away from the 177 underground tanks
holding almost 54 million gallons of radioactive waste.
The urgent need to clean up and clean out the tanks has been a
bone of contention between the U.S. Department of Energy and
regulators since the early 1990s, when the Energy Department
scuttled a plan to turn some of that waste into grout and bury it
in sealed containers.
At least 67 of the tanks, some of them decrepit and well past
their intended service lives, have leaked more than 1 million
gallons of radioactive brew into the soil, contaminating the
aquifer and threatening the river.
The turning point came last year, when the Energy Department
hired Bechtel National to finish the design and build the
vitrification complex after firing contractor BNFL in 2000, when
cost estimates more than doubled to $15.2 billion.
State regulators and the Energy Department subsequently scuffled
over the resulting missed deadlines and uncertain federal budgets
before a kind of détente was achieved. There is a guarded
optimism among regulators now that the job will get done.
"Right now our focus is on getting the thing built," said Sheryl
Hutchison, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology.
"We're not going to get anything vitrified if it's not built."
The Energy Department and its contractors are making good
progress, which is being closely watched, she said.
(Published 12:30AM, September 15th, 2002)
Pierce County Trial
[http://www.tribnet.com/news/census]
*****************************************************************
32 Amarillo Globe-News: Local News: Agency to bolster Pantex's
technical support
09/14/02
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091402 news 5 Amarillo Globe-News The National Nuclear Security
Administration says it will beef up technical contacts between
weapons laboratory experts and the Pantex Plant after a
communication breakdown delayed Pantex safety improvements.-->Web
posted Saturday, September 14, 2002 9:11 a.m. CT
Agency to bolster Pantex's technical support
By Jim McBride
jmcbride@amarillonet.com [jmcbride@amarillonet.com]
The National Nuclear Security Administration says it will beef up
technical contacts between weapons laboratory experts and the
Pantex Plant after a communication breakdown delayed Pantex safety
improvements. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a
nuclear safety agency that monitors U.S. nuclear weapons plants,
recently criticized Sandia National Laboratories officials for
delaying approval of a special safety cart designed
to transport nuclear warheads.
Over the past few years, Pantex personnel and other experts have
developed the cart to move weapons inside the nuclear weapons
assembly and disassembly plant.
The cart, dubbed an Enhanced Transportation Cart, is designed to
protect warheads from lightning, mechanical, heat and other types
of damage while the weapon is moved between work areas at Pantex.
A Sandia National Laboratories engineering systems manager in New
Mexico sent a letter July 17 to Pantex contractor BWXT Pantex
stating that he was "unable to make an informed decision on
approval" of the cart without appropriate information.
But the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said in a recent
letter to top Energy Department officials that Sandia has had
information on the cart for nearly two years because its personnel
helped develop it. In a letter to Linton Brooks, acting
administrator for the NNSA, the nuclear safety board criticized
Sandia for not giving Pantex adequate technical support from
specialists with expertise on specific nuclear weapons.
John Conway, chairman of the nuclear facilities safety board, said
the board was concerned that Sandia did not move forward on its
review of the transportation cart and that Sandia had not provided
timely expertise to Pantex.
"It's a special type arrangement when they take parts off or the
whole weapon is being transported. It is specifically designed
actually to assure that we don't get lightning problems with it or
other safety problems," Conway said of the proposed safety cart.
"This has been nearly two years that this thing has
been being reviewed and somebody at Sandia who should have been
reviewing it never got the word."
On Sept. 3, Everet H. Beckner, deputy administrator for the DOE's
National Nuclear Security Administration, sent a letter to Conway
acknowledging that lab officials had not worked closely enough with
Pantex to provide technical expertise on the W-80 weapons program.
The W-80 is a type of nuclear warhead carried on cruise missile
systems. "The National Nuclear Security Administration agrees that
the concept did not function properly in the case of the W-80
Enhanced Transportation Cart. Communication broke down not only at
Sandia National Laboratories, but at each of the sites involved
with the W-80 ETC. Senior NNSA, laboratory and BWXT
Pantex management are working to resolve this matter," Beckner's
letter said. Beckner will discuss a series of proposed changes
with the nuclear safety board this month.
"The NNSA agrees that timely support is vital to enhancing the
safety of operations at the Pantex Plant. We look forward to
demonstrating improvements being made in this regard in the near
future," Beckner's letter states.
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33 New Radiation Protection Against Terrorism
[Today's News]
[http://www.radshield.com]
Radiation Shield Technologies Announces Demron(TM) -- the First
Ionizing/Nuclear Radiation Blocking Fabric
MIAMI, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Radiation Shield Technologies
(RST) announced today the unveiling of the world's first
ionizing/nuclear radiation blocking garment: Demron(TM). This
debut will take place at the inaugural Homeland Security Summit
to be held September 17-20, 2002 in Atlanta, GA.
Demron(TM) is a revolutionary lightweight, non-toxic and
Lead-free radiation protection fabric. At approximately
one-eighth the weight of older, traditional Leaded garments,
Demron(TM) provides comparable radiation blocking power to that
of standard Lead vest material. Fused between two outer layers of
fabric, Demron(TM) can be manufactured into any garment pattern
such as full-body suits that can effectively shield the human
body from ionizing radiation. The fabric's lightweight design
leaves its wearer unencumbered and fully mobile while giving them
the ability to work in or escape from radiation exposed areas.
Developed by world-renowned surgeon Dr. Ronald F. DeMeo of Miami,
FL, Demron(TM) was originally created to protect medical
professionals from the harmful effects of X-Ray radiation in the
operating room. "I've worked around radiation my entire career,
and I have seen what it can do to the human body, even at low
levels. Demron(TM) was my way to better protect myself in the
O.R., and bring something better to the people who work around
radiation every day." Dr. DeMeo developed Demron(TM) as a way to
finally shed light on the archaic field of radiation protection.
"Until now, we've simply ignored the threat of radiation because
there was nothing that could be done. Lead has been the standard
for over 50 years; a toxic, heavy, impractical standard to say
the least."
Using a patented nano-technology, Demron(TM) can easily be
manufactured for use in a wide-range of applications such as the
production of blankets and tents for protective use by
individuals during any radiological emergency. Full-body
coveralls made of Demron(TM) will be made available to the
general public as of September 17, 2002.
CONTACT: Radiation Shield Technologies, Inc.
Drew E. Lauter
Vice President
200 So. Biscayne Blvd, Ste. 3560
Miami, Fl, 33131
Phone - 305.416.3222
Fax - 305.416.338
dlauter@radshield.com [ dlauter@radshield.com]
http://www.radshield.com [http://www.radshield.com]
SOURCE Radiation Shield Technologies, Inc. Web Site:
http://www.radshield.com [http://www.radshield.com]
*****************************************************************
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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:
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