***************************************************************** 04/16/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.96 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Russia's atomic energy minister details spent nuclear fuel plans 2 UK: The urge to hold on to power 3 US: Majority of Nuclear Plants Seek Delay in Upgrading Security 4 US: Seabrook nuclear sale 5 US: Exelon bowing out of 'pebble-bed' nuke plant project 6 Moscow to settle part of debt to Prague with nuclear fuel - Czech NUCLEAR REACTORS 7 US: NRC to Meet With Amerenue To Discuss Safety Performance at 8 US: Fla. Utility to Buy Seabrook Plant 9 US: Deputies end round-the-clock patrols at nuclear plants 10 US: Entergy Will Prepare Early Site Permit at Grand Gulf Nuclear NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 11 US: Over governor's objections, S.C. getting plutonium shipments 12 Russia claims poisonous waste being exported from Europe to 13 US: Plutonium ready to go 14 US: Plutonium Standoff Intensifies 15 US: Savvy fund-raiser Lewis ready to join Nevada's Yucca fight 16 US: Anti-Yucca Mountain appeals get rolling with lucky $77,777 17 US: EDITORIAL: A Yucca alternative 18 US: YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Repository foes turning up heat 19 US: Editorial: Code red on Yucca remarks 20 US: Yucca: More wool than truth 21 US: Private donors pitch in to state anti-Yucca fund 22 US: Commission OKs $1.5 million for fight 23 US: State files motion on Yucca water 24 US: Yucca case goes to Vermont 25 US: AU: ERA hopeful on uranium prices 26 US: Yucca: Gambling with Tomorrow 27 USEC tax exempted as part of airport bill 28 Sellafield protesters put message in the post 29 US: Energy secretary in standoff with South Carolina over plutonium 30 US: ERA under attack over Jabiluka uranium mine project 31 (Letters To The Editor): Hazards Of Sellafield NUCLEAR WEAPONS 32 Russian nuclear-powered sub completes refit 33 Israel's Nuclear Trump Card 34 US hawk 'tried to sully Iraq arms inspector' 35 Daily Telegraph: Downer hits US on nukes 36 Nuclear Deal to Include Disarmament 37 Nuclear nightmare -- 38 UK: Atomic bomb secrets withdrawn from view US DEPT. OF ENERGY 39 Pantex chief seeks funds 40 Energy Sec. OKs Plutonium Shipments 41 Paul Parson: The race to let the proverbial cat out of the bag 42 Bechtel Jacobs' fate currently undecided ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Russia's atomic energy minister details spent nuclear fuel plans BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Apr 16, 2002 Russia's first contract for the import of spent nuclear fuel will be with the UK and signed in about a year. The Americans prefer to export their spent fuel to other countries, but Russia badly needs cash to maintain security at its nuclear sites and installations - and sees taking in American nuclear waste as a good way of raising that cash. In the wake of 11 September this linkage "should work", according to the Russian atomic energy minister. The following is an excerpt from a report by the Russian newspaper Izvestiya: Aleksandr Rumyantsev, minister of atomic energy of Russia, met yesterday for the first time since he has been in office with representatives of environmental organizations. His predecessor, Yevgeniy Adamov, did such a thing only once. The meeting was held in an atmosphere of relatively strict secrecy. As expected, reporters were not admitted. But Izvestiya greatly needed to obtain from Rumyantsev several answers. It had to find secret ways of infiltrating Izvestiya's questions, and we found them. The questions were put, the answers were obtained. Representatives of six environmental organizations were present at the meeting, which went on for two hours. "The minister tried to be very amicable, he smiled often and retreated into peaceful topics. But the discussion sometimes switched to elevated tones, particularly when the issue of the import and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel was broached. We are categorically opposed to this, and Rumyantsev hardly hopes to achieve a compromise here," Vladimir Slivak, cochairman of the Ekozashchita [Environmental Protection] group, told Izvestiya. The main sensation of the meeting was the minister's statement that the first contract for the import of spent nuclear fuel would be signed only in a year's time - with Britain. The fuel will be coming to us from low-power research reactors. It is notable that representatives of the Ministry of Atomic Energy have repeatedly called Britain and France their fiercest competitors when it comes to importing fuel. Now Russia's nuclear scientists are about to give refuge to the spent fuel of their competitors. Rumyantsev observed here that it is not worthwhile for the UK to reprocess this fuel. This is the sole contract that awaits Russia in the immediate future. Rumyantsev said about spent nuclear fuel from conventional nuclear plants: "I do not see this nuclear fuel." According to the minister everything has been snatched by competitors and there is no place in the sun for the Russian ministry. In addition, 80 per cent of peaceful nuclear fuel is produced by the Americans. The United States sells it to other countries but reserves the right to dispose of the spent product. Russia cannot unbeknownst to it [this appears to mean "without the Americans knowing"] import fuel from Japan, China, and other countries. Rumyantsev says that he is attempting to persuade the Americans to permit Russia to import this fuel. And is employing an iron-clad argument for this: Russia has nowhere from which to get the money to guard its nuclear facilities. After 11 September, this should work, the minister believes. Aleksandr Rumyantsev also said that he considers very favourable the idea of construction of a burial site on the Kurils and import of low-level waste from Taiwan... At the meeting with the environmentalists Rumyantsev attempted to defend the agreement with Hungary on fuel storage. The Supreme Court of Russia recently ruled the agreement illegal and required Hungary to take the fuel back, but it refused. The Hungarian spent fuel will remain in Russia, by all accounts. But the waste from reprocessing fuel that came in autumn from the Bulgarian Kozloduy station, the minister intends to return to its owners. Only this will not be happening any time soon: Russia has no plant that reprocesses this type of fuel (from a VVR-1000 reactor). And it will not be built, as Rumyantsev said yesterday, for at least 20 years. This is why a future generation of atomic energy ministers will have to be responsible for the imported fuel. Source: Izvestiya, Moscow, in Russian 29 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 2 UK: The urge to hold on to power The reality of energy liberalisation has not caught up with the rhetoric, says Andrew Taylor Published: April 15 2002 16:24 | Last Updated: April 15 2002 18:15 Governments may talk enthusiastically about competition in energy markets, but when it comes to reform they are often found wanting. The desire to maintain national champions big enough to cope with emerging international power and gas markets has been a fundamental stumbling block to European Union liberalisation, according an independent study conducted on behalf of the Financial Times. The report by Accenture, the management consultancy, illustrates the extent to which the UK has out- stripped its continental European rivals in offering lower energy prices, greater customer choice and innovative products and services. The cost has been that the UK market has been opened up to overseas rivals. RWE and Eon of Germany are buying two of Britain's largest electricity producers, Npower and Powergen. The state-owned Electricite de France (EdF), Europe's biggest electricity supplier, owns London Electricity. By contrast, outsiders have found it difficult to break into French and German energy markets. France, Accenture says, has opposed "competition and liberalisation every step of the way". Even Germany, which has technically opened its markets, has failed "to deliver the regulatory environment necessary to engender competition". In the US, liberalisation of retail energy markets has also slowed amid concerns over last September's terrorist attacks, the Californian energy crisis and more recently the collapse of Enron, the world's biggest electricity and gas energy trader. A separate study for the FT by Logica, the business consultancy, found that nine US states have deferred or cancelled plans for retail competition over the past 18 months. European authorities may be similarly concerned that security of supply could be weakened by full competition; or, more likely, that former national companies may lose out in a pan-European energy market. A key issue, says Accenture, is whether large supply companies should be allowed to retain control over electricity and gas transmission networks that provide the only access to customers for rivals. All suppliers must have fair access to distribution networks, Accenture argues. The failure to achieve this in Germany - the only EU country not to appoint an independent energy regulator - has "arguably been the biggest barrier to competition". The UK, by comparison, has separated the ownership of both the national electricity and gas transmission networks. Price controls established by Ofgem, the UK energy industry regulator, have also encouraged customers to switch supplier. "In Scandinavia and Germany, customers either are not offered significant discounts or can renegotiate more attractive deals with their incumbent suppliers and thus avoid the need to switch," the report found. Just 2 per cent of EU households outside the UK have switched electricity supplier. This compares with close to 40 per cent in the UK. The British regulator, Accenture argues, has encouraged an industry structure that has left enough companies to encourage competition without leaving each company so small that it cannot afford the expensive marketing campaigns needed to win new customers. The UK has been helped by the fact that gas and electricity historically were sold by separate companies. The sectors competed strongly against each other as their respective markets were opened to competition. In continental European markets dominated by multi-utilities such a scenario was not possible, Accenture admits. Utility markets in France, Italy, Belgium, Ireland and Portugal were dominated by a single national champion retaining close to a 100 per cent market share. "Creating competition in this situation requires selling the assets and customers of the incumbent while also encouraging new entry - a difficult and time-consuming task which no country [outside the UK] has yet fully completed," the report says. France, which last month blocked EU efforts to open retail electricity and gas markets by 2004, has attracted the greatest ire. Rival countries resented cross-border bids by EdF and Gaz de France (GdF) "to exploit their privileged monopoly position . . . to acquire assets and customers abroad". "Customers may seem to be benefiting - as EdF's nuclear capacity means that electricity prices are low. However, it is the French taxpayers that subsidised the construction of nuclear plants decades ago," Accenture notes. There are some brighter spots. The Netherlands and Spain plan to open their energy markets to full competition within two to three years. Spain and Portugal also propose a new electricity interconnection to create a single Iberian power market. But the problems of competitive energy markets extend beyond Europe. US efforts to create a national power market may be stymied by marked differences in the competitive models chosen by individual states, Logica says. "Until these issues are resolved, the benefits of competition will be enjoyed only by those fortunate enough to live in the right state," says David Price, Logica vice- president for US energy and utilities markets. "There is much work to be done before all US consumers are able to enjoy the nationwide freedom of choice that has been introduced in the UK." ***************************************************************** 3 Majority of Nuclear Plants Seek Delay in Upgrading Security Environment News Service: AmeriScan: April 15, 2002 WASHINGTON, DC, April 15, 2002 (ENS) - The owners of three out of four licensed U.S. nuclear power plants are asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a delay in scheduling the security upgrades that the commission recently ordered them to make, the watchdog organization Nuclear Control Institute (NCI) disclosed Thursday. In a letter sent to Congressman James Greenwood, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee investigating the enhanced security requirements mandated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NCI president Paul Leventhal and scientific director Edwin Lyman warned that "most plants did not even have the necessary expertise and information to determine their vulnerabilities to vehicle bombs of the type specified in the [NRC] Order." In their letter, Leventhal and Lyman said that NCI's review of responses by all 64 licensed nuclear power plant operators showed that at least 47, or 73 percent, failed to provide an implementation schedule for all measures specified by NRC within the required 20 days of its February 25 order and asked for extensions ranging from two to five and one-half months. "These delays, if granted, will make it very difficult for many plants to put into place all the upgraded security measures by the NRC's August 31 deadline," they said. "The NRC repeatedly argued in the months following the September 11 attacks that it did not have to issue mandatory security orders because nuclear plant operators had voluntarily taken all necessary measures to ensure adequate security," Leventhal and Lyman wrote. "Today we know this is not the case." Greenwood chaired a closed hearing Thursday with NRC commissioners, representatives of the Nuclear Energy Institute industry lobbying group, and David Orrik, who runs the NRC's mock terrorist exercises at nuclear power plants. Leventhal and Lyman also asked Greenwood to investigate "factually incorrect testimony" presented by Nuclear Energy Institute Vice President Ralph Beedle at the subcommittee’s last hearing on December 5, as well as "false claims made by NEI and by some NRC officials that control room operators could recover a plant after terrorists succeed in gaining entry and destroying a redundant set of safety systems." "It is simply unrealistic to assume that operators would have a significant chance of rescuing a plant in the severely degraded state that would occur if terrorists were able to destroy an entire target set, especially if the terrorists were still at large," Leventhal and Lyman warned Greenwood. © Environment News Service (ENS) 2002 ***************************************************************** 4 Seabrook nuclear sale The Union Leader & New Hampshire Sunday News News - April 16, 2002 will benefit consumers By GARRY RAYNO Union Leader Staff A Florida utility will buy 88 percent of the Seabrook nuclear power plant for hundreds of millions of dollars more than anticipated, company and state officials announced yesterday. The sale is being called a $200 million windfall for New Hampshire consumers and will provide up to $13 million in tax revenue for the state. The Public Utilities Commission yesterday announced the sales agreement with Florida Power & Light Group Inc., which will purchase an 88.2 percent interest in the 1,161-megawatt nuclear power plant for a total of $836.6 million. The state had expected the sale to bring between $400 million and $500 million. State and utility officials hope to close the sale by the end of the year. The sale will need the approval of numerous state and federal regulatory agencies. When the sale goes through, the state will realize up to $13 million from the real estate transfer tax, which will help offset declining business tax revenues. Under the agreement, FPL Group will assume responsibility for the decommissioning of the facility and will receive the Seabrook decommissioning funds, expected to be $232.7 million at closing. The current surcharge for decommissioning will end with the sale, as will Public Service of New Hampshire’s obligation to purchase 36 percent of the power from the facility, the amount of the plant owned by North Atlantic Energy Corp., a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities, the parent company of PSNH. Along with Northeast Utilities, other owners include New Hampshire Electric Cooperative; National Grid Group, the parent company of Granite State Electric Co.; United Illuminating Co.; BayCorp Holdings and NSTAR. Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company, Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant and Hudson Light & Power Department retained their interest in Seabrook, accounting for about 12 percent of the output. One of the architects of the state’s deregulation law, House Science, Technology and Energy Committee Chairman Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, called the sale “a $200 million bonanza for consumers.” Gov. Jeanne Shaheen said the sale was expected to bring about $400 million or $500 million. She said the sale will result in rate reductions not counted in the settlement between the state and Public Service that cleared the way for deregulation and the sale of the plant. “It is just fantastic news for families and businesses across New Hampshire that the actual sales price for the plant will be $836 million — the highest sale price ever for any nuclear power plant in history,” Shaheen said. Martin Murray, PSNH spokesman, said the sale is “great news for our customers. It will significantly lower costs a year or two out.” Under the settlement with the state, the stranded costs — or uneconomical investment in a newly competitive market — associated with Seabrook were paid down to about $100 million. Any amount of money Northeast receives beyond $100 million will pay off other stranded costs. Stranded costs were projected to be paid by 2007, and now they will be paid off by 2004 or 2005, reducing rates for customers at that time. Murray said the stranded costs that will be paid early represent about 7 or 8 percent of customers’ bills. The purchase agreement was reached through an auction process, launched in late 2001 and supervised by the PUC in coordination with the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control. Last year, Vermont Yankee, a nuclear plant about half the size of Seabrook and nearly 30 years old, sold to New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. for $180 million. Seabrook has been in operation since 1990. Seabrook will not be FPL’s first acquisition in New England. The company owns 33 hydro and fossil-fuel producing plants, mostly in Maine with a gas-fired facility in Massachusetts. The company is building a 535 megawatt gas-fired plant in Johnson, R.I., it hopes to have completed by later this summer. One of the largest electric utilities in Florida, FPL produces more than 5,000 megawatts of power throughout the country and serves 4 million customers in its home state. The company owns two nuclear power plants in Florida that are slightly larger than Seabrook, and has an excellent safety record, according to Carol Clawson, director of communications for FPL Energy. “This acquisition supports our strategy to become a major energy provider in the Northeast region,” said Lew Hay, chairman and chief executive of FPL Group, based in Juno Beach, Fla. Another architect of the state’s deregulation law, Sen. Clifton Below, D-Lebanon, said the company has a very good record. He said FPL is the largest utility developer of wind energy and owns the largest solar power plant in the country. FPL Energy has no plans to complete Seabrook Unit 2 and plans to improve the facility’s aesthetic condition. (The Associated Press contributed to this report.) The Union Leader. ***************************************************************** 5 Exelon bowing out of 'pebble-bed' nuke plant project - 2002-04-15 - Philadelphia Business Journal Exelon Corp. plans to drop out of an international consortium that's developing an experimental -- and controversial -- nuclear power plant. The Chicago-based utility, parent to Philadelphia-based Peco, will halt its funding of the "pebble-bed modular reactor," which is being designed for an initial deployment of a $300 million plant in South Africa next year. Exelon was expected to help pay for that plant's construction. Pebble-bed reactors produce about one-tenth the electricity of the usual nuclear power plant, which produces about 1,000 megawatts. (One megawatt heats roughly 1,000 homes.) The pebble-bed reactors are touted as safer because they use helium to cool the plant, rather than pressurized water. A spokeswoman with Exelon's generation group in Kennett Square, Pa., declined to comment. But Exelon was expected to make an announcement on its decision Tuesday, according to news agencies. Department of Energy official Norton Haberman revealed that Exelon was dropping out of the consortium at an agency conference on nuclear power and research on Monday, according to Reuters. Exelon holds a 12.5 percent stake in the project, with the other key players including South Africa's state-owned electric utility and a British nuclear-power company. The utility had negotiated for the possible purchase of 40 pebble-bed plants at a cost of around $6 billion. It was unclear late Monday where those negotiations stand. Next week, Exelon chairman and Co-CEO Corbin McNeill, formerly the CEO of Philadelphia's Peco Energy Co. before it merged to form Exelon, will retire from the company. McNeill had championed the pebble-bed project. Observers and analysts said McNeill's early retirement from Peco likely was a result of a feud over the company's nuclear strategy with Co-CEO John Rowe. The United States hasn't seen a new nuclear reactor built since the 1979 accident on Three Mile Island, which involved a partial meltdown of its reactor. Exelon now owns that plant, one of five it holds in or around Pennsylvania. Copyright 2002 American City Business Journals ***************************************************************** 6 Moscow to settle part of debt to Prague with nuclear fuel - Czech PM AFX Europe; Apr 16, 2002 MOSCOW (AFX) - Russia will pay back 200 mln of its 1.1 bln usd debt to Prague by delivering nuclear fuel to be used in power plants, visiting Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman said. "The main aim of this visit is to settle the question of the debt to the Czech Republic" which Russia inherited from the Soviet Union, Zeman told reporters before meeting the speaker of the Russian upper house. "I hope today we can sign an accord for the delivery of nuclear fuel for 200 mln dollars over five years," said the Czech premier. He also said that the two sides hope to sign another debt agreement under which Russia will repay about 500 mln usd by supplying military hardware and spare parts to the Czech Republic. ap-lpt/pb ***************************************************************** 7 NRC to Meet With Amerenue To Discuss Safety Performance at Callaway NRC: Press Release Region IV - 2002 - 22 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 www.nrc.gov No. IV-02-022 April 16, 2002 CONTACT: Breck Henderson Phone: 817-860-8128 Cellular: 817-917-1227 E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov [opa4@nrc.gov] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with representatives of AmerenUE/Union Electric Co. on Monday, April 22, to discuss the results of the agency's annual assessment of safety performance at Callaway nuclear power plant. The facility is located near Fulton, Missouri, and is operated by AmerenUE. The meeting, which will be open to the public for observation, is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at Capitol Plaza Hotel, 415 McCarty St., Jefferson City. NRC staff will be available before the meeting is adjourned to answer any questions from the public. A letter sent from NRC Region IV to AmerenUE addresses plant performance during the period April 1 to December 31, 2001, and will serve as the basis for the meeting discussion. It is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/call_2001q4.pdf. Current performance information for Callaway is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/CALL/call_chart.html. ***************************************************************** 8 Fla. Utility to Buy Seabrook Plant Las Vegas SUN April 15, 2002 CONCORD, N.H.- Executives of a Florida utility that agreed to buy an 88 percent share of New Hampshire's only nuclear plant will meet with community leaders and residents during the next few weeks to discuss the sale. Officials at FPL Group Inc. said the $837 million purchase of a majority interest in Seabrook Station calls for all workers to keep their jobs at similar wages for at least a year. The company has not said what its plans are beyond that. "We believe our decision to invest in New Hampshire will be welcomed by customers, employees, the community and shareholders," said Lew Hay, chairman and chief executive of the Juno Beach, Fla.-based FPL Group. State and federal regulators must approve the sale, announced after the stock market closed Monday. New Hampshire officials were jubilant. "It's incredibly great news for consumers and the state's economy," said state Rep. Jeb Bradley, an architect of the 1996 state law deregulating the electric power industry. Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, said the price was $200 million more than the plant was expected to bring. Gov. Jeanne Shaheen said it was about $400 million more than officials expected two years ago. The 1,161-megawatt plant near the Atlantic Ocean began operating in 1990. FPL Group is the parent company of Florida Power &Light, Florida's largest electric utility. It serves 3.9 million households in 34 Florida counties. "This acquisition supports our strategy to become a major energy provider in the Northeast region," said Hay. The Seabrook shares being sold are those owned by Connecticut-based Northeast Utilities, Public Service's parent company; United Illuminating Co. of New Haven, Conn.; British-based National Grid Group; Boston-based NSTAR; BayCorp Holdings of Eliot, Maine; and the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative in Plymouth. (Granite State Electric is part of National Grid.) Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Co., Taunton (Mass.) Municipal Lighting Plant, and the Hudson (Mass.) Light and Power Department are keeping their shares of the plant, FPL said. Seabrook was a major political issue in New Hampshire from the 1970s through its completion - billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. The mounting debts pushed Manchester-based Public Service, which owned 36 percent of the project, into bankruptcy in 1988. The company emerged from bankruptcy as a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities. Bradley said the sale will put the risk of operating Seabrook in the hands of new owners. He said the state will benefit by reaping several million dollars in real-estate transfer taxes. Not everyone is lauding the proposed sale. Bob Backus, president of Campaign for Ratepayers Rights, a public advocacy group, said Seabrook could have sold for more had it not been for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And, because of that, he believes electricity customers could see higher rates in years to come. "They didn't buy it for a loser," Backus said. "Down the line they're going to want to recover these costs." On the Net: http://www.seabrookstation.com [http://www.seabrookstation.com] http://www.fplgroup.com [http://www.fplgroup.com] http://www.nationalgrid.com [http://www.nationalgrid.com] http://www.nu.com [http://www.nu.com] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 9 Deputies end round-the-clock patrols at nuclear plants Boston Globe Online: Print it! By Associated Press, 4/16/2002 09:26 OSWEGO, N.Y. (AP) Deputies are discontinuing round-the-clock patrols at three Lake Ontario nuclear plants and turning security responsibilities back over to the plants' owners. The Oswego County Sheriff's Department has been providing security at the Nine Mile Point nuclear complex for the past seven months since shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. ''Since that time, they (owners) have worked hard to increase their security measures, hired new staff and brought in new equipment,'' Sheriff Reuel Todd said Tuesday. The sheriff's department had been providing five deputies during three shifts for 24-hour security at the complex in Scriba, where the Nine Mile Point Unit 1 and 2 plants sit next to the James A. Fitzpatrick reactor. Providing security at the nuclear plants was done entirely through overtime, costing the department about $800,000, Todd said. The county has received a $100,000 reimbursement from the state and is also seeking federal funds to help pay for some of the overtime, he said. ''We will continue to have patrols in the area. ... If things change on a national level or even a local level, we can be back there just as quick as we were on September 11th,'' Todd said. The Nine Mile plants are owned by Baltimore-based Constellation Energy Group while Fitzpatrick is owned by New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. Meanwhile, the three plants have asked federal regulators for more time to outline how they will comply with new security guidelines. Those plans, showing how the plants would meet the new security standards, were due March 17. The plants must be in compliance by Aug. 31. ***************************************************************** 10 Entergy Will Prepare Early Site Permit at Grand Gulf Nuclear Station PR Newswire - USA; Apr 16, 2002 Entergy Nuclear will prepare an application for an early site permit at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station site in Port Gibson, Miss., to keep the option open for a new advanced reactor at sometime in the future. "We have not made a decision to start building a new nuclear unit," said Randy Hutchinson, senior vice president of business development, Entergy Nuclear, a major subsidiary of Entergy. "Having that option available, though, is in the best interests of our power consumers, Entergy and the nation's energy independence. Almost all new power plants being built will run on natural gas, and that puts this country's future supply of electricity at some risk," Hutchinson said. Preparing and filing an early site permit is the first step in the new, streamlined licensing process of the NRC designed to reduce the regulatory uncertainty by completing environmental and other site-specific work before a utility makes a financial decision to build. The early site permit process does not commit nor allow Entergy Nuclear to build a new nuclear unit. The permit only pre-approves the site for possible future construction. Entergy expects to submit the early site permit application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2003. "Whether we ever build a new plant there will depend on economic conditions three to five years from now -- what the power demand is in this region, what new advanced reactor designs are certified by NRC and available to build, what the price of power from competing generating resources is, and what the expected cost of power would be from a new nuclear unit," said Hutchinson. The early site permit application will take approximately a year to prepare, and the NRC is expected to need at least two years to review and act on it, including holding public informational briefings in the plant area. The site permit work will be done by an unregulated Entergy Nuclear subsidiary. Under the new licensing process, the permit would be good for 20 years and could be renewed for an additional 20 years. Entergy would "bank" the permit until the company felt such a new generating unit would be beneficial for power consumers. Entergy's early site permit application would also support the Bush administration's Nuclear 2010 program, which calls for the construction of new nuclear plants by that date to maintain America's energy independence from imported natural gas and foreign oil. Current DOE forecasts shows the country will need 40 percent more electricity by 2020. Under the Bush program, the Department of Energy is offering to share the cost of preparing an early site permit with nuclear power operating companies like Entergy Nuclear. Two other nuclear operating companies have announced they, too, will apply for an early site permit at their nuclear plants. Nuclear energy now supplies electricity for one of every five homes and businesses, and is the only large-scale source of electricity that is emission-free and can be expanded without polluting. As an energy supply leader, Entergy is pursuing development of energy options including nuclear and other renewable environmentally clean sources. Nuclear is an environmentally clean energy source needed to establish a diverse and secure national energy supply in the future. Entergy Nuclear, the second largest nuclear operator in the U.S., is the fastest growing national nuclear operating company in the nation, having bought more nuclear plants than any other company. Entergy has purchased four reactors at three sites in New York and Massachusetts and currently has signed an agreement to purchase the Vermont Yankee plant. That transaction is expected to close in mid-2002. Entergy's nuclear businesses also own and operate five reactors at four locations in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana under regulatory jurisdictions, including Grand Gulf Nuclear Station. Entergy Nuclear also furnishes license renewal and decommissioning services to the U.S. nuclear power industry. The nuclear businesses of Entergy Corporation are headquartered in Jackson, Miss. Entergy, a global energy company based in New Orleans, is the third largest power generator in the nation with more than 30,000 megawatts of generating capacity, about $10 billion in revenue and about 2.6 million customers. Entergy's online address is http://www.entergy.com/ Entergy Nuclear's online address is http://www.entergy-nuclear.com/ Nuclear Contact: Carl Crawford of Entergy, +1-601-368-5658, or cellular, +1-601-927-5870, or ccrawfo@entergy.com Website: http://www.entergy-nuclear.com/ http://www.entergy.com/ ***************************************************************** 11 Over governor's objections, S.C. getting plutonium shipments Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:02:31 -0500 (CDT) Health & Science: Over governor's objections, S.C. getting plutonium shipments By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press WASHINGTON (April 15, 2002 9:43 p.m. EDT)- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham gave notice Monday that he is ready to begin shipments of plutonium into South Carolina by mid-May, despite the Democratic state governor's strong objections. Abraham in a letter to Gov. Jim Hodges said it was "essential" to begin the shipments around May 15, to meet a schedule for closing the Rocky Flats weapons facility in Colorado by 2006. By giving the 30-day notice, required by Congress, Abraham issued a clear signal to Hodges that the Bush administration intends to pursue the shipments, over the governor's objections if necessary, Department of Energy officials said. The planned plutonium shipments from various federal weapons facilities to DOE's Savannah River complex near Aiken, S.C., has been the subject of intense negotiations for months. Hodges has vowed to intercept any shipments unless he gets firm agreement - subject to federal court enforcement - that the plutonium will not remain in South Carolina permanently. He has said he's ready to send state troopers to intercept the truckloads or even lie in the road himself to stop them. Abraham has been just as determined. "The department intends to begin shipping plutonium from Rocky Flats to Savannah River no sooner than 30 days from today," Abraham wrote Hodges on Monday. That would be the first of 34 metric tons of plutonium destined for the Savannah River facility. The standoff over the plutonium shipments escalated last week when Abraham rejected a demand from Hodges that a federal judge oversee the enforcement of any agreement on the plutonium shipments. The Bush administration wants to transport excess plutonium from Energy Department weapons facilities around the country to the Savannah River weapons complex near Aiken, S.C., where it will be made into mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, for commercial power reactors. The plutonium disposition plan is part of an agreement with Russia for each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium. Hodges fears that the plutonium would remain there if the MOX conversion strategy runs into trouble or is scaled back. Abraham outlined what he called a string of concessions to ease the governor's concerns. Among them is a formal commitment to take the plutonium back if the MOX conversion plant falls behind schedule or runs into funding trouble. Abraham also promised to support legislation in Congress to codify the agreement and said shipments initially would be limited to 3.2 tons; he said they would be suspended in October if Congress doesn't act. But Hodges told Abraham he wants more assurances in a formal consent agreement that would allow a federal judge to oversee the process. The governor wants "future leaders of South Carolina to have the leverage and force of law" to assure the federal government lives up to its promises, his spokesman said. Abraham rejected the courts' involvement, saying it would amount to "an attempt to conduct ... national security and foreign policy affairs through the judicial process" and "goes beyond what we can do." On Monday, Abraham said he hoped that over the next 30 days he and Hodges could work to get legislation approved providing the state additional assurances. But a spokesman said Abraham remains adamant in opposing any federal court involvement. ***************************************************************** 12 Russia claims poisonous waste being exported from Europe to Kaliningrad BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Apr 16, 2002 [Presenter] A warehouse has been discovered in Kaliningrad Region where dozens of tonnes of insecticide were illegally kept. Our colleagues discovered that the dangerous materials had been delivered from neighbouring Lithuania and that the accompanying documents were forged. [Correspondent Veronika Nikolayeva] Forty tonnes of pesticides of unknown origin have been impounded in the Neman District of Kaliningrad Region. They were brought from Lithuania under the guise of high-quality mineral fertilizer. An examination showed that the materials were insecticides not suitable for use and were very dangerous. [Anatoliy Buchkov, captioned as head of Neman District's department for civil defence and emergencies, standing near sacks with the word "ammonia" written on them] There's no doubt about it: they are not fit for use. This stuff has been banned from use on the territory of the Russian Federation for more than 10 years. Its shelf life expired more than 20 years ago. [Correspondent] Apart from the above-mentioned pesticides, another 50 tonnes of poisonous substances are being stored in Kaliningrad Region, including radioactive ones. Security employees keep finding powerful radiation sources all over the Region in areas formerly occupied by military units and various enterprises. However, more than half of all pesticides come here from Europe: the neighbouring countries find it too expensive to recycle them. Therefore they take every opportunity to get rid of their dangerous materials and use Kaliningrad Region as a waste disposal area. These chests with mercury were transported from Germany last year under the guise of humanitarian aid. This is not the only such example. [Valeriy Sysuyev, captioned as Kaliningrad Region radiation and chemical defence chief] Obviously, various channels as well as the imperfection of our laws are being used to dump all sorts of waste in our Region. [Correspondent] For several years it was impossible to remove the radioactive materials from the Region because there was no money for this in the local budget. Preparations for dispatch of the dangerous cargo for further recycling began only a month ago. Up to now, the bulk of the poisonous waste has been hermetically sealed in special containers. Soon it will be transported to Leningrad Region by Baltic Fleet ships and buried at a special waste disposal area. Source: NTV, Moscow, in Russian 0400 gmt 16 Apr 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 13 Plutonium ready to go Rocky Mountain News: State Radioactive material from Rocky Flats gets official OK to leave for S.C. after May 14 By Berny Morson, News Staff Writer April 16, 2002 Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham signed papers Monday to begin shipping weapons-grade plutonium from Rocky Flats to South Carolina, ending months of delay. The 30-day notice means the radioactive material can begin moving to the Energy Department's Savannah River Site after May 14. The notice was a relief to officials at Kaiser-Hill Co., the firm coordinating the Rocky Flats cleanup. Company officials feared the delays were jeopardizing the goal of closing the defunct nuclear weapons plant by the Dec. 15, 2006, target date. "We're ready to go," said Kaiser-Hill spokesman John Corsi. Much of the plutonium has already been packed into the special shipping containers. The shipments, slated to have begun last fall, were stalled as Abraham tried to reassure South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges that the plutonium will not be stored permanently in the Palmetto State. The plutonium will be turned into reactor fuel as part of a treaty with Russia to reduce stockpiles of the material, the main ingredient in nuclear weapons. But Hodges wanted a legally binding agreement that the plutonium would be removed from South Carolina if the nuclear fuel strategy falls through. Abraham offered him such an agreement in writing last week, but Hodges refused to sign it, saying it is not legally enforceable. With the negotiations at an impasse and the deadline looming to get the fuel out of Colorado, Abraham acted Monday without Hodges' consent. Hodges' spokesman on Monday said the governor plans to lie down in front of the trucks, a threat he has made before. However, the times and routes of the heavily guarded shipments are not disclosed. Hodges may also take legal action, spokesman Jay Reiff said. Although Hodges rejected the assurances offered by Abraham, legislators from Colorado will join South Carolina's congressional delegation in the push to make the reactor fuel program -- along with funding -- into law. Sen. Wayne Allard and Rep. Mark Udall will back the legislation, which will also be sponsored by Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Allard said Abraham's decision to sign the paperwork is "great news for Rocky Flats, the workers and the communities surrounding the facility." ***************************************************************** 14 Plutonium Standoff Intensifies Las Vegas SUN April 16, 2002 COLUMBIA, S.C.- Gov. Jim Hodges isn't backing down from the federal government just because the Energy Department says it's ready to begin shipments of plutonium to South Carolina next month. Hodges had said previously that he's ready to send state troopers to intercept the truckloads or even lie in the road himself to stop them. His spokesman renewed those calls on Monday upon learning that U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham wants to start the shipments around May 15. "The governor made it very clear that the 30-day notice would escalate the situation," spokesman Jay Reiff said. "Troopers blocking shipments is an option. Legal avenues will be aggressively pursued. You use every feasible tool." Abraham said in a letter to Hodges that it was "essential" to begin the shipments to meet a schedule for closing the Rocky Flats weapons facility in Colorado by 2006. The Bush administration wants to transport excess plutonium from weapons facilities around the country to the department's Savannah River complex near Aiken, where it will be made into mixed oxide fuel to run commercial nuclear reactors. Hodges has vowed to intercept any shipments unless he gets firm agreement - subject to federal court enforcement - that the plutonium will not remain in South Carolina permanently. By giving the 30-day notice required by Congress, Abraham issued a clear signal to Hodges that the Bush administration intends to pursue the shipments, over the governor's objections if necessary, Energy Department officials said. A spokesman for the department would not discuss how the federal government would react to troopers at the state's borders or lawsuits. It's not in the government's best interest to talk about "armed confrontation," spokesman Joe Davis said. "We think we can get these issues resolved." In a separate letter to key members of Congress, Abraham said his intention is to begin shipments of 76 trailer loads of plutonium from Rocky Flats shortly after May 15, continuing through June, 2003. Reps. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John Spratt, D-S.C., were working on legislation that could break the impasse, Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said. A bill under consideration could require that plutonium not be left in the state permanently. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., called the department's decision "great news" and said he would work with South Carolina's congressional delegation to ease the state's concerns. The standoff over the shipments escalated last week when Abraham rejected a demand from Hodges that a federal judge oversee the enforcement of any agreement on the plutonium shipments. Abraham outlined what he called a string of concessions to ease the governor's concerns. Among them is a formal commitment to take the plutonium back if the conversion plant falls behind schedule or runs into funding trouble. But Hodges told Abraham he wants more assurances in a formal consent agreement that would allow a federal judge to oversee the process. Abraham rejected the courts' involvement, saying it would amount to "an attempt to conduct ... national security and foreign policy affairs through the judicial process" and "goes beyond what we can do." On the Net: Energy Department: http://www.energy.gov [http://www.energy.gov] Hodges' office: http://www.state.sc.us/governor/ [http://www.state.sc.us/governor/] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 15 Savvy fund-raiser Lewis ready to join Nevada's Yucca fight Tuesday, April 16, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal COLUMN: John L. Smith I was kidding, but Jerry Lewis was serious. Given the state's puny war chest in its battle against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, last week I snidely suggested someone call telethon king Lewis, the comedy giant whose crusade on behalf of the Muscular Dystrophy Association had raised nearly $2 billion over the years. If ever a state needed a telethon, and pronto, it was dusty old Nevada. Our uphill fight against the Bush Administration, Department of Energy, and cash-rich nuclear energy industry was doomed without an immediate infusion of millions. Gov. Kenny Guinn last week implored every resident to give $1 or more toward the anti-Yucca campaign in the lofty name of the Nevada Protection Fund, but that method could take months. And time is something Nevada has precious little of now that Congress is poised to vote to override Guinn's recent veto. After a couple days on prime-time television and on the front pages of the nation's newspapers, Nevada's Yucca fight has sunk back below the media radar screen. It will take a fast fortune to fill major-market airwaves with the state's side of the story. So, out of satiric desperation, I called for Jerry Lewis to come to the rescue us from our seemingly hopeless predicament. Damned if he didn't answer the call. The man who played the Nutty Professor says fighting Yucca Mountain isn't a nutty idea. "Count me in," Lewis says. "We've got to get an audience with the Congress to tell our side of the story. I'm talking about a big-time attempt. The passion I have for this fight is the same passion I have for my daughter's well-being. I would do whatever is necessary. I am one of the proud members of this society that we live in. I'm a proud Nevadan, and I've got a 10-year-old daughter to think about." There it is. In short, that is what makes this mismatched fight worth the fighting. Forget the odds, the science, and the politics. Remember your Nevada sons and daughters and the future they'll inherit in this battered state. I don't want Nevada to become the nation's nuclear spittoon, but it will take more than passing the hat to get it done. Like other Las Vegans, Lewis has noticed the relative frugality of the casino industry in contributing checks to the Yucca fight. He's not shy with his opinion on the subject. "They should be embarrassed," Lewis says. "It's ridiculous. All major hotels have to do is come up with $500,000 apiece." To date, the figure is closer to $500,000 in total. "That's a mosquito on an elephant," he says, adding that it's in the best interest of the resorts to respond with vigor to the challenge. Nevada lags millions behind the nuclear industry. The state's paltry few million has been eclipsed by pro-Yucca spending said to be as much as $50 million. With time a precious commodity, that buys a lot of spin. Truth is, to date Nevada has done a lousy job framing the issue and its underdog status. The state's Yucca experts could take a lesson from Lewis, who over half a century has learned what makes his brand of fund-raising work. It's not the threat of the disease, or the importance of the figurehead on the air. It's something more personal. "People have to have a rooting interest in the cause," Lewis says. "The reason I've managed to raise $1.8 billion is because people root for me to do well for my kids. But we haven't got 52 years." The issue of Yucca must be personalized. Not just within Nevada, but with the rest of the nation. He has multiple pictures going, a concert schedule to maintain, and a memoir to finish. But when Lewis thinks of the Yucca issue, he also thinks of his daughter. "I've got a lot on the plate, but what the hell," he says. "This has to be a priority. We have to find some way to get their attention before it's too late." What about Nevada's children? Aren't they the ideal images to project in this fight? We may be the nation's pariah state, but we're people, too. People with children to raise and protect from radioactive risk no matter how it's packaged. The clock is running. It's time to make it personal. John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 16 Anti-Yucca Mountain appeals get rolling with lucky $77,777 Tuesday, April 16, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal By ED VOGEL REVIEW-JOURNAL CAPITAL BUREAU CARSON CITY -- Nevada residents have contributed a jackpot-like $77,777 to the drive to prevent nuclear waste from coming to Yucca Mountain. Bob Loux, administrator of the state agency for Nuclear Projects, insisted Monday that the figure was not a number manufactured to capitalize on the state's gambling heritage. "It isn't made up," Loux said. "I think it is a lucky number. It is a portent of money to come." But if Nevada officials lose the Yucca Mountain fight, the number seven won't seem so lucky. The Energy Department wants to store 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste in the ridge, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Gov. Kenny Guinn called on each Nevadan last week to give at least a dollar to pay for a TV and public relations campaign to persuade Congress to reject Bush's plan to make Yucca Mountain the nation's nuclear repository. Incline Village resident Dorothy Lemelson, widow of inventor Jerome Lemelson, contributed $75,000 to the effort during last Wednesday's meeting of the Legislature's Interim Finance Committee meeting. Other than Lemelson's contribution, residents have contributed $2,777 to the campaign. At the meeting, legislators agreed to contribute $3 million to the anti-Yucca campaign. But the contribution is contingent on receiving matching donations from citizens and local governments. Loux said his office received 157 checks in Monday's mail, ranging from four quarters taped to one card to a $200 contribution in another letter. "I think it is overwhelming," he said. "I am pleased by the support. It is just starting." He said he was "slightly disappointed" that the business community has made few contributions. He thinks the total will increase significantly as his office processes donations by credit card. Loux also is hoping the Clark County Commission will make a $1.5 million contribution. The commission earlier considered making that contribution, but held off finalizing the donation until after the Legislature made its contribution. The Agency for Nuclear Projects only is counting donations made since Guinn made his plea for public contributions on April 8. Since last summer, residents and local governments have contributed an additional $1,261,114 to fund the anti-Yucca effort. That total includes $1 million from Clark County, along with $50,000 donations from the city of Mesquite, Station Casinos and the Molasky family. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 17 EDITORIAL: A Yucca alternative Tuesday, April 16, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal One reason the federal government is so eager to dump the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada remains the potential liability should it not soon take title to the stuff -- as it promised nuclear power plant owners decades ago. But a little known deal cut two years ago between the Department of Energy and a Pennsylvania utility offers a blueprint for solving the liability problem without wasting billions of dollars shoving Yucca Mountain down Nevada's throat. Under the agreement, at some future date, the DOE would become legal owner of the nuclear waste generated at PECO Energy's Peach Bottom nuclear plant -- storing the waste in a facility built by PECO, but owned, operated and managed by the DOE. Ironically, the deal is tied up in court thanks to a group of utilities which sued, arguing that taking money from the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for the arrangement is illegal because the money in the fund is supposed to be used to build Yucca Mountain. But as Gov. Kenny Guinn noted last week, implementing the PECO alternative nationwide would not only end spent fuel lawsuits against the DOE and allow utilities to remove all such liabilities from their books, it would save taxpayers billions of dollars by rendering Yucca redundant. Gov. Guinn also pointed out that when the PECO deal was signed, the DOE hailed it as "a precedent for additional settlement negotiations with other utilities." Indeed. The answer to the liability problem is staring the DOE in the face -- and it isn't Yucca Mountain. webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 18 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Repository foes turning up heat Tuesday, April 16, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Environmentalists gather to pressure lawmakers to kill project By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Nevada's environmental allies today kick off a major push to promote the state's fight against the Yucca Mountain Project and the potential effects of nuclear waste shipments through dozens of states. More than 150 activists from around the country have arrived in the nation's capital. They intend to visit their senators this week and lobby against the Energy Department's plans to build a nuclear waste repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. They will be dispatched following this morning's rally outside the U.S. Capitol, where speakers will include Nevada lawmakers and presidents of the Sierra Club and Public Citizen. Organizers said activists have scheduled appointments with senators or staff representing Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin and Colorado. Thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel would be trucked or sent by rail through those states to Yucca Mountain. "For the majority of those folks, the message will be that what's happening to Nevada is the tip of the iceberg," said Dan Geary, Nevada representative for the National Environmental Trust. "The vulnerability of transportation routes are major community issues in so many states." Some 75 representatives from communities near government nuclear facilities attended a training session Sunday on lobbying on Yucca Mountain and other issues important to the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. "Yucca is No. 1 on the briefing sheets. It's a major, major issue for these lobbyists," said Peggy Maze Johnson of Las Vegas, executive director of Citizen Alert of Nevada. Johnson met Monday with aides to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who is leaning against Nevada's position. Yucca Mountain supporters have scheduled a counter-event outside the U.S. Capitol, where House members and officials from the Nuclear Energy Institute will speak in favor of quick action by Congress to approve the repository. "This is to show that we have something to say so people hear both sides," NEI spokesman Mitch Singer said. For the environmentalists, the Washington rally will be the headliner. But nuclear waste events also are scheduled for other states: • In New Mexico, local activists will hold a news conference outside Albuquerque at a highway intersection to highlight transportation risks. • In Michigan, activists have planned a news conference in Lansing backed by a map of possible transportation routes through the state. • In New York, the state's Public Interest Research Group will use a railroad line in Utica along a possible nuclear waste route as the backdrop for an event. • In Vermont, the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, the Sierra Club and Physicians for Social Responsibility are sponsoring a rally in Montpelier to announce the first anti-Yucca Mountain television advertisements. Paul Burns, executive director of VPIRG, said the 30-second commercial will air on ABC and NBC affiliates over several weeks. The Sierra Club bought time, but the amount of the purchase could not be confirmed. Burns said WCAX, the CBS affiliate in Burlington, refused to accept the ad, which highlights the potential that trucks and railcars will be carrying deadly radioactive material from the Vermont Yankee plant in the southern Vermont town of Vernon. The ad closes by urging viewers to call Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and James Jeffords, I-Vt. Both have voted for a Nevada repository in the past. "Certainly, if we are to succeed in stopping or at least delaying the shipment of nuclear waste to Nevada, we absolutely must have the Vermont senators on board," Burns said. Earlier this month, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed President Bush's selection of Yucca Mountain for the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository. Congress has until late July to override the veto. A majority vote in the House or Senate in support of Guinn's veto would kill the Yucca Mountain Project. A majority vote in both the House and Senate to override the veto would approve the repository. Nevada officials and environmentalists long have conceded that the House will override Guinn's veto and have focused their efforts on the Senate. Current estimates show Nevada is about a dozen votes short of the 51 Senate votes it needs to sustain the veto. Lisa Gue, a policy analyst for Public Citizen, said the key to this week's lobbying is the presence of constituents, not Washington lobbyists. "One of the things we hear is that it's very important for members to hear from their constituents," Gue said. "The folks coming down represent state-based citizen groups that have a policy position on this issue." Activists also will solicit media attention in Delaware, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida. They are among 47 national groups and 477 community organizations that environmental leaders say have declared opposition to the repository. webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 19 Editorial: Code red on Yucca remarks Las Vegas SUN April 16, 2002 We can never again rule out any terrorist act as "unimaginable." The federal government's inventorying of smallpox vaccine is evidence of that. So it's irresponsible for U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to assess as safe from terrorist attack the transportation of high-level nuclear waste across thousands of highly populated miles. But that's what he did last week in Washington while addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Ridge told the editors that his office had reviewed the proposal to transport the deadly waste to Yucca Mountain and had found no fault. That his office, barely seven months old, could arrive at a definitive conclusion so quickly is more a model of political loyalty than a miracle of government efficiency. The nation's editors, we hope, understood that Ridge was responding more to the platform of the Bush administration than to any standard of critical judgment. Let's rule out terrorism for a moment. There hasn't been a study yet that hasn't calculated dozens of accidents during the 30 to 40 years that Yucca would be receiving multiple deliveries a day. The Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office, for example, using the Department of Energy's own figures, calculates there will be 175 to 355 accidents -- distinct from lesser "incidents" -- depending upon the mix of highway and rail routes. The numbers upon which the projection is based derive from actual accidents and incidents as nuclear waste was being transported from 1971 through 1990. Now we have terrorism to add to the equation. The known and the unknown when it comes to terrorism are frightful to contemplate. The unknown includes how many foreign terrorists -- sleeper cells -- are already in the country and how many domestic terrorists, ala Timothy McVeigh, there might be. The known is that the Immigration and Naturalization Service and law enforcement agencies are capable of preventing many, maybe most, but not all acts of terror -- as Oklahoma City and Sept. 11 demonstrate. Yet Tom Ridge says he knows for sure that transportation should not be "an impediment" to opening Yucca Mountain. We think the color-code "red" should be attached to his opinion -- symbolizing a severe threat to credibility. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 20 Yucca: More wool than truth Las Vegas SUN April 16, 2002 Where I Stand -- Mike O'Callaghan: More wool than truth Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor. THE COMPETITION BETWEEN Department of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton has become rather entertaining. Which one can pull the most wool over the eyes of Americans appears to be their common goal. Both are using the security of our homeland as a tool to blind us to the real facts of life. Their favorite mouthpiece has been Ari Fleischer, who speaks for the White House occupant. As I wrote before, the national security gimmick was also used 30 years ago to get approval to drill on the North Slope at Prudhoe Bay and build a pipeline across Alaska to Valdez. The approval by Congress came with the restriction that the oil couldn't be exported to foreign countries. In order to make additional dollars that restriction was removed, at the urging of the Alaskan delegation, several years ago. This resulted in about 60,000 barrels daily then being shipped to Asia. So much for it being needed for our national security. Remember the saying: Dog bite me once, shame on dog. Dog bite me twice, shame on me. Following a letter from Abraham, published in the Reno Gazette-Journal, respected historian and chairman of Common Cause of Nevada, Jim Hulse wrote: "Abraham would have us believe that scientific evidence and concerns about homeland security produced the decision to select the Yucca Mountain site. What he did not tell us in his article is he personally has long been a favorite of Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the special interest group that has repeatedly promoted the plan to transport hazardous nuclear waste from 35 other states to Nevada. The nuclear power cabal gave at least $15,000 in soft-money campaign contributions to then Senator Abraham in his unsuccessful bid for re-election in Michigan in 2000. "The secretary of energy also conveniently overlooked the fact that the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the legislative branch, said last year that the scientific data on the proposed Yucca Mountain site were far from complete." As Abraham promotes dumping deadly nuke waste on the Silver State in a most dangerous manner, Norton uses her guile and the backing of energy corporations to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A most questionable undertaking, which threatens far more environmental damage and far less oil than Norton's promises. Syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington in the Los Angeles Times took a revealing look at Norton's willingness to play with "research" results to promote the project, which might produce oil in 7 to 10 years. Huffington concluded that, "If the president is truly sincere about freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil, he would forget about the negligible amounts of oil in ANWR and get serious about conservation and the promotion of alternative sources of energy." Last week Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., took Norton to task for using an industry-funded film to promote ANWR drilling. In a three page letter to the secretary, the congressman wrote, "It would appear on the face of it that your use of your official office to promote this industry-sponsored video in an effort to influence Congress to drill in the Arctic Refuge is precisely the kind of activity that is prohibited by law. "Further, I note that the Comptroller General of the United States has previously ruled it improper for agencies 'to use appropriated funds to provide assistance to private lobbying groups.' GAO has noted 'the few cases in which violations have been found have involved a version of the publicity and propaganda statue tied in specifically to attempting to influence pending legislation.' " A Nevada historian, a syndicated columnist and one congressman have seen through the nonsense promoted by Abraham and Norton. Soon we will discover if a majority of Congress has the same good eyesight and high intelligence. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 21 Private donors pitch in to state anti-Yucca fund Las Vegas SUN April 16, 2002 CARSON CITY -- Private contributions have added $77,777 to a state fund to fight the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, a state official said Monday. After Gov. Kenny Guinn's call for every Nevadan to contribute a dollar to the cause, the state has seen everything from checks, credit card donations and four quarters taped to a piece of cardboard come in to the Nevada Protection Fund, said Bob Loux, director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects. Those contributions can be used to gain matching funds from the state Legislature. The Legislature's interim committee approved up to $3 million in matching funds. The contributions include the $75,000 given last week by the Incline Village woman. The next largest contribution was $200. Loux said many people are asking their name not be disclosed. But there's $100 from Rick Bennett, a former Las Vegas assemblyman who is now government relations officer for UNLV and $50 from Renee Diamond, a former Las Vegas Assemblywoman who now heads the state Manufactured Housing Division. Loux said his office received 158 to 160 letters Monday but these have not been totaled. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 22 Commission OKs $1.5 million for fight Las Vegas SUN April 16, 2002 By Adrienne Packer Clark County commissioners voted 5-2 this morning to approve giving $1.5 million to the state to help with legal fees associated with the fight to keep nuclear waste from being stored at Yucca Mountain. The money will come from funds set aside to buy fire equipment and replace obsolete county computers. The commission also agreed to delay building a Goodsprings courthouse, freeing up nearly $1 million. Commissioners Bruce Woodbury and Chip Maxfield opposed the move, saying the county's budget is already tight and the $1 million the county has already contributed to the fight was sufficient. "I think we're going beyond what is appropriate," Woodbury said. The money will help state leaders fight the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. The money is expected to be applied toward a $3 million matching fund OK'd by a state legislative committee last week. State leaders have asked residents, businesses and governments to give to the fund, and Gov. Kenny Guinn called for every Nevadan to contribute at least $1. So far, the state has seen $77,777 in private donations -- everything from four quarters taped to a piece of cardboard to a $75,000 donation from an Incline Village woman. The next largest contribution was $200. County leaders were concerned about their budget and the projects that will be affected by the $1.5 million. County Manager Thom Reilly assured commissioners that the fire department can still go forward with its initial planned purchases and taking money from a new computer system will not affect services. He also said the county will not be prepared to begin construction on the Goodsprings courthouse for several months. Commissioner Myrna Williams said the county can't afford to wait until the budget is approved in May before contributing the money, as Maxfield had suggested. "This is our one chance; we can't wait to do this," Williams said. "Our best shot (to defeat the dump) is to get people informed at this time to stop it before it happens." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 23 State files motion on Yucca water Las Vegas SUN April 16, 2002 By Cy Ryan SUN CAPITAL BUREAU CARSON CITY -- The attorney general's office said today that as of now the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain is dead because of the veto of Gov. Kenny Guinn earlier this month. And the Energy Department is not authorized to use any underground water, according to a motion filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas. "We feel that any statement that the government experienced irreparable harm cannot be true," Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said. The Energy Department filed suit to overturn the denial by the state of a permanent water right and the refusal by the state to extend its temporary water permits. In court documents filed April 9, the Energy Department said it would run out of water in 18 days. "They don't need water for a project that is dead," Adams said. "If Congress resurrects it, that presents a different issue." Energy spokesman Allen Benson said previously the department has built and filled a 1 million gallon reservoir, providing enough water to last six to nine months, after its temporary permit expired in early April. Adams said there have been conflicting reports on how much it has in reserve. But the court documents maintain it has enough to last only until April 27. Adams expects U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt to schedule a hearing either late this week or next week to hear arguments. President Bush on Feb. 15 designated Yucca Mountain as the site for a burial ground for radioactive waste. Guinn vetoed the selection on April 8. Congress now has 90 days to either uphold or override the veto. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 24 Yucca case goes to Vermont Las Vegas SUN April 16, 2002 State takes its argument public with TV advertisement By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- Nevada's effort to rally public opinion against a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain kicks off in earnest tonight with the premiere of a television ad in Vermont. The state's first anti-dump commercial tells viewers that the nuclear power industry plans to drive waste "right through the towns we live in." "People need to understand that this stuff is going to be transported through their state, past their schools and near their businesses," said Ed Rothschild, a principal with Podesta Mattoon who works with John Podesta, the state's Democratic lobbyist in Washington on Yucca. "A lot of people in a lot of states outside Nevada don't understand that yet." The goal of the television spot is to influence Vermont Sens. Patrick Leahy and James Jeffords. Leahy is a Democrat and Jeffords is independent. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is urging both to side with him. Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., are scrambling to line up 49 other senators to vote against a Yucca repository. The proposed repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is awaiting congressional action in the next three months. Nevada leaders believe the only chance to stop it is in the Senate. The anti-Yucca spot is being aired as a test to gauge the effectiveness a television ad can have on a senator, as well as the effectiveness of the ad's "transportation is dangerous" message. As part of the state's coordinated push against the dump, roughly 100 representatives from environmental and other activist groups from about 20 states gathered today on the U.S. Capitol grounds for a rally to urge lawmakers to vote against Yucca. Some also planned to meet with their lawmakers or staff today. Their message stays true to the transportation argument. At this morning's rally, Chris Williams with the Indiana Citizens Action Coalition noted that Indiana's license plates say "Crossroads of America." "Indiana would become the nation's nuclear freeway," Williams said. "And we say, 'No,' and the people of Indiana say, 'No.' " Nevada's four lawmakers, along with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., joined the activists. At one point, chants of "Safety, yes! Yucca, no!" echoed on the west steps of the Capitol. "This is the time, this is the place, you are the people," Markey told the activists and a few onlookers. "You must mount this struggle against this environmental disaster." Much of the pressure is on Ensign to rally GOP senators. After Ensign's speech, he would not say if any had agreed to vote against Yucca. Only Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., is leaning against the project. However, Ensign is encouraged that a "significant number" of GOP senators had agreed to be "undecided" instead of pro-Yucca. "That's all we're asking at this point," Ensign said. "To get a politician to switch, you've got to have real compelling arguments, which we think we have." The nuclear industry put together its own dueling press conference an hour before the anti-Yucca rally. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, a leading Yucca advocate, called for Congress to vote on it in early May. "We have reached a defining moment in our nation's energy history and our energy future," said Angie Howard, a Nuclear Energy Institute vice president. "It is not the first. It will not be the last. But it is momentous. And it calls on Congress to act in the best interests of United States energy security and the American people." The nuclear industry has dismissed Nevada leaders' arguments that the transportation of nuclear waste is dangerous. Industry lobbyists and leaders say there have been hundreds of safe shipments without a problem and say Nevadans are playing on a fear of the unlikely. But Nevada leaders believe the message is among their best, and the ad reflects that. The ad also touches on the premise that the nuclear industry wants to construct more new plants in America, which may resonate with anti-nuclear Easterners, Nevada officials hope. The narrator, actor Ed Begley Jr., says: "Dozens of new nuclear power plants, that's the goal of the nuclear power industry. And that's why they're lobbying the Senate to let them move 77,000 tons of deadly nuclear waste. "Driving it right through the towns we live in, with over 50,000 nuclear trucks and trainloads moving though our streets, even the government admits, accidents are inevitable. And terrorist attacks will become harder than ever to prevent." The 30-second spot is scheduled to air tonight in the Burlington, Vt., area. The advertisement will run on ABC and NBC affiliates in the next few weeks, Nevada officials said. The area's CBS affiliate declined to run the ad. The advertisement was the first commercial to run in an effort to urge congressional lawmakers to oppose the project aimed at burying the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain. A state official said the ad would run in Oregon, Utah, Wyoming and Missouri after its run in Vermont. Oregon is represented by Sens. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who has voted with Nevada senators against Yucca legislation; and Republican Gordon Smith, who has voted for Yucca legislation. Missouri is represented by Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., a freshman lawmaker who has grave concerns about waste transportation, but has not publicly said how she would vote. Republican Sen. Kit Bond, is leaning in favor of the project, aides say. Wyoming and Utah have Republican senators -- Sens. Craig Thomas and Michael Enzi in Wyoming and Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett. All four have voted in favor of Yucca. Nevada officials, along with the Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Vermont Public Interest Research Group, arranged for the the television spot and helped pay for its production. The Sierra Club purchased the Vermont air time, but Rothschild would not say how much it will cost by the end of its run. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 25 AU: ERA hopeful on uranium prices Financial Review - Apr 16 AAP Energy Resources of Australia is hoping to improve earnings this year as uranium spot prices show signs of recovery. Chief executive Bob Cleary said the uranium miner, which owns the Jabiluka and Ranger mines in World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, could do better than break even in 2002. However, market conditions remained difficult and only small price improvements were expected this year. "Originally we were looking to break even this year, but we think we will do better than that," Mr Cleary said after ERA's annual general meeting. In January, ERA - 68 per cent owned by Rio Tinto - reported a 68 per cent drop in full-year profit to $8.1 million after uranium spot prices fell to between $US7 and $US8. Since then, prices have risen to $US9.90. They were expected to improve gradually in the next 12 to 18 months, Mr Cleary said. ERA shares, untraded yesterday, last traded at $2.07. Rio Tinto's closed 10˘ lower at $37.15. ***************************************************************** 26 Yucca: Gambling with Tomorrow May/June 2002 - Sierra Magazine - Sierra Club by William Poole from Sierra, November/December 1992 Can lethal waste buried today remain isolated for 10,000 years? Political expediency is forcing the people of Nevada to play the highest-stakes game of all. By Nevada measure, Yucca Mountain is scarcely a mountain at all. One hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas, scattered with creosote and ankle-high scrub, its undistinguished ridge trends north to south about 1,000 feet above the bordering valleys. Views are open and spare: to the east the Nevada Test Site, to the west abrupt Solitario Canyon, and to the southwest Crater Flat, a broad expanse of desert punctured by the dark, inverted funnels of several small volcanoes. But during the last decade Yucca Mountain has become the most studied—and disputed—landform in the history of the Silver State. That record may have formerly been held by Mt. Davidson, from which, beginning in 1859, the state's founders removed $400 million in silver and gold. At Yucca Mountain, however, it is not a withdrawal that is being contemplated, but a deposit: 70,000 metric tons of the nation's highest-level nuclear waste. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hopes that before long the "characterization," or formal study, of Yucca Mountain's suitability as a nuclear-waste repository will be fully under way. If all winds favor the DOE, the dump is expected to open by the year 2010. But that's a big "if." Local hostility to the project has been building since 1987, when Congress elected Nevada odd-state-out after a dithering, decades-long search for a politically acceptable site. The Nevada legislature has passed one law and two resolutions against the dump, and the state has attempted to slow the study through lawsuits and by denying key environmental permits—efforts eventually thwarted by the federal government. Under the law that sentenced Nevada, the state was given money—$45 million so far—to monitor the Yucca Mountain study. Officials have put some of the funds to work to inflame the public revolt, greatly peeving the nuclear-power industry, which is paying the bill for the states vigilance, as well as for the characterization. The last thing the industry wants is a protracted dispute: more than 20,000 metric tons of irradiated fuel assemblies sit in cooling ponds and aboveground storage at U.S. nuclear reactors, and seven states have banned new nuclear facilities until waste disposal can be secured. With no other sites under consideration, Nevada's biggest fear is that the dump will be licensed regardless of any drawbacks the ten-year, $6 billion investigation might uncover. "The industry is providing pressure across the board," says Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects. "There's just too much political and economic incentive for the DOE to approve this site no matter what the actual conditions might be." While the state does have veto power should Yucca Mountain be sanctioned, Congress can override that veto—a move that few Nevada residents doubt would occur. Forty driving miles from Yucca Mountain, Beatty, Nevada, is the nearest town to the potential dumpsite with anything approaching a residential identity. (A few years back, after a big gold mine opened down the road, the population doubled to 1,800.) It is the kind of vest-pocket desert community where retired couples from Michigan park their RVs for the night, or for the winter. Beatty, which bills itself as The Gateway to Death Valley, is on average one of the drier hamlets on the continent, but I visited on a soggy, blowing, cloud-covered day. I stopped at the DOE's local public-information office, where I pocketed a couple of free Yucca Mountain Project keyrings and some imprinted pens ("I'm Smart About Nuclear Energy"). I also picked up ten pounds of official DOE newsletters, briefing papers, backgrounders, flow charts, and overview documents, and surveyed the 6,300-page Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Plan. Beyond the Stagecoach Hotel and Casino, beyond the Burro Inn and Casino, beyond the Exchange Club Casino, I stopped at a Chevron station, one of the very few Beatty businesses without a slot machine. The man who pumped my gas was contemptuous when I asked about Yucca Mountain. Didn't I understand that the dump would border the Nevada Test Site, where scientists have been exploding atomic bombs for four decades "Just 18 miles over that hill, you stick your head in the ground, youre dead in ten seconds. What difference does it make Its already 53-million-years polluted." However hyperbolic, this mix of resignation and macho recklessness did not surprise me. Around Beatty and Amargosa Valley, a one-saloon settlement down the road ("Home of Yucca Mountain, Champagne Air, and Million-Dollar Sunsets"), there is some sentiment toward accepting the dump and mining the brief prosperity it might provide. But most Nevadans—75 percent at last count—are repulsed by the idea. A more characteristic response was the one I got from a secretary in the governor's press office when I called to set up an interview. "Can I tell him what this is about she asked. And then, on hearing my answer: Yucca Mountain Oh, yuck!" Governor Bob Miller is one of several Nevada politicians whove been washed into high office by a rising river of anti-dump populism. He is a lean, high-rise Democrat who wears cowboy boots to work and occasionally plays celebrity basketball. "There's a national misconception that this entire state is a wasteland and good for nothing but dumping," he told me in his quarter-acre office in the silver-domed statehouse. To date Miller has enjoyed plenty of peer support for this position: Not one statewide politician has come out for the project. Who would dare with so many voters against it? Last fall, in an attempt to blunt the opposition, the American Nuclear Energy Council (ANEC), an industry trade association, launched the Nevada Initiative, a $9-million campaign to convince Nevadans that the dump would prove an innocuous neighbor. Early TV spots lectured on radiation science: In one, a pitchman displayed a simulated fuel pellet to the camera and explained that nuclear fuel was a solid, not a liquid, and so "could not leak." In another, nuclear-waste transportation casks on speeding trucks and trains survived seemingly devastating crashes. But the ads, if styled to be reassuring, were widely greeted with ridicule—especially after the industry's campaign plan was leaked to the media. Bristling with militaristic jargon, the initiative proposed establishing a "political beachhead" and providing air cover for politicians who wished to switch to a pro-repository position. It told of industry PR flacks training DOE researchers to act as a "scientific truth response team" to refute opposition criticism. To Nevadans, who like to suppose themselves sophisticated about matters of chance, perhaps the biggest insult in the industry scheme was the implication that they could be suckered. The initiative spoke of creating a "sense of inevitability" about Yucca Mountain, which to many Nevadans meant that the industry intended to talk them into the dump whether they liked it or not. John Ralston, a political columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state's largest newspaper, calls the release of the Nevada Initiative memo "the most devastating thing to happen to ANEC since they came to the state. No longer could they claim to be benevolent truth-disseminators. Their campaign was revealed to be a calculated plan to make people think that the dump is coming in order to speed the process along." Soon ANEC's commercials were being broadly lampooned by Ken Johnson and Kim Tofte, disk jockeys on Las Vegas radio station KKLZ. Every new pro-dump ad provoked a Johnson and Tofte satire. In one send-up an industry spokesman explained that "nuclear waste couldnt possibly hurt you, even if you sprinkled it on your cereal. (I like their ads better than ours, industry executive Rodney Smith said at a recent nuclear-power conference. In terms of public opinion, I think they touch the right political buttons.") In a series of TV ads for a local auto dealership, Johnson and Tofte dressed as a two-headed Yucca Mountain miner in a single voluminous pair of overalls. In this guise they urged viewers to "double your automotive value" at Fletcher Jones Mazda/Mitsubishi. Of the miners two heads (the deformity, they noted, was due to Yucca Mountain water), one preferred Mazdas and the other Mitsubishis. Worth noting is that the auto dealership is owned by the family of Jan Laverty Jones, the mayor of Las Vegas. Whatever the real danger from a nuclear dump, Mayor Jones told me in her glass-walled office ten stories above the carnival neon of the downtown casino district, even the perception of risk might divert Las Vegas' much-courted tourists to less worrisome locales. "All it would take," she says, "is one incident." Las Vegas (population 799,000) is among the fastest-growing cities in the country, with a rapidly diversifying economy. Even the resort business is adding wholesome, Disneyesque entertainments to its rolling dice and shimmying dancers. But Jones believes that most Americans, especially easterners, do not understand that Vegas is neither Sodom nor Gomorrah. "There's a perception that we deserve this nuclear waste dump," she says. "They think if you're going to put it next to a city, you might as well put it next to a city like Las Vegas, where everybody lives in casinos and nobody goes to school." The Yucca Mountain Project Office occupies an airy storefront across the street from one of Las Vegas' trendier malls. A couple of workspaces are tucked into the back with a conference room and a small library, but the bulk of the office is dedicated to snazzy public persuasion. Centrally displayed are three nearly life-size cardboard cutouts of happy workers with hard-hats or clipboards, along with a label bragging of the employment created by Yucca Mountain—"an important resource for Nevada." Other exhibits include a scale-model waste repository, an interactive nuke-knowledge computer quiz, a facsimile nuclear-fuel assembly (columnar complexes of slender metal tubes containing uranium-oxide pellets), technicolor charts and maps, and a full-size mock-up of a subterranean repository chamber, complete with recorded narration and an in-one-side-and-out-the-other elevator that traps the visitor momentarily and shakes and rumbles in imitation of descent. I depart from this office-cum-museum-cum-amusement park one overcast morning to Yucca Mountain in a DOE van accompanied by no fewer than three officials. I have been assigned a press escort, of course—a reserved, broad-shouldered man named Darwin Morgan—as well as Tom Bjerstedt, a Ph.D. geologist wearing a blue Yucca Mountain baseball cap, and an enthusiastic young environmental scientist named Greg Fasano, who carries a sheaf of notes on things I need to know. We slice north across creosote-brush flats, up the four-lane highway that shrinks to two lanes precisely at Mercury, entry village and de facto capital of the Nevada Test Site. From here on the roads we will take do not appear on over-the-counter maps. Some miles beyond the test site's guarded entry gate, past Skull Mountain and across scrub-scabbed Jackass Flat, we arrive at a cluster of buildings, the largest of which looks like the headquarters of a small computer firm or other suburban business. In these formerly abandoned buildings, where in the 1960s and '70s government scientists tinkered with nuclear-powered rockets, the DOE is assembling its on-site Yucca Mountain team. The mountain itself lies several miles beyond, and comes at us like a wall until the road finds a climable grade and we ascend to the summit. To the north, the landscape gradually accumulates into higher country. Here, between 8 and 16 million years ago, magma rising through Earth's crust exploded into hot glass shards and crystals. Some of this outflow migrated south and was compressed into a type of rock known as "welded tuff." From atop the Yucca Crest, the formation of tuff into which the DOE hopes to quarry its dump lies 1,000 feet down --more beneath the mountain than within it. We zip our jackets against the breeze and watch laggard clouds smother the higher hills. Tom Bjerstedt has brought along an aerial photo, and he holds it up now for a lecture, doubling the surrounding landscape against his knees. It is Bjerstedt's job to convince me that the violence evident around us—the cinder cones on Crater Flat, the fault that formed Solitario Canyon, the black volcanic Swiss-cheese rock beneath our feet—is but distant and untroublesome history. The state has demanded that the Yucca Mountain site be disqualified because of its volcanic and unstable heritage. Last June an earthquake registering 5.6 on the Richter scale caused a reported $1 million damage to the DOE field operations buildings. Could not tension gradually accumulate along any of the areas 32 earthquake faults, leading to some disastrous future slip? According to Bjerstedt, these worries betray a misunderstanding of geologic history and process. Most of the earthquake faults haven't moved in hundreds of thousands of years, he says, and even though a nearby volcanic cone may be only 20,000 years old, a new eruption probably wouldn't disturb the waste vault. All the volcanoes are out in the valleys, he notes, "not on the mountaintops." Even a solid shaking wouldnt hurt anything, Bjerstedt insists, since the rock around the repository would probably remain intact. Surface buildings, where waste would be prepared for burial, would be built to withstand the largest earthquake that might be expected. He is full of reassurances. "We have to educate people in geology," he says. "We have to help them understand geologic processes and the enormity of geologic time." According to DOE guidelines, the radioactivity would have to be isolated from the environment for 10,000 years—about twice the length of recorded human history. The waste-fuel assemblies would be locked into metal canisters and deposited in the rock, one canister per hole, like the larvae of some outsize high-tech insect. The canisters might last 500 or 1,000 years —the numbers are only guesses. It is the rock itself, 1,100 feet thick, that would be expected to contain the demon's brew: strontium 90, cesium 137, and, far less abundantly, plutonium, which remains toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. The most likely way for radioactive poisons to escape to the environment would be through water. One of the reasons Yucca Mountain attracted DOE investigators as far back as the late 1970s was the extraordinary depth of the water table—about 1,000 feet below the potential repository. Subsequent soil measurements have shown that little of the region's six inches of annual rain percolates to dump level. But climates change, critics point out. Who can guarantee that the desert will not be sprouting forests in 10,000 years To that question, and to most scientific objections, the DOE gives its standard reply: "We want to study that." In fact, many of Yucca Mountain's 1,100 scientists and technicians are preoccupied with water, as I learn when we leave the mountain and I am taken to meet Lorraine Flint in the project's hydrology lab. Flint, a friendly soil physicist in her 30s, has been with the project for six years and is one of 200 scientists on site. She is the only one in this lab today. "Where's everyone else?" I ask her, surveying the deserted room. "It's been raining," she says. Everybody's out in the field. Flint shows off meteorological charts and punches up bright graphs on her computers. Groundwater movement, historical weather cycles, and infiltration (how deep the water goes after how much rain) are all included in the hydrology research. Scientists are also studying how the waste's considerable heat will affect the hydrology and chemistry of the surrounding rock. Flint presents samples of tuff, fine-grained and a lovely red-dish brown where they have been polished smooth by the lab's rock-cutting saws. In 1987, DOE geologist Jerry Szymanski launched what has become the project's most virulent scientific controversy—and not surprisingly, it also centered on water. Szymanski suggested that the dump might swamp from below if earthquakes compressed flooded fissures in underlying rock. Radioactivity might then flow southwest to springs in Death Valley National Monument. In the worst case, water might surge into the super-heated vault, flash into steam and decapitate the mountain in a Chernobyl-like disaster, a scenario Tom Bjerstedt calls "absurd." Szymanski's theory is one of the most puzzled-over geologic scenarios of the last few years. In December 1991 a panel of five scientists delivered a split decision; two panelists chosen by Szymanski found for his theories, three others found against. Then, last April, a 17-member panel selected by the National Research Council unanimously dismissed Szymanskis concerns in a 240-page report. But no amount of reassurance on specific scientific questions relieves the state's larger suspicion that the research at Yucca Mountain is fixed, that the projects characterization plan has been designed not to study the site, but to confirm it. "They selectively interpret the data and they construct the program so that the data they collect prove their point," says Bob Loux. "If the state would recommend what tests they'd like us to do, wed probably do them," responds Carl Gertz, "the DOE's Yucca Mountain project manager. If at any time we find conditions that would make the site unsafe, we're out of here." The DOE's credibility, however, is subverted by its four-decade history of obfuscation over clandestine pollution at the nation's nuclear labs and weapons factories. And because the DOE is also a nuclear cheerleader, promoting and developing new technologies, critics suspect that it is illicitly allied with the industry—a suspicion sharpened by the Nevada Initiative revelation that industry PR flacks were coaching Yucca Mountain scientists. Public uneasiness with the DOE's record is one reason Congress built so much oversight into the Yucca Mountain study. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has to license the repository, regularly reviews the DOE's progress, as does the National Academy of Sciences and a Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board appointed by the president. "One of my biggest challenges," Gertz says, "is when people say, 'You messed up before. How can we trust you?' My answer is, Don't trust me. Trust the oversight." Gertz admits there is no 100-percent guarantee when predicting events 10,000 years into the future. The enabling legislation, he notes, calls only for "reasonable assurance" by "scientific consensus" that radiation will not escape into the environment over ten millennia. "What's reasonable assurance to you may not be reasonable assurance to me," Gertz says. "And what exactly is scientific consensus? Is it 51-49? Is it 80-20? Is it 99-1?" If the characterization proceeds, the meaning of reasonable and consensus may ultimately be up to NRC licensers, and may be tested further in court. Scientists at Yucca Mountain document every step of every experiment for future review. Every specimen must be logged as to origin and handling—this in the wake of an embarrassing lapse a few years back in which drill-core samples were so loosely documented as to be useless in certifying the work. But if shifting forces eventually disrupt the Yucca Mountain project, they are more likely to be political than scientific. Tensions have been accumulating along the nation's nuclear-waste fault for more than 40 years. It was not supposed to be this way. Nuclear technology was to have redeemed its horrific birth through peaceful electrical generation. Nuclear power "too cheap to meter" was to have spurred boundless development and human progress. In those optimistic early decades it was easy to ignore the paradox that nuclear fuel grows progressively more radioactive—even as its usable energy is consumed. At one time or another scientists have proposed blasting radioactive waste into space, or burying it in Antarctic ice or the deep-sea floor. In the United States and most other nuclear nations, deep geologic burial evolved into the solution of choice for high-level radioactive waste. But while U.S. legislators approved the notion in principle, their usually dependable enthusiasm for federal projects decayed dramatically when the project in question was a nuclear dump—despite broad hints of benefits Congress might tender. In 1982, after years of not-in-my-backyard political wrangling, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, a delicately balanced compromise that almost immediately began to teeter. Under the act, multiple sites would be studied and two would be selected for characterization, one in the East and another in the West. Many eastern study sites were to be in granite formations, similar to those under scrutiny in some European countries. Unfortunately for Nevada, the distribution of granite in the United States parallels the distribution of people—and of political power. When the eastern search was finally abandoned in 1986, Nevadans began to quip that you didn't have to be a nuclear physicist to predict what would happen next. One of the remaining sites, at Hanford, Washington, was all but on the banks of the Columbia River. The second, in Texas, was beneath the Oglala Aquifer, the nation's largest, and in the home state of both the then-vice-president and the speaker of the House of Representatives. Finally, in 1987 Congress passed what is known locally as the Screw Nevada Bill, terminating all investigations except the one at Yucca Mountain. Despite the site's manifest uncertainties—its history of geologic turbulence; its potential, as a world-class mineral district, for being quarried by unsuspecting future miners; its unlikely location, thousands of miles from 90 percent of the nation's 110 nuclear-power plants—Congress was persuaded by one simple fact: With fewer than a million people and but four legislative representatives, Nevada was the weakest kid on the block. "It was the shabbiest, sleaziest political maneuver Ive ever seen," says former governor Grant Sawyer, now chairman of the state's Commission of Nuclear Projects. But five years later, the same polls that trace Nevadans' opposition to Yucca Mountain reveal a creeping sense of inevitability. "If they want to build it, they're going to build it," the man behind the desk in a Carson City motel told me. This wearing down of the popular resistance, according to the Nevada Initiative, is one of the nuclear industry's goals. At the same time, the DOE is working to crash through Nevada's objections and propel the characterization forward. In that effort the agency has allies in Congress, which recently passed legislation that strips Nevada of its authority to oversee environmental permits. With Szymanski's theory discarded and the states objections overruled, the site study proceeds apace. Though their legal challenges have been exhausted, the state of Nevada and many environmentalists are now calling for an extended time-out at Yucca Mountain. According to the General Accounting Office, the industry could store its wastes for at least another century in pools or above-ground casks at nuclear reactors. In that time, the industry might regain the trust of the people, laying the groundwork for a siting program based more on geology and less on political oomph. Waste-disposal technologies more predictable than deep geologic burial might be developed. One political step would be to strip the process from the DOE and establish a truly independent agency, as both the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment and the National Research Council's Board of Radioactive Waste Management have suggested. Fifty years into the nuclear age, no country has begun permanent geologic disposal of its high-level radioactive waste. Still, nuclear advocates have proposed doubling the number of U.S. nuclear plants over the next 40 years—a vision supported by Congress, which recently "streamlined" nuclear-power-plant licensing by removing opportunities for public review after a facility has been constructed. With 200 plants, the nation would need to site a Yucca Mountain-size dump every decade, would have to persuade a new populace that the repository is safe, that science had ruled in its selection, and that humans could reasonably predict nature tens of thousands of years into the future. Southeast of Yucca Mountain now, as we dash back over Jackass Flat toward the guarded gate at Mercury, the DOEs Greg Fasano launches into a soliloquy on the intricate environmental safeguards built into this characterization program: air-quality monitoring stations and water-sampling wells and dust-suppression and animal-survey grids; Fasano shuffles through his list. We all understand, myself and my DOE minders, that he has been sent along specifically for this performance, and we listen quietly until he's done. Then there is silence again until Fasano asks me if I have reached any conclusions from my day. Do I understand how hard they're trying? Can I see that science does rule this process, whatever has gone on before? "What I seize on as a geologist," Tom Bjerstedt contributes, "is that however we got here, a lot of us believe this site is worth further study." I sit with this for a while. Then I tell them that it may not matter—that the project's political foundation has been so corrupted, the public mood so hostile, that it may not be able to survive. Alternately, the momentum of the DOE and the nuclear industry may be too great for Nevadans to reverse. In either case, the decision will be informed as much by politics as by science. "But were only doing what Congress asked us to do," Darwin Morgan shoots back, and I can hear in this the fraying edge of his public-relations composure. "All I'm saying is that it may not matter," I reply. "The science may no longer matter at all." William Poole is a freelance writer in San Francisco. Wasted in America If and when the dump at Yucca Mountain opens, it will house spent fuel assemblies from civilian nuclear-power reactors. This high-level radioactive waste represents only one percent of the nation's waste by volume, but it accounts for 95 percent of that waste's radioactivity. Irradiated fuel is currently stored in cooling ponds adjacent to nuclear reactors; at some plants, it is later shifted to shielded dry casks on site. As progress toward a permanent high-level repository falters, the Department of Energy (DOE) is pushing for one or more monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facilities—aboveground, temporary storage bunkers. Congress has authorized a special nuclear-waste negotiator to tempt states and Native American reservations into hosting such dumps; $100,000 grants are being offered simply to study the possibility, and "benefits" as high as $10 million have been mentioned. Many environmentalists oppose MRS facilities, fearing that they will inevitably become permanent. Somehow deceptively named, low-level radioactive waste is defined as neither high-level (e.g., from fuel rods), nor mill tailings from uranium mining, nor tansuranic waste (which contains radioactive elements with a higher atomic number than uranium) above a certain concentration. Nuclear-power plants are the major nondefense source of low-level waste, with smaller fractions coming from industrial and medical sources. Most low-level waste takes the form of contaminated clothing, tools, laboratory animals and the like. Under current law, individual states are responsible for the disposal of their own low-level waste, and are charged with establishing state or regional dumps. In many parts of the country, the siting of low-level dumps is proving as contentious as the struggle at Yucca Mountain. But all levels of nuclear waste are generated by the defense industry and the DOE in the production of nuclear weapons. Some high-level defense waste may eventually end up at Yucca Mountain. The DOE hopes to start burying transuranic defense waste in underground salt caverns at its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. For years the DOE insisted that WIPP was an experimental facility and therefore exempt from environmental oversight. More recently, the project has been opposed by many New Mexicans concerned about the sites safety and about the transportation of waste over the state's roads. To date the House Interior Committee has blocked the opening of WIPP by refusing to transfer the land from the Bureau of Land Management to the DOE until more rigid environmental safeguards are in place. In the meantime, defense waste is stored at DOE laboratories and bomb factories throughout the nation. ***************************************************************** 27 USEC tax exempted as part of airport bill The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Tuesday, April 16, 2002 Lawmakers from the Paducah area worked out the compromise, as they believed earlier opposition had dwindled. By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 FRANKFORT, Ky.--USEC Inc. will get the tax break it was seeking after it moves a final shipping operation from Portsmouth, Ohio, to Paducah. The exemption of uranium enriched at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant from the state's 6 percent sales tax appeared to be dead in this session of the General Assembly. It was revived Monday as an amendment to a bill that includes exempting private airports of more than 1,000 acres from local zoning laws and provisions to pay for the removal of petroleum storage tanks. "This was the only bill we found that we could attach the tax exemption to," said Rep. Charles Geveden, D-Wickliffe, who along with other Paducah-area lawmakers worked out the 11th-hour compromise. The exemption will save USEC and its customers about $6 million a year. The shipping operation will be moved by early this summer. McCracken Judge-Executive Danny Orazine said that failure to pass the bill would have had a negative effect on Paducah when USEC makes decisions next year on where to build a new enrichment plant. "This sends a very positive message to USEC of the support they have not only in Paducah, but at the state level," said Orazine. "When the decision was made to close the Portsmouth plant and move all the operations to Paducah, we wanted to make this USEC's home and be as friendly as we could. When it appeared the bill wouldn't pass, all the people in the community worked as hard as they could to get it back on track. My only regret is that it didn't pass earlier in the session." The passage also was welcome news for USEC. "We appreciate the support we have received from the Paducah area officials, community leaders, the chamber of commerce and legislators," spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said from USEC headquarters in Bethesda, Md. The proposed tax exemption had drawn opposition from two fronts: Northeastern Kentucky lawmakers who represent districts across the Ohio River from Portsmouth blocked its passage because some of their constituents might lose their jobs. After those objections were removed, members of the Paper, Allied-Industrial Chemical &Energy Workers Union 5-550, which represents workers at the Paducah plant, opposed passage without assurances that there would not be future layoffs. Lawmakers backed off passing the earlier version of the bill to give USEC and the union time to reach a compromise on employment and other issues. When no agreement was reached, Geveden and Sen. Bob Leeper, R-Paducah, said the decision was made to renew their efforts to pass the measure. "We always work to satisfy both sides when there is a disagreement on an issue, and we weren't able to do it in this case," said Geveden. "When we first introduced this bill, we thought it would sail through without opposition, but that wasn't the case. In the end, we just needed to pass the bill because it was the right thing to do." Leeper said he attempted to work out a compromise that would ensure a minimum level of employment at the Paducah plant. When those efforts failed, he said he agreed with Geveden and Rep. Frank Rasche, D-Paducah, to find another way to pass the measure. Leeper said he didn't talk with union members directly Monday but was told that the strong opposition that prevented the earlier passage had dwindled. "We had always planned to pass something to exempt the tax," he said. ***************************************************************** 28 Sellafield protesters put message in the post Belfast Telegraph Publication Date: 15 April 2002 MORE than a million Irish citizens are sending postcards to Prime Minister Tony Blair to protest about the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria. They will be posted to mark the 16th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster of April 25-26, 1986, in a campaign which has been organised by Bono's wife Ali Hewson, and supported by stars including The Corrs and Ronan Keating. The Prince of Wales and Hugh Collum, chairman of British Nuclear Fuels, which runs Sellafield, will also receive postcards. The protest begins as citizens express their views in the European Parliament on a report outlining the threat of toxic dangers from Sellafield and La Hague. The report - entitled Possible Toxic Effects from the Nuclear Reprocessing plants at Sellafield (UK) and Cap de la Hague (France) - paints a harrowing picture of the disaster which could follow an accident in the high-level waste tanks at the plants, as well as the health risks posed by the two plants' day-to-day activities. Citizens from across Europe will be taking part in the hearing. Jean Lambert, London's Green MEP, called on the British Government "to fulfil its responsibilities to the health and safety of its own citizens, and those of neighbouring countries under international obligations". She added: "Tony Blair must pay attention to important environmental issues in his own backyard. Has he thought about the waste implications of the nuclear option?" Ms Lambert is to hold a news conference at the European Parliament UK Offices, at 2 Queen Anne's Gate, in London today with David Lowry, co-author of the controversial report presented to the European Parliament, and long term anti-nuclear campaigner Nuala Ahern MEP (Green-Ireland). ©2002 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. | Terms & conditions | Privacy ***************************************************************** 29 Energy secretary in standoff with South Carolina over plutonium shipment Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:12 p.m. on Tuesday, April 16, 2002 By H. JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP)-- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham gave notice late Monday that he is ready to begin shipments of plutonium into South Carolina by mid-May, despite the governor's strong objections. Abraham in a letter to Gov. Jim Hodges said it was "essential" to begin the shipments around May 15 to meet a schedule for closing the Rocky Flats weapons facility in Colorado by 2006. By giving the 30-day notice required by Congress, Abraham issued a clear signal to Hodges, a Democrat, that the Bush administration intends to pursue the shipments -- over the governor's objections if necessary, Energy Department officials said. In a separate letter to key members of Congress, Abraham said his intention is to begin shipments of 76 trailer loads of plutonium from Rocky Flats shortly after May 15, continuing through June, 2003. The plutonium is to be converted to fuel for commercial reactors. The planned plutonium shipments from various federal weapons facilities to DOE's Savannah River complex near Aiken, S.C., has been the subject of intense negotiations for months. Hodges has vowed to intercept any shipments unless he gets firm agreement -- subject to federal court enforcement -- that the plutonium will not remain in South Carolina permanently. He has said he's ready to send state troopers to intercept the truckloads or even lie in the road himself to stop them. Hodges reiterated that threat Monday after receiving Abraham's letter. "Until there is a legally enforceable agreement that holds the federal government to its word, I will do everything at my disposal to ensure that plutonium does not enter South Carolina," Hodges said. "While I am open to a congressional solution, the Secretary's decision to limit the timeframe to thirty days will make this very difficult to accomplish." Abraham has been just as determined. "The department intends to begin shipping plutonium from Rocky Flats to Savannah River no sooner than 30 days from today," Abraham wrote Hodges on Monday. That would be the first of 34 metric tons of plutonium destined for the Savannah River facility. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., called the decision "great news" and said he would work with South Carolina's congressional delegation to ease the state's concerns. The standoff over the plutonium shipments escalated last week when Abraham rejected a demand from Hodges that a federal judge oversee the enforcement of any agreement on the plutonium shipments. The Bush administration wants to transport excess plutonium from Energy Department weapons facilities around the country to the Savannah River weapons complex near Aiken, S.C., where it will be made into mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, for commercial power reactors. The plutonium disposition plan is part of an agreement with Russia for each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium. Hodges fears that the plutonium would remain there if the MOX conversion strategy runs into trouble or is scaled back. Abraham outlined what he called a string of concessions to ease the governor's concerns. Among them is a formal commitment to take the plutonium back if the MOX conversion plant falls behind schedule or runs into funding trouble. Hodges was not convinced. "The federal government is asking us to take them at their word. Given their track record, that's just not good enough," the governor said. Abraham also promised to support legislation in Congress to codify the agreement and said shipments initially would be limited to 3.2 tons; he said they would be suspended in October if Congress doesn't act. But Hodges told Abraham he wants more assurances in a formal consent agreement that would allow a federal judge to oversee the process. The governor wants "future leaders of South Carolina to have the leverage and force of law" to assure the federal government lives up to its promises, his spokesman said. Abraham rejected the courts' involvement, saying it would amount to "an attempt to conduct ... national security and foreign policy affairs through the judicial process" and "goes beyond what we can do." On Monday, Abraham said he hoped that over the next 30 days he and Hodges could work to get legislation approved providing the state additional assurances. But a spokesman said Abraham remains adamant in opposing any federal court involvement. AP Reporter Robert Gehrke contributed to this story On the Net: Energy Department: [http://www.energy.gov] Hodges' office: [http://www.state.sc.us/governor/] [http://www.oakridger.com/dailydouble] [http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 30 ERA under attack over Jabiluka uranium mine project The Canberra Times - ABIX - Australasia; Apr 16, 2002 Conservation groups have urged Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) to give up its uranium mine at Jabiluka, saying nobody wants it. A letter from the Australian Conservation Foundation to ERA says the market does not want it, local Aborigines do not want it, and neither does the public. However, ERA chairman Barry Cusack and managing director Robert Cleary have defended the mine, saying a decision on when the mine would begin operating would not be made for another ten years, and it was currently on an indefinite care and maintenance program. In March 2002, ERA admitted there had been a uranium leak from the Jabiluka site, that critics say had sent water contamination levels soaring. ***************************************************************** 31 (Letters To The Editor): Hazards Of Sellafield Irish Times; Apr 16, 2002 Sir, - Kevin Myers (An Irishman's Diary, April 12th), makes e a good point in saying that much of Britain is at risk from to the reprocessing activities carried out in Sellafield, and we often tend to forget this. This may be true, but the fact is that Britain benefits from this process, which is quite profitable, and also benefits from producing electricity by nuclear power. We do not. Sellafield's effects on us, at this side if the Irish sea, are a mere externality, it seems, to the good people at BNFL. They get cheap fuel, they profit from the waste of others, and they have somewhere convenient to hide the mess - the Irish Sea. Whereas we do not benefit at all, and can do little about it, it seems. - Yours, etc., Stephen Burke, Dunshaughlin, Co Meath. ***************************************************************** 32 Russian nuclear-powered sub completes refit BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Apr 16, 2002 Severodvinsk (Arkhangelsk Region), 16 April, ITAR-TASS correspondent Vladimir Anufriyev: The Zvezdochka defence-sector shipyard has completed a refit of the nuclear-powered strike submarine Yekaterinburg. This was a routine refit of medium complexity without modernization, according to specialist sources. It took four years due to cash shortages. The Yekaterinburg is of the same class as the Kursk; its keel was laid at the Sevmash yard in Severodvinsk in 1982 and it entered service with the Northern Fleet three years later. In 11 years of service the Yekaterinburg travelled over 90,000 nautical miles underwater and performed 10 deep-water submersions. It was sent for refitting in 1996... Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 0801 gmt 16 Apr 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 33 Israel's Nuclear Trump Card NewsMax.com: With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff Click Here Monday, April 15, 2002 3:59 p.m. EDT What would happen if the Palestinians came close to succeeding in their dream to drive Israel into the sea? According to Talk America.com's Lowell Ponte, the Jewish state would not go down without exercising its nuclear option. He cites what psychologists call "The Masada complex" among Israel's military elite - a vow that the defeat 2,000 years ago at the hands of the Romans atop the Dead Sea mountaintop fortress will not be repeated. "If Israel loses, neither the Palestinians nor any unfriendly nation within 2,000 miles would 'win,'" predicts Ponte, in his latest column for FrontPageMagazine.com. "Israel could turn the entire Middle East into a smoking, radioactive hole in the ground. ... This might not be Biblical Armageddon, but it would be a reasonable facsimile." Defense analysts estimate the number of Israeli nuclear weapons at somewhere between 200 and 400, he contends, in an arsenal that may also include a small number of thermonuclear explosives. The Jewish state's nuclear-capable delivery systems include approximately 50 Jericho-2 missiles, each with a reported 2,200-pound payload capacity and 900-mile range. Also on hand: 25 nuclear capable F-15E's and about 80 older Phantom F-4's, according to published reports. Likely targets would include Riyadh, Baghdad, Damascus and the jewel of all Islam, Mecca. Ultimately, the Palestinians can never win everything they want, says Ponte, without destroying themselves and the entire Arab world in the process. Listen to Lowell Ponte on TalkAmerica.com, Saturdays 6-9 p.m. EDT (3-6 p.m. PDT). All Rights Reserved © NewsMax.com ***************************************************************** 34 US hawk 'tried to sully Iraq arms inspector' Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | [UP] Pentagon No 2 ordered CIA to investigate record of UN agency chief Julian Borger in Washington Tuesday April 16, 2002 [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary and a leading hawk in the Bush administration, commissioned a CIA investigation of the chief United Nations weapons inspector in an apparent attempt to undermine the importance of inspections and strengthen the case for military action against Iraq, it was reported yesterday. According to the Washington Post, Mr Wolfowitz asked the CIA earlier this year to look into Hans Blix's record when he was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) between 1981 and 1997. The IAEA's critics argue that during this period the agency took Iraqi assurances about its civil nuclear programme at face value and failed to spot signs that Saddam Hussein was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Mr Blix, a 73-year-old Swedish diplomat who now heads the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission (Unmovic), told the Guardian that the IAEA during his watch had been prevented from carrying out intrusive inspections by the internationally agreed rules it was forced to operate under. But he conceded that before the Gulf war the Iraqis "were cheating and fooling us and everybody else" and he said "the lesson was learned". He promised that Unmovic would be "firm" in its inspections, although it would not "undertake any unnecessary provocations". He made his remarks in an interview before the news of the CIA investigation surfaced, and his office made no comment on the report yesterday. The CIA appears to have agreed that Mr Blix had conducted inspections "fully within the parameters he could operate" as head of the IAEA. Mr Blix is due to attend talks next week with Iraqi officials about the possibility of UN inspectors returning to Iraq for the first time in more than three years. However, Baghdad has asked for a postponement, arguing that the meeting would divert attention from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even if Unmovic is allowed into Iraq, the US hawks believe, the Iraqi leader will be able to convince Mr Blix that he has destroyed his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and they point to Mr Blix's time as IAEA chairman as evidence of his gullibility. The state department, meanwhile, has argued that the administration must support Unmovic inspections if it wants to persuade the rest of the world it has exhausted all diplomatic means of dealing with the threat of Iraq's suspected arsenal. The Washington Post said Mr Wolfowitz's request to the CIA "illuminates the behind-the-scenes skirmishing in the Bush administration over the prospect of renewed UN weapons inspections in Iraq." The inspection issue has become "a surrogate for a debate about whether we go after Saddam", Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser and another prominent Washington hawk, said. In its routine inspections before the Gulf war, the IAEA failed to find evidence of Baghdad's nuclear weapons programme which was later found to have been within months of successfully building a bomb. "It's correct to say that the IAEA was fooled by the Iraqis, but the lesson was learned," Mr Blix said. However, he argued that the IAEA was hamstrung in its operations because it had no mandate before 1991 to conduct intrusive inspections. The Washington Post quoted a state department official as saying that Mr Wolfowitz had "hit the ceiling" when the CIA report appeared to support Mr Blix's defence, concluding he was operating within the "parameters" laid down for him. But an administration official claimed that the outspoken deputy defence secretary "did not angrily respond" to the CIA report because it only gave a "lukewarm assessment" of Mr Blix. Mr Blix will find himself in a sensitive position if Iraq allows Unmovic to carry out inspections. If he judges that Baghdad is cooperating with the inspectors, sanctions could be suspended. If not, it could provide the US with legal justification for a military assault. [UP] ***************************************************************** 35 Daily Telegraph: Downer hits US on nukes [16apr02] By Belinda Hickman FOREIGN Affairs Minister Alexander Downer yesterday criticised a US decision not to ratify an international ban on nuclear weapons testing, as he launched the latest in Australian technology to monitor explosions in the region. Mr Downer, who was leading a diplomatic delegation to Western Australia this week, said the conditions to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force remained "uncomfortably distant". The treaty, under negotiation since the early 1990s and opened for signature six years ago, has been signed by 165 nations and ratified by 90. But for it to enter into force, 44 named countries must ratify the treaty -- 13 are still to do so, including the US. "The US administration has announced that it will not reconsider ratifying the CTBT -- a disappointing move," Mr Downer said. Australia has made a significant contribution to encouraging a worldwide moratorium on nuclear testing -- taking the CBTB initiative to the UN General Assembly in 1996 and hosting the third-largest number of listening stations of any country for the network being set up to monitor it. The International Monitoring System will listen to the world over a network of 321 listening stations and 16 laboratories, 20 in Australia. The latest facility is a $10million hydrophone station by West Australian company Nautronix. One of only six hydrophone stations being set up around the world, the station will sit 100km off Western Australia's isolated Cape Leeuwin and will be used to detect underwater explosions. It could also monitor changes in ocean temperatures for global warming study. Mr Downer said the Government would continue its lobbying efforts to get other countries to ratify the treaty. "The terrible attacks on September 11 have brought home to everybody how crucial it is that we do everything we can to stop weapons such as these falling into the wrong hands, and underline to us just how relevant a ban on nuclear tests is," he said. © Mirror Australian Telegraph Publications ***************************************************************** 36 Nuclear Deal to Include Disarmament Las Vegas SUN April 16, 2002 MOSCOW (AP) - A nuclear arms deal on the agenda of next month's U.S.-Russian summit for the first time will include ways to verify the dismantling of the warheads themselves, arms control analysts said Tuesday. Earlier arms control agreements contained controls to verify the dismantling of nuclear submarines, missiles and bombers, but not warheads, said Rose Gottemoeller, an arms control expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Historically, the strategic arms reduction agreements hadn't touched on warheads because they were considered to be too sensitive and difficult to monitor," Gottemoeller, who served on the National Security Council staff under former President Clinton, told a news conference. "In this new agreement there will apparently be some measures to monitor warheads cooperatively," Gottemoeller said. "This is a very welcome innovation in the strategic arms control process and the first in many years." President Bush has promised to cut the U.S. arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads, while President Vladimir Putin has said Russia could go even lower, to 1,500 warheads from the current 6,000 that each country is currently allowed under the 1991 START I treaty. Bush initially favored an informal deal, but later acceded to Putin's push to formalize the cuts in a written, legally binding agreement. "It's much better for the predictability of our nuclear relationship if we proceed together under a legally binding agreement," Gottemoeller said. While U.S. and Russian officials say that nuclear arms will top the agenda of Bush's visit to Russia, talks have been difficult because of Moscow's objection to the Pentagon's decision to stockpile decommissioned nuclear weapons rather than destroy them. Russia's opposition began to melt last month, when Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov abruptly announced on a trip to Washington that Russia wouldn't mind if the United States put some of the decommissioned weapons in storage. Despite Ivanov's optimism that a deal could be reached by the summit, Russian negotiators still oppose the U.S. plan to store the decommissioned weapons, said Alexander Pikayev, a nuclear analyst with Carnegie's Moscow office. Pikayev predicted that Russia would end up accepting the U.S. reduction plan because "a bad deal is better than a good fight," but would demand in return to be freed of constraints under previous arms control agreements. START I banned Russia from modifying its existing land-based nuclear missiles, the cheapest way to maintain nuclear parity with the United States, and Moscow wants to dump the restrictions, Pikayev said. Russia will also push for inspections to be less intrusive than those provided under START I, which allowed U.S. inspectors wide access to Russian military facilities. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 37 Nuclear nightmare -- The Washington Times EDITORIAL • April 16, 2002 In just the latest indication of the horrors that Osama bin Laden has in store for us, two Afghan nuclear physicists have revealed that al Qaeda attempted to recruit them to build a nuclear bomb. Julian West of The Washington Times reported Thursday that the scientists risked their lives by hiding enough radioactive materials to build dozens of "dirty" nuclear bombs in the ruins of a Kabul mental hospital and the basement of a university's nuclear physics department. Last week, they directed a team of specially trained British soldiers equipped with state-of-the-art detection equipment to the hidden materials. The British soldiers were astonished by what they found. "We've been finding stuff that's far more potent and dangerous than even 'dirty bombs,' " said Capt. James Cameron, head of the British team. Capt. Cameron works for the British Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Regiment, which also monitors Saddam Hussein's weapons programs from Kuwait. In the cancer treatment room of the hospital, they found a broken radiotherapy machine containing enough cobalt 60 to kill a man instantly. In the basement of Kabul University, they found containers of solid and liquid radioactive material and chemical warfare agents. Had the scientists not put their lives on the line by defying the Afghan government by tearing up their research documents and stashing the materials where al Qaeda and the Taliban couldn't find them, the consequences could have been horrible. One of the hero-scientists was Mohammed Korbani, a nuclear physics professor. He said that after the Taliban seized power in Kabul, he was approached by a mysterious organization known as the Chand Groupi or Multi Group, located in a part of the city where many Arab al Qaeda fighters lived and bin Laden operated terrorist safe houses. The organization was linked to a charity run by a renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist named Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmoud, a man described by the CIA as "bin Laden's nuclear secretary." Mr. Mahmoud is currently under house arrest in Pakistan. Weapons found in Mr. Mahmoud's home showed that he was involved in experiments to float an anthrax-laden helium balloon over the United States and that he was attempting to build a nuclear bomb. Mr. Korbani said that members of Mr. Mahmoud's organization "offered me a lot of money, and said they wanted me to find 100 other nuclear scientists and technicians and come to Karachi [Pakistan]," adding that "they kept calling me, but I never returned" the calls. Capt. Cameron told The Washington Times that there was little doubt that the Taliban and al Qaeda were also seeking to make chemical weapons. Were it not for the heroic behavior of Mr. Korbani and his colleague, Mohammed Jan Naziri, al Qaeda might have been able to build several "dirty" nuclear bombs. All civilized people owe Messrs. Nazari and Korbani a tremendous debt of gratitude. ***************************************************************** 38 UK: Atomic bomb secrets withdrawn from view news.telegraph.co.uk - By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 16/04/2002) Government files giving precise measurements and full details of the materials used for all the components of the first British atomic bomb were withdrawn from view at the Public Record Office yesterday. Access to the documents, which included blueprints for the bomb's plutonium core and the initiator which sets off the atomic reaction, was put on hold pending a Ministry of Defence review of whether or not they should be available. The availability of the documents was revealed in The Telegraph yesterday. The MoD said that someone would be going to look at the documents again "as soon as possible" in order to ensure that they should be allowed to remain in the public domain. The release of the documents came to light after an engineer who worked on the bomb, codenamed Blue Danube, discovered them while trying to fill in gaps in his knowledge of the project. One of the files suggested ways in which an atomic bomb could be smuggled into Britain without being detected. [http://adrates.telegraph.co.uk] ***************************************************************** 39 Pantex chief seeks funds Amarillo Globe-News: Local News: 04/16/02 By JIM McBRIDE jmcbride@amarillonet.com BWXT Pantex President and General Manager Denny Ruddy is seeking more congressional funding to bolster Pantex security and complete weapons work to extend the lifetime of America's aging nuclear weapons stockpile. Ruddy submitted written testimony last week to the Senate Armed Services Committee that said Pantex increased its security in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. After the attacks, Pantex received more than $16 million in supplemental security funding and set a goal of hiring more than 100 additional security officers, according to Ruddy's testimony. "In addition to personnel additions, we are currently considering other security enhancements and their associated costs. In order to develop these security improvements and retain our new personnel, permanent increases in security funding will have to be made a priority," Ruddy told senators. Pantex expects to complete most of its dismantlement workload by 2008, Ruddy testified, but he said Pantex will begin extensive work starting in 2005 to support the Stockpile Life Extension Program. The program, dubbed SLEP, includes modifications to nine weapons systems. Projected budgets in fiscal years 2003 through 2007 don't correspond to Pantex's projected workload, Ruddy's testimony said. Ruddy cited particular concerns about Pantex funding in fiscal years 2003 and 2004 for stockpile life extension work. "Beginning in FY2004, shortages ranging from $32 million to $42 million each year will severely impact our ability to meet National Nuclear Security Administration workloads," according to Ruddy's testimony. Pantex also has significant funding needs to improve its infrastructure. During fiscal year 2001, Pantex received about $15 million extra to fix leaking roofs in weapons production areas and replace old equipment. This fiscal year, Pantex will receive about $42 million to make more roof repairs, replace obsolete fire alarm systems and carry out other maintenance work. The plant's fiscal 2002 infrastructure backlog has decreased to $242 million, but some areas of Pantex need restoration, Ruddy said in his testimony. "We cannot meet the future infrastructure requirements of the Stockpile Stewardship program without continued expenditures to keep our facilities in the condition necessary for high-quality, safe nuclear weapons work," Ruddy told senators. Privacy Statement | © 1996-2002 Amarillo Globe-News ***************************************************************** 40 Energy Sec. OKs Plutonium Shipments Las Vegas SUN April 15, 2002 WASHINGTON- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham gave notice late Monday that he is ready to begin shipments of plutonium into South Carolina by mid-May, despite the Democratic state governor's strong objections. Abraham in a letter to Gov. Jim Hodges said it was "essential" to begin the shipments around May 15, to meet a schedule for closing the Rocky Flats weapons facility in Colorado by 2006. By giving the 30-day notice, required by Congress, Abraham issued a clear signal to Hodges that the Bush administration intends to pursue the shipments, over the governor's objections if necessary, Department of Energy officials said. The planned plutonium shipments from various federal weapons facilities to DOE's Savannah River complex near Aiken, S.C., has been the subject of intense negotiations for months. Hodges has vowed to intercept any shipments unless he gets firm agreement - subject to federal court enforcement - that the plutonium will not remain in South Carolina permanently. He has said he's ready to send state troopers to intercept the truckloads or even lie in the road himself to stop them. Abraham has been just as determined. "The department intends to begin shipping plutonium from Rocky Flats to Savannah River no sooner than 30 days from today," Abraham wrote Hodges on Monday. That would be the first of 34 metric tons of plutonium destined for the Savannah River facility. The standoff over the plutonium shipments escalated last week when Abraham rejected a demand from Hodges that a federal judge oversee the enforcement of any agreement on the plutonium shipments. The Bush administration wants to transport excess plutonium from Energy Department weapons facilities around the country to the Savannah River weapons complex near Aiken, S.C., where it will be made into mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, for commercial power reactors. The plutonium disposition plan is part of an agreement with Russia for each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium. Hodges fears that the plutonium would remain there if the MOX conversion strategy runs into trouble or is scaled back. Abraham outlined what he called a string of concessions to ease the governor's concerns. Among them is a formal commitment to take the plutonium back if the MOX conversion plant falls behind schedule or runs into funding trouble. Abraham also promised to support legislation in Congress to codify the agreement and said shipments initially would be limited to 3.2 tons; he said they would be suspended in October if Congress doesn't act. But Hodges told Abraham he wants more assurances in a formal consent agreement that would allow a federal judge to oversee the process. The governor wants "future leaders of South Carolina to have the leverage and force of law" to assure the federal government lives up to its promises, his spokesman said. Abraham rejected the courts' involvement, saying it would amount to "an attempt to conduct ... national security and foreign policy affairs through the judicial process" and "goes beyond what we can do." On Monday, Abraham said he hoped that over the next 30 days he and Hodges could work to get legislation approved providing the state additional assurances. But a spokesman said Abraham remains adamant in opposing any federal court involvement. On the Net: Energy Department: http://www.energy.gov [http://www.energy.gov] Hodges' office: http://www.state.sc.us/governor/ [http://www.state.sc.us/governor/] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 41 Paul Parson: The race to let the proverbial cat out of the bag Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 11:26 a.m. on Tuesday, April 16, 2002 Can you keep a secret? That's what most of us ask our friends when we have a juicy piece of news that we want to share with them, but not with the whole world. Here in the world of journalism, we are sometimes asked to obey an embargo, which is essentially an order to hold publication of a certain story or material until a specified time period. In both the areas of friendship and journalism, a slap in the face means just that. And, you could see the handprint on my cheek last Thursday when an official connected with Oak Ridge National Laboratory suggested that an important announcement was basically being embargoed so that a rival newspaper with a much larger circulation could run it first. During that conversation, I was told by the ORNL representative that I could meet with Alex Fischer, who is currently Gov. Don Sundquist's chief of staff, Friday morning, but I could not print the story until The Oak Ridger's Monday afternoon edition. This was such a secret story that I wasn't privy to the subject matter ahead of time. After a conversation with my editor, Dale McConnaughay, it was decided that The Oak Ridger could not obey the embargo, so the interview was never scheduled. However, the proverbial cat got out of the bag when a source informed The Oak Ridger this weekend that Fischer would be joining ORNL's management team. In the end, the stinging from that slap in the face subsided early Sunday afternoon when a story I had written on this top-secret subject was posted on The Oak Ridger's Web site, thus scooping the competition. Paul Parson is the science and technology reporter for The Oak Ridger. He can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] [http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 42 Bechtel Jacobs' fate currently undecided Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 11:05 a.m. on Tuesday, April 16, 2002 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Bechtel Jacobs Co. has about a year and a half left on its contract to manage nuclear cleanup activities at facilities under the jurisdiction of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Operations office. Although that seems like a long time, DOE is nearing the point where a decision will have to be made on whether to extend Bechtel Jacobs' contract or to search for another company to do the work. "A decision is typically made and announced about a year or so prior to the end of the contract," said DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt. Neither Wyatt nor Dennis Hill, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs, were aware Monday afternoon of any pending decisions regarding the future of the contract, which is set to expire by October 2003. Hill did say that DOE is required to give Bechtel Jacobs a six-month notice if the contract won't be extended. DOE initially awarded Bechtel Jacobs a five-and-a-half-year, $2.5 billion contract in December 1997 to oversee cleanup activities in Oak Ridge, Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky. Following a transition period, the company began work in April 1998. It's anybody's guess as to what happens with the contract, according to Susan Gawarecki, executive director of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee. Her organization closely monitors DOE's local cleanup work. Gawarecki did point out that one potential scenario would be for DOE to extend the contract for a brief period of time -- possibly a year -- and then to begin searching for a new company to oversee cleanup activities. Bechtel Jacobs' deal is classified as a "management and integration contract," which calls for the company to perform its work entirely through subcontractors. This contract differs from DOE's typical deals that require companies to manage and operate a facility such as BWXT Y-12 does at the Y-12 National Security Complex. There are trade-offs to both types of contracts, according to Gawarecki. From an economic standpoint, she says Bechtel Jacobs' deal is better for the community since numerous companies -- a little more than 80 -- have deals to do work for the company locally. However, the "management and operating contract" can result in better onsite management. "I don't think there is one right way of doing it," Gawarecki said. On the other hand, DOE's Inspector General's Office faulted Bechtel Jacobs' efforts in a report issued in March 2001. Among other things, the document indicated DOE could have saved $44 million in fiscal year 2000 if Bechtel Jacobs had subcontracted more work. As of Sept. 30, 2000, nearly three years after the contract was awarded, Bechtel Jacobs had subcontracted less than 60 percent of the original work and reduced staffing through transition to the subcontractors by only 58 percent, according to the audit. DOE's management responded by saying the report failed to take into account that the Bechtel Jacobs contract was a "first of a kind" award for the department with significant and unique subcontracting and workforce transition provisions. One factor that could play an important role in Bechtel Jacobs' future is a new accelerated cleanup program that Oak Ridge is trying to get approval to participate in. If given the go-ahead and proper funding, DOE officials say they could speed up cleanup efforts at the Oak Ridge K-25 site and the Melton Valley waste burial grounds at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by at least eight years each. DOE's current Oak Ridge cleanup efforts were labeled "mediocre" in a recent comprehensive review of the federal agency's Environmental Management program. Oak Ridge has focused on the "easy work," not on higher-risk activities, according to the review, which essentially spawned the accelerated cleanup program. Many local officials say Oak Ridge was treated unfairly in the review, while others attribute the problems with cleanup efforts to DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office and not Bechtel Jacobs. Bechtel Jacobs Co. has also endured some harsh criticism over the past several months in the area of safety, but officials said those problems have been or are in the process of being remedied. DOE last November revoked validation of Bechtel Jacobs' Integrated Safety Management System. DOE did so after the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a federal watchdog agency, identified several deficiencies that were yet to be remedied despite the fact that DOE had pointed them out to Bechtel Jacobs well over a year ago. The system in question is a process that incorporates safety into management and work practices at all levels, addressing all types of work and all types of hazards, to ensure safety for the workers, the public and the environment. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . 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