***************************************************************** 05/16/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.126 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Problems delay restart nuclear plant 2 Burma signs nuclear deal with Russia 3 US: Beacon Journal | 05/16/2002 | Lawmakers want NRC to prove self 4 US: Restarting Reactor Could Boost Nuclear Power Industry 5 Russia to help Myanmar construct a research nuclear reactor 6 British Energy falls £493m into the red 7 Russia to help Myanmar construct a research nuclear reactor 8 US: TVA may vote today to restart reactor NUCLEAR REACTORS 9 US: TVA's Restarting of Nuclear Plant Would Reignite Debate Over Deb 10 US: Browns Ferry Restart Would Needlessly Gouge Consumers 11 US: TVA Disregards Safety and Security in Browns Ferry 1 Restart NUCLEAR SAFETY 12 US: Is U.S. ready for next terrorist hit? Not likely 13 US: New bill could provide whistleblower hotline 14 Police to beef up security around nuke plants - 15 Tissue Banking and Radiation Techniques 16 Radioactive flood waters could cause massive catastrophe NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 17 US: Cornell moves ahead with radiation site cleanup 18 US: Udall's bill pressures S.C. on Flats waste Sanctions threatened 19 US: Udall seeks to 'insure' Flats closure 20 Funds for nuclear dump `arrogant' ploy, says Labor 21 Taipower, AEC differ on location of new waste site 22 US: Senate committee sets June vote on Yucca Mountain 23 Proposals to Ship Taiwanese SNF to Russia Get Chilly Washington 24 US: Ensign, Reid grill Abraham on Yucca 25 US: Utah: Acrimony Grows in Waste War 26 US: Yucca statement by Abraham 27 US: Nuclear-spill procedure exists 28 US: Shipping waste to Nevada only part of nuke solution 29 US: Nuclear Waste Program Documents 30 US: Bill presses for SRS plutonium shipments NUCLEAR WEAPONS 31 US: Nuclear treaty proves Bush is forging a new, wise foreign policy 32 US: Op: This arms deal is key to friendlier relations between the 33 Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower in Court 34 US: U.S. upgrading nuclear weapons research 35 A Worthless Scrap of Paper 36 Bush and Russia agree on nuclear weapons 37 Grigory Pasko hits 40 in prison 38 US: U.S. can't ignore nuclear threat 39 US: Flexibility in nuclear pact creates its own limitations | 40 The Progressive OP: US Russian weapons treaty US DEPT. OF ENERGY 41 'Back to Nature' at Livermore Lab 42 editorial: Allard plan may work 43 Revised cleanup plan unveiled for OR 44 National nuclear operator explores taking over FFTF 45 Mockup set for waste tank practice 46 Business leaders, Bechtel reach agreement 47 Milestone reached in Fernald cleanup 48 High-risk sites under 'attack' 49 Two decision documents signed for OR activities 50 Group looks to preserve historic K-25 artifacts 51 Zach Wamp: Let's not interrupt progress ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Problems delay restart nuclear plant - Toronto - canada.com network Thursday, May 16, 2002 TORONTO (CP) -- Ontario Power Generation says it has experienced unexpected work and design problems that will delay the restart of its Pickering A nuclear station to late December or early 2003. It's the second major delay in restarting the station, idle since 1997 because of financial, safety and environmental concerns. "We have encountered several challenges on the project,'' Gene Preston, the power company's chief nuclear operator, plans to tell the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission at a meeting next Wednesday. The commission, the country's atomic-energy watchdog, released the text of the formal statement prior to the meeting. Ontario Power, owned by the provincial government, originally said it would have the station pumping electricity into Ontario's transmission grid in late 2001. But the company said it has underestimated the complexity of reopening Canada's oldest nuclear power plant, located just east of Toronto. Although 90 per cent of the new designs for the station were completed by last August, the statement said there were major problems installing new equipment in its proper order. For instance, some valves for controlling fluid flows around reactors had to be redesigned twice because of sloppy oversight. Other factors causing the delay are ``operational constraints.'' Preston is expected to tell the regulators that he has taken over management of the project from its general contractor and designer. "I have personally taken direct day-to-day responsibility for management of the return-to-service project,'' Preston said in the statement, adding that he has named four vice-presidents to help oversee the work. The names of the general contractor and the design firm were not disclosed. Construction of the plant started in 1965. It requires about $1.3 billion in upgrades to meet current standards. Its four reactors, running at full capacity, can provide about 10 per cent of the province's power. The Independent Electricity Market Operator, the provincial entity that runs Ontario's wholesale power market, has counted on the timely return to service of Pickering to provide adequate reserves of power to avoid shortages. Under a commission order, Ontario Power must issue reports to the commission every six months on the status of Pickering's return to service. Preston's statement is the first report under the order. © Copyright 2002 Canadian Press ***************************************************************** 2 Burma signs nuclear deal with Russia BBC News | ASIA-PACIFIC | Thursday, 16 May, 2002, [Burma's leader Than Shwe] Burma's military says the project has peaceful aims Burma's military junta has signed an agreement with Russia to help it build a research nuclear reactor. The two countries are also to co-operate on building a nuclear study centre, two laboratories, and nuclear waste site, according to a statement by the Russian Government. Burma's low energy Only 15% of the population has electricity Rural areas are especially deprived Power cuts a common problem Per capita electricity consumption is 60 kw hours a year Source: ADB The Burmese opposition is against the nuclear reactor, which Russia says will be used for research purposes, warning that it could lead to nuclear arms proliferation in the region. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also reportedly raised concerns about safety standards in Burma. Diplomats in Rangoon say authorities have trouble maintaining existing electricity generators, let alone a nuclear reactor. Burma's Foreign Minister, Win Aung, told the BBC earlier this year that his country was committed to developing a nuclear research facility for medical purposes, and possibly to generate nuclear power. Russia's help Russia is to supervise the building of the low-powered reactor and will also provide the fuel. The Burmese Government has said the nuclear facility will be used for peaceful purposes. "What we are doing is totally above board and (there's) nothing clandestine as written in several media reports," Deputy Foreign Minister Kin Maung Win told reporters in January. He said it was imperative for developing countries like Burma - which suffers from a chronic energy shortage - to seek to narrow the development gap. He pointed out that all Burma's neighbours, with the exception of Laos, were reaping the benefits of nuclear research reactors. ***************************************************************** 3 Beacon Journal | 05/16/2002 | Lawmakers want NRC to prove self + [http://www.ohio.com] [Go to your local news source] [The Beacon Journal] [news] [business] [sports] [entertainment] [living] [classifieds] Help Contact Us Site Index Archives Place an Ad Newspaper Subscriptions Search Search the Archives News Breaking News Columnists Local Nation Politics Weather Weird News World Knight Ridder Washington Bureau Making sense of Washington and the world. [http://www.krwashington.com] [http://www.krwashington.com] Our Site Tools Weather Akron 50 32 Cleveland 46 32 Cincinnati 56 35 Local Events [http://yp.Ohio.com/bin/cgidir.dll?MEM=1221&s=OH&t=Cleveland] [http://forums.realcities.com/category.cfm?oid=1272956805758599] [http://maps.Ohio.com/jump.cgi/refsrc=KR.1221] GO TO THE WORLD SERIES! From the first pitch to the last, follow the Indians and all the MLB action this season! [http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/sports/baseball/mlb/cleveland_india ns/] ARCHIVES Miss a story? Search our archives as far back as 1990. [http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/archives/#form] Cars.com Local car shopping, automotive news and "car talk" from Ohio's online leader, Cars.com [http://www.cars.com/carsapp/ohiocom/?szc=44308&srv=adlocator&act =populate&ft=1&tf=quick_usedforsale-default.tmpl&page=used&rn=7&z c=44308&rd=50] Back to Home > Tuesday, May 21, 2002 News ----------------------------------------------------------------- Posted on Thu, May. 16, 2002 [story:PUB_DESC] Lawmakers want NRC to prove self Damage at Davis-Besse leads them to question nuclear panel's fitness By Jim Mackinnon Beacon Journal business writer Calling the damage found in FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse power plant the country's most serious nuclear plant incident since Three Mile Island, two members of Congress say they want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to prove the agency is up to the task of preventing a catastrophe. Democrats Marcy Kaptur, whose Toledo-based district includes Davis-Besse, and longtime nuclear power critic Edward Markey of Massachusetts wrote an eight-page letter to NRC Chairman Richard Meserve asking for answers to detailed questions about how the regulatory agency is investigating Davis-Besse. The two ask whether the NRC should have taken steps years earlier at Davis-Besse that would have prevented boric acid, part of the reactor coolant, from leaking and then eating two cavities into the top of the reactor vessel head, a 150-ton safety component that covers the radioactive fuel core. ``These events indicate that we only very narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe of the magnitude of Three Mile Island or worse,'' the letter says. The letter, sent May 1, is intended to ensure that the NRC answers the ``important questions'' and focuses on the ``important issues'' about nuclear power plant safety and Davis-Besse, said Kaptur spokesman Steve Fought. Kaptur, who represents Ohio's 9th District, and Markey wrote that the NRC in previous years dismissed safety concerns at nuclear power plants ``and insisted that such problems would be detected long before they became significant safety problems. The events at Davis-Besse clearly indicate this was not the case.'' NRC staff members have called the damage found at Davis-Besse unprecedented and beyond what was thought possible. None of the nation's 102 other nuclear plants have similar damage, the agency says. Kaptur may renew a previous request to the NRC for an on-site inspection of Davis-Besse that includes members of Congress, Fought said. Kaptur has said she believes the power plant, which has been shut down since mid-February, should not reopen. The more than 70 questions posed by Markey and Kaptur need to be answered before the NRC allows FirstEnergy to restart the plant, Fought said. ``FirstEnergy needs to show it can operate the plant safely,'' he said. ``It's up to the NRC to hold their feet to the fire.'' NRC spokesman Jan Strasma said the agency will answer all questions by mid-June, and should be able to answer some of the less technical questions sooner. ``We hope the NRC will take a real long look at all power plants,'' said Markey spokesman Israel Klein. ``Davis-Besse has not gotten the attention it deserves. We're waiting eagerly for answers.'' If the acid leaking in the Davis-Besse vessel head had eaten all the way through the more-than 6-inch-thick steel, the resulting ``loss of coolant accident'' would have spewed thousands of gallons of hot, radioactive coolant inside the power plant's containment chamber. A thin stainless-steel inner lining, used as a corrosion barrier, prevented boric acid from breaching at the largest cavity. The stainless steel lining was not designed to hold back the coolant and began to bulge slightly outward under the high pressure inside the reactor. If safety systems don't kick in or fail, such an accident could lead to a fuel-core meltdown, nuclear power opponents say. The NRC and FirstEnergy have said the safety systems would have worked, with no release of radioactivity into the environment. All safety issues will be addressed by the NRC prior to the restarting of Davis-Besse, said FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider. The company has acknowledged its responsibility for the damage, he said. ``We are responding to the situation. We are taking steps to ensure that it never happens again,'' Schneider said. ``We expect to return Davis-Besse to safe and reliable performance.'' Those steps include a management shake-up at Davis-Besse that the company announced last week. The plant, in Oak Harbor along Lake Erie about 25 miles east of Toledo, employs more than 800. FirstEnergy continues to look at either installing a replacement vessel head at Davis-Besse or repairing the damage, Schneider said. The company has said it hopes to have the plant restarted before the third quarter is over at the end of September, although at least one stock analyst believes it won't restart until well into 2003. The NRC has the final say on when the plant can safely restart, Schneider said. ``I can't speak on what the NRC's timetable is.'' The FirstEnergy staff is conducting intensive inspections of a possible replacement vessel head in Michigan, he said. Until the inspection is completed, the company won't know if the unused vessel head can be certified for use by the NRC, Schneider said. Another vessel head, at a nuclear plant in California, could be a replacement as well, he said. FirstEnergy has ordered a new vessel head, but that will take about two years before it can be delivered and installed. The letter to the NRC from Kaptur and Markey is posted at Markey's Web site, [http://www.house.gov/markey] . Click on ``Newsroom'' and then ``Nuclear Power/Nuclear Waste.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or [jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com] email this | print this Shopping & Services [http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/classifieds/employment] , a Car, [http://www.apartments.com/ohiocom] , a Home, and more... [Breaking News] Updated Tuesday, May 21, 2002 Iceland Storms Out of IWC, Japan Rejected on Minke - 01:43 AM EDT PHOTOS OF THE DAY more photos FROM THE NATION/WORLD DESK Updated Sunday, January 27, 2002 » Census 2000: More foreign-born citizens » Shipping nuclear waste; and more special reports Stocks Enter symbol/company name Search Yellow Pages SELECT A CATEGORY OR type one in: Business name or category City State Choose a state AlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareWash DCFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouis iannaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissou riMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsinWyomingAlabama Get Maps & Directions White Pages Search Email Search News | Business | Sports | Entertainment | Living | Classifieds Help | Contact Us | Site Index | Archives | Place an Ad | Newspaper Subscriptions About Ohio.com | [http://www.knightridderdigital.com/about/about.htm] Terms of Use | [http://www.knightridderdigital.com/press/index.html] Copyright Breaking News Columnists Local Nation Politics Weather Weird News World Columnists Companies Financial Markets Industries People &Events Personal Finance Regional Indicators Technology Baseball Basketball Colleges Columnists Football Golf Hockey Motorsports Other Sports Women Attractions Celebrities Columnists Comics &Games Dining Events Horoscopes Movies Music Performing Arts Television Visual Arts Columnists Community Education Food Health Home Occasions Travel Automotive Employment Personals Real Estate ***************************************************************** 4 Restarting Reactor Could Boost Nuclear Power Industry (washingtonpost.com) TVA Board to Vote on $1.7 Billion Proposal To Switch On Mothballed Unit in Alabama By Dan Morgan Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 16, 2002; Page A03 The U.S. nuclear power industry, in a holding pattern for years because of concerns about safety and costs, could get a strong boost today when the Tennessee Valley Authority takes up a $1.7 billion proposal to restart a reactor that has been shut down for 17 years. There have been strong indications that the TVA's three-member board supports the plan to revive the 1,280-megawatt unit at the Browns Ferry plant in Decatur, Ala. An ultimate decision to restart the unit -- where the target date is 2006 -- would mark the first go-ahead for bringing a U.S. nuclear reactor on line in well over a decade. Browns Ferry's Unit 1 was mothballed in 1985, during a broad reassessment of nuclear power by the federal government, which owns the TVA. Its resurrection could signal that nuclear power is beginning to emerge from its status as the pariah of the U.S. energy industry. William Baxter, a Knoxville businessman appointed to the board last year, told a local interviewer this month that restarting the unit would be a good business decision. The TVA's professional staff supports the proposal, as do some key politicians, including Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). But in a letter to TVA Chairman Glenn L. McCullough on Monday, White House budget director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. urged a careful approach. "We agree on the goal," he said, but added: "The question of how to complete it is a big one." Daniels, who met with McCullough on Tuesday, said he had not seen a financial analysis of the proposal, adding that the White House would prefer that the TVA delay a final decision until it has revised its long-term business plan. Whatever the board decides at its meeting today in Huntsville, Ala., critics and advocates of nuclear power agree that a reconsideration of the nuclear option is underway in the public and private sectors. Driving it are rising demands for electricity and increasingly tough environmental controls on the coal-burning power plants that account for nearly half of the nation's electricity output. "We have got to be open in this country to nuclear power," said Sessions, who has lobbied hard to bring the unit back on line. "Many politicians just seem to take it as a given that there cannot be any more nuclear power. That is just wrong." Sessions estimated that the four-year construction project at the Browns Ferry Unit 1 reactor would provide 2,400 jobs for northern Alabama. The plant's other two reactors were brought back on line in the early 1990s, thanks to decisions made several years earlier. A white paper produced last year by Vice President Cheney's energy task force declared that expanded nuclear power production was "a major component of our national energy policy." It said there was room at many nuclear facilities for additional reactors. To underscore that nuclear power plants do not emit greenhouse gases, acid-rain-causing chemicals or health-threatening particles, the task force called on the Environmental Protection Agency "to assess the potential of nuclear energy to improve air quality." No new reactor has been ordered in the United States since the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island. But three major utilities -- Exelon Corp., Entergy Corp. and Dominion Resources Inc. -- have said they are looking at possible sites for future reactors. Once considered white elephants, some reactors recently have been snapped up by investors and independent power companies that are betting they can run them profitably in the nation's newly deregulated wholesale electricity market. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has renewed the licenses of eight of the nation's 103 reactors and is considering renewal applications from 15 others. Last year, the NRC allowed 22 reactors to increase their generating capacity by installing new technologies, a process called "uprating." "For a decade, the performance, reliability and safety has been getting better," said Marvin Fertel, vice president for business operations at the Nuclear Energy Institute. TVA officials say they believe the mothballed facility at Browns Ferry can be brought on line safely and relatively quickly. "As we look down the road we need the power, and because the unit has been licensed, and because we know exactly what has to be done, there is a confidence level," said John Scalice, chief nuclear officer for the TVA. The TVA is the country's largest public power producer, providing electricity to 8.3 million people in seven states while also managing the 652-mile Tennessee River system of dams and hydroelectric stations. Any effort at a nuclear renaissance will face strong opposition from environmental organizations, scientists and those skeptical about the commercial viability of nuclear power. Environmental activists recently picketed TVA offices in Tennessee, protesting the plan to restart the Browns Ferry unit. In 1998, the Union of Concerned Scientists petitioned the NRC to revoke the license for Unit 1, arguing that the TVA had no basis for keeping it in mothball status indefinitely. It asked that Unit 1 be decommissioned or subjected to the same rigorous inspections and controls as operating units. The NRC denied the petition after the TVA said some parts of the unit were needed to support the operations of the two functioning reactors at the site. Unit 1 began generating electricity with a 1960s-vintage boiling water reactor in 1973. In 1985, the TVA voluntarily shut it down and removed its fuel after discovering that the designs used to operate it did not precisely match the physical layout. The NRC placed all TVA plants on a "watch list" in 1986. The two other Browns Ferry reactors, Units 2 and 3, were also shut down for the same reasons in 1985, but they were restarted after corrections were made. Only five of the 17 reactors started by the TVA after the 1960s are operating today. Eight were subsequently canceled after the expenditure of billions of dollars. Several, such as the two units at Bellefonte, have never produced power. The last to come on line was Watts Bar in Tennessee, which took 23 years from start to finish and cost about $7 billion. Reviving the TVA's nuclear program now would be a major mistake, said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. TVA officials, he said, "are rushing to do it over any common sense." Smith said a better use of the $1.7 billion would be cleaning up dirty coal-burning plants and promoting energy conservation. The TVA's customers enjoy some of the cheapest electricity in the nation while consuming more power per household than any other region, he said. The TVA's debt is $25.2 billion, well above the levels of privately owned utilities of comparable size. The TVA promised in 1997 to cut it to $14 billion by 2007, but as a government agency it is under no pressure from stockholders or credit markets to do so. "Congress is asleep at the wheel while TVA is about to run up more debt," Smith said. "No private business could get away with doing this. That's the fundamental weakness of TVA." © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 5 Russia to help Myanmar construct a research nuclear reactor Yahoo! News - Wed May 15, 1:50 PM ET MOSCOW - Russia has agreed to help Myanmar's military regime construct a center for nuclear studies and a research nuclear reactor, the Russian government said Wednesday. Under the agreement, the two countries will cooperate in designing and building a nuclear studies center that will include a research nuclear reactor with a thermal capacity of 10 megawatts and two laboratories, Russian authorities said in a statement. The agreement will also include structures for the disposal of nuclear waste and a waste burial site. Russia has agreed to design the center, offer assistance in choosing the site and supply equipment and materials. Russian experts will also assemble, install and help operate the center's main technical equipment, the statement said. Under the plan, Russia will deliver the nuclear fuel. The agreement did not say when work would begin, but said Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry and Myanmar's Ministry of Science and Technology would work out further details. Myanmar, also known as Burma, is one of Asia's poorest countries and suffers frequent fuel shortages. Myanmar officials have said want a nuclear reactor purely for peaceful purposes. The country has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, of its intention to acquire a research reactor. (mb) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 British Energy falls £493m into the red The Scotsman - Business - 16th May 2002 ANDREW TURPIN DEPUTY CITY EDITOR aturpin@scotsman.com BRITISH Energy, the nuclear power generator, yesterday warned of further losses in its UK arm this year after major problems last year pushed the company £493 million into the red. The East Kilbride-based group’s UK division made a £41 million loss in the year to the end of March 2002, against a £4 million loss the previous year, after another 10 per cent fall in UK wholesale electricity prices. British Energy, the UK’s biggest electricity producer with 20 per cent of the market, is expecting a further 10 per cent fall in wholesale prices this year, according to the executive chairman, Robin Jeffrey. Keith Lough, the finance director, added: "There will probably be an increased loss in the UK business this year." The group froze its dividend at 8p per share. British Energy is still hoping to renegotiate its £300 million-plus annual spent fuel reprocessing contract with BNFL. The group was hit in the past year by a £300 million write-down in the value of its Eggborough gas fired generating plant. It also took a £209 million hit on some supply contracts. The total £535 million exceptional items pushed it to pre-tax losses of £493 million, against a £57 million profit the previous year. At the underlying level, British Energy made a £42 million profit, up from £10 million. Turnover was £2.05 billion, down from £2.12 billion. The UK arm, where turnover dipped 13 per cent to £1.7 billion, is in the final year of a drive to make £150 million cost cuts. In North America, the outlook is brighter, with profits of £74 million, up by £59 million. Profits from the AmerGen 50-50 joint venture in the US, comprising three nuclear plants, were £41 million, while Bruce Power, the 82.4 per cent-owned operation in Ontario comprising six plants, four of them in operation, contributed £45 million. British Energy is waiting for the government to decide its energy strategy for the next few decades, which after a review last year will be formulated in a white paper, probably late this year. It is pushing for clearance to replace its existing nuclear plants with ten new ones at a cost of £10 billion from 2011. The shares fell 8.5p to 175p. ©2002 scotsman.com | contact ***************************************************************** 7 Russia to help Myanmar construct a research nuclear reactor Yahoo! News - Wed May 15, 1:50 PM ET MOSCOW - Russia has agreed to help Myanmar's military regime construct a center for nuclear studies and a research nuclear reactor, the Russian government said Wednesday. Under the agreement, the two countries will cooperate in designing and building a nuclear studies center that will include a research nuclear reactor with a thermal capacity of 10 megawatts and two laboratories, Russian authorities said in a statement. The agreement will also include structures for the disposal of nuclear waste and a waste burial site. Russia has agreed to design the center, offer assistance in choosing the site and supply equipment and materials. Russian experts will also assemble, install and help operate the center's main technical equipment, the statement said. Under the plan, Russia will deliver the nuclear fuel. The agreement did not say when work would begin, but said Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry and Myanmar's Ministry of Science and Technology would work out further details. Myanmar, also known as Burma, is one of Asia's poorest countries and suffers frequent fuel shortages. Myanmar officials have said want a nuclear reactor purely for peaceful purposes. The country has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, of its intention to acquire a research reactor. (mb) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 TVA may vote today to restart reactor - Thursday, 05/16/02 Tennessee News & Information By BILL POOVEY Associated Press CHATTANOOGA — The Tennessee Valley Authority could vote today to restart a mothballed nuclear reactor in north Alabama — a decision that environmentalists contend would be gambling with safety and ignoring ratepayers. TVA watchdog Steven Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said the board has signaled that it will approve the reactivating of TVA's oldest nuclear power generator, the Unit 1 reactor at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant near Athens, Ala. ''No other utility could get away with doing this — making a $1.8 billion decision based on staff recommendation,'' he said. ''This is a huge, huge gamble. This is a very risky proposition for ratepayers.'' TVA spokesman Gil Francis declined to speculate yesterday on what the board — Chairman Glenn McCullough and directors Skila Harris and Bill Baxter — might decide at today's meeting in Huntsville, Ala. Francis said the utility had spent months evaluating the restart. Baxter, the newest board member, has said restarting the reactor looks like a good business decision. Smith said restarting a 29-year-old reactor after a 17-year shutdown was ''very contrary'' to what other electricity providers were doing to boost generating capacity, such as developing natural gas-fired plants. ''There is nobody who is restarting old nuclear reactors that are of 1960s vintage and haven't started in 17 years,'' Smith said. ''They are taking this nuclear reactor and asking it to go beyond its life. So they are going to run it longer than it was designed to run. They are trying to get more power out of it than it was designed to do.'' Reactors provide about one-third of the power generated by TVA, while coal is the fuel source for about two-thirds. TVA recently stopped work on an unfinished natural gas-powered plant at Arnold Air Force Base in Tullahoma after investing nearly $150 million. TVA's nuclear staff in March recommended restarting the reactor, which as projected would power about 650,000 ''typical valley homes.'' The projected $1.8 billion price tag poses a challenge for the nation's largest public utility, which is under pressure to reduce a $25 billion debt that is not permitted to exceed $30 billion. Smith said that ''the last time (TVA) increased rates they said were going to use money to pay down the debt by 50 percent, from $27 billion to $14 billion. ... Right around $2 billion has been reduced. Now they are just going to take about all the money and commit it to go toward finishing this nuclear reactor.'' Smith said a decision to restart the reactor would backtrack on TVA policy to pursue alternatives to nuclear power, including the Green Power Switch where customers pay higher rates to support power from renewable sources. Carol Womacks of Scottsboro, Ala., spokeswoman for the environmental group Citizens of Jackson County, said her group was worried about economics and safety. ''As a ratepayer, I don't think the money should be put in a plant that is that old,'' she said. ''We are just pushing the margin, pushing machinery that is not meant to do'' what they want it to. ''There has been a fair amount of population growth in Huntsville and the Muscle Shoals area,'' Smith said. ''I think they need to be looking at updating evacuation routes.'' TVA voluntarily shut down the Unit 1 reactor in March 1985 because of safety concerns. Units 2 and 3 at Browns Ferry also stopped in 1985 but were restarted in 1991 and 1995 after major renovations. TVA provides electricity to 8.3 million people in Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi. © Copyright 2002 The Tennessean ***************************************************************** 9 TVA's Restarting of Nuclear Plant Would Reignite Debate Over Debt Quicken.com Thursday, May 16, 2002 12:23 AM ET The Tennessee Valley Authority is ready to restart a long-dormant nuclear power plant in Alabama, a $1.8 billion initiative that will ratchet up debate over the federal power agency's massive debt, Thursday's Wall Street Journal reported. At a meeting today in Huntsville, Ala., TVA's three directors are expected to approve a staff recommendation to ask the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to fix up and restart Unit 1 at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant near Athens, Ala., according to a person familiar with the matter. The idled facility is one of five voluntarily shut down by the authority in 1985 amid safety concerns. The agency has since brought four of those back into operation. The agency's debt, at $25 billion the highest in the utility industry, continues to be a concern in Washington. On Tuesday, TVA Chairman Glenn McCullough met with Mitchell Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, which has nominal oversight over the independent federal agency that currently operates as a monopoly provider of power within its seven-state region. Mr. McCullough says that Mr. Daniels "asked some good questions" about TVA's finances, among other matters, but "didn't ask the board to take any specific actions" regarding Browns Ferry. He declines to be more specific. An OMB spokesman would say only that the meeting was "positive and congenial." But in a letter Mr. Daniels sent Mr. McCullough on Monday, the OMB director said TVA "must" consider outside financing "to see what the private sector has to offer to resuscitate Browns Ferry and other unused plants." More pointedly, Mr. Daniels questioned TVA's effort to decide on the Browns Ferry restart before the agency completes a new long-term business plan, due later this year. -- Wall Street Journal staff reporter Andrew Caffrey contributed to this report. Copyright 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. ***************************************************************** 10 Browns Ferry Restart Would Needlessly Gouge Consumers Public Citizen May 15, 2002 $1.8 Billion Restart Highlights Economic Folly of Bush Nuclear Energy Policy WASHINGTON, D.C. — Consumers likely will be gouged if the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) proceeds with a plan to restart a long-idled reactor at the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant, Public Citizen said today. The three-member TVA board is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to spend an estimated $1.8 billion to restart Unit 1. That reactor was shut down in 1985 due to lingering concerns about a fire years earlier and the TVA’s inability to convince the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the reactor could be operated safely. In approving the restart, the presidentially appointed TVA board would be supporting the Bush administration’s energy goals but would be making a terrible economic decision, said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, in a letter to the TVA board. Two of the three board members were appointed by President Bush, who has pushed for expanded use of nuclear power. At $1.8 billion, the estimated cost of restarting Browns Ferry Unit 1 exceeds by more than $100 million the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s highest cost estimate for building a new reactor. The only way for such expensive power generation facilities to survive economically, according to the DOE’s analysis, is if the plant operator can convince state or regional regulators to saddle consumers with long-term power purchase agreements at "above market prices." In other words, for nuclear power plant investment to be economically feasible, consumers must pay unnaturally high prices and be deprived of lower-cost alternatives. "There is no readily apparent rational explanation for the desire to restart the reactor," said Hugh Jackson, policy analyst with Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "But there may be an irrational one: the Bush administration’s obsession with new nuclear power plants." The TVA’s desire to incur such staggering costs to restart a troubled nuclear reactor is particularly perplexing given that in March, the TVA walked away from a $360 million gas-fired power plant project after spending $150 million on its development. TVA cited, in part, insufficient market demand to justify continued development of the gas plant. The Browns Ferry reactor would put twice as much power into the market as the gas plant that TVA already said was unnecessary — but at five times the price. With a $25 billion debt load, TVA is already pushing its congressionally mandated $30 billion debt limit. TVA board members have suggested that the Browns Ferry unit could be restarted without additional debt. TVA reported total revenues in fiscal 2001 of $7 billion and $610 million in debt reduction. But 23 cents of every dollar paid by TVA’s customers continues to go to debt service. Even if TVA can finance the Browns Ferry restart without incurring additional debt — a doubtful proposition given the dicey economics of nuclear power investment — the authority’s captive ratepayers would be better served by a lighter debt load than an exorbitantly expensive and inefficient monument to 20th century energy technology. If anybody is familiar with the way lofty economic promises associated with nuclear power can fall flat, it should be TVA. In 2001, the authority finally acknowledged that three never-completed reactors, one at Watts Bar in Tennessee and two at Bellefonte in Alabama, would never generate revenue. Incorporating that admission in their balance sheets, they finally counted the reactors as a $2.2 billion loss, rather than an asset. In addition to restarting the Browns Ferry reactor, the TVA also proposes boosting Unit 1’s generating capacity from 1,050 megawatts to nearly 1,300 megawatts and extending the reactor’s operating license, currently scheduled to expire in 2013, for an additional 20 years. These actions would threaten public health and safety because aging nuclear plants are more likely to experience mechanical problems that the NRC downplays or ignores. (For instance, a reactor vessel head recently was seriously eroded at FirstEnergy’s Davis Besse reactor in Ohio. The NRC was aware of signs of degredation at the reactor but caved to a request from FirstEnergy to allow the plant to continue operating until a scheduled maintenance shutdown. It was a situation that one former NRC commissioner later deemed "the closest brush with disaster since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.") Instead of needlessly gouging consumers and adding to the nation’s stockpile of deadly nuclear waste, the TVA should be in the forefront of developing energy solutions that stress conservation and clean, affordable energy sources, Jackson said. "The TVA board should put its ratepayers first and keep Browns Ferry Unit 1 in mothballs where it belongs," he said. "If the board determines that it must accede to political pressures to promote nuclear power, then Congress should take steps to curtail the board’s action as allowed under the Tennessee Valley Authority Act." ### Public Citizen ***************************************************************** 11 TVA Disregards Safety and Security in Browns Ferry 1 Restart Decision Nuclear Information and Resource Service National Office Southeast Office 1424 16th Street NW Suite 404 PO Box 7586 Washington, DC 20036 Asheville, NC 28802 Tel. 202-328-0002 Tel. 828-251-2060 For Immediate Release: May 16, 2002 Contact: Paul Gunter, Washington, DC 202-328-0002 Mary Olson, Asheville, NC 828-251-2060 Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) strongly criticized the move by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board to restart the- Browns Ferry Unit 1 nuclear power station, idled since 1985 for noncompliance with federal safety standards and poor economic performance, as a desperate political effort that threatens the public health, safety and security. “For years TVA placed power generation ahead of safety documentation and that’s why Browns Ferry closed,” said Paul Gunter, Director of the NIRS Reactor Watchdog Project. “Now TVA thinks they can counterfeit missing documents to make the reactor look safe for operation again,” said Gunter. Unit 1’s closure originally came when TVA failed to accurately maintain the basic design basis documentation for the reactor including operational technical specifications, equipment modifications, and compliance records for safety equipment. While other commercial nuclear power plants maintained two sets of designs for each reactor, the original design drawings and the “as-built” design plan, TVA only maintained one set of design drawings for Browns Ferry Unit 1. Consequently, TVA lost track of fundamental design modifications to the operational safety blue print of the reactor. It became impossible for reactor operators to verify with confidence to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Unit 1 had not drifted outside its safety specifications with growing margins of uncertainty for safety system reliability. TVA voluntarily shuttered the reactor in 1985 and placed the unit into “Administrative Hold.” Under this unprecedented status, TVA proceeded to defer all obligations to respond to safety bulletins and generic letters issued by the federal safety regulator that required the licensee to analyze reactor conditions and configurations. In every case, TVA responded that the reactor was now defueled and under “administrative hold” and that these issues would be addressed at an undetermined later date. “Unit 1 has been frozen for 17 years in a state of non-compliance with federal safety standards without NRC oversight and inspection,” said Mary Olson, Director of NIRS Southeast Office in Asheville, NC. “How can TVA justify bringing this abandoned atomic relic back on-line with any legitimate claim that public health and safety is a priority,” said Olson ‘The same problems that closed this plant in 1985 and ignored for 17 years have only gotten worse due to disrepair and neglect, not better,” she continued. TVA will now seek approval for a restart plan with a barrage of reconstituted documents to the NRC. The federal regulator will be faced with the challenge to validate the utility’s analyzes and verify the reliability of a myriad switches, pumps, motors, hundreds of miles of electrical cable and mechanical piping, and multiple barrier systems whose designated function is to protect the public and the environment from fiendishly toxic and long-lived radioactive contamination. “Its more likely TVA and NRC have forgotten where the all problems really are, “ said Gunter. “The walk down of this plant conveniently starts a clean slate for a really bogus reactor,” he concluded. In addition to operational safety concerns involved in operating the reactor, NIRS focused concern on the additional vulnerability of security at the nuclear power plant site in the post September 11th world. “Because this reactor was never analyzed for attack by aircraft, it is just one more target for a terrorist to turn into a nuclear bomb,” said Mary Olson. By NRC’s own standards, the containment system for the General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactor is a notoriously weak design both from accidental over-pressurization and over-temperature accidents and vulnerability to deliberate sabotage from the crash of general and commercial aircraft. The GE design was never evaluated for an external crash from an airplane. It is substantially weaker and more vulnerable than the typical large dry containment domes that cover Pressurized Water Reactors. ***************************************************************** 12 Is U.S. ready for next terrorist hit? Not likely Thursday, May 16, 2002 By John Hughes Deseret News editor and chief operating officer Are we ready for the next terrorist attack? It doesn't look like it. In Afghanistan, the war against terrorism has been waged with brilliance. But in the American homeland, bureaucratic inertia and procrastination are hobbling preparations to meet a new terrorist assault. The likeliest attack would be one from cyberspace, according to experts who say those who wish the United States harm have the capacity to orchestrate it. Its potential targets are the U.S. air traffic system, the nation's financial network or other critical operations whose computer systems are vulnerable to penetration. In September 1999 — two years before the 2001 attack on New York's World Trade Center — a government commission warned of a variety of potential attacks on the American homeland. Specifically, it raised the prospect of a "well-planned cyberattack on the air traffic control system on the East Coast of the United States, as some 200 commercial aircraft are trying to land safely in a morning's rain and fog." The bipartisan commission, co-chaired by former Sens. Warren Rudman and Gary Hart, offered a blueprint for government restructuring to meet significant new threats to Americans' security. Though some of the commission's recommendations have been inching along to fulfillment, intelligence and other security officials believe progress is tardy and insufficient, given the scale of the threat. One of the commission's key recommendations was the appointment of a director of homeland security, and that has been done. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge occupies that role and last week displayed a new operations center in Washington that will liaise with the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies involved in the prevention of terrorist activities. But while there may be some improvement in communication, it does not give Mr. Ridge authority over scores of other government agencies and units with roles to play in the antiterrorist effort. This lack of authority and his slender staff of some 100 workers is a far cry from the role envisaged by the Rudman-Hart commission, namely Cabinet rank, presiding over a new agency into which would be merged the Coast Guard, the Customs Service and the Border Patrol — and which would have sweeping authority for managing homeland security. Given its slender resources and authority, the Office of Homeland Security has struggled to make improvements where it can. Thus air marshals now fly on some commercial aircraft, and security at airports is getting tighter. Nevertheless, huge gaps remain in U.S. preparedness, and the vulnerability in cyberspace is but one of the most visible. In Congress, California Rep. Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee's terrorism panel, says "cyberterrorism presents a real and growing threat." Echoes Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl: "It's a big threat, because it's easy to do and can cause great harm." Frank J. Cilluffo, a Center for Strategic and International Studies expert on terrorism, testified before Congress last year that cybersecurity is the "gaping hole" in the nation's infrastructure defense plans. "It's only a matter of time," he said. "While bin Laden may have his finger on the trigger, his grandson might have his finger on the mouse." But experts and investigators point to other deficiencies that suggest homeland security measures are not being implemented with the urgency that the stunning terrorist attacks of last September should have dictated. The New York Times recently cited criticism by auditors of various agencies for tardiness in antiterrorism planning. Singled out was the Department of Agriculture for its inability to account for dangerous biological agents at many of its more than 300 laboratories. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy was unable to account fully for radioactive fuel rods and other nuclear material lent to other countries since the 1960s. Auditors were concerned because this was the kind of radioactive material from which crude "dirty" bombs could be made. Other agencies faulted ranged from the Forest Service (for sloppy security over tanker planes) to the Department of Transportation (for inadequate screening against truck bombers). Says Congresswoman Harman: "Too little has changed since Sept. 11. Federal departments and agencies are not nearly as prepared as they need to be to prevent a second wave of terrorist attacks." Enough of the finger-pointing between executive and legislative branches. The national emergency triggered by the attacks of Sept. 11 spurred calls for unity and national resolve. We need to see it demonstrated now. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret News. He is a former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, which syndicates this column. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com © 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 13 New bill could provide whistleblower hotline Tri-Valley Herald Thursday, May 16, 2002 - 2:56:51 AM MST By Staff Writer: Glenn Roberts Jr. A former Livermore Lab security officer who was fired in August testified this week in support of proposed state legislation that would offer assistance to whistleblowers. Senate Bill 1452, introduced by state Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Montebello, would provide a "Whistleblower Hotline" within the office of the Attorney General to receive reports on employers' violations of state or federal rules and regulations. Mathew Zipoli, vice president of the Livermore Lab Security Police Officers Association -- a labor union representing about 140 security officers who guard the nuclear weapons facility -- said in Tuesday testimony that he supports added protection for whistleblowers. "The public will be better protected by protecting those who are willing to come forward with information about their employers' dangerous and unethical practices," he said. Lab officials have said that Zipoli and Charles Quinones, president of the lab officers' labor group, were fired in August for organizing a labor action. But both officers have said they believe that the terminations may be in retaliation for reporting safety and security issues to federal officials. They initiated lawsuits against lab managers in January. "We feel the best thing we can do is help others (to avoid) the same turmoil that we did," Zipoli said Wednesday. "Whistleblowers are your first line of defense against disaster and corruption within the workplace -- you need people to come forward." He actively supports proposed federal whistleblower legislation. Zipoli said he is worried that his termination at the lab is affecting his plans to continue a career in law enforcement. In addition to establishing a hotline for whistleblower reports, the state Senate bill would protect employees who report a violation of a state or federal rule or refuse to participate in any unlawful activity. The proposed bill also would add civil penalties for violations of whistleblower laws. In an analysis of the proposed legislation, the California Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill, because it appears to violate the Fifth Amendment by making it a crime for business officials not to notify the state Attorney General about actions of financial fraud "that their company has taken or will take." But the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, the sponsor of the bill, argued in favor. "(The bill) would protect whistleblowers from retaliation and hold executives accountable for financial fraud." ©1999-2001 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers ***************************************************************** 14 Police to beef up security around nuke plants - Japan Today Japan News - News - Thursday, May 16, 2002 at 19:00 JST TOKYO — Police squads were formed to beef up security mainly around nuclear power plants in Japan as part of antiterrorism efforts for the upcoming World Cup soccer finals, the National Police Agency (NPA) said Thursday. The police squads will be made up of riot police trained in firearms control who were already posted at various police headquarters, NPA officials said. They will take charge of security for over half of the 34 nuclear-related facilities in 16 prefectures nationwide during the soccer finals May 31-June 30 in both Japan and South Korea, the officials said. (Kyodo News) ***************************************************************** 15 Tissue Banking and Radiation Techniques [www.iaea.org] International Atomic Energy Agency WorldAtom Staff Report RELATED LINKS • Saving Lives in Lima [http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/News/lima_lives.shtml] • Radiation Technology Saving Limbs and Lives [http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/News/03202001_news01.shtml] • University of Singapore Tissue Bank Learning Diploma [http://citamed.nus.edu.sg/tissuebank/] • Factsheet: Tissue Bank in Sri Lanka [pdf file] VIDEO CLIP • Tissue Banking in Thailand Quicktime | Windows Media Player | MPEG [MOU signing] Ms. Martha Anderson (left) and Mr. Bruce Stroever (center) of the Musculo-skeletal Transplant Foundation signing a memorandum of understanding with the IAEA, represented by Deputy Director General of Technical Cooperation Jihui Qian (right). (Photo credit: D. Calma / IAEA) For millions of severely burned, injured and disabled people around the world, tissue grafting or transplantation opens an opportunity for a new quality of life. The process relies on the use of sterilized bone, skin, and other tissues to heal serious injuries and wounds. For years, the IAEA has worked with key international organizations to help bring tissue banking technology to where it is most needed. Its radiation and tissue banking programme bring experts together, and is an effective avenue for channeling help to national health authorities in establishing tissue banks, training associated staff, and developing standards and regulatory guides. A series of cooperative initiatives between the IAEA and other international institutions will further seek to strengthen such technology exchange, develop educational programmes in tissue banking, and harmonize standards and guidelines. On Monday, 13 May 2002, Mr. Bruce Stroever and Ms. Martha Anderson President and Vice-president of the Musculo-skeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF) in the USA signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at the IAEA formalizing a joint initiative to promote professional and public education. Under the project. MTF will spearhead the training of surgeons in the use of tissue transplants at its medical facilities in the USA, and will provide expert services to a selected group of tissue banks in the developing world. The IAEA will coordinate provision of the radiation technology for sterilization of tissues. The contribution of MTF to the programme in kind and in cash is around US$ 90 000. Another MOU covering strategic partnership between Singapore National University and the IAEA is expected to be signed before 31 May 2002. The partnership calls for the establishment of an International Training Center for Global Internet Delivery of Training of Tissue Bank Operators using curriculum established by the IAEA and National University of Singapore (NUS). The IAEA/NUS curriculum, available in English, Korean and Spanish, is a unique vehicle for training tissue bank operators, managers and doctors worldwide. Singapore contributed 250,000 Singapore dollars to the preparation of the curriculum. The Republic of Korea contributed $45,000 for translation into Korean. The IAEA is also starting negotiations with Argentina for an MOU on the establishment of a Regional Training Center for Training Tissue Bank Operators for the Latin America region. The University of Buenos Aires in Argentina will play a comparable role to the University of Singapore, as a regional training centre covering the Latin America region. The University Diploma extends over one year and is the first such diploma available anywhere in the world. So far, 296 tissue bank operators, managers and doctors have been trained under the IAEA programme, with 65 trainees attaining the University Diploma from the University of Singapore and 16 from the University of Buenos Aires. Maintaining the highest standards To ensure maintenance of the highest international standards, the IAEA is forming partnerships with major international professional associations engaged in tissue banking. A Technical Advisory Committee has already been established. This committee is composed of representatives from all the Professional Associations of Tissue Banks, World Health Organization, MTF and the IAEA, and includes the Directors of international, regional and national training centers in various parts of the world. A Steering Committee from within the IAEA will monitor overall implementation of the radiation and tissue banking programme. Other initiatives in this area include the preparation of documents and guidelines, including a set of international standards for tissue banks, an international code of practice for the radiation sterilization of biological tissues and a handbook on public awareness. Measuring the impact The IAEA programme on tissue banking was initiated over a decade ago, and today extends to 30 countries. As experience has been gained through the IAEA programme, the growth and output of of tissue banks have been exponential. Up to the year 2001, the programme has helped to produce 222, 580 tissue grafts with a value of $US51.8 million. Through the programme, countries have realized huge savings in tissue importation costs, surgeons in developing countries learn new grafting methods, injured patients get better health care and lives are saved. IAEA, 14 May 2002 ***************************************************************** 16 Radioactive flood waters could cause massive catastrophe Irish Newspapers - RADIOACTIVE flood waters are threatening to sweep through one of the most heavily populated parts of central Asia after a landslide blocked a river in Kyrgyzstan and inundated an old Soviet-era uranium mining area. The landslide was caused by six weeks of torrential rain in the Jallalabadskaya region of southern Kyrgyzstan and has blocked the Mail-Suu river whose rising waters have covered the radioactive waste dumps from uranium mines abandoned in the 1960s. "The waste was dumped near the river and if the water cannot get out it might result in a serious geo-catastrophe," said the Institute of Physics and Mechanics. Radioactive waste was dumped in special concrete reservoirs in the area close to a uranium processing plant called Electroizolit up to 1965 but these storage facilities are now old and have not been maintained because of lack of money. Heavy rains since the beginning of April led to a series of landslides, Shamil Khilazhev from the local Ministry of Ecology and local situations told The Independent. The latest, on 12 May led a slide "of 400,000 cubic metres [of debris] blocking the river and a road. It created a lake". The danger is that the flood-waters, polluted by radioactive waste, will eventually break through the artificial dam created by the landslide. The institute warned radioactive flood-water could then spread into the Fergana Valley in the neighbouring republic of Uzbekistan which is one of the most fertile and heavily populated parts of Central Asia. ( Independent News Service) Patrick Cockburn in Moscow © Copyright Unison ***************************************************************** 17 Cornell moves ahead with radiation site cleanup Ithaca Times By: Jessica KeltzMay 15, 2002 Later this year, Lansing residents living near Cornell's Radiation Disposal Site will probably see construction, digging and testing, now that the state's Department of Environmental Conservation has approved a plan that will allow the university to clean up and remove contamination at the site. At this time, the site does not pose health risks to nearby residents, said Donna Connery, project manager for Cornell's environmental compliance office. She said Cornell has agreed to clean the site to prevent future health risks and stop the contamination from spreading. "The concept here is preventing future releases and not letting it get any worse," Connery said. Cornell used the site, located in Lansing near the Tompkins County Airport, to dispose of low-level radioactive waste leftover from experiments during the 1950s, '60s and '70s. During that time, it was simply dumped in unlined trenches and buried, as regulations of the era required. Since then, paradioxane, a chemical used as a solvent in experiments, has been detected in nearby groundwater at levels above federal drinking water standards. If consumed, it can cause liver damage, Connery told the Times last year. Other chemicals have been detected as well, but not in significant amounts, she also said. In 1996, the university built a temporary cap over the site to help prevent rainwater from running through and compounding the contamination. And last year, it added a series of wells along Snyder Road to test contaminated water, and eventually remove and clean it. Last week, the DEC selected a plan for Cornell to use to prevent further contamination and clean the Snyder Road groundwater. Connery said the plan will cost the university $10 million and include an underground containment structure (a clay wall) and a permanent cap. Currently, that project is in the design phase and will still need state approval. "We're expecting that to get through that approval process is going to take at least through the summer," Connery said, adding that they hope to begin construction in the fall. Next year, neighbors can expect to see drilling rigs pumping grout about 50 feet below the ground and the permanent cap's building, she added. At the same time, groundwater that has left the site will be removed from the Snyder Road wells and treated, something which Connery said neighbors will barely notice. The DEC's record of decision, the document that explains why it chose this plan for Cornell, is available at the Tompkins County Public Library, Cornell's environmental compliance office and at the Village of Lansing office on North Triphammer Road. For more information, visit the group's official Internet site at http://eco.pdc.cornell.edu/DSCdefault.html. ©Ithaca Times 2002 ***************************************************************** 18 Udall's bill pressures S.C. on Flats waste Sanctions threatened for delaying shipments By Denver Post.com Mike Soraghan [msoraghan@denverpost.com] Denver Post Washington Bureau Thursday, May 16, 2002 - WASHINGTON - A Colorado Democrat has joined the Bush administration to pressure South Carolina to accept plutonium waste from the former Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant. U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, whose district includes the site 13 miles northwest of Denver, introduced legislation Tuesday threatening punishment for South Carolina if it keeps delaying shipments. U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., introduced the same bill in the Senate. Udall called it "an insurance policy" to guarantee that the 2006 cleanup deadline is met and to prevent Colorado's concerns from being obscured in the fight between the Republican administration and South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, a Democrat. "We're leveling the playing field," Udall said. "It gets tilted toward South Carolina too much." The federal government is spending $7 billion to decontaminate Rocky Flats and turn it into a wildlife refuge. The 6 tons of plutonium and enriched uranium at the site are supposed to be hauled to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, an existing nuclear-weapons plant, where a $3.8 billion recycling plant is to be built to convert the waste into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. Hodges is suing to halt the shipments. He says he wants the nuclear recycling plant but fears the government could drop the project before it is completed, leaving the waste in South Carolina permanently. Hodges says it's Colorado that has a leg up in the fight. The administration, he says, is pushing plutonium on South Carolina to help Allard's re-election chances in Colorado, a charge Allard and the administration deny. To Hodges, the bill Udall and Allard introduced is more of the same. "It is nothing more than another attempt to force-feed South Carolina plutonium," said Hodges spokeswoman Cortney Owings. She predicted that the bill is unlikely to pass and said Colorado politicians' time would be better spent pressing the U.S. Department of Energy to keep its promises. Hodges has threatened to lie down in the road or send out the state patrol to block the shipments. If his lawsuit delays shipments past July 1, Udall and Allard's bill would require the Energy Department to look at other places to build the nuclear recycling plant, a facility expected to create about 1,100 construction and full-time jobs. The bill also would fine the DOE $1 million a day, or up to $100 million a year, if any plutonium is left at Rocky Flats after Nov. 1, 2003. South Carolina Republican lawmakers, backed by the Bush administration, have introduced a bill calling for similar fines if the DOE misses deadlines to get plutonium out of South Carolina. But Hodges has called the fines meaningless because they're unlikely to be imposed and their magnitude will be eroded by inflation. Udall, though, says $100 million is a "significant chunk of money. That's a lot of park rangers or day-care centers." He said he hopes his bill can be wrapped in with the South Carolina bill in a final legislative settlement. All contents Copyright 2002 The Denver Post ***************************************************************** 19 Udall seeks to 'insure' Flats closure Rocky Mountain News: State Congressman proposes stiff fines for delays By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, News Washington Bureau May 16, 2002 WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Mark Udall is proposing an "insurance policy" for the closure of Rocky Flats by December 2006. Udall introduced legislation Wednesday that would force the Department of Energy to pay fines of up to $1 million per day if it misses a Nov. 1, 2003, deadline to remove plutonium from the former nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver. The bill is a reaction to delays caused by the legal battle in South Carolina, where Gov. Jim Hodges has sued to block truckloads of plutonium from Rocky Flats from reaching the Savannah River Site until the Department of Energy guarantees it will eventually process and remove the material. Last week, U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard introduced a bill that threatens South Carolina with the loss of thousands of jobs at Savannah River if it continues to block the shipments. Udall, a Boulder Democrat, wants to hold the Department of Energy accountable rather than punishing South Carolina. If shipments do not begin by July 1, 2002, the Department of Energy would have to look for alternative waste sites. If the shipments are not completed by Nov. 1, 2003, the fines would kick in. Although shipments had been scheduled to start as early as this week, the timetable is now in limbo pending a court hearing in South Carolina June 13. "No matter what happens with South Carolina, Mark (Udall) believes we need an insurance policy to make sure the Department of Energy keeps its promise," said Udall spokesman Lawrence Pacheco. Allard, a Loveland Republican, welcomed the bill and agreed to introduce it in the Senate. "Anything out there that holds everyone's feet to the fire on the 2006 cleanup and closure deadline is positive," Allard spokesman Sean Conway said. The plutonium rift has prompted a flurry of activity in Congress. Closest to becoming law is an amendment to a pending defense authorization bill offered by Allard and Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. It would codify a past agreement between South Carolina and the Department of Energy and require the federal government to pay fines of $1 million per day -- up to $100 million per year -- if the agency misses deadlines for removing the plutonium from the Savannah River Site. Udall borrowed that concept. He also took Allard's proposal for the Department of Energy to reopen its decision picking Savannah River as the place to build a facility to convert the plutonium into fuel for nuclear power plants. As Udall wrote in a letter to colleagues: "My purpose in shaping his proposal was not to be innovative, but to develop legislation that would protect Colorado's interests." 2002 © The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 20 Funds for nuclear dump `arrogant' ploy, says Labor news.com.au - [16may02] By Political Reporter REBECCA HOLMES THE allocation of $9.9 million in the Federal Budget for national radioactive waste facilities was "an arrogant attempt by the Commonwealth to impose its will on the people of South Australia", Environment Minister John Hill said yesterday. Mr Hill said the State Government remained "totally opposed" to the establishment of any facilities in SA. "This is just another step by the Commonwealth Government towards making SA the nation's radioactive waste dumping ground," he said. "I regard this Budget allocation as an arrogant attempt by the Commonwealth to impose its will on the people of SA using taxpayer money." Also, Premier Mike Rann repeated his commitment to a state referendum just before the next federal election if the Federal Government went ahead with its waste-dump plans. A referendum on the issue at such a crucial time would be a "nightmare scenario for John Howard", Mr Rann said. "If he wants to go ahead with this crazy plan, we will fight it all the way." The Budget allocation is for two facilities – a national underground near-surface disposal site for low-level waste and an above-ground storage site for intermediate-level waste. Woomera has been identified as being the intended site for the low-level waste facility. "While the Federal Government has made the assurance the intermediate-level radioactive waste dump will be located on Commonwealth land, it's clear that they are considering South Australia for both facilities," Mr Hill said. In Parliament yesterday, Opposition environment spokesman Iain Evans asked Mr Hill if a Commonwealth facility would include SA's low-level waste. "The people of SA do not want waste from interstate stored in our state. That is the bottom line," Mr Hill said. He said the Government through the Environment Protection Agency would audit SA waste and determine how it should be stored. ***************************************************************** 21 Taipower, AEC differ on location of new waste site OUT OF STEP: The Taipei Times Online: 2002-05-16 Thursday, May 16th, 2002 The AEC told a legislative committee yesterday that it had written off a site for dumping nuclear waste on a Kinmen County islet, just after Taipower suggested they favored the site By Chiu Yu-Tzu STAFF REPORTER Taipower and its government overseer, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC), appeared at odds yesterday over whether the nation's first final repository for low-level radioactive waste should be built on a small islet in Wuchiu township, Kinmen County. Speaking before the legislature's Sanitation, Environment and Social Welfare Committee yesterday, AEC Vice Chairman Chen Kuo-cheng (³¯°ê¸Û) said that inappropriate geological conditions and potential pressure from Beijing made it impossible to build the repository on the islet. "We are inclined to choose a site on Taiwan proper rather than on Hsiaochiu Islet (¤pËúÀ¬) in Wuchiu, whose geological structures are not stable enough to meet our safety requirements," Chen told the committee. Chen offered Japan as an example, saying that a high-level waste disposal site was built in Rokkasho Village (¤»©Ò§ø), Aomori Prefecture («C´Ë¿¤) rather than on a remote islet, to avoid the potential danger posed by unstable geological structures. The site is 523km northeast of Tokyo. Chen's comments, however, stood in stark contrast to a Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) report presented at the beginning of the hearing. Lin Ming-hsiung (ªL©ú¶¯), director of Taipower's Nuclear Backend Management Department, reported that the company favored the Hsiaochiu Islet site. However, Lin said the Environmental Protection Administration had not yet approved an environmental impact assessment submitted for the site. The apparent contradiction between Taipower and its overseer, the AEC, irritated legislators. "If the AEC has problems with the proposal, why didn't you tell Taipower to give up the infeasible proposal?" DPP legislator Lai Chin-lin (¿à«lÅï) asked the AEC's Chen. Chen responded that in addition to problematic geological conditions on Hsiaochiu, Chinese pressure was another big concern. He then asked, "What can we do if Chinese fishermen protest against the project?", adding that the proposal was not feasible given existing cross-strait relations. The suspension of the project will inevitably delay the relocation of 98,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste presently stored at an interim repository on Orchid Island in Taitung County. Demonstrations carried out last month and early this month on Orchid Island were followed by the arrival of Lin Yi-fu (ªL¸q¤Ò), Minister of Economic Affairs, on May 4. Lin promised demonstrators that a Cabinet-level commission would be formed within one month to tackle the relocation project. Taipower's Lin said yesterday that if the commission asked the firm to reject Hsiaochiu Islet, other options would be possible. The five proposed alternative sites are reportedly the Pengchia Islet (´^¨ÎÀ¬), a depopulated island near Keelung, the Tungchi Islet (ªF¦NÀ¬) of the Penghu Islands, Tashen Mountain (¤j²`¤s) on Orchid Island, Tajen township (¹F¤¯¶m) in Taichung County and Mutan township (¨d¤¦¶m) in Pingtung County. This story has been viewed 221 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/05/16/story/0000136227] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 22 Senate committee sets June vote on Yucca Mountain Thursday, May 16, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Full Senate has until late July to override Guinn veto of dump plan By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- A resolution that would finalize Yucca Mountain for a nuclear waste repository could begin moving in the U.S. Senate on June 5, when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has scheduled a meeting to vote on the measure. Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., set the date on Wednesday. His announcement came a day before the committee convenes three days of hearings on the Nevada project. The committee's vote will come near the end of a 60-day period designated by a 1982 nuclear waste law for the panel to consider the Yucca Mountain bill before moving it to the full Senate for resolution. Committee spokesman Bill Wicker said the Yucca Mountain resolution might get delayed beyond June 5 if the panel is unable to clear away a backlog before then of 30 park bills and a controversial California water bill. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., put the Yucca Mountain resolution on a fast track, and it passed the House last week. The Senate has until late July to pass the resolution, which would cement President Bush's designation of the Nevada site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas for nuclear waste burial. If the Senate fails to finish the bill by the end of the designated period, the Yucca Mountain Project would be considered killed under procedures set by Congress in 1982. Sources have said Bingaman agreed to hold off his committee's work on the bill in a deal with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. For his part, Reid removed a block he had on Margaret Chu of New Mexico to get confirmed as head of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management in the Energy Department, they said. Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., are studying possible procedural tactics to stall the legislation further, in addition to seeking votes to defeat the resolution outright. Published vote counts indicate they remain short of the 51 needed to defeat the bill. Their efforts are being supplemented by lobbying by environmental groups and by television commercials running in selected states. Today, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will lead off three Yucca Mountain hearings before members of the Senate energy committee. Abraham will explain his reasons for recommending the Nevada site for a repository. On Wednesday, Nevada lawmakers and possibly Gov. Kenny Guinn will explain their opposition to the project. On May 23, the committee is scheduled to hear from technical experts from the Environmental Protection Agency, the General Accounting Office and other groups that have a role in overseeing or regulating the Yucca Mountain program. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 23 Proposals to Ship Taiwanese SNF to Russia Get Chilly Washington Reception + [Home page in Russian] Rus Eng [Homepage in Norwegian] Nor Spent fuel imports The Russian Ministry of Nuclear Energy (Minatom) is actively promoting plans for large scale imports of spent nuclear fuel to Russia for storage or reprocessing. Jump to section [The Arctic Nuclear Challenge]        Energy               Russia        You are here: www.bellona.no : Russia : Nuclear Industry : Spent fuel imports : News story | [Currently version is English] [ align=] Focus [Jump to section] [Jump to section] [Jump to section] [Jump to report] [Jump to report] Search Bellona Web Site map Advanced Search Proposals to Ship Taiwanese SNF to Russia Get Chilly Washington Reception MOSCOW - Despite the upbeat intentions to form a US-Russian "working group" to discuss Russia's support for the Iranian nuclear industry announced last week by senior US and Russian Energy officials, talks over an agreement to ship Taiwanese spent nuclear fuel (SNF) to Russia failed to make progress. Although being unable to cope with SNF and radwaste management, Taiwan carries on construction of the fourth NPP — Lungmen with two BWR reactors. photo: www.bv.com Charles Digges, 2002-05-16 14:16 Taiwan, which operates three commercial nuclear power plants (six reactor units) and four research reactors, has in recent years piled up tonnes of SNF and lacks effective temporary storage facilities. The island's geological make-up does not support the creating of a permanent underground vault. Russian Nuclear Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev spent three days in Washington last week to meet with US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, members of Congress and others to set the stage for nuclear and non-proliferation issues for the May 23-26 summit between US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among those items that Nuclear Ministry officials had hoped would be solved before the summit was the inking of an agreement on the Taiwanese SNF imports. To move the Taiwanese waste to Russia, Washington and Moscow must decide how the waste will be handled, which would require settlement of the "Agreement of Cooperation on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy" under the US Atomic Energy Act enacted in 1954. While the last week's meetings cantered on nuclear weapons and non-proliferation issues connected to Russia's support of Iran's infant nuclear power industry, Taiwan's nuclear-waste problem was briefly discussed. "Yes, indeed, we touched upon this issue, but the signing of such an agreement [Cooperation on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy] really requires a lot of time for preparation," Rumyantsev was quoted as saying by the English-Language Taipei Times. "We really haven't had any specific discussions of Taiwan fuels, American-based or American-sourced fuels at this point," Abraham said according to the paper. "That's one of a lot of the issues that are engaged in broader agreements that are not yet formulated." Taiwanese authorities are seeking to find repositories for their spent fuel and have been holding talks with Russia to ship waste now stored at Orchid Island and other sites to Russia for long-term storage. Russian Nuclear Power Ministry, or Minatom, officials reached Thursday would not specify how much SNF from Taiwan would be imported to Russia, if the deal is ever approved by the Americans or how much money Russia would get in return for taking it. But the main snag in the deal is a requirement that Washington must agree to the transfer, since Taiwan's nuclear power plants were built, and the nuclear fuel supplied, by US firms. The lack of US enthusiasm to discuss the Taiwanese deal in any depth was bound to come as something of a blow to Minatom, which has been searching for commercial nuclear waste storage and reprocessing contracts since last June, when SNF imports were legalized by the Duma. Since then, Taiwan has been aggressively courting the option of sending its waste to Russia. At that time of the law's passage, Minatom had convinced lawmakers — to the dismay of some 90 percent of Russian citizens who were polled — that the government could bank billions by charging for the reprocessing and storage of foreign SNF. But because 70-90 percent of the world's nuclear fuel is of US origin, and because France and Britain dominate the dwindling reprocessing market, Minatom has had difficulties getting its cash cow to fly. Minatom's plans to import SNF in general — and the Taiwanese waste in particular — have been greeted by American and Russia non-proliferation experts and environmentalists with scorn. Thomas Cochran, of the Non Proliferation Trust (NPT), a private American corporation that hopes to eventually build a permanent geological nuclear waste repository in Russia specifically for countries like Taiwan, disapproved of any Minatom led effort to bring the waste to Russia in a recent email interview with Bellona Web. While NPT agrees that something needs to be done to solve Taiwan's worsening pile-up, Cochran said he would fight any Minatom supervised transfer of the waste to Russia because of the non-proliferation risks it would pose. An NPT-supervised transfer of the Taiwanese waste, however, would involve safeguards that the waste would not be reprocessed — but the NPT plan would have to be adopted by the US and Russian governments first, and the NPT plan has opponents of its own. The fact that the Taiwanese fuel is of US origin begs the question as to why the United States doesn't take it back. The main impediment to this, Cochran said, was "politics and public opinion." "Moreover, no US corporation would take the commercial risk, and the US Government would not do it on its own," said Cochran. "The US Government also would view this proposal as undermining its efforts to get Yucca Mountain licensed," he added in reference to the controversial geologic repository currently being considered in the state of Nevada. Current law limits the Yucca Mountain capacity to less than the projected requirement for handling US spent fuel alone, Cochran said. [ Bellona Home ] > [ Energy ] [ Russia ] >> [ Environmental Rights ] [ The Russian Navy ] [ Nuclear Industry ] [ Nuclear Powered Icebreakers ] [ Accidents and Incidents ] [ Waste Managment ] [ Nuclear Weapons ] [ Russian NPPs ] >>> [ International Co-operation ] [ Reprocessing in Siberia ] [ Spent fuel imports ] You are here: www.bellona.no : Russia : Nuclear Industry : Spent fuel imports : News story | Top of page Publisher: [bellona@bellona.no] , President: [frederic@bellona.no] Information: [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: [webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway Menu system java script courtesy of Peter Belesis at the [http://www.dhtmlab.com/] . [ (c) BELLONA -- Reuse and reprint recommended provided source is stated ] ***************************************************************** 24 Las Vegas SUN: Ensign, Reid grill Abraham on Yucca ----------------------------------------------------------------- Las Vegas SUN ----------------------------------------------------------------- May 16, 2002 Ensign, Reid grill Abraham on Yucca By Benjamin Grove LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON -- Nevada's senators faced off against Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham this morning in a Senate hearing, peppering the Cabinet member with questions about the need to move forward on a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. As a courtesy, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., allowed Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign to sit with the panel and confront Abraham after he testified. Ensign, R-Nev., began by challenging Abraham's notion that shipping waste to Yucca Mountain will create a single national dump and rid waste from 131 storage sites nationwide. Nevada leaders assert that waste will always be spread across the country in temporary storage at reactor sites s long as power plants produce energy -- and waste. "We're not going to have just one site," Ensign said. "And that's what you have led people to believe." Abraham said it was important to at least decrease the amount of waste at the reactors. He stressed that the shipments would clean up closed power plant sites where waste is still stored. Abraham countered Nevada's claims that the Yucca site and transportation of waste are unsafe. At one point he assured Ensign that it was not as if "garbage cans" would be used to haul the material across the country. But Ensign said more study of shipping waste must be done, adding that it can be safely stored for 100 years at current locations. "Why move forward when we haven't studied these things?" Ensign said. Ensign also alleged the Energy Department has been biased throughout Yucca development because the federal government has never had a back-up plan. "The DOE has said we're putting all our eggs in one basket," Ensign said. "That proves to me that the DOE is tunnel-visioned toward Yucca Mountain." Abraham said that characterization was unfair: "We've been fair and objective." The two got into several testy exchange, with each interrupting the other. Ensign also said the nation should spend more money on alternatives such as reprocessing and recycling, which could at least decrease the amount of time waste would be radioactive. "The potential is there," he said. "That's our point. We don't need to hurry with this thing." Reid, D-Nev., also fired off questions, at one point suggesting Abraham was applying his Harvard Law School education to evade the questions. Abraham testified that waste transportation has been proven to be safe, in part because there are 300 million hazardous waste shipments nationwide each year. Reid, the majority whip, said that point wasn't valid because high-level nuclear waste is far more deadly and not comparable to average waste shipments. "This is some of your Harvard logic, but we have to sort right through that," Reid said. In his testimony, Abraham restated his well-known case for Yucca, saying that scientists had considered the potential effects that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, water flows through the mountain, or even a glacial age would have on the waste. Even under those conditions, waste would remain safely isolated, he said. Abraham said he had reached those conclusions after studying the evidence, talking to scientists and visiting Yucca. "I did so with great concern for the people in the area, people in Nevada," Abraham said. He also argued that Yucca was needed to secure the future of nuclear power in America. Waste from U.S. submarines was piling up in a temporary site in Idaho, he added. "The decision to move forward with this is a very important one, and the correct one," Abraham assured senators. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., made some of his most candid comments in opposition to a Yucca repository. He was worried about nuclear waste being shipped through Colorado on its way to Nevada, he said. Campbell, so far Ensign's only Republican colleague to oppose Yucca, said there had been 126 large truck wrecks in the Rocky Mountains since 1993. "There's no question trucks are crashing all the time." Campbell also likened Yucca Mountain to someone building a nice house and then trying to build a septic tank on the neighbor's property. "I just think that's morally wrong," he said. "I'm not at all sure we ought to be dumping it in Nevada." Campbell smiled as he suggested the waste should instead be shipped to Michigan, Abraham's home state. Abraham did not answer. "There's no response to that," Bingaman said with a smile. "I noticed," Campbell responded. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said she supports Yucca Mountain because her state has three sites with nuclear waste and she has concerns about terrorist attacks on those sites. "This material is all over the nation," Landrieu said. "The faster we get about doing it, the better." She asked Abraham about the 293 unresolved scientific issues in a General Accounting Office report last year. Abraham said 41 already have been resolved, and the remaining 252 will be addressed by the time the Energy Department submits its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2004. "Some have tried to characterize these as defects, they're not," Abraham said. "These aren't show stoppers. These are technical steps that need to be taken before licensing." Abraham recommended the project in January, which President Bush approved. Abraham has since urged lawmakers to stamp their approval on the project that proposes to bury 77,000 tons of the nation's radioactive waste at the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Last week the House gave Yucca its final approval with a 306-117 vote. The Senate committee is expected to hold two more hearings on Yucca next week, in which Nevada officials, then scientific experts, will testify. The panel is likely to send Yucca to the full Senate on June 5. The full Senate is expected to vote on Yucca in July. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a leading advocate of Yucca, stressed to fellow panel members that the upcoming vote was critical. If the Senate rejects Yucca, the nation will be left searching for a new waste plan, he said. "This is a one-shot deal," Craig said. "Congress gets one bite at this apple." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Las Vegas SUN main page ----------------------------------------------------------------- Questions or problems? Click here. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 25 The Salt Lake Tribune -- Acrimony Grows in Waste War [Today's Front Page] [World and National News] [Utah and Local News] [Business] [Sports] [Opinion, Commentary and Public Forum Letters] [Daybreak- Weekly Features] [Previous headline in list] [Next headline in list] Acrimony Grows in Waste War Thursday, May 16, 2002 BY JUDY FAHYS THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE The battle over radioactive waste initiatives has gotten downright dirty, with the two sides slinging back and forth words such as "deceptive" and "lie." Envirocare of Utah is one of the targets of an initiative to raise taxes and prohibit importation of hotter waste into the state. The hazardous-waste-treatment company and its supporters have enlisted formidable political muscle, including U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and U.S. Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah. Unified under the banner of "Utahns Against Unfair Taxes," they intensified the rough and tumble over the weekend with automated telemarketing to solicit voter support. "If you are a registered voter and can spare about a half a minute for me to tell you how you can help us stop a huge, $200 million tax increase," said the caller, "please press the number one on your phone now." Salt Lake City resident Marianne Holtsclaw said she received three such calls from opponents of the tax. "My first reaction was, 'This is sinister,' " she said. "I want to know who they are and what they want." Calls such as these, plus postcards and letters describing the waste tax as an anti-business, liberal, environmentalist scheme, have advocates of the Radioactive Waste Restrictions Act ballot initiative fighting mad. They insist their measure is not aimed at any Utah company. "It's a complete lie," said former state legislator Frank Pignanelli, representing waste-tax proponents. "It's a tax on out-of-state waste." The fight erupted last month with the announcement of an initiative-petition campaign to raise taxes on waste now shipped to Utah and to limit it to the least radioactive. Envirocare has petitioned the state to allow it to accept hotter waste than it is now allowed. The proposed ballot proposition also would raise Utah's tax on the waste to levels comparable to commercial facilities in South Carolina and Washington state -- the only other commercial disposal in the United States besides Envirocare, which operates a 640-acre landfill in Tooele County, 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. A coalition of advocates for education and the homeless, supported by the powerful Utah Education Association teachers union, is touting the tax increase as a way to make Utah less attractive for commercial radioactive waste disposal and to generate up to $144 million each year for Utah's strapped schools and homeless programs. All of that money would come from out-of-state companies, since federal law requires Utah companies to send their commercial waste to Washington. Proponents of higher taxes argue Utah charges only 10 cents a cubic foot to dump the waste in the state, while the Washington site fetches $20 per foot and the South Carolina site gets $235. Utah lawmakers have considered a tax on radioactive waste four times, approving about $3 million in taxes two years ago. The taxes apply to two facilities, Envirocare and a reprocessing mill in San Juan County. Tax opponents, led by Envirocare, mounted a counter initiative-petition campaign called the Stop Targeted Taxes Act, which is supported by a business coalition that includes the influential Utah Manufacturers Association. If passed by voters, the law would ban initiatives that "establish or levy taxes that apply to a specific industry, entity or individual." Each side has until June 3 to gather at least 76,180 voter signatures. Both sides have hired professionals to round up signers and to carry out their opposing political strategies. It's not clear whether tax opponents -- by making their law effective in December -- will preempt the waste-tax hike if both pass. But it is clear they are fighting passage of the tax just as hard as they are pushing for their own initiative. Tax opponents say the backers of the higher tax are being deceptive because their measure would target a single business -- Envirocare -- and drive it out of business with levies twice as large as its annual revenue. Hugh Matheson, a Salt Lake City lawyer managing the campaign to block the waste-tax increase, called the initiative "a fundamental deception" because it would put Envirocare out of business. He also called the initiative process a bad way to make law. Similar criticisms are raised by high-profile Republicans, whose party dominates Utah politics. One is Allyson Bell, manager of Gov. Mike Leavitt's 2000 reelection campaign and an image-maker for Envirocare. Another is Hansen, whose son, Joe, is a director of the opposition campaign and whose voice is used in the automated calls. Also on board is Hatch, who criticized the tax increase initiative in a May 7 letter to Republican state convention delegates. "While raising taxes to punish business interests comes naturally to many liberals, I believe it is contrary to important Republican principles, such as due process, the free market and equal protection," his letter stated. "Furthermore, using the political system to target one business or industry for harsh treatment sends a terrible message to our state's business community and to businesses that would make Utah their home." A longtime supporter of Envirocare, Rep. James Gowans, D-Tooele, circulated a similar letter to Democratic delegates. Two-thirds of the Legislature also has signed a letter urging Utahns not to sign the waste-tax petition, Matheson said. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement ----------------------------------------------------------------- End NAC / Flash ad code --> END OF CLICK HERE TABLE --> [Previous headline in list] [Next headline in list] © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on Utah OnLine is copyrighted The Salt Lake Tribune and associated news services. No material may be reproduced or reused without explicit permission from The Salt Lake Tribune. [http://www.utahonline.net] [http://www.sltrib.com] [http://www.slcitylights.com] [http://www.utahbound.com] [http://www.tribtalk.com] [http://www.tribaccess.com] ***************************************************************** 26 Yucca statement by Abraham Statement of the Honorable Spencer Abraham Secretary of Energy Before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee United States Senate -- May 16, 2002 Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am pleased to appear before you today. [ border=] On February 14, I forwarded a recommendation to the President, based on approximately 24 years of federal research, that Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is suitable for development as the nation's geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive wastes. The President officially recommended the site to Congress on February 15, and pursuant to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), the [http://www.state.nv.us/cnr/govveto0402.htm] . I am greatly encouraged that on May 8 the House of Representatives voted, by an overwhelming margin, to pass the Joint Resolution before you today. The expeditious manner in which the House acted, and the wide margin and bipartisan manner by which the Joint Resolution passed, clearly signal this Nation's confidence and readiness to take the next step toward resolving the challenges of permanent waste disposal. Without delay, I ask that the Senate also pass the Joint Resolution, so that the Department may enter the next phase of repository development an expert and independent scientific and technical examination of the safety of the site by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Passing this Joint Resolution, thus overriding the State of Nevada's disapproval, hardly needs emphasis. Twenty years ago, [http://www.rw.doe.gov/progdocs/nwpa/nwpa.htm] the Federal government's responsibility for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. In doing so, Congress foresaw the fundamental national security and energy policy considerations that weigh heavily in favor of proceeding with a geologic repository, and mandated that a repository program be based upon a thorough scientific evaluation of several candidate sites. In 1987, Congress limited that evaluation to the site we consider today: [http://yuccamountain.org/image/tunnel02.jpg] . In formulating this recommendation, I first considered whether sound science supported a determination that the Yucca Mountain site was scientifically and technically suitable for the development of a repository. The scientific evaluation of the Yucca Mountain site had been conducted over a 24-year period; as part of the study, some of the world's best scientists examined every aspect of the natural processes-past, present, and future-that could affect the ability of a repository beneath Yucca Mountain to isolate radionuclides released from any spent fuel and radioactive waste disposed of there. The Department's scientific inquiries and modeling clearly demonstrate that a repository at Yucca Mountain can meet the [http://yuccamountain.org/epa99.htm] for protecting the health and safety of our citizens. These extremely stringent standards were based on the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences. What they mean, in terms of the Yucca Mountain site, is that a person living 11 miles away from the site cannot receive more annual radiation exposure during the 10,000-year regulatory period than a traveler receives today from natural sources in three round trip flights from Las Vegas to New York. In evaluating whether the repository can comply with the Agency's standards, our scientists employed extremely conservative assumptions and considered the impact of events with extremely low probability of occurrence, all erring on the side of public safety. For example, earthquakes were assumed to occur, and volcanic eruptions were evaluated-even though the likelihood of a volcanic event affecting the repository during the first 10,000 years is just one in 70 million per year. Even with these unlikely events analyzed into the Agency's 10,000 year compliance period, Yucca Mountain still meets the EPA standards. A review of the documentation that accompanied the recommendation clearly reveals that the Department has carefully evaluated the extent to which Yucca Mountain's substantial natural geologic barriers work in concert with the robust engineered systems. We know that Yucca Mountain is in a closed hydrologic basin, a geologic feature that greatly limits the potential migration of radionuclides. Between the emplacement tunnels and the water table, which is approximately 2000 feet below the surface, the geology provides natural adsorption retarding any potential radionuclide movement. The hydrologic features at this site suggest that more than ninety percent of the annual rainfall runs off or is evaporated, meaning less than a half an inch of water travels beneath the surface. Our studies indicate that the vast majority of water samples taken from the mountain are thousands of years old. Even with this robust geology, our scientists again conservatively considered how engineered barriers 1,000 feet below the surface and 1,000 feet above the water table might corrode by analyzing what would happen during an ice age, if Nevada's climate changed and rainfall increased dramatically. Even including these scenarios, Yucca Mountain still meets the EPA standards. After thoroughly examining the relevant scientific and technical materials, I have concluded that they demonstrate that the site is scientifically and technically suitable for construction of a repository. As I stated in my recommendation to the President: "Irrespective of any other considerations, I could not and would not recommend the Yucca Mountain site without having first determined that a repository at Yucca Mountain will bring together the location, natural barriers, and design elements necessary to protect the health and safety of the public, including those Americans living in the immediate vicinity, now and into the future." Having reached this conclusion, I went on to evaluate whether compelling national interests counseled in favor of moving forward with a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, and if so, whether there were countervailing arguments so strong that I should nonetheless decline to proceed. This evaluation argued strongly in favor of proceeding, and certainly that there was no basis for abandoning the policy decisions made by the Congress in enacting the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the 1987 amendments to that Act. In short, the relevant considerations are as follows. First, Yucca Mountain is critical to our national security. Today, over forty percent of our Navy's combatant vessels, including aircraft carriers and submarines, are nuclear powered. The additional capabilities that nuclear power brings to these platforms is essential to national security. To maintain operational readiness, we must assure disposal of spent fuel to support refueling of these vessels. We are in the midst of advancing the non-proliferation objectives that have been the welcome result of the end of the Cold War. A geologic repository is an integral part of our disposition plans for surplus weapons grade materials. Yucca Mountain is an important component of homeland security. More than 161 million people live within 75 miles of one or more nuclear waste sites, all of which were intended to be temporary. We believe that today these sites are safe, but prudence demands we consolidate this waste from widely dispersed, above-ground sites into a deep underground location that can be better protected. A repository is also important to our nation's energy security. Nuclear power provides 20 percent of the nation's electricity and emits no greenhouse gases. The reactors we have today give us one of the most reliable forms of carbon-free power generation, free from interruptions due to international events and price fluctuations. This nation must develop a permanent, safe, and secure site for disposal of spent nuclear fuel if we are to continue to rely on our 103 operating commercial reactors to provide us with electricity. And a repository is important to our efforts to protect the environment. A repository is indispensable to implementing an environmentally sound disposition plan for high-level defense wastes, which are located in [http://ndep.state.nv.us/lts/close/3waste.pdf] The Department must move forward and dispose of these materials, which include approximately 100 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste and 2,500 metric tons of defense production spent nuclear fuel. Finally, I carefully considered the primary arguments against locating a repository at Yucca Mountain. None of these arguments rose to a level that outweighs the case for going forward with the site designation. Of these, the only one I shall address in my prepared testimony is the concern critics of the project have raised about the " [http://yuccamountain.org/transport.htm] ." I wish to address this issue briefly, not because I believe there is any real basis for believing these concerns are warranted, but rather, because I believe that simply by incanting the words "transportation of nuclear waste," opponents are hoping they can incite public fear, without any basis in fact, and that this hope has become the last refuge for opposition to the project. The facts, however, are these. First, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, working with the Departments of Transportation and Energy, has overseen approximately 30 years of safe shipment of spent nuclear fuel in this country. [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/trans/trfact03.htm] . And the successful and extensive European experience in transporting this type of nuclear material corroborates our experience. [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2002/nn11678.pdf] It would also constitute 0.00006% of the annual hazardous material shipments, and 0.006% of the annual radioactive material shipments that occur in this country today. Second, because the site has not yet been designated, the Department is just beginning to formulate its preliminary thoughts about a transportation plan. There is an eight-year period before any transportation to Yucca Mountain might occur. This will afford ample time to implement a program that builds upon our record of safe and orderly transportation of nuclear materials and makes improvements to it where appropriate. [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/travel.htm] -- [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/maps2002/index.htm] , and cannot possibly start to be made until the site has been designated and the Department has the opportunity to work with affected States, local governments, and other entities on how to proceed. Third, even without a repository at Yucca Mountain, the need to find a place to put the spent fuel that is continuing to accumulate will lead to the transportation of these materials, and likely quite soon. On-site storage space is running out and not all utilities can find new adjacent land where they can put this material. Therefore, they will devise ad hoc off-site consolidated storage alternatives. Already a consortium of utilities is working on a facility that they have presented to the NRC. Whether or not this effort ultimately succeeds, it is likely that some similar effort will. Thus the transportation of nuclear materials is not a function of a repository at Yucca Mountain, but rather is a necessary consequence of the material that continues to [http://yuccamountain.org/wastemap.pdf] that are running out of room for it. Finally, Yucca Mountain critics argue that nuclear materials in transit could be a terrorist target. But they are forgetting the obvious: spent fuel in secure transit to a permanent repository is certainly less susceptible to terrorist acts than spent fuel stranded at the temporary, stationary sites -- many very close to major cities and waterways -- where it now resides. Let me close with one last thought. The critics of this program would have Congress overturn the fundamental decisions it legislated 15 years ago - that a single underground repository located at Yucca Mountain holds the greatest promise for the long-term safety and security for the Nation. The great body of scientific work done since then has confirmed the fundamental soundness of the Yucca Mountain site. The only issues remaining are the type that only can be resolved in a Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing proceeding. The critics who would upend this path to resolution of the remaining issues have a heavy burden of proof in urging that the policy decision made by Congress in 1987 and the findings of the body of scientific work that examined Yucca Mountain both be abandoned before the NRC has even had the opportunity to pass on whether a repository can safely be sited there. Given the history and the work to date, their burden would be substantial even if this project were not critical to many important national interests. But it is. Rejection of the proposed resolution would leave the country with no ultimate destination for our spent naval fuel, no adequate path for disposing of our own surplus plutonium, thereby making it hard for us to press other countries to dispose of theirs, and no means to complete the environmental cleanup of our defense complex. Utilities may have to start planning to decommission existing nuclear reactors and figuring out how to replace them. Congress would still have to formulate an alternative in view of the statutory obligation that the Government dispose of commercial spent fuel that was legislated in 1982, but that would be no easy task. In short, a decision to oppose this project's going forward at this stage is a decision to abandon the repository program and subject the country to these consequences without ever letting neutral experts at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decide whether that is the right course. Nothing the critics of this project have advanced comes close to meeting the burden of proof they should have to satisfy to warrant proceeding in this fashion. Opposition to nuclear power is not a sufficient ground, since we all, and the United States Government in particular, have an obligation to safely dispose of this waste regardless of any such policy view. Nor are concerns about transportation, for all the reasons outlined above. Rather, opposition to this resolution, and to submitting this question to the NRC, seems warranted only if one is convinced that there is such overwhelming evidence that a repository at Yucca Mountain cannot meet the NRC and EPA standards that it would be a waste of time and money to use the ordinary NRC processes to find out. Support for the proposed resolution, on the other hand, does not require being convinced that the Department of Energy is right in believing that a repository at Yucca Mountain will meet the applicable standards or that the NRC will decide it should be licensed -- although in my judgment the scientific work to date provides ample basis for reaching that conclusion. Indeed, it doesn't even require being convinced that this outcome is the most likely. Rather, all that is required to support the resolution is to believe there is enough of a serious possibility that $4 billion and 24 years of scientific research have produced a sufficient basis for our conclusion that the site can be safely developed as a repository. That conclusion will then subject the extensive scientific basis for the President's recommendation to objective testing in the only official context it can be -- an NRC licensing proceeding. I urge the Senate now to act promptly and favorably on the proposed joint resolution, as the House has done so overwhelmingly on May 8. This will allow the Department to proceed with the next stage of addressing the merits of all remaining issues, by applying the independent expertise of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Additional Reading State of Nevada -- [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2002/testimony020425.htm] State of Nevada - [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/impactreport.pdf] ***************************************************************** 27 Nuclear-spill procedure exists By Jeff Schogol Medill News Service If a train or truck carrying nuclear waste through North Carolina was involved in an accident, local fire departments would be the first to cordon off the area and evacuate people, if necessary. The firefighters would not have much protection from exposure to radioactive material, said Moore County Fire Marshal Steadman Meares. “They are definitely at risk,” he said. State officials have outlined a plan assigning duties in the event of a hazardous-materials spill, Meares said. Congress is debating a bill that would send all nuclear waste by truck or train to a site in Yucca Mountain, Nev. Potential routes to transport the waste would go through Columbus, Bladen, Robeson, Scotland, Moore, Lee and Sampson counties in the Cape Fear region. Meares said Moore County firefighters do not have suits to protect them from radioactive material. They would have to hope they were far enough away from the radioactive material to avoid dangerous exposure or shield themselves by getting behind cars and buildings. Lumberton firefighters would not have much more protection, said Mitchell Pate, Emergency Services director for Lumberton. He said the fire department has a few protective suits that would allow some firefighters to get close enough to identify the material. A state regional response team from Fayetteville, with 15 regular and 15 alternate members, has the responsibility to try to contain a hazardous-material leak in 16 counties surrounding Fayetteville, said Fayetteville Fire Chief James Hall. 6 response teams There are six regional response teams in North Carolina. Hall said the team does not have a complete set of protective gear and equipment for every member because the entire team would never be in a contaminated area at the same time. “We have all the suits we need,” he said. Hall said he is legally prevented from committing his entire team to a contaminated area. If the regional response team needed backup, it would call on the N.C. Department of Emergency Management, which could call in state and federal authorities. According to the department, it is up to local authorities to plan how to evacuate areas surrounding hazardous-materials accidents. There is no plan to evacuate Moore County, Meares said. Southern Pines Fire Chief Ricky Baker said his department could evacuate the town, but it would take time. “You can’t evacuate 10,000 people in five minutes,” he said. Copyright 2002 The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer. Contact us. ***************************************************************** 28 Shipping waste to Nevada only part of nuke solution Atlanta Journal-Constitution: ajc.com: OUR OPINIONS: OPINION WEDNESDAY • May 15, 2002 Fifty years of nuclear power production, bombmaking and research have left a nasty legacy: 77,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste that will remain dangerous to all life for hundreds of thousands of years. Having created that radioactive mess, we owe it to our successors on this planet to ensure that it's stored safely. And such assurance isn't possible. Think about it: Two thousand years ago puts us back to the time of Jesus; 5,000 years ago we invented the wheel. So how can we possibly ensure that nuclear waste will be stored safely for 10,000 years into the future? As a committee from the National Research Council concluded, the task "may be beyond the analytical capabilities of any scientific and engineering team." So what do we do? Two things. First, a majority of that waste is being stored temporarily at more than 100 civilian nuclear power plants around the country, in cement pools or in dry concrete casks. That includes Plant Vogtle, a Georgia Power nuclear plant near Augusta, and Plant Hatch, near Baxley. It's time to get it out of there. For more than 20 years, the U.S. government has been studying whether a site in the remote Nevada desert would be suitable as a permanent storage site. Scientists have studied Yucca Mountain's geology, seismology, hydrology and any number of other -ologies, and the best answer so far is . . . "maybe." Whatever its faults, though, burial 1,000 feet beneath Yucca Mountain is safer than leaving the waste in places such as Plant Vogtle, on the banks of the Savannah River; or the Pilgrim nuclear plant in Massachusetts, on the shores of the Atlantic. Keeping that material in one well-guarded facility out in the desert is also wiser than leaving it scattered in private sites near population centers. As you might expect, though, folks in Nevada see it differently. Gov. Kenny Guinn recently used his right under federal law to veto location of the repository in his state. Under that same law, Congress has the power to override his veto. The House has already voted overwhelmingly to do so, and the Senate is expected to follow suit by a more narrow margin. To fend off that vote, Nevadans and their allies in the anti-nuclear movement argue that transport of the highly radioactive material by rail and highway poses a serious threat to human health and the environment. That's just not true. Unlike storage for 10,000 years, the challenges of transporting high-level waste are definable, understandable and solvable. We know the potential dangers, ranging from accidents to terrorist attack, and we know how to address them. And overall, any alleged danger in transporting the waste is far outweighed by the danger of leaving it in temporary facilities. However, while the repository in Nevada is our best available option for handling the waste, "best available" is not good enough. To satisfy our immediate, selfish need for energy, we have created a deadly problem that will linger for a thousand human generations, with consequences we cannot begin to imagine. Knowing that we cannot possibly ensure the long-term safety of that material, do we continue to produce more of it? No new nuclear plant has been built in this country for decades, and it's time to make that informal moratorium both permanent and formal. Let's clean up our mess as best we can, and then stop. © 2002 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ***************************************************************** 29 Nuclear Waste Program Documents Documents Out for Public Comment Sitewide Permit Modification (Waste Treatment Plant) Public comment period May 15 -July 1, 2002 The Washington State Department of Ecology wants your input on the first set of draft permit conditions for Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant. The treatment plant is being built to vitrify (turn waste into a safer glass form) millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste stored in aging underground tanks. This draft permit is the first set of modifications that will incorporate construction of the tank waste treatment facility into the Hanford Facility-Wide Dangerous Waste permit. Information Sheet Fact Sheet Draft Permit and Attachment Combined (3.5 MB) Smaller files Draft Permit (0.9 MB) Attachment 51, part 1 (1.8 MB) Attachment 51, part 2 (0.8 MB) Attachment 51, part 3 (0.8 MB) Sitewide Permit Modification (WRAP and CWC) Public comment period May 2 -June 17, 2002 The Washington State Department of Ecology seeks public comment on revisions to Revision 7 (Modification E) of the Resource, Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permit for the Hanford Site. The revised permit includes operating conditions for Hanford's Central Waste Complex (CWC) and Waste Receiving and Processing facility (WRAP). The proposed revisions are the result of negotiations and dispute resolution between Ecology and the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors, following an appeal of the original permit modification, which was issued in February 2001. Additionally, as part of the public comment period on the permit modification, the Tri-Party Agencies will also take public comment on a related Tri-Party Agreement change that revises the schedule for when future modifications of the Sitewide permit will be processed. For more information, please contact Laura Ruud [lruu461@ecy.wa.gov] , Ecology, (509) 736-5715. Information Sheet Fact Sheet, Change Control Form, and changes to the Applicability Matrix and schedule. (346 KB) Waste Receiving and Processing Facility (WRAP) Permit (2.3 MB) Changes (3 MB) Central Waste Complex (CWC Permit (3 MB) Changes (2.75 MB) Other Changes (961 KB) Sitewide Permit Modification (Commercial Waste Disposal Facility) Public comment period May 2 -June 17, 2002 The Washington State Department of Ecology seeks your input on a change to the Hanford Sitewide Dangerous Waste Permit. The proposed permit modification will require additional site investigation of the commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal facility operated by U.S. Ecology Inc. The facility is located on leased land near the 200 East Area of the Hanford Site. The investigation will be used to determine the extent of environmental contamination at the site. For more information, please contact Brenda Becker-Khaleel [bbec461@ecy.wa.gov] , Ecology, (509) 736-3003. Information Sheet Fact Sheet and Proposed Changes (Draft Permit) Press Releases Energy Department fined for incomplete assessment of high-level waste tanks Governor Locke announces major Hanford waste tank agreement [http://access.wa.gov/news/article.asp?name=n0005050.htm] Ecology poised to enforce major Hanford deadline to ensure tank safety State imposes new schedule for treating Hanford tank wastes Director's (Final) Determinations The Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) [http://www.hanford.gov/tpa/tpahome.htm] allows the Director of the Department of Ecology (Ecology) to issue a Determination whenever negotiations to modify the TPA fail to achieve a resolution. The U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) has 30 days to appeal a decision. If DOE does not make an appeal or if an appeal is denied, the determination becomes part of the TPA. Final Determination on Extension of Tank Waste Treatment Milestones, July 26, 2001 Cover Letter Final Determination Final Determination on Double-Shell Tank Integrity Assessments (M-32) Final Determination Final Determination on Land Disposal Restriction, March 29, 2000 Cover Letter Final Determination Final Determination on High Level Radioactive Tank Waste, March 29, 2000 Cover Letter Final Determination Focus Sheet Dangerous Waste Permitting (Site-Wide Permit) Documents Dangerous Waste Portion Of The Resource Conservation And Recovery Act (RCRA) Permit For The Treatment, Storage, And Disposal Of Dangerous Waste At The Hanford Facility Rev. 7 (Sitewide Permit) Mod F -- Addition of the 222-S Laboratory complex to the Site-Wide Permit Tank Waste Treatment Permitting Documents Sand and Gravel General Permit Applications General Permit [http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/sand/] Focus Sheet and Notices Hanford Site Air Operating Permit Final permit Statement of Basis Response to comments made by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Hanford Site contractors Response to comments made by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) Revisions to the Air Operating Permit Other Permitting Documents Waste Discharge (Water) Permitting Documents 200 Area Effluent Treatment Facility (ST 4500) Permit Fact Sheet Site-wide Hydrotest, Maintenance, and Construction Discharges (St 4508) Permit Fact Sheet Site-wide Cooling Water and Condensate Discharges (ST 4509) Permit Fact Sheet Site-wide Industrial Stormwater Discharges to Engineered Land Disposal Structures (ST 4510) Permit Fact Sheet 200 Area Treated Effluent Disposal Facility--TEDF (ST 4502) Permit Fact Sheet Map Photograph of TEDF 400 Area Cooling Tower and Ponds (ST 4501) Permit Administrative Orders Penalty for Failure to Meet M-32 Tank Waste Milestone Penalty Notice Administrative Order Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) Commercial Low Level Waste Disposal Facility (US Ecology, Inc.) Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) [http://www.ecy.wa.gov/biblio/0005010.html] Final EIS for the Tank Waste Remediation System [http://www.hanford.gov/eis/twrseis.htm] Hanford Remedial Action Environmental Impact Statement and Comprehensive Land Use Plan [http://www.hanford.gov/eis/hraeis/hraeis.htm] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Other Memorandum of Understanding between EPA and Ecology as part of the Tri-Party Agreement for single regulator under RCRA ***************************************************************** 30 Bill presses for SRS plutonium shipments Augusta Georgia: Technology: 05/16/02 Web posted Thursday, May 16, 2002 By Brandon Haddock [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] Staff Writer Another combatant has joined the political war surrounding plutonium shipments to Savannah River Site. U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., introduced a bill Wednesday that would fine the U.S. Department of Energy $1 million a day if it failed to ship plutonium from his state's Rocky Flats site to SRS by November 2003. Shipments would have to begin by July 1, or the Energy Department would have to look for other places to ship the radioactive metal. South Carolina politicians, including Gov. Jim Hodges, have fought to delay the shipments until they have assurances that SRS won't become a permanent storage site for plutonium. But Mr. Udall said his concerns lie not with the Palmetto State, but his own. "No matter what happens with South Carolina, we need an insurance policy to make sure the Energy Department keeps its promise to Colorado to close Rocky Flats by 2006," Mr. Udall said in a statement. "This bill focuses on protecting Colorado." A spokeswoman for Mr. Hodges called Mr. Udall's bill as "a nonissue." "We don't foresee this bill going anywhere," Cortney Owings said. "It is nothing more than another attempt to force-feed South Carolina plutonium. "The people of Colorado would be better served if their elected officials pressured the federal government to be honest and keep their commitments rather than wasting time on bogus legislation." Mr. Udall's bill followed one introduced by U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., last week. That bill would allow the Energy Department to reconsider its decision to build plutonium-treatment plants at SRS. Some SRS supporters covet those plants, which would create more than 500 long-term jobs at the nuclear-weapons site. But Mr. Hodges has opposed shipments of plutonium to SRS because he has no guarantees that the plants actually would be built. In an attempt to break the months-old debate, South Carolina Republicans already have introduced a bill that would fine the Energy Department $1 million a day if it failed to meet deadlines for building the plants, then treating plutonium and shipping it out of South Carolina. But Mr. Hodges would not endorse that bill, saying it didn't include enough protections for his state. Instead, the governor has sued in federal court to block the shipments until an agreement acceptable to him is reached. Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409 or bhaddock@augustachronicle.com [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] . [http://augusta.com] . ***************************************************************** 31 Nuclear treaty proves Bush is forging a new, wise foreign policy The Union Leader & New Hampshire Sunday News - May 16, 2002 Michael Kelly: THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S new nuclear arms treaty with Russia is worth contemplating. It is, in its own way, a thing of beauty — a small thing that is actually quite large and that is wonderfully confounding to the way things are supposed to work. It is a mere three pages long. It was arrived at not through years of negotiating by teams of experts, but in a matter of months, chiefly on the strength of personal rapport between George W. Bush and Vladimir V. Putin. It is a victory for Bush — it cements American nuclear superiority, committing the United States to do with its nuclear arsenal only and precisely what already-decided doctrine called for, and this commitment is reversible. But it is also a victory for Putin, giving him a treaty he needed to show back home as fruits of friendship with America. It arrives only five months after Bush yanked America out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the usual experts said would wreck the arms limitation process. It is a far-sighted treaty — from an American President who had seemed to regard arms treaties as abominations and who had specifically rejected one in this matter. This bit of paper is emblematic of an evolution that is arriving at definition. Piece by piece, in an urgent process of growth that began Sept. 11, Bush is forging a new — in context, radical — foreign policy. This is not so much a matter of doctrine as philosophy — a set of values, a worldview, to use two other terms Bush would reject as overly grand. It is largely stated through actions instead of words, and it is working to rapid and transformative effect. Bush’s philosophy rests on three deceptively simple tenets. (1) America first. Bush is certainly not an isolationist and he cannot even credibly be called a unilateralist, but in any consideration of choices he is highly focused on one question: What is good for the United States? The interests and sensibilities of other nations and other peoples are unapologetically of secondary concern. This kind of single-mindedness is harder to sustain, and more rare in a President, than you might think. It lends great clarity to decision-making and great strength to execution. The triumph (and it is, over all, clearly that) of the American campaign in Afghanistan rests entirely on this quality. American security demanded the destruction of al-Qaida and the Taliban, no matter what anyone said, no matter what the risk. That’s that; the rest is commentary. (2) Good is good and bad is bad. The Bush policy is not Kissingerian realpolitik, but a more complex realism — a realism rooted in morality. The great successful American exercises of force, from the Civil War to the World Wars to the Cold War to the Gulf War, have all been grounded in a moral understanding of the world. This understanding has informed America’s sense of what was proper in its own actions: The United States could properly act with great lethal force, and in its own interests, but it also had to be on the side of at least an arguable good. This also informed America’s understanding of the actions of other nations. In the final analysis, the Third Reich and the Soviet empire had to be destroyed because they were forces for, as Bush would say, evil. A moral rationale does not guarantee wise foreign policy (see The League of Nations, Vietnam), but unwise policy very often rests on the absence of moral consideration: the purposeful embrace of euphemism, evasion and confusion as to right and wrong. Bush understands this. That understanding is sweeping in its ramifications. The Clinton administration based eight years of negotiations with Yasser Arafat on the pretense that we didn’t know that Arafat was, in the end, a man no one could do business with. Bush has taken the opposite stance. In time, perhaps not much time, the Palestinian people will decide that they are better served by a leader that the American President can do business with. And this will be to the good. (3) If you know where you stand, you can dance. A President who is solid on the ends can afford to be limber on the means. Bush is not afraid to change his mind, to rethink something, to admit to a mistake, even to wholly reverse himself. He knows what he believes in, and he knows his friends and enemies know it too, and he figures he will get there. Michael Kelly is the editor of Atlantic Monthly magazine and a graduate of the University of New Hampshire. The Union Leader. ***************************************************************** 32 Op: This arms deal is key to friendlier relations between the U.S. and Russia. OrlandoSentinel.com: Posted May 16, 2002 The world got safer this week, when the United States and Russia agreed to cut their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds over the next decade. If ratified in both countries, the new treaty would leave each with about 2,000 nuclear weapons activated in 2012. For some perspective, consider that the United States had 15,000 nukes in 1987, and the Russian-dominated Soviet Union had 12,000. It's amazing how far the two sides have come. There are limits to the new treaty. It doesn't require the countries to destroy the weapons they deactivate, meaning Russia's might still be vulnerable to mischief. Either country can back out of the pact three months after notifying the other. And 2,000 weapons are still enough for an apocalyptic attack. But there is no disputing the treaty's tremendous symbolic value. The countries whose confrontation dominated the latter half of the 20th century are now committed to minimizing threats to each other as they forge closer ties. Former foes are becoming fast friends. The treaty could pave the way for further cooperation between the United States and Russia in other areas such as the war on terrorism and missile defense. In another remarkable development this week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- the military alliance formed to counter the Soviet threat -- agreed to consult with Russia on key issues. While Russia's role falls short of membership, its participation will ease tensions provoked by NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe. President George W. Bush said a "new era" in U.S.-Russian relations began this week. He's right. Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel ADVERTISEMENTS ***************************************************************** 33 Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower in Court Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | [UP] Monday May 13, 2002 11:10 AM JERUSALEM (AP) - Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu made a rare court appearance Monday to request that secret documents from his trial be made public and to seek permission to meet with his British attorneys. The gray-haired, tanned Vanunu arrived in court handcuffed and wearing brown prison garb. Vanunu, who is serving an 18-year prison term for treason, has spent several years in solitary confinement. He was recently granted permission to spend outdoor recesses with other inmates. Vanunu, a former nuclear technician, was sentenced in 1988, two years after he gave The Sunday Times of London pictures of Israel's nuclear reactor near the Negev Desert town of Dimona. Israel, employing a policy it describes as ``nuclear ambiguity,'' has never confirmed it has nuclear capability. Avigdor Feldman, Vanunu's Israeli attorney, said Monday's Supreme Court hearing dealt mostly with a lower court ruling that Vanunu cannot access the protocols of his trial. No decision was made at the closed-door hearing. ``The decision is absurd. The trial is about him, he was the defendant in the trial. Just as he was present at the trial he should be allowed to read the protocols,'' Feldman told Israel Army Radio at the end of the three-hour closed-door session. Based on Vanunu's pictures, experts concluded Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA estimated more recently that Israel has between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons. In recent years, public debate on Israel's nuclear policy has picked up. In August 2000, the daily Yediot Ahronot published new satellite pictures of the desert reactor. A television documentary last year said the Jewish state developed its nuclear capability from French technology received in the 1950s. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 34 U.S. upgrading nuclear weapons research By THOMAS HARGROVE May 15, 2002 The Bush administration is preparing to sign a nuclear warhead-reduction treaty with Russia, but at the same is increasing nuclear weapons research. Critics and proponents agree that the Pentagon is beginning a long-term realignment in its capacity to design new kinds of nuclear weapons. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently adopted a Nuclear Posture Review that concluded "our nuclear infrastructure has atrophied" and must be restored. "We are definitely seeing increases in our nuclear weapons research and development capabilities, something that is badly needed," said Amoretta Hoeber, a private defense consultant and former deputy undersecretary of the Army in the Reagan administration. "The national laboratories that conduct this kind of research have been badly neglected in recent years. This is changing." President Bush travels to Moscow next week for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the centerpiece of the meeting being the signing on May 24 of a treaty limiting each nation to between 1,700 and 2,200 long-range nuclear warheads by 2012. But the treaty will not reduce the U.S. ability to design and manufacture new fission and fusion bombs, according to senior nuclear policy observers. "This agreement does not envision any dismantlement of the United States' nuclear infrastructure," said Karl Inderfurth, former assistant secretary of state under President Clinton. "There continue to be discussions at the Pentagon for the development of new kinds of weapons. There have been suggestions that we should resume underground nuclear testing for these new weapon systems." No one is predicting a major nuclear weapons building program, especially since unofficial estimates place the current ready- or near-ready warhead stockpile at up to 10,500 individual weapons. The official number of "front line weapons" ready for immediate use is 6,000 warheads. "The nuclear weapons establishment is uncomfortable not having the ability to produce new nuclear weapons," said Christopher Paine, senior analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which advocates further nuclear disarmament. "The administration is trying to reshape deterrence in a way that fits with its view of U.S. global dominance. They want to use nuclear weapons as part of that new global posture," Paine said. Among the indications of higher interest in nuclear weapons research: - Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told a Senate committee two months ago that $10 million has been allocated to study whether existing nuclear warheads can be modified as "earth-penetrating" weapons. The U.S. military had to contend with concrete-hardened command-and-control bunkers during the Gulf War and with vast caves in Afghanistan during recent exchanges with forces loyal to al Qaeda.. - The National Nuclear Security Administration said recently it is considering plans for a new factory to produce the grapefruit-sized "plutonium pits" needed to trigger nuclear blasts. The 1989 closure of the Rocky Flats manufacturing plant near Denver stopped production of the pits, which last about 50 years. - Scientists at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories have been formed into small, competing research groups to consider new nuclear warhead designs. John Gordon at the Nuclear Safety Administration said their mission is to "explore what is possible." The Bush administration on Jan. 8 adopted a Nuclear Posture Review, a congressionally mandated analysis of long-term plans for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. A major element of this review - at least according to the shorter, declassified version released by the Pentagon - is a call to upgrade nuclear infrastructure. "Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. defense infrastructure has contracted and our nuclear infrastructure has atrophied," the declassified version said. "New approaches to development and procurement of new capabilities are being designed so that it will not take 20 years or more to field new generations of weapon systems." The report struck a delicate balance, experts agree, in urging an upgrade in the nation's capacity to produce new nuclear weapons without calling for a new round of weapons production. In 1994 Congress prohibited research and design development of any new warhead with a yield of five kilotons or more, the equivalent of 5,000 tons of TNT. "Look, we are not going to be making fresh plutonium or new highly enriched uranium. We have tons of the stuff, and it will last many thousands of years," Paine said. "They are not going to be producing radically new designs of nuclear weapons anytime soon. But if the question is whether or not the administration is going to be spending a ton of money to upgrade our overall nuclear capabilities, then the answer is yes," he said. On the Web: U.S. Defense Department: www.defenselink.mil Natural Resources Defense Council: www.nrdc.org (Contact Thomas Hargrove at HargroveT(at)shns.com or on the Web at http://www.shns.com.) The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 35 A Worthless Scrap of Paper Thursday, May. 16, 2002. Page 9 By Pavel Felgenhauer Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin have agreed to sign a treaty next week in Moscow to cut strategic nuclear weapons over 10 years from their present level of 5,000 to 6,000 warheads each to 2,200 to 1,700. The proposed treaty is only three pages long, in sharp contrast to previous strategic arms control agreements like START I, signed in 1991, or START II, signed in 1993, that ran to hundreds of pages with appendices describing in detail verification of compliance procedures, timetables for decommissioning of specific weapons systems, precise definitions of the methods for counting warheads, etc. A high-ranking Russian official who has access to the new draft treaty told me this week that most of the text consists of a long preamble that includes a declaration of good intent, assurances of friendship, speaks of peace on Earth and so on. The treaty per se is only half a page long (double spaced). It seems Bush this week read out the entire "treaty" to reporters virtually verbatim: "Russia and the U.S. will by 2012 have 2,200 to 1,700 warheads." This treaty does not have any timetable for decommissioning, no definitions of what a warhead is or how to count them, no verification procedures -- no nothing. Russian sources say that Washington has supplied Moscow with some plans for future decommissioning of strategic weapons systems (e.g., 50 MX Peacemaker missiles with 10 warheads each are earmarked by the Pentagon for scrapping soon). But these decommissioning plans are not part of the new treaty and are in fact unilateral, nonbinding promises. Washington has also vowed great openness and says it will allow the Russians full access to verify future cuts. But again the verification procedures are not stipulated in the treaty and depend only on future goodwill. Legally speaking, in military arms control terms, the new treaty is nothing more than a worthless scrap of paper. Without any agreed procedure on how to count nuclear warheads, an entire nuclear submarine with 20 ballistic missiles and the capability of carrying 400 nuclear devices may be counted as one "warhead" if most of its payload is temporarily stored on land. The new treaty essentially allows Russia and the United States to cut or not as they please, to deploy new attack systems or to keep old ones. This is not arms control, but the end of arms control as it has been known for 30 years. Of course, the new treaty will be condemned as a national sellout by many in the Russian elite. Last Sunday, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, anticipating a wave of criticism, announced that the new treaty is only a brief outline and that some follow-ups may be negotiated. However, the possibility that Washington will continue traditional arms control negotiations is minute. The new treaty is seen as a major victory for Washington and a defeat for the Kremlin, which wanted some substantial guarantees that planned U.S. missile defenses will not threaten Russia and that offensive nuclear cuts will be "irreversible" but got a worthless piece of paper. However, the treaty is assured of ratification in the State Duma, where Putin has a comfortable majority. In fact some of Russia's military chiefs also support the accord. From 1997 to 2001, when Igor Sergeyev was defense minister, almost all procurement money was spent on strategic nuclear weapons. Since Sergeyev's ouster there has been a backlash against strategic nuclear weapons led by Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Kvashnin. The General Staff is planning to use the treaty to cut strategic missiles and spend its money on other projects. Strategic nuclear weapons are increasingly seen as senseless and unusable by many Russian generals. In 1999, despite strong objections from Russia, NATO bombed Yugoslavia and nuclear deterrence could not prevent it. The outcome would have been the same whether Russia had 1,500 warheads or 5,500. The new treaty may actually turn out to be a "win" for both Moscow and Washington inasmuch as its signing signals that Russia has abandoned the cherished principle of nuclear parity with the United States -- the last vestige of former Soviet superpower status. Now it is time the Kremlin stopped acting as a lame superpower in other fields by downsizing not only its nuclear arsenal by two-thirds but its entire military machine and reforming what's left into something more professional, so that Russia can begin to develop as a normal, civil state. Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst. [http://www.moscowtimes.ru ***************************************************************** 36 Bush and Russia agree on nuclear weapons Editorial: Disarming progress / [http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.a Editorial: Disarming progress / Bush and Russia agree on nuclear weapons Thursday, May 16, 2002 President Bush's announcement Monday of agreement between the United States and Russia on nuclear arms reduction puts in place another building block in a steadily improving relationship and suggests that his visit to Russia next week will be a harmonious one. Other elements in that improving relationship include a closer Russian involvement with NATO, worked out this week at a foreign ministers' conference of the alliance in Iceland, an increasingly constructive Russian role as an oil producer and cooperation in other areas. The pledged mutual reductions of nuclear warheads from 6,000 to a maximum of 2,200 by the year 2012 in principle make the world safer and save money for both countries. Mr. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin will sign the treaty May 24, but it will not go into effect until both countries' legislatures ratify it. In the United States, ratification will require a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The U.S. position stated in the treaty is consistent with the Defense Department's recent Nuclear Posture Review. There are still many loose ends in the U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control area. The issue of whether warheads taken out of service by both sides will be dismantled or destroyed, or just put into storage, is not addressed by the new treaty. Measures for verification are not dealt with either. Both nations maintain they are observing the signed but never ratified 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but there are reports of the Russians preparing new testing. The United States has stated its intention to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in the name of developing a national missile defense system. Both sides' possession of thousands of tactical nuclear weapons has not been addressed at all. At the same time, the general state of cooperation between the two countries is good and improving. Closer integration of Russia into NATO planning and consultations seems to be leading to Moscow's softening its opposition to approaching NATO acceptance into the alliance of Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Mr. Putin is invited to upcoming NATO summits in Italy in May and Prague in November. Russia will cohost the conference on the Middle East scheduled for the summer. Russia is expected to announce shortly an end to limits on its oil exports, thus reducing Middle East exporters' leverage over the market and lowering world oil prices. All is still not well with the bear, however. A terrorist attack in southwest Russia during a May 9 parade killed 41, the war in Chechnya continues and Russia still sells arms to Iran and Syria. A newspaper editor was shot dead for writing about crime in Russia. The globalization of crime has resulted in Russian gangs becoming active in the United States. But, in general, the two countries are more or less pulling together, with both oars in the water, and both the nuclear arms reduction and the NATO accord are welcome developments. Copyright ©1997-2002 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights ***************************************************************** 37 Grigory Pasko hits 40 in prison Gregory Pasko, an investigative journalist who worked for the Pacific Fleet's newspaper, was arrested on 20 November 1997 by the FSB and charged with high treason for his writing about the nuclear safety issues in the Russian Pacific Fleet. MOSCOW - On Monday Galina Morozova will visit her husband Grigory Pasko in a Vladivostok prison to celebrate his birthday. They will talk about him hitting the "big 4-0" on telephone receivers as they face each other through thick wire meshed glass. She will bring him letters from friends and supporters that already will have been opened and read by agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB). December 2001: The verdict is announced, Pasko is set behind the bars, his wife Galina will only be able to see him once a month from now on. Charles Digges, 2002-05-15 16:40 Then, the one-hour visit for this month will end and she'll return home to the children, 18 and 3, and resume the business running a semblance of a normal life. Later in the day, if well-wishers telephone to hear about Grigory's progress, the FSB will be listening in and will hear about it too. Galina, 39, has been stoically digesting this petty harassment since 1997, when the security services first took note of her husband's journalistic investigations on the Russian Pacific Fleet's negligent nuclear waste dumping procedures in the Sea of Japan. After five years, it has ceased to have much of an effect on her. "They don't persecute us…[but they are] keeping our family under control — controlling my son and me too," she said in an interview with Bellona Web in Moscow on Tuesday. Her remarks betray no fear, only the conviction that the life of her family will continue with or without the intervention of the state. To be sure, Galina does not make the impression of a woman who is driven to desperation by the situation her family is in. To the contrary, she is fully in control of every soft-spoken word she says. She is no injured victim of a bewildering state. Rather, she is someone whose private standards of human conduct have been violated, and the blunt plodding of the authorities elicit in her an articulate, focused defiance. On Dec. 25, Galina's husband, a Vladivostok-based military reporter for the Boyevaya Vakhta newspaper, was convicted of treason in a Pacific Fleet military court and sentenced to four years in prison for attending a meeting of naval brass and possessing notes he made there. The FSB maintained that Pasko had intended to pass this information, which allegedly concerned "secret naval manoeuvres," to the Japanese media — though he was never accused of actually having done so. In 1999, the same court had convicted Pasko of negligence for passing film to Japanese TV journalists of Russian Pacific Fleet ships illegally dumping nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan. Pasko was subsequently amnestied by Russia's Supreme Court, but appealed the decision based on the notion that an innocent man cannot be amnestied. The unexpected result was a new trial and a conviction on fresh charges of treason, which his attorney, Bellona and rights groups throughout the world maintain were fabricated by the FSB and relied heavily on two spurious Defence Ministry orders — one of which was abolished by the Supreme Court last week and the other of which was determined at the same hearing not to have the force of law. In late May or early June, the Supreme Court will hear the appeal to Pasko's latest conviction. Following that conviction last December, voices high in the Russian Government — most notably Federation Council Speaker and ally to President Vladimir Putin, Sergei Mironov — began making statements indicating their disagreement with the verdict and began dangling the possibility of a pardon for Pasko. According to Galina, the offer for a pardon was made. "We could apply for a pardon — they let us know that such an appeal would be approved and he would be free," she said. Given the family's current circumstances, its tempting to think that taking offer would have been an easy decision: Galina alone is shouldering the burden of feeding the children the two children, Ruslan, 18, Galina's son from a previous marriage and the 3-year-old son of Galina's late brother. Her workday at a private firm begins early and ends late, and her salary and time are stretched paper-thin As for Pasko, he is staring down four years in a Russian jail, with contagious tubercular inmates, stomach-churning rations of watery stew, exposure to nameless infections, his own deteriorating health and the gnawing knowledge that he is innocent to keep him company. So when presented with the option of begging the government's mercy in exchange for freedom, Galina says: "Talking about the pardon was not difficult at all — we had the same opinion: a pardon does not suit us at all." "It was our common decision — to appeal for a pardon means to admit one's guilt — if someone is not guilty of anything, how can he ask for a pardon?" Since his second incarceration in December, Pasko has been named a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International — the second Russian, after Bellona's Aleksandr Nikitin, since the break-up of the Soviet Union to receive that designation, and only the third since Andrei Sakharov. Additionally, the powerhouses of the western press — from The New York Times to the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal — all weighed in on the December verdict with condemning editorials. This brought a level of international attention to Pasko equalled in recent years only by Nikitin, who battled the same Defence Ministry decrees for blowing the whistle on negligent nuclear waste handling practices by Russia's Northern Fleet. Nikitin was acquitted in 1999. But celebrity is not something that sits easy with either Galina or her husband, and she refuses to consider her husband a savoir or a martyr. "I don't consider him a hero. And he doesn't consider himself a hero," she said. "Is it heroism to do one's journalistic job diligently?" Turning a blind eye to the problems he was exposing, she said, would have involved ignoring his conscience. He refused to do that. "Is that heroism? He and I don't think so," she said. "He just became a victim of the circumstances." Indeed, she doesn't consider that the reports he was filing involved any sort of special risk. They had discussed the possibility that his pursuits might bring unpleasantness, but she said she never quite thought he would get arrested. "He began to notice the agents tailing him and the anonymous letters to the authorities complaining about him and he noticed there was some backstage game being played against him," she said. "But as a law abiding citizen… he was hoping that if he didn't violate any legislation as a journalist, if he conducted his journalistic activities according to the law and didn't let him self step over any boundaries, then he could not be arrested." While the international media has identified the Pasko case as a chilling reminder of just how shabby are the states of free speech and access to crucial environmental information in Russia, the hometown press has not been so kind. With two exceptions, said Galina, the papers in Vladivostok have been at best indifferent. At their worst, they have been rabidly spy-baiting, and have consigned Pasko to the role of traitor. The worst, however, said Galina, has been state run ORT national television, which recently devoted a segment of its popular tabloid talk show "Chelovek I Zakon" (Man and the Law) to trashing Pasko as a spy. On ORT's "Odnako" (However) program, Mikhail Leontiev — who distinguished himself as a televised pro-Putin attack-dog during the 2000 presidential race — also heaped prime-time mud on Pasko. Such bitterness from the quarters of the state run media jar with Federation Council Speaker Mironov's earlier hints at leniency — word's Galina and her husband never put much stock in anyway. But it does offer an insight into the government's possible discomfort with Pasko's decision to sit in jail rather than accept its bait of clemency. "Who is this Mironov anyway," said Galina. "He's not the last man in the government. So what? Anyone can stand up and say something, but no one does anything." "There is no understanding of this state," she added. In the coming weeks, her husband's case will be before the Supreme Court, which could lead to his freedom as early as June. Of course, she says, she is optimistic, but that optimism is tempered with a stoic caution — a habit developed, among other places, at her husband's last trial. "We expected anything from the state, but we were hoping," he would be acquitted, she said. "We even admitted the chance that the verdict would come back guilty because [the court] can't go against the system, and that would be an indictment of the system," she said. "But we didn't expect him to go to jail — we didn't expect such baseness. It is over five years now they've been persecuting him. There are reasonable limits." Because of these experiences, her approach to optimism has become a sort of stern formula. "I don't have time to sit and lament my sad fate and the sad fate my family and my husband," she said. "My oldest son is a student and I have to care for the smaller child so that he doesn't just grow like grass… I do everything myself. And it takes a lot of time," she said, concluding, "You can find rescue from any problem in your work, in every day activity. To cry into ones pillow is not a way out. After the black strip always comes the white." Judging by Galina's description of him, it is a creed that Pasko adheres to himself. "He has a firm character and will not go limp, will not give in," she said. While in prison he has been reading copiously and studying the law, and even has ambitions of pursuing a legal career when his case is decided and he is again free. He is also taking copious notes on his life there, and writing legal complaints, both for himself and other prisoners. "He finds what to do," she said, and then paused to reconsider the phrasing. "A man can find what needs to be done." Publisher: [bellona@bellona.no] , President: [frederic@bellona.no] Information: [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: [webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 38 U.S. can't ignore nuclear threat USATODAY.com - By Ted Turner I'm worried that we're about to make the same mistake we made a decade ago. In August of 1991, when a coup by Soviet hard-liners fell apart, then-president Mikhail Gorbachev gave credit to live global television for keeping world attention on the action, and Time magazine wrote: "Momentous things happened precisely because they were being seen as they happened." But if good things can happen because a lot of people are watching, bad things can happen when few people are watching. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the media moved off the story of the nuclear threat — and we moved into the new world order without undoing the danger of the old world order. In the wake of Sept. 11, people are realizing that the nuclear threat didn't end with the Cold War. Soviet weapons, materials and know-how are still there, more dangerous than ever. Russia's economic troubles weakened controls on them, and global terrorists are trying harder to get them. When President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Moscow next week, they will sign a treaty to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on each side. They need to reduce a lot more than that. Some of the poisonous byproducts of the two powers' arms race are piled high in poorly guarded facilities across 11 time zones. They offer mad fools the power to kill millions. At a Bush-Putin news conference two months after the terrorist attacks, Bush declared: "Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction." He also has told his national security staff to give nuclear terrorism top priority. Where's the money? But it's hard to see this priority in the budget and policies of the administration. Not a dollar of the $38 billion the administration requested in new spending for homeland defense will address loose weapons, materials and know-how in Russia. The total spending on these programs — even after Sept. 11 — has remained flat at about a billion dollars a year, even though, at this rate, we will still not have secured all loose nuclear materials in Russia for years to come. But what worries me most is not the lack of new spending, but the lack of new thinking. Where are the new ideas for preventing nuclear terrorism? We can't just keep doing what we've been doing, and we can't just copy old plans; we've got to innovate. If we are hit with one of these weapons because we slept through this wake-up call from hell, it will be the most shameful failure of national defense in the history of the United States. Waning public interest Unfortunately, public pressure for action is weak, partly because media attention on nuclear terrorism has begun to fade. And it's fading not because the threat has been addressed or reduced, but because the media cover what changes, and threats don't change much day to day. They just keep on ticking. The media need to stay on this story because it's harder to get government action when there's not much media coverage. If something's not in the media, it's not in the public mind. If it's not in the public mind, there's little political pressure to act. If public attention moves off this nuclear threat before the government has moved to reduce it, we will be making the same mistake we made after 1991. Leadership, however, means being out in front even if no one's pushing from behind. Bush and Putin need to think bigger and do more. They need to reduce the chance that terrorists can steal nuclear weapons or materials or hire away weapons scientists. They need to work together as partners in fighting terror and encourage others to join. They need to launch a worldwide plan to identify weapons, materials and know-how and secure all of it, everywhere, now — if we are to avoid Armageddon. CNN founder Ted Turner last year established the Nuclear Threat Initiative, dedicated to reducing the threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He has pledged to provide $250 million to fund its activities. USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 39 Flexibility in nuclear pact creates its own limitations | csmonitor.com Ann Scott Tyson Special correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor--> USA > Military from the May 16, 2002 edition Flexibility in nuclear pact creates its own limitations The treaty's impact is dulled by no rules for a timetable or destruction of warheads. By Ann Scott Tyson | Special correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – While politically important, this week's US-Russian accord to remove thousands of nuclear warheads from operational deployment is unlikely to make the world a markedly safer place. Experts say that the Bush administration deserves credit for simply achieving an agreement to scale back offensive nuclear weapons, while also moving ahead with missile defense – breaking the inertia over US-Russian strategic arms reductions under Clinton's presidency. Debate US strategy and tactics in the war on terrorism "We did get there in a way that is a little more informal, a little more unilateral, but we did it," says a nuclear expert affiliated with the Pentagon. The treaty, to be signed by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next week, also marks a diplomatic success. "The significance is not so much in strategic terms, it's more in terms of the relationship we are building with Russia," says Robert Einhorn, a former US assistant secretary of State for nonproliferation. Yet many experts agree that the treaty's broad rules and open-ended approach make it less meaningful as a curb on a possible nuclear catastrophe. "The treaty does not make us more secure. But it may make us less secure, because the real risk is about diverting and stealing nuclear weapons," says Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Marginal gain in safety In terms of sheer numbers, experts agree that a marginal gain in safety will result if the United States and Russia each lower the number of deployed nuclear warheads from about 5,000 to 6,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the year 2012. "The fewer nuclear weapons there are, the less chance of accidents and miscalculations," says Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear-proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here. Declining numbers, in turn, "will produce some very modest progress with respect to each side's confidence about the direction of their cold-war nuclear arsenals," says Darryl Kimball, director of Washington's nonprofit Arms Control Association. Although some experts pointed out that overly deep cuts could prove destabilizing – by enabling a missile-defense system to effectively neutralize another nation's offensive weapons – virtually all concluded that this week's accord is too cautious in cutting warheads. Moreover, the Bush administration's insistence on a highly flexible treaty limits its strategic impact, experts say. The treaty does not set a timetable for cuts or require that the warheads taken out of service be destroyed. In fact, it has a 90-day withdrawal clause and expires in 10 years, freeing either side to rebuild. "The overriding concern we had going in was to find a way to record in the treaty the kind of flexibility the administration felt was needed," says one US official familiar with the negotiations. He acknowledged that originally the administration saw no need for a treaty, and the Pentagon was "most skeptical," emphasizing the US difficulty in canceling the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. Underlying the demand for flexibility are administration concerns about the long-term nuclear intentions of Russia, as well as deterring China and so-called "rogue" states such as Iraq and North Korea, US officials say. "The most dangerous scenario is a Russia that suddenly changes course," says the US official, adding that China "and other rogues" also pose a plausible, if more remote threat. US negotiators sought even more leeway in the form of an "opt out" clause that would have allowed either side to temporarily exceed the warhead limits after giving notice 45 days in advance. But Russian officials rejected it. Dangerous questions The flip side of this flexibility to rebuild is that it raises potentially dangerous questions about future US and Russian nuclear aims, say experts, many of whom are hard put to think of situations that would require warheads exceeding treaty limits. "The signal we are sending to the world is that we take nuclear weapons and their use and employment very seriously. We actually think ... we can gain strategic advantage by using them," says Mr. Daalder. As the world's preeminent military power, the US would gain more security not through demanding flexibility, but by curbing the military powers of all states, "because it would lock in our relative advantage," Mr. Kimball and others contend. And by insisting on holding warheads in reserve, rather than agreeing to Russian calls to dismantle them, Washington is perpetuating what many experts view as America's greatest, most immediate nuclear threat: vulnerability of the Russian stockpile to diversion or theft. Another vital safety area not addressed by the treaty is the need for shared early-warning data to lower the risk of an accidental launch, a problem "much more dangerous than the [weapons] balance," says Hans Binnendijk, a nuclear-weapons expert at the Pentagon's National Defense University. "The US and Russia are not going to go to nuclear war with each other under anyone's scenario," he says, "But Russian early warning is deteriorating to the point where they no longer have confidence in what they are seeing, and they could misinterpret a missile launch." Copyright © 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights ***************************************************************** 40 The Progressive OP: US Russian weapons treaty Editor Matthew Rothschild | The Progressive magazine May 15, 2002 It's hard to look at the nuclear arms agreement between Russia and the United States without heaving a sigh of relief. The reduction of the arsenals by two-thirds represents the ripping up of the perverse suicide pact that Washington and Moscow operated under during the entire Cold War. Finally, it seems clear that the risk of global annihilation--so frighteningly high during much of the Cold War--has now receded to the negligible. And for that we can be grateful. But the agreement is not without its problems. First, it does not require, as Putin had wanted, that the two powers dismantle and destroy the weapons they are drawing down. Instead, Bush insisted that the weapons could be placed in storage. This makes the cuts less than fully meaningful, since the warheads can quickly be reactivated. And it also raises the risks that Russia's weapons, which are notoriously poorly guarded, may fall into the hands of terrorists. And second, it does not take nuclear weapons off of hair-trigger alert. This is idiocy! A computer failure or a human error could still wreak nuclear havoc, giving Washington or Moscow a mere fifteen minutes--the time it takes for a missile fired from one country to hit the other--to decide whether it was a false alarm or whether it was a real incoming missile, and if it was the latter, whether to retaliate by launching nuclear weapons back. Why play with nuclear fire? And for all the good the treaty does, it also leaves Washington freer than ever to consider its own nuclear weapons as just some more tools in the shed against other adversaries, such as China, North, Korea, Iraq, or Iran. The reckless rhetoric from the Pentagon this spring in its Nuclear Posture Review shows that this risk is not insignificant. Nor is the risk insignificant that India and Pakistan will use their nukes against each other. In fact, that risk seems to grow higher by the day. Not until the United Sates and Russia lead the world to the abolition of nuclear weapons will we be totally out from under the cloud. -- Matthew Rothschild ***************************************************************** 41 'Back to Nature' at Livermore Lab Tri-Valley Herald Thursday, May 16, 2002 - 2:57:52 AM MST Live animals, robots to be on display FROM STAFF REPORTS Lawrence Livermore Lab officials will present live animals, displays of endangered and threatened species, and interactive robots crafted from building blocks during a "Back to Nature, Down to Earth" event Saturday. The lab Visitors Center, off of Greenville Road, will host the affair, scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It is free and open to the public. Visitors Center coordinator Linda Lucchetti said that about 500 people attended the first Science on Saturday event, held in November. That demonstration had a space and science theme. "Our first Saturday event was so successful that we wanted to do another one," she said. Employees of the Lindsay Wildlife Museum of Walnut Creek will bring live animals, displays and literature to educate people about California wildlife. An environmental diorama will demonstrate how stormwater runoff can cause pollution, and other exhibits energy and science displays are planned. "These Saturday programs are a fun way to make science accessible and interesting to the community and especially children," Lucchetti said. For information, call (925) 422-5815 or visit the Web at http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/06news/Community/nature--expo.html ©1999-2001 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers ***************************************************************** 42 editorial: Allard plan may work Denver Post.com Thursday, May 16, 2002 - An intriguing public policy proposal accompanied a bill introduced last week by U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard to let the federal government ship surplus plutonium to places other than South Carolina. Allard, a Colorado Republican, introduced his measure, S. 2501, because South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges has refused to let the U.S. Department of Energy truck plutonium from DOE's Rocky Flats cleanup site in Colorado to its Savannah River facility in his state. If passed, Allard's bill would strip South Carolina of 15,000 federal jobs over the life of the $4 billion project to convert surplus defense plutonium into commercial reactor fuel, called mixed oxide fuel or MOX. Hodges charged that Allard was politically motivated to penalize South Carolina for its demands that DOE honor past promises and not leave surplus plutonium forever in that state. But whatever the motive, there could be a real national benefit to Allard's idea. One of his bill's co-sponsors is U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a Texas Republican who thinks the Lone Star State - still reeling from Enron's collapse, the dot-com bust and assorted other business follies - would welcome thousands of high-paying federal jobs. What the alternative to Savannah River would be isn't clear, but a logical option for the MOX plant is Pantex, DOE's plant near Amarillo, Texas, which has an ongoing nuclear defense mission. If the plutonium were sent to Texas, it would represent a reasonable, additional duty to an operating federal facility. Texas' interest in landing the DOE jobs should intrigue taxpayers. Of the approximately 34 metric tons of plutonium originally slated to be shipped to South Carolina for the MOX project, about 6 metric tons would have come from Rocky Flats. Most of the rest would have come from Pantex. Since so much plutonium is stored at Pantex already, if Congress gave Texas the MOX facility, less of the dangerous, radioactive material would have to be shipped halfway across the country - through the Midwest, over the Mississippi River and into the deep South. Moreover, since the distance between Colorado and Texas obviously is less than the mileage to the East Coast, the time the material would be at risk of terrorism or theft would be greatly reduced if the material went to Texas instead of South Carolina. If Congress passed the bill, DOE wouldn't have to start from scratch: Years ago, the department prepared environmental studies detailing what safety measures would be needed to safely truck plutonium to Pantex. New Mexico might object to Texas getting the plutonium because some of the material would likely travel through its borders on its way to Pantex. Congress might reduce political resistance in the Land of Enchantment, however, by funding repairs and improvements to highways used for the shipments. All contents Copyright 2002 The Denver Post ***************************************************************** 43 Revised cleanup plan unveiled for OR KnoxNews: Local DOE looks to finish job more quickly By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer May 16, 2002 OAK RIDGE - The Department of Energy announced plans Wednesday to accelerate the Oak Ridge cleanup program, pump more money into high-risk projects and complete the overall cleanup by 2016 - about eight to 10 years ahead of previous schedules. A "letter of intent" signed by DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Tennessee has set the stage for a revised cleanup strategy at one of the nation's largest nuclear sites. The initial impacts would be seen next year, when the Oak Ridge cleanup program would get an additional $105 million in funds from a national account set up for accelerated projects. That would boost 2003 spending on cleanup projects here to $520 million - about $40 million more than this year's level. Congress, however, still must approve the DOE request for cleanup money at Oak Ridge and other nuclear sites. "It's not done," said U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Chattanooga, who participated in a Wednesday teleconference with DOE's cleanup chief, Jessie Roberson, and others. "It's an outline, a plan." Wamp said the Oak Ridge agreement is positive and could potentially save taxpayers lots of money in the long term. But it will require "heavy lifting" in the short term to push the proposal through the appropriations process, he said. The congressman said he plans to include statutory language in the energy and water appropriations bill that would help secure funds annually for the accelerated cleanup efforts. That would avert having to start all over again if there's a change in administrations, he said. Among projects slated for quicker action are the decommissioning of uranium-enrichment facilities at the East Tennessee Technology Park, formerly known as K-25, and the cleanup and closure of federal operations there. The plant is being converted to private uses. Other priorities include getting rid of old wastes stored at the Oak Ridge nuclear facilities and eliminating a range of pollution problems in Melton Valley at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. DOE also plans to remove spent nuclear fuel currently stored at ORNL, a legacy of operations at the High Flux Isotope Reactor. The Bush administration early this year began touting a quicker cleanup approach for all DOE sites, saying it could eliminate risks and save funds now spent annually on maintenance. "It looks like a real opportunity to move more dirt quicker," said Justin Wilson, who is policy deputy to Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist and helped negotiate the Oak Ridge agreement. "And it will move where the risks are the greatest. That's what cleanup is all about." So far, Oak Ridge and Hanford, Wash., are the only two DOE sites that have negotiated agreements for the accelerated cleanup. Hanford is expected to get more than $400 million from the national fund, which initially was set at $800 million but now is expected to grow to $1.1 billion for fiscal 2003. Other sites are due to complete their plans soon. Roberson said DOE, EPA and Tennessee officials will meet several times over the next month to solidify budget plans for Oak Ridge cleanup through 2008. Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's environmental manager in Oak Ridge, currently heads the cleanup effort, but the company's contract is due to expire next year, and the federal agency has not decided whether to extend the pact. Wamp said he hoped the Oak Ridge contractor would get an extension because contract rebids are a distraction and disrupt important work. Roberson said Bechtel Jacobs helped develop the accelerated plan, and she said the company, with its performance in the coming months, has a chance to affect DOE's contract decision. Frank Munger may be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 44 National nuclear operator explores taking over FFTF This story was published Thu, May 16, 2002 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer One of the nation's largest nuclear operators is looking at the possibility of operating Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility. A representative of Entergy Nuclear visiting the Tri-Cities this week said much more information is needed and no decision has been made about the future of the mothballed research reactor. "But we do see the viability of FFTF," said Jeff Mahan, who does business development work for Entergy. Benton County Commissioner Claude Oliver said he expected to make an announcement about corporate interest in FFTF this week, but Oliver and Mahan declined to say if it involved Entergy. Entergy, based in New Orleans, operates and owns nine nuclear power plants in the South and Northeast and is expected to soon begin operating a 10th, Vermont Yankee. Supporters of FFTF have been looking for private companies interested in using the reactor to produce isotopes for medicine and other industrial uses, because the Republican and Democratic administrations said the government has no use for it. Both have ordered it permanently shut down. A coalition of local governments led by Oliver, the Benton County Commission chairman, and Citizens for Medical Isotopes have been looking for private companies interested in the reactor. The two groups hope that if they put together a plan for commercial use of the reactor, the federal government essentially will declare it surplus and allow it to be used privately. However, time is running out. Backers have said they need to have the plan pulled together in June, because work to close down the reactor permanently already has begun. "Many of the support systems have been shut down, but not the crucial ones," said Wanda Munn of Citizens for Medical Isotopes. Once sodium is drained from the reactor's cooling system, the reactor probably never can be started again. Its supporters also are continuing to push government officials to reconsider restarting the reactor. Carolyn Oakley, regional representative for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will tour the reactor today. On Wednesday, she learned more about advances in the use of isotopes to treat cancer and other diseases. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this spring approved using radioactive isotopes to treat breast cancer. After a tumor is removed, radioactive isotopes are inserted into the breast to kill any remaining cancer cells. The procedure is less costly and does not cause the burns that conventional radiation treatment does. The process also takes five days instead of six weeks. Such new medical uses increase demand for isotopes, which could be made at FFTF. Already, some isotopes are in short supply. They include both isotopes used for medical research into new cancer treatments and such isotopes as thallium 201, which is widely used to diagnose cardiac problems. Most isotopes are imported into the United States, and shortages have grown worse since Sept. 11. Oakley, who is Secretary Tommy Thompson's representative for the Northwest, said she would be sending a positive message about FFTF back to Washington, D.C. "I know there is a real need, and I was disappointed the administration said it is time to wind down the program," she said. She called medical isotopes "the wave of the future." Supporters also are getting more support from organized labor. Boeing aerospace machinists are lobbying the Washington congressional delegation this week to restart FFTF. Of particular concern is language in the Senate Energy Bill that would delay a restart. Union officials are asking that language be removed when House and Senate versions of the bill are reconciled. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 45 Mockup set for waste tank practice This story was published Thu, May 16, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer When you look at an underground Hanford radioactive waste tank, you can't see much. Just a few pipes barely sticking out of some concrete pads. It's disappointingly tiny and boring for what is really a Godzilla-size cauldron of the nastiest radioactive witch's brew in the United States. Now, just east of Hanford's HAMMER training facility, a mockup of a Hanford waste tank sits above ground. Open at the top, 75 feet in diameter, with a 27-foot-tall cylindrical steel wall. Metal decks hover 35 and 55 feet from the ground, and it's capable of holding 800,000 gallons of sand or water or goop. Talk softly inside it, and echoes bounce around. "Standing inside here, you can see the magnitude of the job faced at the tank farms," said Jim Thompson, single-shell tanks retrieval project manager for the Department of Energy's Office of River Protection. This month, Hanford finished building its Cold Test Facility, consisting of the mockup tank and basins to hold make-believe wastes. Los Alamos Technical Associates and Thompson Mechanical Contractors designed and built the facility for $2.4 million. DOE and CH2M Hill Hanford Group hope to start using it by midsummer to test and fine-tune ways to clean solid and sludgy radioactive wastes out of Hanford's tanks. Hanford's biggest problem is 53 million gallons of highly radioactive wastes in 149 single-shell underground tanks and 28 double-shell underground tanks. DOE and CH2M Hill, which manages the tank farms, want to move all the wastes from the older, leak-prone single-shell tanks to the newer and safer double-shell tanks to await eventual glassification. In simplified terms, tank wastes are divided into liquids and solids. The Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact governing Hanford's cleanup, gives DOE and CH2M Hill until 2004 to remove all the pumpable liquids from the single-shell tanks. Hanford appears likely to make that deadline. Meanwhile, engineers and scientists are trying to figure out how to remove the remaining solid wastes -- salt cakes, peanut butterlike sludges and rocklike chunks -- from the tanks. The Tri-Party Agreement gives Hanford until 2018 to accomplish that task. Removing solids is much more complicated than pumping liquids from the tanks, said Joe Cruz, a retrieval engineer with the Office of River Protection. At that's where the Cold Test Facility's mock tank comes in. Engineers will fill the tank with sand, clay and other stuff to simulate tank wastes. Then they will experiment on ways to remove it. For example, the Cold Test Facility's first project is to mimic the single-shell Tank S-112 in the 200 West Area. There, liquid wastes still wait to be pumped out. But after that pumping, Hanford expects at least a half-million gallons of radioactive salt cake to remain inside the tank. Engineers will experiment with sprinkler nozzles in the mock tank to dissolve simulated salt cake. The diluted wastes would be pumped out. At a real tank, the sprinklers, monitors, sensors and pumping equipment have to be inserted into the tank, then operated through narrow pipes. Consequently, the mockup gives engineers a chance to study and fix potential problems in an easily accessible facility. Hanford officials expect to take four to six months to perfect techniques for Tank S-112. Removal techniques will vary from tank to tank. Hanford also is looking at two other removal technologies for solid wastes in the single-shell tanks. One is using a crawling robot to push wastes toward a mast with a vacuum to suck the debris out. The other consists of machines that use air to push or pull wastes out of the tanks. The mock tank can be partitioned so two or more techniques can be tested simultaneously. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 46 Business leaders, Bechtel reach agreement This story was published Thu, May 16, 2002 By Wendy Culverwell Herald staff writer Business leaders concerned about the way Hanford contractors work with local companies reached a handshake agreement this week with officials of Bechtel National Inc. The two sides agreed to work out ways to promote the area's economic future as Bechtel develops the Hanford Waste Treatment and Neutralization Plant. The Tri-Cities Local Business Association was formed in March by business owners who say that while the Hanford contractors turn to local companies for supplies and services, their efforts do little to build the economic base for the future. Sid Morrison, a former congressman and state transportation director, is leading the group, which has taken the position that locally owned companies should get more of the work that helps them to build their intellectual and equipment base. As Hanford's role in supporting the economy diminishes, its legacy will be strong businesses with the talent and resources to soldier on. Morrison said the meeting with Bechtel was productive and led to an agreement that the work at Hanford should promote a sustainable economic base. Suzanne Heaston of Bechtel National said the gathering was a good opportunity to talk, and the participants agreed to meet again to iron out details. Bechtel and its fellow contractors have maintained they work hard to meet their goals, which include contracting with local and small businesses. Morrison said the group identified the exacting construction standards associated with the plant as a stumbling point for companies that don't have the certified workers or processes to do the work. But, he said, that could offer Tri-City entrepreneurs an opportunity to specialize. "Somebody has to build those parts somewhere," he said. The business association includes a number of former Hanford executives who left to work in the private sector, as well as representatives from private companies such as Lampson International, the Kennewick crane company. The group is lobbying Congress to review contracting procedures and has called on DOE to publish its plans to purchase goods and services in an annual report, which would give local companies more time to gear up to bid for the work. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 47 Milestone reached in Fernald cleanup Thursday, May 16, 2002 Last of usable uranium shipped By Steve Kemme, skemme@enquirer.com [skemme@enquirer.com] The Cincinnati Enquirer CROSBY TOWNSHIP — To the cheers of about 200 onlookers, the last truckload of usable uranium pulled out of Fernald Wednesday, marking the end of a major stage in the cleanup of the former uranium-processing plant. [[photo]] A placard on the last truckload of uranium product leaving Fernald Wednesday warns of its contents. (Glenn Hartong photo) As Bob Seger's “Roll On” was played over loudspeakers at a special ceremony, Robert Sizemore climbed into his truck, which bore a “radioactive” emblem, and drove away. He took 1,000 pounds of uranium in steel drums that were enclosed in metal boxes to the U.S. Department of Energy's Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio. Over the past three years, Fluor Fernald, which was hired by the DOE to clean up the site, has shipped 9.1 million pounds of uranium to Portsmouth, where it will remain in interim storage. “We no longer have any uranium product material on site,” said Dr. Don Paine, project director of nuclear materials disposition. From 1952 to 1989, the Fernald plant contributed to the nation's defense program by producing 500 million pounds of uranium metal products that were used at other federal sites for the production of nuclear weapons. When the plant shut down in 1989, there was 31 million pounds of usable uranium on the 1,050-acre site in Crosby Township. Fernald shipped 16.7 million pounds to other DOE sites and to private companies that purchased it, 5.2 million pounds to waste disposition sites and 9.1 million pounds to the Portsmouth plant. The first of 760 truckloads was sent to Portsmouth on June 2, 1999. No accidents or injuries occurred on the Fernald site or en route to Portsmouth, said Steve McCracken, DOE site manager. “This is a tremendous step forward in completing our cleanup mission,” he said. Almost all of those attending Wednesday's ceremony were Fernald and DOE employees. Most Crosby Township residents who were invited could not attend because of work, Fernald spokesman Jeff Wagner said. Lisa Crawford, president of Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH), which has been monitoring the cleanup, said she's pleased that the last of the usable uranium is off the site. “It's another milestone that's been met,” said Ms. Crawford, who was unable to attend Wednesday's ceremony. “There have been very few problems or issues with it. Let's just keep moving in the right direction.” The entire cleanup of the site is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2006. Remaining cleanup work includes processing the waste in silos, demolishing buildings, excavating contaminated soil and extracting and treating contaminated ground water. ***************************************************************** 48 High-risk sites under 'attack' The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 05/16/02 Cleanup funding gets $105M boost by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff The term "high-risk" hangs like a dark cloud over an area of waste burial grounds and a facility that played an important role in the Manhattan Project, both of which are located on the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Reservation. However, DOE is hoping a freshly inked deal with its regulators will serve as a proverbial "ray of light." Following a set of negotiations that lasted just about two months, Jessie Roberson, environmental chief for DOE headquarters, announced Wednesday that the federal agency was setting aside $105 million from a fairly new funding account to expedite cleanup efforts in Oak Ridge. This will increase the local Environmental Management budget to about $520 million in fiscal year 2003. "That's a lot," said Susan Gawarecki, executive director of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, upon first hearing about the new funding level. Her group closely monitors DOE's local environmental activities. President Bush's original FY 2003 budget request for Oak Ridge was $413 million. Previous appropriated funding levels for Oak Ridge were $448 million in FY 2001 and $480 million in FY 2002. "This really gets us on track," U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, said of the proposed FY 2003 funding. "It's a whole lot better than we were last year. We cannot tolerate any more reductions. We need to move forward with optimism and cooperation." To obtain the additional funding, DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office had to devise a plan for accelerating its cleanup work. That plan places an emphasis on two "high-risk" sites -- the Oak Ridge K-25 site, which was built in the 1940s to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons, and the Melton Valley waste burial grounds at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Current Oak Ridge cleanup efforts were labeled "mediocre" in a comprehensive review that DOE headquarters did of its Environmental Management program. For one thing, Oak Ridge has focused on the "easy work," not on higher-risk activities, according to the review, which essentially spawned what's been dubbed the "accelerated cleanup program." DOE headquarters launched the $800 million, fast-paced cleanup project in February in hopes of overhauling its Environmental Management program. In March, DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office submitted its proposal to participate in the program. In order to do so, DOE had to reach an agreement with its regulators -- the state and the Environmental Protection Agency. Shortly before Oak Ridge applied to participate in the accelerated cleanup program, around $433 million of that account was awarded to cleanup efforts in Hanford, Wash. Although that sounds like a lot, officials are quick to point out that Hanford received significantly less funding than Oak Ridge in President Bush's budget request. Congress as part of the FY 2003 appropriations process will now consider both the Oak Ridge and Hanford funding agreements. Wamp said he will work to "lock in language" for the Oak Ridge agreement to ensure that funding will be available annually. Justin Wilson, Gov. Don Sundquist's policy adviser, said the new agreement establishes a bias for cleanup action and continuous improvement. Under the new timetable, high-risk cleanup activities will be completed by 2008 and the entire program is expected to be finished by 2016, several years ahead of previous schedules. The new plan is also expected to significantly cut costs, with the total cost of cleanup efforts at the Oak Ridge K-25 site expected to drop from $2.4 billion to around $1.5 billion. "This agreement ensures that Oak Ridge's most pressing cleanup needs will be met," said U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., in a statement to the press. "DOE's new approach --addressing the highest priorities first while putting a plan in place to deal with other contaminated areas --makes good sense. Oak Ridge will get more money and better results from this deal." Numerous facilities and land areas were left contaminated at K-25 due to the plant's uranium enrichment work. The accelerated cleanup proposal calls for the quick disposal of legacy waste at K-25, the demolition of several buildings and the development of a plan for reindustrialization. The Melton Valley burial grounds contain areas with high inventories of radioactive wastes that DOE says pose a risk to human health and the environment. Melton Valley was used by ORNL for disposal of solid and liquid radioactive wastes and for the development of research reactors. DOE expects its Melton Valley plan would result in improvements to water quality in the Clinch River, the restoration of 7 acres of wetlands and the removal of 204 casks of transuranic waste, which is considered some of the most dangerous wastes in Oak Ridge. Under the accelerated work plan, the Melton Valley completion date would shift from 2014 to 2006, with the total cleanup cost dropping from $350 million to $240 million. The balance of the accelerated cleanup proposal includes the following projects: + Installation of water treatment systems to mitigate off-site mercury releases from the Y-12 National Security Complex. + Excavation of uranium-contaminated soil from the burn-yard area at Y-12. + Treatment and disposal of mixed low-level waste and transuranic waste. Transuranic waste generally consists of protective clothing, equipment, sludge and soils that have been contaminated with manmade radioactive elements heavier than uranium. + Remediation of the Bear Creek Valley burial grounds. + Operation and expansion of the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility to provide the necessary waste disposal capacity to support accelerated cleanup. + Construction and operation of a privatized transuranic waste processing facility. Under the accelerated cleanup proposal, DOE will develop a set of specific goals for physical progress by June 14. "Accelerated cleanup agreements will accomplish results in a manner that is safe, protective of human health and the environment, and in compliance with state and federal environmental laws," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement to the press. "The Oak Ridge pact is a framework for all Department sites to follow in moving toward an accelerated cleanup plan because it provides the necessary level of detail and criteria to reach a commitment to faster, safer cleanup." Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 49 Two decision documents signed for OR activities The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 05/16/02 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff The Department of Energy and its regulators have signed two "records of decision," thus committing to long-term cleanup activities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex. Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist's office made the announcement Wednesday afternoon that the state, DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency had signed the documents. The Bethel Valley decision document calls for cleanup activities to protect people and the environment from exposures to hazardous materials in and around ORNL, according to Sundquist's news release. Bethel Valley contains a number of remediation sites ranging from contaminated soil and groundwater to inactive facilities. The Y-12 cleanup efforts will improve the surface water quality of Upper East Fork Poplar Creek. Contaminants of concern in the Upper East Fork Poplar Creek watershed include mercury, nitrate and carbon tetrachloride. Sundquist's announcement Wednesday on the records of decision quickly followed the news that DOE headquarters was allotting an extra $105 million to expedite the cleanup of some high-risk Oak Ridge sites. That increases the proposed fiscal year 2003 Oak Ridge cleanup budget to $520 million. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . ***************************************************************** 50 Group looks to preserve historic K-25 artifacts The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 05/16/02 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Susan Gawarecki and Norman Mulvenon say they will don "fitted dust masks" for a jaunt through the historic, U-shaped K-25 building next week to identify artifacts worth preserving. The building, which is marked for demolition, is located at the Oak Ridge K-25 site -- now referred to as the East Tennessee Technology Park. It was the first process building at the K-25 plant and began operating as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The K-25 site's original mission was to produce enriched uranium for use in atomic weapons. The plant produced enriched uranium for the commercial nuclear power industry from 1945 to 1985 and was permanently shut down in 1987. As regards health concerns, Gawarecki, executive director of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, said mold will be far more of a threat than any contaminated materials as they explore portions of the three-level, 4.5-million-square-foot building. The ventilation system has been cut off for a couple of years. Mulvenon, who is on the LOC's Citizens' Advisory Panel and the Oak Ridge Site-Specific Advisory Board, said the three-day walk-through is a result of some meetings focusing on "historic preservation" that took place last month in Oak Ridge. Participants in those meetings included Joe Garrison, the state's historic preservation officer; Skip Gosling, chief historian for the Department of Energy; Mick Wiest with the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association; and representatives from DOE's local contractors. A "memorandum of understanding" is apparently being hammered out regarding the preservation of a portion of the K-25 building, probably the Roosevelt Cell. This piece of operating equipment was fixed up for a planned visit by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that never occurred. Garrison declined to talk about the trip into K-25 or the effort to preserve a portion of the building. He said it was his office's policy not to discuss ongoing projects. However, Wiest said the National Historic Preservation Act calls for an inventory of the landmark K-25 building. About a dozen people will make the trek into K-25 on May 21-23. During the K-25 visit, Wiest said some of the items he'll be keeping an eye out for are time clocks, hand-made signs and a particular set of worker rules that he previously saw inside the building. "We want to save enough of that to give the next generation a look at life in the 1940s," said Wiest. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or [pparson@oakridger.com] . ***************************************************************** 51 Zach Wamp: Let's not interrupt progress The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 05/16/02 U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, checks over some notes in the Appropriations Hearing room as he waits for Chairman Bill Young (R-Fla.) to call a hearing to order. An emergency supplemental spending bill passed the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday. It took the Committee about 16 hours to review the entire bill. The legislation included $30 million to enhance security needs at the Y-12 National Security Complex. by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Given that Oak Ridge's Environmental Management program is moving into new territory, it's logical to wonder how this will impact Bechtel Jacobs Co., which oversees those efforts. Unfortunately, there's no straight-out answer to that question. Jessie Roberson, the Department of Energy's assistant secretary for Environmental Management, declined to specify what the future holds for Bechtel Jacobs' contract during a telephone press conference Wednesday afternoon. DOE typically makes a decision on whether to extend a contract or to search for another company to do the work about 18 months before a deal ends. That's roughly the amount of time Bechtel Jacobs has left on its contract. However, during the press conference, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, suggested that putting the contract out for bid would be a bad thing. Now that DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office has a plan for accelerating local cleanup efforts, Wamp said it's important not to interrupt progress and to "keep the momentum" going. Typically, the process for seeking a new contractor can take up to a year. 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. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************