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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 EC to invest ?1.23bn on nuclear research *
2 UK: Nuclear costs explode
3 US: NRC Doesn't Seem to Have What It Takes
4 UK: Terror check at Britain's nuclear sites
5 US: Activists Say Anti-Nuke Support Up
6 EU calls on United States to rejoin consortium working on nuclear fu
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
7 US: NRC to Conduct Supplemental Inspection At Cooper Nuclear Station
8 US: NRC Conducts Special Inspection of Circuit Breaker Damage At D. 
9 US: Testimony on inadequacy of 10 mile evacuation zone
10 US: Federal inspectors will begin review of Cooper Nuclear Station n
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
11 Iodine tablets sent to Irish homes 
12 US: NRC Proposes $3,000 Fine for Avera McKennan Hospital
13 US: At the Core of Nuclear Fear 
14 US: Project On Government Oversight Testimony Nuclear Power Plants' 
15 US: Schumer Proposes Tracking Radioactive Materials
16 US: Radiological attack: 'Manhattan would be uninhabitable for years
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
17 US: Plutonium: South Carolina Govenor Declares State Of Emergency
18 US: YUCCA: Corrupt federal agencies*
19 US: S.C. troopers ordered to halt Flats plutonium shipments
20 US: S.C. Plutonium Ban Could Be Dangerous
21 US: Yucca: The madness of King George
22 US: Congressional candidate reaffirms commitment to fight Yucca 
23 Sellafield's Japanese nuclear cargo could be blocked 
24 US: Pike commissioners join opposition to nuclear waste storage -
25 US: Nuclear waste route needs a good inspection -
26 US: Yucca Editorial: Another reason why this is a no-brainer
27 US: Mayors weigh nuke resolution to ban nuke waste transport
28 US: Pro-Yucca group blasts campaign tactics
29 US: Nebraska: Lack of jury could be basis for appeal in waste trial
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
30 Vajpayee: Pakistan's promises helped avert nuclear conflict *
31 Britain plans to built small nuclear bombs
32 Government 'plans new nuclear arms'
33 Russia and America Formally Scrap Start II, ABM Treaties
34 Harvard's Seven Steps to Eliminate Terrorist Nuclear Threat
35 Vajpayee: Pakistan's promises helped avert nuclear conflict 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
36 Hanford workers to vote Wednesday on contract
37 In pursuit of Hanford trivia
38 Hanford-to-Richland worker shuffle flawed
39 Group continues effort to turn Hanford A-bomb reactor into museum
40 DOE's cancer isotope project moving forward 
41 Oak Ridge lab gets 20th 'user facility' designation 
42 DOE Initiative Will Convert Weapons Program Legacy Material into 
43 DOE Says District Court Decision Means Plutonium Shipments Can 
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 EC to invest ?1.23bn on nuclear research *

online.ie home 

 /online.ie 

17 Jun 2002/

The European Commission said it is to invest ?1.23bn in European 
nuclear energy research.

The commission said nuclear research will play a key role in 
ensuring diversified energy sources are available in Europe.

"Safe and clean nuclear energy is a priority for sustainable 
development: it can greatly contribute to meeting Kyoto Treaty 
requirements," said European Commissioner for Research Phillipe 
Busquin.





Ireland Online

*****************************************************************
 2 UK: Nuclear costs explode

    Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | 

Monday June 17, 2002
 [http://www.guardian.co.uk]  		
 		
Both Paul Brown (Sellafield: a nuclear black hole, June 14) and 
George Monbiot (Dangerous waters, June 11) demonstrate the 
institutional inertia that has led to nuclear explosive materials 
being unnecessarily shipped from Japan to Sellafield to protect 
BNFL's economic interests. 

At an open meeting of the Labour environment campaign group, 
Sera, in April, Robin Cook, who opposed the use of plutonium Mox 
fuel in the 1980s, said that Labour would not have supported Mox 
production at Sellafield if it had not inherited a £470m Mox 
plant, built under the Tories. 

Indeed, a warning was issued in September 1976 about the dangers 
of using plutonium as a fuel, by the independent royal commission 
on environmental pollution. Its report, Nuclear Power and the 
Environment, said: "We are sufficiently persuaded by the dangers 
of a 'plutonium economy' that we regard this as a central issue 
in the debate over the future of nuclear power. We believe that 
we should not rely for something as basic as energy on a process 
that produces such hazardous substances as plutonium unless we 
are convinced that there is no reasonably certain economic 
alternative." 

Not even BNFL argue there is no alternative to Mox. The cost of 
plutonium fuels will increase as security provisions are forced 
by political pressure to become more rigorous against terrorist 
breach; and the cost of managing nuclear wastes is also bound to 
escalate. 

For instance, on June 10, energy minister Brian Wilson revealed 
in a parliamentary reply to Llew Smith MP that BNFL "has spent in 
the region of £100m" in cleaning up a high-activity radioactive 
leak from building B241 at Sellafield. And it does not enhance 
confidence when Sellafield workers have been found with drugs in 
their systems while working at the nuclear site, as the 
Whitehaven News revealed, yet none has been removed. Dr David 
Lowry

Stoneleigh, Surrey

 [dlowryrmb@compuserve.com]  

· Sellafield is indeed a hole into which taxpayers' money is 
being poured. And it's getting deeper. The nuclear waste mess is 
worsening, as demonstrated by the fact that Sellafield is 
leaking, among other things, Technetium-99 into groundwater 
boreholes. This is potentially lethal for around 2 million years. 

And how do BNFL and British Energy plan to deal with the 
radioactive waste legacy that they've created? Pretend it's 
nothing to do with them and get the taxpayer to pick up the tab, 
freeing these bankrupt companies to tout for more business to 
expand UK Nuclear Dustbin plc and build 10 more nuclear power 
stations. 

We hope the trade and industry secretary throws out the nuclear 
industry's proposals to build more power stations that will add 
another 20,000 tonnes or so to the radioactive waste problem. 

Rick Le Coyte Greenpeace rick.lecoyte@uk.greenpeace.org 

· George Monbiot says that the reason the British nuclear power 
programme exists has been "lost in the mist of time". The nuclear 
lobby must be pleased he has forgotten that a prime motivation 
for the UK civil nuclear programme was the need to produce 
plutonium for UK and US nuclear weapons. This necessitated 
setting up the dirty and dangerous reprocessing structure in the 
first place. As Monbiot observes, the decision to allow the Mox 
plant to operate was, in turn, taken "to make sense of the 
reprocessing operations at Sellafield". Recalling this is also 
important to understanding how the nuclear lobby achieved such 
power over government.

Prof Keith Barnham London [k.barnham@ic.ac.uk]  

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
 3 NRC Doesn't Seem to Have What It Takes
 
Monday, Jun. 17, 2002. Page 10 

 By Matt Bivens 

WASHINGTON -- Ever since President George W. Bush announced that 
al-Qaida has been scheming to attack our nuclear power plants, 
the industry has proclaimed itself ready -- with full-page ads in 
newspapers and magazines talking up its investment in hiring and 
maintaining crack security forces.
 
Nuclear power's private security teams are "highly committed ... 
highly trained ... well-compensated professionals," one such ad 
asserts, under a photograph of a bald, no-nonsense character in a 
gray uniform and black gloves, who cradles an M-16 with a 
high-power scope. "Their training is intense, exacting and 
continuous. They are expert marksmen, annually certified in an 
array of weaponry. In short, they're professionals! Nuclear power 
plant security -- we've got what it takes."
 
But buyer beware. That PR was challenged at a recent Senate
hearing by the testimony of Danielle Brian, executive director
of the Project on Government Oversight. POGO works with
whistleblowers, and since Sept. 11 has been contacted by
frustrated security guards from commercial nuclear plants across
America. Consider how the guards' concerns clash with the
industry's ads: 

THE ADVERTISEMENTS show guards on duty with automatic weapons. 

THE REALITY, as per Brian's testimony: "Many guard forces around
the country are equipped only with shotguns and revolvers. ...
[Those with better equipment] tell us that contrary to the
full-page ads in The Washington Post and other newspapers, they
do not normally wear flack jackets or their communications gear,
nor do they carry their semi-automatic weapons. Sometimes, the
guards are more than a football field's distance away from their
weapons and flack jackets. ... At one-third of nuclear power
plants, the guards only have access to shotguns, and they are
locked up at a central location. In case of a [terrorist]
attack, the guards would have to go to that location, unlock the
cabinet, get their shotguns and protective gear, and return to
their post."
 
THE ADVERTISEMENTS speak of "expert marksmen, annually certified
in an array of weaponry."
 
THE REALITY as per POGO: "Guards from several of the power
plants have registered complaints with POGO about inadequate
training. ... For example, one facility hired a new class of
guards after Sept. 11. The vast majority of the new recruits had
never fired a gun before. During their training, they were
limited to firing 96 rounds with their handgun, and far fewer
with their shotguns. ... Firearms training requires only that
they be capable of standing and hitting a stationary target 25
yards away -- they have no training shooting on the run at a
moving target."
 
THE ADVERTISEMENTS: "well-compensated."
 
THE REALITY as per POGO: "Currently, security guards who are
risking their lives are among the lowest compensated employees
at many plants. [POGO recommends] pay scales and ... benefits
... commensurate with those accorded to local police and fire
departments."
 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to be looking over
the industry's shoulder. So one would have expected NRC chairman
Richard Meserve to have something to say about all of this. Yet
Meserve hardly struck the pose of an indignant reformer as he
urged senators to think instead about the cost to society of
security everywhere, including at chemical plants, oil
refineries and dams. Senators stared back, bug-eyed. 

Think about it: Your agency's fiefdom is singled out in the
president's state of the union address as targeted by formidable
terrorists; you're at a congressional hearing where others are
testifying that you are probably not ready for this challenge;
and your off-hand reply is roughly: "Yeah, but what about the
dams?" 

Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a
Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute

[www.thenation.com [http://www.thenation.com] ].
 
*****************************************************************
 4 UK: Terror check at Britain's nuclear sites
Scotsman.com <http://scotsman.com/>

 Back Issue:  *Sunday, 16th June 2002* 

Full security checks at 22 of the 31 nuclear power stations and 
waste reprocessing stations have been canceled due to a 
recruitment crisis.

/STEPHEN FRASER/

SECURITY inspections of Britain?s nuclear facilities to ensure 
they are safe from terrorist attack have been abandoned because 
of a chronic staff shortage.

The government?s own director of civil nuclear security has 
admitted that a recruitment crisis in his office has forced him 
to cancel full security checks at 22 of the 31 nuclear power 
stations and waste reprocessing stations it regulates.

The admission, which casts doubt on government claims of 
increased security in the wake of September 11, has shocked 
experts and MPs.

The revelation comes in the first annual report of the Office of 
Civil Nuclear Security, the government agency responsible for 
protecting Britain?s civil nuclear sites, including five in 
Scotland.

The office?s director, Michael Buckland-Smith, admits that he has 
been forced to cancel ?compliance inspections? at 22 facilities 
after the attack on the Twin Towers.

Instead, his staff had switched to giving ad hoc security advice 
and would not have enough staff to resume inspections until next 
month at the earliest.

Buckland-Smith, who has five inspectors among his staff, admitted 
his agency was suffering a recruitment crisis and had lost staff 
with police or security service experience to private sector 
companies who could pay more.

He said: "I have lost two experienced inspectors over the past 18 
months and faced considerable difficulty and delay recruiting 
replacements. Unfortunately, four of my most experienced staff 
are either retiring or leaving in the next 12 months, compounding 
the difficulties we anticipate finding suitably qualified 
replacements and filling new posts."

Earlier in the report Buckland-Smith admits: "It is impossible 
without a thorough and comprehensive programme of site 
inspections undertaken by experts, to identify security 
weaknesses or monitor compliance with standards and regulations."

Buckland-Smith also said his agency had discovered "deficiencies" 
in the security arrangements adopted by a number of facilities, 
though he did not give full details.

He did, however, reveal one incident at an unnamed power station 
two years ago when a security guard, who was later sacked, had 
attempted to sneak an unauthorised person into the plant.

Buckland-Smith refused to answer questions on his report but a 
Department of Trade and Industry spokesman admitted: "Compliance 
inspections involve a lot of paperwork, so we have concentrated 
on offering security advice though we will resume inspections as 
soon as possible. We are confident the regulator?s staff issues 
can be resolved through the introduction of pay incentives."

Dr John Large, an independent nuclear safety consultant who 
advised the Russian Federation on the salvage of the Kursk 
nuclear submarine, said the failure to carry out compliance 
inspections meant security at facilities could not be fully 
tested.

He said: "You cannot test the response of nuclear plants to a 
terrorist threat by having cosy chats over a coffee with the 
plant?s security people. Dropping compliance inspection is like 
handing a driving licence to somebody without putting them 
through a test."

He said compliance inspections involve a group of inspectors 
running exercises to test the reaction of site staff to different 
scenarios. The scenarios might involve a simulated attack by 
terrorists or mock acts of sabotage by insiders.

"Compliance inspections are the best way of winkling out 
weaknesses in a plant?s defences and systems," added Large, a 
former research scientist for the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for Linlithgow , said he was 
"extremely concerned" .

"The quid pro quo for having nuclear facilities is that no 
corners are cut in the regulation of the security regime covering 
plants and these staff shortages must mean corners have been 
cut."

The OCNS regulates security at Scotland?s four nuclear power 
stations, Torness, Hunterston A and B, and Chapelcross . It is 
also responsible for checking security at the UK Atomic Energy 
Authority?s plant at Dounreay .

It is not clear whether any of the five facilities are included 
in those that have had compliance inspections . The safety of 
nuclear facilities is regulated by a separate agency, the Nuclear 
Installations Inspectorate.

Richard Dixon, the head of research for the Friends of the Earth 
Scotland, said the report was "damning" . "If I were a terrorist, 
looking at this report and scouting out what is happening with 
the nuclear industry across the world, I would be heading to 
Britain because our nuclear facilities look like a soft touch."

British Energy, the private company which operates Torness and 
Hunterston B power stations, and the state-owned UKAEA, which 
controls Dounreay, both insisted their security arrangements were 
extremely tight in the wake of September 11.

 ©2002 scotsman.com <http://scotsman.com
*****************************************************************
 5 Activists Say Anti-Nuke Support Up

Las Vegas SUN: 

June 16, 2002 

FORT GREELY, Alaska- Stacey Fritz was in her element, standing
with her anti-nuclear weapons banners on a remote highway in the
middle of Alaska's Interior. Across the road from her small band
of protesters the enemy - the future site of new nuclear missile
silos. 

Backed by a national defense fervor born of the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, the newest phase of President Bush's missile
defense program broke ground here Saturday. But peace activists
say the attacks also stirred another passion: doing away with
missiles and war. 

"Sept. 11 has definitely made people sit up and take notice,"
said Fritz, a University of Alaska Fairbanks student and founder
of No Nukes North. 

The rallying patriotism that spread across the country still
contributes to high approval ratings for the Bush
administration. Despite Fritz's demonstration on Thursday, there
was little opposition as construction started on missile
interceptor silos at the Army base 100 miles southeast of
Fairbanks. 

"In the aftermath (of Sept. 11) I think everybody sort of toned
down their message," said Scott Lynch, communications director
for Peace Action, based in Washington, D.C. 

Peace Action used to be known as SANE/FREEZE, the coalition of
the Committee for Sane Nuclear Policy, created in 1957; and the
Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign of the early 1980s. It boasts a
membership of 85,000, with more than 100 local chapters - about
a third of the peak it claimed in the 1980s, but up from a
decade ago when membership numbered 30,000. 

Immediately after Sept. 11, anti-war, pro-peace messages took a
back seat to expressions of grief. "People were just afraid to
speak out," said Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director of the
Western States Legal Foundation, a nuclear disarmament advocates
group in Oakland, Calif. 

Since then, however, activists have been hearing from the
hinterlands, Lynch said. 

"I was talking with a colleague in Vermont a few weeks ago,"
Lynch said. "She said there were 12 new peace groups in her area
that had just popped up out of nowhere that didn't exist six
months ago. These were just people who got together and felt
like they needed to do something." 

The resurgence in the peace movement makes sense, said Bernard
Beck, an associate professor of sociology at Northwestern
University who studies pop culture and societal relationships to
media. 

"In the immediate days after (Sept. 11), there was lots of
feelings that you'd be undermining the national effort if you
talked about anything but retaliation (for the attacks)," Beck
said. "But the attacks also caused more people to start
thinking." 

One thing that has changed since Sept. 11 is the level of
interest among people who weren't paying attention before. 
The end of the Cold War probably caused many people around the
world to believe that nuclear issues were over with, said Colin
Archer, secretary-general of the International Peace Bureau in
Geneva. 

Then came the terrorist attacks; the conflict between nuclear
weapon-capable rivals India and Pakistan over Kashmir heated up;
and the United States last week withdrew from the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 

Organizations the Peace Bureau deals with have been showered
with calls for information and offers of support, the bureau
said. 

"I never thought I'd be saying 'thanks' to George Bush," Fritz
said. "But I think he's helped me find a career." 

On the Net: 
Peace Action: http://www.peace-action.org/
[http://www.peace-action.org/] 
Western States Legal Foundation: http://www.wslfweb.org/
[http://www.wslfweb.org/] 
Int'l Peace Bureau: http://www.ipb.org/ [http://www.ipb.org/] 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 6 EU calls on United States to rejoin consortium working on nuclear fusion energy 

* AP World Politics*

/Mon Jun 17, 8:08 AM ET/

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union invited the United States 
Monday to rejoin an international consortium working on 
demonstrating the feasibility of nuclear fusion energy.

The EU's just-adopted, four-year, 1.23 billion euro (dlrs 1.16 
billion) budget for nuclear research includes 750 million euro 
(dlrs 709 million) for nuclear fusion research.

Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin said that money should 
help clear the way for construction to begin in the next few 
years on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a 
joint project of the EU, Japan, Russia and Canada.

The United States was involved in the project during the 1990s, 
but dropped out due to congressional concerns about its 
burgeoning cost.

But in a Jan. 3 letter to the chairman of the U.S. House science 
committee, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham indicated his 
willingness to consider renewing U.S. participation, citing the 
importance of the research and progress in developing a 
lower-cost design.

The latest design is expected to cost dlrs 5 billion, down from 
more than dlrs 8 billion.

"I hope the U.S. will join the consortium again and help us 
develop this promising technology," Busquin said.

Negotiators are aiming to pick a preferred location for the 
reactor this summer. France, Spain, Canada and Japan have 
proposed sites.

ITER would be a burning plasma experiment, which is viewed as an 
important next step in the pursuit of fusion energy.

Harnessing nuclear fusion, the power that lights the sun, has 
long been a goal of researchers who view it as the ultimate 
energy source, cleaner and safer than today's commercial nuclear 
reactors.

(pfg-cb)

*More from > AP World Politics

Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 7 NRC to Conduct Supplemental Inspection At Cooper Nuclear Station
 
    NRC: Press Release Region IV - 2002 - 29 - 

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 
www.nrc.gov
   
  No. IV-02-029           June 17, 2002 CONTACT:     Breck 
Henderson Phone: 817-860-8128 Cellular: 817-917-1227     E-mail: 
opa4@nrc.gov [opa4@nrc.gov] 
 
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will conduct a 
three-week, supplemental inspection of the Cooper Nuclear 
Station, a nuclear power plant near Brownville, Nebraska, 
beginning June 24. The plant is operated by Nebraska Public Power 
District. A supplemental inspection is one that is added to the 
NRC's normal, or baseline, inspection program in response to 
declining regulatory performance. The supplemental inspection at 
the Cooper plant will be the most extensive called for under 
NRC's inspection program. The purpose of the inspection is to 
provide information that the NRC will use to determine the full 
extent of regulatory problems at the plant and whether additional 
agency actions are necessary.
 
Declining regulatory performance at Cooper has taken place since 
October 2000, when the NRC identified the first of five 
inspection findings with low to moderate safety significance. 
Four of the findings were associated with failures in Cooper's 
implementation of their emergency preparedness program, while the 
fifth finding involved a compromise of the biennial 
requalification exam for plant operators. Notwithstanding these 
issues, Cooper continues to operate in a manner that adequately 
maintains public health and safety.
 
The inspection will be performed by a 13-member team which will 
spend a week at the plant beginning June 24 and another two weeks 
beginning July 15. Kriss Kennedy, chief of the branch that 
oversees Cooper in NRC Region IV, will lead the inspection team. 
A public meeting, to be announced separately, will be held the 
week of August 19 to discuss results, and the final inspection 
report is expected to be issued at the end of August.
   


*****************************************************************
 8 NRC Conducts Special Inspection of Circuit Breaker Damage At D. 
C. Cook Nuclear Plant
 
NRC: Press Release Region III - 2002 - 36 - 

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region III 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle IL 60532 www.nrc.gov
   
  No. III-02-036           June 14, 2002 CONTACT:     Jan Strasma 
(630) 829-9663 Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662     E-mail: 
opa3@nrc.gov [opa3@nrc.gov]   
  
  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has begun a special 
inspection of the circumstances surrounding a circuit breaker 
fire Wednesday (June 12) at the D. C. Cook Nuclear Power Station 
at Bridgman, Michigan. The two-reactor facility is operated by 
American Electric Power Co. Both units at the plant were in 
operation at the time, Unit 1 was a 68 percent power after 
starting up from a refueling and maintenance outage, and Unit 2 
was at 100 percent power. The units remained in operation.
 
The damage occurred in the 345 kilovolt switch yard at the plant. 
Although the plant lost its preferred connection to offsite 
electrical power, equipment and safety systems continued to be 
powered by the auxiliary transformer for each unit.
 
The company declared an Alert under its emergency plan, and the 
NRC monitored plant activities from the Regional Office in Lisle, 
Illinois, and its Operations Center in Rockville, Maryland. The 
agency's resident inspector was onsite and the senior resident 
inspector from the nearby Palisades plant responded to the site 
as well.
 
The NRC's special inspection will review the causes of the 
damage, the work underway in the switchyard at the time, and the 
utility's repair and recovery plans.
   


*****************************************************************
 9 Testimony on inadequacy of 10 mile evacuation zone

EDWIN S. LYMAN, PHD
 PRESIDENT, NUCLEAR CONTROL INSTITUTE
 TESTIMONY SUBMITTED TO
 THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
 
JUNE 5, 2002 
 
The purpose of this brief testimony is to provide preliminary 
data to support the contention that the current 10-mile radius of 
the emergency planning zone for plume exposure (“plume exposure 
EPZ”) is inadequate, in the event of a beyond-design-basis 
(“severe”) accident or terrorist event at a commercial nuclear 
power plant, and will fail to protect the public in accordance 
with Federal guidelines.  Therefore, the call for an extension of 
the emergency planning zone to 50 miles contained in S.1746, 
“Nuclear Security Act of 2002,” is an appropriate and prudent 
measure that merits serious consideration.  In fact, such a 
change will be necessary to provide the level of protection now 
called for by FDA and EPA in the event of a severe nuclear 
reactor accident. 
 
We have used the MACCS2 code to generate estimates of thyroid 
dose and total effective dose equivalent (TEDE)[1] to members of 
the public downwind of a severe radiological release at a nuclear 
power plant, involving core melt, vessel breach and containment 
failure.[2]  The total radioactive iodine release assumed is 
about 60% of the core inventory, similar to the release from the 
Chernobyl accident.  The calculated doses assume only exposures 
due to passage of the initial plume and due to deposited 
contamination for one week following the accident; thus long-term 
doses are not considered.  Ingestion doses (the milk pathway) are 
also not considered.  The calculations are for a generic 
pressurized-water reactor and a single meteorological condition 
(atmospheric stability class D, wind speed 4.4 miles per hour, 
and no precipitation).  The exposed individuals are assumed to be 
30-year-old adults.  Other assumptions for this model, including 
the source term, can be found in a recent publication.[3]  The 
intent here is not to be comprehensive, but simply to demonstrate 
the severity of these events.   
 
The pertinent results are summarized in the following table: 
 
     
Peak Thyroid Dose (rem): 
    
Peak TEDE (rem):
   
  
Distance (miles)
     
  
15
     
626
     
163
   
  
28
     
292
     
60
   
  
45
     
254
     
38
   
The relevance of these values is as follows: 
 
Thyroid prophylaxis.  According to the FDA’s recent guidance on 
the administration of potassium iodide (KI) as a prophylactic 
measure, it is recommended that adults between the ages of 18 and 
40 take 130 mg of KI daily if their thyroid exposure is projected 
to exceed 10 rem.[4]  From the table, it can be seen that this 
threshold is exceeded by a factor of 25 for the most affected 
individuals at a distance of 45 miles.  Thus according to FDA 
guidance, KI administration would be recommended for some 
individuals located at least 45 miles downwind of the accident. 
 
The situation is even more severe for children and pregnant or 
lactating women.  For these individuals, the FDA recommends KI 
prophylaxis if the projected thyroid dose is greater than 5 rem.  
To convert the thyroid doses in the above table, which were 
estimated for 30-year-old adults, to children, who would receive 
a larger thyroid dose for the same radioactive iodine intake, a 
factor of between two and ten should be applied, depending on the 
age.[5]  Thus the thyroid dose to children could exceed the FDA 
threshold for KI administration at even greater distances than 
for adults. 
 
Evacuation.  According to the EPA “protective action guides” 
(PAGs), evacuation should normally be initiated if the total 
effective dose equivalent (TEDE) exceeds 1 rem.[6]  It is obvious 
from the above table that according to this rule, evacuation 
would be recommended at more than 45 miles downwind from the 
site. 
 
Conclusion.  The 10-mile plume exposure EPZ was never intended to 
provide significant protection against the long-term carcinogenic 
effects of radiation exposure, but was only intended to reduce 
the early fatalities that could occur from acute radiation 
poisoning.  Nevertheless, the ultimate long-term health 
consequences of a severe radiological release would be 
catastrophic, and the government must be obliged to ensure that 
these longer-term effects be avoided to the maximum extent 
possible.  Thus an extension of emergency planning to a region 
extending at least 50 miles downwind of nuclear reactor sites is 
an essential measure to bolster protection of the public in the 
event of a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant.              


[1] TEDE is the sum of the dose due to external radiation and the 
“committed effective dose” delivered for up to a 50-year period 
as a result of internal exposure resulting from radionuclide 
intake.
 
[2]  D.I. Chanin and M.L. Young, Code Manual for MACCS2:  Volume 
1, User’s Guide, SAND97-0594, Sandia National Laboratories, 
1997.   

[3] Edwin S. Lyman, “Public Health Risks of Substituting 
Mixed-Oxide for Uranium Fuel in Light-Water Reactors, Science and 
Global Security 9 (2001) 33-79.
 
[4] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug 
Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, 
“Potassium Iodide as a Thyroid Blocking Agent in Radiation 
Emergencies,” Guidance Document, November 2001.  Available on the 
Web at www.fda.gov/cder/guidance/index.htm.
 
[5] International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), 
Age-Dependent Doses to Members of the Public From Intake of 
Radionuclides, Part 5, ICRP Publication 72, Vol. 26, No 1 (1996).
 
[6] T. McKenna, J. Tefethen, K. Gant, J. Jolicoeur, G. Kuzo and 
G. Athey,  RTM-96: Response Technical Manual, NUREG/BR-0150, Vol. 
1, Rev. 4, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, March 1996, p. 
G-7.

Nuclear Control Institute
*****************************************************************
 10 Federal inspectors will begin review of Cooper Nuclear Station next week

Omaha.com

Published Sunday
June 16, 2002

*BY NANCY GAARDER*

WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

A federal team of inspectors on June 24 will begin an intense 
on-site review of the Cooper Nuclear Station.

Cooper is under the federal government's microscope because of 
problems that it has had, particularly with emergency 
preparedness.

A team of 13 people will spend a total of three weeks at the 
plant this summer, said Breck Henderson, a spokesman for the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees 
nuclear plants.

In August, Henderson said, the NRC will have an "exit meeting" 
with plant officials to discuss their findings.

The NRC has been studying problems at Cooper for some time.

When a small fire broke out at the plant a year ago, plant 
workers didn't notify outside emergency personnel quickly enough. 
Also, in a separate instance, plant workers made mistakes during 
drills that could have caused unnecessary radiation exposure to 
residents around Cooper.

©2002 Omaha World-Herald. All rights reserved. Copyright
*****************************************************************
 11 Iodine tablets sent to Irish homes 

online.ie home

 /online.ie 

17 Jun 2002/

The Government has sent a packet of six iodine tablets to every 
household in Ireland as part of the national emergency plan for 
nuclear accidents.

The tablets, which are for human consumption, should arrive in 
the post in the coming days and weeks.

Ireland's preparations for a possible nuclear fallout were 
criticised in the wake of the September 11 atrocities, prompting 
a review of nuclear accident procedures.






Irish News Online
*****************************************************************
 12 NRC Proposes $3,000 Fine for Avera McKennan Hospital
 
 NRC: Press Release Region IV - 2002 - 30 - 

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 
www.nrc.gov
   
  No. IV-02-030           June 17, 2002 CONTACT:     Breck 
Henderson Phone: 817-860-8128 Cellular: 817-917-1227     E-mail:  
[opa4@nrc.gov]   
  
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has proposed a fine 
of $3,000 against Avera McKennan Hospital, in Sioux Falls, South 
Dakota, for an incident in which a medical technology student was 
given a radioactive pharmaceutical without approval by an 
authorized physician as required by NRC regulations.
 
The student was given technetium-99m, which is used for bone 
scans, despite the fact that the student was not a patient at the 
hospital and a physician had not determined that use of the drug 
was appropriate and necessary. The student was given a quantity 
of technetium-99m that is normally given to patients for 
diagnostic studies, and no adverse effects would be expected. The 
NRC also cited the hospital for its radiation safety officer's 
failure to conduct an adequate investigation following the 
incident.
 
In a letter to the hospital's regional president, Fredrick W. 
Slunecka, NRC Regional Administrator Ellis W. Merschoff 
emphasized the intentional nature of the violation and the 
importance of prompt corrective action for violations of this 
type and significance.
 
The violation has been categorized as a Severity Level III 
violation, which carries a civil penalty of $3,000. The NRC uses 
a four-level scale to rate the seriousness of violations, with 
Severity Level I being the most serious. The violation for 
failing to conduct an adequate investigation has been categorized 
as Severity Level IV, which has no civil penalty.
 
Avera McKennan is required to respond to the letter and Notice of 
Violation with actions the hospital is taking to assure future 
compliance with regulatory and license requirements. The hospital 
has 30 days to pay the fine or protest it. If the protest is 
denied, the company may request a hearing by the NRC.
   


*****************************************************************
 13 At the Core of Nuclear Fear 
			 			 			 			 			 					
  The good news is the small odds that we’ll be irradiated from a 
nuclear plant. The bad news: ‘safety’ and ‘security’ are not 
identical        

NEWSWEEK      

June 24 issue —  

My kids already think I’m Homer Simpson, and the plant manager 
seemed to agree. Before we went in, he worried that I’d wander 
too close to the edge of the platform and drop my pen directly on 
top of the nuclear reactor. Then he’d have to shut the whole 
place down while someone retrieved it. By that time I’d been 
through “radiation training” and “dose assessment,” and taken a 
written test on how to handle myself in “confined spaces.” 
Despite a temperature inside of 105 degrees, I wore the standard 
jumpsuit, rubber gloves, helmet, goggles and, yes, the booties.         

AT LEAST I WASN’T glowing. The electronic “friskers” turned up 
insignificant contamination, and the meter on a chain around my 
neck showed I’d been exposed to only 1.4 millirems of radiation, 
less than a sixth of a basic X-ray. “Move to the wall and cut 
your dosage in half!” Kevin, the health-physics technician, 
yelled above the din of the reactor. Or maybe he just wanted to 
make sure I didn’t drop that pen.    
 
It isn’t easy to get into a nuclear power plant these days, for 
either terrorists or journalists. My visit this month to Indian 
Point, 30 miles north of New York City, was both reassuring and 
disturbing. The good news is how small the odds are that we’ll 
all be irradiated from a nuclear plant, and the scrupulous 
emphasis on safety I found. The bad news is that “safety” and 
“security” are not identical, and the embattled nuclear 
industry—fearful of giving ammo to the critics—won’t admit to at 
least one clear vulnerability to terrorists and take a relatively 
simple step to fix it. Before September 11, nuclear power—clean 
and green—seemed to be making a comeback as an alternative energy 
source. 

Now it’s under attack, especially at places like Indian Point, 
which some genius in the 1960s located amid millions of people. 
While no nuclear bomb can be made from the fuel at a power plant, 
audacious terrorists might target a plant anyway. Rudimentary 
maps of nuclear facilities were found in abandoned caves in 
Afghanistan. Unfortunately for the industry, radiation and 
terrorism make for a potent fear cocktail. They’re both 
invisible—until it’s too late. “The psychological impact is so 
overwhelming that we sometimes get paralyzed about what we can 
do,” says Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of the Children’s Health 
Fund, who argues that the potassium-iodide pills now being 
distributed to residents within 10 miles of American nuclear 
plants (they help prevent thyroid cancer in children) belong in 
everyone’s medicine cabinet.       
      
But those pills are for a specific kind of radioactive iodine 
released from reactors, and reactors themselves may not be the 
big problem. They’re “hardened targets,” protected by 16 feet of 
concrete, a “missile shield” and backup cooling tanks with 
600,000 gallons of water. An engineering debate has erupted over 
what damage a big airliner could do to the containment shell (a 
small plane would crumple on impact). The pro-nuke engineers say 
a 747 would have to hit at the perfect angle just to penetrate, 
and that even if it did, the fireball would ventilate upward and 
not cause the reactor below to melt down. The anti-nuke types say 
that is overly optimistic conjecture, with no tests to back it 
up. Neither side can be trusted not to shade the argument.      
  
At least the containment facility that houses the reactor was 
designed to be protected. Unless you include beefed-up perimeter 
security after 9-11, the same cannot be said of the nearby “spent 
fuel pools”—the 38-foot-deep pools with no hardened dome that 
house the depleted “fuel-rod assemblies” removed from the 
reactor. Indian Point’s three pools are in bedrock. But at many 
other nuclear plants (I won’t tell you which ones), the pools are 
above ground level. As Frank von Hipple of Princeton explained to 
me, if the water is somehow drained, the rods could ignite in a 
horrendous zirconium fire, releasing cesium-137 that would render 
hundreds of square miles uninhabitable for generations—a horror 
no pill could help. The odds are very low, but not low enough.

Closing nuclear plants wouldn’t prevent this disaster, because 
all rods must stay in the pools for at least five years. But 
across the United States, older rods are stacking up, awaiting 
permanent storage in Nevada. The Indian Point pool I visited 
contained twice as many rods as the facility was designed for. 
The industry considers this “re-racking” safe enough, but critics 
are persuasive in explaining how such density increases the fire 
hazard.

Fortunately, there’s a way out—an interim storage solution that 
would increase security. It’s called “dry casking”—encasing the 
older rods in metal and separating them. To relieve overcrowding, 
the industry is already moving toward dry casking. But not fast 
enough. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to insist on 
accelerating the dry-casking process (at relatively low cost) 
means acknowledging there’s a security problem. In a highly 
charged political climate, no supporters of nuclear power want to 
do that. Now even the Homer Simpsons among us must insist upon 
it.
        
Alter’s e-mail is alterj@newsweek.com.
        
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.

*****************************************************************
 14 Project On Government Oversight Testimony Nuclear Power Plants' 
Inadequate Security
 		 		 			 		 		 			 		 	 	 		
Wednesday June 5, 2002
 							
Testimony of Danielle Brian, Executive Director

Project On Government Oversight (POGO) on Inadequate Security at 
Nuclear Power Plants before the Senate Environment and Public 
Works Committee
 						
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, POGO first began 
investigating security at nuclear facilities over sixteen months 
ago. We are an investigative organization that works with 
insiders in order to improve public policy. We have neither a 
pro- nor an anti-nuclear agenda. We began investigating the 
Department of Energy's (DOE) nuclear weapons facilities because 
more than a dozen insiders – current and former DOE and 
contractor security officials, contractors with military 
experience who test and evaluate the security at these 
facilities, and members of various guard forces – came to us with 
grave concerns regarding inadequate security pre-September 11.

Just prior to September 11, we completed our report U.S. Nuclear 
Weapons Complex: Security at Risk, concluding that our nation's 
ten nuclear weapons facilities, which house nearly one thousand 
tons of weapons-grade plutonium and highly-enriched uranium, 
regularly fail to protect this material from mock terrorist 
attacks. Once security became a national priority, we briefed 
these alarming findings with the National Security Council, the 
Office of Homeland Security, the Pentagon Nuclear Command and 
Control staff, the staff of the Scowcroft End-to-End Review, the 
Office of Management and Budget, numerous Congressional 
Committees and Members, and at Rep. Chris Shays' request, the 
General Accounting Office.

Because of this work, guards from commercial nuclear power plants 
across the country began contacting POGO with similar concerns 
about inadequate security at the plants where they work. In 
April, POGO accompanied a group of nuclear power plant security 
guards to brief a dozen Congressional offices and Committee staff 
about their first hand concerns. We then began working with 
current and former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) security 
officials and contractors with military capabilities who test and 
evaluate security at commercial reactors. These people echo the 
same concerns about ongoing inadequate security at commercial 
nuclear power plants.

My testimony is based on the information and documents gathered 
from these insiders. Again, I believe it is important to 
emphasize that our sources of information are not "anti-nuclear." 
In fact, most of them have worked in the nuclear energy field for 
most of their adult lives. We applaud the sponsors of Senate 
Bills 1586 and 1746, the "Nuclear Security Act," for several 
important provisions contained in these bills.
 						
The Design Basis Threat
 						
Nuclear facilities are required to protect against a specified 
level of threat (known as the Design Basis Threat or DBT) from 
outside attackers and inside conspirators using a specific set of 
weapons. NRC's current DBT is wholly inadequate and must be made 
more realistic. According to published sources including U.S. 
News and World Report, the NRC's DBT requires protection against 
only three outside attackers with the help of one passive 
insider. This is absurd given the 19 terrorists involved in the 
highly coordinated, technologically advanced September 11 attack.

Rumors are that DOE will increase its DBT to approximately ten 
outside attackers and significantly upgrade the weaponry and 
tools that adversaries can be expected to use in an attack. 
However, although some in NRC have also recommended an increase 
to its DBT, there seems to be resistance within the senior ranks 
of the NRC to committing to making these improvements. There 
appears to be no justification for the NRC to have a less robust 
DBT for nuclear power plants than DOE has for nuclear weapons 
facilities. A successful attack on either a nuclear power plant 
or weapons facility would cause unfathomable damage to 
surrounding populations. We believe that the provisions in the 
"Nuclear Security Act" for a new and significantly upgraded DBT 
are absolutely essential.

In addition to the inadequate number of attackers to be protected 
against, the current DBT does not require protection against some 
of the most dangerous weapons that are available on the open 
market today, such as 50 caliber API sniper rounds that can 
penetrate hardened guard posts and vehicles, nor do they use 
simulated chemical or biological agents that would require the 
guard force to be trained with gas masks. Furthermore, 
performance tests do not employ diversionary tactics that are 
likely to be used during an attack, such as remote controlled 
explosives. POGO agrees with the Nuclear Security Act's 
provisions that the new DBT include enhanced requirements for 
more realistic weapons, explosives, tools, and tactics, as well 
as more outside attackers and active inside collaborators.

Poor Performance
 						
Though the DBT is severely inadequate compared to what we now 
recognize as the threat, half the nuclear power plants cannot 
even protect against this current standard of three outside 
attackers. David Orrik, the head of the Operational Safeguards 
Response Evaluation (OSRE) program, testified before the House 
Commerce Committee on April 11, that in 46 percent of the 
force-on-force security tests:
 					 					 						
"the expert NRC team identified a significant weakness – 
significant being defined as the adversary team simulating 
sabotaging a target set, which would lead to core damage and in 
many cases, to a probable radioactive release. It is important to 
note that, even with adequate time for the plants to prepare and 
make themselves ready for the OSRE, that 46% still had a weakness 
in armed response."
 							
Let me caution the Committee – these tests are seriously dumbed 
down to favor the guard forces. The utilities are informed of an 
upcoming test six to ten months in advance giving them plenty of 
time to prepare, the guards are usually aware of the attack 
scenarios, the mock terrorists are allowed to be made up of the 
utilities' own management staff, and the weapons used in the 
tests are not nearly as dangerous as those that can easily be 
found on the open market.

Despite their clear artificiality and imperfections that favor 
the guard forces, force-on-force performance tests are still the 
best test of the performance of a guard force in protecting key 
targets at a nuclear facility. This is the key issue that cannot 
be forgotten – can the guard force protect the integrity of the 
reactor and the spent fuel pools from a suicidal terrorist 
attack? The statistics say no. How much worse would those 
statistics be if the DBT accurately represented the very real and 
sophisticated threat we know we are now facing?

The mindset of both the utilities and the NRC is far too 
compliance-oriented – rather than performance tested. Our 
security guards are regularly told that security upgrades are 
unnecessary because the utility is already in "compliance" with 
NRC regulations. In other words, if a checklist of requirements 
for detection, delay, and response is met – to include such items 
as a double-fence, alarms, a certain number of guards – the 
facility is deemed secure. However, performance tests repeatedly 
reveal that despite this "compliance" with requirements, physical 
security and the guard forces cannot stop terrorists from causing 
catastrophic damage to the reactor. This institutionalized 
bureaucratic complacency may be the biggest impediment to 
adequate security.

A post-September 11 example of this phenomenon is that armed 
guards are now required to accompany all visiting trucks coming 
onto the site. We are told, there is often no extra guard 
available, and therefore, a guard is required to leave his post 
uncovered to accompany the truck. In these cases, the facility 
may be in compliance with this new requirement, yet guards are 
concerned that there is a hole in their defensive posture.

Spent Fuel Pools are Security"s Poor Stepchild
 							
The NRC has never tested a power plant guard force"s ability to 
protect spent fuel pools – possibly the prime target of a 
terrorist attack. In October of 2000 the NRC started to recognize 
the problem of spent fuel fires in a study of the effects of 
accidents. However, in 100 pages of analysis, they never 
considered sabotage by terrorists. The NRC needs to create a 
target/assets list prioritized by importance.

Several spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants across the 
country are only 50 yards from the double fence line. In a 
terrorist attack, the initial strike would likely be 
extraordinarily violent, fast, and with a significant level of 
human carnage. According to Sandia National Lab's "Barrier 
Technology Handbook," it is estimated that a terrorist could 
penetrate the fence line and breach a door or side of a secured 
building in less than 60 seconds. We encourage the NRC to 
immediately recognize spent fuel pools as a primary terrorist 
target.

We have been advised by military Special Forces sources of 
specific and obvious vulnerabilities at most nuclear power plants 
that I would be happy to discuss with Senators or staff. I am 
uncomfortable, however, outlining them in public testimony.

To explain in general terms, a certain type of explosive, which a 
terrorist could carry on his back, would allow him to blow a 
sizeable hole in the reinforced concrete bottom or wall of the 
spent fuel pool. At nuclear plants that have boiling water 
reactors (BWR) – about one-third of the existing?reactors are 
BWRs – things could be even worse. These reactors have the spent 
fuel pools above ground. In these cases, a certain kind of 
explosive could even be launched from outside the fence lineinto 
the side of the pool. According to an unclassified study by 
Brookhaven National Lab, under certain conditions, the pool would 
start draining immediately, which could result in the immediate 
release of high-levels of radiation, quickly turning into an 
uncontrolled radioactive fire, and the plant could do nothing 
effective about it.

The Nuclear Security Act does require a plan to increase security 
of these spent fuel pools. In the meantime, we would encourage 
the addition of barriers and delay mechanisms to supplement 
security until the spent fuel is placed in dry casks underground.
 							
Inadequate Training and Weaponry
 							
Guards from several of the power plants have registered 
complaints with POGO about inadequate training as well. For 
example, one facility hired a new class of guards after September 
11. The vast majority of the new recruits had never fired a gun 
before. During their training, they were limited to firing 96 
rounds with their handgun, and far fewer with their shotguns. Two 
guards quit after two months on the job believing they couldn't 
protect the plant in the case of a terrorist attack. They told 
POGO, and other guards have admitted to NRC inspectors, that 
their training is so inadequate, in the face of a real terrorist 
attack, many guards would use their guns simply to protect 
themselves while they escaped from the plant. Other guards with 
decades of experience protecting nuclear power plants bemoaned 
the lack of training outside the classroom, as well as the lack 
of modern tactical training. For example, their firearms training 
requires only that they be capable of standing and hitting a 
stationary target 25 yards away – they have no training shooting 
on the run at a moving target.

Additionally, the guard forces at nuclear power plants are 
severely out-gunned. Even the NRC's DBT assumes that attackers 
will be armed with automatic weapons and explosives, yet many 
guard forces around the country are equipped only with shotguns 
and revolvers. We understand that the NRC is working with the 
Committee on legislative language to address this discrepancy.
 							
Security Tests: More Often and More Robust
 							
NRC's virtually defunct Operational Safeguards Response 
Evaluation (OSRE) program conducts force-on-force tests using 
mock attackers only once every eight years at each plant. 
According to the nuclear power plant security guards and NRC 
inspectors we have interviewed, this eight-year hiatus creates a 
woeful lack of focus on security between tests. According to the 
guards with whom we have been working, because the tests are 
announced so far in advance, the utility management has time to 
quickly invest in security training consultants to improve their 
posture and chances of success. The guards advise us that after 
OSRE force-on-force tests, th security posture regularly returns 
to a bare minimum.

POGO agrees with the Nuclear Security Act's provision to require 
that such tests occur no less than every two years to ensure that 
heightened standards remain in effect. POGO additionally 
recommends that the utility only be given 24- to 36-hour notice 
and that the utility be required to freeze in place the guard 
force to be tested at the moment of notification, rather than 
being allowed to call in the youngest or most capable guards.

Currently, the mock terrorists and the attack scenarios to be 
tested are chosen by the utilities. The mock terrorists can be 
county or state police, the utility's own training staff, or even 
their own utility management staff – the very people who have a 
stake in ensuring success. With all due respect to these people, 
and as genuine as they may be in trying to test the physical 
security of the facility, none of them are trained to have the 
mindset or skills of highly trained terrorists. POGO recommends 
the use of military Special Forces units that are already trained 
to act as the adversarial team in force-on-force tests.

According to the guards, they know within an hour or two when a 
test will take place and what part of the plant the mock 
terrorists will attack. They tell us that contrary to the 
full-page ads in the Washington Post and other newspapers, they 
do not normally wear flack jackets or their communications gear, 
nor do they carry their semi-automatic weapons. Sometimes, the 
guards are more than a football field's distance away from their 
weapons and flack jackets. However, when the mock attack is about 
to take place, the guards are magically wearing their flack 
jackets and communications gear and have their weapons in hand. 
Even more troubling is the fact that, at one-third of nuclear 
power plants, the guards only have access to shotguns, and they 
are locked up at a central location. In case of a real attack, 
the guards would have to go to that location, unlock the cabinet, 
get their shotguns and protective gear, and return to their post. 
By that time, the terrorists would have achieved their goals and 
caused catastrophic damage. Ongoing, limited-scope performance 
tests should regularly be testing the timelines for terrorist 
access to critical components.

If the facility fails a performance test, the Nuclear Security 
Act requires re-testing every six months until it passes. We 
would recommend, immediately calling in a well-armed and trained 
National Guard unit as compensatory action to supplement security 
until the facility passes a new OSRE test.

We have learned from anti-terrorism experts that the worst enemy 
of any guard force is the daily grind of nothing happening. 
Guards are only human. A simple way to combat this problem is to 
add unannounced checks by the NRC to security testing. Fast food 
chains and the Postal Service frequently use a "mystery shopper" 
to use a false ID or exploit some other weakness. Because the 
guards know a "mystery shopper" may be in their midst at any 
time, they remain more alert. This would be a very low cost tool 
that would significantly supplement security.
 							
Federalization
 							
We recognize that federalizing the security force is a 
contentious issue. POGO believes that the same goals can be 
accomplished through far more vigorous federal oversight, along 
with upgraded training, compensation, and authority granted to 
security forces.

Currently, security guards who are risking their lives are among 
the lowest compensated employees at many plants. Pay scales and 
first responder benefits for security forces, including life and 
disability insurance, should be commensurate with those accorded 
to local police and fire departments. We cannot expect our 
security guards to give their all when we do not fairly provide 
for them in the event that they are injured while performing this 
dangerous and important job. Also, people working at nuclear 
power plants, including NRC and utility employees as well as 
contractor and subcontractor employees, should be given 
whistleblower protections. In the current climate of fear and 
whistleblower retaliation, it has been our experience that people 
have been deterred from coming forward with important information 
that could help fix security problems. The Paul Revere Act, 
introduced in the House, and soon to be introduced in the Senate, 
would strengthen whistleblower rights and extend them to federal 
contractor employees.

We applaud the introduction of Senate Bill 1586 that recognizes 
that security forces do not have enough authority to carry out 
their mission. Currently, guards are prohibited from using deadly 
force unless an intruder wields a gun, or they feel their life or 
the life of someone else is in danger, in accordance with state 
law. In other words, if an attacker jumps over the fence with a 
backpack and runs towards the reactor building or spent fuel 
pool, the guard can only attempt to chase down the attacker. We 
have been told of an instance when an NRC inspector observed a 
guard follow a mock terrorist during a force-on-force drill as he 
destroyed critical target sets in the reactor complex. When asked 
why he wasn't doing anything to stop him, the guard explained 
that he didn't have the authority to shoot an intruder who was 
only destroying property. The NRC has been trying to resolve this 
conflict for years. This legislation must remedy this obvious 
failure.

Local law enforcement and first responders should also be given 
clearance to receive safeguard information so they can better 
coordinate emergency response plans. Currently, local law 
enforcement and first responders, in many cases, do not have 
adequate familiarity with the layout of critical areas of the 
plant that is necessary to respond to an emergency.

If there is any expanded role for the federal government, it 
should be providing independent oversight, rather than management 
of security. Robust and credible federal oversight is absolutely 
key to adequate security at both the nuclear power plants and 
nuclear weapons facilities. POGO has already recommended taking 
the security oversight function out of DOE, and we strongly 
recommend the same for NRC. NRC has historically been altogether 
too compliant with industry's wishes. For example, recently 
agreeing to industry's demands to replace OSRE with industry 
self-assessments of security was totally irresponsible. History 
has shown that the critical job of security oversight cannot be 
adequately performed from within these agencies. Therefore we 
suggest that a small independent Office of Nuclear Security be 
created, perhaps housed in the Office of Homeland Security, or 
perhaps as an independent agency reporting to the Congress and 
President. Its purpose would be to provide oversight over and 
test the security of both government and commercial nuclear 
facilities.

We would be happy to assist you and your staff as you work to 
refine these pieces of legislation, as well as making some of our 
inside sources available to you so that you can learn from their 
first-hand experiences.
 							
 							
Site Map I Web Overseer [pam@pogo.org] 

© The Project On Government Oversight 2002
*****************************************************************
 15 Schumer Proposes Tracking Radioactive Materials

www.ny1.com

JUNE 17TH, 2002

Hoping to prevent terrorists from building a so-called dirty 
nuclear bomb, Senator Charles Schumer is introducing a bill to 
require the federal government to track all radioactive material.

Schumer wants a national inventory to trace the movement of 
radioactive material is it is stored, transported, used and 
disposed. His bill would also increase security around nuclear 
facilities that produce and receive low-grade radioactive 
materials, such as plutonium and uranium used in hospitals, 
laboratories and power plants.

?We have to tighten up,? Schumer said at a news conference in 
Manhattan Sunday, ?and we particularly have to tighten up the use 
of these radiological materials, which are now, as I said, 
available just about anywhere.?

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission generally leaves tracking of 
low-grade radioactive material, which has nearly two million 
sources in the United States, to private industry. The commission 
receives an average of 300 reports of small amounts of missing 
radioactive materials per year, about half of which are 
eventually recovered.

The proposed tracking system and security would cost about $1 
billion to implement, Schumer said, adding that the measures 
would prevent attacks like the one Brooklyn-born terror suspect 
Jose Padilla is accused of planning with Al Qaeda.

A ?dirty bomb? is a conventional explosive used to spread 
radioactive material, not an actual nuclear reaction. The 
radioactive material, likely low-grade, would not significantly 
raise the death toll of an explosion, but its use could cause 
greater panic. The radiation would likely slow any emergency 
response to the blast area and could also render the area 
uninhabitable for a period.

Copyright © 2002 NY1 News. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 16 Radiological attack: 'Manhattan would be uninhabitable for years'

Independent.co.uk <http://www.independent.co.uk>

© 2002 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

By Geoffrey Lean

16 June 2002

*Internal links*

A dirty bomb from Pakistan? Or a dirty trick from Washington? 
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=305801>

Radiological attack: 'Manhattan would be uninhabitable for years' 
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=305800>

If a "dirty bomb" were to be set off in New York, every building 
in Manhattan and for miles around might have to be demolished, 
concludes one of the United States' most distinguished scientific 
bodies.

The Federation of American Scientists, which cites 52 Nobel 
prizewinners among its sponsors, says a bomb made using just one 
piece of radioactive cobalt could make the city uninhabitable for 
decades, and seriously contaminate one thousand square kilometres 
of the states of New Jersey, Connecticut and New York.

Three months ago ? long before last week's debacle was even a 
glimmer in Attorney General John Ashcroft's eye ? the 
federation's president, Dr Henry Kelly, warned the Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations that the "threat of a malicious 
radiological attack in the US" was "credible".

He presented the results of a study ? carried out by the 
federation and Princeton University ? into what might happen if a 
bomb containing just a single "pencil" of intensely radioactive 
cobalt-60 was exploded at the southern tip of Manhattan on a calm 
day with a slight south-westerly breeze. Plants used to disinfect 
food by irradiation often contain hundreds of these "pencils", 
each just a foot long and an inch in diameter.

The danger, as the report makes clear, is not that the bomb would 
immediately kill people, although deaths would probably result 
from the force of the explosion. The real threat would come from 
long-term radioactive contamination, causing hundreds of 
thousands of fatalities from cancer over decades.

The investigation concluded that Wall Street, Greenwich Village, 
Times Square, and the swathe of New York stretching up to Central 
Park that contains most of its skyscrapers would become as 
contaminated as the no-go area permanently established around 
Chernobyl. One in 10 people who continued to live in a 300-block 
area downwind from the bomb would develop cancer. And a huge area 
stretching 70 miles downwind would be so badly affected that, 
under US government rules, it would have to be evacuated and the 
buildings decontaminated or destroyed. In practice, the study 
says, "demolition may be the only practical solution".

Could it happen? There would probably, as the federation points 
out, be little difficulty in finding radioactive material. 
Food-irradiation facilities are poorly guarded ? and the world is 
awash with similar, or even more dangerous, radioactive sources 
used in industry, medicine and university laboratories. Some two 
million sites in the US alone are licensed to use radioactive 
materials, and the government admits that 1,500 sources have gone 
missing over the past five years. And last year President Bush 
cut the budget for protecting nuclear waste ? and weapons ? by 93 
per cent.

It would be much harder, says the nuclear consultant John Large, 
to explode the bomb so that radiation was widely dispersed. The 
radioactive material would have to be heavily shielded if any 
terrorist trying to make or use the bomb were not to die within 
minutes; an X-ray machine typically contains a radioactive source 
the size of a cod liver oil pill inside shielding as big as a 
coffee jar.

A successful bomb would have to be designed with great 
sophistication, first to break open the "coffee jar", then to 
gradually heat the radioactive source so that it vaporised, and 
finally to scatter it to the winds.
*****************************************************************
 17 Plutonium: South Carolina Govenor Declares State Of Emergency
 
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 05:21:21 -0500 (CDT)

 
Larry Morningstar mana8@earthlink.net

South Carolina Executive Order 2002-14

Friday evening (June 14, 2002, hour unspecified) the Governor of the U.S.
state South Carolina declared the state of emergency, and ordered State
troopers to prevent plutonium transports to enter the state borders.

This piece of news has been suppressed and NOT REPORTED by any U.S. media on
Friday when it happened.

Only Canadian television CBC has reported it shortly after 21 hs (California
time), and only once, after that the news disappeared from their newscast (and
website).

Today, June 15, only CNN from all of U.S. media or press reports it at 7:08
A.M. No other American news outlet reports this event which, at least
potentially, may even escalate into civil war.

Federal authorities (i.e. the United States government, Washington, the
President), ignoring South Carolina's plea NOT TO SEND PLUTUNIUM TO SOUTH
CAROLINA FOR STORAGE (Endlagerung), sent off trucks loaded with plutonium
which will reach the South Carolina border this weekend.

CNN, as opposed to Canadian CBC, uses (an emergency), instead of (state
emergency), and (police), instead of (state troopers), in an obvious attempt
to play down the event and "not to cause panick".

<http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/06/15/sc.plutonium/index.html>

S. Carolina orders police to stop plutonium

Gov. Jim Hodges

June 15, 2002

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) -- South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges declared an
emergency Friday and ordered police to block federal plutonium shipments from
entering the state.

The federal Energy Department is scheduled to ship the plutonium from the
Rocky Flats weapons plant in Colorado -- which is being closed -- to South
Carolina's Savannah River nuclear weapons complex, where it would be used as
fuel for a nuclear power plant.

Trucks carrying shipments of the deadly radioactive material could begin
arriving at the state line as soon as this weekend.

"As governor, when I believe danger exists to our state, I am empowered to
declare an emergency and to take measures to maintain peace and safety in
South Carolina," Hodges said.

"For these reasons, I have today issued an executive order that an emergency
exists in South Carolina. I order that the transportation of plutonium on
South Carolina roads and highways be prohibited."

MORE STORIES Judge denies S.C. bid to halt plutonium shipment

Hodges refused to say how he would block the shipments.

A federal judge has refused the state's request to block the plutonium
shipments. Hodges has appealed the ruling and asked for a delay until an
appeals court can hear the case.

South Carolina Executive Order 2002-14
<http://www.state.sc.us/governor/2002-14.html>

Executive Order 2002-14 (June 14, 2002)

WHEREAS, according to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, a "known terrorist"
with connections to al Qaeda who allegedly planned to build and explode a
radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States has been recently captured by
federal authorities and is presently being detained as an enemy combatant in
Charleston, South Carolina;

WHEREAS, a "dirty bomb" is a conventional incendiary device laced with
radioactive materials that upon detonation scatters and disperses radioactive
particles into the atmosphere, thereby exposing potentially thousands of
persons to radiation;

WHEREAS, weapons-grade plutonium is a primary ingredient utilized in creating
dirty bombs;

WHEREAS, the United States Department of Energy has publicly announced that it
will begin sending truck shipments of weapons-grade plutonium to the Savannah
River Site located in Aiken and Barnwell Counties, South Carolina as soon as
June 15, 2002;

WHEREAS, when, in the Governor's opinion, a danger exists to the person or
property of any citizen and the peace and tranquility of the State or of any
political subdivision or particular area of the State designated by him is
threatened, the Governor shall declare an emergency and may take such measures
and do all and every act and thing which he may deem necessary in order to
prevent violence or threats of violence to the person or property of citizens
of the State and to maintain peace, tranquility and good order, pursuant to _
1-3-410, et seq., of the South Carolina Code of Laws;

WHEREAS, the Governor may further cope with such threats and danger by
directing and ordering any person or group of persons to do any act which
would, in his opinion, prevent or minimize danger to life, limb or property,
or prevent a breach of the peace; and he may order any person or group of
persons to refrain from doing any act or thing which would, in his opinion,
endanger life, limb or property, or cause, or tend to cause, a breach of the
peace, or endanger the peace and good order of the State or any section or
community thereof, and he shall have full power by use of all appropriate
available means to enforce such order or proclamation, pursuant to _ 1-3-430;

WHEREAS, for the purposes already stated, the Governor may also order any and
all law enforcement officers of the State or any of its subdivisions to do
whatever may be deemed necessary to maintain peace and good order; order the
discontinuance of any transportation or other public facilities, or, in the
alternative, direct that such facilities be operated by a State agency; or
authorize, order or direct any State, county or city official to enforce the
provisions of such proclamation in the courts of the State by injunction,
mandamus, or other appropriate legal action, pursuant to _ 1-3-440; and

WHEREAS, a legitimate threat of theft, diversion, or use of plutonium by
terrorists exists that requires serious protective measures to prevent the
terrorist use of plutonium in South Carolina and to protect the citizens of
South Carolina from the threat and effect of dirty bombs or other related
terrorist devices;

NOW, THEREFORE, I hereby declare that an emergency exists and order that the
transportation of plutonium on South Carolina roads and highways is
prohibited; that any persons transporting plutonium shall not enter the State
of South Carolina; and that any persons nevertheless attempting or intending
to transport plutonium along the public thoroughfares of the State of South
Carolina shall give notice of such intention and to cease and desist from such
action until further direction is given.

I further order and direct the South Carolina Department of Public Safety to
increase and enhance its security, patrol, inspection, and surveillance
measures along South Carolina's highways, particularly in the areas along our
state's borders and surrounding the Savannah River Site, and to enforce the
provisions of this Executive Order.

copyright ) Office of the Governor, State of South Carolina 2001, all rights
reserved
*****************************************************************
 18 YUCCA: Corrupt federal agencies*

By: June 14, 2002

*06-14-02*

Sovereignty is to a state admitted to the Union of the United 
States akin to the inalienable rights of the people, which are 
mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

The torch of sovereignty was lit when Nevada was admitted to the 
Union. It still burns today even though the light from its flame 
is dimmed by the smoke and mirrors of the unjust and corrupt 
federal agencies that illegally occupy 89% of the land in Nevada. 
In order for the light from the torch of sovereignty to be bright 
again, Nevada residents need to wake up to the facts.

The State of Nevada owns Yucca Mountain and all of the other 
unsold and non-appropriated lands in our state. The federal 
government has no jurisdiction over these open lands or the 
people who derive their livelihood from the use of these lands. 
The federal district court, which sentenced Cliff Gardner to 
suffer for his crime of ranching in Nevada, had no jurisdiction 
to confine Cliff. The sentencing of Cliff Gardner was a crime in 
itself perpetrated by a federal district judge. The same unjust 
and corrupt government that seized Ben Colvin's cattle in 
Esmeralda County is equally guilty of outright cattle rustling.

Citizens take heed and learn the facts. We must make the flame of 
state sovereignty bright forever by lighting a fire under our 
local legislators and get them to exercise voter requests in the 
bills drafted in the next session. We need to give NRS. Chapter 
321 the teeth to control the monster federal government in our 
great State of Nevada.

OQ Chris Johnson, Elko, Nevada

/©Pahrump Valley Times 2002/
*****************************************************************
 19 S.C. troopers ordered to halt Flats plutonium shipments

Rocky Mountain News: Nation

By Jacob Jordan, Associated Press
June 15, 2002

 COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Gov. Jim Hodges ordered state troopers and
other authorities to South Carolina's borders Friday to stop
federal shipments of plutonium that could begin arriving from
Rocky Flats as early as this weekend. 

"I order that the transportation of plutonium on South Carolina
roads and highways is prohibited," Hodges said. "I order that
any persons transporting plutonium shall not enter the state of
South Carolina." 

Hodges, who has vehemently opposed the shipments, read a
statement declaring a state of emergency but refused to answer
any questions about specific plans for roadblocks or other
barricades at South Carolina's Savannah River Site, a nuclear
weapons complex near Aiken. 

On Thursday, a federal judge refused to block the shipments of
weapons-grade plutonium. Hodges appealed the ruling and asked
for a delay until the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could
hear the case. 

The Energy Department plans to move the material from Rocky
Flats, which is being cleaned up and closed, to the Savannah
River Site, where the material would be converted into nuclear
reactor fuel over the next two decades. Rocky Flats is northwest
of Denver. 

But Hodges has said he fears the government will end up leaving
the plutonium permanently in South Carolina, making the state a
tempting target for terrorists. 

"The Department of Energy has broken promises, offered no
assurances and left few options. Once plutonium arrives, it will
never leave," Hodges said. "They want South Carolina to quietly
become the nation's plutonium dumping ground." 

The shipments legally could begin as early as this weekend, but
U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond Jr. said Energy Department
officials told him they would not start until after June 22. 
A message left for an Energy Department spokesman was not
immediately returned Friday afternoon. 

Vice President Dick Cheney, in South Carolina on Friday for a
fund-raiser, said the fuel-conversion program is important to
ensure that plutonium "never falls into the wrong hands." 

"This administration is totally committed to helping pass
legislation to guarantee that South Carolina does not become a
permanent storage site for plutonium," Cheney said. 

Hodges, a Democrat who is up for re-election in the fall, has
threatened for weeks to use troopers to block roads into the
Savannah River Site and has vowed to lie in the road if
necessary to stop the trucks. 

About 6 1/2 tons of plutonium are to be shipped from Colorado. 
Federal officials have said the nuclear material would be under
constant guard, and its path and time of arrival would be kept
secret. They also say security at the Savannah River site is
sound. 
  
2002 © The E.W. Scripps Co.
*****************************************************************
 20 S.C. Plutonium Ban Could Be Dangerous
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
June 16, 2002 

COLUMBIA, S.C.- A federal judge ordered Gov. Jim Hodges to allow 
federal plutonium shipments to his state, saying a physical 
blockade would be illegal and presents a possible terrorist 
target. 

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie issued the order Friday, a day 
after Hodges declared a state of emergency and dispatched state 
police to inspect vehicles for plutonium. 

Currie on Thursday threw out Hodges' lawsuit to stop the 
shipments. Her order Friday reinforced her decision. 

The shipments could begin Saturday at the earliest. The Energy 
Department wants to move 6 1/2 tons of plutonium to the Savannah 
River Site near Aiken as it closes down the Rocky Flats facility 
in Colorado. The weapons-grade material would be converted into 
fuel for nuclear reactors, the agency said. 

"The harm that a blockade of plutonium shipments might present is 
obvious," Currie wrote in her order obtained by The (Columbia) 
State newspaper and reported Sunday. "An arguably peaceful 
blockade, therefore, presents a target of opportunity for those 
with less peaceful intentions." 

Hodges has appealed Currie's ruling to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court 
of Appeals in Richmond, Va. 

Hodges' spokesman Morton Brilliant said Saturday the governor's 
actions are legal under state law and Hodges is trying to protect 
the state. 

"We're saying it's dangerous to turn South Carolina into a 
plutonium dumping ground," Brilliant said. 

Public Safety Department spokesman Sid Gaulden said troopers 
won't resume inspections until next Saturday "unless things 
change." 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 21 Yucca: The madness of King George
 
  Jon Ralston [online@rgj.com]   

SPECIAL TO THE RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
6/16/2002 09:41 pm 
	
If anyone doubts that Nevada is still thought of as a colony, a 
pseudo-state by those in the nation’s capital, a couple of recent 
incidents should dispel that optimism.

King George set the tone earlier this year when he patronized the 
state’s two senators and its governor, granting them an audience, 
nodding like a beneficent sovereign and then declaring shortly 
after they left: “Let them eat nuclear waste.”

Once again, the White House has shown how “special” it considers 
Nevada while a national pundit also revealed how the rest of the 
country, ironically and erroneously in this case, think the 
gaming industry is responsible for every political maneuver here:


+  Aren’t we special? In that misplaced White House political 
strategy disk that was found on a street corner last week by a 
Democratic Senate aide -- -an only in D.C. story if ever there 
was one -- Nevada merits special mention. That is, the state is 
mysteriously labeled as one with “special concerns.” Those 
concerns are not elaborated upon in the document, but the 
allusion is obvious.

The Bushies are so concerned, so deeply worried about Nevada 
because of King George’s flip-flop on Yucca Mountain, which he 
knows has damaged him here. (Count how many visits the president 
has made here.)

Nevada, which the memo points out was one of a handful of states 
Bush won by less than 5 percent in 2000, obviously is high on the 
radar screen now as the White House prepares for the 2004 
campaign. You can be sure that the condescension King George 
provided the three Nevadans earlier this year in his office is 
nothing compared to the lip service to come.


+  Yes, it must be those evil gamers: For the second time this 
year, conservative commentator Robert Novak insisted that the 
casinos are responsible for that ad campaign on Yucca Mountain. 
Both ludicrous accusations came on “Crossfire,” where Novak duels 
with a Democratic foil, and this weekend it was Paul Begala.

Novak first raised the gaming specter when Sen. John Ensign was 
on the show a few weeks ago and the junior senator rightly 
chastised Novak for his ignorance. But this weekend, Novak used 
the line again in response to Begala’s using the earthquake near 
Yucca Mountain to criticize the president’s decision. “The 
gambling industry made up this whole silly campaign against 
Yucca,” Novak retorted.

For the record, the gamers, who may act as if Nevada is their 
personal suzerainty on many issues, have very little to do with 
this campaign; -the scare tactics were urged by Ensign and Sen. 
Harry Reid, and it may be ineffective, but hardly silly.

But it is that same haughty attitude that will result a few weeks 
from now in that Senate vote to officially consecrate Yucca 
Mountain as the repository. And while senators will have no 
worries about facts, just as Novak doesn’t, that explains why 
Nevada is of “special concern” to King George in 2004.

Jon Ralston, who publishes The Ralston Report, works for 
Greenspun Media Group. He welcomes comments and questions. Write 
him at ralston@vegas.com. Or call (702) 870-7997.
 		   		   				
 		   		   			 
© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett 
*****************************************************************
 22 Congressional candidate reaffirms commitment to fight Yucca 
project 

Monday, June 17, 2002
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
Reid, Porter trade shots over donations from pro-nuclear
interests
 
By STEVE TETREAULT 
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU 

WASHINGTON -- An offhand comment by Republican House candidate 
Jon Porter last week provoked a slash from Sen. Harry Reid, 
D-Nev. 

Appearing on a Las Vegas cable TV show last Wednesday, Porter was 
asked about persistent charges by Democratic opponent Dario 
Herrera that he is soft on opposition to Yucca Mountain because 
he has taken campaign funds from House Republican leaders who 
support the repository. 

Porter said Herrera should "ask the same of Senator Reid," who 
has accepted donations from interests with pro-nuke ties over the 
years. 

After learning of the remark, Reid fired with both guns, saying 
Porter "has gone to desperate lengths to hide the fact he is in 
the pocket of Yucca Mountain prostitutes" like House Speaker 
Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas. 

Porter campaign manager Mike Slanker maintained Porter's comment 
was made "tongue in cheek" and that questioning Porter's 
commitment to the anti-Yucca cause "is a stupid argument." 

"It's no big deal, but it is an election year," Slanker said. 

A Reid spokeswoman said the senator chose to respond after 
several Nevadans called to alert him to Porter's televised 
comment. 

Slanker said he suspected Herrera had a hand in siccing Reid on 
Porter. 

"Absolutely not," Herrera said. 

B52s join anti-Yucca cause 

More celebrities joined the anti-Yucca Mountain campaign on 
Capitol Hill last week. 

On their way home to New York after performing in Miami the night 
before, two members of the B52s rock group stopped in Washington 
for six hours on Thursday to speak against the proposed nuclear 
waste repository. 

Bass player Sara Lee and lead singer Kate Pierson told Sen. 
Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY., they're concerned about spent 
nuclear fuel shipments to the proposed Nevada repository and that 
nuclear waste will remain at plants in New York even after the 
Yucca repository is filled to capacity. 

Since their 1980s new wave band is most associated with its 
birthplace in Athens, Ga., Pierson and Lee tried to score 
appointments with Georgia senators Zell Miller and Max Cleland, 
but settled for meetings with staff. 

"The basic concern is the transportation of this waste through so 
many communities," Lee said. "I really feel like the vast 
majority of people in America aren't aware of the details. We're 
underinformed." 

Pierson said group members plan to speak against the project in 
cities they're visiting on a summer festival tour that begins 
June 21. The B52s will perform July 19 at Mandalay Bay. 



Herrera signs tax pledge 

Democratic congressional candidate Dario Herrera was one of a 
handful of Democrats this week that pledged to not approve any 
new taxes, a typically Republican campaign gesture. 

Herrera, a Clark County commissioner, joined with only five 
Democratic House incumbents in signing the Taxpayer Protection 
Pledge put out by a Washington, D.C., based group, Americans for 
Tax Reform. 

Herrera's likely opponent in November's general election, state 
Sen. Jon Porter, R-Henderson, signed the pledge a day before 
Herrera, but Herrera insisted that his pledge was not a reaction 
to Porter's move. 

Porter campaign manager Mike Slanker said Herrera signed the 
pledge because his campaign wants him to appear more 
conservative. Republicans outnumber Democrats among active voters 
in the district, and Slanker predicted Herrera will adopt 
conservative positions on issues as the campaign progresses. 

"I bet if he was still in his old County Commission district he 
wouldn't have signed it," Slanker said. "We are about to witness 
the reinvention of Dario Herrera." 

However, Herrera said he has consistently opposed new taxes 
during his one term in the Assembly and his one term on the 
commission. 

Other Democrats, he said, should realize that "by responsibly 
prioritizing the federal budget we can protect Social Security, 
we can lower the sky-high costs of prescription drugs and we can 
fight for affordable health care without raising taxes." 

Review-Journal staff writer Frank Geary contributed to this 
report.
 
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
 23 Sellafield's Japanese nuclear cargo could be blocked 

Sunday Herald
 
 By Rob Edwards [rob.edwards@sundayherald.com] , Environment
Editor 
 
 A bitterly contested government scheme to ship enough plutonium 
for 50 nuclear warheads around the globe is facing an 11-hour 
legal hitch, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

As a result, the plan by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) to bring 
255kg of plutonium back from Japan to the Sellafield nuclear 
complex in Cumbria over the next couple of months could be 
delayed, or even cancelled. This would be deeply embarrassing -- 
and expensive -- for the state-owned company.

The Environment Agency, the government's green watchdog in 
England, launched an urgent investigation late last week into 
whether BNFL's planned shipment was illegal. The agency is trying 
to find out whether the plutonium should be defined as 
radioactive waste.

If it is, it will have to be authorised by the agency under 
Europe's Transfrontier Shipment of Radioactive Waste Regulations 
1993. The problem is that BNFL has not even applied to the agency 
to make the shipment.

Yet the two armed BNFL boats that are due to bring the plutonium 
back from Japan arrived there on Friday. They are scheduled to 
load eight plutonium fuel assemblies from the Takahama nuclear 
plant in the next few weeks.

The plutonium was originally sent from Sellafield in mixed oxide 
fuel known as MOX to be burnt in a reactor at Takahama three 
years ago. But it was rejected by the Japanese power company, 
Kansai Electric, following a scandal over the falsification of 
MOX safety data at Sellafield which led to a clear-out of BNFL's 
senior executives.

The Japanese have insisted that the plutonium be sent back to 
Britain, though this has been opposed by environmental groups 
alarmed that it would become a 'floating target for terrorists'. 
Last week the Environment Agency wrote to BNFL requesting details 
of what will happen to the plutonium when it arrives in Britain. 
T he agency is demanding answers by Wednesday.

'We need to determine the status of the material. Is it fuel or 
is it nuclear waste?' said a spokeswoman for the Environment 
Agency. 

European regulations define radioactive waste as 'any material 
which contains or is contaminated by radio-nuclides and for which 
no use is foreseen'. The environmental group, Greenpeace, argued 
that this is precisely what the plutonium from Japan is. BNFL, 
however, said the plutonium is not waste. 'The eight fuel 
assemblies will be placed in storage at Sellafield pending a 
decision on their future use,' explained a company spokesman.

Doesn't that mean it's waste? 'No, we most definitely do not 
consider it to be waste. It has a future use but that has not 
been decided. '

In a legal letter to Greenpeace on Friday, BNFL said it could not 
discuss the future use of the plutonium in detail 'for reasons of 
commercial confidentiality'. It added: 'No authorisation is 
required under the 1993 regulations for the shipment of the MOX 
fuel to the UK .'

This is fiercely disputed by Greenpeace, which has pressed the 
government to halt the shipment while its legality is under 
examination by the Environment Agency. But this was rejected late 
on Friday by the energy minister Brian Wilson.

 Pete Roche, of Greenpeace, welcomed the Environment Agency's 
investigation but was dismayed that the government had not acted 
to delay the shipment. 'We will certainly be taking legal advice 
on this,' he said. 'To send highly radioactive materials on a 
six-week trip on the high seas was a stupid idea before September 
11. In today's context it can only be described as insane. It 
would be a floating target for terrorists.'

 The planned nuclear shipment is being opposed by nations along 
its route, and could be greeted by protest boats in the Irish 
Sea. Security for the trip has been described by the respected 
Jane's Foreign Report as 'totally inadequate'.

 A report from the British government's Office for Civil Nuclear 
Security disclosed 'deficiencies' in security at nuclear plants, 
including the new MOX plant at Sellafield. This week the 
International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna will warn that 
thousands of radioactive sources around the world that could be 
made into 'dirty bombs' are inadequately controlled.       
    
©2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights
*****************************************************************
 24 Pike commissioners join opposition to nuclear waste storage -

chillicothegazette.com
 
Saturday, June 15, 2002   

 Our view...
 
The Gazette Staff 
  
WAVERLY -- Add the names of two Pike County commissioners and 
State Sen. Mike Shoemaker to the list of those who don't want 
nuclear waste stored at a former uranium enrichment plant in 
Piketon. 

Commissioners James Brushart and Harry Rider each sent letters to 
David Allen of the Department of Energy to voice their 
displeasure with the plan, which will call for 14,200 tons of 
potentially reusable nuclear waste to be stored at the Piketon 
plant for 20 years. 

"In Pike County, we are trying to pick up the pieces and make 
economic development attractive," wrote Brushart. "If we are made 
a dumping ground for the government's waste to be stored, this 
will severely hamper any possiblities of economic development in 
the future." 

Rider called the plan "appalling" and said he was concerned about 
the safety and security concerns of storing nuclear waste at the 
plant. 

In a weekly column distributed by Shoemaker, the state senator 
took aim at the Washington bureaucracy that created problems in 
Piketon. 

"Southern Ohio needs an expanding businesses that pay living 
wages for hard working employees," he wrote. "We don't need 
dirtier air, polluted water and a dumping ground reputation." 

Mike Shoemaker, State senator 

Originally published Saturday, June 15, 2002
 
[http://www.gannettfoundation.org]    
*****************************************************************
 25 Nuclear waste route needs a good inspection -

chillicothegazette.com
 
    Saturday, June 15, 2002   

   Opinion   

Regardless of how residents of Scioto Valley feel about nuclear
power, we're all going to deal with the reality of spent nuclear
fuel and other wastes streaming by our homes on the way to
long-term disposal in Yucca Mountain. 

The story broke earlier this week that the Norfolk Southern rail
line which runs through the heart of the city may be the route
that spent wastes travel as they head for their final resting
place. 

The fact that the materials will be on the rails was decided
decades ago when the nation embraced nuclear energy as a cheap
and safe source of energy. 

The waste is coming, although federal officials have wisely
declined to announce the official route. Tentatively, East Coast
wastes will stream west from Surry, Va., through West Virginia
and Kentucky before heading north through Chillicothe. Once it
reaches Marion, officials predict, it will head west toward
Nevada. 

There are two areas that need to be addressed before the first
waste train rolls in 2004. 

We were a bit shocked when local safety service officials said
they hadn't been notified of the fact that deadly wastes would
be traveling through their jurisdiction. 

They know now. Today is the time to start planning. Not only
does the waste pose an environmental concern, it also makes the
community a target for someone desiring to put their hands on
some nuclear waste for a dirty nuclear weapon. 

We also understand that the industry has the highest standards
for safety and there's virtually no chance for releases should a
train carrying the wastes derail. Real life examples show just
how secure rail or truck transport of nuclear waste can be: 

+ Dec. 14, 1995 - In North Carolina, a train carrying empty
casks derailed. The casks were not damaged. (Department of
Energy) 

+ March 24, 1987 - In St. Louis, a train carrying two casks of
Three Mile Island reactor core debris collided with a car at a
railroad crossing. The cask was not damaged, and no material
leaked. (Department of Energy) 

+ Dec. 9, 1983 - A trailer carrying a spent fuel cask containing
seven fuel assemblies separated from the tractor hauling it.
When the electrical and air lines were disconnected suddenly,
the brakes on the trailer locked, bringing the trailer and cask
to a rapid stop on the highway. There was no damage to the cask
and no release of radiation. (U.S. Department of Transportation) 

+ Aug. 3, 1978 - An empty cask being loaded onto a trailer broke
through the trailer bed, causing minor damage to the impact
limiter (the shock absorber on the end of the cask) and the cask
base plate. No radioactive material was leaked. (U.S. Department
of Transportation) 

Despite assurances, we suggest that federal, state and local
officials conduct an inch-by-inch inspection of all tracks that
the waste may travel in the region. 
It only makes sense. 

Originally published Saturday, June 15, 2002
 
  
Copyright ©2002 Chillicothe Gazette. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 26 Yucca Editorial: Another reason why this is a no-brainer

Las Vegas SUN: 

June 17, 2002 
 
Much of the recent debate in Congress over the Yucca Mountain 
project has centered on the transportation dangers of shipping 
77,000 tons of nuclear waste cross-country to Nevada. But last 
week Mother Nature shifted the debate back to one of the geologic 
reasons why nuclear waste should not be buried inside Yucca 
Mountain. On Friday an earthquake registering 4.4 on the Richter 
scale struck Little Skull Mountain, which is just a dozen miles 
from Yucca Mountain, the proposed site of the nation's nuclear 
waste dump.

 It's not as if last week's earthquake was unusual -- temblors 
are common there. Nevada is the third most seismically active 
state, and as recently as 1992 a 5.6 magnitude earthquake hit 
Little Skull Mountain, causing more than $400,000 in damage to 
Energy Department facilities near Yucca Mountain. Nevada's 
propensity for earthquakes should have been reason enough for 
Congress to never have considered our state as a dump. While the 
House has approved President Bush's plan to send nuclear waste to 
Nevada, the Senate still can do the right thing and block the 
plan. If we're lucky, the tremors from last week's earthquake 
reached Washington, shaking some common sense back into the heads 
of senators who mistakenly have backed Yucca Mountain.
 
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 27 Mayors weigh nuke resolution to ban nuke waste transport
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
June 17, 2002 
 By Diana Sahagun 
<diana@lasvegassun.com [diana@lasvegassun.com] >

 More than 200 U.S. mayors were considering a resolution this 
morning that asks Congress to prohibit the transportation of 
high-level nuclear waste unless all cities along the route 
receive funds, training and equipment to protect against an 
accident.

 A 14-member committee of mayors on Saturday approved an amended 
version of a resolution that was sponsored by Nevada leaders who 
oppose Yucca Mountain. The amended resolution was also supported 
by pro-Yucca mayors.

 A pro-Yucca resolution proposed by three U.S. mayors was not 
introduced on Saturday. Instead, the mayors of Augusta, Ga.; 
Little Rock, Ark., and Charlotte, N.C., added their support to 
Nevada's resolution with minor changes.

 The amended resolution, before the full U.S. Conference of 
Mayors in Madison, Wis., asks Congress to prohibit the 
transportation of high-level nuclear waste unless -- beginning 
three years prior to any such movements -- all cities along the 
route receive adequate funding, training and equipment to protect 
the public health and safety in the event of an accident.

 The resolution could be amended before the full 250 mayors take 
a final vote.
 
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 28 Pro-Yucca group blasts campaign tactics

Las Vegas SUN
 
June 17, 2002 
 
By Benjamin Grove 
<grove@lasvegassun.com [grove@lasvegassun.com] >

 WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials and environmental groups are 
needlessly scaring people about the risks of transporting nuclear 
waste as part of their broader anti-Yucca Mountain campaign, 
several members of a pro-Yucca coalition said today.

 The group, the U.S. Transport Coalition, today began a two-day 
"Nuclear Spent Fuel Transportation Capitol Hill Summit" to 
reassure senators and the public that shipping nuclear waste is 
safe.

 "We are going to focus on (waste shipping) experience, not 
myths," coalition co-chairman Jack Edlow said.

 Edlow is also president of Edlow International, which 
specializes in shipping nuclear waste. The company stands to win 
lucrative contracts if Yucca Mountain -- the plan to bury the 
nation's high-level nuclear waste at the desert site -- is 
eventually approved.

 The coalition consists of other nuclear industry companies and 
utility interests that stand to gain if Yucca is approved. About 
75 people attended the conference today. The conference features 
panel discussions with mostly industry officials. Sen. Larry 
Craig, R-Idaho, a leading Yucca supporter, is expected to give 
the final speech Tuesday.

 The group assembled its first conference just weeks, possibly 
days, before the Senate approves Yucca. The Senate has until July 
25 to override Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the site.

 The group was launched earlier this year to quell fear-mongering 
generated by Nevada officials, Edlow said.

 Nevada officials have sought to stress the risks of shipping 
waste from 131 sites nationwide to Yucca in a massive 24- to 
36-year shipping campaign. The plan risks accidents and terrorist 
strikes, Nevada officials have said.

 Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., today dismissed the coalition's charges 
of fear-mongering.

 "You have to consider the source," Reid said. "The truth hurts 
and that's why they are out at this particular time."

 The nuclear industry, under strict government regulation, has 
shipped nuclear waste in the United States about 2,700 times with 
minor accidents and no radiation releases, coalition leaders 
said. That message was echoed today by opening keynote speaker, 
Robert Paduchik, deputy assistant secretary of energy.

 "It's a tremendous safety record," Paduchik said. "It's one we 
are extremely proud of."

 Paduchik said Yucca opponents were using "incredibly wild 
numbers" when referring to the number of shipments it would take 
to move 77,000 tons of high-level waste to Yucca. The Department 
of Energy's own study said it could take as many as 100,000 truck 
shipments, but the DOE is committed to using a mostly rail 
scenario that would involve 3,500 rail and 1,100 truck shipments, 
Paduchik said.

 The coalition today held its meeting near the U.S. Capitol, 
encouraging members to chat with senators and staff who were 
invited to drop by.

 In his comments, Edlow mocked the celebrities lobbying against 
Yucca. Edlow also challenged Reid by name for generating fear in 
attempts to kill Yucca.

 "You need to stop throwing rocks at transportation issues," 
Edlow said, in reference to Reid.

 Reid said Nevada officials were stressing valid waste 
transportation risks, concerns echoed by some of the nation's 
leading scientists and environmental groups.

 "Everybody knows there are going to be accidents," Reid said. 
"It's a fact, and they should stop trying to be deceptive and 
deceitful."
 
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 29 Nebraska: Lack of jury could be basis for appeal in waste trial

Omaha.com

Published Sunday
June 16, 2002


*BY ROBYNN TYSVER*

WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN - The jury box sits empty in the high-stakes waste trial 
under way in a federal courtroom here.

To the disappointment of the state, a judge will decide 
Nebraska's fate and not 12 jurors.

In decisions punctuated with references to the Founding Fathers 
and England's kings, two federal judges said earlier this year 
that Nebraska was not entitled to a jury trial in the case.

The lack of a jury may be grounds for an immediate appeal if 
Nebraska loses the $100 million lawsuit.

"It's an unusual ruling, but it's an unusual case," said Vince 
Powers, a Lincoln attorney who is not involved in the trial.

Nebraska is being sued by a five-state compact alleging that 
former Gov. Ben Nelson torpedoed a request for a license because 
he did not want a low-level radioactive waste facility built in 
the state.

The facility would be a depository for low-level waste from 
nuclear power plants, medical research centers and other sources.

Utility companies paid out about $100 million in an attempt to 
get a license. Now they want their money back.

Powers said the no-jury ruling deals with a fundamental 
constitutional question - the right of a defendant, in this case 
the State of Nebraska, to be judged by a jury.

"This is the type of case for which the U.S. Supreme Court will 
eventually have to make some type of ruling, I would expect, if 
the state loses," Powers said.

A common belief is that a jury would be more sympathetic to the 
state and less likely to side with a compact intent on building 
the facility in Boyd County.

A judge, on the other hand, is commonly seen as more inclined to 
decide the case entirely on legal grounds.

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf is presiding over the trial, 
which is expected to last into July.

The state's lawyers argued that Nebraska was entitled to a jury 
trial because the lawsuit was a straightforward 
breach-of-contract case in which financial damages are at stake.

The lawyers said the state is essentially being accused of 
breaking a contractual obligation to act in "good faith" as 
outlined in the compact that Nebraska joined in 1986.

Under the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, defendants 
in breach-of-contract cases are entitled to a jury trial.

The attorneys for the five-state compact - which includes 
Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas and Oklahoma - counter that the 
unique public aspect of this case distinguishes it from a 
contract dispute. They said Nebraska, a compact member, had no 
right to a jury trial under common law.

In a Jan. 23 ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Piester denied 
the state's initial request for a jury trial. He said Nebraska 
has no such right in an action that pits one state against other 
states.

The state appealed to Kopf, who also denied the request.

Because state and federal law do not address the question, Kopf 
went back to English common law at the time the Seventh Amendment 
was adopted to determine whether a jury would have been required 
at that time in a similar case.

He said disputes between the U.S. colonies were handled by the 
crown or, if the king was too busy, his Privy Council.

"There is no historical evidence that the method of resolving 
colonial disputes ... involved law actions or juries," Kopf wrote 
in a Feb. 26 ruling.

Kopf agreed with Piester* *that this was a legal argument between 
states that went beyond a contract dispute.

"I reject the analogy that this case is like a breach of contract 
case for purposes of the Seventh Amendment," he said.

"While it is true that a compact is a contract between states, it 
is also true that a compact is much more."

He noted, for example, that the compact was sanctioned by the 
Congress, which has authority to ensure that such agreements 
between states do not infringe on federal power.

The state appealed Kopf's order to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of 
Appeals before the trial started June 3. The appeals court 
declined to take up the matter.

The state wanted the question settled before trial so as to avoid 
the necessity for a new trial if it is later determined by a 
higher court that Kopf erred.

"Both fundamental fairness and judicial economy argue forcefully 
for that determination to be made now, so that the parties and 
the court will not be forced to endure the burden of having to 
repeat an extended trial before a jury," William Bradford 
Reynolds, the lead attorney for the state, wrote in his request 
to have the issue heard by the federal appeals court.

©2002 Omaha World-Herald. All rights reserved. Copyright 
*****************************************************************
 30 Vajpayee: Pakistan's promises helped avert nuclear conflict *

/Mon Jun 17,12:56 AM ET/

/By NEELESH MISRA, Associated Press Writer/

NEW DELHI, India - not pressure from the United States ? helped 
avert a nuclear war with its longtime South Asian rival, a 
newspaper reported Monday.

Slideshows <http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=ss&>

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee indicated that New Delhi had 
given up the option of an armed conflict with Pakistan after a 
tense, six-month face-off in which 1 million soldiers have been 
deployed along their border.

India says Pakistan backs Islamic guerrillas who cross the 
Kashmir frontier to carry out bombings and armed assaults on 
civilians and security forces in Indian territory. Islamabad says 
it gives only moral and diplomatic support to the rebels, who are 
fighting for Kashmir's independence or merger with 
Muslim-majority Pakistan.

"If Pakistan had not agreed to end infiltration, and America had 
not conveyed that guarantee to India, then war would not have 
been averted," Vajpayee told Dainik Jagran, one of India's 
largest selling newspapers.

"The belief that India gave up the option of war under American 
pressure is totally wrong," Vajpayee said in his first detailed 
comments on the current crisis in which he declared "victory 
without war."

On the border, no shelling or mortar fire was reported for the 
second straight day Monday, indicating further easing of the 
situation that seemed to have brought the hostile neighbors close 
to their fourth war. However, sporadic small arms fire continued 
between rival soldiers, as it has for years.

Kashmir has been at the core of two of the three was India and 
Pakistan have fought since their independence from Britain in 
1947. More than 60,000 people have been killed in the 12-year 
insurgency.

Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 31 Britain plans to built small nuclear bombs

 ©The Frontier Publications (Pvt) Ltd. 

  Shahid Ahmed Qureshi  
   Updated on 6/17/2002 4:22:52 PM  

London: Britain planned a massive nuclear bomb-making factory for 
Aldermaston, raising concern that UK is heading towards a new era 
of atomic weapon production reported The Observer today here in 
London. 

Proposed plant will be able to test, design and build a new 
generation of nuclear bombs. 

Arms experts believe it will focus on smaller atomic warheads for 
use against terrorist groups and rogue states. 

Planning details will be submitted to West Berkshire planning 
authorities in the next 10 days reveal plans for one of the most 
state-of-the-art nuclear weapons plants in Europe. 

Described by environmentalists as one of the most momentous 
decisions of Tony Blair’s leadership, the plant will cost 
hundreds of millions of pounds, despite being officially approved 
without parliamentary debate, sparking fury among MPs. 

Environment analysts warn that it appears to be a blatant breach 
of Britain’s obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation 
treaty. 

William Peden, nuclear disarmament expert at Greenpeace, said:

‘We are talking a massive nuclear bomb-making factory.’ The plans 
- the existence of which were confirmed by the Atomic Weapons 
Establishment - will involve closure of the 270-acre Burghfield 
site, where Britain’s atomic warheads have been produced for 
almost 50 years. 

It will be replaced by a futuristic complex capable of designing 
atomic weapons as well as storing existing Trident warheads at 
AWE’s 700-acre headquarters. 

Details of the proposals were discovered in AWE’s annual report, 
which refers to plans to ‘transfer all operations’ from 
Burghfield to the Aldermaston site. 

The report also reveals proposals for a hydrodynamics research 
facility to help design and develop nuclear weapons, a £15 
million supercomputer to simulate the effects of atomic devices 
and a factory producing tritium, a substance used to maximise the 
effects of a nuclear explosion. 

An AWE spokesman said they had to ‘maintain the capability to 
design a successor’ to Trident, although the Government had not 
asked it to start work on one. 

Prof. Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford 
University, said: ‘But, at the very least, they want to build the 
infrastructure to create a new generation of weapons. ‘It is 
clear that the Government is committing itself to a long-term 
nuclear future after Trident. 

This suggests a nuclear-free world more in theory than in 
practice.’ Menzies Campbell , Liberal Democrat foreign affairs 
spokesman, said Government policy remained unclear. 

‘There has never been a serious parliamentary debate about a 
Trident replacement or what form it should take,’ he added. ‘But 
before embarking on expenditure of this size on an issue of such 
political controversy, at the very least Parliament ought to be 
con sulted. 

I even suspect that the Cabinet may not have been involved in the 
decision. 

There are also legitimate concerns about facilities like this 
after 11 September.’ The planning application will be submitted 
by the Ministry of Defence on behalf of AWE, which is responsible 
for running Britain’s nuclear weapons’ sites. 

The proposals must abide by normal planning procedures because 
crown immunity was removed after AWE - in effect, private 
contractors - took control of the running of Aldermaston in 1993. 

Planning officers do not have the power to reject the plans but, 
in the event of strong objection, can demand that Environment 
Minister Michael Meacher examines them. 

Labour MP Martin Salter - who claims that his Reading West 
constituency lies downwind of Aldermaston - said: ‘I am appalled 
that plans have been drawn up to extend the nuclear weapons plant 
at Aldermaston without reference to local communities, or indeed 
Parliament.’ Tomorrow he will table a series of parliamentary 
questions about the Government’s long-term nuclear policies. 

The revelation arrives amid allegations that the UK is keen to 
pursue the Bush administration’s lead in wanting to develop a 
range of tactical nuclear devices that can be used pre-emptively 
against terrorist groups or rogue states. 

Recent Nuclear Posture Review Report from USA details the need 
for an ‘offensive’ nuclear deterrent and a revitalised nuclear 
weapons complex with massive investment in facilities in order to 
modernise its weapons production capability. 

Analysists point to a series of statements from Defence Secretary 
Geoff Hoon in which he insists Britain has a right to use nuclear 
devices -pre-emptively if necessary - against states that are not 
nuclear powers. 

Rebecca Johnson, executive editor of Disarmament Diplomacy, a 
leading independent journal in arms control, warned that US and 
UK policy was becoming increasingly ‘hand in glove’. 

Ian Davis, director of the British American Security Information 
Council, an independent think-tank, said there was mounting 
evidence of increased co-operation between Britain and the US on 
nuclear policy. 

Inquiries had found Labour becoming increasingly secretive over 
nuclear policy and demanded ‘greater parliamentary scrutiny’ over 
future decisions. 

Investigations by The Observer confirm increased activity between 
US and UK weapons officials. 

Parliamentary answers from defence ministers reveal the number of 
UK defence personnel visiting the US has grown substantially. 
Visits to the Nevada nuclear test site have risen from nine in 
1999 to 40 last year with a further 182 meetings between both 
countries. 

There are now 16 joint working groups on weaponry issues, 
including nuclear warhead physics, nuclear counter-terrorism 
technology and nuclear weapon code development. 

Peden said that the planned development mirrored the secrecy 
surrounding the replacement of Polaris with Trident in the late 
1970s.New facilities were then also sited at Aldermaston, but 
construction was hampered by delays and escalating costs, which 
eventually soared to £1.5 billion. 

There has still been no official acknowledgment on the type of 
warhead Trident carries. 

An AWE spokesman said the current proposals depend on a number of 
factors such as the results of a feasibility study. 

They also have to be approved by regulators including the Nuclear 
Installations Inspectorate. 

If approved, construction of the new plant would be included 
within the current £2.3bn 10-year contract. 

He added that leaflets detailing the proposals would be released 
to the public in two weeks’ time. 

In these circumstances what signals the developing countries get 
and what role IAEA will play in third world? How will we justify 
the arms control and peace efforts. 

Views Expressed and published here are not a property of The 
FrontierPost; however FP reserves the right to edit any comments.
*****************************************************************
 32 Government 'plans new nuclear arms'

BBC News | UK | 

Sunday, 16 June, 2002, 

[Aldermaston site, Berkshire]                   

MoD denies plans to build new nuclear weapons 

Britain's key atomic weapons plant could be at the centre of a 
multi-million pound nuclear arms expansion programme, it is 
reported. 

Such an extension at the Aldermaston site, in Berkshire, would 
allow Britain to test, design and build a new generation of 
smaller nuclear weapons. 

These could be used against terrorist groups and rogue states, 
according to The Observer newspaper. 

The Ministry of Defence denied plans to develop new nuclear 
weapons, but said it would retain the capacity to do so as a 
prudent precaution. 

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said 
Labour must not take a unilateral decision about replacing the 
existing Polaris weapons. 

He said: "Parliament must be given a full-scale role in the 
discussions leading up to it." 

Sophisticated plant 

Proposals to be submitted to West Berkshire planning authorities 
outline one of the most state-of-the-art weapon plants in Europe, 
the newspaper reports. 
		 			
[David Rendel, Liberal Democrat for Newbury] Rendel: Government 
must clear outline its plans
 		 		 		 			  
It claims the plans would see the Atomic Weapons Establishment 
(AWE) close the nearby 270-acre Burghfield site, which is where 
Britain's atomic warheads have been produced for nearly 50 years. 

This would be replaced with a complex capable of designing new 
atomic weapons. 

Mr Campbell said: "Whether or not to replace Trident will be one 
of the most significant political decisions of the next 20 
years." 

He called for consensus between the political parties to be 
reached and he added: "We cannot have any repeat of the precedent 
set by Labour in the 1970s when Polaris was updated without the 
Cabinet being fully informed." 

'No indication' 

Liberal Democrat MP for Newbury David Rendel, which includes 
Aldermaston, said the government should be more forthcoming about 
its intentions. 
	
 At present there is no indication that anything other than 
research into nuclear weapons will be taking place      
   	
   David Rendel MP 	  

 "We knew that the facilities at Burghfield would be moved to 
Aldermaston, and that Aldermaston would be involved with further 
research, since the current contract came into operation," said 
Mr Rendel. 

"At present there is no indication that anything other than 
research into nuclear weapons will be taking place at 
Aldermaston." 

But he added: "The best way to calm fears about nuclear weapons 
at Aldermaston is if the government comes clean about its future 
nuclear policy." 

'Early stages 

An MoD spokeswoman said there were currently no plans to develop 
or build new nuclear weapons. 

She said there was a proposal to concentrate all Trident 
activity, such as simulated testing and some maintenance 
functions, at Aldermaston. 

This, she said, might require expanded premises. 

But that involved a long process and was at the "very early 
stages of genesis." 

There are no plan to construct new facilities for the purpose of 
building new nuclear weapons, she emphasised. 

But according to the newspaper the MoD is submitting the planning 
application - which is subject to normal planning procedures - on 
behalf of AWE. 

Anti-terrorist checks 

The proposals must abide by normal planning procedures. 

This is because crown immunity was removed after AWE, effectively 
private contractors, took control of the running of Aldermaston 
in 1993. 

The news comes as the government's nuclear security chief, 
Michael Buckland-Smith, said staff shortages had forced a cut 
back on anti-terrorist checks at nuclear facilities across the 
UK. 

The director of the Office of Civil Nuclear Security admitted in 
his office's annual report that the agency is having trouble 
recruiting staff, Scotland on Sunday reports.            

*****************************************************************
 33 Russia and America Formally Scrap Start II, ABM Treaties
 
MOSCOW - Russia pulled out of the 1993 START II nuclear arms 
treaty Friday, one day after the United States formally withdrew 
from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty prohibiting construction 
of a missile defence system.
 
Charles Digges, 2002-06-16 18:48

The action by the Russian parliament had limited practical 
effect, however, because the US and Russian legislatures had 
ratified different versions of START II, preventing it from 
taking force. 

"Putin does want to show that two can play at this game," said 
Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Non-Proliferation Project 
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington 
told the Washington Post. "This is a signal to the US, and it is 
also Putin consolidating support with the military and the 
hard-liners, telling the conservatives: ‘We aren't going to let 
them roll all over us.'" 

Meanwhile, reaction in Moscow to the long-planned US withdrawal 
on Thursday from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was mute, 
on the whole echoing President Vladimir Putin's acceptance of 
Washington's unilateral declaration last year that it would pull 
out. 

Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, speaking in Canada on Thursday 
during a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Eight, 
said Russia is interested in continuing talks with the United 
States on nuclear arms and missile defence. 

"The primary aim now is to minimize the negative consequences of 
the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty," he was quoted by Interfax 
as saying. 

In Moscow, by backing out of START II, Russia frees itself from 
what military experts in Moscow considered onerous restrictions 
on the land-based intercontinental missiles that are Russia's 
strongest nuclear assets. 

START II's requirement stipulating that such weapons be armed 
with only one warhead each meant in essence that Russia had to 
build an entire new generation of missiles, analysts and 
lawmakers said. 

Other restrictions set by START II are obsolete, including the 
requirement that both countries slash their nuclear arsenals to 
3,500 warheads apiece. 

The much-derided treaty signed in Moscow last month requires the 
United States and Russia to limit themselves to 1,750 to 2,200 
each in the next decade. Opponents of the treaty have pointed out 
that it has no decommissioning schedule, meaning, conceivably, 
that neither side will have to start slashing arsenals for a 
decade. Also provisions for the American side allow the 
stockpiling — rather than the destruction of warheads — and makes 
the treaty virtually pointless.
 
But both Foreign Minister Ivanov and Mikhail Margelov, chief of 
the Federation Council's foreign affairs committee, told Bellona 
Web through spokesmen that it was thanks to Russia's insistence 
on a new formal US-Russia nuclear arms treaty — the Moscow 
Treaty, signed during the summit last month — that the 
negotiation process was kept alive. 

Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov underscored that Russia was not 
retaliating for the US decision to pull out of the ABM Treaty by 
withdrawing from the Start II treaty. The ABM treaty expired 
Thursday, six months after Washington gave notice it would 
withdraw. "The national defence system exists in virtual space, 
not in reality," he told reporters in Kyrgyzstan. "So there is no 
need for retaliation." 

Others were less conciliatory. Some at the Foreign Ministry 
blamed the United States for START II's demise, saying Washington 
had failed to fully ratify the treaty and had invalidated the ABM 
Treaty, which was the cornerstone of arms control agreements for 
three decades, Ministry officials said in interviews with Bellona 
web Friday. 

State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov said the United States had 
lost trust among other members of the international community, 
Interfax reported. 

Dmitry Rogozin, the hard-line head of the Duma foreign affairs 
committee called the US withdrawal from the ABM treaty a "big 
political mistake," adding that Russia was freed from the 
conditions of START II as a result, Interfax said. 

Flamboyant ultranationalist and Duma deputy speaker Vladimir 
Zhirinovsky said the day was a "holiday" for Russia. "We can now 
do whatever we want," Interfax reported him as saying. 

Bush administration officials virtually underscored that, having 
repeatedly said that a Russian decision to arm its missiles with 
multiple warheads would not be a significant threat to the United 
States. Washington is much more concerned about whether nuclear 
material could be stolen or diverted from Russia to unfriendly 
countries, they have said.
   
  Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President: 
Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no 
[info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no 
[webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 
38 38 62  * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 34 Harvard's Seven Steps to Eliminate Terrorist Nuclear Threat
 
Harvard's Seven Steps to Eliminate Terrorist Nuclear Threat The 
recently published Harvard report “Securing Nuclear Weapons and 
Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action” reviews the 
dimensions of the danger of nuclear attack by terrorists and the 
efforts underway to combat it and recommends seven steps for 
immediate action to eliminate this threat. The seventh step 
favours controversial proposal by the Russian Ministry of Atomic 
Energy to ship foreign spent nuclear fuel to Russia. A brief 
summary of the report follows beneath.

reviewed by Helene Tidemann, 2002-06-17 14:37

September 11th demonstrated that the threat from well-organised 
terrorist groups like Al Qaida is real. It is clear that 
terrorist’s interest in weapons of mass destruction includes 
chemical, biological as well as nuclear possibilities. The 
Harvard report focuses on the nuclear weapon threat. 

Action is Needed Now

 The report defines the threat by the huge size of the global 
stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material, the large number of 
countries and facilities where these stockpiles are held, and the 
poor state of security for some of them. 

The fear is that sophisticated terrorist groups will get their 
hands on nuclear material. The amounts required to build a 
nuclear explosive are small, and can easily be smuggled in a 
brief case or under an overcoat. The detonation of such a bomb in 
a city would be a catastrophe beyond imagination. Even a 
1-kiloton “fizzle” from a badly executed terrorist bomb would 
create a circle of near-total destruction near 1 mile in 
diameter. 

Theft of these essential ingredients of nuclear weapons is 
according to this report not a hypothetical worry but an ongoing 
reality. Over the last decade there have been multiple confirmed 
cases of thefts. The problem today is that there is no binding 
international standard for how well these stockpiles should be 
secured. Since this is a global problem, it will require a global 
solution. A particular focus of the problem is in Russia and the 
report emphasises the importance of US and Russian co-operation. 

The report outlines seven immediate first steps that should be 
taken to ensure that nuclear weapons and material are secured and 
accounted for. 

1. A Global Coalition

 The first step presented in the report is the building of a 
global coalition to secure Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

US, NATO and Asian allies and Russia would be participants and 
co-leaders of such a coalition. Key roles for the participants 
would include the securing and accounting for domestic stockpiles 
or to ask for and permit the help it needs in order to do this. 
Participants would work together to detect, interdict and 
investigate WMD theft and smuggling. Coalition participants 
should work together to put in place the capability to respond in 
the event of a WMD threat or attack. Some participants might also 
join with the US in making investments to help other countries 
secure and account for their stockpiles. 

Such a global coalition cannot succeed without active and 
dedicated Russian participation. Of the 58 countries with Highly 
Enriched Uranium (HEU)-fuelled research reactors, roughly 40 
received their HEU from the United States and the remainder from 
the Soviet Union, which means that Russia has supply 
relationships crucial in getting that HEU removed or secured. 
Russia also has broad range of relationships with countries that 
US would be unable to work with effectively such as Iran, North 
Korea, Libya and Belarus. 

The report shows concerns about an unfortunate trend toward 
US-Russian threat reduction co-operation, focusing on US as donor 
and Russia as recipient. On the US side there is a tendency to 
take the view that since the US is paying the piper, it should 
call the tune. On the Russian side there is a tendency to expect 
the US government to cover the entire tab. On both sides there is 
suspicions and bureaucratic delays. A joint participation in a 
global coalition will help reverse this trend, the authors 
believe. To establish the needed partnership between US and 
Russia, significant changes is required from both sides, like 
flexible responses to the issue of access to sensitive 
facilities, acknowledging that expertise from both sides are 
useful in solving the proliferation problems. 

The report also emphasises the importance to seize the 
post-September 11th opportunity to build this global coalition. 
This opportunity will not last forever. 

2. Single Leaders for US and Russia

 President Bush needs to appoint someone in the White House, who 
reports directly to him, who has no other mission but this to 
lead the US participation in the nuclear elements of a global 
coalition to secure weapons of mass destruction. This person 
should wake up every morning thinking, “What can I do to keep 
nuclear weapons out of terrorists hands today?” 

A US leader for these efforts would work closely with Russian 
officials, including a Russian counterpart leader that should be 
appointed by President Putin. The authors stress that this is a 
full-time assignment and that these co-ordinators must have 
direct access to their Presidents. 

3. Accelerating, Strengthening and Sustaining the Security The 
stockpiles should be secured as fast as possible. To do this it 
is necessary for US and Russia to rebuild a partnership approach 
that can sustain broad Russian support, set an agreed deadline 
and jointly develop a strategic plan to meet this deadline. 
According to the report the main security risks may be addressed 
within four years. 

There will be more work to be accomplished after the deadline, 
like improvements and up-grading of the systems. They should 
provide the necessary resources to carry out the plan, resolve 
the access issues and overcome the many bureaucratic obstacles.

Suspicion between the US and Russia has to disappear and 
flexibility on both sides is needed. The US government should 
offer Russian experts reciprocal access at US facilities engaged 
in comparable activities, undermining the argument that the US is 
spying through such visits. 

It is equally important that the security systems installed are 
adequate to defeat the threats they are likely to face. It is 
crucial to sustain the security for these stockpiles into the 
future. US should seek a clear commitment from the Russian 
government to provide its own resources to sustain and improve 
the security systems once US assistance phases out. It will also 
be crucial to build up effective regulation in Russia so that 
site managers know they will be punished through fines or 
facility shut downs, if the high standards to security and 
accounting for nuclear material is not met. It will also be 
necessary to drastically reduce the number of buildings and 
facilities where nuclear warheads, plutonium and HEU are stored.

The surest way to prevent nuclear theft is to remove the material 
from the buildings where it is stored. And the smaller the number 
of buildings and facilities to be secured, the lower the cost of 
ensuring effective security. 

4. A Global Cleanout and Secure Effort

 There are today 345 operational or shutdown reactors fuelled 
with HEU in 58 countries. Security of these hundreds of buildings 
varies widely, from excellent to appalling. Vulnerable nuclear 
material anywhere could be stolen and made into a terrorist bomb. 
The threat of nuclear theft is not limited to the former Soviet 
Union. A global effort is needed to address this threat by 
ensuring that all vulnerable stockpiles of plutonium or HEU are 
either eliminated or provided with high levels of security. 

  The report is available in it’s full length on the Web at 
http://www.nti.org [http://www.nti.org]   

Today there are many small programs that address this threat. 
Some of them are: 

+ The Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) 
program has been developing proliferation-resistant low-enriched 
fuels to replace HEU research reactor fuels, and helping US and 
US supplied reactors convert.
 
+ The United States also has in place a major take-back effort 
for irradiated HEU from US supplied research reactors. This is an 
offer to take the spent fuel off reactor operator’s hand if they 
agree to convert to Low Enriched Uranium (LEU).
 
+ A similar Russian RERTR program and HEU take-back program is 
underway with funding from the US
 
+ Under the Atomic Energy Act countries supplied by the United 
States are required to maintain adequate security for US-obliged 
nuclear material and the US government is required to check to 
ensure that they are doing so. 

All of these programs are valuable and are making genuine 
contributions to international security. But there is no 
consolidated effort with the authority and flexibility to provide 
targeted packages of incentives to each facility to give up its 
HEU or plutonium or to participate in a rapid security-upgrade 
program. 

The goal should be to eliminate all the highest-risk HEU 
stockpiles in the world within a few years. 

Given the availability of LEU fuels in the RERTR program, and the 
risks posed by HEU, there is no longer any need for HEU in the 
civil sector. 

The report suggests that with a program funded at $50 million per 
year, many of the most urgent security hazards posed by HEU and 
plutonium outside of the former Soviet Union could be addressed 
within a few years. 

Some states like Pakistan, India and China will pose particular 
difficulties for co-operative international efforts to upgrade 
security for nuclear material because of the secrecy surrounding 
their nuclear efforts. Pakistan’s connection to Afghanistan and 
Al Qaida, and the likelihood of nuclear “insiders” that could be 
sympathetic to Al Qaida, have raised international concerns over 
the potential vulnerability of their nuclear stockpiles. 

Tens of tonnes of separated, weapons usable plutonium are 
processed and shipped from place to place every year — when only 
a few kilograms is enough for a bomb. Most of this material is 
well secured, but the security varies widely from one country to 
the next. 

The Bush administration and the congress is proposed to establish 
a “global cleanout and secure” program funded at roughly $50 
million in fiscal year 2003, making funds available from fiscal 
year 2002 so the program to eliminate these stockpiles can get 
started immediately. 

5. Leading Toward Stringent Global Nuclear Security Standards

 Today there are no binding international standards for nuclear 
security in place. There have been efforts to formally negotiate 
more stringent standards, but they have made limited progress. 

The report suggests that the US should join with a number of 
like-minded states with substantial nuclear activities in making 
a politically binding commitment to meet a stringent, agreed 
standard for security and accounting for all their nuclear 
material and facilities. They will report to the International 
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on their nuclear security regulations 
and procedures. 

The IAEA standard today are almost entirely rule-based, rather 
than performance-based: they call for nuclear material to be 
locked in vault, but do not say how hard the lock should be to 
pick or break etc. Therefore the authors stress the need for an 
agreement on at least a minimum design basis threat that security 
systems for weapons-usable nuclear material everywhere should be 
able to meet. 

For stringent international standards to have real teeth the 
report suggests that there have to be some means to confirm that 
the standards were being met. This can include exchange of 
information about national nuclear security procedures and 
standards, and bilateral or international visits or peer reviews 
at selected facilities, with managed access to protect sensitive 
information. With creativity and high-level leadership this can 
be achieved in a way that does not make the information available 
to potential terrorists and thieves. 

6. Accelerated Blend-Down of Highly Enriched Uranium

 HEU is the easiest material for terrorist to make nuclear 
weapons from because it can be used in a simple “gun-type” bomb. 
Destroying as much as possible of this is therefore essential to 
ensure it will never fall into hostile hands. 

By paying Russia to blend this material to a form that can never 
again be used in weapons and then store it in Russia, held off 
the market for a specific period, the security objective of 
destroying HEU could be decoupled from market constraints, and 
the accelerated blend-down could be accomplished without 
disturbing world nuclear fuel markets. 

This accelerated blend down effort would build on the US-Russian 
co-operative effort to address threats posed by weapons-usable 
nuclear material — the HEU Purchase Agreement, signed in 1993. 
Under this deal, 500 tonnes of HEU from dismantled Russian 
nuclear weapons are being blended to low-enriched uranium (LEU) 
(which cannot support an explosive nuclear chain reaction) and 
sold to the US for use as commercial nuclear reactor fuel. 

Currently, 30 tonnes of HEU is being blended to LEU each year. 
The report suggests working out an accelerated HEU blend-down 
arrangement supported by both US and Russia. In principle such a 
deal would be very simple. The US would pay Russia its capital 
and operating costs to blend the large quantities of additional 
HEU each year. Russia would agree that this additional LEU would 
be held off the market to avoid crashing the uranium and 
enrichment prices with a flood of additional material onto the 
market. These additional blended stocks could then be blended to 
commercial levels and metered onto the market at the 
30-tonne-per-year rate once there was no more material to blend. 
Such a deal would serve the US national security interest as well 
as Russia’s financial interests. 

7. New Revenue Streams for Nuclear Security

 Given the scale of the activities that need to be funded and the 
need to provide funding for Russia’s huge stockpiles of nuclear 
weapons and material, the authors suggests developing new revenue 
streams that can supplement on-budget government expenditures. 
They recommend two particular approaches to be pursued. 

The first is a dept for non-proliferation swap. In such a swap, a 
portion of Russia’s debt would be cancelled and instead this 
payment would go into an auditable fund to finance agreed 
non-proliferation and arms reduction initiatives. The report 
urges for the Congress to complete passage of this legislation 
and for the Bush administration to begin negotiating with Russia 
and other potential creditor nations to begin implementing an 
auditable and transparent debt-for non-proliferation swap. The 
second is to allow Russia to import foreign spent nuclear fuel 
for long-term storage and reprocessing. Russia’s Ministry of 
Atomic Energy (MINATOM) projects that it might be possible to 
earn $20 billion in gross revenue from importing 20,000 tonnes of 
spent fuel over 10-20 years. 

The report states that in order to allow such an offer from 
Russia some of the following criteria will have to be met:
 
+ Effective arrangements to ensure that the entire operation has 
high standard of safety and security.
 
+ Resolve the proliferation risks posed by Russian nuclear 
co-operation with Iran. 

+ A portion of the revenue is used to fund disarmament, 
non-proliferation and cleanup projects. 

+ The project can not in any way contribute to separation of 
additional unneeded weapons-usable plutonium or to Russia’s 
nuclear weapons program. 

+ And finally, one has to make sure that the project has support 
from people likely to be affected by it through a democratic 
process, giving them the opportunity to ensure that their 
concerns is effectively addressed.   

  Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President: 
Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no 
[info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no 
[webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 
38 38 62  * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 35 Vajpayee: Pakistan's promises helped avert nuclear conflict 

Yahoo! News - 

AP World Politics     

Mon Jun 17,12:56 AM ET 

By NEELESH MISRA, Associated Press Writer 

NEW DELHI, India - not pressure from the United States — helped 
avert a nuclear war with its longtime South Asian rival, a 
newspaper reported Monday.
 
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee indicated that New Delhi had 
given up the option of an armed conflict with Pakistan after a 
tense, six-month face-off in which 1 million soldiers have been 
deployed along their border.
 
India says Pakistan backs Islamic guerrillas who cross the 
Kashmir frontier to carry out bombings and armed assaults on 
civilians and security forces in Indian territory. Islamabad says 
it gives only moral and diplomatic support to the rebels, who are 
fighting for Kashmir's independence or merger with 
Muslim-majority Pakistan.
 
"If Pakistan had not agreed to end infiltration, and America had 
not conveyed that guarantee to India, then war would not have 
been averted," Vajpayee told Dainik Jagran, one of India's 
largest selling newspapers.
 
"The belief that India gave up the option of war under American 
pressure is totally wrong," Vajpayee said in his first detailed 
comments on the current crisis in which he declared "victory 
without war."
 
On the border, no shelling or mortar fire was reported for the 
second straight day Monday, indicating further easing of the 
situation that seemed to have brought the hostile neighbors close 
to their fourth war. However, sporadic small arms fire continued 
between rival soldiers, as it has for years.
 
Kashmir has been at the core of two of the three was India and 
Pakistan have fought since their independence from Britain in 
1947. More than 60,000 people have been killed in the 12-year 
insurgency.
 
*****************************************************************
 36 Hanford workers to vote Wednesday on contract
 
This story was published Sat, Jun 15, 2002
 
By the Herald staff
 
Hanford's union workers are scheduled to vote Wednesday for the 
second time on a proposed three-year contract.
 
The medical benefits costs in the proposed contract are different 
from those that the members of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades 
Council overwhelmingly rejected six weeks ago, said Tom Schaffer, 
HAMTC president.
 
This time, any increase in medical benefits costs will be capped 
at 10 percent per year, Schaffer said.
 
Meanwhile, the rest of the proposed contract is about the same as 
the one voted on April 30. The new contract calls for a 4 percent 
annual wage increase compared with the 3 percent annual increase 
in the contract that expired March 31. The extra 1 percent is 
expected to absorb the extra medical costs.
 
HAMTC is an umbrella organization for 14 Hanford-related union 
locals. It has 2,600 to 2,800 members. HAMTC members are voting 
on contracts with Fluor Hanford, Bechtel Hanford, CH2M Hill 
Hanford Group and Battelle. 

Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This 
*****************************************************************
 37 In pursuit of Hanford trivia
 
For newcomers and nonscientists, here's a primer of our 
radioactive neighbor
 
This story was published Sun, Jun 16, 2002
 By John Stang Herald staff writer 
Does Hanford puzzle you?
 
You sorta know it's really radioactive out there, but you're not 
sure what anyone actually does in "the area?"
 
Do your neighbors talk like characters in a Dilbert cartoon?
 
Does the term "tank farm" make absolutely no sense?
 
Well, here's your chance to pursue a little Hanford trivia at 
your leisure.
 
We can't make you an expert with just a single article, not even 
close. But if the board game of Hanford Trivial Pursuit is ever 
invented, you'll be armed with enough information to get at least 
a few wedges for your game piece.
 
Even without the game, we'll toss in some weird tidbits you can 
use to make yourself look extra smart at the next neighborhood 
barbecue.
 
Now remember, the metro area of today's Tri-Cities has about 
130,000 people. And maybe 14,000 people work at Hanford, using 
the loosest definition of a Hanford-related job. Plus, we'll 
unscientifically guess 10,000 to 15,000 Hanford retirees live 
around here.
 
This feature is for you remaining 100,000 Tri-Citians.
 
The Indians and Hanford
 
For thousands of years, the region's tribes used Hanford as a 
major crossroads in their annual migrations to find food.
 
The Columbia River within today's Hanford was a major fishing 
area for the Indians that make up today's Wanapum band, Nez Perce 
Tribe, Yakama Indian Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the 
Umatilla Indian Reservation.
 
When the United States sent the tribes to their reservations in 
1855, treaties with the Nez Perce, Umatillas and Yakamas gave 
those nations a major say in what happens in today's Hanford. 
Because the Wanapum never fought a war, the United States never 
signed a treaty with the band. So the tribe with the closest ties 
to Hanford has the least legal clout today on cultural and 
fishing matters on the site.
 
Hanford also is where Indian legends tell of a struggle between 
the cold and warm winds at the dawn of time.
 
Basically, five brother warm winds and five brother cold winds 
held a wrestling match to the death. The cold winds won.
 
But Winaawayay, son of one of the warm winds, challenged the cold 
winds to another duel and won by magic and trickery. He spared 
one or more of the cold winds and condemned them to blow through 
the Hanford area for only a short time each year. That's why our 
weather here is pleasant.
 
White people arrive at Hanford
 
The first white guy to show up at Hanford was British-Canadian 
explorer David Thompson in 1811. The Hudson Bay Co. constructed 
Hanford's first non-Indian building next to a Wanapum village on 
the Franklin County side of the Columbia River sometime between 
1826 and 1846.
 
That trading post no longer exists. If you travel up the Columbia 
River, you'll see a beat-up remnant of a log structure next to 
the old trading post site. Many people mistake that for the 
trading post, but it used to be home for a couple of cowboys, as 
well as a blacksmith shop.
 
The 19th century trading post evolved into the village of White 
Bluffs, which led to the creation of the downstream villages of 
Hanford and Richland.
 
Today's nuclear reservation is named after the long-gone village 
of Hanford, which was named in 1908 for its founder, Seattle land 
speculator Cornelius Hanford.
 
The feds arrive at Hanford
 
Let's fast-forward to Feb. 25, 1941, at a lab in Berkeley, Calif.
 
Young chemist Glenn Seaborg and two partners bombarded a solution 
containing uranium with particles from a cyclotron and created a 
microscopic bit of plutonium.
 
The scientists named the new element plutonium after the planet 
Pluto. Even though the chemical symbol for plutonium logically 
would be "Pl," the chemists had some fun, and designated 
plutonium's symbol as "Pu" -- as in a kid holding his nose and 
saying, "Pee-yew."
 
Plutonium caught the attention of Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, head 
of World War II's top-secret Manhattan Project, which was 
supposed to invent the atomic bomb.
 
Groves needed pounds of plutonium to put the atomic into his 
atomic bombs, not the millionths of an ounce Seaborg could 
produce in a lab.
 
So he recruited Lt. Col. Franklin Matthias to find an isolated 
spot near lots of electrical power and a big river to build the 
world's first nuclear reactor -- that was not a lab prototype -- 
to manufacture tons of plutonium.
 
"I said I ought to get some Buck Rogers comics so I could get 
comfortable with what this was all about," Matthias recalled in 
an interview before his death.
 
Matthias scoured the West for a good site. On Dec. 22, 1942, he 
flew over White Bluffs, Hanford and Richland. With the Grand 
Coulee Dam a few hours upstream, Matthias found his spot.
 
In early 1943, the feds kicked out all the farmers, villagers and 
Wanapum to create the 560-square-mile Hanford nuclear 
reservation. Today, the surviving evictees still are somewhat 
irked.
 
Atomic bombs 

To make a long story short, let's zip ahead to Sept. 26, 1944.
 
More than 50,000 workers moved to Hanford to design and build B 
Reactor. They bulldozed the old Hudson Bay Co. trading post as 
they created today's Hanford.
 
And now, world-famous physicist Enrico Fermi was ready to start 
up B Reactor.
 
Meanwhile, Matthias fretted whether the contraption would blow 
up. He was grateful Hanford was in the middle of nowhere, where 
no one would see the explosion.
 
When Fermi's team cranked up B Reactor, it sputtered, died, then 
spontaneously restarted again Sept. 28.
 
There were complicated reasons why B Reactor did that, which 
involved xenon gas, neutron absorption and reactor designs. When 
this tale is told, science and engineering nerds think it's a 
really cool story. Non-nerds have trouble following the tale.
 
Anyway, scientists fixed the glitch, and Hanford began cranking 
out plutonium.
 
Hanford's plutonium ended up in a bomb on a tower near 
Alamagordo, N.M., in what became the world's first atomic 
explosion on July 16, 1945.
 
That explosion inspired J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan 
Project's head scientist, to quote the Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindu 
text: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
 
Hanford had nothing to do with the atomic bomb "Little Boy" that 
destroyed Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. That bomb used uranium 
processed at Oak Ridge, Tenn.
 
But on Aug. 9, 1945, a B-29 bomber dubbed the Bock's Car dropped 
the "Fat Man" atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, hastening the 
end of World War II. The roly-poly Fat Man, named after the 
somewhat roly-poly Winston Churchill, used Hanford plutonium.
 
Hanford and the Cold War
 
Let's not dawdle through the Cold War.
 
But you do need to know a little bit about Hanford's 100 Area, 
200 Area and 300 Area.
 
The 100 Area is a catch-all term for the nine reactor sites along 
the Columbia River. The uranium fuel was irradiated inside the 
reactors to create tiny specks of plutonium in that fuel.
 
The 200 Area is where all the monster-size chemical plants are 
located. They extracted plutonium from the fuel and molded it 
into "buttons." These buttons were shipped elsewhere to be put 
inside the nation's atomic bombs for the four-decade-long nuclear 
stand-off with the former Soviet Union.
 
The 300 Area is that built-up part along Richland's northeast 
border. That's where the reactors' uranium fuel was assembled.
 
In all of these areas, Hanford dumped mega-billions of gallons of 
chemical and radioactive fluids into tanks, pools, ponds and the 
ground.
 
There are many reasons why unimaginable amounts of wastes were 
dumped at Hanford.
 
A big reason was a sort of innocence. People in the 1940s, 1950s 
and early 1960s just did not know nor think much about 
environmental consequences. Ecology just was not on the nation's 
consciousness.
 
Another reason: Hanford operated under Cold War secrecy. So no 
agency really regulated the site's waste disposal matters until 
1989. There wasn't any real legal pressure to address 
environmental problems.
 
And there was a bit of a philosophical outlook that someone would 
take care of the problem in the future.
 
That future is now.
 
In the 1980s, inklings of the scale of Hanford's environmental 
problems oozed through its Cold War secrecy.
 
Then the Cold War ended. The United States didn't need any more 
plutonium. And Hanford quit making it.
 
Hanford and the Tri-Party Agreement
 
Christine Gregoire, then-director of Washington's Department of 
Ecology, wanted to file a lawsuit against the Department of 
Energy in the late 1980s to force it to tackle the unfolding 
problem of cleaning up the world's most contaminated piece of 
land outside of the Soviet Union.
 
But she fretted that DOE's numerous lawyers and deep pockets 
would overwhelm the state's attorneys.
 
Meanwhile, Mike Lawrence, then DOE's Hanford manager, worried 
that the site was wide open for all sorts of environmental 
lawsuits.
 
So Lawrence's and Gregoire's staffs hammered out a legal pact 
called the Tri-Party Agreement, which would, and still does, 
govern Hanford's cleanup.
 
Signed on May 15, 1989, the pact gave DOE some breathing room to 
tackle Hanford's cleanup over a 30-year period. That later was 
modified to 40 years.
 
Meanwhile, the pact gave the state and the Environmental 
Protection Agency unprecedented legal clout to force DOE to stick 
to the cleanup timetables.
 
What goes on out at Hanford
 
In 2002, we're in the 12th year of Hanford's cleanup.
 
And you're wondering what in the hell goes on out there.
 
Actually, many Hanford employees often wonder the same thing.
 
Reorganization is a way of life at Hanford.
 
The companies involved in cleanup constantly change. Their roles 
often change. Sometimes, companies get bored with their names and 
pick new names. Companies get bought out. Companies get fired. 
Companies get gobbled up. Hanford workers constantly shift from 
company to company.
 
The shortest half-lives on the reservation belong to top 
managers. Replacement managers often come with new master plans.
 
Right now, Hanford has two co-equal DOE agencies, four prime 
cleanup contractors, two prime support contractors and dozens of 
subcontractors and so-called sub-subcontractors.
 
The site has three versions of CH2M Hill, two different Fluors, 
two good-sized Bechtels, and at least three Durateks that we know 
of.
 
Despite all of that, cleanup actually gets done and has picked up 
momentum.
 
In 1999 and 2000, Hanford switched from doing lots of studies and 
preparation work to measurable environmental cleanup.
 
What's out there today 

Think of Hanford as a monster punch bowl at a fraternity party 
where all the guests brought their own booze and poured it 
together in the bowl.
 
The site's contaminants are mixed together in a similar way.
 
Hanford has 177 underground tanks holding 53 million gallons of 
highly radioactive wastes. Sixty-seven tanks are suspected of 
leaking more than 1 million gallons of wastes.
 
These are the famous tank farms. The 177 tanks are divided into 
18 clusters. Each cluster is a tank farm.
 
Actually, the tank farms are pretty boring to look at. Above the 
ground, all you can see are some concrete pads with a few pipes 
sticking out. All the tanks and all the nasty radioactive stuff 
are hidden beneath the ground.
 
To get a real feel for the size of a half- to 1-million-gallon 
underground tank, you can drive west from Battelle on Horn Rapids 
Road. A mockup of a tank -- all above ground -- is out there. You 
can't miss it.
 
Also, Hanford dumped 440 billion gallons of slightly radioactive 
fluids directly into the ground -- returning us to the fraternity 
party punch bowl metaphor.
 
Then there are 2,300 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel in two 
water-filled, leak-prone pools 400 yards from the Columbia River. 
And there are 170 square miles of contaminated aquifer beneath 
the ground, with 85 square miles contaminated above federal 
drinking standards. Plus more than four tons of scrap plutonium 
stashed away in the Plutonium Finishing Plant.
 
Overall, Hanford has about 100 different radioactive and chemical 
substances at about 1,500 locations.
 
Some of the nonradioactive chemicals can be pretty dangerous. 
Maybe 30 gallons of these chemicals blew up and blasted a hole 
through the PFP's roof in 1997.
 
Cleanup today
 
Let's start with the two K Basins, which is where the 2,300 tons 
of spent fuel are stored.
 
Simply put, workers are moving the fuel from the pools to a big 
underground storage vault seven miles from the river. But that 
fuel is highly radioactive. So all sorts of Rube Goldberg 
equipment is needed to safely move the stuff.
 
This project is slightly behind schedule but is expected to catch 
up. The last fuel is to be moved by 2004.
 
Then there is "stabilizing" the PFP's different types of 
plutonium into safer forms. Several methods are used, with the 
most common being a complicated type of baking. This is supposed 
to be done by 2004.
 
Experts still are pondering how to fix Hanford's ground water 
problems, although some stop-gap measures are place.
 
Finally there's vitrification -- what you keep hearing referred 
to as "the vit project." This is where Hanford plans to build 
humongous plants to convert the 53 million gallons of tank wastes 
into glass.
 
Construction starts in a few months. The first glass should be 
created in 2006 or 2007, and everyone is aiming to finish 
glassification by 2028.
 
And now, you can bluff your way through most casual conversations 
about Hanford. 

Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This 
*****************************************************************
 38 Hanford-to-Richland worker shuffle flawed
 
Published June 17, 2002
 
The proposed Department of Energy shuffle that would scoot as 
many as 1,700 workers from central Hanford to Richland is out of 
step with good sense.
 
The department has asked Fluor Hanford to come up with a plan to 
move the workers by Sept. 30, 2003. 

The reason? 

Many of the site's buildings, utilities and roads will need 
upgrades soon. Rather than spend the money, DOE would rather move 
workers into town.
 
The idea supposedly is a part of the agency's overall goal to 
speed cleanup. 

But it could have just the opposite effect.
 
"Only personnel with a hands-on need will be located onsite," 
DOE's draft plan says.
 
Is this the same agency that argued in 1993 that spending $6 
million to move a third of the employees in Richland's federal 
building to the Hanford site would improve the department's 
oversight of waste cleanup projects?
 
That reasoning still has relevancy. Too many of Hanford's key 
cleanup projects are still in their infancy for the department to 
put more distance between managers and on-the-ground workers.
 
Cutting corners doesn't further DOE's acceleration plan if it 
leads to more problems - and hence expense - for the projects 
that the agency is trying to expedite.
 
It also is bad for the community. The utility and road 
maintenance costs that DOE is looking to save could well be 
shifted to Richland or the state by putting more workers and 
offices into town. 

And shifting that many workers no doubt will boost the need for 
office space in Richland and doom the Tri-City market to a glut 
during Hanford's next downturn and, eventually, the site's 
closure.
 
The plan doesn't appear good for Hanford business, and it doesn't 
appear good for the community. 

DOE should put the brakes on it. What's your opinon? 

Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This 
*****************************************************************
 39 Group continues effort to turn Hanford A-bomb reactor into museum
 
The Seattle Times: 

By Linda Ashton 
The Associated Press 

RICHLAND — On the banks of the Columbia River, hidden behind the 
protective borders of the Hanford nuclear reservation, is a 
radioactive piece of history that fueled the beginning of the 
Atomic Age. 

B Reactor, built as part of the top-secret World War II Manhattan 
Project, produced the plutonium for the world's first atomic 
bomb, the Trinity test at Alamogordo, N.M., on July 16, 1945. 

It also made the plutonium for the bomb that would be dropped on 
Nagasaki, Japan, less than a month later, effectively ending the 
war. 

"You have people who believe it's an engineering marvel, and 
people who believe it's a monstrosity," said Manny Van Pelt, a 
spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy. 

B Reactor's place in history is undisputed, but its future is 
uncertain. 

For about 11 years, a group called the B Reactor Museum 
Association has been pushing to have it turned into a museum. But 
this spring, Keith Klein, the Energy Department's manager at 
Hanford, said federal funds allocated for cleaning up the 
nation's most-contaminated nuclear site would not be used to open 
the reactor to tourists. 

"There are no plans to preserve it as a museum right now, and 
it's simply because we're in the business of cleaning up the 
site," Van Pelt said. "We're not in the museum business." 

Gene Weisskopf, a member and former president of the museum 
group, would like to see Congress appropriate the money to 
protect and preserve B Reactor, and he's puzzled by the lack of 
national interest in the project. 

"It might be because people don't like to think about nuclear 
weapons and mass annihilation — it's not a topic people like to 
think about — but they love talking about World War II and 
D-Day," he said. 

"People love looking back at that time of great, intense human 
effort and desperate innovation." 

B Reactor was the world's first large-scale nuclear reactor. 
Construction began June 7, 1943, just six months after physicist 
Enrico Fermi turned nuclear theory into reality. 

U.S. Rep. Richard "Doc" Hastings, R-Pasco, would like to see the 
B Reactor end up as a museum. 

"I'm confident we can get it done," he said. 

There are obstacles. The building is almost 60 years old. Part of 
it is radioactive and, naturally, off-limits to the public. The 
core is shielded by 10 tons of lead. 

"The whole thing is sealed to human entry," Van Pelt said. "It's 
not something you can just stand behind a piece of glass and look 
at. It's not the same as walking into the Smithsonian." 

It's also remote — deep inside the 560-square-mile desert 
reservation, an area with tightly controlled access, even more so 
since Sept. 11. 

And then there's the cost of such an undertaking. 

Just to leave the building as it is now costs about $3 million a 
year in maintenance. To open it for tourism would cost more than 
$40 million, Van Pelt said. 

"We'd like to see the history of B Reactor preserved," he said. 
"There are many ways to accomplish this besides preserving the 
reactor itself." 

Other options include keeping extensive records on the B Reactor, 
with photographs, drawings, models, exhibits and written 
histories. Some parts of the reactor could be preserved for 
display at a selected location. 

The advisory committee helping to develop a management plan for 
the Hanford Reach National Monument also could consider the 
future of the reactor. 

The Richland office of the Department of Energy (DOE) has until 
September 2005 to prepare its recommendation on the future of the 
reactor, one of nine at Hanford. 

"Our primary focus is on accelerating cleanup of the river 
corridor," Van Pelt said. "Unless non-DOE funds are available to 
make the reactor safe for the public and maintain it, the 
department will most likely decide ... to cocoon it." 

With cocooning, the reactor building would be reinforced, cleaned 
up as much as possible and closed, presumably to sit undisturbed 
for up to 75 years. 

Still, the DOE would welcome proposals from capable partners who 
could find the money to save the reactor. 

"We want to give everybody who is concerned about B Reactor the 
opportunity to get their plans rolling," Van Pelt said. 

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
 40 DOE's cancer isotope project moving forward 

The Oak Ridger Online -- Feature: Business -- 

06/17/02
 
by Paul Parson 
Oak Ridger staff 

At long last the Department of Energy has issued a final request 
for proposals for a private company to convert a stockpile of Oak 
Ridge nuclear material into a weapon against cancer.

 Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced in September 2000 
that it planned to work with the private sector to provide a 
long-term supply of bismuth-213, which has shown promise as a 
tool for treating cancer. A draft request for proposals was 
released in January 2001.

 Bismuth-213 is a decay product of uranium-233. Oak Ridge 
National Laboratory stores around 1.5 metric tons of uranium, 
containing 450 kilograms of U-233, that was originally produced 
at DOE's nuclear defense production plants, according to 
information provided by DOE.

 For the past several years, DOE has provided bismuth-213 for 
clinical trials at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New 
York City for the treatment of acute myelogenous leukemia, and it 
is also being explored in the treatment of lung, pancreatic and 
kidney cancer.

 In November 2001, DOE headquarters prematurely notified the news 
media that the final request for proposals had been issued. The 
federal agency quickly retracted that press release, saying that 
the requests were on hold until a detailed project plan could be 
submitted to Congress.

 Jeff Sherwood, a spokesman for DOE headquarters, and officials 
with the federal agency's Oak Ridge Operations office confirmed 
this morning that the request for proposals issued Friday 
afternoon is the "final" one.

 In a statement to the press, Abraham said: "DOE has an important 
responsibility to clean up the dangerous materials and old 
contaminated structures left over from the Cold War. That we can 
fulfill this mission while producing valuable new tools in the 
fight against cancer is an exciting and unique opportunity." The 
initial award of the contract is anticipated in spring 2003.
 
Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or 
pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] .

All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger 
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 41 Oak Ridge lab gets 20th 'user facility' designation 

The Oak Ridger Online -- Feature: Business -- 

06/17/02
 
by Paul Parson 
Oak Ridger staff 

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Cooling, Heating and Power 
Integration Laboratory will enable researchers from industries, 
universities and other institutions to conduct tests on what's 
known as distributed energy products and systems.

 Distributed generation is electricity produced on site using 
fuel cells, microturbines and renewable electric systems, 
according to information from ORNL. The Cooling, Heating and 
Power Integration Laboratory contains a 30-kilowatt microturbine, 
heat recovery units and dehumidifiers to test distributed energy 
sources and projects.

 Lab officials said distributed energy resources make use of 
energy normally wasted in the generation of power by combining 
electricity with heating and cooling systems.

 This type of power generation is creating a new industry of 
custom-designed programmable features to meet specific energy 
needs for factories, hospitals, and office and commercial 
buildings.

 Integrating building, cooling, heating and electricity systems 
with on-site or near-site electricity generation could increase 
energy efficiency by as much as 30 percent, reduce carbon 
emissions by 45 percent or more and improve indoor air quality 
through humidity control, according to an ORNL press release.

 The ORNL research center has been designated as the 20th 
national user facility at the federal laboratory. Officials 
acknowledged this designation during a ceremony at the lab this 
morning.

 User facilities allow researchers to conduct proprietary and 
nonproprietary work as well as foster collaborative efforts among 
ORNL, private industry and other institutions. ORNL's Office of 
Technology Transfer and Economic Development coordinates these 
efforts.

 Seven companies have been selected as industry partners to 
develop package systems, and some will be the first customers of 
the Cooling, Heating and Power Integration user center. They are 
Burns and McDonnell, the Gas Technology Institute, NiSource 
Energy Technologies, Capstone Turbine Corp., Honeywell 
Laboratories, United Technologies Research Center and Ingersol 
Rand.
 
Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or 
[pparson@oakridger.com] .

All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger 
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 42 DOE Initiative Will Convert Weapons Program Legacy Material into 
Weapon Against Cancer Energy Department Issues Request for 
Proposals to Increase the Supply of Medical Isotopes for Clinical 
Trials and Cancer Treatment 

energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release
    
RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2002              

WASHINGTON, DC -- As part of an initiative to clean up Cold War 
legacy sites, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced today 
that it will accept proposals from private companies to provide a 
large-scale, long-term source of medical isotopes that have shown 
tremendous promise in the treatment of deadly cancers. DOE's 
initiative will increase the supply of these medical isotopes by 
5,000 percent. The initial award of this phased contract is 
anticipated in spring 2003. This Request for Proposals, No. 
DE-RP05-00OR22860, is available at [http://www.nuclear.gov] . 

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory stores uranium, containing 
uranium-233, that was originally produced at DOE's nuclear 
defense production plants. This material is stored at a 
laboratory facility that dates back to the Manhattan Project and 
that requires expensive environmental, criticality and security 
controls. The project announced today, integrated with the 
building cleanup and deactivation work, will also enable the 
extraction of valuable medical isotopes as the material is 
stabilized. The department has used this material to provide 
modest quantities of bismuth-213 for the past five years. 

Bismuth-213 is a decay product of uranium-233 that is being used 
in cancer treatment research, such as the human clinical trials 
for the treatment of acute myologenous leukemia. Bismuth-213 is 
also being explored in the treatment of cancer of the lungs, 
pancreas and kidneys. The isotope is bound to monoclonal 
antibodies that attack the cancer while minimizing the impact on 
surrounding tissues. 

"DOE has an important responsibility to clean up the dangerous 
materials and old contaminated structures left over from the Cold 
War," Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said. "That we can 
fulfill this mission while producing valuable new tools in the 
fight against cancer is an exciting and unique opportunity." 

For over 50 years, the department has led the development of 
isotopes for medical diagnosis and treatment and for industrial 
uses -- this was possible because of the expertise and 
infrastructure that emerged from its core national security 
missions. Today, DOE provides isotopes to the medical research 
community, in support of other federal agencies such as the 
National Institutes of Health and others, by making its 
facilities and expertise available so that therapeutics can be 
developed to control or defeat serious illnesses, such as 
leukemia and other cancers. 

                                                         Each 
year, 600 deliveries of over 215 types of isotopes are made to 
over 300 domestic and international customers – including 
hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and industrial customers. At 
the department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos 
National Laboratory, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental 
Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory, more than ten 
facilities produce radioactive isotopes. 

DOE works with many organizations around the world to ensure the 
availability of vital medical isotopes. Examples include a 
public/private partnership with a company in Boston, 
Massachusetts, to bring yttrium-90, a promising new medical 
isotope for treatment of many cancers, to the market and a 
partnership with University of California – Davis to provide 
technology and source material for production of iodine 125 for 
treatment of prostate cancer. 

Media Contact: Joe Davis, 202/586-4940 Hope Williams, 
202/586-5806 

Release No. PR-02-106
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 43 DOE Says District Court Decision Means Plutonium Shipments Can 
Start As Soon As June 22nd

energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release

RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2002

Washington, D.C. - The following declaration by the Department of 
Energy's Legal Counsel has been provided to the 4th Circuit 
United States Court of Appeals and counsel for South Carolina 
Governor Jim Hodges. It is relevant to DOE plans for shipments of 
weapons grade plutonium from its Rocky Flats, Colorado facility 
to the Savannah River Site. The Department of Energy also made 
the following statement with regards to Governor Jim Hodges' 
Executive Order to shutdown South Carolina interstate highways to 
national security shipments. 

Joe Davis, DOE spokesman, said, "We appreciate the District 
Court's expeditious ruling in favor of the Federal Government. As 
part of that proceeding, we said that we would not begin 
shipments before June 15th. As a practical and logistical matter 
related to our transportation operations, the earliest date that 
the Department could begin national security shipments of weapons 
grade plutonium to South Carolina is June 22nd. The Court's 
decision allows DOE to move forward with plutonium shipments to 
South Carolina from Rocky Flats, Colorado, and the Department 
intends to proceed with those shipments." 

With regards to Governor Hodges' issuance of an Executive Order 
directing the South Carolina Department of Public Safety to shut 
down South Carolina highways to shipments of plutonium, Davis 
said, "The Court made clear its view that under the Constitution, 
the Governor has no authority to interfere with the Department of 
Energy's shipments of plutonium. The Court granted no order 
against the Governor's doing so only because it presumed that the 
Governor would not engage in unconstitutional self-help. We are 
extremely disappointed the Governor has chosen to totally 
disregard the Court's admonition and intend to ask the Department 
of Justice to seek further relief from the court as expeditiously 
as possible." 

Text of Declaration Submitted to U.S. 4th Circuit Court of 
Appeals 

"Following entry of the District Court's judgment in this case I 
consulted with the DOE program official who will be responsible 
for effectuating the shipment of plutonium from Rocky Flats to 
the Savannah River Site to ascertain the earliest date on which 
such shipments could commence. I have been advised that, given 
the necessary logistics involved, the earliest date on which a 
shipment could be ready to leave Rocky Flats would be June 22, 
2002." - Lee Liberman Otis, General Counsel, U.S. Department of 
Energy. 

Media Contact: Joe Davis, 202-586-4940 

Release No. PR-02-109

    
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