***************************************************************** 03/18/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.69 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: ALERT: PREVENT BIG HANDOUTS TO NUCLEAR INDUSTRY!!! 2 South Korea to enter nuclear power plant business in Romania 3 UK: Move to avoid shortage of skills in nuclear industry 4 US: Editorial: Influence plays big on energy NUCLEAR REACTORS 5 US: NRC to Meet with TVA Officials to Discuss Safety Performance at 6 Dismantling of Fugen to cost Y84 bil 7 Armenian official says nuclear station to close in 2008 8 RWE not using nuclear decommission cash for acquisitions 9 Turbo-generator at Lithuanian nuclear plant switched off due to 10 US: Accidents Weigh On Consumers' Minds: 11 US: PAC money helps defeat Vermont Yankee nuke votes 12 US: NRC to Meet with Duke Energy Officials to Discuss Safety 13 US: NRC to Meet with Southern Nuclear Officials to Discuss Safety NUCLEAR SAFETY 14 US: Despite New Tools, Detecting Nuclear Material Is Doubtful 15 UK: MOD proposes new research programme into DU munitions NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 16 US: Letter: President was disrespectful, not Sen. Reid 17 US: Letter: Let's make deal on waste storage 18 US: DOE files petition to keep water on at Yucca 19 US: Las Vegas SUN: Video shows nuclear cask risks 20 US: Goshutes Reject Mediator, Feuding leaders snub election offer by 21 US: WIPP: Plutonium Boom Has Town Glowing 22 US: Maine Questions NRC on Spent Fuel Transport 23 US: Perspectives: Why Yucca Mountain is the place NUCLEAR WEAPONS 24 The 'dirty bomb' threatens both Russia and the US 25 US: Bush Finds That Ambiguity Is Part of Nuclear Deterrence 26 US: New Nuclear Policy Makes for a Safer World 27 New Zealand PM says nuclear-free policy reinforced by 11 28 Clinging to Outdated Dogmas 29 Iran: Daily interviews N-Korean envoy on "US nuclear threat" 30 After 20 years, nuclear protesters face eviction 31 New Zealand to Keep Nuclear Ship Ban 32 US: OP: Nuclear Posture review in defense of it 33 US: U.S. to begin work on nuclear bunker buster 34 Terror convicts told of nuclear threats 35 US: Nuclear arsenal upgrade planned 'Bunker buster' marks a shift in 36 US: HOW'M I GLOWIN'? KOCH AIRS OLD SCARE 37 US: Troubling Nuclear Review 38 US: The nuclear option is back on the table 39 US: Makings of a 'Dirty Bomb' 40 US: New nuclear policy has troubling implications 41 US: U.S. should keeps its nuclear posture strong 42 US: The point of keeping nukes 43 Senators seek approval of Russian arms deal 44 FBI Alerts Allies on Al Qaeda's Nuclear Plans 45 US: Is Bush readier to use nukes? 46 US: Nuclear arsenal upgrade planned 47 US: Nuclear arms scientists may lack 'sense of mission' 48 US: Bomb lost off Georgia coast sparks new concerns 49 Russia Satisfied With U.S. Plan US DEPT. OF ENERGY 50 Interview: DOE's nuclear bloodhound 51 Letter: DOE is accountable 52 Boxer & Feinstein urge DOE to clean up Santa Susana 53 Does Goliath want bubble fusion to fail? 54 UNLV to archive medical records of NTS workers OTHER NUCLEAR 55 Obituary: Professor George Rochester ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 ALERT: PREVENT BIG HANDOUTS TO NUCLEAR INDUSTRY!!! Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 15:58:55 -0600 (CST) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 15:37:28 -0500 From: Michael Mariotte To: cindyf Subject: Senate Energy Bill S 517: UPDATE AND ALERT YOUR ACTION NEEDED ALERT FROM NIRS (Nuclear Information and Resource Service) www.nirs.org SENATE ENERGY BILL S 517 PACKED WITH MORE TAXPAYER HANDOUTS TO NUCLEAR INDUSTRY! We need your continued action on this issue. This is a remarkably BAD energy bill and passage of amendments like the ones below are unacceptable for anyone who cares about real energy independence. For those of you who have already contacted your Senators about S 517, Thank You. If you haven't done so yet, please do. The Senate could vote on S 517 as early as this week. Senate recess begins March 25, 2002 so if S 517 does not pass this week, it will be brought up after the Senate reconvenes on April 8, 2002. Please also consider meeting with your Senator(s) if S 517 fails to pass before recess. If your Senators don't hear from you they will vote for the industry. The following is a list of amendments which have been added to the Senate Energy Bill (S 517), (list and summary courtesy of Public Interest Research Group). PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS. TELL THEM TO VOTE AGAINST S 517. Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121. Find your Senators' email and fax numbers at www.senate.gov. NUCLEAR AMENDMENTS TO S. 517 (as of March 13) SA 2987 - Craig Extends authorization for "Fusion Energy Sciences Program" three additional years beyond the period stipulated in the original bill. Now authorizes $1.4 billion for years 2003 to 2006. SA 2995 - Craig DOE to carry out "Nuclear Power 2010 Program": an aggressive program to facilitate the construction and start-up of new nuclear plants by 2010. Includes cooperation between DOE, private sector and international collaborators - as well as "demonstrate new regulatory processes for next generation nuclear power plants". SA 2983 - Voinovich Reauthorizes Price-Anderson nuclear subsidy for commercial reactors to 2012. Treats group of modular reactors totaling under 1,300 KW as one reactor. SA 3009 - Domenici Establishes the Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel Research within the Office of Nuclear Science and technology of the DOE. Will carry out integrated research, development and demonstration programs on technologies for treatment, recycling and disposal of high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel. SA 3011 - Landrieu Directs the Secretary of Energy to study designs for a high temperature nuclear reactor capable of producing large-scale quantities of hydrogen using thermo-chemical processes. ***************************************************************** 2 South Korea to enter nuclear power plant business in Romania BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 18, 2002 Text of report in English by South Korean news agency Yonhap Seoul, 18 March: Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) will sign an agreement with the National Company Nuclearelectrica (SNN) of Romania at the KHNP's head office in Seoul Tuesday, the KHNP said Monday [18 March]. Under the accord, the KHNP will provide technical aid for the operation of the Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant No 1. and will help with the establishment of the No 2 plant, which is currently under construction. Romania launched construction of heavy water nuclear reactor power stations in the late 1970's but only finished construction of the No.1 plant due to financial problems. The No 2 plant is due for completion in 2005. Source: Yonhap news agency, Seoul, in English 0831 gmt 18 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 3 UK: Move to avoid shortage of skills in nuclear industry Financial Times; Mar 16, 2002 By BEN HUNT The Department of Trade and Industry moved yesterday to avoid a skills shortage in the nuclear and radiological industries with the commission of two studies. The DTI, backed by four other departments, has commissioned a skills audit of the industry's demands and its ability to meet them, as well as a foresight study that aims to predict the shape of the industry. The studies will cover a range of activities from nuclear clean-up to the use of radiology in medicine. Brian Wilson, energy and industry minister, said the country did not yet have a skills crisis, but could avoid one if only action were taken immediately to identify the right skills and the right numbers of workers needed. "The key issue for the future is to ensure that the UK has the capability to exploit technologies using radiation in healthcare, defence and other sectors, as well as ensuring the protection of existing nuclear plant and decommissioning activities," he said. The government would use the foresight report, due in May, as the foundation of a "stimulation" phase to encourage a flow of workers into nuclear industries. More than 4,000 companies are registered with the Environment Agency as users of radioactive materials, while 8,500 people are employed in nuclear power generation. Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 1995-2002 ***************************************************************** 4 Editorial: Influence plays big on energy Las Vegas SUN March 18, 2002 A report by a public interest group and two Senate votes last week demonstrated the dominance that special interest groups and their huge campaign donations still hold over our nation's energy policy. Common Cause's study documented how the nuclear power industry gave nearly $30 million to congressional lawmakers in the last decade. It shows the uphill battle Nevada faces as it resists a future where caravans containing deadly nuclear waste roll across the nation to Yucca Mountain. Common Cause's Andy Draheim asked, "How can anyone in Nevada, or anywhere in the nation, be expected to believe that Yucca Mountain is being driven by the public interest, and not the special interest, with so much money changing hands?" Conservation and alternative fuels had no chance last week in the Senate. On Wednesday legislation to increase fuel efficiency standards in vehicles was defeated 62-38. The proposal, which generated much opposition from auto companies and the United Auto Workers, would have required the average miles-per-gallon to rise from 27 to 36 by 2013. Nevada's Democratic Sen. Harry Reid voted for the bill while Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, voted against it. On Thursday the Senate voted 70-29 against a bill that would have required utilities to generate 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. Again, Reid voted for the proposal, Ensign against. Ensign's vote is ironic since a new Nevada law requires that 15 percent of the state's energy come from renewable sources by 2015. Money's influence in politics has resulted in terrible policies, including the drive to bury nuclear waste in Nevada. And those members of Congress who pass up conservation measures, such as increased fuel efficiency for vehicles, often are the same ones who would needlessly drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, even though to do so would permanently damage the environment there. Meanwhile wind, geothermal, solar, hydrogen and other renewable energy sources aren't being tapped to anywhere near their potential. "Green power" advocates just don't have enough of the right kind of green -- cash -- to make a difference in Washington. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 5 NRC to Meet with TVA Officials to Discuss Safety Performance at Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant NRC: Press Release Region II - 2002 - 16 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region II 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30303 www.nrc.gov No. II-02-016 March 18, 2002 CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416 Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: opa2@nrc.gov [opa2@nrc.gov] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with Tennessee Valley Authority officials on Wednesday, March 27, to discuss the results of NRC's annual assessment of safety performance at the Watts Bar nuclear power plant. The meeting will be held at 2:00 p.m. in the Andrew Johnson Room at the Best Western Motel, 1421 Murray's Chapel Road in Sweetwater, Tennessee. The public is invited to observe the meeting, and NRC officials will be available before the meeting is adjourned to answer any questions. A letter sent from the NRC's Regional Administrator to TVA, which addresses plant safety performance during the previous year and forms the basis of the meeting discussion, is available from Region II Public Affairs or on the NRC web site at www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/wb_2001q4.pdf [PDF Icon] Current information for the Watts Bar plant is available at www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/WB1/wb1_chart.html ***************************************************************** 6 Dismantling of Fugen to cost Y84 bil Japan Today Monday, March 18, 2002 at 18:00 JST TOKYO The dismantling of the Fugen advanced thermal reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, will cost some 84 billion yen, sources at the government-operated Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute said Monday. While it will take some 30 years from 2010 to dismantle the reactor, several billion yen will be needed annually by that year for maintenance in addition to the estimated 84 billion yen, they said, adding that expenses will likely exceed 100 billion yen. (Kyodo News) ***************************************************************** 7 Armenian official says nuclear station to close in 2008 BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 18, 2002 Text of report by Armenian news agency Arminfo Yerevan, 15 March: Armenia's nuclear power station is going to function till 2008, Armenian Deputy Energy Minister Areg Galstyan said today in the Supreme Council club. According to him, the calculations show that given the amount of (?investments) and the rise in energy consumption, the power station can be closed down only in 2008, as opposed to 2004 - the date that the European Union (EU) insists on. Under the agreement reached with the EU, the power station will be closed after the creation of alternative energy sources, the deputy minister recalled. The issue of nuclear power station is included in the program on the stable development of the Armenian energy sector till 2030, Galstyan stressed. The Armenian nuclear power station was reopened in 1995 thanks to a 30m-dollar Russian credit. At present only one, the 440-MW power unit, is functioning. The station accounts for 40 per cent of the energy produced in Armenia. Source: Arminfo, Yerevan, in Russian 1600 gmt 15 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 8 RWE not using nuclear decommission cash for acquisitions AFX (UK); Mar 18, 2002 ESSEN (AFX) - RWE AG is not paying for acquisitions with money from its decommissioning funds for nuclear power plants, said RWE Power AG spokeswoman Stephanie Schunck. At last weekend's EU summit in Barcelona, the Green/EFA group of the European Parliament alleged utility companies such as E.ON AG, RWE AG and Electricite de France are using decommissioning funds for acquisitions. "The provisions we must put aside for the decommissioning of nuclear power plants are not being used for acquisitions," said Schunck. RWE had set aside 9.5 bln eur in provisions by the end of its business year 2000/2001 for its 3 nuclear power plants. RWE is currently being linked in the UK media to an offer of between 270-275 pence per share, or around 3 bln stg in total, for Innogy Holdings PLC. In June last year, German power companies came to an agreement with the government to shut down nuclear plants after they have been operational for 32 years. das/jmp For more information and to contact AFX: www.afxnews.com and www.afxpress.com ***************************************************************** 9 Turbo-generator at Lithuanian nuclear plant switched off due to malfunction BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 18, 2002 Vilnius, 18 March: The repairs of one out of two turbo-generators at one of Lithuanian Ignalina nuclear power plant's (INPP) two power units continue on Monday [18 March], the power station's administration reported. It said that the first turbo-generator of Ignalina's power unit one was turned off at 2141 [local time, 1941 gmt] on Friday [15 March] due to a malfunction at the electricity current activation system. According to the press release issued on Monday, the radiation environment at the power plant's grounds and beyond has not changed. The Ignalina information centre told BNS that the cause behind a technical error was still investigated, with plans keep the turbo generator closed for repairs for about a week. On Monday, power unit one operated at a capacity of 650 megawatts, while power unit two with both turbo-generators active worked at a capacity of 950 megawatts... Source: BNS news agency, Tallinn, in English 1150 gmt 18 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 10 Accidents Weigh On Consumers' Minds: From The Tampa Tribune By CHERIE JACOBS cjacobs@tampatrib.com Published: Mar 18, 2002 The words ``nuclear power'' can spark vivid memories of the world's two serious nuclear plant accidents. ``I think memories of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl will probably always be with us,'' said Jim Owen, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association for utilities. ``Things are a lot different than they were in 1979.'' Plants today are safer than ever, experts say. No one ever has been killed in a nuclear accident in the United States. But that doesn't stop people from flashing back to: * Three Mile Island, Harrisburg, Pa. On March 28, 1979, one of the reactors at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant suffered a partial meltdown and was dangerously close to complete meltdown. No one was seriously injured, but it was the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. No new plants have been ordered since the Three Mile Island accident; orders for 91 others were canceled. National regulations were stiffened, and countless modifications were required at plants nationwide as the public lost its fascination with nuclear energy. Babcock &Wilcox, the company that designed Three Mile Island, also designed Crystal River's nuclear unit for Florida Power Corp. * Chernobyl Power Plant, Ukraine. On April 26, 1986, worker errors and explosions released radiation from the Soviet plant. The accident killed 32 people immediately and sent a radioactive cloud across Europe. The explosion affected millions of people. More than 4,000 cleanup workers have died since, and 70,000 have been disabled by radiation in Ukraine alone. It continues to have lasting health effects on residents, such as thyroid cancer and birth defects. The plant was shut down permanently in December 2000. Reporter Cherie Jacobs can be reached at (813) 259-7668. [http://archive.tampatrib.com/] ***************************************************************** 11 PAC money helps defeat Vermont Yankee nuke votes Worcester Telegram &Gazette Online Sunday, March 17, 2002 By David Gram THE ASSOCIATED PRESS MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Vermont Yankee's political action committee spent nearly $160,000 to defeat nonbinding referendums on Town Meeting Day that called for closing the Vernon nuclear plant. It's believed to be the largest political expenditure ever made in connection with Town Meeting Day in Vermont. Citizens Against the Shutdown of Vermont Yankee raised $227,141 to defeat referendums placed on town meeting agendas in nine towns near the plant in southeastern Vermont. Vermont Yankee's PAC lost in seven of the nine towns, where annual meetings voted from the floor to approve the nonbinding resolution. Those were Putney, Dummerston, Newfane, Marlboro, Brookline, Guilford and Westminster. It won in Townshend, home of retiring Vermont Yankee President Ross Barkhurst. And the Vermont Yankee PAC won in the biggest town, Brattleboro, by a wide enough margin to offset the votes in the smaller towns. Votes were counted in eight towns; when all are added together, Vermont Yankee's PAC won by a vote of 2,471 to 2,315. One town -- Marlboro -- easily passed the resolution on an uncounted voice vote. The resolution called on state officials to block the pending sale of Vermont Yankee to Entergy Nuclear of Mississippi and urged that the plant be closed down “at the earliest possible date.” Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz, whose office received the campaign finance filing from Vermont Yankee on Friday, expressed surprise at the size of the expenditure. Markowitz noted that the referendums were nonbinding and had no force of law, but she said the win in a vote of its neighbors was an important public relations coup for Vermont Yankee. “They got their $100,000 worth,” she said, adding, “It's a lot of money, though, when you think about security issues and other things they could be spending money on.” Much of the Town Meeting Day debate in communities where residents voted at annual meetings centered on concerns about the plant's vulnerability to terrorist attacks in this post-Sept. 11 environment. The filings, which Markowitz said Vermont Yankee was not required by law to submit to her office, showed that the plant contributed nearly $181,000 of the more than $227,000 raised by its PAC, with much of the balance coming from plant employees and unions that represent workers there. The plant's backers made much of the boost Vermont Yankee gives the local economy. Its political campaign, though, made its biggest payments -- totaling $63,000 -- to a Boston polling firm. When Jane Southworth of Brattleboro, one of a loose-knit group of nuclear critics who worked for the referendum, was told of Vermont Yankee's campaign finance filing, she uttered a common expletive, the first word of which was “Holy.” Southworth estimated her group spent less than $1,000 -- much of it in donated time by volunteers. “It feels like a bought election,” she said. Brian Cosgrove, head of public relations at Vermont Yankee and former executive director of the Vermont Republican Party, spearheaded the plant's campaign. Messages left Friday at Cosgrove's home and office were not immediately returned. Sunday, March 17, 2002 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp. ***************************************************************** 12 NRC to Meet with Duke Energy Officials to Discuss Safety Performance at Oconee Nuclear Power Plant NRC: Press Release Region II - 2002 - 14 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region II 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30303 www.nrc.gov No. II-02-014 March 18, 2002 CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416 Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: [opa2@nrc.gov] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with Duke Energy officials on Monday, March 25, to discuss the results of NRC's annual assessment of safety performance at the Oconee nuclear power plant. The meeting will be held at 1:00 p.m. in the World of Energy at the Oconee site near Seneca, South Carolina. The public is invited to observe the meeting, and NRC officials will be available before the meeting is adjourned to answer any questions. A letter sent from the NRC's Regional Administrator to Duke Energy, which addresses plant safety performance during the previous year and forms the basis of the meeting discussion, is available from Region II Public Affairs or on the NRC web site at www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/oco_2001q4.pdf [PDF Icon] Current information for the three units at the Oconee plant is available at www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/OCO1/oco1_chart.html www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/OCO2/oco2_chart.html and www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/OCO3/oco3_chart.html ***************************************************************** 13 NRC to Meet with Southern Nuclear Officials to Discuss Safety Performance at Farley Nuclear Power Plant NRC: Press Release Region II - 2002 - 15 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region II 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30303 www.nrc.gov No. II-02-015 March 18, 2002 CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416 Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: opa2@nrc.gov [opa2@nrc.gov] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with Southern Nuclear Operating Company officials on Wednesday, March 27, to discuss the results of NRC's annual assessment of safety performance at the Farley nuclear power plant. The meeting will be held at 10:00 a.m. (CST) in the Houston County Administration Building, 462 North Oats Street in Dothan, Alabama. The public is invited to observe the meeting, and NRC officials will be available before the meeting is adjourned to answer any questions. A letter sent from the NRC's Regional Administrator to Southern Nuclear, which addresses plant safety performance during the previous year and forms the basis of the meeting discussion, is available from Region II Public Affairs or on the NRC web site at www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/far_2001q4.pdf [PDF Icon] Current information for the two units at the Farley plant is available at www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/FAR1/far1_chart.html and www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/FAR2/far2_chart.html ***************************************************************** 14 Despite New Tools, Detecting Nuclear Material Is Doubtful March 18, 2002 By JAMES GLANZ Since Sept. 11, the federal government has sharply increased support for research into advanced sensors that could detect nuclear weapons or so-called dirty bombs if they fall into the hands of terrorists in the United States. Last week, several national laboratories unveiled an ultrasensitive hand-held radiation detector weighing 10 pounds that could join bomb- sniffing dogs as an essential tool for emergency response teams. But nuclear terrorism experts say that even the latest detection technologies — and others that are the focus of research — face forbidding odds. Ultimately, the experts said, all detectors are likely to meet a brick wall imposed by the laws of physics. Without intelligence information to narrow the search, "needle in a haystack" is far too mild a phrase, said Dr. Steven Fetter, a physicist and security expert who is a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland. "If you tell me there's a warhead in New York, it's just hopeless," Dr. Fetter said. "You just hope you never get to the point where you have to track down one of these in a city." The question that the post-Sept. 11 world has put to security officials is in a sense simple: If terrorists with nuclear material were loose in the United States, how would anyone know, and how could such weapons be hunted down if the nation knew they were out there, somewhere? The question is not hypothetical. Terrorist groups like Al Qaeda have made recent efforts to obtain nuclear materials, and a senior administration official said in an interview that the government had been forced to deploy its Nuclear Emergency Search Team in the months since the World Trade Center attacks. The official would not elaborate, saying only that the NEST deployments had taken place in the United States. To anyone without a background in nuclear physics, the answers may be unexpected and more than a little disconcerting. The question boils down to whether the radiation emitted from an illicit weapon would announce its presence to state-of-the- art detectors, allowing the material to be found and a horrific act stopped. Several facts of physics make such a search overwhelming at best. The first problem may be obvious. A sophisticated terrorist could shield a bomb in a radiation-blocking material like lead. On the positive side, the shield might have to be so bulky that a terrorist could not move quickly without being noticed. But some of the most dangerous nuclear materials, those that could be used in an atomic bomb, are not very radioactive, giving searchers little to go on. Moreover, earth's natural radiation can easily mask a distant radiation source's signal. Scientists seem to agree that arrays of permanent nuclear detectors should be deployed in heavily populated areas and politically and symbolically important buildings. But they add that the nation also has to promote tight controls on nuclear materials, some of which have common industrial and medicinal uses. "We plainly need to take a new look at the procedures by which people obtain these high levels of radioactive material," said Dr. Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, who spoke at a Senate hearing this month. "The risks are quite high." The threats from radioactive materials come in two forms. One, the dirty bomb, would use a conventional explosive to disperse a radioactive material to sow terror and cause health problems, including cancer. Dirty bombs would rely on substances like radioactive cesium, cobalt, iridium and strontium that are used to kill pathogens in food processing plants, as probes to test welds and pipelines and in many medical treatments. All those materials are intense emitters of gamma rays, a kind of high-energy version of X-rays. While gamma rays are what make the materials useful for medicine and industry, extremely high doses can also increase the cancer risk in people. The hand-held Cryo3 detector, based on the radiation-sensitive element germanium, was developed to find gamma ray "fingerprints" of such materials in a collaboration between three Energy Department national laboratories: Lawrence Berkeley, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Germanium is not only highly sensitive to gamma rays; it also determines their precise energies. Since each type of radioactive material emits different gamma ray energies, "you can make a much more informed decision about what your next step might be," said Michael O'Connell, a program leader in the National Nuclear Security Administration. Germanium detectors are generally bulky, laboratory-scale devices, Mr. O'Connell said. Because of several technical advances, including a miniaturized cooling engine for the germanium, the new system could be used by urban bomb squads as well as NEST groups, he said. Since Sept. 11, the security administration's annual budget for nuclear sensor development has been doubled, to $20 million. A spokeswoman estimated that federal laboratories are spending another $14 million to $18 million on the problem. Much deadlier, and harder to obtain, would be nuclear bombs based on uranium or plutonium. Experts' worst nightmare is that a small nuclear weapon from the former Soviet arsenal would be smuggled into the United States. These elements are relatively feeble emitters of gamma rays, as Dr. Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, points out. The trick in detecting them is to look for neutrons, subatomic particles with no electrical charge. Neutrons are difficult to detect. The government is working on improved and more mobile neutron detectors, Mr. O'Connell said. Even before the new advances, the nation was not without a capacity to respond quickly to potential nuclear threats. The NEST squads are outfitted with equipment like belt-clip detectors the size of pagers and more powerful sensors in vehicles. How likely is it that a team could detect a dirty bomb or small nuclear weapon in a van taking Interstate 95 to Washington? Dr. Frank N. von Hippel, a physicist who teaches science policy at Princeton University, said Russia and the United States ran a joint exercise in 1989 that found that under ideal conditions warheads could be detected from more than 200 feet away. "They showed that U.S. and Soviet warheads were quite detectable," Dr. von Hippel said. "That might not necessarily be true for a terrorist warhead." But given the uncertainty surrounding the unthinkable prospect of a chase for loose nuclear weapons or dirty bombs, most authorities agree that the sole airtight solution is to control the materials at their source. "The moral of the story is you lock up nuclear materials as well as you can lock them up," said Dr. Fetter, of the University of Maryland. "Once you let them get out, the problem is a thousand times harder." Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information ***************************************************************** 15 UK: MOD proposes new research programme into DU munitions MOD press releasePublished Friday 15th March 2002 The Ministry of Defence announced on 14 March that whilst it believed the deployment of depleted uranium ammunition to pose minimal health risks, it was considered desirable to conduct a programme of peer-reviewed research involving independent institutions to respond to concerns that have been raised. The aim is to help set the risks to our own forces from not using depleted uranium munitions against certain difficult targets, such as modern armour, in the context of any possible health hazards its deployment might pose. It is clear that depleted uranium ammunition is likely to remain an essential option for British forces, given advances in tank armour and the like. And it is also clear that British forces on operations are likely to encounter depleted uranium munitions deployed by allies, partners and opponents. Therefore, although the MOD believes DU munitions to pose an actual health risk under only the most extreme of conditions, further research can only be to the good. The proposal for the research programme is set out in full here. ***************************************************************** 16 Letter: President was disrespectful, not Sen. Reid Las Vegas SUN March 18, 2002 This is in response to Douglas Bryant's March 4 letter in which he faults Sen. Harry Reid for having dared to speak up and "tell it as it is" regarding President Bush's approval of Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste dump. Bryant calls it a personal attack by the senator for having said that GWB lied and by calling him a liar. The definition of a liar is "one who has told a lie or who lies." The definition of a lie is "a false statement or action made with the intent to deceive." Does this not accurately describe the entire scenario to a "T" Mr. Bryant? You assert that Mr. Reid was disrespectful. The office of the presidency does (and should) command the due respect of all ... but where is it written that respect is "unequivocally guaranteed" to the person who occupies (in this case "appointed to") that office? Respect is a virtue to be earned and maintained and is a two-way street. Where is the respect that GWB should have extended to the residents of Nevada by considering our justified concerns, fears and objections? We have been completely ignored in favor of his darlings in the energy industry. Are our lives, welfare and future well-being worth less than those who live in the other 49 states? For you to infer, Mr. Bryant, that Nevadans will come across to the White House and the rest of the nation as name-calling, unpatriotic desert-renegades is as insulting as one can possibly get. LAVERGNE UZARSKI All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 17 Letter: Let's make deal on waste storage Las Vegas SUN March 18, 2002 Let's tell the country we are for sale. Eventually, the nuclear waste is going to come to Yucca Mountain, whether we like it or not. So why not make a deal? A lot of time, money and energy could be saved if we accept the country's nuclear waste for a price and end the protesting. I am thinking about $5,000 per citizen, per year for the life of the storage facility. In round figures, that would be about $7.5 billion per year. We could shut up, and life could go on. This could be a bargain price for the nuclear industry, considering the billions of dollars already spent on the project. Of course, for those looking ahead -- by the year 3000 -- Nevada residents could have been paid over 75 trillion, but who is counting, there would be many years of storage left. DON CARDIFF All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 18 DOE files petition to keep water on at Yucca Las Vegas SUN March 18, 2002 By Cy Ryan SUN CAPITAL BUREAU CARSON CITY -- The U.S. Energy Department has gone to court to stop the state from cutting off water at the proposed nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain on April 9. In a petition filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas last week, the department said state Engineer Hugh Ricci's decision to refuse to extend temporary water permits contradicts state law. Without water, the complaint said, the DOE won't be able to complete scientific studies to provide "a reasonable assurance that the public and the environment will be adequately protected from the hazards posed by high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel." The Energy Department added the petition to a previous complaint challenging the state's denial of a permanent water supply at Yucca Mountain. Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said the state will file its answer to both allegations on March 29. She said she would seek dismissal of the part of the complaint involving the temporary water permit. The federal government maintained it would comply with state law and file its applications for water rights, Adams said. But when it was denied, it went to the federal court instead of the state courts, as is the normal procedure. "There is a lawful process. But the government doesn't seem to be able to comply with it," she said. The case is before U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt. No hearing has been set. The department asks Hunt to stop the state from "unlawfully interfering with DOE's performance of its statutory obligations under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and other federal laws." The government wants to pump 430 acre-feet of water from the Fortymile Canyon-Jackass Flat Groundwater Basin in Nye County each year. An acre-foot is enough water to supply a family of four for a year. The state issued temporary permits in 1992 and 1994 to study the mountain. But Ricci refused to extend the temporary permits in February, after President Bush accepted the DOE's recommendation to build a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain. The state engineer said the site characterization process was complete and the temporary water permits were no longer necessary. Ricci said he would issue a cease and desist order to the government if it continued to use underground water after April 9. The DOE's lawsuit seeks to stop Ricci. Blaine Welsh of the U.S. Department of Justice says in the suit that Hunt should order Ricci to issue an extension of the water rights so the Energy Department can comply with federal regulations. The DOE says it needs to gather more information to prepare for licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The suit said the state engineer may deny an application if there is no unappropriated water, if it conflicts with existing water rights and if the use of the water would prove detrimental to the public interest. Former state Engineer Mike Turnipseed denied a permanent water right to the federal agency on grounds the nuclear dump would prove detrimental to the public interest. The Legislature has passed resolutions opposing the dump site. The Energy Department says the denial of the continued use of the water will cripple dust suppression during excavation by tunnel boring machines and other excavating equipment. In addition the water would be used for fire suppression, worker health and safety, environmental compliance and hydrological testing, the DOE says. Hunt ruled in favor of the state in the DOE's first lawsuit over a permanent right. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling and returned the case to Hunt's court to determine if the federal law supersedes the state law on water rights. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 19 Las Vegas SUN: Video shows nuclear cask risks Las Vegas SUN March 18, 2002 Nevada leaders point to dangers of transporting waste By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- In an attempt to grab national attention and rally opposition against the Yucca Mountain project, Nevada's congressional delegation today released a videotape showing an anti-tank missile blowing a hole in a nuclear waste shipping container. Nevada officials say the footage makes the case that it is too dangerous to ship nuclear waste across the country to Yucca Mountain for permanent burial because the metal waste containers used to transport waste are vulnerable to a terrorist strike. "The (video's) message is that it is inherently dangerous to transport 77,000 tons of toxic nuclear waste to (a site) 90 minutes from a major population center in the state of Nevada," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said. "There is no guarantee that these containers can be protected under the circumstances of a terrorist attack." President Bush last month approved Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a suitable site to bury the nation's highly radioactive nuclear waste, which is now stored at nuclear power plants and U.S. defense sites around the nation. Congress likely will vote on the project this year. Nevada officials have long opposed the Yucca project. Among their arguments: Shipping waste across the country risks accidents and terrorist strikes. Highly radioactive uranium rods, after being used to fuel nuclear reactors around the country, would be put in one-foot-thick steel casks and put on trains or trucks destined for Yucca Mountain. The video released today, which was done as part of a privately sponsored test in 1998 done in conjunction with the Army at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, shows a simulated missile attack on a shipping cask. Nuclear industry and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials acknowledge that a missile could put a hole in the casks but argue that potential health and safety dangers would be small. A missile would displace very little radioactive waste material from the cask, nuclear industry experts say, although Nevada officials and their scientific consultants disagree. "It is handleable," said John Vincent, a senior project manager at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top trade group. "It does not create a huge exposure with thousands affected. That does not happen." Experts point to a 1982 Department of Energy full-scale test at Sandia National Laboratories in which an explosive charge put a 6-inch hole in a waste container. If the test container had been hauling real radioactive waste, up to seven people could have died from cancer caused by exposure to the displaced radioactive material, according to early estimates. More recent estimates suggest up to 48 people could die. Consultants hired by the state of Nevada say even more people than that could be affected. "They are constantly saying that it's not as bad as you think," said Bob Halstead, a waste transportation expert hired by Nevada. "I don't believe it." The 1998 video shows two experiments sponsored by International Fuel Containers. In one, a missile charge is attached to a cast-iron cask and detonated. The explosion put a softball-sized hole in the cask. The cask is similar in strength to casks licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for waste shipping. The charge was manipulated to simulate a fired missile strike, IFC president Thomas Kirch has said. Missiles are relatively common in use worldwide. In the second experiment, a concrete compound "flak jacket" material marketed by IFC protects the cask from the blast. The missile charge did not breach the cask. The video was produced by IFC as a promotional tool to sell its concrete flak jacket product to nuclear power companies, which store waste from their nuclear reactors in on-site storage areas. The concrete material is too heavy to wrap around waste containers for shipping. Nevada's lawmakers released the 4.5-minute videotape to local broadcast news outlets and have offered it to national media. Nevada officials say the video demonstrates why waste should be left at nuclear power plants, where it can be adequately protected, and not shipped across 43 states for permanent burial in Nevada. Berkley obtained the videotape from IFC's Kirch in early February, shortly after she first heard about the Aberdeen test. The video was reviewed by the Sun and described in a story Feb. 12. Nevada officials have been reviewing the tape and mulling over how it fit into their anti-Yucca strategy. They are trying to interest national news media in the video, sources said. Nevada officials say the video counters claims made by nuclear industry officials who say shipping waste is safe. Industry officials say they have a long record of shipping waste without radiation releases. NEI has been promoting a video of its own that shows a waste container passing tests in which it is burned, dropped and hit by a train. Nevada officials plan to send the Aberdeen videotape to local news outlets along rail and highway routes that would be used to haul waste to Nevada, said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "It's very dishonest for the industry to send out tapes of Sandia tests that only show tests where the containers successfully survived," Loux said. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 20 Goshutes Reject Mediator, Feuding leaders snub election offer by BIA The Salt Lake Tribune -- Monday, March 18, 2002 BY JUDY FAHYS The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs has taken the unusual step of offering to officiate a new election for the bitterly divided Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians as the tribe makes plans to store tons of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. The agency usually intervenes in intratribal affairs only if invited. But, in a letter to the rival leaders battling for control of the tribe, Uintah and Ouray Agency Superintendent Allen S. Anspach warned about the "debilitating controversy" interfering with routine functions and important issues -- among them, presumably, the pending federal license for the $3.1 billion nuclear waste facility on the reservation in Utah's western desert. "In light of the leadership turmoil and in appreciation for the momentous decisions that face the band, we would like to offer our assistance," Anspach wrote in a Feb. 21 letter to the three-person executive committees of the two factions claiming leadership. Many of the Goshutes' 127 members would welcome an end to the spiteful war between the dueling administrations, one led by Leon Bear and the other by Marlinda Moon. But Both sides said they were rejecting the BIA's offer. Some tribal members allege fiscal irregularities and mismanagement have eroded their faith in the tribe's contract with a nuclear-utility consortium, which has leased 125 acres on the reservation for a concrete pad to store 4,000 casks of spent nuclear fuel. "These are momentous decisions on the [nuclear-waste facility] and to be leaderless is crippling the tribe," said Mark Echohawk, the Pocatello attorney for a group of Bear critics. "Without any resolution, the tribe can't govern itself." Bear's critics accuse the longtime chairman of misusing lease money that reportedly totals more than $1.4 million so far. They say he has not given opponents their share and has used the money to buy votes and undermine tribal traditions. Their concerns have triggered a grand jury investigation. Bear insists the charges are unfounded, proof only of vicious personal rivalries. Questions about money fueled an Aug. 25 recall vote, which Bear has repudiated, and the Sept. 22 election of a new executive council, led by Moon, which Bear also rejects as he tries to cling to office. Bear reasserted his leadership in an Oct. 13 election, which opponents say is invalid because there was not a quorum of tribal members present to vote. He and disputed Tribal Secretary Rex Allen scuffled in the tribal offices last fall while Allen tried to get mailing supplies for the Sept. 22 election. Raising a concern voiced by many Goshutes, Allen said the federal government and the utility consortium are exploiting the situation."They see the splits in our tribal government," he said, "and they are taking advantage of us." Last month, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board also offered to mediate the dispute. It would be a headache for regulators if, after five years of review, they find they have signed off on a $3 billion project involving an invalid tribal government. Anspach, the BIA superintendent for Utah, offered to be host to a new election for the executive council, which consists of chairman, vice chairman and secretary. His agency would foot the bill and administration, including verifying the results. "We would expect all parties to abide by the results of such an election, including the federal government," said Anspach. But both camps have snubbed the BIA's offer, insisting the issue already has been decided by the Goshute "General Council," or quorum of adult tribal members. "We say 'No' because we already had an election," Moon said, referring to the Sept. 22 vote. "We are going to stand by it." "The people feel they have spoken," said Miranda Wash, who intends to assume the duties of tribal secretary under Moon once the dispute is resolved. Bear points instead to the Oct. 13 election. "It's not a matter of what I want," said Bear, who took office eight years ago in the wake of a similar election dispute. "It's a matter of what the General Council wants . . . To me, it's already been settled." Tribe members are expected to gather for their next General Council meeting in April. fahys@sltrib.com © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 21 WIPP: Plutonium Boom Has Town Glowing March 18, 2002 DISPATCH FROM CARLSBAD, N.M. Economy: Residents credit a facility for burial of low-level nuclear waste for their high-tech recovery. By TOM GORMAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER CARLSBAD, N.M. -- Plutonium is saving this town. David Brannan, who worked in the potash fields for 34 years, said his new job--helping to bury plutonium in the subterranean salt beds 26 miles away--allowed him to buy a snazzy new Honda Goldwing motorcycle. At his family-owned Chevrolet dealership, Phil Carrell is selling high-end Suburbans, Tahoes and Corvettes to the scientists, engineers and government managers who have followed the plutonium here. And Mel Vuk, provost of New Mexico State University's local campus, blushes that he is able to hire part-time instructors who are highly educated specialists working at the plutonium burial site. "It's like Christmas--all these people with high-tech degrees who are in town and willing to teach," he said. "It's changed the academic landscape of Carlsbad." So it goes in this windblown, blue-collar town of 27,000 people in southeastern New Mexico, which faced an economic meltdown with the collapse of the local fertilizer industry and is now recasting itself as an improbable center of nuclear know-how. The change in Carlsbad's fortunes came with the creation of the U.S. Department of Energy's first and only underground repository of low-level nuclear waste. Many New Mexico politicians and environmentalists opposed development of the site because of perceived dangers, but Carlsbad's civic leaders say the project's trade-offs--minimal risks for high-grade employment--were well worth it. The benefits accrued here could also occur in Las Vegas, some Nevadans suggest, if the federal government succeeds in developing Yucca Mountain as a dump for highly radioactive waste. Opponents counter that any possible benefits to Las Vegas with the development of the $60-billion project are far outweighed by its risks. Since opening in 1999, Carlsbad's $2.5-billion Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP as it is affectionately known here, has safely disposed of more than 14,000 55-gallon drums crammed with clothing, rags, tools, soil and equipment contaminated by plutonium, a fuel for nuclear reactors and a key ingredient in nuclear weapons. The radioactive rubbish is trucked here from Rocky Flats near Denver, from Los Alamos near Santa Fe, and from other federal defense facilities. In contrast, the materials intended for Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas, include spent nuclear fuel rods that emit gamma rays that can quickly kill people exposed to them. The waste will need to be buried in impenetrable containers handled by robots, deep inside the mountain, but still be accessible for retrieval, perhaps hundreds of years from now, for possible recycling. But while Nevada officials are fighting development of Yucca Mountain, which would add little employment to Las Vegas' economy, civic leaders here welcomed plutonium for creating hundreds of jobs. Officials calculate that WIPP generates 12% of the town's payroll. Town folks take comfort that plutonium emits alpha rays, which can be stopped by a single sheet of paper or an inch of air. The long-term danger comes if plutonium particles are accidentally released, become airborne and are ingested or inhaled, damaging human tissue from within. Workers wearing normal clothes lower the barrels by hoists to rooms excavated in the salt beds nearly a half-mile below the surface. Over time, the salt seals the room like a natural trash compactor. When a plutonium burial site was proposed and rejected in Kansas for geological reasons in 1972, Carlsbad came courting. The local potash industry, which mined the barren fields and pastures for fertilizer, was struggling against worldwide competition, and the town needed a new industry. Mayor Bob Forrest notes that every locally elected politician for 25 years has welcomed the government's plutonium business. Environmental lawsuits delayed the opening of the facility for years. To help overcome opposition, Congress promised New Mexico $300 million over 15 years. Most of the money is being spent on highways, including detours around Santa Fe and Carlsbad so the radioactive containers will not be driven through the middle of the towns. When WIPP opened, hundreds of people welcomed the first delivery of plutonium. "We are the Department of Energy's success story," Forrest said. About 820 people work at the site; 667 are employed by Westinghouse Electric Co., under federal contract to construct and operate the facility. The company is the largest employer in Carlsbad. About half of its workers were hired locally, including many former potash miners. Others, including technicians, engineers and nuclear scientists, moved here from elsewhere--and have slowly adjusted to a quiet town with a Sears, a Wal-Mart, a bowling alley and two three-screen movie theaters, one indoors, one outdoors. An additional 140 people work at a Westinghouse subsidiary that constructs the stainless steel containers that each carry 14 barrels for transport to Carlsbad aboard flatbed trucks. Jesse Laman, 43, is paid $16.80 an hour as a container welder, compared to $14.53 he made hourly as a mechanic in the potash fields. "I've got benefits, a retirement program, all that," he said. "I wouldn't still be in town if it weren't for this job." The benefits of WIPP to Carlsbad extend beyond new, blue-collar employment--and suggest what might occur in Las Vegas if Nevada is unable to stop the development of the Yucca Mountain project. The Department of Energy funded a $25-million environmental monitoring and research center at the local New Mexico State University campus. Its 29 scientists and technicians monitor air, soil, water, plants and employees to detect any radiological releases, and conduct radioactivity research for other government and private laboratories. "The type of work we're doing here on plutonium is not done anywhere else in the world," said its director, Joel Webb. Health physicist Dave Schoep, hired away from a Las Vegas laboratory to work at the research center, speculates that if Yucca Mountain is developed, southern Nevada, like Carlsbad, would reap new science projects. "The natural progression of Yucca Mountain would be spinoff science work," he said. State university officials in Las Vegas wouldn't comment on that possibility, in order to not undercut the state's arguments against Yucca Mountain. But already, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas has won a $3-million federal grant to study technologies to refine spent nuclear fuel, and its faculty hopes the federal government will build a proton accelerator at the Nevada Test Site, near Yucca Mountain, to bleed high-level nuclear waste of its radioactivity. Carlsbad would like the accelerator project as well. Carlsbad's mayor said he is thankful that the materials buried here are much less toxic than what would go to Yucca Mountain. "Bringing in WIPP was the best decision this city's ever made," Forrest said. "But I wouldn't want a facility here to store highly radioactive waste. There are too many unknowns with that. WIPP is as popular here as Yucca Mountain is unpopular in Las Vegas." Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 22 Maine Questions NRC on Spent Fuel Transport Lincoln County NewsMarch 20, 2002 By Greg Foster The state’s nuclear safety advisor addressed U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials Monday about major objections the state has to the storage of spent nuclear fuel at the Maine Yankee site. Paula Craighead cited the NRC’s failure to license the dry cask canisters for transport as an obstacle to getting it out of Wiscasset. Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) argued in federal court that it is not required to accept Maine Yankee’s canisters for disposal at the proposed national repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and has no obligation to accept them for transport, said Craighead, nuclear safety advisor to the Governor and Legislature. Along with Friends of the Coast and other officials and citizens, the nuclear safety advisor to the Governor and Legislature made her comments at a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory public hearing at the Wiscasset Middle School on a second revision of Maine Yankee’s license termination plan (LTP) and the company’s request for the partial site release. “The DOE specifically relied on the NRC’s failure to license the Maine Yankee canisters for transport,” Craighead said. “NRC’s continued delay in issuing the transport license may give an unintended signal to the DOE that the Commission agrees that these canisters may not be transported away from Maine.” Security questions Craighead told the NRC that she believes the most critical issue at Maine Yankee today is the storage of the spent fuel because of security issues and other concerns about its presence there for an indefinite length of time. “The new security needs at Maine Yankee arise solely because of 1,434 spent fuel rods, the newest more than five years old. The plan envisions leaving radioactive materials on site far too long after the professional manager and engineers have left,” she said. The state has doubts about whether Maine Yankee had the authority under its license to build the ISFSI (independent spent fuel storage installation) in the first place, even though it was with NRC approval, according to Craighead. “But we have had no NRC forum to date to review the issue with the NRC,” she said. Craighead said that the DOE admitted in court that legal authority exists for the DOE to accept spent fuel and greater than class C waste even before Yucca Mountain is operational. There are military centers in existence now in Washington, Idaho, and South Carolina and another in New Mexico that is operating as a pilot project. “Military spent fuel routinely travels out of Kittery to Idaho for example,” she said in a recent letter to Westport selectmen. “Maine and New England have the opportunity to lead the country in demonstrating how commercial nuclear byproducts can be safely transported from a shut down facility so that cleanup is complete.” Responding to her comments, Ron Bellamy, NRC’s Region I chief of the decommissioning and laboratory branch of the Division of Nuclear Materials Safety, said, “Security at Maine Yankee is the highest issue the Commission is considering.” Peter Christine of Alna spoke to the issue, which he labeled huge, and asked who will have the responsibility of the ISFSI once Maine Yankee’s license is terminated in the next few years. “We need a concise statement to assure the people that the issue is being taken care of,” he said. In response, Mike Meisner, Maine Yankee’s chief nuclear officer, assured Christine that Maine Yankee would remain responsible for the ISFSI for the duration until the spent fuel is transported elsewhere. Ray Shadis of Friends of the Coast speculated about the eventuality of leaks at the ISFSI. “There is no provision if it should spring a leak because they’re not supposed to spring a leak,” he said. Meisner argued there needs to be community involvement in the issue. “Unless we have active community involvement, we can’t adequately air these kinds of issues,” he said. Alan Clemence of Searsport expressed his objection to what he considers an inadequate coverage of the security concerns in the LTP. “There needs to be much more security available on the site,” he said. “To adopt an LTP that doesn’t adequately address the issue is negligent.” Westport Selectman Stanley Lane criticized the lack of any adequate early warning system for area residents and implementation of safety systems at the plant. “Everything isn’t great, and we are scared about our safety and everything else,” he said. One of his concerns is what might happen once buildings come onto the backlands. “Nobody’s going to know what is going on in those buildings,” he said. “Security could easily be breached. I can’t see any company coming in next to any terrorist target.” Don Hudson of Chewonki, member of the Maine Yankee’s Community Advisory Panel, also joined with the others in urging the NRC to push for resolution of security issues. A big cause of anxiety to him is the uncertainty about the ISFSI. “I’m afraid it will be a smaller blip on the NRC radar,” he said. “It leaves many of us troubled. It’s not a good place to leave nuclear waste.” Jim Perkins of Boothbay asked questions concerning the decommissioning activities around the forebay and intertidal areas. He asked specifically for caution in the dumping of waste water from the demolition of the interior of the reactor vessel, which Maine Yankee reported would be filtered many times before being released. Partial site release Craighead and the deputy director of the state Bureau of Health addressed major concerns Monday they have about Maine Yankee’s early release of 630 acres of its property known as “Backlands”, including the 200-acre Eaton Farm. Their statements before U.S. Nuclear Regulatory officials if taken seriously could cloud plans for near future use of Eaton Farm as an environmental center and nature preserve and the land north of Ferry Road for an industrial park. “The recent report examining one of several old dump sites on the backlands is raising concerns about DDT, mercury, pcb’s, and other contaminants needing to be thoroughly evaluated and the site remedied,” said Dr. Philip Haines, Bureau of Health deputy director. “This dump is not of Maine Yankee’s making, but is an inherited problem that will need to be resolved before the backland is released.” Haines asked the NRC to proceed with caution in the partial site release process, stating questions about a piecemeal approach. “We do not believe it is appropriate to continue partial site release beyond the backlands,” he said. “It is critical to actually terminate the site license as a whole and not just nibble away at the site until only the ISFSI (independent spent fuel storage installation) remains.” Haines also cited other concerns the MOH has about the area, specifically the intertidal zone. “The full survey of the intertidal zone has not yet been resolved or completed,” he said. He argued that the area in question includes some of the land being considered for early release and because of that the matter needs prompt resolution. “We are beginning to understand that the walls creating the forebay are quite permeable,” he said. Defining the scope and sampling regime for Bailey Cove sediment is critical, in his estimation. “Final assessment of the forebay and environs and a determination of appropriate remedial measures remains as a significant unresolved issue,” he said. Also speaking for the state, Craighead tied in the early release plan with security concerns, since the so-called backlands could affect security at the plant. “This buffer area may have security implications, however, that the state will address in the second part of its early release reporting,” she said. “We do not believe that this one early release should be accepted as the first of a multiple release strategy: one definable parcel at a time until the one that can’t be released, the ISFSI.” According to a recent study the NRC made on the property, the land is no more contaminated than any other land in the state with traces of radiological samples from nuclear bomb tests and is therefore considered safe as far as radioactive materials are concerned. Marv Rosenstein, chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s chemicals management branch Office of Ecosystems Protection, detailed the EPA’s desire for an objective analysis of potential environmental effects of the decommissioning activities, including the intertidal area. “Maine Yankee often concludes that environmental impacts will be insignificant without fully describing what the impacts are or identifying the specific activities that will cause them,” Rosenstein said. “Missing is any discussion of important factors such as the area affected, the timing of activities, the biota affected and the time for biotic communities to recover from the disturbance.” Complaining about aspects of the environmental supplement to the LTP, Rosenstein said, “As it stands now, the supplement does not provide the NRC with the basis for an accurate analysis of the potential impacts of decommissioning activities at Maine Yankee.” Mike Webb from the NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md. spoke about Maine Yankee’s request last year for early release of property which is in two portions, one for Eaton Farm and the other for the land north of Ferry Road. The request is in the form of an amendment to the LTP and could be granted some time in April or May. Vol. 127 - No. 11 This site is owned by Lincoln County News © 2001 ***************************************************************** 23 Perspectives: Why Yucca Mountain is the place Storing nuclear waste in Nevada is not a political move -- it's for the nation's safety Pittsburgh, PA Opinion > Monday, March 18, 2002 By M. Granger Morgan In recent weeks editorial pages have been filled with political commentaries arguing that the Bush administration has double-crossed the state of Nevada by approving the use of Yucca Mountain as a location to receive spent fuel from the nation's civilian electric power reactors. These columns have discussed the possible political ramifications of this decision for the next congressional and presidential elections. However, in the midst of all the political discourse, nobody has bothered to examine the technical issue that underlies this decision. M. Granger Morgan is head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Every so often the fuel in civilian nuclear power plants wears out and must be replaced with new fuel. When that happens, the old fuel is removed. Because it contains a great deal of radioactivity which gives off a lot of heat, it must be cooled. If it were not cooled, it could melt and form a puddle of spent fuel which could go "critical," and cause a minor, but very messy, explosion. Because the nation currently has no place to put spent reactor fuel, tons of it have been placed in "temporary" storage next to the reactors. Most of this spent fuel is kept cool by submerging it in large tanks of water called "swimming pools." Unlike reactors themselves, which are housed in highly reinforced steel and concrete containment structures, these spent fuel storage facilities sit in vulnerable buildings which could be easily penetrated by a terrorist attack. If a terrorist lobbed a mortar shell, or crashed even a modest-sized fully fueled aircraft, into one of these buildings, the resulting conventional explosion could spread radioactive waste over a large area. From the point of view of potential terrorist targets, its not the hardened power reactors that we should be worrying about -- it's all those storage facilities that sit beside them. Why has this vulnerability been allowed to develop? Years ago Congress passed legislation that said that the country should find a suitable underground location to build a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. The regulation specified that before approving a storage location, experts had to demonstrate that spent fuel could be placed in the facility, people can seal it up and walk away, and we could be guaranteed that no significant damage would result from leaks for many thousands of years. While it is understandable why one would want to impose such a requirement, you only need to spend a few minutes with any good geologist to learn that this is basically an unachievable objective. On time scales of many thousands of years, geologists can't give us definitive answers. They can tell us that there is a minuscule chance that anything could leak out, but there is no way that they can provide an absolute assurance. Despite that simple fact, after narrowing their search for storage locations down to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which is located next to the old nuclear weapons test site, the U.S. Department of Energy has spent billions probing, drilling, sampling and modeling, trying to prove the unprovable. The ironic thing about all this is that before it is placed in storage, the waste will be sealed in highly secure casks and then placed hundreds of feet underground in solid rock where it will be carefully monitored. Just a few miles to the west, on the Nevada test site, there are large numbers of locations where all the highly radioactive debris from years of underground nuclear tests sits completely uncontained amid tons of fractured rock rubble. There is a simple alternative to our current approach to waste storage. Give up on trying to design a facility that we can pretend we could walk away from and forget -- we'd never have done that anyway -- and build a facility that is highly secure, but which we will carefully monitor. If in the future the monitors should ever detect a small developing problem, go in and fix it before it becomes serious and radioactive contamination has a chance to leak out and do damage to the environment -- a process that would take many hundreds of years. The solution may have been simple, but adopting it was going to take presidential leadership to change the policy, and no president was prepared to spend political chips to fix the mess, given all the other more immediate problems he and the nation faced. So the spent fuel has piled up, and piled up, and piled up, to the point that many reactor sites are running out of space to store it all. Sept. 11 changed the picture dramatically. When one looks around the country for targets which could be hit with ease, cause significant damage and spread terror in the general population, its hard to find anything more attractive than all these lightweight buildings filled with highly radioactive spent fuel. So, suddenly we have a reason why a president is willing to spend a few political chips, perhaps even lose an Electoral College vote or two, in order to protect the nation. You'd think that in all the political commentary about double crossing Nevada, somebody would have pointed this out. Copyright ©1997-2002 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights ***************************************************************** 24 The 'dirty bomb' threatens both Russia and the US The Taipei Times Online: 2002-03-18 March 18th, 2002 The two countries must cooperate on nuclear issues if they are going to keep radioactive materials out of the hands of terrorists By Ehsan Ahrari The stories of the so-called "loose nukes" surfaced almost immediately after the implosion of the Soviet Union. Even General Alexander Lebed attempted to give credence to such stories by claiming in 1997, that more than 100 suitcases with nuclear bombs were smuggled out of Russia. More recently, the BBC quoted a spokesman of the IAEA, David Kyd, as saying that "there are about 175 cases of seizure of nuclear material being smuggled from former Soviet republics." The same source cited the observation of a Russian General that unidentified terrorists "had recently twice tried and failed to penetrate Russian nuclear storage." However, in the post-Sept. 11 days, the specter of the radiological dispersion bomb-the so-called the `dirty bomb'-surfaced with much credibility. The US intelligence sources have found convincing evidence that al-Qaeda terrorist group was very much interested either in getting its hands on a dirty bomb, or manufacturing one. "Dirty bomb" refers to highly radioactive material, such as Cesium 137 or spent fuel nuclear rods, wrapped in conventional high explosives. A potential explosion of such a weapon would not kill a large number of people, but it could contaminate the area of explosion, causing death, cancer, and other health problems for an indefinite period. In the first week of March, Senator Joseph Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during hearings on the issue of theft of highly enriched uranium (HEU), characterized Russia as "the candy store" for terrorists. The dirty bomb's capability as a terror weapon should not only worry the US, but also Russia. The deleterious effects of the Sept. 11 attacks on the national psyche in the US will be felt for quite sometime. But the potential explosion of a dirty bomb is likely to create even more devastating outcome. As Biden observed, the potential explosion of a dirty bomb may not be "the catastrophic event," "but it would have a catastrophic psychological effect on the United States." Its effects on the US economy could also be devastating. The US government knows how vulnerable it is as an open society, and how that openness can be exploited by a determined terrorist group, not only in the near future, but at any time and place of their choosing. Russia is conducting a brutal campaign against the Chechen rebels. In view of the gross asymmetry between the superior Russian military forces and the rag-tag Chechen fighters, the availability of a dirty bomb might create a situation from which Russia might not be able to extricate itself for a long time. The issue of the dirty bomb also undermines US President George W. Bush's argument that the US is vulnerable to a ballistic or a cruise missile attack from one of the so-called rogue states. No rogue state is mad enough to commit the suicidal act of shooting a missile in the direction of the US and be wiped out in retaliation. However, a nameless and a faceless terrorist group may be able to import a dirty bomb and drop it from a high building. The specter of dirty bomb also necessitates that the US and Russia revisit the issue of cooperation on the multifaceted nuclear issues between the two. The Bush administration, rather thoughtlessly, abandoned the ABM Treaty by claiming that it had become a "relic" of the bygone Cold War era. President Bush was only partially right in that observation. The ABM was indeed created during a bygone era when the FSU and the US had an adversarial relationship. Even though that relationship has transformed into a non-adversarial one, it still remains highly competitive. Even then, the fact of the matter is that the US clearly enjoys substantial advantages over Russia in the post-Cold War era. Bush not only abandoned the ABM Treaty, but also insisted that the two countries no longer need to negotiate the type of treaties of the Cold War years. Since the US was the advantaged actor of the two, it sounded quite magnanimous about its ties with Russia, and wanted to move away from the tedious formalities of negotiating nuclear arms treaties. However, from a position of disadvantage, Russia's best hopes of competing with the US in the realm of nuclear affairs was to formalize their mutual understandings and agreements, and ensure that the latter would not cavalierly change its mind over the specifics of such arrangements. For instance, in explicating its "nuclear posture review," the Bush administration stated that it hopes "to shift emphasis away from offensive nuclear forces and augment the US strategic posture with enhanced conventional capabilities and missile defenses ...." It announced its plans to reduce deployed strategic forces to 3,800 by the year 2007. The most controversial part of the nuclear posture was what the administration proposed to do with "the warheads removed from service." Some of those warheads were to be destroyed, but the Bush administration also planned to allocate portions of the remainder of those warheads to what it calls a "responsive force," which "could be used to augment deployed nuclear forces within weeks, months, or years should the need arise." The much-heralded unilateralism of George Bush was very much alive and well, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding. Russia knew that its choices were limited. Even though it preferred a treaty, it was willing to accept an executive agreement, if that was the best Bush was prepared to offer. There is little doubt that Russia was not only one to incorporate the same type of advantages for itself in future nuclear agreements as the Bush administration was awarding itself, but would take steps to enhance its countermeasure capabilities, thereby keeping the nuclear arms race alive. In the post-Sept. 11 environment, it is necessary for the US to become less cavalier and more understanding of Russia's disadvantageous position in the ongoing nuclear arms race. A weak Russia may not only continue to probe for advantages over the US, but by remaining weak, it also remains a potential source for nuclear smuggling, theft, and even an outright sell-out to the terrorists. Ehsan Ahrari is professor of national security and strategy at the Joint Forces Staff College, Norfolk, Virginia. The views expressed in this article are his own. This story has been viewed 399 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/03/18/story/0000128202] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 25 Bush Finds That Ambiguity Is Part of Nuclear Deterrence March 18, 2002 WASHINGTON, March 17 — President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rarely missed an opportunity in recent weeks to warn that they will do whatever it takes to keep Saddam Hussein, or any other hostile power, from obtaining nuclear or biological weapons. But the White House suddenly grew nervous after the leak of a Pentagon report suggesting one possible strategy for stopping them — a quick strike with a low-yield nuclear weapon designed to burrow deep into the earth and wipe out underground sites where such weapons are produced or stored. Allies and nuclear strategists began asking a question not heard in Washington for decades: would the president ever consider a pre-emptive nuclear strike? The answers have ranged from "not likely" to "no comment." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell insisted several times that there had been no change in nuclear policy. The White House spokesman took the unusual step of quoting statements by two of former President Bill Clinton's defense secretaries warning potential rivals that they would face an overwhelming and devastating response if they threatened nuclear or biological attack. In interviews, President Bush's top aides noted that despite the president's aggressive language about Iraq and the "axis of evil," he had never said that he would consider using specially designed nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive strike. "We do not have a declared policy of pre-emption," a senior administration official said on Friday. "We have a strategy of deterrence." At the same time, this official added, it is important to develop deep- burrowing nuclear weapons in order to "hold at risk" any nation's hardened, underground nuclear or biological weapons and laboratories. The new American weapons are needed, the official said, to make sure there is no safe place to develop nuclear and biological weapons, and to discourage countries from even trying. Yet ambiguity is everything in nuclear deterrence. Taken together, Mr. Bush's language, his advisers' statements and the Nuclear Posture Review suggest that Mr. Bush sees some advantage in keeping the world guessing about how the United States would respond to evidence that a country or a terrorist group was hiding weapons of mass destruction deep underground. So the administration reached for phrases that left some strategic wiggle room, to sow reassurance at home and doubt in Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Mr. Bush will not discuss it, naturally, and he said last week that "the nuclear review is not new," suggesting that the Clinton administration was headed in the same direction. Then, muddying the waters, he added, "We've got all options on the table, because we want to make it very clear to nations that you will not threaten the United States or use weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies." China and North Korea, among other nations, say they believe the policy is both new and aggressive, with Beijing accusing Washington this weekend of trying to commit "nuclear blackmail." This is not the first time the Chinese or the North Koreans have tried to figure out what an American president thinks about the unthinkable. Harry S. Truman unleashed atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and never looked back, but he also refused Gen. Douglas MacArthur's request to use them in the Korean War. John F. Kennedy had to face the prospect in the Cuban missile crisis, and newly revealed tapes indicate that Richard M. Nixon urged his secretary of state to think about the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, though it seemed more like a passing rant than a serious discussion. But the strategic calculations that went on in the past are different from those under way in the Bush White House because deterring superpowers is very different from deterring a Saddam Hussein. It is widely accepted that nuclear weapons are virtually useless in a war on terrorism or on rogue states, and in the case of America's nuclear arsenal that is particularly true. As the Nuclear Posture Review notes, the American arsenal is overwhelmingly based on cold-war thinking, when deterrence meant convincing rivals that the United States possessed the ability to wipe out their cities and missile silos. Mr. Bush has said that approach is outdated and has embraced deep cuts in America's traditional nuclear arsenal. But terrorists do not have cities, and Iraq and Iran do not have silos. So the discussion under way in Washington focuses on what amounts to a specialty use of a nuclear weapon: harnessing a nuclear blast to dig deep underground and cause a seismic wave that would collapse an underground nuclear site. The idea would be to keep nuclear fallout to a minimum. So far the United States has only one earth-penetrating nuclear weapon that might get at underground sites, the B61 Mod 11 gravity bomb. The nuclear study, on which Mr. Bush was "extensively briefed," his aides say, warned that this weapon "cannot survive penetration into many types of terrain in which hardened underground facilities are located." A study is under way to figure out how that weapon could be modified to get the job done, with more blast and less radiation, though that might take a decade. Still, the discussion has prompted questions that the White House wants to quash, while leaving Mr. Hussein wondering. "The danger of this way of thinking," said one former Clinton administration nuclear strategist, "is that it treats a nuclear weapon as just one instrument you have available." "Of course, no president would use it if he could get the job done with a conventional weapon," the former official said. "But what if the C.I.A. director walks into the Oval Office one day and says, `Mr. President, we know where there are nuclear and biological weapons deep down in Tora Bora, but the only way to get at them is with a nuclear weapon'?" Secretary Powell, eager to calm the diplomatic waters, made a point of restating American policy, saying that the United States would not use a nuclear weapon pre-emptively against a state that had promised not to build nuclear weapons of its own. That policy was meant to encourage countries to join the nonproliferation treaty. Administration officials say Secretary Powell was absolutely right. But then, preserving ambiguity, they note that the policy might not apply to a country that signed the treaty but then built nuclear weapons anyway — Iraq, for example. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information ***************************************************************** 26 New Nuclear Policy Makes for a Safer World March 18, 2002 By BARRY M. BLECHMAN, Barry M. Blechman was assistant director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1977 to 1980. The Bush administration's new nuclear policy has received a great deal of criticism over its suggestion that U.S. nuclear weapons play a role in deterring hostile nations that don't possess nuclear weapons but are armed with other kinds of weapons of mass destruction. The criticism--that the new policy lowers the bar for use of nuclear weapons--is misplaced. In fact, by linking U.S. nuclear and conventional precision strike capabilities, the policy narrows the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense policy, reduces the circumstances in which they might be used and sets the stage for even deeper cuts in nuclear forces. The planned reduction in nuclear warheads deployed with operational submarines, bombers and land-based missiles--from about 6,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200--is quite an accomplishment. It will decrease the cumulative risk of technical mishaps and unauthorized or inadvertent launches, and it should reassure the Russians politically by moving the U.S. to a force level that Russia appears to be seeking itself. Critics of the new policy have complained that many of the warheads coming off U.S. forces will be placed in reserve rather than dismantled immediately. Getting 4,000 warheads off alert is very important in its own right. It would take time to put the weapons back on missiles or into active bomber inventories. Given the international furor that would accompany such a move, no president would take it without very serious reason. Meanwhile, having the option to beef up U.S. forces is only sensible given the uncertainties of world events. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said, when it comes to international threats "the only surprise is that we're surprised when we're surprised." Weapon and stockpile requirements are reviewed periodically. If international developments continue favorably, either further reductions in operational weapons or the destruction of stockpiled weapons would certainly be possible. The new policy recognizes that Russia is no longer our enemy, and there is no longer a need to plan for massive attacks against that nation. It would move the U.S. away from a single, integrated operational plan for nuclear attacks to "capabilities-based targeting." Instead of massive, society-destroying nuclear strikes, the U.S. would plan to have capabilities to conduct limited nuclear strikes aimed at specific objectives. In its classified form, the policy mentioned nations for which planners need to prepare such options, causing a furor. The only thing new here from previous administrations is that the names of the nations leaked out. In its most important development, the new defense policy pairs U.S. nuclear forces with precise, conventional strike capabilities. In this formulation, the new policy greatly circumscribes the potential role of nuclear weapons. Recognizing the immense capabilities of modern aircraft and missiles armed with conventional weapons, the new policy implies that for the first time in 50 years the U.S. may not have to respond to nuclear threats in kind. We may be able to defeat such threats by attacking enemies with conventional weapons, relying on missile defenses to stop any threatening forces that survive. This is a huge change in thinking, allowing for even more nuclear-force reductions as conventional strike and missile defense capabilities advance. Administration officials have a way to go before the new policy is fulfilled. They have to work closely with the U.S. Strategic Command to ensure that the planned changes in targeting are implemented properly. The nuclear departures of more than one previous administration have been thwarted in their implementation phase. And the administration will have to move expeditiously to set in place the transparency measures and other arrangements to reassure the Russians and others that the shift from negotiated arms control agreements to unilateral reductions in forces is not a subterfuge. These steps notwithstanding, the new policy is a major accomplishment and an important advance toward ending nuclear dangers. Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 27 New Zealand PM says nuclear-free policy reinforced by 11 September BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 18, 2002 Text of report by Radio New Zealand National Radio audio web site on 18 March The prime minister, Helen Clark, says the 11 September terrorist attacks reinforce the need for New Zealand to maintain its nuclear-free policy. A former Australian minister of defence, Peter Reith, told an ACT [minority opposition] party conference at the weekend that New Zealand's anti-nuclear stand was a mistake and should be scrapped. He said there is no risk in nuclear-armed or powered vessels coming to New Zealand. Ms Clark told [New Zealand National Radio's] Morning Report the risk of nuclear vessels coming here is greater now than when the anti-nuclear legislation was passed. [Clark] The terrorist element around the world is prepared to do almost anything, as we've seen with the 11 September attacks. Therefore, a nuclear-powered vessel in your harbour presents a rather interesting target for such groups. [End of recording] Helen Clark says New Zealand has been able to work with the United States military in the war on terrorism despite the anti-nuclear policy. The leader of the opposition, Bill English, who is in the US, told the programme that the anti-nuclear policy means New Zealand has to work harder when it comes to building trade with America. Source: Radio New Zealand National Radio audio web site, Wellington, in English 0900 gmt 18 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 28 Clinging to Outdated Dogmas http://www.moscowtimes.ru Mar. 18, 2002. Page 10 By Ivan Safranchuk The results of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's trip last week to the United States represent significant progress when compared to his public pronouncements prior to departure for Washington. On the eve of his visit, Ivanov expressed doubts about the prospects of a new nuclear arms reduction treaty being worked out in time for the May summit meeting between Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin. However, just a few days later at a joint press conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he was already expressing confidence that a treaty would be signed by the two presidents. The positive tone of the visit and the arms control talks was not affected by leaks in the past two weeks of U.S. contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against a number of countries -- including Russia -- contained in the Pentagon's still-classified Nuclear Posture Review. Ivanov, in contrast to many other Russian officials and politicians, did not seem particularly surprised by the leaked documents, and this is entirely understandable as it is pretty clear that the Defense Ministry has similar plans. Indeed the Cold War operational and contingency plans of Russia, the United States and NATO have only undergone minor revisions in the past decade. For the respective governments, the most pressing task is to keep these plans out of the public domain rather than to revise them significantly. This might explain why Rumsfeld and Ivanov seemed so united on the issue of leaks. Mutual understanding prevailed over any discontent that may have been caused by the substance of the leaked documents. In any case, Russia should have been pleased to learn that the number of U.S. nuclear weapons targets on its territory is set to decline drastically over the next decade -- in line with the Nuclear Posture Review's downgrading of Russia as a threat. Ivanov and Rumsfeld stressed at their joint press conference that Bush and Putin want to sign a new nuclear arms reduction treaty and that they will do so. However, for many arms control experts the rationale and logic behind a new treaty are far from clear. The three main issues between Russia and the United States in the field of nuclear arms reduction are: the status of any treaty document, the rules for counting (including the so-called shelving of nuclear warheads) and issues of verification and transparency. So far, the two sides have only reached understanding on the first issue; it seems to have been agreed that the presidents will sign a "legally binding document." This sounds good until you get into the details of what constitutes a legally binding document. The Putin administration would like it to be a full treaty subject to ratification by the Senate on the U.S. side, and the State Duma and Federation Council on the Russian side. The U.S. administration would prefer an executive agreement that would not be subject to ratification by the Senate. Russia's problem in this regard is that according to the 1994 Law on Ratification of International Treaties, any document dealing with national security and arms reductions must be ratified by the Duma. The Russian side is hardly likely to agree to a treaty that it must ratify fully, while the United States is under no such obligation. However, the indications are that a compromise has already been reached on this particular issue: The United States will agree to the Russian interpretation of what is "legally binding" (in any case the Bush administration should not have too much trouble in getting such a document ratified) and in exchange Russia will accept U.S. counting rules, based on the Pentagon Nuclear Posture Review's definition of what constitutes an operationally deployed nuclear warhead. This would mean that Russia will also put in storage rather than dismantle some of its missiles and warheads. Under such a compromise, verification measures would presumably be in line with START I and II procedures, with some omissions in recognition of the fact that many of the measures are either ineffective or excessive. A number of comments made during Ivanov's trip strongly suggest that this is to be the basic framework for compromise. However, putting the formalities aside, the question that needs to be asked is: What exactly is the purpose of Russia and the United States signing such a treaty? The United States seems simply to be acquiescing in Russia's and domestic arms control advocates' demands for a legally binding treaty. Russia, the driving force behind the new treaty, is having difficulty explaining the rationale behind it, except for to trot out the old line about arms control being the cornerstone of international stability. This traditional arms control mantra has already been thoroughly undermined by Russia's muted response to the United States giving notice of its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Treaty negotiators are trying to develop a long-term document without having a clear-cut rationale. As Rumsfeld put it, "The two presidents have agreed that they would like to have something that would go beyond their two presidencies. ... So some sort of a document of that type is certainly a likelihood." However given the new political realities, traditional arms control talks -- particularly bilateral ones -- seem to be largely abstract exercises that bring to mind Hermann Hesse's "Glass Bead Game." Russia's tactics in these talks prove that it still adheres to a traditional arms control approach, based heavily on parity (or nuclear balance) thinking. Due to the huge imbalance in capabilities -- including nuclear arsenals -- between the United States and Russia, this approach can only result in further unilateral concessions by Russia, which were initiated in the 1990s by the signing of the two START treaties. Putin's team cannot fail to understand this. Clinging to this approach, therefore, can only be interpreted as the failure of Cold War veterans on both sides to go beyond the legacy of the Cold War -- in spite of the promising statements coming out of Moscow and Washington. Following on from downgrading each other as threats in internal documents, Russia and the United States should have abandoned traditional arms control talks in favor of developing new bilateral accords, based primarily on building mutual confidence that their still huge nuclear arsenals are not intended for use against each other. However, with the deadline set for May and with overwhelming expectations that a new arms reduction treaty will be signed, U.S. and Russian negotiators are under a great deal of pressure to produce something. Given the underlying rationale, the treaty they produce is unlikely to be the first treaty marking a new era in U.S.-Russian relations and much more likely to be the last treaty of the Cold War era. Ivan Safranchuk, director of the Center for Defense Information's Moscow office, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times. [http://www.moscowtimes.ru ***************************************************************** 29 Iran: Daily interviews N-Korean envoy on "US nuclear threat" BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 18, 2002 Text of Leading News report, entitled: "North Korean envoy: The seven countries threatened by nuclear attack, oppose American domination of the world" published by Iranian newspaper Resalat web site on 18 March The American daily Los Angeles Times, in its reports a few days ago, said that America was probably planning nuclear attacks against seven countries including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. In the wake of this news the threats against the seven countries, and Iran, Iraq and North Korea in particular, continue. Our correspondent has interviewed the North Korean ambassador in Tehran Kim Jong-nam about the article of the Los Angeles Times and the American threats against North Korea and Iran. About combating America's nuclear threat, Kim Jong-nam said: In addition to the Los Angeles Times report, President George W. Bush himself spoke about probable nuclear attack against seven countries of the world. A question arises in this connection and that is, why has America targeted all these countries as possible future nuclear attack? He added: These seven countries oppose America's domination of the world and are not obeying America blindly. The America is, thus, threatening them to exert pressure on them. He added: Since coming to power George W. Bush has trampled on many international agreements and bilateral ties with other countries. He ignored the international convention banning the application of nuclear weapons and in a crazy fashion threatened seven countries of the world. I think America's objectives from these threats is to occupy these countries. Kim Jong-nam said: America abrogated a treaty and joint communique issued between the two countries in 1994. The communique had agreed that America must not threaten Pyongyang with nuclear weapons. But today Washington is threatening us with such weapons, contrary to its agreement. About America's objective from threatening North Korea, he said: Washington intends to disarm us. Under the existing circumstances whereby America has breached our bilateral agreements and is undermining the ties between North and South Korea, we cannot remain silent in the face of America's threats. We must prepare ourselves to confront America's attack. We do not like war, but should America decide to inflict a blow on our country, all the people of North Korea would stand up to Washington. This is the stance of our government. About North Korea's plans to combat the American threats, Kim Jong-nam said: We have our own defence plans but we cannot divulge these plans. America intends to dominate the existing order in the world and create a unipolar system, but it will not succeed because many countries of the world do not wish to live under the American domination. He added: I believe that all countries of the world, big or small, must strengthen their military and defence capabilities. We must all confront America's hegemonistic policies through solidarity and cooperation with one another. The North Korean envoy, about America's threats against Iran, said: Iran is an important country which opposes terrorism and domination by other states. Iran is a peace loving country in the world and its policy of reducing tension has been warmly received by the people of the world. America therefore is resorting to threats in order to weaken Iran's power and influence of the Islamic Republic in the region. Source: Resalat web site, Tehran, in Persian 18 Mar 02 pp 1 and 13 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 30 After 20 years, nuclear protesters face eviction Independent News © 2002 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd By Paul Kelbie Scotland Correspondent 18 March 2002 For 20 years, they have continually probed, tested and occasionally breached the outer defences of Britain's nuclear submarine base. They have helped organise mass blockades to try to halt the workings of the Trident submarine fleet and waged a non-violent guerrilla war against convoys of nuclear missiles. But the peace campaigners who live in the shadow of the razor wire and armed guards at the Royal Navy base at Faslane, near Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland, are finally facing eviction. A three-day demonstration outside the gates of the base last month that resulted in more than 200 arrests has prompted local councillors to call for an end to Europe's longest-running protest. What began as a two-week sit-in in 1982 has grown into a worldwide symbol of the anti-nuclear struggle. More than 10,000 people are estimated to have undertaken a tour of duty at the camp lasting anything from a few days to a few years. The group of colourfully painted caravans, ramshackle huts and a teepee stand as a permanent reminder of opposition to the country's Trident nuclear deterrent. "The camp is still as important today as it always has been," Jane Tallent – the deputy chairperson of CND Scotland, who lived at the camp between 1984 and 1990 – said. "It's a permanent reminder for the people who work there that there are a substantial number of us who are opposed to what they do for a living. Given the limited resources the council has, I don't think most of the local population would agree that it would be a priority for them to spend money on evicting the peace camp." But last month's demonstration, in addition to the frequent disruption caused by the camp in collaboration with CND and Trident Ploughshares, has encouraged members of Argyll and Bute Council to call a halt. Within the next fortnight, officers from the council will meet with police and military representatives to discuss the "future of the Faslane camp". "Twenty years is too long for a temporary structure," George Freeman, a councillor who is one of the main advocates of eviction, said. "The disruption and inconvenience caused to the local residents is too much. The camp is clearly in breach of planning and environmental legislation and so should be removed." About four years ago the council won a court case to evict the camp from its site, a ruling that until now it has chosen not to enforce. "There was no time limit on the order and the council has the legal right to move against the camp any time it chooses to do so," Mr Freeman said. But while the events of 11 September have increased fears over security, they have also reignited interest in the peace movement within Britain and support for the camp. "There are lots of people prepared to come and help us fight off any eviction threat," Zoe Weir, who has lived at Faslane for more than four years, said. Her one-year-old daughter, Tabitha, has never known any other home. "A great many people oppose nuclear weapons on British soil and don't believe the deterrent argument anymore." The camp claims to be able to muster hundreds of reinforcements within hours using an elaborate system of phone calls, and its defences are continually updated by the inhabitants – 20 men, women and children. Twenty years has allowed plenty of time for the camp – which has become very self-sufficient, with its own solar panels, wind generator, bicycle-powered lighting and wood-burning stoves – to prepare for a long-drawn out battle. "They will never be able to get us out easily," said Hoosie, who did not give his surname and who has lived in the camp for almost five years, making him the longest current resident. "It will cost at least £300,000 ... They would have to close the main road which runs past the base to get us out of the trees and that would cause massive disruption. They would also need to call in very expensive and highly specialised tunnelling engineers. "Even then it wouldn't stop us. We would just move further along the road and start again." ***************************************************************** 31 New Zealand to Keep Nuclear Ship Ban Las Vegas SUN March 17, 2002 WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - New Zealand has no intention of changing its policy banning nuclear-powered ships from the island nation's harbors and waters, Prime Minister Helen Clark said Monday. Successive U.S. administrations have urged New Zealand to drop the policy but Clark said she would not relax the ban when she meets President Bush next week in Washington. The Sept. 11 attacks showed that terrorist groups are prepared to "do almost anything" to advance their cause, Clark said. "Therefore, a nuclear-powered vessel in your harbor presents a rather interesting target for such groups," she told National Radio. Clark also ruled out seeking a new military relationship with the United States some 15 years after New Zealand was suspended from a joint U.S.-Australian-New Zealand alliance known as ANZUS because of its anti-nuclear laws. New Zealand seeks "a very positive, warm relationship" with the United States, "but it won't be the same relationship it was when ANZUS was formed at the start of the '50s," she said. Clark said long-standing differences over nuclear policy "will be noted" in passing during her White House meeting with Bush. She said the key issues would be trade - New Zealand is seeking a bilateral free-trade pact with the United States - and international and regional security. Clark will also protest the recent imposition of penalty tariffs on New Zealand's steel exports to the United States. New Zealand has initiated trade dispute procedures at the World Trade Organization over the move. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 32 OP: Nuclear Posture review in defense of it projo.com/opinion + 3.17.2002 00:17 The real world News that the Defense Department is engaged in something called a Nuclear Posture Review has sent more than a few people -- including some who should know better -- into postures of their own: We're planning on starting a nuclear war! We're going to attack Iraq with tactical nuclear weapons! George W. Bush is going to blow up the world! Actually, the Bush administration is doing what every administration since 1945 has done: Assess the nation's security threats, nuclear and otherwise, and calibrate policy accordingly. That such planning includes tactical nuclear weapons does not mean that the administration is determined to use such weapons. It means what such planning has always meant: that the possession of nuclear weapons, and the apparent willingness to use them, serve as a deterrent against potential aggressors. There are no U.S. plans for the "first use" of nuclear weapons anywhere. And in any currently conceiveable circumstances, we strongly oppose any such first use. The United States and Russia are determined to drastically reduce the nuclear arsenals in both countries. But the post-Cold War world has yielded new dangers from so-called rogue nations with weapons of mass destruction, including, possibly, nuclear weapons. In the choice between politely asking such regimes as North Korea to please refrain from using such weapons, and warning North Korea that the use of such weapons might be answered in kind, the latter seems most prudent. In short, the Defense Department must consider all contingencies, all scenarios, all dangers and threats in defending national security and preserving the peace of the world. Back to: Opinion [http://www.projo.com/report/stories/07234891.htm] [http://www.projo.com/wwwthreads/wwwthreads.pl] Copyright, Belo Interactive, Inc. ***************************************************************** 33 U.S. to begin work on nuclear bunker buster The Seattle Times: Nation &World: Monday, March 18, 2002 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific WASHINGTON — Energy Department scientists will begin work next month on a new nuclear bunker-buster, the first U.S. development work on new nuclear weapons in a decade, according to budget documents. The first President Bush canceled the last major weapons-research program, a short-range attack-missile warhead, in 1991. He halted all new weapons research in 1992. President Clinton shifted the nuclear-weapons program from research, testing and production to dismantling warheads and ensuring the safety and reliability of older weapons without testing. The U.S. arsenal has included one type of nuclear bunker-buster since 1997. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico took a bomb and refitted it with a hardened nose cone and new tail fins. The aim of the new weapon is to go deeper into the ground to cause less surface damage. Senate mulls subpoenaing Ridge to testify before committee WASHINGTON — The Senate is considering subpoenaing homeland-security chief Tom Ridge to compel his testimony about President Bush's domestic-security spending request, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said yesterday. Daschle said he would like the White House to drop its opposition to Ridge's appearance. "We've got to find a way to break the impasse," said Daschle, D-S.D. "He's got to work with us. There is just too much at stake." The Bush administration has said that Ridge has privately briefed lawmakers and that his refusal to appear before a congressional committee is the usual practice in which the president's immediate staff does not testify to Congress. But Daschle said Ridge acts with all the rights and privileges of a Cabinet officer, and he should come before Congress. The administration wants spending on domestic security to double next year, to $38 billion. Cheney gets Saudi, Bahraini support for anti-Iraq action Vice President Dick Cheney, who has received little encouragement on his 11-nation tour to build a coalition for possible military action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, received support from two fronts yesterday. In Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said his nation would support a U.S.-assisted overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as long as it is led by the Iraqi people. "Regime change in Iraq will only happen if the Iraqi people do it," Saud said. Asked whether he favors assistance from U.S. intelligence agencies, which have reactivated plans to oust Saddam, he replied, "What internal change has ever been done without assistance from the outside?" In Bahrain, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa said, "Iraq must comply with all relevant U.N. resolutions without delay as to avoid potential harm to the region. On weapons of mass destruction, we feel as strongly as the United States about their danger not only to us, but to the world as a whole." Iraqis, al-Qaida have been in close touch, says magazine WASHINGTON — A report in the latest issue of the New Yorker suggests that Iraqi intelligence has been in close touch with top officials in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida for years and that the two organizations jointly run a terrorist organization that operates in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. The CIA has largely discounted the proposition that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has maintained links with al-Qaida. The article focuses in part on a Muslim-extremist guerrilla group in the Kurdish zone of Iraq called Ansar al-Islam, which it said is made up of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs trained in bin Laden's camps. The article's author, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote that he interviewed several operatives of the group who had been captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a pro-American Kurdish group that controls one province in northern Iraq. The captives said Saddam and al-Qaida run Ansar and that a number of al-Qaida fighters fleeing Afghanistan have escaped to Iraqi Kurdish territory controlled by Ansar. Senator warns of potential for urban warfare in Afghanistan WASHINGTON — U.S. troops could be targeted by al-Qaida fighters hiding among civilians in Afghan cities, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said yesterday. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said the battles "probably will be smaller in scale but could be even bloodier in terms of casualties," than the fighting in recent weeks in the Shah-e-Kot valley. "It's not going to be like when we took Berlin at the end of World War II," said Graham, the committee chairman. "It's going to be urban warfare in small settings." ***************************************************************** 34 Terror convicts told of nuclear threats -- The Washington Times March 18, 2002 By Jim Gomez and Dafna Linzer ASSOCIATED PRESS U.S. officials received a warning as early as 1995 that Islamic militants were plotting to attack an American nuclear site, but they did not pass along the information to the agency that oversees nuclear facilities or to the plants themselves, the Associated Press has learned. The warning came in police interrogations of convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad and from a computer seized in the Philippines from Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Both men were linked to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network, and both are serving life in prison in the United States for plotting to blow up 12 U.S.-bound airliners. The AP learned of the 1995 warning through secret intelligence documents and interviews with officials in the United States and the Philippines. According to a secret Philippine report, a letter obtained from Yousef's computer indicated he was "planning to attack any nuclear facilities in the U.S. and unspecified targets in France and Great Britain." Yousef, who ran the al Qaeda cell that targeted the World Trade Center in 1993, discussed the plan with Murad when the two met in October 1994 in Quetta, Pakistan, according to statements Murad made to interrogators. But Murad, who was arrested in Manila in January 1995, said he was unaware of the specifics of the plan to attack nuclear facilities. Rodolfo Mendoza, a former police official in Manila who was among those who supervised Murad's interrogations, said the details on the nuclear threat were immediately shared with U.S. authorities. "During a debriefing session, Murad told us about this planned attack on an unspecified nuclear facility. We passed on that information from Murad to [U.S. officials]," Mr. Mendoza said. Murad also told investigators that he and other Middle Eastern students took pilot training at U.S. flight schools in the early 1990s, and that he had proposed a suicide mission in which he would fly a jetliner into a federal building. That information, provided six years before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was also shared with FBI agents in Manila. An FBI agent who accompanied Murad back to the United States for trial testified in 1996 that Murad spoke about plans for a nuclear attack. Victor Dricks, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the government agency charged with overseeing the country's 104 nuclear facilities had not heard of such a warning during 1995. "We did not know of any credible threat against any specific facility that we would take seriously enough to take some action on," he said. Carl Crawford, manager of nuclear communications at Energy Nuclear, which operates nine reactors in the South and the Northeast, said that in 1995 the company "never received any formal communications from the NRC or any other federal law enforcement agency regarding such threats. We never received any request to go on high alert." In January, the NRC alerted nuclear power plants that the government had received a tip from an al Qaeda operative that terrorists might be planning a suicide attack on a power reactor. An FBI official speaking on the condition of anonymity said at the time that the NRC had acted on old information that had been deemed not credible. But the NRC communication said the agency decided to issue the alert after an FBI agent in Washington state contacted a nuclear power plant about the threat. The NRC ordered the nation's nuclear plants operating in 31 states to their highest alert level after September 11, and at least seven states are using National Guard troops to help secure reactors. ***************************************************************** 35 Nuclear arsenal upgrade planned 'Bunker buster' marks a shift in U.S. strategy By Jonathan Weisman USA TODAY WASHINGTON -- Energy Department scientists will begin work next month on a new bunker-busting nuclear weapon that could mark the most significant advance in the U.S. nuclear arsenal in a decade. Research into a weapon that could penetrate deeply buried structures, such as those designed to make nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, is a key part of President Bush's push to rejuvenate the U.S. nuclear weapons program. The research project marks a shift from designing weapons of mass annihilation to smaller arms that the administration says would better deter ''rogue'' states but critics say could make nuclear war more plausible. Documents from the Energy Department, which oversees nuclear weapons, say Bush also plans to: * Reassemble design teams at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, which disbanded the teams in 1992 after the first President Bush had agreed to a nuclear test moratorium. * Shorten from years to months the lead time it would take to resume nuclear testing. * Ramp up spending on manufacturing sites to build nuclear weapons and components. ''The need is clear for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex,'' the Pentagon's new review of nuclear strategy says. News organizations have obtained portions of the classified Nuclear Posture Review. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will determine whether an advanced earth-penetrating nuclear weapon can be built. It would be assembled from existing warheads and components and placed in a 5,000-pound shell. Everet Beckner, the National Nuclear Security Administration's deputy administrator for defense programs, says the program starts small: There likely will be fewer than a dozen designers at each lab, the ''bunker buster'' study will cost $40 million to $50 million over two to three years, and Energy officials will seek congressional approval before designing a weapon. Bush's father canceled the last major weapons research program, a short-range attack missile warhead, in 1991. He halted all new weapons research in 1992. President Clinton shifted the nuclear weapons program from research, testing and production to dismantling warheads and ensuring the safety and reliability of older weapons without testing. The U.S. arsenal has had one type of nuclear ''bunker buster'' since 1997. Scientists took an existing bomb and refitted it with a hardened nose cone and new tail fins. The aim of the new weapon is to go deeper into the ground to cause less surface damage. © Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 36 HOW'M I GLOWIN'? KOCH AIRS OLD SCARE NYPOST.COM Regional News: By WILLIAM J. GORTA KOCH AIRS OLD SCARE March 18, 2002 -- Just weeks after local politicians slammed feds for keeping mum about a possible nuclear attack on New York, former Mayor Ed Koch revealed a long-kept secret: a threatened plutonium contamination of the city's water supply - and a positive test for plutonium traces at the reservoir - during his administration. The preliminary test turned out to be a false positive and six weeks later, a more accurate test proved the water supply plutonium-free, said Koch in this week's New York magazine. Koch said he and his aides kept the threat and tests secret because they feared panic in the streets. "There was nothing we could do," he said. Besides, he said, in New York, "You can't tell people not to drink water - there isn't enough seltzer to go around." And even if the tests had proven positive, there was little health danger from the low-level traces, Koch said. ***************************************************************** 37 Troubling Nuclear Review The Salt Lake Tribune -- Monday, March 18, 2002 I was shocked to read "Pentagon Revamps Nuke Use" (Tribune, March 10) which outlined the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review. The plan's short list of possible nuclear targets including Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, Syria and Libya, conjures up scenarios almost too grizzly to consider. Bush, who campaigned in 2000 as a healer of bipartisan conflict, shows us quite plainly that his international healing powers are questionable. His act-tough approach to the war on terrorism, which this week has begun to include the possible use of nuclear warheads, will surely net us more enemies than allies. We should be jumping up and down screaming, "Enough is enough!" Sept. 11 was too horrible a crime to learn nothing from. It would also be a crime to let this tragedy pass without grasping the opportunity to see how the rest of the world sees us. We have to look directly into the ugliness of the World Trade Center to see where our foreign policy is misdirected. Instead Bush is using it as a jumping off point for an endless war and now he announces to the world who he would consider turning a missile on. The new Nuclear Posture Review which includes calls for bunker-busting mini-nukes, is especially troubling since making use of such warheads would make us a first-strike nuclear aggressor. This is a clear departure from past policies. Not to mention the fact that the unthinkable use of one nuclear warhead would make us guilty of a hundred Sept. 11s. Our aggressive responses and tough talk are generating plenty of new enemies worldwide. Imagine if your country was on Bush's short list. Looking back on the president's reaction to 9/11, can you really say you feel safer? PETER GREGORY Logan © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 38 The nuclear option is back on the table Journal and Courier Online - In the News - Opinions posted Monday, March 18th 2002 U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer sounded like the Lone Ranger last fall when he uncorked the word "nuclear" in the then-budding war on terrorism. Within a month of the murderous Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. soil and in the midst of anthrax scares in the nation's capital, the Monticello Republican and Persian Gulf War veteran said the Bush administration should keep all of its options open when fighting al-Qaida. Buyer caused a temporary and fairly minor stir when he floated the idea of "tactical nuclear strikes." Buyer said nuclear weapons would provide a way to dig into and permanently demolish the caves of Afghanistan without risking U.S. ground troops on terrain that could be filled with booby-trapped hideouts for chemical or nuclear weapons development. "They've upped the ante," Buyer said then. "We do not use (nuclear arms) as a first option. But we have them as weapons in our stockpile. They are available." It was a frightening proposal then. And still is. But perhaps Buyer wasn't out there by himself. Consider the words of President Bush last week, days after word leaked of the administration's so-called Nuclear Posture Review. The Pentagon plan calls for the development of new breeds of nuclear weapons -- what Buyer alluded to as those of a tactical nature -- and an expansion of the list of nations against whom such warheads might be used. "The reason one has a nuclear arsenal is to serve as a deterrence," the president said at a press conference last week. "We've got all options on the table because we want to make it very clear to nations that you will not threaten the United States or use weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies or friends." Bush has done little to veil his inclination to take the war on terrorism beyond Afghanistan. Word of the nuclear weapons strategy review comes just as the White House ramps up a public appeal at home and overseas aimed at flushing out suspected stashes of chemical weapons stowed away by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Making it known that he isn't afraid to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack serves notice to Saddam or any other misguided soul prepared to step over the line. But the words "nuclear war," no matter how limited, still send a chill down the spine. The fallout, literal and figurative, of a nuclear attack would be difficult to mop up. After Buyer first spoke of the idea of a limited nuclear war, we said we hoped the president wouldn't be eager to take him up on the suggestion. After a decade spent reducing the nuclear threat through disarmament -- Secretary of State Colin Powell last week told Congress that's still the president's goal -- it seems that calling out nations and putting them on alert of a nuclear strike is counterproductive. Let's hope that even if "all options" are on the table that there's no rush to pick them up, except in the most dire situations. [http://www.lafayettejc.com Copyright © 2001, Federated Publications, Inc. A Gannett Site. Use of this ***************************************************************** 39 Makings of a 'Dirty Bomb' (washingtonpost.com) Radioactive Devices Left by Soviets Could Attract Terrorists By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 18, 2002; Page A01 Six months ago, they were mere Cold War trash: hundreds of small radioactive power generators scattered across the Soviet Union decades ago and largely forgotten, except when the odd lumberjack turned up with severe radiation burns. But in the aftermath of Sept. 11, these aging but potentially lethal devices are being viewed in a troubling new light: as possible components in a weapon to be used in a terrorist strike. Even more troubling, some of them have vanished. In Georgia, on the Black Sea, a search is underway for at least two of the devices, called radiothermal generators, or RTGs, believed to have been abandoned and then stolen after the closing of a Soviet military base. Just before Christmas, three woodcutters in northwestern Georgia suffered massive injuries after stumbling upon a similar device in the middle of a forest. In the far-eastern Russian region of Chukotka, investigators discovered a complete breakdown in controls over 85 radiothermal generators placed along the arctic coast by the Soviets in the 1960s and '70s. Some of the machines had been vandalized for scrap metal, others were literally falling into the surf and at least one could not be found, according to Russian government documents obtained by The Washington Post. "The generators are placed on open land, are clearly visible from the sea and are visited by staff no more than once a year (in recent years, staff has not visited the sites at all)," said a report by a Russian commission that inspected the generators in 1997. "They would be easy targets for a terrorist attack, the consequences of which could be extremely serious." Vladimir Yetylin, a legislator from Chukotka, located on the Bering Sea, said in an interview Friday that he suspected some generators were still missing and planned to press for an investigation. "At the time, there was not enough money to gather up these [power] sources," said Yetylin, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, blaming the chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The RTGs, used by the Soviets to power navigational beacons and communications equipment in remote areas, each contain up to 40,000 curies of highly radioactive strontium or cesium. Even a tiny fraction of a single curie of strontium has a high probability of causing a fatal cancer, according to a calculation by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), a nuclear watchdog group. While cesium and strontium cannot be used to make nuclear weapons, the two heavy metals could contaminate large areas if combined with conventional explosives in a radiological weapon or "dirty bomb." "This stuff can be just ghastly to clean up," said Federation of American Scientists President Henry Kelly, a physicist who testified this month at a Senate hearing on dirty bombs. Such a bomb detonated in a large city could render several blocks uninhabitable, he added. There are literally hundreds of places where terrorists could obtain material for such a bomb, including former dumping grounds for medical waste in this country. But the recent discoveries in the former Soviet Union have further heightened international concerns about the possibility of nuclear theft. The RTGs in particular offer high concentrations of radioactivity with minimal controls -- and sometimes no controls, according to officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations. "After the Soviet Union broke up so abruptly, the newly formed nations had no use for these things and no infrastructure," said Melissa Fleming, an IAEA spokeswoman in Vienna. "They didn't have the means or even the information to locate, recover and dispose of them." The IAEA classifies the Soviet RTGs as "orphaned" nuclear sources and has called for a major international effort to find them and lock them up. "They are a problem, from the point of view of terrorism," Fleming said. But she added: "Since we can't find them, presumably it would be hard for terrorists to find them as well." RTGs are self-contained power sources that convert radioactive energy into electricity. Compact and relatively small -- Soviet models are between two and four feet in length and weigh between 1,000 and 3,000 pounds -- they are ideal for remote areas with little access to traditional fuels. The Soviets are known to have built more than 300 of the devices, most of them to power navigational beacons along arctic shipping lanes. The U.S. government also built RTGs; some were used to power spacecraft, but at least 10 of the devices were installed at remote military listening posts in Alaska in the 1960s and '70s. After a brush fire threatened one of the devices in 1992, the Air Force began replacing them with diesel-powered generators. In Soviet-made RTGs, the device's core typically is a flashlight-size capsule of strontium 90, surrounded by thick lead to absorb the radiation. When the lead cladding is intact, the generator is essentially harmless. But if the shielding were missing or cracked, someone standing nearby would receive a fatal dose of radiation within hours, IAEA officials said. It was the strontium core that the Georgian woodcutters discovered in December while working in a remote forest in the northwestern region of Abkhazia. According to IAEA officials, the metal cylinder caught the men's attention because its heat had melted the surrounding snow. Oblivious to the risk, the men took the device back to their campsite. Within hours the men suffered severe skin burns and internal organ damage. Nearly three months later, two of them are still critically ill in hospitals in Moscow and Paris, while the third has recovered. Last month, an international team led by the IAEA recovered the strontium core and a sister device that had been abandoned in the same area. Even though special one-ton lead shields were constructed for the recovery effort, the workers were allowed to approach the cores for only 40 seconds at a time. The cores were trucked to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where they are being temporarily stored along with four others that have been recovered since 1998. Still far from clear, the IAEA says, is how the cores ended up in the woods -- or how the Georgian government eventually will dispose of them. According to the IAEA, Georgian officials are convinced that more remain unaccounted for. "Based on inventories, we think there are two more," Fleming said. "And there is some information that suggests still other sources in Georgia." In other corners of the former Soviet Union, the fact that officials know the location of the devices has done little to ease local safety concerns. The Russian government commission that visited Chukotka in 1997 set out in ships to inspect 85 radiothermal generators believed to be scattered along the region's northern coast. The officials were unable to reach about a third of the devices because of harsh terrain and bad weather. But of the 52 RTGs inspected, nearly half no longer functioned, and only three had any sort of fencing or protection. The commission's report describes six of the devices as heavily damaged and leaking potentially lethal amounts of radiation. One of the generators was nearly buried in frozen mud, it said, a second was lying in water and at least one could not be located. "This lack of control means that it is entirely within the realm of possibility that . . . one or several RTGs might have been lost," said the report, signed by the province's chief health inspector, G.B. Lebedev, and chief inspector, Yuri Skobelev. The generators had long sparked concern among local health officials and international wildlife groups worried about the potential for radiation leaks. But even before the Sept. 11 attacks, environmentalists who visited the region expressed concern about the apparent lack of security for the devices. "It was just sitting in a wooden hutch -- I could have walked right up to it," said David Kleine, director of the World Wildlife Fund's Alaska field office, who passed within a few yards of one of the generators during a 1991 Bering Sea trip. Still, there is an enormous difference between finding an abandoned generator and successfully carting it away to create a weapon, nuclear experts say. IEER President Arjun Makhijani said an amateur tampering with such a device would put his own life in peril. But for someone with proper training and a bent for terror, the generators could be a means for inflicting significant harm. "If you don't know what you are doing, it will kill you first," Makhijani said. "But if you know what you're doing, it will do an extreme amount of damage." Staff writer Alan Cooperman contributed to this report. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 40 New nuclear policy has troubling implications Editorial: Too many targets? / Pittsburgh, PA Wednesday Monday, March 18, 2002 The leak in Washington of a Department of Defense planning document, the Nuclear Posture Review, has set off considerable discussion about U.S. defense and foreign policy. What is actually in the document is not surprising. The United States has various kinds of nuclear weapons and, in certain circumstances, might use them. That basic point is well-known and of long duration. What is new are several other elements and implications. The first is that the document contains a list of possible targets of U.S. nuclear attack. The list includes, predictably, Iraq, North Korea and Iran -- all countries that are basically unfriendly to the United States and seeking to develop their own nuclear capacity. No surprises. The list also includes Libya and Syria. Neither country is exactly friendly, although Syria was an ally in the 1991 Gulf war against Iraq and is an important player in the effort to arrive at a settlement in the Middle East, particularly with respect to the future of the Golan Heights. Still, this is not astonishing. Other stated potential target countries include China and Russia. Both are nuclear powers. War with each has been the subject of U.S. contingency planning for half a century. The problem is not that they have been listed but the company in which they have been put: with "rogue states" Iraq, North Korea and Libya. Obviously leaders in Moscow and Beijing are aware that the Pentagon has contingency plans -- even in the post-Cold War world -- for war with Russia and China. But reports that the Bush administration has included them on a list of rogue states that are potential targets is likely to complicate U.S. diplomacy. The so-called "hit list" isn't the only feature of the Nuclear Posture Review that gives pause. The paper also contemplates new categories of nuclear weapons with a lower yield and less danger of fallout. Such weapons could be designed to destroy storehouses of chemical and biological weapons. This broadening of the acceptable use of nuclear weapons is a departure from the nuclear deterrence policy followed by the United States during the Cold War. If that is what the Pentagon has in mind, there needs to be a discussion not only within the administration but also on Capitol Hill and between the United States and its European allies. In testimony before Congress, Secretary of State Colin Powell has denied any suggestion that the administration is staking out a dramatically different policy on the use of nuclear weapons, but President Bush should now address the controversy. We would prefer that he reaffirm that this nation would use nuclear weapons only in the most extreme circumstances. If he has a different view, he should say so -- and let the debate begin. Copyright ©1997-2002 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 41 U.S. should keeps its nuclear posture strong Borderland News March 18, 2002 Rogues discouraged A U.S. military Nuclear Policy Review recently leaked to the public has some countries worried -- notably those countries listed as possible targets of American nuclear weapons. Two countries, China and Russia, have been on the list for a long time. Since they've reportedly got missiles targeted at the United States, their inclusion should be no surprise. But the new inclusion of Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria shouldn't be a surprise, either. Each is a rogue nation with little love for the United States that wouldn't hesitate to use its own weapons of mass destruction, if available and if the time were right. Far from being a threat of imminent nuclear action, the Nuclear Posture Review is a warning that this country is willing to consider every possibility to deter an attack. As Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate appropriations subcommittee, "It does not seem to us to be a bad thing for them to look out from their little countries, their little capitals, to see a United States with a full range of options or an American president with a full range of options to deter" an attack. The Nuclear Posture Review also mentioned development of nuclear weapons that could destroy highly fortified targets deep underground. This also is not a threat of a more-aggressive U.S. nuclear stance, as some critics have complained. It is, rather, an acknowledgement of the necessity of having the capability to attack and destroy underground military facilities. The review estimated that more than 10,000 underground military facilities are scattered throughout more than 70 countries. U.S. forces must be able to take them out. The Nuclear Policy Review is just that, a review. But if the subject countries wish to get upset and take it personally, all the better. [El Paso Times Online] ***************************************************************** 42 The point of keeping nukes [http://www.bostonherald.com] A Boston Herald editorial Monday, March 18, 2002 The leaking of a secret report to Congress generated much misunderstanding of the nuclear weapons policies of the Bush administration. Now that Russia has firmly stated its understanding and support, maybe the panic-mongers will think again. Just before Vice President Dick Cheney set off on March 7 to solicit support for overthrowing the regime in Iraq, somebody slipped the report to the Los Angeles Times. The document, drawn up in January, said the Pentagon needed new earth-penetrating nuclear warheads and bombs to reach and destroy military facilities deep underground. It named Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Russia and China as places where they might have to be used. This does not mean that the United States is planning to attack anybody. It means that the United States needs a credible deterrent against new developments. The reason the United States maintains nuclear weapons at all is to deter their use by anybody. A regime like Saddam Hussein's or North Korea's could well calculate that current penetrators (like the B-61 gravity bomb) could be neutralized by going deep enough. Seventy countries have 10,000 underground installations, most of them of little importance. But 1,400 contain weapons of mass destruction, missiles or command facilities. (We have them too.) Saddam Hussein is known to have buried biological warfare laboratories. Russia's defense minister, Sergei Ivanon, told reporters last week after a visit to Washington that U.S. explanations ``satisfy us.'' He added, ``Being a defense minister, I understand well that the defense ministry of any country must plan any kind of developments.'' Now if we can only get op-ed writers and talk-show wizards to understand. © Copyright by the Boston Herald and [http://www.hiasys.com] . ***************************************************************** 43 Senators seek approval of Russian arms deal - March 17, 2002 CNN.com - WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have written a letter to the Bush administration requesting that any new agreement with Russia on arms control be treated as a formal treaty, subject to Senate ratification. The letter, dated March 15 and obtained by CNN Sunday, was addressed to Secretary of State Colin Powell. It referred to Powell's February 5 testimony before the committee in which he said President Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, were "hard at work" on an agreement to reduce offensive nuclear weapons. Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, and Jesse Helms, R-North Carolina, the authors of the letter, said that since any such deal would most likely include "significant obligations" by the United States on deployed U.S. strategic nuclear weapons, they are "convinced that such an agreement would constitute a treaty subject to the advice and consent of the Senate." "With the exception of the SALT I agreement, every significant arms control agreement during the past three decades has been transmitted to the Senate pursuant to the Treaty Clause of the Constitution," the senators wrote. "We see no reason whatsoever to alter this practice." The president has executive authority to negotiate or withdraw the United States from treaties without seeking congressional approval. But the Senate must ratify any new treaties. Bush and Putin agreed verbally late last year to slash their respective offensive arsenals. Last week, Bush told reporters the administration was open to a "legally binding instrument." The president added he had not yet decided whether he would submit any agreement to the Senate for formal ratification, since it is not clear what that "instrument" is going to be. In his testimony, Powell said the discussions on mutual weapons reduction were part of a new "strategic framework" with Russia. "We do expect that as we codify this framework," Powell said, "there will be something that will be legally binding, and we are examining different ways in which this can happen. It can be an executive agreement that both houses of Congress might wish to speak on, or it might be a treaty." Biden and Helms said they expect the administration to have close consultation with the committee as negotiations with Russia go forward. "No constitutional alternative exists to transmittal of the concluded agreement to the Senate for its advice and consent," they wrote. © 2002 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. ***************************************************************** 44 FBI Alerts Allies on Al Qaeda's Nuclear Plans Monday March 18 5:51 AM ET MANILA (Reuters) - The United States has alerted its allies to watch out for attempts by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to produce weapons of mass destruction, FBI chief Robert Mueller said Monday. Mueller, in Manila, raised the concern in talks with Philippine officials before flying back to the United States at the end of a tour of Southeast Asia. He has said the region is a potential sanctuary for members of al Qaeda, prime suspects in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Mueller said evidence gathered in Afghanistan showed without doubt that the Saudi-born bin Laden and al Qaeda were trying to obtain biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. ``We have not seen any definitive evidence that he was successful but there is enough there to cause us substantial concern and ... to say to countries around the world to be on the alert for any efforts or attempts by terrorist groups to obtain weapons of mass destruction,'' Mueller told a news conference. He said it was clear al Qaeda had established a presence in Southeast Asia and that the United States and its allies in the region were on the alert against possible new attacks by the group. Mueller singled out the militant Jemaah Islamiah group as linked to bin Laden's network and said it also had ties in several countries, including Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. ``We are working together to put all the pieces in the puzzle ... so that we can have a fuller portrait of al Qaeda's presence in the region.'' Security forces in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have detained dozens of Islamic militants in recent weeks on suspicion they might be linked to JI. U.S. special forces are currently training Filipino troops in counter-terrorism to help defeat the Abu Sayyaf group in the southern Philippines, which Washington has also linked to al Qaeda. The Abu Sayyaf has been holding a U.S. missionary couple hostage for nearly 10 months on southern Basilan island. Mueller warned in Singapore last week that al Qaeda members fleeing from Afghanistan might seek new sanctuaries in other areas, including Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Mueller voiced the same concern in talks with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo before he left Manila. ``He emphasized that there is no evidence of any al Qaeda cell in the Philippines but we have to take all the necessary precautions to make sure that this continues this way,'' presidential national security adviser Roilo Golez said. Golez said Mueller offered the FBI's technical assistance in tracking down funds of terror groups as well as information obtained from members of al Qaeda and the Taliban regime captured in the Afghanistan conflict. Philipine police have detained at least four Indonesians in recent weeks for questioning on their possible links to al Qaeda. ``What has emerged from our investigation is that the Indonesians, while they may have no direct link to al Qaeda, appear to have a connection with Jemaah Islamiah,'' national police chief Leandro Mendoza said. Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited ***************************************************************** 45 Is Bush readier to use nukes? - March 18, 2001 CNN.com - By Mark Thompson As if the Bush Pentagon hadn't been busy enough lately, last weekend it emerged that officials there have revamped the nation's nuclear-war plans. A classified portion of the latest "Nuclear Posture Review," which was presented to Congress Jan. 8, lists the countries the U.S. considers contenders for a nuclear assault: Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria. In the past, policymakers generally didn't name specific targets, or if they did, the list wasn't leaked. The document advocates that the military develop a new class of smaller, earth-penetrating nuclear arms suitable for destroying bunkers, as well as buried nuclear, chemical and biological stores. The retooled plan seems to reflect a loosening of the traditional constraints the U.S. has placed on its nuclear arms--which limited their use to retaliation against biological, chemical or nuclear attack or to extraordinary combat situations. The review--first reported by the Los Angeles Times--says the U.S. might consider nuclear strikes if Iraq attacked Israel, if China moved militarily against Taiwan or if North Korea reinvaded South Korea. Officials in Washington insist there has been no change in policy. They note that even if Iraq was never acknowledged to be on a target list, Washington during the 1991 Gulf War did issue a veiled threat that it might unleash nuclear fury if Iraq used chemical weapons on U.S. troops. That might have been what kept Saddam Hussein's sarin gas sidelined. Officially, the Pentagon insists the congressionally mandated review "does not provide operational guidance on nuclear targeting or planning." Unofficially, some defense officials describe it as little more than a "self-licking ice cream cone"--a report designed to keep money flowing into military budgets for the maintenance of existing nuclear arms and the development of new ones. ***************************************************************** 46 Nuclear arsenal upgrade planned By Jonathan Weisman, USA TODAY Nuclear weapons labs hurt by low morale WASHINGTON — Energy Department scientists will begin work next month on a new bunker-busting nuclear weapon that could mark the most significant advance in the U.S. nuclear arsenal in a decade. Research into a weapon that could penetrate deeply buried structures, such as those designed to make nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, is a key part of President Bush's push to rejuvenate the U.S. nuclear weapons program. The research project marks a shift from designing weapons of mass annihilation to smaller arms that the administration says would better deter "rogue" states but critics say could make nuclear war more plausible. Documents from the Energy Department, which oversees nuclear weapons, say Bush also plans to: Reassemble design teams at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, which disbanded the teams in 1992 after the first President Bush had agreed to a nuclear test moratorium. Shorten from years to months the lead time it would take to resume nuclear testing. Ramp up spending on manufacturing sites to build nuclear weapons and components. "The need is clear for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex," the Pentagon's new review of nuclear strategy says. News organizations have obtained portions of the classified Nuclear Posture Review. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will determine whether an advanced earth-penetrating nuclear weapon can be built. It would be assembled from existing warheads and components and placed in a 5,000-pound shell. Everet Beckner, the National Nuclear Security Administration's deputy administrator for defense programs, says the program starts small: There likely will be fewer than a dozen designers at each lab, the "bunker-buster" study will cost $40 million to $50 million over two to three years, and Energy officials will seek congressional approval before designing a weapon. Bush's father canceled the last major weapons research program, a short-range attack missile warhead, in 1991. He halted all new weapons research in 1992. President Clinton shifted the nuclear weapons program from research, testing and production to dismantling warheads and ensuring the safety and reliability of older weapons without testing. The U.S. arsenal has had one type of nuclear "bunker buster" since 1997. Scientists took an existing bomb and refitted it with a hardened nose cone and new tail fins. The aim of the new weapon is to go deeper into the ground to cause less surface damage. Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. [http://www.gannett.com] ***************************************************************** 47 Nuclear arms scientists may lack 'sense of mission' 03/18/2002 - Updated 01:33 AM ET By Jonathan Weisman, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's push to rebuild the nation's nuclear weapons research and production program is about more than developing new weapons to confront a new enemy. It's also about training a new generation of scientists to replace an aging cadre of Cold Warriors who are heading toward retirement and taking the USA's nuclear weapons knowledge with them. Administration officials and nuclear weapons scientists say a decade of neglect at the nation's three nuclear weapons labs has hurt morale, encouraged weapons experts to leave and crippled efforts to recruit a new generation of nuclear scientists. "Nobody wants to work here," complains Tom Thomson, a senior weapons designer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. "There's no sense of mission," he says. Only by challenging scientists to design and build new nuclear weapons will the labs regain their intellectual edge, they say. Next month, nuclear weapons design teams will work on a weapon that could explode deep underground and cause minimal damage at the surface. Targets could include bunkers built to make nuclear or chemical weapons. In assembling the design teams, the administration wants U.S. scientists to "think more broadly" about today's threats, "the present stockpile and whether it's properly configured," says Everet Beckner, deputy director of the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration. Critics of Bush's push to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons say they are outraged that the administration would risk a new nuclear arms race just to create more challenging work for scientists — especially when their job is to design a weapon that has a greater chance of being used. "Getting nuclear weapons untangled from old Cold War doctrines and putting them on the shelf for use is a huge departure from the past," says Robert Alvarez, an Energy Department official in the Clinton administration. Bush administration critics also say nuclear weapons lost their diplomatic and military utility with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the labs should shrink along with their mission. The point of successive international arms control accords has been to halt the arms race, not only in numbers of nuclear weapons but in their quality, arms control advocates say. By resuming nuclear weapons research, Bush is violating the spirit of those accords, the critics say. President Clinton addressed the issue of intellectual atrophy in the 1990s with a multibillion-dollar effort to ensure the safety and reliability of the remaining nuclear arsenal without testing. His administration funded a raft of new science projects, from the largest laser in the world at Lawrence Livermore to pricey new non-nuclear explosives facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Scientists also began supercomputing initiatives to create three-dimensional modeling of nuclear explosions and the effects of age on nuclear weapons. But instead of providing intellectual challenges to a new generation of scientists, the program only slowed the exodus from the labs, administration officials and nuclear scientists say. "To keep people thinking at the front edge of their intellectual interests, it's important that they not be constrained to think only in terms of what's out there, already built," Beckner says. Morale was dealt another blow by the Wen Ho Lee scandal, in which a Taiwanese-American who worked at Los Alamos was charged with spying for China. He was released after nine months in prison, when the government's case against the scientist collapsed. Before the first President Bush declared a nuclear testing moratorium and an end to new nuclear weapons design in 1992, scientists were proposing a variety of exotic models. High-altitude radio frequency warheads would knock out an enemy's electrical grid. Directed-energy weapons would channel a nuclear blast in one direction. Low-yield "mini-nukes" would produce smaller nuclear explosions and pose a more credible deterrent to foes who do not believe the United States would ever detonate a large nuclear weapon capable of wiping out a city. Such ideas are beginning to resurface. Two years ago, Stephen Younger, the head of nuclear weapons work at Los Alamos, wrote, "It is often, but not universally, thought that nuclear weapons would be used only ... when the nation is in the gravest danger." Younger added, "This may not be true in the future." Younger, now director of the Pentagon agency charged with defending the nation from nuclear, chemical and biological attacks, extolled the virtues of the "mini-nuke" in his 2000 paper. He wrote that the benefit of a less powerful weapon is that casualties "may be reduced, an important factor in attacks near urban areas." Paul Robinson, director of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, and Younger argue for a new "bunker buster" that can hit deeply buried targets with minimal deaths. Some scientists don't believe that could work. Even a "mini-nuke" would have to burrow down 230 feet to fully contain the blast, says Robert Nelson, a physicist at Princeton University. That, he says, is physically impossible. If it could not reach that level, even the force of a "mini-nuke" would be devastating, Nelson says. The giant daisy cutter bombs used sparingly in Afghanistan have 15,000 pounds of explosives. A 1-kiloton "mini-nuke" would explode with the equivalent force of 2 million pounds of explosives. Even so, the administration is ready to try. John Gordon, undersecretary of Energy for nuclear security, told a Senate panel last month that the United States must adapt its nuclear force to deter "rogue states" bent on making nuclear, chemical or biological arms. Gordon said the goal is to be able to produce new nuclear weapons. The 2003 Energy Department budget request boosts nuclear stockpile work 18% from this year to $1.2 billion. Funding to rebuild the nuclear weapons production complex already shot up from$9 million in 2001 to $197 million this year, and Bush wants the level to reach $243 million in 2003. The development of new warheads could also add pressure on the United States to resume nuclear testing. Clinton signed an international test ban treaty, but it has not been ratified by the Senate and Bush does not support it. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has expressed doubts that the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear arsenal can be ensured without an occasional explosive test. Thomson says building a new weapon without testing it would be like designing a new car but never turning the ignition switch to see if it works. The Nuclear Posture Review, the classified administration report that advocates new weapons research, calls for the Energy Department to reduce the time it would take to conduct a test from two years to several months. "While the United States is making every effort to maintain the stockpile without additional nuclear testing, this may not be possible for the indefinite future," it concludes. USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. [http://www.gannett.com] ***************************************************************** 48 Bomb lost off Georgia coast sparks new concerns Orange County Register - Top News Some fear the potential threat of a nuclear device ditched by a crippled U.S. bomber in 1958. March 18, 2002 By RON MARTZ Cox News Service SAVANNAH, Ga. -- For more than 40 years, the lost nuclear bomb was like Art Arseneault's memory of it: out of sight and virtually forgotten. In 1958, Arseneault led a team of Navy divers on a 10-week search for a hydrogen bomb that had been jettisoned from a crippled U.S. military bomber into the waters of Wassaw Sound just east of Savannah. The bomb, 100 times more powerful than the one that leveled Hiroshima, was never found. Military officials said there was no danger of a nuclear explosion and eventually abandoned the search, leaving the bomb resting in the sand and muck between Tybee and Wassaw islands. For Arseneault, a retired Navy lieutenant commander, the unfound bomb was little more than a mission cut short, a job unfinished. Then came Sept. 11. Suddenly, the unfound bomb took on new significance because of the possibility it could be exploited as a weapon of mass destruction or, at the least, used to make a "dirty bomb" to spread radioactive material along the southeast coast. "In these days of terrorism, I can't believe the United States is going to let that much uranium sit within a mile of the beach and within three miles of downtown Savannah," said Arseneault, now 77. The Air Force considers the case closed after revisiting it last year at the urging of Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., whose district encompasses the Georgia coast. The Air Force said in a report last April that a search for the missing bomb would cost $5 million to $11 million and that trying to retrieve it could set off 400 pounds of conventional explosives inside. The report went on to say, "if left undisturbed, there is no reason to expect the explosives to spontaneously explode." Arseneault agrees with the Air Force that the bomb is probably harmless if undisturbed. "But I wouldn't let a dredge get within a mile of Wassaw Sound," he said. Still, Arseneault is concerned enough about the bomb's potential threat that he has agreed to lend his expertise to a group pushing the government to find and remove it. Founded and run by retired Air Force Lt. Col. Derek Duke of Statesboro, an airline flight instructor, the group is known as American Sea Shore Underwater Recovery Expedition. "It would be very tragic if the country, having known about this, would let it go and then have someone make a dirty bomb out of this," Duke said. The components of the bomb are in dispute. It contained either plutonium or highly enriched uranium, but the Air Force said the bomb was not configured as a nuclear device when it was lost. ***************************************************************** 49 Russia Satisfied With U.S. Plan [http://www.moscowtimes.ru Monday, Mar. 18, 2002. Page 4 The Associated Press Russia is satisfied with U.S. explanations about a contingency plan that could allow nuclear strikes against Russia and six other nations, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Friday after talks in Washington. U.S. officials provided Russia with explanations "that satisfy us," Ivanov told reporters in Shannon, Ireland, on his way back from the United States. He did not elaborate. Reports of a classified Pentagon nuclear planning document that could result in targeting seven nations had threatened to overshadow Ivanov's visit. Russian officials have questioned why the plan lumps Russia together with some of Washington's fiercest foes, such as Iraq and North Korea. But in his talks with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, Ivanov steered clear of any public signs of irritation. "Being a defense minister, I understand well that the defense ministry of any country must plan any kind of developments," Ivanov said Friday. Ivanov's talks with U.S. officials focused on working out a deal on nuclear arms cuts that both sides hope to secure in time for U.S. President George W. Bush's visit to Russia in May. "There remain differences in approach to the text of the future agreement," Ivanov said. "But I wouldn't say that it's an impasse." He said the main sticking point is Russian concern over U.S. plans to store decommissioned weapons instead of destroying them. It also remains unclear how the cutbacks will be made legally binding. President Vladimir Putin has pushed for a binding document, and Bush, after initially resisting, said during Ivanov's visit that he was ready to sign a formal deal. The Foreign Ministry said Friday that Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov had a positive conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell by telephone Thursday about the two countries' relations. There are "good prospects" for preparation of an agreement on the weapons reductions by the summit, the ministry said, according to Interfax. Igor Ivanov said on Mayak radio station Saturday that there were some problems in negotiations with the United States on cutting strategic arms, but Russia will do its best to reach an agreement. The next round of talks on the arms reduction agreement will be held in Geneva on Friday and Saturday between U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Deputy Foreign Minister Gregory Mamedov.  The ranking Democratic and Republican members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee have written the Bush administration demanding that any nuclear arms reductions with Russia be submitted to the Senate as a formal treaty, according to a copy of their letter obtained Saturday, the New York Times reported. Senators Joseph Biden and Jesse Helms said an agreement on "significant obligations by the United States regarding deployed U.S. strategic nuclear warheads'' would "constitute a treaty subject to the advice and consent of the Senate." Their letter to Powell was dated Friday, two days after Bush expressed optimism that a deal on nuclear arms cuts would be ready for his summit meeting in May with Putin. ***************************************************************** 50 Interview: DOE's nuclear bloodhound United Press International: By Scott R. Burnell UPI Science News Published 3/17/2002 12:42 PM UPTON, N.Y., March 11 (UPI) -- Radiation has never been high on most people's "must-have" lists, and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks only heightened worries about the possibility of backpack nukes finding their way into major cities. Ralph James, however, has made a career of seeking out the energetic subatomic particles and rays emanating from some of the most dangerous elements on the planet. James, associate director for energy, environment and national security at the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, is focused on creating smaller, cheaper, easier-to-use radiation detectors. His work commands the attention of the White House and Congress, where recent hearings have focused on the consequences not only of nuclear weapon detonations, but of conventional explosions contaminated with radioisotopes. The technology James works with is far more complex than the film badges or chattering Geiger counters Hollywood has long used to signify the hunt for uranium or plutonium. His devices involve semiconductor chips capable of spotting isotopes by their individual radiation "fingerprints." The effort to safeguard the nation from rogue nukes might be hard-pressed to find a better bloodhound -- James has earned awards from the research and development community the past four years for his work to improve both the chips and the detectors. Prior to Brookhaven, he worked at both Sandia and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. He earned his bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Tennessee and a master's in physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology before switching to applied physics, where he earned both an additional master's and his doctorate at the California Institute of Technology. James spoke to United Press International during a conference at Brookhaven, where he gave a presentation on the accelerated effort to more widely deploy radiation detectors across the United States. Q. You mentioned the development effort is underway for advanced sensors. On Capitol Hill, there's been a lot of talk not only of nuclear weapons smuggling, but also the possibility of radiological attacks. Phrases have been thrown around such as "a sensor on every lamp post," and this would appear to be the sort of technology that's going to fill that role. A. You need to have something that's relatively inexpensive to be able to disperse them in such a widely distributed manner. You're also going to have something that doesn't have the operational constraints imposed by our really good detectors today that need this cryogenic cooling -- they just won't work in an unattended fashion for long periods of time. You're after something that's low-power, battery operated, very compact in size, long-term operation unattended, no maintenance; all those things are going to be required to make this happen. This (chip) technology really fits the bill. Q. Can we discuss the technology in a little more detail? What direction is it taking? A. The technology direction is very simple. We need sensors that are more sensitive, to detect radiation from a greater distance. This is very important if we're going to have this distributed network or even just checking in airports, tunnels and such. We also need detectors that have great specificity, where they can uniquely identify isotopes that are of great interest to us while not interrupting the flow of commerce with the sources that aren't of such concern. We live in a world that's filled with radiation; it's in the walls, the floors, coming from space. So if we just have a dumb detector that senses radiation, we're going to constantly get false alarms. If this brings about an emergency response, we have a big problem. What we need is something that can discern special nuclear materials that might be part of something with nuclear yield. These are cases of plutonium-239, uranium-235, the ones people know about; (we have to spot these) materials from a wide range of naturally occurring isotopes. We can determine by a specific signature those isotopes that present the greatest risk to our citizenry, versus those that are shipped by the hundreds for a variety of nuclear medicines, gauging and other tasks. Q. By signature, you mean empirical study has come up with a ratio of alpha to beta to gamma particles and rays that will signify a particular isotope? A. That's not exactly how this works. Most of these materials emit X- and gamma-ray radiation. The rays are fairly penetrating and escape most shielding; charged particles, like alphas and betas, do not. We've got to detect based on gamma rays or neutrons. The gamma rays have telltale signatures associated with each nuclei, and each isotope has its own nuclei. Q. Particular frequencies? A. Yes, they really are frequencies. We refer to "energies" for the gamma emissions, but you can think of them as frequencies. Just as you can tune your radio to find the frequency of your favorite station, you can identify each isotope by tuning into the unique energies associated with the emissions. We can spectrally "window" and determine if (a source) is plutonium-239, a great concern for nuclear weapons, or something like americium-241, which is in practically every smoke detector in the Unites States. Q. So this sort of system would seem to imply a network of simple detectors in a port of entry or an airport cargo terminal, designed to note the passage of something that's radiating in the proper energy bands and sound the alarm. A. If you have limited resources, and we all do, and you're trying to have the maximum reduction of risk, you typically would focus on transportation choke points. These are the obvious things -- airports, seaports, train depots, tunnels, bridges and such. That's not going to give all the layers of defense you want, so you'll have to couple that with other things and this is where cost becomes a major issue. Where'd you like to deal with this is with a sort of distributed network system. With any major city, if (the detectors) are cheap enough, you could put them with every fireman, every policeman, even with every postal worker. Now you have all these people going out in all these different regions with sensitivity to radiation. These individuals need just two signals, a warning that there's elevated radiation and another that might denote danger. You'd have a very strong network, it would be extremely difficult to move things around when you've got that many people. We see this happening in the future; eventually, you could see the detectors all coupled together (and) processing information. As technology advances, you could see these attached to GPS devices, so that when something occurs, the detector could communicate with a central location that then checks to see if other detectors (have gone off). That would give you a very high level of confidence that something's going on that we should look into. Q. Understandably there's a very high interest level (in these detectors), a very high effort level. Given the resources being put into this, what's a reasonable timetable to expect this type of network? A. There are a couple of issues -- cost and the technology advancements. The detectors are available now, but there's a matter of cost. With economies of scale, you expect those costs to come down. It's also a big effort within Brookhaven to work with Russian labs to help them with material control and accountability. In terms of when we may be able to see these larger resources, I'm sure that's being discussed, but I'm not in a position to offer precise information. Copyright © 2002 United Press International ***************************************************************** 51 Letter: DOE is accountable The Seattle Times: Letters to the editor Monday, March 18, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific The Seattle Times' editorial, "Sue for Hanford cleanup money" (March 4), urges Washington state to threaten legal action, if necessary, against the Department of Energy (DOE) over its cleanup program at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The fact is that DOE, far from shirking its responsibilities, is stepping up its commitment to the cleanup of Hanford. We can all agree with the need to get on with the job of cleaning up Hanford. The Environmental Management program called for fundamental reform and the agreement we reached this week to accelerate cleanup at Hanford is only the beginning. But, running to court takes away from real cleanup results and doesn't help taxpayers and local communities. We should be spending our valuable time and resources on the ground reducing risk and accelerating cleanup rather than spending it in court. DOE will not use litigation to avoid responsibility, and neither should the states. Promoting compliance and ensuring that key milestones are met must be our focus. When we are at fault we will acknowledge it, and correct course. And I will hold my managers — whether federal or contractor employees — accountable for meeting our commitments. We believe the most effective approach is to work with our regulators and stakeholders to develop strategies that will accelerate cleanup and risk reduction. On March 5, a Letter of Intent was signed to accelerate cleanup of Hanford. Your paper covered that announcement. Under the new plan, the parties will work to complete cleanup operations at Hanford 35 to 45 years sooner than the current estimated completion date of 2070. This agreement demonstrates the Bush administration's commitment to accelerated cleanup and ensures progress long sought by the department, EPA, and Washington state. The Hanford pact provides the framework necessary to accelerate cleanup and it is a major step to more effectively reduce health risks and expedite the environmental restoration of the nation's nuclear sites. Jessie Roberson, assistant secretary for environmental management, Department of Energy, Washington, D.C. Bush league Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company ***************************************************************** 52 Boxer & Feinstein urge DOE to clean up Santa Susana Senators Feinstein and Boxer Urge the EPA and the Department of Energy to Fulfill Commitments Regarding Santa Susana Field Laboratory Cleanup U.S. SENATOR BARBARA BOXER | CALIFORNIA March 15, 2002 Washington, DC - U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Barbara Boxer(D-Calif.) today urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) to stand by their earlier commitments to oversee the cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in Simi Valley, California. In separate letters to EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham, the Senators expressed dismay over recent reports that the DOE was abandoning a plan to have the EPA perform an independent radiation survey of the site using the EPA's Superfund standards. Furthermore, the DOE recently announced a 30% reduction for the cleanup funding in its proposed FY2003 budget. "It is our understanding that the DOE and EPA entered into an agreement in 1995 that all contaminated DOE sites would be cleaned up consistent with EPA's Superfund standards," Senators Feinstein and Boxer wrote. "We are deeply concerned that this commitment now appears in question." The SSFL site was used since the 1950s by the federal government to test nuclear reactors and rocket engines. Over the years as the Los Angeles suburbs expanded, the chemical and radioactive contamination from the site became increasingly hazardous to the surrounding neighborhoods. In May 2001, the EPA sent a letter to Senator Feinstein promising to go forward with an independent radiation survey of the site. "Promises were made to us and this community," the Senators wrote. "It was,after all, the federal government that contaminated this site, and it was the federal government that promised to clean up this site consistent with EPA standards in order to protect the public health and environment. We expect the government to live up to these commitments, and we ask your direct intervention to assure that this is the case." ***************************************************************** 53 Does Goliath want bubble fusion to fail? By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer Most of us first heard of bubble fusion early this month after Science magazine lifted an embargo on its March 8 edition and released the preliminary results of research by Rusi Taleyarkhan et al. That made headlines around the world. But the fusion establishment got a preview of the work a week earlier, thanks to Oak Ridge National Laboratory's management. Stan Milora, director of ORNL's Fusion Energy Division, briefed his colleagues on what was about to come during a Feb. 27 meeting of the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee. FESAC is an expert panel that advises the U.S. Department of Energy on fusion research matters. "I thought it was absolutely necessary that the fusion community be inoculated to this before it burst out in Science and other places,'' Milora said. "It was a good thing that they got a heads-up on this.'' Otherwise, he said, the assembled experts wouldn't have a clue what it was all about when they started hearing reports of bubble fusion and some of them might be asked for comment about the controversial research activity. Milora said he got the go-ahead for the briefing from ORNL's top management, specifically Deputy Director Lee Riedinger and Associate Director Jim Roberto. And how was the news received at the FESEC luncheon (held at the Marriott in Gaithersburg, Md.)? "I think the reaction was, hey, very calm and collected,'' Milora said. The information exchange was probably no big deal, not terribly out of the norm, but it's notable and interesting given that some folks view the latest scientific controversy as another round of David and Goliath - the fusion establishment versus the alternative approach, billion-dollar machines versus a table-top experiment. Thus, offering a briefing to fusion folks in advance of Taleyarkhan's publication in Science could give the appearance that ORNL was showing favoritism or, at a minimum, covering its backside. "I didn't really use the Taleyarkhan paper because it hadn't been released,'' Milora said. "But I did describe some aspects of the Saltmarsh and Shapira paper.'' The ORNL official was making reference to Mike Saltmarsh, the former fusion research director at the lab, and Dan Shapira, an experimental nuclear physicist, who collectively evaluated the Taleyarkhan experiment last summer and disputed the results. That, again, could give the appearance of unsportsmanlike behavior. The national lab apparently decided it was necessary to make a briefing on bubble fusion in advance of publication, but decided not to use the peer-reviewed publication itself but instead based the presentation on a not-yet-peer-reviewed dissent of the research results. Maybe that's fair and right, but there are bound to be folks that disagree. Lurking in the background of this news story has been the suggestion that traditional fusion researchers and perhaps much of the nuclear physics community in general don't want bubble fusion to work. If that's true, and I don't know that it is, nobody wants to say that in words that can be understood. Milora, for instance, seemed genuinely surprised at the suggestion of such a thing. "I haven't even heard that charge,'' he said. The fusion community historically has welcomed alternative approaches, albeit usually at lower funding levels "because they are speculative,'' Milora said. "When they start getting to the point of having legs under them and the science is pinned down, they can move on to the next step,'' he said. Even though cold fusion turned out to be nothing at all in 1989, Milora said he remembers serious researchers reflecting on the news reports and wondering, without contempt, "Have we missed something?'' Saltmarsh, Milora's predecessor in ORNL's fusion leadership role, said he believes most researchers would like to see bubble fusion perform as advertised. "People who have been in fusion for many, many years - and that includes me - would love it if we could figure any easier way to do it,'' he said. Despite his skepticism about bubble fusion and his rejection of results from early experimentation, Saltmarsh thinks the whole endeavor is worthwhile. Scientists still don't fully understand sono-luminescence, the physics principle upon which the bubble-fusion experiment is based, he said. That principle involves the use of standing sound waves to expand and collapse bubbles in liquid, with a resulting release of energy in the form of light flashes. There are open questions about whether it's possible to generate the high temperatures necessary to sustain nuclear fusion with this technique, Saltmarsh said. "Maybe we can,'' he said, "but it's a big step. You can't prove that it's wrong. It's a bit off the wall, but science gets along by looking at off-the-wall things. I would not fault somebody for saying, 'I wonder if we could do that?' It's worth investigating. ... If it happens, I would be amazed and excited.'' Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science and technology also is Copyright 2002 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 54 UNLV to archive medical records of NTS workers Las Vegas SUN March 18, 2002 By Jennifer Knight < [jknight@lasvegassun.com] > In an experiment that could revolutionize how doctors approach nuclear industry health issues, computer experts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas are preparing to digitally archive a massive amount of medical records of former Nevada Test Site workers. The UNLV project would establish Nevada as the nation's repository for electronically stored Energy Department health records. With a unique ability to digitally store and transmit crucial data, its technology also could have far-reaching effects in the private sector, UNLV officials say. "Imagine a former DOE employee has filed a claim for his participation in nuclear testing and maybe he has an abnormal CAT scan," said Tom Nartker, a computer science professor for UNLV's Information Science and Research Institute. "You might be able to query the system and ask the computer to show all other scans with the same abnormality." The database would allow doctors to search for patterns in radiation-related illnesses with the touch of a button, rather than hunting through medical records and industrial reports that currently are stored in paper morgues throughout the nation. Ideally a patient's medical history would be linked with other DOE records, such as which area an employee was working in, what type of contaminants were present and what the level of radiation was at the time. That information -- critical to doctors working with radiation exposure data -- is not currently linked to patient records, Nartker said. The federal government has allocated $9.4 million over three years in seed money for the UNLV Records Project. "At this point, this is only an investigational study," said Bill Bunn, a health systems specialist for the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees experiments at the Test Site. "If the DOE funds this as a program, it will mean millions and millions of dollars for Nevada." Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has helped secure funding for the project on a year-by-year basis, but permanent funding would have to be included in the president's budget, a Reid aide said. "The senator will continue to fund the program as he has in the past," spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said. "But in order to make it a permanent repository for a national database, that would be up to the president." UNLV researchers as soon as this summer will begin electronically scanning records -- some dating as far back as 1951 -- on current and former Nevada Test Site workers. Eventually, the project could expand to include medical records from other nuclear arms facilities. The architects of the project face an enormous task, considering security on the database system must be top-notch and the voluminous amounts of information will take up considerable computer space. Records on former DOE employees in Nevada alone are stored in three separate facilities. There are an estimated 126,000 medical records to pore over, as well as an unknown number of industrial hygiene records and information on 1 million radiation film badges, which were used to measure radiation exposure on 50,000 employees through the years. "I don't think that anyone understands how huge this project really is," Bunn said. "Over the years, we have collected a lot of stuff." The information is expected to take up at least 100 terabytes, or 100 trillion bytes -- hundreds of thousands of times more information than the most powerful personal computer on the market can hold. Not many computer centers have the ability to store such vast databases. UNLV was chosen, in part, because of the high-powered machine at the university's National Supercomputing Center. A top-of-the-line "cyber-security" policy for the project is already pending DOE approval, Joseph Lombardo, the center's manager, said. "Theoretically no one will be able to hack into it," Lombardo said. "Supposedly, when you pass this (level of compliance), it is very secure." Once the electronic scanning begins, the project is expected to take three to six years to complete, Nartker said. The development of the nation's first searchable medical records database for former nuclear workers comes seven years after Congress passed a law requiring the DOE to evaluate the long-range health of former employees. Since then 15,000 workers have undergone health screenings at 14 sites throughout the country. A large percentage of them have experienced significant health problems as a result of their work with the DOE, according to a DOE progress report completed six months ago. The prospect of having electronic access to the information is promising for epidemiologists such as Lew Pepper, a Boston University professor of public health who is overseeing Nevada's health screening program. "It's probably revolutionary that the Department of Energy is thinking about doing this," Pepper said. "It's a good idea that the records should be collected and (digitally) archived. For an epidemiologist, it is very difficult to get radiation exposure information." Once all of the information is scanned, a sorting process will begin. Specialists at UNLV's Center for Health and Informational Analysis will sift through all of the files and work with computer experts to create a sort of "web browser" for medical information, Joseph Greenway, the center's director, said. The revolutionary aspect of the project lies in the way information will be compiled. Eventually, every part of a medical file -- including three-dimensional diagnostic tools like CAT scans or MRIs -- could be included in the database, Nartker said. Uses for such technology could also spill over into the private sector, Stephen Rice, UNLV's vice provost for research, said. "This kind of computerized medical technology ... will provide a level of care to people in remote areas who don't have doctors or medical experts working in their community," Rice said. Ideally a patient or a rural doctor could electronically send crucial records to a medical expert to get a diagnosis, he said. The DOE and UNLV also are working with local companies in the private sector to make the information as usable as possible. A company called QUEST was hired to visit four other nuclear facilities and learn how their computer systems work. The facilities each have unique systems, because during the Cold War they were not set up to communicate with each other, Bunn said. If the UNLV Records Project becomes a permanent program, Nevada's reputation in the field of technology will surge, Bunn said. "Once you get this little nexus of technology going, it will grow," he said. "From there, so much more can happen." bAll contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 55 Obituary: Professor George Rochester The Independent - United Kingdom; Mar 18, 2002 BY JOHN MAJOR AND ARNOLD WOLFENDALE IN 1947, as a researcher at Manchester University, George Rochester discovered, with Clifford Butler, "V-particles" in the cosmic radiation. Their work triggered a search in physics laboratories all over the world, and particularly in laboratories on mountain-tops, for more examples of these new, unstable particles in the cosmic radiation. Subsequently, large accelerating machines were built to create the particles artificially under controlled conditions in energetic nuclear interactions, and sophisticated systems designed to detect the particles. This became a growth industry in fundamental physics and continues to this day. Rochester was a Tynesider, and proud of it; his antecedents had lived in the area for some 200 years. His father was a blacksmith, as was his mother's father, and this early exposure to manual crafts was to find expression in Rochester's very positive attitude to practical science in later years. After his father moved to the Tyneside shipyards of Swan Hunter the young Rochester was subject to the privations of the time, but the family's spirit of hard work and church activity - both his father and grandfather were Methodist lay preachers - saw them through. From Wallsend Secondary School, Rochester proceeded in 1926 to Armstrong College (now Newcastle University) with an Earl Grey Memorial Scholarship. There he came under the spell of Professor W.E. Curtis, a distinguished spectroscopist who, more than anyone, stimulated the young man and inculcated in him an attitude to precise scholarship that was to last him all his life. Leaving Armstrong College in 1934 he spent a year in Stockholm University as Earl Grey Fellow and two years at Berkeley, California as a Commonwealth Fellow. His main researches at this stage were in spectroscopy, following his mentor's interests, in particular in the examination of band spectra. In 1937 he was appointed to an Assistant Lectureship at Manchester University, where Patrick Blackett had just been appointed Professor of Physics; there followed nearly 20 years of extraordinarily productive work in what was to Rochester a new field - cosmic radiation, that enigmatic rain of atomic particles of phenomenal energy which comes from outer space. In the period 1938-46, and working largely with the gifted Hungarian physicist Lanos Janossy, Rochester made important investigations of the character of the energetic showers of particles produced by cosmic rays in absorbing materials. These investigations used what were at that time very elaborate arrangements of Geiger-Muller counters and called upon considerable technical knowledge and expertise in interpretation. An important result was the identification of neutral particles - neutrons - amongst the particles initiating the showers, and the distinction between the electromagnetic and non- electromagnetic shower components. Following Blackett's return from wartime service, Rochester and his junior colleague Butler (later Sir Clifford Butler FRS) made technical improvements to Blackett's magnet cloud chamber apparatus and used it to continue the studies of the "penetrating showers" of cosmic rays observed in the earlier work. The cloud chamber made visible the passage of the electrically charged, sub-atomic particles of the penetrating showers by the tracks of water droplets that formed on the ions left behind in the mixture of alcohol and water vapour of the chamber. To improve the efficiency of detection, the chamber was only expanded and made sensitive to charged particles when controlling Geiger-Muller counters indicated the possible presence of penetrating showers. Among some 5,000 stereo-photographs recorded by the system, two showed forked tracks of a striking character. One forked track could be seen in the lower right hand quarter of the chamber of the first photograph; the other in the upper right-hand quarter of the second photograph. Following a thorough analysis, trying to explain the forked tracks in terms of possible collision processes in the vapour of the chamber, Rochester and Butler, in 1947, had to conclude that the forked tracks could only have resulted from the spontaneous decay of a new class of unstable particles. These so-called V-particles, the first examples of what were to become known as "strange particles", were completely unexpected and their correct interpretation from the cloud chamber photographs was a remarkable feat, indicating a complete mastery of the physics of particle behaviour and of the mysteries of cloud-chamber performance. In the first photograph a secondary interaction had taken place in the 3cm-thick block of lead inside the chamber and from this a neutrally charged particle (and hence invisible in the cloud chamber) was emitted which, after a short distance of travel, spontaneously decayed into two electrically charged particles, one positive, the other negative. In the second photograph a positively charged particle produced in an interaction in the lead above the chamber had decayed just inside the chamber into a positively charged particle. On the reasonable assumption that the secondary particles were, in the terminology of the day, "light" or "heavy" mesons (now muons or pions), detailed analysis showed that the incident particle of the decay in each photograph had a mass of about 1,000 electron masses. These were the first examples of charged and neutral kaons. Awards followed the discovery of the V-particles. The C. V. Boys Prize was later awarded jointly to Rochester and Butler by the Physical Society in 1956 and Rochester was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1958. At Manchester, Butler continued and extended the cloud-chamber studies of the strange particles, whereas Rochester turned to the nuclear emulsion technique as an alternative detector, already being effectively used at Bristol University by Cecil Powell and his colleagues. This led to experiments with accelerators and a continuing interest in "machine physics". In 1955, Rochester was appointed to the Chair of Physics at Durham University, and thereby returned to his beloved North-East. There followed the establishment of the cosmic ray group, with its interest in a wide variety of cosmic ray phenomena, and a nuclear emulsion group, which developed into a bubble- chamber group, continuing with a series of accelerator experiments. From these beginnings and related developments there evolved the present internationally important research schools in astronomy and astrophysics and in elementary particle theory. These have been complemented by similar developments in solid state physics (in many of its manifestations) and in atomic physics. The 18 years that Rochester occupied the Durham chair saw a big increase in the size of the Physics Department and, indeed, in the university as a whole; in all this he played a key role, including times as Dean of the Faculty of Science and as Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Sub-Warden of the university. On his retirement in 1973, Rochester continued to live in Durham and to act as father confessor to his younger colleagues - although he was careful not to interfere with the activities of his academic successors. Retirement gave him the opportunity to expand an interest in Durham's early contributions to astronomy which followed from the construction of the Durham Observatory in the late 1830s. The university marked Rochester's retirement by the establishment of the Rochester Book Prize, awarded annually, alternately in Durham and Newcastle, to the best undergraduate in first-year science; and also by the establishment of the Rochester Lecture, given each year by a distinguished scientist. On the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the V-particles, the university did him the further honour of naming the Physics Department, in the design of which he had been closely involved, the Rochester Building. It is particularly fitting that the new UK Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology is being built in Durham. George Dixon Rochester, physicist: born Wallsend, Northumberland 4 February 1908; Assistant Lecturer in Physics, Manchester University 1937-46, Lecturer 1946-49, Senior Lecturer 1949-53, Reader 1953-55; Professor of Physics, Durham University 1955-73 (Emeritus), Second Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1967- 69, Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1969-70; FRS 1958; married 1938 Idaline Bayliffe (died 2002; one son, one daughter); died Durham 26 December 2001. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************