***************************************************************** 11/18/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.299 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: The Failsafe Point 2 Power deregulation ghosts haunt Ontario: California, Enron turned 3 UK: Debt-for-equity swap touted as solution for BE 4 N. Korea Radio Says Country Has Nukes 5 US: Rumsfeld: U.S. Waits to Go to U.N. 6 US: Physician lectures on nuclear war risks - 7 EDITORIAL :Deadlocked KEDO 8 A majority of French would like not to use nuclear energy 9 Analysis: NATO's 'find and strike' role* 10 Blix, a Swede whose word could trigger an Iraq war 11 Misinterpretation on NK Nukes Creates Stir NUCLEAR REACTORS 12 Plans to restart reactors still on 13 US: NRC decision on NPF-63 14 Fukui begins reactor checks 15 Sizewell A criticised by environment man 16 NPPD asks to let private company run Cooper plant 17 US: ACRS meeting 18 EU, Bulgaria reach deal on nuclear reactor closure NUCLEAR SAFETY 19 US: Apollo Woman Pushes for Cancer Compensation* 20 Uranium oxide plant at NFC sealed off 21 NFC-INVESTIGATION AERB starts investigation into NFC blast 22 Pakistan: No nuclear leakage after blast: official 23 UK: Nuclear trains - security tightened 24 Players identified in TEPCO cover-up NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 25 Hartsville and Louisiana Energy Services Meeting - November 25* 26 US: FR: Portland GE spent fuel storage amendment application 27 US: A lurking danger? 28 US: Energy NW outdoor storage of spent fuel gets little notice 29 US: Activist pushing for government reparations for nuclear pollutio 30 Russian nuclear rubbish tip challenges clean-up experts NUCLEAR WEAPONS 31 Nuclear technologies * Nuclear weapons * 32 U.N. Inspectors Arrive in Iraq 33 Finnish activist boards British nuclear submarine undetected* 34 UK: Nuclear technologies Nuclear weapons 35 Liability row delays Russian nuclear sub clean-up 36 IAEA head says Iraq agrees to meet Dec 8 deadline US DEPT. OF ENERGY 37 Bechtel contract to draw new jobs 38 Hanford's '03 budget on hold until mid-January 39 Federal grant funds drying up 40 FFTF shutdown delayed until mid-March 41 Hanford reactor awaits fate, again 42 Carlsbad residents question proposed plutonium pit facility 43 DOE official asks for 'Top 10' ways to improve 'openness' 44 U.S., Russia may ink deal to ship uranium to Y-12 OTHER NUCLEAR 45 Inventions that changed the world 46 Nevada among states pushing ahead with green power ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 The Failsafe Point The Energy Wars 11/17/2002 @ 12:19am The Senate killed some ugly legislation last week that would have handed billions of tax dollars to the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries. But don't rejoice yet: Trent Lott and other Republican leaders say they'll offer a "new and improved" energy bill as early as January--this time in a Republican-controlled Congress. So the coming energy wars will be an early and important test of the new-look Democrats in the House under Nancy Pelosi. Most likely, they will also serve as an early reminder of the limitations of Tom Daschle, the personification of the old-look Dems in the Senate. After all, the energy bill that just went down in flames--and was blubbery-fat with fossil-fuel subsidies--may have been inspired by the White House. But as with tax cuts for the rich and war with Iraq, Daschle was meekly and quickly on board. With fellow Democrat Jeff Bingaman, Daschle actually co-sponsored the legislation--it was the Bush-Cheney agenda, served up as the Daschle-Bingaman bill. Two years in the making, the energy bill traces its parentage to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force (yes, the same task force that drew so heavily on wisdom from the Ken Lays of this world). House Republicans picked up the Cheney-Enron plan and got to work. Just after Thanksgiving last year, they snuck through renewal of a 1950s-era law that subsidizes insurance for nuclear power. "To assure the future of nuclear energy, liability coverage must continue for nuclear activities," a White House statement said afterward. (Translation: the nuclear industry can't pay its own way in a free market, but they do always seem to find money for Republican campaign contributions.) This was make-or-break legislation for the Cheney-predicted nuclear power renaissance. Yet despite the gravity of the decision on whether new nuclear power plants could be constructed in America, when no such plant has been built for thirty years, the vote took place under a suspension of the rules" format usually reserved for noncontroversial matters, like renaming post offices: forty minutes of total debate, no amendments and no record of who voted how. The House Republicans also passed the "Securing America's Future Energy Act of 2001. Over the next ten years, according to data from nonpartisan Congressional agencies in charge of modeling changes to the tax code, that bill would have handed upwards of $30 billion in subsidies to the oil, gas, coal and nuclear power companies (for comparison, White House economists guess a war with Iraq could cost $100 billion). The bill would also open Alaska's wildlife refuge to drilling. Never mind that a 0.4-mile-per-gallon improvement in the average vehicle's fuel economy would save as much oil each year as we'd ever get from the refuge; the bill did little to force Detroit to improve automobile fuel economy. In a post-9/11 world, it did nothing to wean us from foreign oil. For a loyal opposition party with the nation's best interests in mind, there was a lot to talk about here. But House Democrats abdicated quietly. Their queasy approach was summed up by the cover of the Democratic national energy plan: a photo of a family washing its beloved SUV. The House Republican bill passed and was promptly endorsed by President Bush in his State of the Union address. It was then sent on to the Democratic Senate as the the starting point for Republican haggling. Remember, Democrats controlled the Senate then; they could have killed it outright. Instead, they fiddled with it and played Hamlet--which is a large reason why it still has far more political legitimacy than it deserves. The Dems did block the Alaskan wildlife drilling--and acted like they deserved a Medal of Honor for doing so. But they also approved the nuclear insurance subsidy. They bowed and groveled before the SUV in gutting fuel economy standards. This was a time when energy traders were imploding and Californians were realizing they had just been raped by deregulation--yet the Daschle Dems moved to repeal New Deal-era regulations that order utility holding companies to invest in ways that keep bills low and service reliable. Finally, the Daschle Dems also larded in many of the same billion-dollar subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power--and for good measure added in fat new farm subsidies for the constituents back home. Daschle-Bingaman is now dead. But Republicans don't seem to mind. "We intend to revive [the energy bill], breathe new life into it and ultimately approve an even bigger and better bill," says a spokesman for Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin, who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Tauzin and the House Republicans can then pass the baton to Senate Republican Pete Domenici, new chair of the Senate Energy Committee, who is such a champion of nuclear power that those in the industry refer to him as "St. Pete." So Tauzin, Domenici & Co. will offer the Democrats their first major challenge in the new Congress. They know what their next move is. Do the Democrats know theirs? Will it be more meek, old-school collaboration? Or will they act as the opposition--against wasteful and market-distorting subsidies for polluters, and for energy-efficiency and renewables? Either way, the energy wars will define the new Democrats. OLDER Kucinich v. Bush Back to top Welcome to "Failsafe Point," a new project funded by the Nation Institute. A failsafe point is the last point at which we can still exert control over events. We are at such a point now with regard to the environment, energy issues and nuclear weapons. FSP will follow the money and the science involving these issues, as well as the secretive bureaucracies, the public health issues, the national and international politics, and possible alternatives. also by Matt Bivens A Clean, Green, Energy Machine Privacy Policy Copyright © 2002 The Nation ***************************************************************** 2 Power deregulation ghosts haunt Ontario: California, Enron turned the tide [A part of canada.com] [NATIONAL POST] Monday » November 18 » 2002 Paul Vieira Financial Post CREDIT: Chris Bolin, National Post Ernie Eves, the Ontario Premier, last week announced a cap on the price consumers will have to pay for power until at least 2006. With voters hopping mad over a 25% surge in their hydro bills, Ernie Eves, the Ontario Premier, turned his back only six months into the province's restructuring of its $10-billion power market. In fact, Mr. Eves is not the first politician to back out, as electricity reform, or deregulation, has become a hot potato governments are scared to touch. During the past year, 23 U.S. states that studied deregulation or were ready to open their borders to competition have either delayed the process or dropped plans altogether, according to a recent UBS Warburg report. Other countries, particularly in Latin America, are also getting cold feet. "The biggest problem is that there's a lot of fear out there. Nobody wants to end up like California," says Glen Thomas, chairman of Pennsylvania's Public Utilities Commission and one of the architects of that state's restructured power market. Even though electricity reform has proven to be a success in places like Pennsylvania, the U.S. northeast and England, everybody remembers the horror of California -- the soaring rates, the rolling blackouts and the bankrupt utilities. Add in fears of Enron-type energy traders manipulating the market and it's no surprise deregulation is hitting a dead end. "California and Enron were pretty seminal in terms of changing the tide," says Jan Carr, managing director of the Toronto offices of Barker Dunn & Rossi, an energy consultancy. Proponents of electricity reform say if done properly, consumers will get more choice and lower prices, just as they did when governments broke up monopolies in the airline, railway, telephone and natural gas sectors. Deregulation was partly fuelled by a lack of willingness among governments to take on the risk of building generation megaprojects to meet consumer demand. When governments have taken that risk in the past, the results have sometimes been costly. For example, the nuclear expansion undertaken by the old Ontario Hydro monopoly is the key reason why Ontarians are stuck with a $38-billion electricity debt, which they are paying off through a special charge on their hydro bills. Moreover, ageing infrastructure, in both the generation or transmission fields, is in need of either repair or upgrades, at a big cost to the state. The U.K. was the first country to embrace deregulation. Under Margaret Thatcher, the former Conservative prime minister, the government broke up the state power monopoly and privatized its successor companies. Smaller generating companies built plants and competition flourished. The result: a 30% drop in electricity prices in real terms during the 1990s. U.S. state governments followed, with Pennsylvania cited as the model market. But then, along came California. A number of factors -- growing power demand, fuelled by the dot-com craze in Silicon Valley; limited supply; a hot summer and cooler-than-normal winter; rising natural gas prices; capped retail prices; market manipulation on the part of some traders; and a ban on building nuclear plants -- led to the crisis in 2000 that haunts deregulation advocates across the continent. David Austin, a Vancouver energy lawyer, says skepticism around deregulation in Canada is also based on a misguided perception that cheap power, especially from hydroelectric sources, is a birthright. "Restructuring is about making sure that electricity is going to go up no more than it has to," he says. "But until people stop living in hydro la-la land, they will not understand what restructuring is all about." Alberta was the first Canadian province to open its electricity borders in 2000 -- and like Ontario, saw the market price for electricity initially soar, from about 5¢ a kilowatt hour (kWh) to about 20¢ kWh. The rise was sparked by high natural gas prices, and merchants who bid up the price to buy Alberta energy and sell it to power-starved California. The government intervened by issuing rebates to households and making minor regulatory changes. Prices have since dropped and the government hopes new generation projects will further drive prices down. While Alberta tinkered, Ontario pulled the plug. Mr. Eves announced last week the province will cap the price consumers pay for power at 4.3¢ kWh until at least 2006, and issue rebates to customers retroactive to May 1. As a result, the government will step in and bear the risk should the market price exceed 4.3¢. Industry players and analysts say the move will cost Ontario taxpayers billions and drive away private-sector investors that were looking to build or acquire energy assets in the province. "What has happened in Ontario is classic Canadiana -- it's the car stuck in the snow, and it goes forward, it goes backward, but it just ends up digging a deeper hole," Mr. Austin says. "The reality is that supply is not keeping up with demand." Lack of supply was one of many flaws in the Ontario scheme. The province opened its market to competition last May 1, even though private-sector companies had yet to add new power to the grid and Crown-owned Ontario Power Generation Inc. failed to get its troubled Pickering A nuclear station back in operation, despite many promises. Moreover, power producers stayed away from Ontario for a number of reasons: the government delayed opening the market twice, in 2000 and 2001, which planted seeds of doubt as to whether the province was serious about deregulation; the dominant market player, OPG, is government-owned, creating an unlevel playing field; and investors faced uncertainty over whether mothballed nuclear units at Pickering and Bruce would come on-stream and flood the market with cheap electricity. "You don't want to go into a restructuring short of supply," Pennsylvania's Mr. Thomas says. "That was another mistake of California. So if you had problems with plants that you expected to be online but were in fact offline, that is huge." As for other Canadian provinces, New Brunswick and British Columbia are most advanced with plans to restructure, Mr. Carr says. "I think the mistake that has happened [in Ontario] is that they have been too timid in their restructuring program," he says. "You need one thing or another -- you either need a vertically integrated, tightly regulated monopoly system, or you need a very competitive, very open market-driven system. But we were sort of dithering around with something that was trying to be halfway between the two. And that does not work." pvieira@nationalpost.com © Copyright 2002 National Post ***************************************************************** 3 UK: Debt-for-equity swap touted as solution for BE Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Power crisis worsens as courts pull the plug on TXU Beige is the new in the black Norwegian breaks business mould in Sellafield protest City briefing Garnier 'stakes job' on pay Al-Qaida link brings freeze Why tanker trade is taking so long to turn around Robbie's ranting, says his publisher MM02 chief hints at Dutch sale Heather Stewart Monday November 18, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] British Energy could be forced into a debt-for-equity swap to avoid the nuclear power generator sliding into administration when its government bailout expires at the end of the month. With the £650m emergency loan from the Department of Trade and Industry due for repayment in less than a fortnight, a debt-for-equity swap is being touted as a way of restructuring the heavily indebted firm and staving off bankruptcy. Britsh Energy has admitted that it plans to sell some north American assets, including Canadian subsidiary Bruce Power, to raise cash. Unless it can rewrite the £300m-a-year reprocessing contract with British Nuclear Fuels, rock-bottom electricity prices leave a question mark over its viability in the long term. BNFL, as one of the leading creditors, would be likely to take a holding in British Energy as part of any debt-for-equity deal. Amid speculation of diverging views within the government about how to tackle British Energy's problems, Brian Wilson, the energy minister, said that nuclear power "cannot be run on a shoestring and we have to accept that". He hinted that the government would be prepared to see the company go to the wall if a suitable restructuring deal could not be struck. "The options are to continue to support them in the interests of security of supply or else to put them into administration," Mr Wilson told the Sunday Times. The government faced harsh criticism from the City after forcing Railtrack into administration a year ago, leaving furious investors almost empty-handed. A debt-for-equity swap would be unlikely to please shareholders, either. Marconi's owners were left holding just half a percent of the embattled telecoms firm after a £4bn debt-for-equity deal which handed most of it over to its creditors. British Energy is already on borrowed time, after the DTI rolled over its original £410m loan for a first time in late September. The department insisted yesterday that it hoped to be able to make an announcement on the structure of a rescue deal by November 29, if not before. A spokesman said that talks were ongoing, at both ministerial and official level, and "nothing is ruled in, nothing is ruled out, everything is still on the table". Useful links British Energy [http://www.british-energy.com/] Department of Trade and Industry [http://www.dti.gov.uk/] British Nuclear Fuels Ltd [http://www.bnfl.co.uk/website.nsf/default.htm] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament [http://www.cnduk.org/] Greenpeace [http://www.greenpeace.org/homepage/] HSE nuclear glossary [http://www.hse.gov.uk/nsd/ilrwglos.htm] UK atomic energy authority [http://www.ukaea.org.uk/] National Radiological Protection Board [http://www.nrpb.org.uk/] Friends of the Earth [http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/dump_nuc lear/index.html] World Nuclear Association [http://www.uilondon.org/] World Nuclear Transport Institute [http://www.wnti.co.uk] [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 4 N. Korea Radio Says Country Has Nukes Las Vegas SUN: November 18, 2002 By PAUL SHIN ASSOCIATED PRESS SEOUL, South Korea- Days after the United States and its allies decided to cut off oil shipments, North Korea's state-run media reported for the first time that the communist country has nuclear weapons. But South Korean officials expressed doubt about the credibility of the report. On Sunday, the North's Pyongyang Radio reported that the country "has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons due to nuclear threats by U.S. imperialists," according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which monitors broadcasts from the North. Some took the Korean-language report by Pyongyang Radio as the North's first confirmation of possession of nuclear weapons. Until now, North Korea had claimed that it was "entitled to have nuclear weapons and more powerful weapons than that to protect its sovereignty from U.S. threats." But on Monday, South Korean officials said they were skeptical that the report represented a change in North Korea's official position on nuclear weapons, which has been to neither confirm nor deny that the country has them. "It's too early to say whether North Korea's official position on its nuclear issue has changed," said Choi Young-joon, a chief analyst at South Korea's Unification Ministry. "In North Korea, such a report should follow an official government statement or policy announcement or comments by a top official," he said. Yonhap played down the significance of the report carried by Pyongyang Radio. No other Northern media, including its English-language foreign news outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, carried it. "Also, it was a one-time report and was not repeated," Yonhap said, adding that the program was aired off prime time between regular newscasts. Yonhap said it was likely that the news anchor made a mistake or that the North was deliberately trying to create confusion. Few South Koreans cared about the controversy. "I don't know which is which," said Kim Dal-ho, an office worker in Seoul. "Ordinary people like me have no control over the issue. They may be just bluffing." At issue was a verb in the North Korean report which sounded unclear to many monitors. Yonhap concluded that the verb, which means "become or come to" in English, was pronounced in the past tense, indicating that the North already has nuclear weapons. In the report, North Korea accused the United States of trying to isolate it from the world by claiming that the communist country had broken nuclear arms control agreements. North Korea claims that it has faithfully honored "the main spirit and purpose" of a 1994 pact with the United States and other anti-nuclear accords. However, the possession of nuclear weapons or a program to develop them would constitute a violation of those accords. Under the 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to freeze its plutonium facilities suspected of being used to develop nuclear weapons in return for two light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of fuel oil every year until the reactors were built. But North Korea admitted to visiting U.S. officials in Pyongyang in October that it had a covert program to make nuclear weapons with enriched uranium. As a penalty, a U.S.-led international consortium, called the Korean Energy Development Organization, last week decided to cut off fuel oil shipments to North Korea beginning in December. North Korea has yet to respond to the decision. Pyongyang has said it will resolve its nuclear issue if the United States offers a nonaggression pact. Washington has rejected any such talks unless the North scraps its nuclear ambitions "in a prompt and verifiable manner." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 5 Rumsfeld: U.S. Waits to Go to U.N. Las Vegas SUN November 18, 2002 By MATT KELLEY ASSOCIATED PRESS SANTIAGO, Chile- The United States is holding back on going to the U.N. Security Council to debate possible military action against Iraq, despite the Iraqis' firing at American and British warplanes, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says. Iraq's anti-aircraft attacks in no-fly zones patrolled by coalition aircraft is "unacceptable" and a violation of the latest Security Council resolution on Iraq, Rumsfeld said Sunday. But he said the United States is waiting for a pattern of Iraqi misdeeds to emerge before going to the Security Council. "It seems to me that what will happen is a pattern of behavior will evolve and then people will make judgments with respect to it," Rumsfeld told reporters flying with him to a summit of Western Hemisphere defense ministers here. Ahead of the gathering, which begins Tuesday, Rumsfeld planned to meet with officials from Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina to discuss hemispheric security issues. Since Saddam Hussein grudgingly accepted the latest Security Council resolution Wednesday, Iraq has twice fired on coalition planes enforcing no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, U.S. officials said. The latest attack came Sunday, when Iraqi anti-aircraft gunners near Mosul in the northern no-fly zone fired at coalition planes, which responded with airstrikes on Iraqi military positions. The first team of U.N. weapons inspectors is to arrive in Baghdad Monday to begin preparations for ridding Iraq of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and the long-range missiles and remote-controlled airplanes to deliver them. President Bush has threatened to lead "a coalition of the willing" to disarm Iraq through military force if Saddam does not comply with the latest U.N. demands. Rumsfeld repeated warnings to Iraq's military commanders not to obey any orders by Saddam to use chemical or biological weapons if Iraq is invaded. "Let there be no doubt anyone who is involved in the use of weapons of mass destruction will be particularly held accountable in the event it becomes necessary and the president and the U.N. make the decision to use force in Iraq," the defense secretary said. He added that the United States understands the bulk of Iraq's regular military forces are conscripts who are "hostages to the small ruling clique." Those soldiers should lay down their arms if war erupts, he said. "It is certainly correct that people who stay in their barracks and people who do not engage in the use of weapons of mass destruction or attack coalition forces will not have problems," Rumsfeld said. On another topic, he said he had not heard of any evidence suggesting that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had returned to his ancestral homeland of Yemen, where U.S. anti-terrorism operations in recent weeks killed a top leader of the terrorist group. He also declined to comment on the recent capture of a reported top al-Qaida leader. The United States is concerned about reports of al-Qaida activity in remote regions of South America and has contacted governments in the area to discuss the problem, Rumsfeld said. Regional cooperation to fight terrorism, drug trafficking and other threats will be a main theme of Rumsfeld's appearance at the defense summit. He plans to speak at the conference's opening session before leaving for a NATO meeting in Prague later this week. Rumsfeld said he would propose greater cooperation among countries of the region in maritime operations and in worldwide peacekeeping efforts. "If one thinks of the problems in the hemisphere of smuggling and narcotrafficking and hostage-taking and the like, the closer we are able to cooperate from the standpoint of our respective navies, the greater the security environment," he said. The United States is proposing a program to help interested countries in the region improve their naval equipment and information, according to a Pentagon fact sheet. U.S. contributions could include help with communications and logistics, as well as sharing information and helping make sure various countries' systems can work together. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 6 Physician lectures on nuclear war risks - theithacajournal.com - The Ithaca Journal Monday, November 18, 2002 By DIANA LaMATTINA Journal Staff ITHACA -- The unknown consequences and the fear of a nuclear war were the topics of a lecture presented by Dr. Helen Caldicott on Sunday night at Ithaca College. "All Americans need to know that America had a radioactive war in 1991 with Iraq," Caldicott said to a mainly non-college age crowd. "There's been a virtual blackout in the American media about it." Eric Lieb, a junior at Ithaca College, said Students for a Just Peace invited Caldicott because of her reputation as an activist for peace. "From what we gathered, she's a huge advocate for human rights and discusses it from a physician's standpoint," Lieb said. Students for a Just Peace originally was created to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but has expanded to encompass promoting peace throughout the Middle East. "We want students to gain more of a sense of what is going on outside of college life," Lieb said. "We will hopefully prompt people to action." A long road As a pediatrician, the 64-year-old Australian confidently described to the audience the global situation in common medical terms. "As you know, America is at a state of emergency. The planet meanwhile is in the intensive care unit," Caldicott said. "The problem is that this country is ignorant about what's going on." Prior to starting an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age, Caldicott was an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, specializing in cystic fibrosis. She also was on staff at the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston until 1980, when she resigned to work full-time on the prevention of nuclear war. In the late 1970's she founded Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of over 23,000 doctors committed to educating the public about the dangers of nuclear power, weapons and war. In addition, she helped start similar medical organizations in other countries, such as International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. New book During Sunday's lecture, Caldicott referred to and read from her newest book passages about the immediate threat nuclear weapons placed upon America. The book, "The New Nuclear Danger: George Bush's Military Industrial Complex," was released by The New Press in April. According to Caldicott, Americans would immediately suffer physically horrifying consequences if a nuclear missile was to strike America or if a nuclear plant were attacked. "It would be a total annihilation," Caldicott said. The Iraqi people are suffering from the Americans' having used uranium in 1991 during the Gulf War, she said. She related to the audience how doctors say they have commonly seen girls as young as 10 with breast cancer and mothers suffering as they see their babies born with only one eye. "Doctors have cried at the foot of their patient's bed because they can't treat the patients in Iraq because of the sanctions by the U.S.," Caldicott said. As her most recent undertaking, Caldicott founded the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. The purpose of the Institute is to educate the American public through the mass media about the medical, environmental, political and moral consequences of perpetuating nuclear weapons, power and waste. Caldicott explained how the Institute's goal is to create a pervasive presence in the mainstream media to counter pro-nuclear representatives. "We're going to get equal time with the right-wing media," Caldicott said, as she explained she disagreed with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "My goal is to get on television and debate with Rumsfeld." The lecture ended with Caldicott urging Americans to become active in the effort to end the nuclear age. "The only way evil flourishes is good people doing nothing," Caldicott said. "I'm giving you the task of saving the planet." Topic: Local News Copyright © 2002 Ithaca Journal. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 7 EDITORIAL :Deadlocked KEDO asahi.com : ENGLISH Asahi Shimbun www.asahi.com [http://www.asahi.com/] Japan should take initiative in breakthrough. The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) executive board has decided to freeze provision of heavy oil to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) from next month because of North Korea's continuing nuclear development. The move will seriously impact North Korea's economy. The United States and North Korea struggled to form the ``agreed framework'' during the Korean Peninsula crisis eight years ago, and the halt may jeopardize that pact. The establishment of KEDO was a major pillar in the agreement. In exchange for North Korea abandoning nuclear development, Japan, the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and other countries would contribute funds to build two light-water reactor nuclear plants. The agreement said the United States would provide 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil every year until 2008 when the first plant is scheduled for completion. The executive board is made up of four members - Japan, the United States, South Korea and the European Union. Nine other countries including Australia are also participating as ordinary members of the body. KEDO is the only international organization with the goal of preventing a specific country from developing nuclear weapons. KEDO's mandate is to ensure that North Korea quickly abandons nuclear development in a verifiable manner. Freezing oil shipments reflects the strong U.S. reaction. The administration of President George W. Bush has always had reservations about the agreement. Hard-line opinions have gained ground in the U.S. Congress, and if it doesn't approve provision of oil in future budgets, KEDO will face a serious crisis. No country wants to raise tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Japan and South Korea have called upon the United States to maintain the KEDO framework. That's why the KEDO executive board announcement stated that dialogue between the two Koreas, negotiations between Japan and North Korea, and talks between the EU and North Korea would be ``important contact windows.'' The board thinks that pressure on North Korea should come not only from the United States, and that each country involved in the project needs to approach North Korea through its own ``window'' and insist it abandon nuclear development. China and Russia have a strong influence on North Korea, and face rising expectations to play active roles. The United States is focused on Iraq, and as long as North Korea sits tight, there probably won't be any major developments in U.S.-North Korea relations for some time. South Korea is holding elections for next president in December, so there will likely be little progress on its relations with Pyongyang anytime soon. Under such circumstances, Japan has an important role to play. Relations between Japan and North Korea have bogged down. Japan is holding five Japanese who recently were allowed to visit their home country after being abducted by North Korea decades ago. North Korea has warned Japan it will not proceed with negotiations unless the abductees are returned. Naturally, Japan holds the moral high ground in this issue and wants to stick to its principles. However, when considering the threat to security from North Korea, it is undesirable to keep Japan-North Korea negotiations in limbo. The Japanese government should explain the Japanese public is equally angry about nuclear development and the abductions. Doing nothing is not the best course of action. Japan should propose a schedule for Japan-North Korea talks, and suggest a solution such as providing open communication between abductees who choose to live in Japan, and their families in North Korea, by letter and telephone. The Japanese government should try various approaches to get North Korea to sit down at the negotiating table. The crisis should not be inflamed further. Attempting to hold dialogues is not the same as compromising. --The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 16(IHT/Asahi: November 18,2002) (11/18) [Copyright Asahi Shimbun. All rights reserved. No reproduction ***************************************************************** 8 A majority of French would like not to use nuclear energy Eury < EIPA Conference - Keep Ahead with European Information Date: 18/11/2002 *In short:* A French Union for Electricity survey shows that 61 % of the French citizens polled would prefer not to use nuclear energy in the future. *Short news*: According to AFP, a survey conducted for the French Union for Electricity by the "Centre d'études et de connaissances sur l'opinion publique" at the end of September on the expectations of the public towards nuclear energy indicates that the French are convinced of the economic advantages of nuclear energy. Nevertheless, 61 % of the persons polled would prefer not to use nuclear energy in the future, and 62 % of them asserted that they would be ready to pay more for electricity (up to 10 % of increase of their invoice) in order to abandon nuclear energy. One of the main arguments against nuclear energy is the problem of nuclear waste. The French are rather sceptical about the information on nuclear energy and nuclear waste released by EDF or by their political leaders and deemed more trustworthy the information delivered by consumer organisations. 63 % of the persons polled consider that renewable energies could replace nuclear energy in the next 20 years. © EurActiv 2000 e-mailReact to Section Coordinator ***************************************************************** 9 Analysis: NATO's 'find and strike' role* United Press International By Peter Almond Published 11/17/2002 4:40 PM LONDON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Senior British officials are convinced that NATO will play a much more vital military role around the world in coming years, in spite of U.S. fears that it will become another indecisive, bloated U.N. when it agrees to take on seven new members from Eastern Europe at a summit meeting in Prague later this week. The alliance has satisfactorily resolved all major outstanding issues -- including the concerns of Russia -- about inviting the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to join NATO, as well as taking on Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The mostly-concluded diplomacy for a 26-member NATO means there can now be much more attention paid to transforming the alliance into a flexible military alliance, particularly to deal with terrorism. "Terrorism has really focused minds," said one senior British official involved in NATO policy planning who requested anonymity. "There is now a real focus on effective rapid reaction forces and there is agreement across the board how that should be done ... I don't see much chance of (European) posturing when Europe itself is as likely to be the next target (of terrorists) as America." NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson has described the Prague summit as "a major turning point in the military partnership's ability to deliver the security that we all need. With new membership, new missions and new military capabilities, NATO's transformation will make a quantum leap forward." In a week in which several North African men with alleged links to al Qaida were arrested in Britain in connection with a reported plan to release nerve gas in the London subway, the British government is anxious to see the NATO restructuring completed as soon as possible. Official sources say that French, German, Italian and other European governments are agreed that it needs to be done, even at the expense of the much-touted 60,000-man European Union rapid reaction force. Membership of the EU's planned rapid deployment force, which is still in the planning stage but was due to be operational in 2003, overlaps NATO's members (except for Turkey -- not an EU member -- Canada and the United States). The expectation now is that the EU force will abandon attempts to compete ("complement," in EU terminology) with NATO for intelligence-gathering, surveillance and secure communications and focus exclusively on back-up peacekeeping tasks. Europe will focus more on a NATO plan to establish a 20,000-man rapid reaction force under U.S. command, using the most advanced U.S. equipment, personnel, intelligence and transport and the best high-readiness forces from across Europe and Canada. The aim is to create a "find and strike" role for the force, using new regional operational headquarters restructured from the remains of the heavy, inflexible Cold War NATO structure. Gone is the idea that they could only operate in Europe. "Suppose there is a country where the government knows that international terrorist groups are operating from it but just isn't strong enough to do anything about it," said one British official, alluding perhaps to Yemen, Sudan or Morocco. "NATO calls on its rapid reaction force. It quickly deploys, destroys the training camp, chemical munitions factory, seizes terrorist leaders, whatever, and is then back within five to 15 days or brings in more backup for a longer stay. "That's the sort of thing NATO has to prepare to do. It can't just be an American operation. The Americans don't want to do this all the time on their own." But to meet U.S. concerns that these will still just be ad hoc operations and that NATO hasn't yet shown enough flexibility from its Cold War days, the alliance has agreed to drastic command changes and a slimming down process. All NATO operations will come under a single U.S. military commander, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, or SACEUR, based at Mons, Belgium, who will probably be called Strategic Commander Operations, or SCO. He will take over the role of the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, known as SACLANT, based in Norfolk, Va. The headquarters there will instead focus on training, military doctrine and experimental exercises instead of its decades-old role of getting U.S. troops to Europe in time of war and attempting to contain Soviet nuclear submarines from breaking out into the Atlantic. Under the SCO will be eight operational headquarters to supplement NATO's Allied Rapid Reaction Force headquarters at Rheindhalen, Germany, which first deployed to Kosovo and is directed and largely staffed by the British. In addition to a combined air operations HQ at Brunssum, Holland, and a maritime headquarters at Naples, Italy, another six new regional operational headquarters are expected to be based at Valencia, Spain; Milan, Italy; Istanbul, Turkey; Germany; and Strasbourg, France. Another site has to be located. Among the more active headquarters, the British have moved 30 staff officers from SACEUR headquarters in Mons to Milan, where an Italian-British headquarters will help redirect NATO focus away from Germany and Norway towards the Balkans and the Mediterranean. A new German-Netherlands Corps headquarters is being proposed to take over control of ISAF in Afghanistan, although not formerly under NATO command. Back at NATO military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, a growing and major focus for NATO officials is generating forces for troop and headquarters rotations in such places as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, and for forces at land and sea. Six NATO warships are in the eastern Mediterranean specifically watching for any ships that may be carrying terrorists or their weapons. In Kyrgyzstan, an integrated air group of Dutch, Norwegian and Danish F-16s -- not directly under NATO command -- are providing "cab rank" fighter cover over Afghanistan. For all the dismissive talk of NATO as no longer relevant to the global anti-terrorist war, and for all America's obvious and growing military strength, senior Pentagon officials have made clear to their European counterparts they have a real practical need to share their burden. "All you've got to do is mention the words 'op tempo' in the Pentagon and you'll find the United States has a real problem maintaining the pace of its operations," said one British source. "The U.S. Navy, for instance, is very, very grateful for NATO ships to help with interdiction forces." So far, the British have taken the modest brunt of first-strike operational support to the United States, particularly with special operations forces, aircraft surveillance and air-to-air refueling. But NATO leaders on Thursday and Friday are expected to press for that to be extended across the alliance. A new "capabilities package" will focus on eight key areas, including: secure communications, information systems; chemical and biological warfare; combat service support, air defenses, surveillance, air-to-air refueling, and airlift. These NATO shortcomings have been listed before, of course, notably in 1999 after the Kosovo operation when the huge gap between U.S. and other NATO forces became painfully obvious. But this time, British officials say they are confident the alleged "laggards" of the alliance will take action, if only not to be shown up by enthusiastic new members such as the Czech Republic, whose chemical weapons detection units are firmly established as part of the new NATO rapid reaction force. Poland's air defense regiment is also prized, and the explosive ordnance demolition units of the Baltic states might also become part of the force. Germany's contribution is thus increasingly under pressure, particularly because it has still not agreed to sign up to its full commitment of yet-to-be-built multinational strategic Airbus A400M transport aircraft. Europe's main airlifter project for rapid reaction forces thus cannot go ahead. The NATO summit is expected to pressure German officials further by backing them to lease several U.S. C-17 air transporters, or Ukrainian Antonov aircraft. The former may be the more practical proposition because Britain has already paved the way by leasing four C-17s from the U.S. Air Force, and Ukraine isn't in good standing with NATO because of human rights violations. Copyright © 2002 United Press International ***************************************************************** 10 Blix, a Swede whose word could trigger an Iraq war Reuters AlertNet - 18 Nov 2002 12:51 By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Summoned out of retirement on a cruise to Antarctica, Hans Blix, who led U.N. inspectors to Baghdad on Monday to search for weapons of mass destruction, is a man whose word could make the difference between war and peace in Iraq. As the chief United Nations weapons inspector, the 74-year-old Swede will have to report on whether Iraq meets U.N. Security Council demands on disclosing its alleged chemical, biological and nuclear arms programmes. The United States has warned that if Iraq fails the U.N. test, American forces will go to war to disarm President Saddam Hussein. "The situation is tense at the moment but there is a new opportunity and we are here to provide inspection which is credible," he said after landing in Baghdad with a team of about 30, the first U.N. arms inspectors to visit in four years. "We hope we can all take that opportunity together." Tough and calm, Blix is a stickler for rules and walks a fine line between Washington's drumbeat of war and the natural U.N. inclination to turn swords into ploughshares. "I think it is clear that there has to be constant pressure to...(get) the Iraqis to comply," he has said. "There was an erosion over the years in the past. So that has to be there." At the same time, Blix strives for neutrality and has frowned on U.S. proposals that it name inspectors for his teams or send troops to open roads for them. "We have been trying from the very outset to have a balanced position," he said in a recent interview. A lawyer with two doctoral degrees, Blix studied at Columbia University in the United States and Cambridge University in England, and taught international law at Stockholm University. He joined the foreign service and was Sweden's foreign minister in 1978. In 1981, he became director-general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the next 16 years. But his retirement in 1997, which included hiking above the tree line in the Swedish mountains, did not last long. Blix and his wife Eva, then a Swedish government adviser on Arctic and Antarctic affairs, had left Patagonia on a cruise ship for Antarctica in January 2000 when U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called. OUT OF THE FRIDGE Members of the Security Council, Annan said, wanted him to lead the U.N. Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission, or UNMOVIC, responsible for Iraq's ballistic, chemical and biological weapons. "I was taken out of the refrigerator -- literally," Blix said. He took up the post in March 2000. His hiking now is limited to a 25-minute walk to his 35th-floor offices at U.N. headquarters, knapsack on his back. He works most weekends, his wife having remained in Sweden and his two adult sons leading their own lives. "I live like a monk. I have a computer at home," he said. Diplomats say Blix has brought credibility in revamping the agency, discredited by charges of U.S. spying and steady Russian criticism of his predecessor, Australian Richard Butler. He has set up training courses for more than 200 potential inspectors and created an electronic archive with 30,000 entries of material collected in Iraq by his two predecessors, Butler and fellow Swede Rolf Ekeus. But U.S. conservatives have accused Blix of overlooking Iraq's atomic arms programme during the years he headed the IAEA, which spent decades promoting nuclear energy. Blix says the rules of the game have changed considerably since the 1991 Gulf War, which for the first time permitted intrusive scrutiny by IAEA teams of nuclear materials in Iraq. Then the U.S. CIA was ordered by the Pentagon to investigate him, an action that amused him. "I thought it was somewhat redundant in view of the fact I should be a well-known quantity, having been head of the IAEA for 16 years," Blix said. At the same time, Iraq, which had not permitted U.N. inspectors to return to Baghdad since December 1998, made him a prime target for many months in 2002. "From the beginning they regarded UNMOVIC as a nonentity," he said. "Later on I was promoted to a spy and then finally we had the pleasure of discussions with the Iraqis." But he stood firm in three rounds of talks with Iraqi arms officials, refusing to go to Baghdad unless inspections were conducted on his terms. Iraq finally agreed. "We have waited now for nearly four years, so we have to have a little more patience," he said with a wry smile. ***************************************************************** 11 Misinterpretation on NK Nukes Creates Stir [KoreaTimes National] By Seo Soo-min Staff Reporter What could be seen as the North's startling concession on its possession of nuclear weapons created a momentary stir in Seoul yesterday, with journalists scrambling to fathom Pyongyang's intent behind a radio report. The state-run Pyongyang Broadcasting Station ran a report titled, ``It is the U.S. that violated international agreements and treaties'' Sunday afternoon, accusing the United States of violating various accords, including the Agreed Framework it struck with the North in 1994. One sentence, roughly translated from Korean to English, read, ``In the face of the increasing threat from the American imperialists, we have come to possess powerful military countermeasures, including nuclear weapons.'' Reporters interpreted this as the North's first admittance to possessing nuclear weapons. Reaction was particularly strong among the foreign media. ``North Korea Admits to Nuclear Weapons,'' said a headline on Voice of America. Similar headlines, such as ``North Korea Comes Clean,'' followed across the world. The original transcript of the lengthy report in Korean, however, revealed a different picture, and misunderstandings also seemed to have stemmed from the ambiguity of the Korean language, much of which was lost in translation. In the very next sentence after the part on nuclear weapons, the report said North Korea was ``being thrust in that direction'' by the U.S., not actually doing it yet. Also, the disputed part ``we have come to possess'' nuclear weapons could also be translated as ``we are entitled to possess'' or ``we are about to possess.'' ``If the North were to announce that it has the nukes, it would definitely make big issue out of it, broadcasting the message simultaneously all over the world,'' a Unification Ministry official said. The message is likely part of ongoing anti-U.S. propaganda, which Pyongyang stepped up recently, he added. North Korea put an end to the controversy by changing the sentence to a more precise ``we are entitled to possess'' in a re-run of the same radio report yesterday afternoon. ssm@koreatimes.co.kr ÀԷ½ð£ 2002/11/18 17:46 [webmaster@hankooki.com] ***************************************************************** 12 Plans to restart reactors still on CLASSIFIEDS Price cap won't affect project; negotiations to sell confirmed / * Jim Algie * /Saturday, November 16, 2002 - 08:00 /*Local news * - Bruce Power stands by plans to restart two 800-megawatt nuclear reactors on schedule in 2003, a company spokesman said Friday. Bruce Power chief executive officer Duncan Hawthorne could not be reached for comment Friday, but spokesman Steve Cannon confirmed statements by Hawthorne earlier this week that provincial energy market changes, such as caps on retail charges, would not affect the timetable for Bruce A repairs. Bruce Power officials would not comment on a Globe & Mail story that suggested there could be delays in a possible takeover bid by Cameco Corp., which has a 15 per cent stake in Bruce Power, due to the changes announced in Ontario’s electricity market. The Globe cited unnamed industry sources who say Cameco is leading a group of potential new investors in Bruce Power, including TransCanada PipeLines of Calgary and Borealis Capital Corp. of Toronto. British Energy also confirmed Friday it’s in talks about selling part or all of its share of Bruce Power. Meanwhile, work on the two Bruce A units continues. “I can say that the Bruce A restart project is on line, in fact we’re ahead of the originally announced schedule,” Cannon said. “We have spent nearly $300 million of the $400 million that’s been earmarked for the project and we’re still very much on line, pending regulatory approval.” Environmental assessment hearings are scheduled for Dec. 12 on the restart with licensing hearings set for Jan. 15, Feb. 26 and 27. Hawthorne said earlier this week he expects approval by late February “based on a good showing at the regulatory hearings.” He said power production should follow by summer at both units. “Bruce Unit 4 should be operational by April of 2003 followed by Unit 3 soon after, before summer,” Cannon said. Bruce Power, which operates reactors at the Bruce nuclear generating station under a two-year-old lease from Ontario Power Generation, is a partnership of majority owner British Energy, Saskatoon-based uranium supplier Cameco and two employee unions. The partnership has put together a profitable operation in the past year and a half. Cameco’s third quarter financial report released Oct. 31 shows pre-tax earnings at Bruce Power of $61 million on revenue of $682 million. Please See PLANS, Page 2 But Bruce Power’s majority owner has troubles at home and that’s created uncertainty in Canada. There has been press speculation in the United Kingdom about a cutoff of government aid for British Energy. A 650-million pounds sterling ($1.62 billion) government loan guarantee expires Nov. 29 and European Community officials have begun investigating the arrangement for violations of anti-subsidy rules. British Energy issued a brief statement Friday confirming talks “which may, or may not, result in the sale of all or part of its stake in Bruce Power.” The two-paragraph statement said proceeds from any sale would be used first to repay funding from the British government. An analyst quoted in a Reuters news service story from London estimated the value of British Energy’s 82 per cent interest in Bruce Power at between 600 and 800 million pounds sterling ($1.49 billion-$1.99 billion). That would be enough for the company to pay back loans to the British government but leaves little for the Edinburgh-based company’s future, the report said. Cameco spokesman Jamie McIntyre confirmed Friday that his company has begun talks with British Energy about “increasing its stake” in Bruce. In September, Cameco renewed its commitment to invest up to $100 million in Bruce Power and to provide financial assurances of up to $102 million. Cameco’s third quarter earnings statement, issued Oct. 31, indicates the company is prepared to make further commitments to Bruce Power. It refers to “several actions” by Cameco designed to “protect its interests” in the Tiverton company. McIntyre would not place a deadline on talks with British Energy. “The complexity of the issues are really quite enormous and I think the negotiators are just making their way through them as they go,” he said. His company remains keenly interested in Bruce, McIntyre said. Hawthorne met with Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission officials Thursday to discuss potential fallout from British Energy’s financial problems. The commission wants $264 million in new guarantees to cover costs in the event of a forced shutdown. Hawthorne and safety commission officials told reporters later the company “may be in a position to resolve this matter in the very near future.” Asked on Friday how soon Hawthorne would speak publicly about new financial guarantees for Bruce, Cannon said “it would be a matter of weeks.” Hope you enjoyed reading Owen Sound Sun Times online. © 2002, OSPREY MEDIA GROUP INC. ***************************************************************** 13 NRC decision on NPF-63 FR Doc 02-29210 [Federal Register: November 18, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 222)] [Notices] [Page 69576-69577] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr18no02-95] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket No. 050-00400] License No. NPF-63; Carolina Power and Light Company; Notice of Issuance of Director's Decision Under 10 CFR 2.206 Notice is hereby given that the Director, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), has issued a Director's Decision with regard to a Petition dated November 5, 2001, filed by Mr. Jim Warren from NC WARN, hereinafter referred to as the ``Petitioner.'' The Petition was supplemented on February 12, 2002, with another letter on the same topic. The Petition concerns the rail transport of spent nuclear fuel by Carolina Power and Light Company (CP). The Petitioner requested that NRC take immediate action to halt the rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel by CP due to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the continuing threat of terrorism. As the basis for the request, the Petitioner raised concerns stemming from recent terrorist attacks, and the fact the Petitioner believes the trains transporting the spent nuclear fuel are slow-moving targets. The Petitioner considers such transport to be potentially unsafe for the citizens in his state and especially for those along the transport route. On January 16, 2002, the NRC Petition was reviewed by a Petition Review Board (PRB). During the review, the PRB decided not to grant the part of the Petition that requested immediate halting of the rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel. Additionally, the letter dated February 12, 2002, supplementing the initial position taken by Mr. Warren and further requesting that NRC halt the rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel, did not change the decision of the PRB. The NRC sent a copy of the proposed Director's Decision to the Petitioner and to CP for comment on August 29, 2002. The Petitioner responded with comments on September 27, 2002, and [[Page 69577]] the licensee responded on September 24, 2002. The comments and the NRC staff's response to those comments are included in the Director's Decision. The Director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards has determined that the requests to immediately halt rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel shipments by CP be denied. The reasons for this decision are explained in the Director's Decision pursuant to 10 CFR 2.206 [DD-02-05], the complete text of which is available for public inspection at the Commission's Public Document Room, located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland, and via the NRC's Web site (http:// www.nrc.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] ) on the World Wide Web, under the ``Public Involvement'' icon. NRC staff has determined that the established system of existing regulations for spent nuclear fuel transport, coupled with the additional security measures from the recently issued transportation Orders, adequately protect the transportation of spent nuclear fuel. Thus, the Petition sent by Mr. Warren of NC WARN to halt CP rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel has been denied. A copy of the Director's Decision will be filed with the Secretary of the Commission for the Commission's review in accordance with 10 CFR 2.206 of the Commission's regulations. As provided for by this regulation, the Director's Decision will constitute the final action of the Commission 25 days after the date of the Decision, unless the Commission, on its own motion, institutes a review of the Director's Decision in that time. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 12th day of November, 2002. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Martin J. Virgilio, Director, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 02-29210 Filed 11-15-02; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 14 Fukui begins reactor checks Japan Today [http://www.japantoday.com] Monday, November 18, 2002 at 17:00 JST TSURUGA — The Fukui prefectural government and municipalities in the prefecture on Monday began checking records of reactor inspections conducted by electric power companies following revelations that Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) had falsified reports on defects at its nuclear power plants. Officials of the local authorities inspected the Tsuruga nuclear power plant of Japan Atomic Power Co and the Mihama nuclear power plant of Kansai Electric Power Co and will inspect by Wednesday all of 15 reactors in the prefecture, the authorities said. (Kyodo News) Japan Today Discussion ***************************************************************** 15 Sizewell A criticised by environment man November 17, 2002 20:09 AN ANTI nuclear group has criticised a decision by Environment Minister Michael Meacher to allow the Sizewell A nuclear power station to increase emissions of a radioactive isotope. Mr Meacher has approved proposals to allow the plant to discharge greater volumes of an isotope called Carbon 14 which it is producing in greater volumes as the twin reactors get older. However, the minister has also rubber-stamped a recommendation from Environment Agency that emission limits on four other isotopes be tightened. The new limits will come into effect on December 18 and British Nuclear Fuels (BNF) has been working for some months to ensure that it will comply by the deadline. The emission limit on Carbon 14 has historically been lower at Sizewell A than at the other magnox nuclear power stations elsewhere in the UK. However, the isotope began to be produced in greater volumes at the Suffolk plant and, as part of a review of all discharges, BNF asked the Environment Agency to approve a higher emission limit. The company also wanted higher limits on two other isotopes but offered to reduce discharge limits on four more. The agency rejected the idea of higher limits for two of the three isotopes but agreed it in respect of Carbon 14, a decision which has now been ratified by the European Union. The Environment Agency's Sizewell A site inspector, Paul Naylor, said that the new authorisations generally tightened emission limits at the power station. "We have had to go through this process for all the magnox power stations and Sizewell A has been leading the way nationally in making sure that the new arrangements will be in place in time," Mr Naylor said. Robin Thornton, BNF spokesman said: "This has been a lengthy and thorough process but both the Environment Agency and Sizewell A believe the outcome will create great benefits for the environment. We will not only be keeping discharges within the authorised limits but striving as hard as we can to keep them as low as we possibly can." Charles Barnett, chairman of the Shut Down Sizewell Campaign, said: "It makes a mockery of Government targets for sustainable development and flies in the face of an international agreement to achieve zero emissions by the year 2020." ***************************************************************** 16 NPPD asks to let private company run Cooper plant Omaha.com November 18, 2002 *BY NANCY GAARDER* WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER COLUMBUS, Neb. - The Nebraska Public Power District will ask the Legislature to allow a private company to operate the utility's nuclear power plant without being held liable for problems that occur. The utility, owner of Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville, would retain liability. Marcia Cady, an NPPD spokeswoman, likened it to owning a car. If you let someone else without insurance drive the car, you would be liable in case of an accident. "It's still our plant, we're responsible for it," Cady said. The utility's board voted 8-2 to ask the Legislature for answers on what is and isn't possible. Board member Larry Kuncl of Columbus said he voted for the motion, not because he supports it but because NPPD needs to know if it is possible to change state law. The utility is publicly owned and chartered under state law. Nuclear Management Co., a Wisconsin-based firm, is in negotiations with the utility to assume the federal license for Cooper Nuclear Station. The private firm has been assisting with Cooper operations for more than a year, helping improve the plant's performance. The company has said that it wants to be indemnified against problems that might occur. The change would protect NPPD, Cady said, by shielding it from liability for problems that occur at any of Nuclear Management's other plants. Maureen Brown, a spokeswoman for the company, said each of its nuclear facilities has indemnification arrangements that protect it from problems that occur at other plants. Cady said NPPD has insurance that would help cover the costs of problems at the plant. The federal government also has a pool of money to help with the costs of catastrophic nuclear accidents. Board member Les Taylor voted against the motion. "I don't feel the district should pay all of the bills plus assume all of the risk," he said, referring to the contract that would pay Nuclear Management to run the plant. "They should assume responsibility if they're going to manage it." The utility's management wants to turn the plant over to Nuclear Management because Cooper continues to have performance problems. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees nuclear plants, has given Cooper the lowest grade that a nuclear plant can get and remain operating. The agency cited concerns over employee performance and general management. Some board members think Nuclear Management can bring the expertise needed to get the plant up to speed. The NPPD board also asked for an evaluation of the company's performance at Cooper and the other plants that it operates. The company was formed in 1999 and operates plants at six sites. The board also launched what is expected to be a six-month process transferring Cooper's nuclear license from the utility to Nuclear Management. The license transfer must be approved by the federal government. In other business, the board hired Clay Warren as Cooper's new chief nuclear officer. He will begin work Dec. 1. He replaces Dave Wilson, a Nuclear Management employee who will leave later that month. Warren is a consultant for NPPD through Universal Services Alliance. With this contract, he will become a full-time NPPD employee and will live near the nuclear plant, which is located in southeast Nebraska. The board also set a $258,000 salary for its new chief executive officer, Bill Fehrman, currently vice president of energy supply for NPPD. Fehrman will take office Jan. 1 and will replace Bill Mayben, who is retiring. Mayben's salary was $264,000. Lights On wrote: A government-owned power company seeking to hire a private power company to run the plant? This seems rather bizarre. I'd be more comfortable privatizing Nebraska Public Power District...period. ©2002 Omaha World-Herald. All rights reserved. Copyright ***************************************************************** 17 ACRS meeting FR Doc 02-29211 [Federal Register: November 18, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 222)] [Notices] [Page 69576] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr18no02-93] [[Page 69576]] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Subcommittee Meeting on Planning and Procedures; Notice of Meeting The ACRS Subcommittee on Planning and Procedures will hold a meeting on December 4, 2002, Room T-2B1, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The entire meeting will be open to public attendance, with the exception of a portion that may be closed pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552b(c) (2) and (6) to discuss organizational and personnel matters that relate solely to internal personnel rules and practices of ACRS, and information the release of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. The agenda for the subject meeting shall be as follows: Wednesday, December 4, 2002--9:30 a.m. until 12 Noon The Subcommittee will discuss proposed ACRS activities and related matters. The purpose of this meeting is to gather information, analyze relevant issues and facts, and formulate proposed positions and actions, as appropriate, for deliberation by the full Committee. Oral statements may be presented by members of the public with the concurrence of the Subcommittee Chairman; written statements will be accepted and made available to the Committee. Persons desiring to make oral statements should notify the Designated Federal Official named below five days prior to the meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be made. Electronic recordings will be permitted only during those portions of the meeting that are open to the public. Further information regarding topics to be discussed, the scheduling of sessions open to the public, whether the meeting has been canceled or rescheduled, and the Chairman's ruling on requests for the opportunity to present oral statements and the time allotted therefor can be obtained by contacting the Designated Federal Official, Mr. Sam Duraiswamy (telephone: 301/415-7364) between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. (EST). Persons planning to attend this meeting are urged to contact the above named individual at least two working days prior to the meeting to be advised of any potential changes in the proposed agenda. Dated: November 12, 2002. Howard J. Larson, Acting Associate Director for Technical Support, ACRS/ACNW. [FR Doc. 02-29211 Filed 11-15-02; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 18 EU, Bulgaria reach deal on nuclear reactor closure Reuters AlertNet - 18 Nov 2002 20:55 BRUSSELS, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Bulgaria agreed on Monday to close two reactors at its Soviet-designed nuclear plant Kozloduy, removing a key obstacle to the Balkan country's efforts to join the European Union in 2007. Bulgaria, which along with Romania has been left out of the EU's first wave of eastern enlargement in 2004, committed itself to closing the plant's number three and four reactors by 2006 but secured a last-chance "peer review" inspection from the EU to determine if they really are unsafe. "We have ended this hard fight and secured the best possible terms," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy told a news conference after a round of accession talks in Brussels. The closure of Kozloduy is very sensitive in Bulgaria as the plant produces about 40 percent of the country's electricity. Sofia will close Kozloduy's first two units this year. The more modern reactors five and six will be allowed to stay open. By agreeing to shut the third and fourth reactors, Bulgaria was able to conclude talks on energy, one of 30 policy areas, or negotiating chapters, which need to be agreed with the EU before any country can join. The deal, which increased the number of chapters completed for Bulgaria to 23, augurs well for the country's plans to conclude accession talks next year and to join by January 1, 2007, at the latest, Passy said. EU aid for closing the reactors still needs to be negotiated, he added. Passy spoke after EU foreign ministers debated plans of the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, to boost aid for Bulgaria and Romania to support their membership drive. EU leaders are to make a final decision on the aid package at a Copenhagen summit in mid-December. The Commission proposes that the two Balkan countries should see their shared pre-accession aid rise by 20 percent to 1.23 billion euros in 2004 over 2003. The assistance -- to modernise transport infrastructure, clean up the environment, overhaul the farm sector and implement free market reforms -- would grow to 1.33 billion euros in 2005 and 1.43 billion euros in 2006. ***************************************************************** 19 Apollo Woman Pushes for Cancer Compensation* By:JOE MANDAK, Associated Press Writer November 17, 2002 Activist pushing for government reparations for nuclear pollution APOLLO, Pa. - Like many folks in this tiny borough, Patricia Ameno's dad never thought much about the nuclear fuel plant across the road from his home. It had been there for decades, and he didn't get curious until the late 1980s, a few years after the company made headlines by saying it wanted to incinerate nuclear waste. John Ameno Sr.'s interest was infectious, and his daughter Patty, though she was no longer living at home, started asking questions. Three million documents, two brain tumors and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit later, Patty Ameno is still at it, pushing for $1.5 billion in government reparations to compensate the residents of Apollo - population 1,765 - and a dozen other communities in the area about 35 miles northeast of Pittsburgh for what she says they have gone through. She says the plants, which closed in the late 1980s, caused cancer rates to jump in what is known as the Kiski Valley and too little has been done about it. "They think this whole valley is expendable," said the 51-year-old Ameno. Personally, she's had her own problems. Surgery from her first brain tumor, five years ago, left her deaf in one ear. She's mulling treatment options for a second brain tumor, as well as two growths on her breast, and has had a cervical tumor, too. "I won't take any radiation - I've already had my dose," Ameno said. She blames the time she spent growing up near the plant for her sicknesses and those of her friends and neighbors. The question of whether two fuel plants and a nearby waste dump affected people's health has even moved into Congress, courtesy of Ameno, who has lobbied Rep. John Murtha to push for hearings into whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did its job monitoring the sites. Murtha has already gotten the Army Corps of Engineers to take over cleanup of the waste dump and one of the defunct fuel plants - a plutonium processing facility in nearby Parks Township - saying the NRC wasn't moving quickly enough. NRC officials won't comment on Murtha's call for oversight but say they did things by the book and that the site of the razed Apollo plant has been safe since 1997, when several years of cleanup ended. It was in 1957 that Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., or NUMEC, began doing business in and around Apollo, producing fuel for nuclear submarines and other purposes. After activists like Ameno started asking questions, they found experts who agreed residents might be suffering the effects of radioactive smokestack emissions, unreported nuclear accidents and improperly dumped waste. Those hazards were documented in government files obtained by Ameno or the local newspaper, The Valley News Dispatch in Tarentum, which published a yearlong investigation into the matter this fall. According to Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, environmental, health and safety problems at nuclear plants first became an issue in the late 1980s, but only at bigger facilities. "It remains to be seen how many of the smaller facilities (like NUMEC) exhibit these type of problems, but there were hundreds of them in the Cold War," Schwartz said. Schwartz and Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the nonprofit Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, say the NRC was created in the 1970s to correct the lax regulatory legacy of the Atomic Energy Commission but failed. "You have an agency with a conflicting mission," Schwartz said. "On the one hand, you're supposed to regulate the industry, and on the other hand, you're supposed to promote it." For Patty Ameno, the fight has been a long one. In 1994, she spearheaded a federal lawsuit on behalf of some 200 people with wrongful death or personal injury claims, and 100 more claiming property damage. Four years later, eight test plaintiffs (Ameno was not among them) were awarded $36.7 million against Atlantic Richfield Co, which bought out NUMEC in 1967, and Babcock & Wilcox Inc., which operated the plants after Atlantic Richfield sold them in 1971. During the trial, a doctor said 351 of Apollo's then-1,895 residents, or nearly one-in-five, had been diagnosed with some form of cancer. Company attorneys maintained radioactive emissions had been filtered out and that even if residents had been exposed, radiation levels were too low to cause cancer or other illnesses. The verdict was never paid, with the judge ordering a retrial after deciding she had wrongly allowed some evidence. The retrial has been delayed, in part because Babcock & Wilcox filed for bankruptcy after paying a multimillion-dollar settlement on separate punitive damage claims, said Fred Baron, the Texas attorney who represents Ameno and the others. Baron said he hopes settlement talks soon bear fruit. Meanwhile, Ameno wants the government to rebuild the local economy, saying it has been damaged by pollution concerns, and to pay to monitor residents' health. Some residents, though, see Ameno as the problem. Jerry Gorelli has operated Veado's restaurant in Apollo since 1965. Unbeknownst to him, radioactive dirt had been piled next to it for years. But he's more concerned about Patty. "She just never quits," he said. "My biggest concern is what the people's image of the place is." Ameno's dad died in 1999 at age 83, not of the prostate cancer she said he had but of a stroke. He left Patty the house and the family delicatessen next door that he closed in 1996 because he felt guilty about inviting customers onto property he feared was dangerously polluted. "That's where I grew up. I'm just waiting for the settlement and then I'm tearing it down," she said. "I'm gonna blacktop it. I don't want to take the chance that anyone's kids will play in that dirt." ***************************************************************** 20 Uranium oxide plant at NFC sealed off Online edition of India's National Newspaper Monday, November 18, 2002 Hyderabad, Nov. 18. (UNI): The uranium oxide plant in the sprawling Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) at Moulali, near here, was sealed off following a blast in the plant yesterday. A team of experts from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Commission (AERC) from Mumbai have arrived to inspect the plant. The NFC is the only unit in the country to make critical core components for all the operating reactors. NFC sources said the blast had occurred due to high temperature in the plant. However, there were no casualties since the blast took place in the early hours of yesterday. The sources ruled out leakage of any radioctive material due to the blast and said that in all other plants in the complex work was going on as usual. The uranium oxide plant converts magnesium diuranate, brought from the mines in Jaduguda in Uttar Pradesh, into final uranium pellets for use in the fuel bundles of the reactors. The roof of the plant was blown off under the impact of the blast. Prev: Gujarat elections notified Next: RS adjourns after obituary references The Hindu Group: [http://www.hinduonline.com/] | About Us | Copyright © 2002, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of ***************************************************************** 21 NFC-INVESTIGATION AERB starts investigation into NFC blast HYDERABAD, NOV 18 (PTI) The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board has initiated a probe into the blast in the uranium processing plant at the Nuclear Fuel Complex yesterday, a senior NFC official said here today. However, the blast is of minor nature. The damage may be to extent of Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 and there was no need for any panic as there was no radioactivity leakage, he told PTI. The incident occurred at 4.30 AM and there was no casualty. Except for some asbestos sheets near the plant nothing was damaged, the official said. The AERB team would submit its report to the Department of Atomic Energy in a day or two, he added. RELATED STORIES _20-Nov-2002_ ©Hathway Investments Private Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 22 Pakistan: No nuclear leakage after blast: official Sify News *Hyderabad, Nov 18* Nuclear energy officials on Monday launched a probe into an explosion at a nuclear facility in Hyderabad. Officials said the blast, which happened on Sunday morning, had not caused any leakage of radioactive materials as it occurred away from the processing unit. "There is nothing to panic about. It was a minor incident," T V Nagendra, public relations officer for the Nuclear Fuel Complex in Hyderabad, was quoted as saying by /The Hindu/. The facility is used for processing nuclear fuels. Officials at the complex refused to divulge details about the incident, but sources at the plant said the blast was probably triggered by a chemical reaction. The explosion occurred at an ammonia nitrate purification plant within the complex. Officials said no one was injured in the blast. ©AFP 2000. All rights reserved. This material should not be ***************************************************************** 23 UK: Nuclear trains - security tightened Nov 17 2002 By Caroline Wheeler Al-Qaida terrorists could be planning to attack nuclear trains with a makeshift ?dirty bomb? as they pass through the Midlands. **If successful the radioactive fall-out would spark a national disaster on a similar scale to Chernobyl, campaigners have warned. Now British Transport Police, who have recognised the trains as a ?potential target?, have stepped up security along the nuke route - which passes through inner city areas of Birmingham. Incredibly, the Sunday Mercury has discovered timetable details of EVERY nuclear train are available to buy over the counter - for just £12. The news comes less than a week after Tony Blair?s chilling speech in which he warned of a terrorist enemy ?looking for ever more dramatic and devastating outrages to inflict.? He asked the public to be vigilant and said that extremists might use boats or trains rather than planes to attack the West. Last week the government recognised the threat of dirty bombs and ordered that all major ferry ports be fitted with radiation-measuring devices, to stop terrorists trying to smuggle radioactive material on board. And one of the latest FBI warnings suggested that the al-Qaida terror network may be plotting to attack trains in America. So-called dirty bombs are a combination of conventional explosives with radioactive material. A spokesman for British Transport Police confirmed that trains carrying radioactive waste were a potential terrorist target. He said: ?There are move-ments of nuclear waste not just by train but also by road, but clearly the trains are a potential target and it?s taken into account. There is tight security governing the movement of nuclear flasks by rail and elsewhere for which we and others are responsible for policing. ?After September 11 and at the time of the first anniversary, security was heightened. Now in response to Tony Blair?s speech, we have increased the number of patrols in train stations. ?We are hooked into the anti-terrorism branch and the intelligence service and we rely on them to pass on to us any relevant information about a security threat to our transport system.? A spokesman for British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) said: ?Direct Rail Services (DRS) operates within extremely stringent safety and security regulations that are continuously monitored, ensuring the risk of any incident is minimised at all times. ?The Office of Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS) audits and approves the security procedures undertaken by DRS and is in constant communication regarding threat levels and DRS employees have been briefed, explaining the need for increased vigilance during these periods.? A spokesman for Sellafield said: ?Safety has always been our number one priority. There is no way that we would transport spent nuclear fuel if we thought it was not safe. ?We are extremely proud of our safety record and for the best part of 30-years we have not had one single problem specific threats affecting the industry. ?For security reasons it is not sensible to comment on opportunities for terrorists to attack flasks. ?However, the design and operational arrangements, agreed with the appropriate government departments, take into account perceived terrorist threats. ?Flasks are heavily shielded, purpose-built containers constructed from forged steel more than 30cm thick. ?Each flask weighs over 50 tonnes and is housed under a locked cover, fastened to the rail wagon for transportation. with radioactive material being transported either by rail or road.? But Jenny Maxwell, the vice chair of CND who is based in Birmingham, fears the trains could be targeted by terrorists. She said: ?Trains carrying spent nuclear fuel from power stations pass through the Midlands every week on their way to the Sellafield re-processing plant in Cumbria. ?Our worst fear is that these trains could be targeted by terrorists who could create the effect of a dirty bomb by attacking the flasks with explosives. ?If you got radiation going over Birmingham it would result in a massive increase in cancer and could have a similar effect to Chernobyl. ?These trains are easy enough to spot. If CND can find out about them, so can others.? Last week a Sunday Mercury reporter bought a timetable - freely available to the public - which gives the exact minute and day each nuclear trains pass through Midland stations. For security reasons, we do not plan to make these details public but the trains run along the West Coast Main Line to Sellafield, via Cheltenham, Birmingham, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Stafford and Crewe. *Copyright and Trade Mark Notice* © owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2002 icBirmingham^TM is a trade mark of ***************************************************************** 24 Players identified in TEPCO cover-up asahi.com : ENGLISH Asahi Shimbun www.asahi.com [http://www.asahi.com/] The Asahi Shimbun A section chief, two maintenance officials and Hitachi Ltd. played key roles in faking safety tests concerning the last line of defense at a nuclear reactor operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), according to an internal investigation. Some TEPCO workers have admitted they helped to cheat on tests on the airtightness of a containment vessel housing the reactor at TEPCO's No. 1 nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture in 1991 and 1992. Hitachi, which was contracted to undertake the tests, came up with the method to fake the safety checks on the request of TEPCO officials, according to the investigation. Up to 40 people from Hitachi and the plant's maintenance section were responsible for the tests, according to the investigation. TEPCO will release its final report on its investigation in early December. The company is currently considering dismissals and salary reductions for those involved in the cover-up. The containment vessel is a concrete dome surrounding the reactor and is considered the final stronghold for containing radiation during accidents. For obvious reasons, tests are regularly conducted to ensure an extremely high airtight level of the vessel. At the time of the faked tests, the containment vessel had a ``leak rate'' too large to be considered safe. But repairs and other tests would prolong a shutdown of the plant, which would hurt the company financially at a time of increasing electricity demand, investigators said. Unwilling to shut down the plant, the TEPCO workers prepared to fabricate reports of the regularly scheduled safety tests in 1991 and 1992, investigators said. To ``correct'' the leak rate, officials pumped extra air into the container from a steam isolation valve during the tests, the investigation showed. The key personnel in this action were the section chief and two of his staff, the report said. The goal was to hold the daily leak rate from the 6,000-cubic-meter vessel to an acceptable 0.348 percent, according to the investigation. Personnel from the plant's maintenance section had Hitachi, a manufacturer with detailed knowledge of nuclear power equipment, devise the method to conceal the leakage, according to the investigation. Hitachi is also investigating the matter through a committee that includes external lawyers. ``We want to assess what the facts were after lining up the reports of both our and the TEPCO investigations,'' a Hitachi director said.(IHT/Asahi: November 18,2002) (11/18) [Copyright Asahi Shimbun. All rights reserved. No reproduction ***************************************************************** 25 Hartsville and Louisiana Energy Services Meeting - November 25* Welcome to SierraActivist.org NJ Chapter Sierra Club Conservation Committee Sunday, November 17 @ Louisiana Energy Services (LES) is a multinational company that wants to put a uranium enrichment facility 40 miles northeast of Nashville, Tennessee, in a small, pristine town called Hartsville. The people of Hartsville do not want this plant. Unfortunately, the people of Hartsville do not get to decide whether the uranium-enrichment facility is put in their town or not. The county commissioners of Hartsville get to decide the fate of the future generations of Middle Tennessee. This is not bad news. There are several county commissioners who are uncertain whether the uranium enrichment facility should be put in Hartsville. LES is wining and dining the county commissioners, the county executive and other influential people of Hartsville. As I type this, several county commissioners, the county executive and several influential townspeople are in Almelo, Holland, on LES' dime, touring an exact replica of the type of uranium enrichment facility that LES wants to build and put online in Hartsville. On November 19th, a public meeting will be held at the Trousdale County High School in Hartsville. The county executive, LES, and the other influential people and commissioners who took the trip to Holland will be at this public meeting to discuss what they saw, and their opinions of the safety and cleanliness of the plant that they toured in Holland. _*We need a lot of people at this meeting*_ to ask lots of good questions, for example: did you talk to the locals, did you talk to other scientists and experts in the nuclear field, excluding the scientists that LES and URENCO produced for you? Did you talk about nuclear waste? Did you talk to any healthcare professionals regarding nuclear-related illnesses in Almelo, compared with other regions in Holland that do not have this type of plant in their backyard? etc. etc. The current issue that the people of Hartsville are facing is trying to persuade the county commissioners not to allow rezoning of the Four Lakes Regional Industrial Development complex. The Four Lakes Region is currently zoned for agricultural purposes only, but if LES has its way, Four Lakes will be rezoned for industrial purposes that will allow the uranium-enrichment facility to operate there. On _*November 25, 2002 at 7:00 p.m.,*_ there will be a Trousdale County Commissioners meeting at the Trousdale County Courthouse. The local citizens, known as "Citizens for Smart Choices" have a resolution that is expected to be heard at this time. The resolution will be dealing with CSC's demands that there should be no rezoning of the Four Lakes Region. Tthere will be a rally before the commissioners meeting, _*starting at 5:30 p.m.*_ on the Trousdale County courthouse steps. There are going to be speakers and lots of rabble rousing. _*Please join us for this!*_ We need as many people as possible at both of these events so please come. Please contact CSCTN@yahoo.com for directions and more information, or visit www.stoples.org From: Hannah Burdine [hcburdine@earthlink.net ] Powered by Nuke-Hosting.com Enter NUKE TOP 100 and Vote for this Site !!! Enter DJ Dreads NUKE TOP 100 SITES and Vote for this Site !!! ***************************************************************** 26 FR: Portland GE spent fuel storage amendment application FR Doc 02-29209 [Federal Register: November 18, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 222)] [Notices] [Page 69575] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr18no02-92] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket No. 72-17] Portland General Electric Company Trojan Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation; Notice of Docketing of Materials License SNM-2509 Amendment Application By letter dated October 18, 2002, Portland General Electric Company (PGE) submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or the Commission), in accordance with 10 CFR part 72, requesting the amendment of the Trojan Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) license (SNM-2509) and the Technical Specifications for the ISFSI located at Columbia County, Oregon. PGE is seeking Commission approval to amend the materials license and the ISFSI Technical Specifications to reflect a change in the Holtec International Multi- Purpose Canister (MPC) helium backfill pressure upper limit. This application was docketed under 10 CFR part 72; the ISFSI Docket No. is 72-17 and will remain the same for this action. The amendment of an ISFSI license is subject to the Commission's approval. The Commission may issue either a notice of hearing or a notice of proposed action and opportunity for hearing in accordance with 10 CFR 72.46(b)(1) or, if a determination is made that the amendment does not present a genuine issue as to whether public health and safety will be significantly affected, take immediate action on the amendment in accordance with 10 CFR 72.46(b)(2) and provide notice of the action taken and an opportunity for interested persons to request a hearing on whether the action should be rescinded or modified. For further details with respect to this amendment, see the application dated October 18, 2002, which is available for public inspection at the Commission's Public Document Room, One White Flint North Building, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD or from the publically available records component of NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). The NRC maintains ADAMS, which provides text and image files of NRC's public documents. These documents may be accessed through the NRC's Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html] . If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737 or by email to pdr@nrc.gov [pdr@nrc.gov] . Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 7th day of November 2002. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Christopher M. Regan, Project Manager, Spent Fuel Project Office, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 02-29209 Filed 11-15-02; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 27 A lurking danger? Buffalo News - Officials in Ashford are worried about a possible threat that has sat quietly in their town for over a year: two train cars loaded with nuclear waste JOHN F. BONFATTI News Staff Reporter 11/17/2002 RONALD J. COLLERAN/Buffalo News These two covered rail cars containing nuclear waste have remained at the West Valley Demonstration Project since last summer. Security at the site has been quietly upgraded since last year's terrorist attacks. Quietly, officials have beefed up security at the West Valley Demonstration Project, where two train cars loaded with highly dangerous nuclear waste sit while federal officials decide when - or whether - they can be shipped off-site. The Cattaraugus County Sheriff's Department established a substation in a portable trailer at the project in October, after assigning a sheriff's car there following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. And there is a plan to rearm security officers at the site. Officials for the Department of Energy, which is completing the project in partnership with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and West Valley Nuclear Services, the contractor, spoke cautiously about security at the facility. "We really don't talk about security," said Alice C. Williams, the DOE director at the project. But security at the site, once the country's only commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing facility, is a concern to the supervisor of Ashford, the town where it is located. "It's a constant worry to me," said Supervisor Bill King. King said that while he believes officials have done "a good job" addressing security at the project, "there are definitely possibilities to create problems. I think we all have to be realistic and realize there are possibilities. It depends on what kind of kook would go at it and how." Two of the biggest concerns are the rail cars that are loaded with 125 spent nuclear fuel assemblies, which are bundles of the uranium-filled rods used to power nuclear reactors. Under an agreement between the federal government and the state of Idaho - and in a plan that involved two years of complicated preparations and millions of dollars - the assemblies were to be shipped by train to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho Falls. In summer 2001, the assemblies were removed from their storage pool and placed in special dumbbell-shaped casks that were loaded onto specially built rail cars that critics dubbed "mobile Chernobyls." Just before the shipment was set to take place, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks occurred. The DOE immediately announced it was postponing the shipment, although officials said the postponement was related to unmet conditions in the agreement with Idaho. A DOE spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was unable to say whether the government still plans to ship the assemblies off-site, and said she couldn't comment on security at West Valley. The rail cars with the casks remain on site. Draped under coverings, they are within 500 yards of Rock Springs Road. Were the casks to be breached, exposure from the uranium, plutonium, cesium and strontium inside would be significant. "If that happened, it could create some radioactive effects on the area, no question in my mind," said King, who also wondered what would happen if, somehow, one of the two underground disposal areas containing nuclear waste were disturbed. At the time of the planned shipment, officials stressed that the 9-inch-thick casks are designed to withstand a variety of assaults, but acknowledged that testing had occurred only on scale models, not the actual casks. Up until October, a Cattaraugus County sheriff's deputy kept watch on the rail cars. On Oct. 1, the sheriff's department opened a trailer in the project parking lot as the department's fifth substation. The cost of the substation, which was not immediately available, is being borne by West Valley Nuclear Services. "It's just an added measure that West Valley Nuclear Services feels would benefit them, and also us," said Undersheriff Dennis John. An e-mail sent to workers at the project last week spells out a plan to recertify security officers to carry firearms. For many years, guards at the site were armed, had access to a sizable arsenal and trained at an on-site shooting range. But in recent years, security officers at West Valley have not been armed. Neither Williams nor West Valley Nuclear Services President Jim Little would comment on the specifics of security measures being taken, but said they continually reassess those measures. "We have looked at all aspects, and we're comfortable with how we're addressing the security of the fuel," Williams said. "We believe we've addressed the security of the fuel appropriately." Said Little, "I think people should be assured that everything is in great hands here, given the environment we work in." Paul Piciulo, project manager for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, said the DOE handles the details of West Valley security. "They don't share a lot of information about security," he said. "But I do believe they're paying very close attention to the security needs." e-mail: jbonfatti@buffnews.com [jbonfatti@buffnews.com] Copyright 1999 - 2002 - The Buffalo News ***************************************************************** 28 Energy NW outdoor storage of spent fuel gets little notice This story was published Mon, Nov 18, 2002 By Chris Mulick Herald staff writer Energy Northwest executives were eager to get the story out when they began making plans to store the Columbia Generating Station's spent nuclear fuel outside. They didn't want to be accused of hiding anything if the story played poorly in the environmentally conscious Northwest. But it turns out the story has barely played at all. Energy Northwest, the public power consortium that operates the 1,150-megawatt reactor north of Richland, is scheduled sometime today to finish moving its fourth of five giant canisters of spent fuel. So far the operation has gone off without incident, either physically or on the public relations front. No one showed up to protest at public hearings, and environmentalists have barely paid attention. "We are not really engaged with it as an issue," said Nancy Hirsh, policy director for the Northwest Energy Coalition. More than a dozen of the country's 103 nuclear plants have moved spent fuel from storage pools inside to outdoor storage facilities. An effort to move spent fuel from outside the Trojan nuclear plant in Rainier, Ore., northwest of Portland is expected to commence in the coming months. "It's been a really big deal the first time," said Energy Northwest Project Manager Steve Scammon. "It'll become a little more routine." Though filled with highly radioactive material, the 18-foot-tall cylinders do not appear to be much of a threat up close. Before being hauled out to the pad by a giant crawler, the fuel assemblies are lowered into a steel canister, which is ultimately lowered into steel and concrete casks. Fully loaded, they weigh 380,000 pounds, or more than a Boeing 777. Separated from the fuel by 2 feet of concrete and 2 inches of steel, you can walk up and touch the casks without protective clothing. They give off small amounts of radiation but not enough to even be detected during a 10-minute stroll on the storage pad. A flight attendant will get more radiation spending a day on an airplane, said Energy Northwest spokesman Don McManman. The containers are backfilled with helium, an inert gas that helps the fuel cool by transferring heat from inside the casks out through vents. "The outside air comes in and picks up the heat," said Curtis Moore, an assistant project manager. Readings inside the plant Friday indicate the air coming out of the casks was between 38 and 44 degrees warmer than normal outdoor temperatures. The only cause for alarm would be if those temperature differences increased to 114 degrees, suggesting some sort of obstruction of air flow. Checking the temperature is about all crews have to do. The current campaign is removing 340 assemblies from what was a crowded spent fuel pool inside the plant. That will make room for new ones that will be pulled from the reactor during its next refueling outage next May. By next August, crews will begin a second campaign to fill 10 more casks. Ultimately, it is hoped the fuel will be shipped to Nevada's Yucca Mountain for permanent disposal once the facility is completed. Northwest ratepayers already have contributed $100 million for that effort. In the meantime the casks are licensed for 20 years but without parts to break could actually last much longer. "They're good almost indefinitely," Scammon said. "They just sit there." Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 29 Activist pushing for government reparations for nuclear pollution O-R Online | [http://www.observer-reporter.com] Sunday, November 17, 2002 APOLLO (AP) - Like many folks in this tiny borough, Patricia Ameno's dad never thought much about the nuclear fuel plant across the road from his home. It had been there for decades, and he didn't get curious until the late 1980s, a few years after the company made headlines by saying it wanted to incinerate nuclear waste. John Ameno Sr.'s interest was infectious, and his daughter Patty, though she was no longer living at home, started asking questions. Three million documents, two brain tumors and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit later, Patty Ameno is still at it, pushing for $1.5 billion in government reparations to compensate the residents of Apollo - population 1,765 - and a dozen other communities in the area about 35 miles northeast of Pittsburgh for what she says they have gone through. She says the plants, which closed in the late 1980s, caused cancer rates to jump in what is known as the Kiski Valley and too little has been done about it. "They think this whole valley is expendable," said the 51-year-old Ameno. Personally, she's had her own problems. Surgery from her first brain tumor, five years ago, left her deaf in one ear. She's mulling treatment options for a second brain tumor, as well as two growths on her breast, and has had a cervical tumor, too. "I won't take any radiation - I've already had my dose," Ameno said. She blames the time she spent growing up near the plant for her sicknesses and those of her friends and neighbors. The question of whether two fuel plants and a nearby waste dump affected people's health has even moved into Congress, courtesy of Ameno, who has lobbied Rep. John Murtha to push for hearings into whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did its job monitoring the sites. Murtha has already gotten the Army Corps of Engineers to take over cleanup of the waste dump and one of the defunct fuel plants - a plutonium processing facility in nearby Parks Township - saying the NRC wasn't moving quickly enough. NRC officials won't comment on Murtha's call for oversight but say they did things by the book and that the site of the razed Apollo plant has been safe since 1997, when several years of cleanup ended. It was in 1957 that Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., or NUMEC, began doing business in and around Apollo, producing fuel for nuclear submarines and other purposes. After activists like Ameno started asking questions, they found experts who agreed residents might be suffering the effects of radioactive smokestack emissions, unreported nuclear accidents and improperly dumped waste. Those hazards were documented in government files obtained by Ameno or the local newspaper, The Valley News Dispatch in Tarentum, which published a yearlong investigation into the matter this fall. According to Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, environmental, health and safety problems at nuclear plants first became an issue in the late 1980s, but only at bigger facilities. "It remains to be seen how many of the smaller facilities (like NUMEC) exhibit these type of problems, but there were hundreds of them in the Cold War," Schwartz said. Schwartz and Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the nonprofit Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, say the NRC was created in the 1970s to correct the lax regulatory legacy of the Atomic Energy Commission but failed. "You have an agency with a conflicting mission," Schwartz said. "On the one hand, you're supposed to regulate the industry, and on the other hand, you're supposed to promote it." For Patty Ameno, the fight has been a long one. In 1994, she spearheaded a federal lawsuit on behalf of some 200 people with wrongful death or personal injury claims, and 100 more claiming property damage. Four years later, eight test plaintiffs (Ameno was not among them) were awarded $36.7 million against Atlantic Richfield Co, which bought out NUMEC in 1967, and Babcock &Wilcox Inc., which operated the plants after Atlantic Richfield sold them in 1971. During the trial, a doctor said 351 of Apollo's then 1,895 residents, or nearly one-in-five, had been diagnosed with some form of cancer. Company attorneys maintained radioactive emissions had been filtered out and that even if residents had been exposed, radiation levels were too low to cause cancer or other illnesses. The verdict was never paid, with the judge ordering a retrial after deciding she had wrongly allowed some evidence. The retrial has been delayed, in part because Babcock &Wilcox filed for bankruptcy after paying a multimillion-dollar settlement on separate punitive damage claims, said Fred Baron, the Texas attorney who represents Ameno and the others. Baron said he hopes settlement talks soon bear fruit. Meanwhile, Ameno wants the government to rebuild the local economy, saying it has been damaged by pollution concerns, and to pay to monitor residents' health. Some residents, though, see Ameno as the problem. Jerry Gorelli has operated Veado's restaurant in Apollo since 1965. Unbeknownst to him, radioactive dirt had been piled next to it for years. But he's more concerned about Patty. "She just never quits," he said. "My biggest concern is what the people's image of the place is." Ameno's dad died in 1999 at age 83, not of the prostate cancer she said he had but of a stroke. He left Patty the house and the family delicatessen next door that he closed in 1996 because he felt guilty about inviting customers onto property he feared was dangerously polluted. Copyright ©2001 Observer Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 30 Russian nuclear rubbish tip challenges clean-up experts [http://www.ft.com] By Andrew Jack Published: November 19 2002 4:00 | Last Updated: November 19 2002 4:00 Acommunist slogan that promised to bring "atomic energy to every house" in the Soviet Union has dangerous echoes in the Kola peninsula of Russia's far north. At a site 35 miles from the Norwegian border, above the Arctic Circle, the Russian navy guards 93 reactor cores with 35 tons of fuel in conditions so bad foreigners have only in the past few months been allowed to witness them. Scientists visiting Andreyeva Bay report radiation levels tens of thousands of times normal. They have seen rusting containers of nuclear waste in the open air, exposed to the extreme climate, and contaminated storage boxes leaking water into the ground and sea. The Kola peninsula is among the toughest challenges in the former Soviet Union for nuclear clean-up experts - and Andreyeva is probably the most dangerous place of all. "There is no other place in the world where such large amounts of spent nuclear fuel are so improperly stored as at the Kola naval bases," says Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group whose analyses are used by both Russia's officials and its critics. The region became a nuclear archipelago in Soviet times as home to a substantial part of the nuclear-powered submarine fleet, the civilian nuclear-powered ice-breaker fleet, and four nuclear power stations. After a decade of sharp decline in state funding for military and non-military purposes and bureaucratic fighting between the government and foreign donors, many long-term problems of fuel reprocessing and storage remain unresolved. The worst fears have not been realised. The adjacent resource-rich Barents Sea remains one of the cleanest in the world. But potential dangers are enormous - not least after representatives of the rebel Chechen government of Aslan Maskhadov last month warned that Chechen terrorists might seize nuclear materials within Russia. Only last week, Yuri Vishnevsky, head of the state nuclear energy inspectorate, admitted that several kilogrammes of uranium, including several grammes of weapons-grade material, had gone missing over the past 10 years. In that time, says the PIR Centre, a Moscow-based non-proliferation agency, while many alleged cases of theft have proved untrue, there have been at least 52 incidents of illegal nuclear trafficking involving Russia. At a time of heightened attention towards prevention, debate is increasingly focused on the inadequacy of security measures. Mr Vishnevsky conceded that the physical protection of nuclear plants "does not, to put it mildly, quite measure up to the rules". The Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council warned last week that, despite considerable efforts - notably from the US Department of Energy - about half Russia's weapons-grade material was inadequately secured. Measures to protect thousands of lower-grade radioactive stocks, which could form the basis for "dirty" bombs, were weaker still. Nevertheless, there are signs of hope, reflecting fresh threats of terrorism and the greater willingness of other countries to provide extra resources in response, including a $20bn (£13bn) decade-long commitment by the G8 nations to address the issue globally. Torbjorn Norendal, the Norwegian ambassador at large for nuclear issues, says long-stalled discussions on a multilateral inter-governmental agreement with Russia to ease the work of foreign nuclear clean-up are close to resolution. The stumbling block, a willingness by Russia to waive civil liability for foreign contractors in the event of an accident during clean-up, was removed in principle by negotiators a few weeks ago. Pro-Russian observers put some of the blame for slow progress on poor co-ordination among donors, bureaucracy, tough political demands and the lack of close personal relationships. Bellona has been active in highlighting for a decade "the Arctic nuclear challenge" around Kola. Andrei Zolotkov, one of its activists and a former Soviet parliamentarian and nuclear engineer, risked serious trouble 10 years ago when he denounced the then Soviet Union's violation of international agreements banning the dumping of nuclear waste at sea. Bellona was frozen out by Russian officials during the second half of the 1990s as it fought an ultimately successful battle in the courts to clear Alexander Nikitin, another activist, naval officer and journalist, of espionage charges for reporting on nuclear abuses. Yet today, the organisation has an office in Murmansk, and Mr Zolotkov is set to participate in the next stage of dismantling the Kursk nuclear submarine after it was lifted from the Barents Sea last year. Frederic Hauge, Bellona's president, says: "Compared with the size of the problem, there has not been too much progress. But we are not standing still. Whoever said it was going to be easy?" © Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2002. "FT" and ***************************************************************** 31 Nuclear technologies * Nuclear weapons * Nov. 18, 2002. 01:00 AM When the British patent office took a public opinion poll on the best and worst inventions of all time, nuclear weapons made it to the top of the second list. During World War II, many scientists became aware that certain radioactive elements such as uranium could be used to make powerful weapons through a process called fission. First discovered in 1939, fission occurs when the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller pieces and a few neutrons. Some of those neutrons can sometimes cause other atoms to break up as well, starting a chain reaction. As the atoms break apart, energy is released. To develop this reaction into a weapon for the U.S. military, a group of American and European scientists set to work under the leadership of Robert Oppenheimer. More than $2 billion (U.S.) was spent just to get the radioactive elements required for what became the Manhattan Project. The atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, used a special kind of uranium and plutonium to start a chain reaction, releasing enormous amounts of energy. Some of it was released as heat, killing people by melting their flesh. Other people died from the initial impact, still others from radioactive fallout. More than 105,000 people were killed. "(Nuclear bombs) are the ultimate evil as far as weapons go," says Bert Hall, a professor with the Univeristy of Toronto's Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Despite action to eliminate the world's nuclear arsenal, he says, more than 20,000 nuclear warheads are "lying around the planet somewhere." And eliminating all of the existing weapons still wouldn't solve the problem. "We've let the genie out of the bottle," Hall says. "If we destroyed every one of them ? which I'm in favour of ? we still have the ability to make them." Nuclear power generation, which uses the same basic principles as nuclear weapons, may simply be a blip in history, Hall says, as other sources of energy are developed. The same can't be said of nuclear weapons. "We will never be free of the threat of nuclear weapons," Hall says. "The future is going to blame the 20th century for that, long after all of our accomplishments have been forgotten." *Legal Notice:*- Copyright 1996-2002. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. ***************************************************************** 32 U.N. Inspectors Arrive in Iraq Las Vegas SUN November 18, 2002 By BASSEM MROUE ASSOCIATED PRESS BAGHDAD, Iraq- Backed by U.S. threats of force, U.N. inspectors landed in Iraq on Monday to resume the search for weapons of mass destruction in a mission that could determine whether the Gulf is plunged into a new war. After the L-100 cargo plane with a black "U.N." on its side landed at Baghdad airport, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix told reporters that credible inspections were "in the interest of Iraq and the interest of the world." "We are here to do a job and we will do it professionally and, I hope, competently," he said. Earlier, before taking off from Cyprus for Baghdad, Ewen Buchanan, the inspectors' chief spokesman, said equipment loaded Monday onto the plane included vacuum cleaners "to clear up four years of dust." Inspectors were last in Iraq in 1998. President Bush has warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that failure to cooperate with the inspectors will bring on an American attack. Saddam faces a three-week deadline to reveal his weapons of mass destruction or provide convincing evidence he no longer has any. In Iraq Monday, Al-Thawra, the mouthpiece of Saddam's ruling Baath Party, said in a front-page editorial that the previous U.N. inspection regime had been "an American organization to spy on Iraq," and that it hoped the new team would avoid that trap. The last inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998 amid Iraqi allegations that some were spying for the United States and countercharges that Iraq was not cooperating with the teams. Their departure was followed by four days of punishing U.S. and British airstrikes on Iraq. Another leading Iraqi newspaper, Babil, said in an editorial titled "our people are up to the responsibility" that Iraq wants the inspectors' mission to "prove to the Americans ... that our country is free of weapons of mass destruction," said Babil, which is owned by the Iraqi president's son, Odai. "Those unjust Americans, as well as others, should leave the Security Council alone and end the unjust siege imposed on us," Babil said. Iraq has been under strict economic sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions can be lifted when weapons inspectors say Iraq is clear of weapons of mass destruction. Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, who oversees the International Atomic Energy Agency, had flown to Cyprus en route to Baghdad from Vienna, Austria on Sunday, joining about two dozen other members of the advance team assembling here to prepare for resuming inspections. "The question of war and peace remains first of all in the hands of Iraq, the Security Council and the members of the Security Council," Blix said Sunday. Blix said his team was prepared to meet the challenge of ensuring Iraqi compliance. But he said he hoped Iraq would not try to hide anything. The United States is waiting to see Iraq's response to inspections before going to the Security Council for debate of military action, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday. "It seems to me that what will happen is a pattern of behavior will evolve and then people will make judgments with respect to it," Rumsfeld told reporters flying with him to a defense ministers' summit in Santiago, Chile. In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Monday he believed the U.N. inspectors will be able to come up with a reliable assessment of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction if they are given the access they need. "I'm pretty confident about this," he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "Inspections last time took a long time but they did arrive at a substantial proportion of the truth." Sounding a tough line, ElBaradei said Sunday there was agreement on the need for "intrusive verifications - that means we would go everywhere, we will use every means at our disposal to make sure that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction." He also said Iraqis with key information would be taken out of the country for interviews for their own safety if necessary but acknowledged, "if people do not want to talk, we obviously will not be able to force them to talk." Blix favors cooperation instead of confrontation with the Iraqis, and the differences in approach could create tension between the inspectors and the Bush administration, U.N. officials said Sunday on condition of anonymity. Blix has said that preliminary inspections likely will resume Nov. 27, with full-scale checks beginning after Iraq files a declaration of its banned weapons programs by a Dec. 8 deadline. Blix then has 60 days to report back to the U.N. Security Council with his findings. While denying wrongdoing, Saddam agreed Wednesday to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return to search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after the Security Council approved a toughly worded resolution that gives Iraq "a final opportunity" to eliminate such arms and the long-range missiles to deliver them. It gives inspectors the right to go anywhere at anytime and warns Iraq it will face "serious consequences" if it fails to cooperate. The advance team will reopen the office used by the previous inspections regime and set up secure phone lines and transportation. Meanwhile, the official Iraqi News Agency quoted an unidentified military spokesman as saying air defense units opened fire late Saturday and Sunday on "hostile warplanes" forcing them to leave Iraqi air space. Such actions are considered by U.S. officials a violation of the new Security Council resolution. Buchanan, the U.N. inspectors' spokesman, said Monday he did not think the no-fly zone activity would affect the inspection mission. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 33 Finnish activist boards British nuclear submarine undetected* HELSINGIN SANOMAT international Foreign - Monday 18.11.2002 Finnish peace activist *Elisa Silvennoinen*, together with Swede *Petter Joelson*, broke into a British nuclear submarine, the /HMS Vanguard /, at the Devonport base in Plymouth, England late on Friday night. Both activists have been arrested and questioned by the police. The pair are due to appear before magistrates on Monday, charged with criminal damage. Both activists have admitted committing the offence, and would have been free to leave the police station soon thereafter, but they chose to remain until the court hearing. The two belong to the campaign group Trident Ploughshares, which opposes Britain's Trident nuclear submarines. The aim of the activists was to prove how easy it is to board a nuclear submarine, making them vulnerable to terrorists. According to Trident Ploughshares, the duo was able to enter the base quite easily, needing only to damage a perimeter fence. The Devonport Naval Base is the base for seven nuclear submarines. After boarding the submarine, Silvennoinen and Joelson waited for a moment, then triggered the fire alarm. Their arrest was made without incident, and the submarine suffered no damage. Helsingin Sanomat ***************************************************************** 34 UK: Nuclear technologies Nuclear weapons TheStar.com - Business/News Nov. 18, 2002. 01:00 AM When the British patent office took a public opinion poll on the best and worst inventions of all time, nuclear weapons made it to the top of the second list. During World War II, many scientists became aware that certain radioactive elements such as uranium could be used to make powerful weapons through a process called fission. First discovered in 1939, fission occurs when the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller pieces and a few neutrons. Some of those neutrons can sometimes cause other atoms to break up as well, starting a chain reaction. As the atoms break apart, energy is released. To develop this reaction into a weapon for the U.S. military, a group of American and European scientists set to work under the leadership of Robert Oppenheimer. More than $2 billion (U.S.) was spent just to get the radioactive elements required for what became the Manhattan Project. The atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, used a special kind of uranium and plutonium to start a chain reaction, releasing enormous amounts of energy. Some of it was released as heat, killing people by melting their flesh. Other people died from the initial impact, still others from radioactive fallout. More than 105,000 people were killed. "(Nuclear bombs) are the ultimate evil as far as weapons go," says Bert Hall, a professor with the Univeristy of Toronto's Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Despite action to eliminate the world's nuclear arsenal, he says, more than 20,000 nuclear warheads are "lying around the planet somewhere." And eliminating all of the existing weapons still wouldn't solve the problem. "We've let the genie out of the bottle," Hall says. "If we destroyed every one of them  which I'm in favour of  we still have the ability to make them." Nuclear power generation, which uses the same basic principles as nuclear weapons, may simply be a blip in history, Hall says, as other sources of energy are developed. The same can't be said of nuclear weapons. "We will never be free of the threat of nuclear weapons," Hall says. "The future is going to blame the 20th century for that, long after all of our accomplishments have been forgotten." Legal Notice:- Copyright 1996-2002. Toronto Star Newspapers ***************************************************************** 35 Liability row delays Russian nuclear sub clean-up Reuters AlertNet - 18 Nov 2002 02:03 By Jon Boyle VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Nov 18 (Reuters) - From the warm seas of Russia's far east to the numbing cold of the bleak northwest, scores of ex-Soviet nuclear submarines rot in menacing silence, sinking rustbuckets with the potential to devastate a continent. But billions of dollars needed to help neutralise the environmental threat are on hold because Western states say Russia refuses to exempt them from legal liability should anything go wrong while they help Moscow clean up its mess. Experts at an international forum in the Pacific port of Vladivostock said an inter-ministry fight, pitting Russia's Foreign Ministry against the Defence and Atomic Energy Ministries, appeared to be at the heart of the controversy. Russian scientists say the radiation locked inside the corroding hulls of 122 decommissioned nuclear-powered submarines, once the pride of the Soviet fleet, represents 3,000 times the levels of the A-bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. "Early generation submarines are in a desperate state" because they were not designed with dismantling in mind", Ian Downing, the man in charge of British efforts to help Russia put its nuclear house in order, told Reuters. "They haven't been looked after, they are sinking. Most of them have still got the spent fuel on board," while others risk capsizing, he said on the sidelines of the British-funded forum on decommissioning Russia's nuclear submarines. ALARM BELLS Some fear that early submarines still have their weapons on board, corroded into place, said Downing, director of the Nuclear Industries Directorate at Britain's Department of Trade and Industry. "But that's informed speculation, shall we say." Downing said he was absolutely mystified why Russia was refusing to grant Britain the same liability exemptions written into U.S. and Norwegian accords. "Nuclear liability never goes away so you need to extend the exemption from liability into the future. All previous agreements with the Russians have done that. "When we came to put that condition into our agreement, they said 'no, we no longer accept the idea of continuing liability'. "So we said to them, what about all these agreements you've already signed? To which they replied, 'they are not enforceable in Russian law.' "That's set some alarm bells going around the world. It's one of the reasons the G8 Global Partnership might never fly, unless we get this issue sorted. So my parochial problem has become an international problem." That agreement, forged during the June G8 summit of leading industrial nations in Canada, would provide Russia with $10 billion from the United States and $10 billion from the club's other rich members (excluding Russia) over a decade. Several projects agreed with Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy only need the dispute to be resolved to commence. British Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the issue in Moscow talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in October. SUMMIT HAGGLING The liability issue "caused a lot of trouble at the Kananaskis summit", said one British official familiar with the debate. "It was quite clear, but not explicit, that they were trying to do a deal. They would give in on liability if the G7 would give in on debt relief. "Because they've got into this wider kind of trading thing, they cannot do a deal that would undermine their wider objective," the official said. U.S. projects are also suffering from the liability issue, says Dieter Rudolph, programme director of the U.S. national Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation programme. "We have been trying to get our own legal agreement for over three years and not had any success", said Rudolph, whose programme comes under the U.S. Department of Defense. He has only been able to help develop a spent nuclear fuel cask for U.S. and Russian submarines by using the existing Cooperative Reduction Threat programme with Russia, which provides the legal protection Rudolph needs. "I think we all have concluded that the problem really is within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that their priorities do not appear to be the same as the priorities of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Atomic Energy", Rudolph said. RUSSIAN DEFENCE Valery Lebedev, Russia's deputy minister for Atomic Energy, told Reuters that the stumbling block was a gap in Russian legislation which needed "half a year" to be resolved. "The law on civilian liability for nuclear damage has not yet been passed, but is being considered by the State Duma," Lebedev said. It has received a first reading already, he added. The lower house of parliament had also yet to ratify the Vienna Convention on civil liability for nuclear damage, which sets mimimum standards on financial protection against damage from peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The Foreign Ministry, which has come in for most criticism over its "blocking" role, told Reuters after repeated requests for comment that its experts were unavailable. GARGANTUAN TASK The scale of the task facing Russia and whoever eventually agrees to help in the great Soviet nuclear clear up is daunting. Rough British estimates of the cost of cleaning up the Soviet nuclear legacy in the northwest alone -- where around two thirds of the submarines are anchored -- are enormous. Defuelling the fleet, placing the spent fuel in safe interim storage and a modest environmental clean-up programme would cost $300-$400 billion over 30 to 40 years, they say. Rudolph quoted Russian officials as saying 15 to 20 submarines in the Russian far east were close to sinking, making defuelling a doubly hazardous process. Two in fact sank, but were subsequently refloated. But despite the frustrations, he retains a qualified optimism. "Five years ago when I started, I think the picture we had at that time was rather pessimistic. "Since that time, Russia has put into place a concrete plan to address these issues, and we see a way ahead. "But the two key issues are the legal agreement, the liability issue, and funding. But I think a lot of countries have the money available but can't spend it until this legal agreement is in place." ***************************************************************** 36 IAEA head says Iraq agrees to meet Dec 8 deadline Reuters AlertNet - 19 Nov 2002 19:11 BAGHDAD, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Iraqi officials have agreed to produce a full account of the country's weapons programme by December 8, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei said on Tuesday. "They are working on that declaration and they will produce it by December 8," ElBaradei said after meeting Iraqi officials in Baghdad. Under a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted on November 8, the first big test is a December 8 deadline for Iraq to submit a full account of all banned weapons programmes. By January 27 the inspectors must have given their first report to the Security Council. ElBaradei said Iraqi officials had agreed to produce a declaration covering biological, nuclear and chemical weapons. ElBaradei, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and an advance team of 30 experts returned to Baghdad on Monday after a four-year break to search for weapons of mass destruction that Iraq may have. ***************************************************************** 37 Bechtel contract to draw new jobs This story was published Sat, Nov 16, 2002 By Wendy Culverwell Herald staff writer The newest member of the family of companies providing goods and services to the Hanford vitrification project is about to make a big impression on the Tri-Cities. Intermech, winner of a major contract to build and install ductwork for the waste treatment plant's heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, or HVAC, system, will develop a fabrication center in the Tri-Cities and employ up to 275 people, chiefly union sheet metal workers. On Friday, Bechtel National Inc., lead contractor for the multibillion-dollar Hanford Waste Treatment and Isolation Plant project, awarded the contract with a potential value of more than $70 million to Intermech of Winston-Salem, N.C. Intermech is owned by Zellweger Luwa Group, a Swiss company with $750 million in annual sales. The contract calls for Intermech to fabricate ductwork for the HVAC systems serving the treatment plant's four main buildings -- the high level waste building, the low activity waste building, the pretreatment building and the on-site laboratory. The ductwork will total about 4 million pounds, which translates to two to three miles of ducts. Hugh McPherson, Intermech president, said his company will set up a 35,000- to 40,000-square-foot fabrication shop in the Tri-Cities, most likely in Richland. Company leaders have toured several prospective sites. The company plans to begin the process of leasing a building, equipping it and hiring staff in December. The startup phase will continue through the first quarter of 2003. McPherson estimated the plant's payroll will average 150 to 180 people, a figure that could climb to 275 during peak production. The plant is needed because the nuclear waste plant calls for a different kind of ductwork than can be bought commercially. The plant requires heavier gauge metal and specific welding procedures. The award followed a competitive bid process in which Bechtel looked at bidders' qualifications as well as costs. Intermech is certified under the Nuclear Quality Assurance program. Intermech will truck the finished ductwork to the Richland facility Bechtel uses to marshal construction materials before delivering it to the work site on Hanford's Central Plateau. Mark Swager, a subcontracts manager for Bechtel National, said the ductwork contract is standard for Hanford projects. Intermech will be reimbursed for its costs and will receive a fee based on meeting certain targets. Specific tasks will be assigned to Intermech over the course of the contract, with a completion date set for December 2005. Intermech intends to keep the plant open after it finishes its work on the treatment plant. "One of the things that really excites us about this area (is that) the skill sets and the work ethic in the Tri-City area are second to none," McPherson said. "We're not planning on leaving." The contract award comes two years after Intermech acquired Thompson Mechanical. The two companies worked together on a project at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in 1998. McPherson said Intermech liked Thompson's work ethic and thought the two companies would be a good fit. The acquisition also gave Intermech a much-desired presence near the Hanford site. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 38 Hanford's '03 budget on hold until mid-January This story was published Sat, Nov 16, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer Hanford won't see an updated 2003 budget before mid-January. And that means the site will have to hold spending at fiscal 2002 levels, which are $117 million below what Hanford had hoped for. Congress went into winter recess Friday, with no plan to return until early January. Meanwhile, 11 of 13 appropriations bills before the U.S. House and Senate still have not gone to full floor votes and the subsequent House-Senate negotiations to nail down appropriations for fiscal 2003, which began Oct. 1. Both the Senate and House energy and water appropriations bills -- which contain proposed allocations for the Department of Energy and Hanford -- must wait until January for action. For the interim, Congress has allocated money at 2002 levels through Jan. 11. Hanford consequently is receiving money at a rate matching 2002's allocation of $1.776 billion. That is $117 million less than the $1.893 billion proposed for 2003 in both the House and Senate. In addition, several unknowns loom: -- The federal Office of Management and Budget, which outranks DOE in requesting money from Congress, has not indicated how it views DOE's proposed allocations to speed up nuclear cleanup. -- How long can DOE operate with the lower 2002 funding before it affects its 2003 plans to accelerate cleanup? -- What will be the 2003 and long-term costs of a long-term contract to tackle cleanup along Hanford's Columbia River shore? That contract is to be announced soon. Its costs will have to be factored into the 2003 budget. -- How will the Senate's switch from Democratic to Republican control affect cleanup funding? And will that shift affect Hanford? DOE's Office of River Protection believes operating at 2002 levels into January will not affect its acceleration plans. DOE's Richland office and DOE's Washington, D.C., headquarters did not return calls Friday requesting that information. Washington's Department of Ecology believes DOE sincerely wants to kick its acceleration efforts into action in 2003, said state spokeswoman Sheryl Hutchison. But the state is concerned the funding delay will affect acceleration efforts, she said. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. ***************************************************************** 39 Federal grant funds drying up This story was published Sat, Nov 16, 2002 By Jeff St. John Herald staff writer Governmental and nonprofit groups will face new rules and uncertain funding next year from a federal program to help Department of Energy communities develop their economies. DOE's so-called 3161 program may be accepting grant applications this year but the agency won't necessarily have money for them, explained Sean Stockard, Tri-City Industrial Development Council director of economic transition, at a meeting Friday in Richland for potential grant seekers. "If (DOE) has $5 million this year for economic transition, we'd be very fortunate," he said. It's possible there will be no money at all for the program, he said. What money the program does have next year will be up for grabs for the 15 DOE communities across the country eligible for funding, he said. Since 1995, the 3161 program has brought $21.2 million to the Tri-Cities, creating or retaining about 2,006 jobs. But DOE hasn't taken new grant applications in the last two years, Stockard said. TRIDEC did get $600,000 this year for grants submitted in years past, but, "If we get three proposals funded again for $600,000 to $800,000, we'd be very, very fortunate," he said. Low turnout at the meeting -- only about 20 people showed up for the workshop at the Red Lion Inn -- could indicate word is out of diminished prospects for next year, he said. "There's such a small amount of money nationally," said Rich Cummins, vice president of instruction for Columbia Basin College. He's a co-sponsor with TRIDEC of the Minority Business Counseling program in Pasco, which got $200,000 in 3161 money this year. Cummins and potential grant seekers from Washington State University, the Port of Benton and other agencies agreed proposals will need strong support from a variety of community interests to succeed. The small cap program will accept proposals for no more than $200,000 and requires 25 percent matching money from a nonfederal source, Stockard said. Proposals also must show concrete job-creation prospects, he said. Applications will be taken through December and reviewed by TRIDEC before being sent on to DOE, Stockard said. Which projects will be funded, if any, probably won't be announced until June, he said. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 40 FFTF shutdown delayed until mid-March This story was published Sun, Nov 17, 2002 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer Shutdown work on Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility will be halted until March 12 under an new agreement between Benton County and federal attorneys. The additional delay gives supporters of the reactor more time to convince the federal government to turn the reactor over to private use for research and to make isotopes for new medicines. Work to drain the sodium from the reactor's secondary cooling loops was to begin last week until Benton County filed suit, accusing the federal government of not following environmental regulations. It's a critical step, because once sodium is drained, corrosion could begin, making it more difficult to find businesses willing to restart and operate the reactor. The Department of Energy initially agreed to a two-week delay in the shutdown after the suit was filed. Proponents of restarting the experimental reactor see the additional delay as an indication DOE is worried about the lawsuit. "If they thought they had a quick winner, they wouldn't be asking for four months to defend against it," said attorney John Bolliger of Pasco, who represents Benton County in the suit. Over the next few months, both sides will prepare arguments for a federal judge, who could rule either that shutdown may continue or that DOE needs to prepare an environmental study on the shutdown before more work is done. Both sides are hoping the judge will resolve the dispute without requiring it to go to trial, Bolliger said. "It is a cost-effective approach for our side," he said. The county has earmarked $70,000 for legal work and Richland has agreed to contribute $16,500, but more money could be needed if the matter goes to trial. Even those who oppose restarting the reactor should favor having a plan for meeting environmental regulations in place before shutdown work continues, said Claude Oliver, Benton County commissioner and president of Citizens for Medical Isotopes. Among the issues that need to be addressed is what to do with unused nuclear fuel, Oliver said. The suit hinges on federal regulations that prohibit nuclear test reactors from being decommissioned and decontaminated without an environmental review. Benton County believes that review has not been done. "They don't want federal agencies going out and making decisions with environmental consequences without informing the stakeholders -- the public," Bolliger said. Supporters of FFTF want to use the next months to build on the recent progress they believe they've made in getting support for private operators to restart of the reactor. Although it has not been used for a decade, it remains DOE's newest and largest reactor. DOE, under Republican and Democratic administrations, has ordered the reactor permanently shut down, saying it has no use for it. But last month, Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services, sent a letter to DOE discussing the reactor's potential uses for making new medicines. The reactor is capable of making radioactive isotopes that can be used both for diagnosis of disease, because they show up in medical scans, and also to kill cancer cells with carefully targeted doses of radiation. The demand is likely to increase as new medicines are brought to market, Thompson said. He's also concerned that the United States imports 90 percent of its medical isotopes. Most come from a Canadian reactor, but some types not made in Canada are imported from other countries, including Russia. Supporters of FFTF believe that with Republicans newly in control of the Senate, there may be more support for the president's energy policy, which calls for a new generation of nuclear reactors. The reactors under consideration would require advanced nuclear testing that could be done only at FFTF or in another country. Oliver plans to continue discussions with officials at Health and Human Services and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the next four months to win support to declare the reactor surplus and turn it over to private use. He also will continue to meet with businesses that are interested in private operation of the reactor but are reluctant to negotiate unless DOE shows support of the plan. Benton County and the federal government concluded negotiations Friday on the agreement to maintain the status quo at the reactor until March 12. It was set to be filed in federal court in Spokane late Friday, but the county had not received confirmation Saturday that paperwork had been delivered before the court closed for the weekend. The Department of Energy declined comment Saturday. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 41 Hanford reactor awaits fate, again The Seattle Times: Local News: Monday, November 18, 2002 - 12:13 a.m. Pacific By Linda Ashton The Associated Press RICHLAND — Three times in the past 10 years, the U.S. Department of Energy has signed a de facto death warrant for an experimental reactor at Hanford nuclear reservation, and three times it has won a reprieve. As recently as Nov. 8, it was last rites time again at the Fast Flux Test Facility, but the federal government in 11th-hour negotiations with Benton County agreed to wait at least two weeks before taking any irreversible steps in permanently shutting down the FFTF. It's the latest development in the peculiarly passionate fight to save the one-of-a-kind reactor that supporters contend has technological and commercial potential too valuable to destroy. "I love the FFTF because, first and foremost, it is the outstanding example of safety and beneficial use of advanced technology," said Wanda Munn, a retired Westinghouse Hanford engineer who worked at FFTF from construction in the mid-1970s, through startup and 10 years of operation. "There is not another facility in the world that can do as many things as well and as safely as FFTF can." The prototype reactor's mission to test advanced nuclear fuels ended almost as soon at it started. Although it's not a breeder reactor, FFTF was built as part of the government's breeder-reactor program, abandoned in 1983. Still, the 400-megawatt, sodium-cooled reactor operated from 1982 until 1992. It was used for research, to produce medical and industrial isotopes and to make tritium. The Energy Department ordered the reactor shut down permanently in 1993, unable to justify the then-$100 million operating budget. The department later agreed to try to find a sustainable use for the surplus reactor. FFTF's nuclear fuel was removed from the core, but it was kept on standby, ready for a restart, while a decade was spent studying possible projects and uses and searching for private investors without success. In January 2001, the Clinton administration ordered FFTF dismantled. When the Bush administration took office, it also tried and failed to come up with a viable mission and, in December 2001, ordered FFTF shut down. New estimates suggest it could take another 10 years to shut down and entomb the reactor and cost as much as $620 million. It has cost $30 million to $40 million a year to maintain the reactor on standby. "FFTF needs to be deactivated as fast as feasible so that the tens of millions of dollars a year saved will be used for cleanup," said Gerry Pollet, director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group in Seattle. The FFTF is the Energy Department's newest, largest and most versatile reactor, although it's almost a quarter-century old. "It still has at least 20 years of viable operating life with neutrons flying around in it," Munn said. Many advocates for FFTF are pinning their hopes on the research reactor's capacity to make medical isotopes for diagnosing and treating disease as the means to save it from destruction. Benton County, supported by several local governments and a cancer-fighter group called Citizens for Medical Isotopes, has sued the Energy Department in an effort to win more time to find a private investor willing to make radioisotopes for nuclear medicine. A radioisotope is a form of a radioactive element. "This lawsuit is a ridiculous retread joke," said Pollet. "It is brought to us by the same person who sued to stop Hanford's infamous N Reactor from being deactivated, and he lost the same lawsuit in the 1980s." FFTF advocates are looking for a lifeline in Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson's recently stated concerns about the future supply of medical isotopes for the U.S., which imports about 90 percent of its supply. [http://www.seattletimescompany.com/] ***************************************************************** 42 Carlsbad residents question proposed plutonium pit facility El Paso Times Online Borderland Monday, November 18, 2002 Associated Press CARLSBAD -- Some Carlsbad residents have formed a group in an effort to learn more about a plutonium pit facility that could be built in the city. Retired minister Gene Harbaugh is among the members of the People with Questions about a Modern Pit Facility. "We want to try to raise some questions and have some discussion in public about this," Harbaugh said. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is among five sites being considered for the facility to produce plutonium pits, which trigger nuclear weapons. The group is to meet tonight. It must move quickly because the Department of Energy's deadline for submitting comments on the proposed facility is Friday, he said. "People need to have a secure place to raise questions," Harbaugh said. The other sites being considered are Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Pantex Plant near Texas, the Nevada Test Site and the Savannah River Site in North Carolina. Public hearings on a draft environmental impact statement should occur next summer, with a final impact statement ready in March 2004. [http://www.elpasojobs.com/] | Copyright © 2001 El Paso Times. ***************************************************************** 43 DOE official asks for 'Top 10' ways to improve 'openness' The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 12:01 p.m. on Monday, November 18, 2002 R. Cathey Daniels Oak Ridger staff Some local citizens are saying that the U.S. Department of Energy has become more "secretive" in recent years, and an official with the Oak Ridge Operations office has said he's game to work on the issue with local "stakeholders." To that end, Gerald Boyd, assistant manager for environmental management, has asked a group of citizens to submit a Top 10 list of ways his office can improve communications. Both Boyd and citizens are saying that a first step might be to hold a workshop on the accelerated cleanup baseline program. "This administration has an attitude (of secrecy), and it prevails in every department," said Norman Mulvenon, chairman of the Citizens' Advisory Panel of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee. Some members of the Citizens' Advisory Panel and the Site Specific Advisory Board recently met with Boyd to discuss the issue. Members of the CAP have discussed the issue at their past two monthly meetings. "I'm not in any way ridiculing this administration's approach," said Boyd. "We've got this new accelerated cleanup program, and it's a new thing, and it's fast paced. "I just don't want the stakeholders to be surprised or blind-sided. I just want to ensure that the community is aware and that we work together." Boyd said he plans to use the Site Specific Advisory Board as his primary vehicle for communication with the public. Al Brooks, member of the Citizens' Advisory Panel and chairman of the Oak Ridge Environmental Justice Committee, said that lack of communication with the public can be an expensive way for the DOE to operate. "East Fork Poplar Creek is one example," Brooks said during the October CAP meeting. "In that case, the public saved DOE's rear-end -- over $1 billion in savings is credited to the public in that case. The DOE had planned extensive expenditures on that remediation project until intervention by the public, led at the time by Brooks. "That used to be the kind of approach DOE had for public contribution, but now they can't trust you?" Some CAP members have expressed dismay that budget numbers have been pulled from critical documents, such as the Oak Ridge Performance Management Plan. "We do not get the same kind of information we have gotten in the past," said Mulvenon. Pat Halsey, DOE's representative to the CAP, acknowledged that budget numbers have been pulled from documents, and noted at the October meeting that the DOE "removed all (references) to funding from the Performance Management Plan." "I understand that there is some concern in the community that we don't share budget numbers earlier than we do," said Boyd. "But we have to stay within the budget rules. The (fiscal year) 2004 budget is embargoed right now, and that's standard procedure." CAP member Barbara Walton at the October meeting called the current administration's attitude a "new level of paranoia" and noted that "security of budget numbers should not be the high priority -- security of people should be the high priority." Brooks said at November's CAP meeting that public meetings "provide an opportunity to give the public an explanation of what is happening in Oak Ridge." He suggested a periodic state of progress report be submitted on enviornmental management issues. Other suggestions included Boyd attending some CAP meetings and the department reviving the annual model environmental conference initiative. The Citizens' Advisory Panel plans to submit in the coming weeks its Top 10 list for Boyd to consider. Boyd said: "We will have more public meetings, and I did ask for the top 10 things we can do, but they need to be 10 things we 'can' do. We'd like to do as much as possible." R. Cathey Daniels can be contacted at (865) 220-5515 or danielsrcd@oakridger.com. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 44 U.S., Russia may ink deal to ship uranium to Y-12 The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 12:03 p.m. on Monday, November 18, 2002 (AP) -- The Y-12 National Security Complex would receive regular shipments of highly enriched uranium from Russia under an agreement expected to be completed early next year, officials said. The nuclear material would be used to fuel several research reactors in the United States, including the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said Bill Brumley, the federal manager at Y-12. The project is part of an international effort to reduce the risk of weapons-usable materials getting into the hands of terrorists or others seeking nuclear capability. The security of nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union is a major concern. The head of Russia's nuclear regulatory agency earlier this week said that small amounts of material have disappeared from the nuclear facilities. The proposal calls for the purchase of 250 kilograms -- about 550 pounds -- a year for up to 10 years, Brumley said. The price tag is still being negotiated, he said. Brumley said officials hope that a government-to-government agreement will be reached in December, followed by a contract signing in February. Delivery is targeted for May. Y-12 personnel have already made one trip to Russia to prepare for the shipments, he said. The Y-12 complex produces nuclear warhead parts from uranium and other materials. It is also the principal storehouse for bomb-grade uranium in the United States. The Oak Ridge plant also is heavily involved in nonproliferation programs, regularly sending experts to Russia and other foreign countries to provide advice and assistance on nuclear security. In conjunction with ORNL, Y-12 last year established a Joint Center for International Threat Reduction. Y-12 will not process the Russian uranium into fuel rods or plates for the U.S. research reactors, but will store the material in high-security vaults and dispense it as needed. Brumley declined to specify the enrichment level of the Russian uranium. The ORNL reactor uses uranium fuel that is more than 90 percent U-235, the fissionable isotope of uranium. That is the same range as material used in nuclear weapons. [http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 45 Inventions that changed the world Transistors. Lasers. Jet engines. The Internet. Nuclear weapons. *****************************************************************