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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Israelis want Iranian nukes included in U.S.-Russia talks 
2 US: TVA should exploit opportunity
3 SA: Winds of Change
4 Russia seals deal with Myanmar     
5 N.K. experts visit South to pave way for direct air link            
6 Korea: NK Team Arrives to Inspect Airports and Reactor 
7 US: Alert sparks nuke debate: Plant security rapped, defended 
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
8 US: Federal regulators approve transfer of Yankee's operating
9 US: Davis-Besse Nuke plant probe involves Congress
10 Nuclear reactor reduces capacity after malfunction in Ukraine 
11 US: Radioactive remains: The state's decommissioned Yankee Rowe 
12 US: With future of nation's nuclear waste uncertain, Yankee Rowe 
13 US: Nuclear Reactor Could be Restarted After 17 Year Shutdown
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
14 US: Fired Official Is Critical of County Plan for Emergency
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
15 US: Yucca: Desert showdown over nuclear waste
16 US: Hodges Asks For Plutonium Injunction
17 UK: CALL FOR NUCLEAR TRAINS TO BE MONITORED
18 US: Abraham: Yucca Not Enough for Waste
19 US: The New Republic Online: Nuclear Waste
20 US: Bush administration raises Yucca stakes
21 US: State GOP against Yucca, but wants negotiations if it's OK'd
22 US: Bush backs desert nuclear dump 
23 US: Yucca EDITORIAL: The senators do well
24 US: Republicans adopt anti-Yucca statement
25 US: Insure Nuclear Waste 
26 US: SUWA Hates Hansen Plan
27 US: Profit is the motive behind push for Yucca 
28 US: N-Board Rejects Utah Plea 
29 US: Critics of Yucca disposal have no alternative 
30 US: Leavitt seeking N-waste support
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
31 Peace Action: Treaty Not All Its Cracked Up to Be
32 Congress Endorses NATO Expansion 
33 Martin Schram: Keeping nukes in the right hands 
34 US Wants Better Russia Nukes Count
35 US: The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Com
36 Cold War Redux
37 Gambling with nuclear war
38 Russia hones its nuclear skills
39 Cold War Legacy
40 Swissinfo International News
41 Russian nuke defences maintained 
42 The Warheads Left Out in the Cold 
43 Russia hones its nuclear skills  
44 Russia may be boosting Iran's nuclear arms 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
45 Savannah River (SC) and Wackenhut (WAK)
46 DOE drops plutonium shipping plan 
47 Plutonium packaging a problem at Flats 
48 Rocky Flats won't use contested containers 
 
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Israelis want Iranian nukes included in U.S.-Russia talks 

Chicago Sun-Times - News

May 17, 2002
 
The Israeli government is lobbying Washington to place Iranian 
nuclear proliferation high on the agenda of next week's summit 
between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, 
which is expected to go a long way toward codifying a new world 
order. 

The topic of the transfer of nuclear and missile technology from 
Russia to Iran was discussed at high-level U.S.-Israeli talks in 
Washington over the last two weeks. 

According to senior Israeli diplomatic officials, the topic was 
discussed Monday during the Israeli-U.S. strategic dialogue 
between Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and his 
staffers, and Israeli government officials.

 A week before, a high-ranking delegation went to Washington to 
specifically talk with the administration about the nuclear and 
missile technology "leakage" issue. This delegation met with 
Undersecretary of State John Bolton. 

One diplomatic official said it is both presumptuous and 
unrealistic for Israel to ask the United States to hold up an 
agreement with the Russians to cut nuclear stockpiles by 
two-thirds, or not to form a new Russian-NATO committee to 
coordinate policy on a number of issues unless they put an end to 
nuclear and missile leakage to Iran. The idea, he said, is to 
"weave" the Iranian proliferation issue "into the fabric" of the 
overall U.S.-Russian dialogue. 

Jerusalem Post
*****************************************************************
 2 TVA should exploit opportunity

@@HEAD:REVIVAL - @@SUBHEAD:

The Paducah Sun
Paducah, Kentucky
Saturday, May 18, 2002

The devil may be in the details of how the Tennessee Valley 
Authority decides to finance the restart of a mothballed nuclear 
reactor, but the agency definitely needs a plan to recoup its 
staggering $6.3 billion investment in dormant nuclear power 
plants. 

With the nation facing an increasing threat from energy shortages 
such as the disruptions in the natural gas supply that wreaked 
economic havoc in some parts of the country two winters ago, the 
time is right for TVA to expand its nuclear power program. 

It certainly helps that the Bush administration sees the 
advantages of nuclear power, and is trying to help the nuclear 
power industry regain some of the momentum it lost in the wake of 
the Three Mile Island accident. 

The post-Three Mile Island hysteria almost devastated TVA, which 
had to abandon several nuclear projects, including the unfinished 
Bellefonte plant in Hollywood, Ala. TVA officials shut down the 
Browns Ferry station in 1985. 

Much of the $27 billion debt TVA accumulated in the 1980s and 
early 1990s stemmed from the agency's abortive investments in 
nuclear power. 

Not surprisingly, agency officials are trying to recover some of 
those investments by restarting dormant nuclear units and, 
perhaps, finishing the Bellefonte plant. 

The TVA board voted Friday to restart the mothballed Unit 1 
reactor at Browns Ferry. 

Again, not surprisingly, this move alarmed environmentalists. The 
environmental lobby has adopted the view that all things nuclear 
are to be greatly feared. 

The fact is, nuclear power is clean — it creates very little 
pollution. If TVA switches some of its power generation capacity 
from coal to nuclear, the air in the Tennessee Valley will be 
cleaner. 

Coal is the fuel source for about two-thirds of the power 
produced by TVA. These old coal-burning plants are relatively 
"dirty," and they're increasingly expensive to operate given 
Environmental Protection Agency regulations that require the 
installation of pollution control equipment. 

"Going nuclear" is a strategy for protecting the environment, not 
harming it. 

Environmentalists point to the "unsolved" problem of nuclear 
waste — a problem they've tried to keep the nation from solving — 
but the Bush administration is making progress in developing the 
Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada. 

As for safety, the nuclear power industry in western Europe and 
the United States has an outstanding record. 

At one time, TVA received criticism — much of it deserved — for 
safety lapses at its nuclear plants. But two years ago the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave TVA's nuclear program top 
grades for safety. 

Over the past decade nuclear power production in the United 
States has become safer and much more efficient than it was in 
the early 1980s. An example is TVA's Sequoyah plant near 
Chattanooga, which has operated without interruption for nearly 
eight years. 

From the standpoint of efficiency, safety and environmental 
responsibility, TVA has a strong case for restarting the Browns 
Ferry reactor and finishing the Bellefonte facility. 

The question that looms over the agency's nuclear ambitions is 
cost. 

TVA officials estimate it will cost $1.8 billion to bring Unit 1 
at Browns Ferry back on line. Finishing construction at 
Bellefonte could cost TVA as much as $3 billion. 

The agency has made only modest progress in reducing its massive 
debt burden. That calls into question TVA officials' claim that 
they can reduce the $25 billion debt and pay for the Browns Ferry 
restart with existing revenues. 

Agency officials have said in the past they hope to find a 
private partner to help finance the reactor restart. Private 
financing would remove the most serious objection to the revival 
of TVA's nuclear program. 

Over the long term, nuclear power can play a significant role in 
meeting the growing demand for power in the Tennessee Valley. If 
TVA officials can solve the financing problem, they owe it to 
their customers to fully develop the agency's nuclear assets. 

*****************************************************************
 3 SA: Winds of Change

allAfrica.com: 

Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg)
 
ANALYSIS
 May 17, 2002 
Posted to the web May 17, 2002 

Muna Lakhani
 
One clear indicator of poverty worldwide is access to affordable 
energy. If we had not been misinformed about the reliability of 
sources of energy that are alternatives to the current fossil 
fuels (coal and oil) that we use today, South Africa would have 
been a world leader in providing not only clean and safe energy 
to all our people, but also in exporting indigenous technologies 
that would have built on proven technologies from elsewhere.
 
Renewable energy technologies constitute an alternative source of 
energy that remains largely untapped in South Africa. This 
includes free energy from the sun via both photovoltaic panels, 
that convert sunlight to electricity, and solar thermal (heat) 
technologies, which, through the heating process, can either heat 
water for use directly or generate steam to produce electricity.
 
Renewable energy also includes free energy from the wind - the 
most mature technology worldwide, and one that is growing at a 
rate of up to 62% a year. Even off a low starting point wind 
alone could generate the world's electricity by 2030.
 
Other technologies also being used commercially include: wave and 
tidal power that can be hidden under water given that the motion 
of the ocean never stops; biomass energy- the use of organic 
material that is grown for both its methane and heat value - as 
plants use carbon dioxide while growing and release it when 
burnt; micro-hydro power (small dams) for generating electricity 
on a small scale as opposed to the large dams that constitute 
environmental and social disasters; as well as geo-thermal 
energy, which uses the heat from underground.
 
The established fossil and nuclear fuel industries do not accept 
these as valid solutions. Their argument is that coal is cheaper 
- if you don't mention the health hazard to people living in the 
vicinity of coal-power plants. In the United States recent 
studies show that, even without the subsidies that the fossil and 
nuclear industries receive, wind is cheaper than coal by simply 
including the health costs to people as a result of being harmed 
by emissions and general pollution.
 
"Nuclear power will be too cheap to meter" - is the strident 
voice of the nuclear industry.
 
However, every state in the US that uses nuclear power charges on 
average 25% more for electricity, and there is also the related 
danger posed by radioactive waste.
 
It is also often stated that renewable energy is "intermittent". 
Only 0,2% of the world's coastlines, or 2% of deserts, could 
generate enough electricity for the whole world at today's 
consumption rates. Wind has, in large areas along our coastlines 
and escarpment, at least a 35% availability.
 
So, why are we not going along the route of clean and safe energy 
for our people? Is it that vested interests do not want 
communities to own the means of producing energy, both for 
themselves and for sale to the national grid? Or is it because 
the simple technologies outlined previously are not challenging 
enough? Or is it simply that decision-makers are being fed biased 
information?
 
Whatever the reason, we need to address these issues as a matter 
of urgency. Not only is it only a matter of time before we will 
be expected to pay for our greenhouse gas emissions from coal, 
but attempting to grow the nuclear industry will be extremely 
inefficient (the manufacture of nuclear fuel is an 
energy-intensive process) and will simply result in higher costs 
for consumers.
 
We must move away from the mindset that energy generation must be 
centralised - distributed generation not only helps ensure 
security of supply, but also minimises the need for long 
transmission lines. A number of countries are racing along the 
renewable energy path and setting targets of at least 50% of 
electricity from renewable energy.
 
There must be something wrong with our thinking if we continue to 
pursue failed and abandoned technologies, such as Eskom's 
proposed pebble bed nuclear reactor, which is in trouble as we 
speak. Its US investor, Exelon, has pulled out and the British 
investor, British Nuclear Fuel Limited, is technically insolvent 
owing to its inability to pay for its radioactive clean-ups. The 
South African Industrial Development Corporation is on record as 
wishing to sell its shares. This reactor will produce 10 times 
more radioactive waste than other nuclear processes. Our 
government's expert panel was recently unable to establish 
whether it is feasible from either a financial or technical 
viewpoint. The amount Eskom is planning to spend on the 10 
reactors could supply more electricity if it were spent on 
renewable energy.
 
Renewable energies are not rocket science, but simply proven 
technologies that produce minimal pollution, are pretty much free 
to run once built, and will produce immediate benefits for 
communities who can be taught how to manufacture South African 
versions of renewable energy technologies. Zimbabwe and India are 
doing very well building wind turbines. South Africa can build 
wind turbines with at least 60% local content - unlike the 
proposed nuclear reactors, which will mainly be imported. The 
economics work - many more jobs are created from renewable 
energy, no matter what proponents of dinosaur technologies may 
say.
 
The world's leading economies, mainly in the European Union, are 
moving away from coal, oil and nuclear power. It makes sense for 
fossil and nuclear energy companies in those countries to look 
elsewhere for new markets, but it should not be Africa or 
anywhere in the South. We are not the dumping ground of the 
North's failed technologies. We deserve better.
 
Muna Lakhani is a member of Earthlife Africa Johannesburg and 
Gauteng campaign coordinator for the Nuclear Energy Costs the 
Earth Campaign
 
  Copyright © 2002 Mail & Guardian. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 4 Russia seals deal with Myanmar     

WorldNetDaily: 

MAY 17 2002  
       
Plan to build nuclear reactor reduces China's influence

Posted: May 17, 2002

Editor's note: In partnership with Stratfor, the global 
intelligence company, WorldNetDaily publishes daily updates on 
international affairs provided by the respected private research 
and analysis firm. Look for fresh updates each afternoon, Monday 
through Friday. In addition, WorldNetDaily invites you to 
consider STRATFOR membership, entitling you to a wealth of 
international intelligence reports usually available only to top 
executives, scholars, academic institutions and press agencies. 

© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com 

The Russian government announced yesterday that it signed an 
agreement with Myanmar's military regime to build a nuclear 
reactor, a deal that likely will reduce China's influence in the 
Southeast Asian state. Although the Myanmar regime's opposition 
claims the deal could lead to nuclear proliferation in their 
country, the nation does not have the capabilities for such 
goals, according to Stratfor, the global intelligence company. 

The new nuclear center will include a 10-megawatt research 
reactor, two laboratories and a nuclear waste site, Agence 
France-Presse reported. Russia did not indicate the cost or the 
commencement date of the project. Because of its strategic 
proximity to China and India, Myanmar plays an important role in 
their attempts to both increase their influence in the region and 
reduce that of the other. Russia also likely hopes that its 
involvement in the reactor project will raise its geopolitical 
relevance to the players with an interest in Myanmar. 

Despite concerns over the reactor's use, the military junta in 
Yangon maintains that it will be used for medical and research 
purposes that they hope will lead to the production of energy. 
Despite having significant gas resources, Myanmar suffers from a 
severe energy and electricity shortage, with regular blackouts 
lasting up to three days, The Associated Press reported. 

Though the country has an abundance of rivers and therefore 
hydropower plants, it does not generate nearly the amount of 
energy required to supply the whole country. Yangon does not have 
the economic resources with which to build the necessary energy 
generators and must look to aid from other countries. 

Japan announced May 10 it would give the military regime $4.9 
million to renovate a hydroelectric power plant built in the 
1950s that is currently running below capacity. Tokyo reported 
that the total renovations for the plant would cost $24 million. 
China is also helping Myanmar build three hydropower plants in 
Paunglaung, Mone and Thaphanseik. 

This electricity shortage only serves to worsen Myanmar's pitiful 
health-care system. The World Health Organization has called the 
health services in the country the second-worst among 191 
countries, with more than 500,000 Myanmar citizens having the HIV 
virus, according to U.N. statistics, and one-third of children 
under the age of five malnourished. 

Although the country obviously has more pressing needs, the junta 
may very well wish to develop nuclear weapons. The regime has 
shown extreme reluctance to loosen its grip on power, despite 
releasing democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest 
May 6. Although the international community would condemn such a 
move, the possession of nuclear weapons would extend the already 
isolated regime's importance and influence. 

But developing nuclear weapons takes considerable monetary 
resources (which Myanmar doesn't have), considerable knowledge of 
nuclear development (which the state's scientists do not possess) 
or cooperation from another country. 

North Korea presents a viable option for Myanmar, and in a 
February report the CIA alleged that the regime has produced 
enough plutonium for one, possibly two nuclear warheads. 
Pyongyang, however, is not known for proliferating nuclear 
technology, and Yangon doesn't have the cash to convince them to 
change their tune. 

Furthermore, Russia would not cooperate in the advancement of 
Yangon's nuclear capabilities. Russian President Vladimir Putin 
has operated with a newfound pro-Western orientation since the 
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Moscow and Washington are set to sign 
an agreement at the end of May that would require each to reduce 
their nuclear arsenals from about 6,000 to the range of 2,200 to 
1,700 in 10 years, Agence France-Presse reported. 

Despite the arguments against their claims, Myanmar's opposition 
is trying to further its own political goals with its warnings 
that the junta could use the reactor project to attain nuclear 
technology. The opposition wants to take control of the 
government -- after the military refused to recognize the 
National League for Democracy's electoral victory in 1990 -- and 
knows that if it can convince Washington that the junta is 
actively seeking to amass such capabilities, the United States 
will openly seek the removal of the military from the government. 

But this is not likely to happen, as Washington has not issued a 
condemnation of the Russia-Myanmar project, but rather urged for 
safeguards against the military use of the reactor. 

The issue of nuclear proliferation aside, the project will bring 
many benefits -- geopolitical and otherwise -- to those involved. 
With most in the West shunning and sanctioning Myanmar, it has 
limited options as far as which countries it can look to for aid, 
support, trade, etc. 

Although India is vying for influence in the country, its fervent 
support of the democratic opposition "left the door open for the 
blossoming of ties between Myanmar's junta and the Chinese 
government," Asia Times reported. Beijing has since expanded 
links with Myanmar to include military, economic and political 
relations. During Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to Yangon 
in December 2001, the junta freed 200 political prisoners as a 
sign of goodwill, and China promised over $9 million in aid 
without discussing the intentions for the money. 

India has tried to push back into Myanmar's sphere of influence. 
Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh has visited Yangon twice since 
November 2000. Myanmar's dependence on Russia for help in 
developing a nuclear reactor will reduce China's importance to 
the country and will help even the playing field for India. The 
junta itself does not want Beijing to have too much influence in 
the internal operations of Myanmar. 

Russia, for its part, will gain a greater position in the 
Southeast Asian political landscape. Russia in 2001 sold Myanmar 
10 MiG-29 fighters for the price of $130 million. Helping the 
closed country build a nuclear reactor will give Moscow a bit 
more leverage in the political developments of Myanmar. 

With the argument about nuclear proliferation a non-issue, the 
nuclear reactor will benefit most of the countries with a stake 
in Myanmar. The Chinese are the only party left on the sidelines. 
But it won't take too long before they get back in the game with 
a play of their own. 

© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. 
*****************************************************************
 5 N.K. experts visit South to pave way for direct air link                                                                                            

Korea Herald!!_National
http://www.koreaherald.com
         	 
A group of 10 North Korean experts arrived in Seoul yesterday to 
look over South Korean airports in preparation for the proposed 
opening of a direct inter-Korean air route over the East Sea, 
officials here said. 

The air route, if opened, will link the North's Seondeok Airport 
in Hamheung, South Hamgyeong Province, and the South's Yangyang 
Airport in Gangwon Province, and will be used to transport 
workers and materials for the construction of nuclear reactors in 
the North. 

During its six-day stay in South Korea, the North Korean 
delegation will visit Yangyang Airport, Gimhae International 
Airport near Busan and nuclear power plants in Uljin in North 
Gyeongsang Province, said officials at the Korean Peninsula 
Energy Development Organization (KEDO). 

KEDO, a U.S.-led international consortium, is building two 
1,000-megawatt light water reactors in the energy-starved North 
under a 1994 deal, in which North Korea promised to freeze its 
suspected nuclear weapons program. 

Sources said the 10-strong delegation includes six experts from 
the North's Air Koryo, whose jetliners are expected to be used 
for the inter-Korean air link. 

"KEDO and North Korea are negotiating over the plan to open the 
direct air route, but nothing has been determined yet. The North 
Korean experts' visit is part of the negotiations," a KEDO 
official said. 

They are scheduled to visit Gimhae International Airport because 
it will be used as the substitute for Yangyang Airport in case of 
bad weather conditions, the official added. 

The North Koreans' trip came about two weeks after Pyongyang 
abruptly called off a scheduled round of economic talks with 
Seoul, after taking issue with South Korean foreign minister's 
controversial remarks made in Washington. 

In December, a 19-member delegation composed of North Korean 
officials and experts made a two-week visit to the South to 
observe South Korean nuclear facilities. 

(jihoho@koreaherald.co.kr By Kim Ji-ho Staff reporter 
          					 					               					 					
2002.05.20

(C) Copyright 2000 Digital Korea Herald. 
*****************************************************************
 6 Korea: NK Team Arrives to Inspect Airports and Reactor 

Digital Chosunilbo 

The Chosun Ilbo
    
05/19(Sun) 17:27
 
A team of 10 North Korean technicians related with the KEDO 
project to build nuclear reactors in the North, and Koryo 
Airlines arrived in Seoul, Sunday, by way of Beijing to inspect 
facilities at Yangyang International Airport, prior to launching 
direct flights to Seondeok Airport in the North's South Hamgyeong 
Province. The flights will ferry personnel and materials for the 
light water reactor program. 

The visit is the second since December 2001, when a team of 19 
technicians paid a two-week visit to Seoul to explore education 
and training facilities for North Koreans who will run the 
reactors. 

The delegation, including chief delegate Ahn Yeong-hwan the 
chairman of the North Korean side of the KEDO project will check 
out Yangyang for six days; Gimhae International Airport, to be 
used when Yangyang is not available; and Ulgin nuclear power 
plant, which is the same design as that in the North. 

A South Korean delegation of aviation experts visited Seondeok 
airport in 1997. 

(Kim In-gu, ginko@chosun.com) 

  Copyright (c)1995-2001, DIGITAL CHOSUN All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 7 Alert sparks nuke debate: Plant security rapped, defended 

 Bostonherald.com E-NEWS 

by Jules Crittenden 
Sunday, May 19, 2002

Last week's alert that terrorists might try to attack a nuclear 
power plant in the Northeast on the Fourth of July and use it to 
create a ``dirty bomb'' may have been only a false alarm. But the 
power-generating reactors dotting the region remain alluring 
targets that are inadequately defended despite Sept. 11's 
heads-up, critics say.

 Nuclear industry spokesmen counter that plant security is high 
and reactor containment structures probably are ``robust'' enough 
to thwart air attacks at Plymouth's Pilgrim plant and Seabrook 
Station on the New Hampshire border.

 But critics say sophisticated terror attacks were never figured 
into plant construction and security plans. They say the 
consequences of an attack are too dire not to take extreme 
security steps.

 ``If al-Qaeda could turn a nuclear power plant into a weapon, 
that would be the most devastating effect that could be made,'' 
said U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Malden, noting that intelligence 
agencies have identified several cases of terrorist interest in 
the plants. He is pushing several measures intended to safeguard 
the plants.

 Pat Skibbee, a longtime activist who works near Seabrook, said, 
``Since September 11, it's been even clearer that nuclear power 
plants are a constant vulnerability and a constant threat over 
the heads of millions of Americans.''

 The death toll from a radiation release could range from 
hundreds to thousands within 10 miles of a plant, depending on 
the extent of damage, which way the wind is blowing, and even the 
time of day and the season - whether people are at home or at 
work or packed into a nearby vacation area. Long-term cancers 
could kill thousands more up to 100 miles away, and large tracts 
of land could be rendered uninhabitable, experts say.

 ``Something like this would wreak overwhelming economic havoc on 
whatever region was affected,'' Markey said. Industry officials, 
however, say security problems and the potential for a 
catastrophic attack have been grossly exaggerated. 

``We have been doing everything possible to strengthen what we 
believe was always a strong security program for the plants,'' 
said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Victor Drick. ``The 
public should be assured that we take these threats seriously.'' 
He and others said that while plants weren't built to withstand 
air attacks, they rely on airport security to prevent hijackings, 
and the intelligence services and military to identify and 
respond to airborne threats.

 At Pilgrim and Seabrook, the reactors are surrounded by layers 
of reinforced concrete and steel between six and 10 feet thick. 
While spent fuel rod storage pools have less protection, 
spokesmen say the tanks also are heavily built with multiple, 
redundant systems to keep the rods wet and make sure they don't 
start burning. 

Critics have called for the dispersal of spent rods in ``dry 
cask'' containers in which they may be less susceptible to 
overheating - at a cost of tens of millions of dollars per plant 
- but nuclear officials say that step is unnecessary.

 ``This is not the World Trade Center,'' said Seabrook spokesman 
Alan Griffith. ``You've got an extremely well-fortified piece of 
design we think would withstand a massive impact. We're not 
talking about glass and steel . . . It would pose an incredible 
task for even the most talented pilot to hit the dome, let alone 
the spent-fuel pool.''

 While critics have compared private plant security forces to 
poorly trained ``mall cops,'' Griffith called Seabrook's force 
``paramilitary'' and said ``to even make that connection to what 
level of security we have is absurd . . . we're vigilant, we're 
prepared.''

 To thwart truck bombs, vehicles now face barriers before they 
get near the plants. Plymouth's David Tarantino said security 
guards, many ex-military, are well-paid, receive weapons and 
tactical training, and operate under ``shoot-to-kill'' policies.

 Tarantino also disputed claims that plants conduct inadequate 
checks on employees, saying each worker undergoes several 
psychological, substance abuse and criminal background checks. 
Markey, noting that the Sept. 11 terrorists would have passed 
criminal background checks, countered that he wants to see full 
FBI security clearance investigations such as government 
officials undergo.

 ``We've told the NRC, we'll do what you and the military say,'' 
Tarantino said. ``We know how to produce electricity. We don't 
know what is necessary to defend against invasion. For that we 
rely on the military.''

 Massachusetts Public Safety Secretary James Jajuga said several 
squads of National Guard troops patrol Pilgrim's perimeter on a 
24-hour basis. He said intelligence gathering and sharing from 
local police and citizens up to state and federal agencies is 
happening at unprecedented levels, something he hopes will thwart 
terror attacks. Jajuga said he is satisifed with the results of 
two state police reviews of security at Pilgrim. As a former 
state senator on the New Hampshire border, he said he has toured 
Seabrook several times and is confident in that plant's security 
as well.

 ``As far as I'm concerned, they (private plant security forces) 
are well trained,'' he said.

 But Gordon Thompson, an engineering expert at the Institute for 
Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge who has studied 
nuclear security for two decades, said, ``The plants are lightly 
defended. They are not defended against air attack in any 
manner.''

 While Thompson agrees with industry advocates that the plants 
are ``robust'' in construction, they have vulnerable points he 
declined to list. While the likelihood of a catastrophic incident 
is remote under normal circumstances, he said, ``If you introduce 
a determined and technically sophisticated enemy, the probability 
becomes what you choose to make it.''

 Markey said that in the wake of Sept. 11, he managed to pass a 
House measure that, when signed, will require stockpiling of 
potassium iodide to thwart some forms of radiation illness.

 Markey also is calling for a federalized security force and 
otherwise heightened military presence while the al-Qaeda threat 
persists. Another Markey amendment awaiting Senate approval will 
require the NRC to revisit its ``design basis threat,'' the 
assumptions on which the NRC base its regulations. By reopening 
the regulatory process, Markey said, the NRC can be compelled to 
consider a range of post-Sept. 11 scenarios he said are not now 
addressed in plant defenses. 

Activist Skibbee said ultimately, she believes there is only one 
answer. ``They are undefendable. They are compromising U.S. 
national security and each person's personal security. Why? So 
each company can make a profit. The plants should be shut down.'' 

  © Copyright by the Boston Herald 
*****************************************************************
 8 Federal regulators approve transfer of Yankee's operating
license to Entergy 

                 Boston Globe Online: Print it!
 
By Associated Press, 5/17/2002 17:59 

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) The proposed sale of Vermont Yankee nuclear 
power plant to Entergy Corp. won federal approval on Friday. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the transfer of the 
plant's operating license to the Mississippi-based company. 

The move was the second federal approval the deal has received, 
Vermont Yankee officials said. The Federal Energy Regulatory 
Commission unanimously approved the sale on Feb. 1., stating that 
the sale will ''not adversely affect competition, rates or 
regulation.'' 

The sale is awaiting a decision by the Vermont Public Service 
Board. 

The Department of Public Service told the board earlier this 
month that the proposed sale to Entergy Nuclear Inc. is in the 
best interests of the state and should be approved. 

Three environmental groups oppose the sale, while one consumer 
group says it should be conditioned on a requirement that some of 
the money received for the nuclear plant be returned to 
ratepayers. 

Vermont Yankee and Entergy are hoping for a decision from the 
board by mid-June. 

The final arguments earlier this month capped a process that 
began last August, when Vermont Yankee's utility owners announced 
they had reached a deal to sell the plant to Entergy Nuclear for 
$180 million. 

The deal also contains a power buyback agreement under which CVPS 
and GMP agree to continue taking their current allotment of power 
from the Vernon reactor, and to pay Entergy for it. 

*****************************************************************
 9 Davis-Besse Nuke plant probe involves Congress

[http://www.daytondailynews.com]                                                                                
 		 
Associated Press 

WASHINGTON | A congressional committee will send investigators
next week to the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio, where an
acid leak burned a hole in the reactor cap.

 House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin said
he called for the review so lawmakers could get a firsthand
account of the damage.

 ‘‘Public confidence in the safety of nuclear energy is
critically important to our long-range energy needs,’’ said
Tauzin, R-La.

 Rep. Paul Gillmor, R-Ohio, said Friday the investigators will
help lawmakers determine why the damage wasn’t found earlier and
what should be done to keep nuclear energy safe.

 In March, inspectors found leaks in reactor nozzles had allowed
boric acid to eat a hole in the 6-inch-thick steel cap that
covers the plant’s reactor vessel. It’s the most extensive
corrosion found on top of a U.S. nuclear plant reactor.

 ‘‘We want to make sure that whatever problems that are taking
place at Davis-Besse don’t happen at other plants,’’ said
Gillmor, a Republican whose northwest Ohio district includes the
plant along Lake Erie.

 An industrywide review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of
the 68 other nuclear plants with similar designs and conditions
has reported nothing similar to what led to the corrosion at
Davis-Besse.

 Two staff members from the committee will visit the plant on
Tuesday and meet with NRC officials and representatives from
FirstEnergy Corp., which runs the plant located about 25 miles
east of Toledo, Ohio.

 Gillmor said the committee will then decide whether it should
hold a hearing on the topic and what, if any, legislation is
needed to safeguard the nuclear industry.

 A spokesman for the Senate committee that oversees NRC
operations said the panel wasn’t planning its own investigation.

 FirstEnergy spokesman Richard Wilkins said Friday the company
welcomes congressional investigations.

 ‘‘The more people like this that go through the plant and get
their questions answered, the better,’’ he said.

 The congressional probe comes as Reps. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio,
and Edward Markey, D-Mass., are calling on the NRC to answer
questions about the damage.

 Environmental and nuclear activists also have asked federal
regulators for an independent review of the damage at the
25-year-old plant.

 The NRC plans to answer Kaptur and Markey’s questions by next
month and has not yet made a decision on the request for an
independent review of the plant, agency spokesman Jan Strasma
said.

 He said the agency was expected this week to begin an internal
review of the agency’s regulatory requirements and performance
during the Davis-Besse investigation.

 The plant was shut down in February for refueling and isn’t
expected to be restarted until September. The NRC must first
approve the company’s proposal for repairing the reactor head.

[From the Dayton Daily News: 05.18.2002] 	 
 [http://www.daytondailynews.com] | Local index | Today's print
edition local section
 
Copyright © 2002, Cox Ohio Publishing. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 10 Nuclear reactor reduces capacity after malfunction in Ukraine 

      Sat May 18, 8:37 AM ET 

KIEV, Ukraine - Operators reduced the capacity of a nuclear 
reactor at Ukraine's Zaporizhia atomic power plant by 35 percent 
Saturday after a malfunction in its circulation pump, officials 
said.

The radiation level at the plant was normal, and works to repair 
the defect continue, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

Ukraine was site of world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, when 
a reactor at the Chernobyl plant exploded and spewed radiation 
over Europe. Chernobyl was closed down for good in 2000.

Minor malfunctions at Ukraine's four nuclear power plants occur 
frequently, but don't usually cause radiation leaks. Currently, 
10 Ukrainian reactors are functioning, while three others are 
under repair.

(ms/jh)


      Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 
The 
*****************************************************************
 11 Radioactive remains: The state's decommissioned Yankee Rowe 
nuclear power plant forced to relocate waste 

             MetroWest Daily News.c o m - LOCAL NEWS
 
By Adam Gorlick / Associated Press 
Sunday, May 19, 2002

ROWE - Tucked into the pristine stillness of the Berkshires, just 
a few hundred yards from the Vermont border, this seems like an 
unlikely place to find nuclear waste.

 But nestled in the forested hills rolling through this town of 
360 people is the hulking shell of Yankee Rowe, one of the 
country's first nuclear power plants and home to the radioactive 
remains of a utility that produced enough electricity for 5,000 
households.

 Shut down in 1992 after 31 years of operation, the plant began 
decommissioning a year later. The process was supposed to be 
helped by the federal government's promise to start carting away 
the plant's waste in 1998.

 Four years after missing that deadline, a bill is now moving 
through Congress to create a repository for the country's spent 
nuclear fuel. But with that facility's opening at least eight 
years away, Yankee Rowe is about to start a six-month procedure 
of moving its own waste to a new onsite storage system.

 "We were never intended to be a storage site," said Brian Wood, 
Yankee's site manager. "We've been waiting for the government to 
take this stuff away."

 After being submerged in a 40-year-old 150,000-gallon pool of 
water, more than 266,000 pounds of radioactive waste is about to 
resurface.

 Beginning next month, workers will raise the plant's 533 spent 
fuel assemblies and entomb them in 15 outdoor casks - 
13-foot-tall concrete containers that officials say can withstand 
earthquakes, tornadoes and small plane crashes.

 Industry officials call it "dry cask storage," and say it's 
safer than keeping the waste in a pool. Dry storage costs about 
$1.5 million a year, $2 million less than maintaining the cooling 
pools, they say.

 Getting the waste outside also will allow workers to dismantle 
the plant, a task that can't be done with an indoor cooling pool 
in use.

 The radioactive waste will be air-cooled as it sits in 
ventilated casks. Water-cooling requires moving parts and 
manpower, increasing the cost and opportunities for error.

 But moving the high-level radioactive material is risky, and 
workers at Yankee Rowe spent the past week practicing how to make 
the move as safe as possible.

 The spent fuel - uranium pellets about the length of a thumbnail 
- is packed in long, thin rods bundled into 533 rectangular fuel 
assemblies.

 Unshielded, it generates enough radiation to kill.

 Cranes will lift the fuel assemblies into steel canisters. Those 
canisters will be hoisted from the cooling pool, dried off, and 
welded shut. Much of the operation will be remote-controlled, 
protecting workers from too much radiation exposure.

 Once the canisters are plugged, they'll be trucked about 300 
feet to the outdoor storage site and sealed inside the 
21-inch-thick concrete casks with 3.5-inch-thick steel liners.

 The casks, each weighing 110 tons fully loaded, will stand on a 
3-foot-thick concrete pad until the Department of Energy takes 
them away.

 "They appear to be in good enough shape to move the spent fuel 
from the pool," said John Wray, a nuclear engineer with Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission who oversaw the past week's dress 
rehearsal. "They can safely operate the equipment to accomplish 
the task in a safe manner without exposing anybody to excessive 
levels of radiation."

 Security has been heightened at all working and decommissioned 
nuclear power plants since Sept. 11, and guards at Yankee Rowe 
holster pistols on their hips and have long guns slung across 
their backs. Jersey barriers, barbed wire fences and security 
checkpoints around the 10-acre plant ensure nobody stumbles onto 
the site.

 But the threat of terrorist attacks is still on the minds of 
plant workers and community members.

 "The fuel is safe just standing there untouched in the casks," 
said Gailanne Cariddi, chairwoman of the Citizens Advisory Board, 
a group of area residents and business leaders that serves as a 
liaison between Yankee and local communities.

 "The concern is the security on the outside," she said. 
"Everyone needs to be sure that's in place."

 There are now 21 dry cask facilities across the country. Two are 
at decommissioned plants. Within a year, the NRC expects six 
decommissioned plants to be using dry casks, agency officials 
said.

 The move at Yankee Rowe will come about a month after the U.S. 
House approved a plan to store 77,000 tons of used reactor fuel 
accumulating in 39 states at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. 
If the Senate approves the plan this summer, it will be at least 
eight years before Yankee's fuel is moved.

 And if the government comes for it in 2010, there's no guarantee 
they'll take it all at once, said Kelley Smith, a Yankee Rowe 
spokeswoman.

 Given the uncertainty of Yucca Mountain, Yankee Rowe is licensed 
to keep the waste in dry storage for 20 years. The casks 
themselves will last at least 40 years, Wood said.

 "After that, we check the integrity of the structures if need 
be," he said.

 The federal government's inability to move Yankee's waste is at 
the center of a $71 million lawsuit the company filed against the 
Department of Energy. Yankee wants to be reimbursed for storing 
the waste for the 12 years from the time the federal government 
promised to take the waste until the earliest Yucca Mountain will 
be ready.

 "It makes no sense to keep waste here," Smith said. "But as long 
as we have to keep it here, we're going to do it as safely and 
cost-effectively as possible."

On the Net: http://www.yankee.com/
 
          © Copyright by the MetroWest Daily News and 
*****************************************************************
 12 With future of nation's nuclear waste uncertain, Yankee Rowe 
moves spent fuel to cheaper, safer storage 

bostonherald.com   
        
Associated Press 
Saturday, May 18, 2002

ROWE, Mass. - Tucked into the pristine stillness of the 
Berkshires, just a few hundred yards from the Vermont border, 
this seems like an unlikely place to find nuclear waste.

 But nestled in the forested hills rolling through this town of 
360 people is the hulking shell of Yankee Rowe, one of the 
country's first nuclear power plants and home to the radioactive 
remains of a utility that produced enough electricity for 5,000 
households.

 Shut down in 1992 after 31 years of operation, the plant began 
decommissioning a year later. The process was supposed to be 
helped by the federal government's promise to start carting away 
the plant's waste in 1998.

 Four years after missing that deadline, a bill is now moving 
through Congress to create a repository for the country's spent 
nuclear fuel. But with that facility's opening at least eight 
years away, Yankee Rowe is about to start a six-month procedure 
of moving its own waste to a new onsite storage system.

 ``We were never intended to be a storage site,'' said Brian 
Wood, Yankee's site manager. ``We've been waiting for the 
government to take this stuff away.''

 After being submerged in a 40-year-old, 150,000-gallon pool of 
water, more than 266,000 pounds of radioactive waste is about to 
resurface.

 Beginning next month, workers will raise the plant's 533 spent 
fuel assemblies and entomb them in 15 outdoor casks - 
13-foot-tall concrete containers that officials say can withstand 
earthquakes, tornadoes and small plane crashes.

 Industry officials call it ``dry cask storage,'' and say it's 
safer than keeping the waste in a pool. Dry storage costs about 
$1.5 million a year, $2 million less than maintaining the cooling 
pools, they say.

 Getting the waste outside also will allow workers to dismantle 
the plant, a task that can't be done with an indoor cooling pool 
in use.

 The radioactive waste will be air-cooled as it sits in 
ventilated casks. Water-cooling requires moving parts and 
manpower, increasing the cost and opportunities for error.

 But moving the high-level radioactive material is risky, and 
workers at Yankee Rowe spent the past week practicing how to make 
the move as safe as possible.

 The spent fuel - uranium pellets about the length of a thumbnail 
- is packed in long, thin rods bundled into 533 rectangular fuel 
assemblies.

 Unshielded, it generates enough radiation to kill.

 Cranes will lift the fuel assemblies into steel canisters. Those 
canisters will be hoisted from the cooling pool, dried off, and 
welded shut. Much of the operation will be remote-controlled, 
protecting workers from too much radiation exposure.

 Once the canisters are plugged, they'll be trucked about 300 
feet to the outdoor storage site and sealed inside the 
21-inch-thick concrete casks with 3.5-inch-thick steel liners.

 The casks, each weighing 110 tons fully loaded, will stand on a 
3-foot-thick concrete pad until the Department of Energy takes 
them away.

 ``They appear to be in good enough shape to move the spent fuel 
from the pool,'' said John Wray, a nuclear engineer with Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission who oversaw the past week's dress 
rehearsal. ``They can safely operate the equipment to accomplish 
the task in a safe manner without exposing anybody to excessive 
levels of radiation.''

 Security has been heightened at all working and decommissioned 
nuclear power plants since Sept. 11, and guards at Yankee Rowe 
holster pistols on their hips and have long guns slung across 
their backs. Jersey barriers, barbed wire fences and security 
checkpoints around the 10-acre plant ensure nobody stumbles onto 
the site.

 But the threat of terrorist attacks is still on the minds of 
plant workers and community members.

 ``The fuel is safe just standing there untouched in the casks,'' 
said Gailanne Cariddi, chairwoman of the Citizens Advisory Board, 
a group of area residents and business leaders that serves as a 
liaison between Yankee and local communities.

 ``The concern is the security on the outside,'' she said.

``Everyone needs to be sure that's in place.''

 There are now 21 dry cask facilities across the country. Two are 
at decommissioned plants. Within a year, the NRC expects six 
decommissioned plants to be using dry casks, agency officials 
said.

 The move at Yankee Rowe will come about a month after the U.S. 
House approved a plan to store 77,000 tons of used reactor fuel 
accumulating in 39 states at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. 
If the Senate approves the plan this summer, it will be at least 
eight years before Yankee's fuel is moved.

 And if the government comes for it in 2010, there's no guarantee 
they'll take it all at once, said Kelley Smith, a Yankee Rowe 
spokeswoman.

 Given the uncertainty of Yucca Mountain, Yankee Rowe is licensed 
to keep the waste in dry storage for 20 years. The casks 
themselves will last at least 40 years, Wood said.

 ``After that, we check the integrity of the structures if need 
be,'' he said.

 The federal government's inability to move Yankee's waste is at 
the center of a $71 million lawsuit the company filed against the 
Department of Energy. Yankee wants to be reimbursed for storing 
the waste for the 12 years from the time the federal government 
promised to take the waste until the earliest Yucca Mountain will 
be ready.

 ``It makes no sense to keep waste here,'' Smith said. ``But as 
long as we have to keep it here, we're going to do it as safely 
and cost-effectively as possible.''
 
Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
 13 Nuclear Reactor Could be Restarted After 17 Year Shutdown
 
  Environment News Service: 

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama, May 17, 2002 (ENS) - The Tennessee Valley 
Authority has decided to seek permission to restart a reactor at 
the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant that was mothballed in 1985. 
On Thursday, the three member board of the federally owned 
utility approved a staff recommendation to return Unit 1, the 
oldest of the facilities three reactors, to service for another 
20 years. 

Calling it the best business decision to meet long term power 
needs in the Tennessee Valley, the TVA board authorized the 
utility's staff to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a 20 
year extension of the operating licenses for all three reactors 
at the North Alabama plant, and to begin work to recover Unit 1. 

[Browns Ferry] Two of the three nuclear reactors at Browns Ferry 
are now producing electricity; TVA wants to restart the third 
reactor. (Three photos courtesy TVA [http://www.tva.gov] ) If 
Unit 1 resumes operations, it will be the first major addition to 
the nation's nuclear power supply in more than a decade. 

"Returning Browns Ferry 1 to service is the best business 
decision for TVA and its customers in terms of power supply, 
cost, generation mix, delivered cost of power and the 
environment," said TVA chair Glenn McCullough Jr. "This decision 
advances our National Energy Policy, which calls for the safe 
expansion of nuclear energy, and it meets our objective of 
providing affordable, reliable power to the people of the 
Tennessee Valley." 

TVA says that engineering and planning estimates show that Unit 1 
can be returned to operation safely, said TVA chief operating 
officer O. J. "Ike" Zeringue, who recommended approval of the 
restart to the board. 

Citing a detailed engineering estimate presented to the Board in 
March, the power supply forecast, an environmental review and a 
financial analysis, Zeringue said that returning Browns Ferry 
Unit 1 to operation will reduce the cost to consumers of TVA's 
power, while causing to "significant, adverse" environmental 
impacts. 

Restarting Unit 1 is expected to cost from $1.7 billion to $1.8 
billion and will take five years to complete. TVA is still about 
$25.2 billion in debt from the original construction costs of its 
three nuclear power plants, built in the 1970s and 1980s. 

[turbines] Workers clean reactor feedwater pump turbine parts at 
Browns Ferry. On Thursday, TVA said its financial staff has 
determined that the agency can finance the restart while 
continuing to reduce the agency's massive debt, though at a 
slower pace. Unit 1 is expected to pay for itself after about 
eight years of operation, and the additional power it will 
produce will help lower TVA's average power costs, the agency 
said. 

"I believe this is a wise business decision for TVA," said TVA 
director Bill Baxter, one of the three board members. "This 
investment will pay dividends for the families, businesses and 
industry of the Valley in the forms of low cost power, cleaner 
air and economic growth." 

The two reactors now operating at Browns Ferry have set a number 
of records for continuous operating hours. Unit 1 has a history 
of problems, including a major fire in 1975 that caused major 
damage to the unit's safety systems just two years after it began 
operating. 

All three Browns Ferry reactors were shut down in 1985 after 
engineers learned that the completed plants did not exactly match 
their blueprint designs. After several refinements were made, the 
plant's Unit 2 was restarted in 1991, and Unit 3 was restarted in 
1996. 

TVA said Unit 1 was left idle because its generating capacity was 
not needed at the time. 

Now, the agency facing growing power demand in a region with a 
major air pollution problem. Restarting the Unit 1 reactor, which 
emits no smog producing pollutants, will help meet energy needs 
without adding more air pollution. 

[worker] TVA worker Robert Smith logs the access of workers at 
Browns Ferry Unit 3. TVA wants to operate all the Browns Ferry 
units for another 20 years. "We must balance the responsibility 
to provide power to meet future needs with our objectives of 
protecting the environment and continuing the trend of debt 
reduction," said TVA director Skila Harris, one of the three 
board members. "Restarting Unit 1 will provide needed generating 
capacity without increasing air emissions, and the financial 
analysis shows that we can undertake this project while 
continuing the trend of debt reduction." 

Approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the only 
official hurdle the TVA must cross before restarting Unit 1, but 
some conservation groups say they object to the proposal. Stephen 
Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean 
Energy in Knoxville, Tennessee, has long opposed the planned 
restart. 

"The plan stinks," Smith said. "Unit 1 was designed to operate 
for 40 years, but now TVA wants to add another 20 years on top of 
that. And they want the unit to produce 300 megawatts more than 
it was designed for, 1,300 instead of 1,000 megawatts. It's a 
prescription for a serious problem." 

[map] TVA operates three nuclear power plants, including Browns 
Ferry in Alabama. (Map courtesy Energy Information Agency 
[http://www.eia.doe.gov/] ) Asked whether TVA was making the 
right decision in opting to increase its nuclear resources, 
rather than its fossil fuel powered plants, Smith said "there are 
a lot better alternatives for the [Tennessee] Valley's energy 
needs than continuing to generate more radioactive wastes." 

David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of 
Concerned Scientists, a group that petitioned the NRC in 1998 to 
revoke the operating license for Browns Ferry Unit 1, noted that 
no nuclear power plant in any nation has ever been restarted 
after such a long shutdown. 

TVA, the nation's largest public power producer, provides power 
to large industries and 158 power distributors that serve 8.3 
million consumers in seven southeastern states. The agency 
operates three nuclear power plants, 11 fossil fueled plants and 
29 hydroelectric dams. 

© Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All Rights Reserved. <img
*****************************************************************
 14 Fired Official Is Critical of County Plan for Emergency

May 18, 2002  

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

TARRYTOWN, N.Y., May 17 — The former deputy director of emergency 
preparedness for Westchester County said today that his dismissal 
this week was unfair and that it was a result of his attempts to 
design a new evacuation plan for the county that was good for 
more than show.

The former official, Christopher Kozlow, who was fired on Monday, 
said that County Executive Andrew J. Spano was primarily 
concerned with revising the existing evacuation plan quickly to 
soothe public fears after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

But Mr. Spano called the criticism nonsense and said he was fired 
because of ineffectiveness. "He talked a good game and looked 
good," he said, "but he just didn't deliver."

In November, Mr. Kozlow was put in charge of creating a new 
emergency plan for responding to an accident or sabotage at the 
Indian Point nuclear plant in Buchanan. But he said today that 
his aims collided with those of Mr. Spano.

Mr. Kozlow said: "I was not going to put my professional 
reputation, my integrity, down by just writing a document without 
testing and evaluating and making changes. The rush was on public 
perception, getting it out there." 

He conceded that before his firing, he had spoken in support of 
the direction of the evacuation planning and had not criticized 
Mr. Spano. "I took ownership of the plan I inherited," he said, 
"which meant I was accepting responsibility, whether I thought it 
worked or didn't think it worked." He said he hoped to "rip up" 
the old plan and develop a new one.

But Mr. Spano said that Mr. Kozlow missed deadlines to submit 
plans and complete committee work repeatedly, and that 
Westchester was lagging behind other counties in evacuation 
preparedness as a result. 

"One committee that he was in charge of never even got started," 
Mr. Spano said, "and when I confronted him two weeks ago, he took 
15 minutes to get to a particular place where it still wasn't 
clear when the work would be complete."

Mr. Spano said that the decision to hire Mr. Kozlow was made by 
Jay B. Hashmall, a former deputy county executive who was forced 
to resign last year after a report in The Journal News about 
irregularities involving county contracts. Mr. Spano said that at 
first he was "one of Mr. Kozlow's biggest fans." 

He said the dismissal would not derail the pace of the planning, 
because a number of people were working on it. However, State 
Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky said the departure left 
Westchester on dangerous footing. "The evacuation plan was 
disastrous in the first place," he said, "and is now in tatters." 

Mr. Brodsky said he thought that Mr. Kozlow wanted to "make real 
change and was being told `we need a paper plan.' Whether or not 
the changes would work or wouldn't work was secondary to putting 
forth a document that they could wave in the air and say, `Look, 
it's changed.' "

Mr. Kozlow's lawyer, Jonathan Lovett, said his client intended to 
file lawsuits next week against the county government, Mr. Spano 
and various county officials, as well as unspecified state 
officials.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Permissions | 
*****************************************************************
 15 Yucca: Desert showdown over nuclear waste
 
    news.telegraph.co.uk - 

 (Filed: 18/05/2002) 

Bush fights Greens over vast toxic dump, reports Toby Harnden at 
Yucca Mountain, Nevada

 
Deep inside a huge volcanic rock in the heart of a nuclear test 
area on the edge of the Mojave desert is a hollowed-out chamber 
that has become a new Ground Zero in the war between President 
Bush and American environmentalists.
 
According to Mr Bush, Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is the ideal site 
to transport 77,000 tons of toxic waste from the four corners of 
America to be stored for the next 10,000 years.
 
The chamber, its walls lined with aluminium and fibreglass 
insulation, is serviced by enormous tubes that pump in fresh air. 
Metal bolts are placed every few feet to stabilise the rock. It 
is one and three quarter miles back to daylight.
 
Yucca Mountain is remote, Mr Bush argues, and the waste will be 
stored beneath 1,000ft of rock between water tables and the 
desert above.
 
Nuclear power, moreover, is making a comeback in America, which 
is determined to lessen its reliance on foreign oil.
 
Ranged against the president is an unlikely coalition of 
Democrats, casino owners in Las Vegas 100 miles away and 
environmentalists emboldened by their recent victory in the 
Senate that put Mr Bush's plans for oil and gas exploration in 
Alaska on hold.
 
The White House is confident of victory. This month, the 
Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 306 to 117 
to approve the Bush plan, which envisages nuclear waste being 
stored in Nevada from 2010.
 
Senators are due to vote on Yucca in July and opponents admit 
that they are struggling to secure a majority of votes.
 
Although the spectre of another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island is 
raised by opponents, much of the argument about Yucca Mountain is 
framed by September 11 and the threat of future terrorist 
attacks.
 
The Bush administration argues that it is much safer to store 
nuclear waste at a single site inside the heavily guarded 
1,400-square-mile nuclear test site than keep it at 131 locations 
in 39 states.
 
"If we license Yucca Mountain, every day can be September 11 
because that is the kind of threat we're exposing our nation, our 
communities, our families to," said Carl Pope, president of the 
Sierra Club, the leading US environmental group, at a recent 
rally on Capitol Hill.
 
The Sierra Club argues that transporting the waste to Yucca 
Mountain is much more dangerous than leaving it where it is.
 
According to the US Energy Department, the shipments would travel 
by road, rail and even barge through 43 states and 109 cities. 
Some have suggested that an al-Qa'eda operative might fire a 
shoulder-launched missile at a lorry with a toxic load.
 
"It's all about fear," said John Hartley, a geologist working on 
the Yucca Mountain project. "The technology is fairly new and was 
borne out of a great mushroom cloud."
 
Between 1951 and 1992, when testing ceased, there were 928 
nuclear detonations at the test site, part of which is the 
mysterious Area 51, a 60-square-mile segment that has attracted 
the fervent attention of conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs.
 
Yucca Mountain has been earmarked as a nuclear storage site for 
more than two decades. There are regular protests outside the 
site, but it is 65 miles from the main gate to Yucca Mountain.
 
"It is a badge of courage for an environmentalist to be arrested 
on the test site itself," said Abe Van Luin, a senior project 
manager. When the nuclear waste arrives in 2010, he said, tents 
will spring up and bodies will block the roads.
 
The state of Nevada has cut off water to Yucca Mountain, forcing 
workers to use chemical lavatories pending resolution of a 
lawsuit to get it turned back on.
 
But Mr Van Luin insists that the opposition will be overcome. 
Nuclear waste has been transported around America for decades, he 
points out, and no nuclear emission has resulted.
 
      20 May 2001: Fear and loathing in Las Vegas for America's 
nuclear dump 26 April 1996: Chernobyl radiation leak as 
scientists tell of mutation fear   

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002. Terms &Conditions
*****************************************************************
 16 Hodges Asks For Plutonium Injunction
	
  TheCarolinaChannel.com - 

 Hodges Asks For Plutonium Injunction DOE Has Broken Promises,
Request Says 

Posted: 9:04 p.m. EDT May 16, 2002

Updated: 8:04 a.m. EDT May 17, 2002

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- An attorney representing Gov. Jim Hodges has 
asked a federal court to stop plutonium shipments from Colorado. 
Hodges' attorney filed the preliminary injunction in federal 
court on Thursday to prevent the shipments from coming to the 
Savannah River Site in Aiken. 

The filing is the first move since Hodges sued to stop the 
shipments earlier this month. 

Attorney William Want says the federal Department of Energy has 
continually broken commitments on when plutonium would be 
processed and when it would leave SRS. 

Want said that DOE claimed last month that it was making SRS a 
long-term storage facility for the nuclear material. 

That would break earlier commitments that the plutonium would be 
processed and then leave the site. Hodges' legal team also 
consists of plutonium expert Allison Macfarland from the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She said that DOE's move 
for long-term storage of plutonium at SRS is unprecedented. 

Colorado Clean-Up Behind Schedule
 
Officials in Colorado say there is more than one problem with the 
effort to remove plutonium from the Rocky Flat weapons plant. 

South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges has been fighting efforts by 
Colorado and the Energy Department to ship the plutonium to the 
Savannah River Site near Aiken. 

But a federal audit released Thursday said the company in 
Colorado that is packaging the plutonium for shipments is behind 
schedule. The audit says workers have packaged less than half the 
amount expected. 

The report expresses concerns about Kaiser-Hill's ability to pick 
up the pace. 

The plutonium is supposed to be reprocessed into fuel for 
commercial nuclear reactors. Hodges said that he worries the 
project might be abandoned and the material might stay in South 
Carolina indefinitely. 

        Previous Stories: + May 14, 2002: Lunch Bunch Week 1: 
Plutonium In S.C. + May 10, 2002: DOE Delays 1st Plutonium 
Shipments + May 8, 2002: Politics, Plutonium Near Critical Mass + 
May 1, 2002: Hodges Sues To Stop Plutonium Trucks + April 24, 
2002: Hodges Spurns Colorado's Plutonium Request   

Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 17 UK: CALL FOR NUCLEAR TRAINS TO BE MONITORED
 
FEARS about radioactive nuclear waste being transported through 
Tynedale came under the spotlight during a meeting called by 
Hexham East End Residents' Association.

There are worries that radioactive nuclear fuel rods transported 
on trains from Hartlepool to Sellafield in Cumbria via the Tyne 
Valley are harmful.

And there are also concerns that a major accident involving a 
nuclear train could kill thousands of people, a worry which has 
been exacerbated by news of yet another rail disaster at Potters 
Bar.

Now, the association has decided to write to the Health and 
Safety Executive to ask it to keep an eye on the situation.

The group's chairman Jim Strain, said: "It's been suggested that 
I contact the Health and Safety Executive with reference to 
monitoring the transportation of radioactive waste in terms of 
how many trains travel in the Tyne Valley every week, how many 
caskets are transported at any time and to monitor any 
discharge."

The trains carry flasks of radioactive nuclear fuel rods from 
Hartlepool and other UK power stations to Sellafield for 
re-processing to remove uranium and plutonium.

The most frequently used route is through Sunderland, Gateshead 
and the Tyne Valley through Hexham, Carlisle and on to the 
Cumbrian coast.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Tyne and Wear said trains 
carrying nuclear waste travel through Hexham once a week in the 
early hours of Wednesday morning.   
    
http://cngroup.dsvr.co.uk
*****************************************************************
 18 Abraham: Yucca Not Enough for Waste
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
May 17, 2002 

WASHINGTON- Plans for a nuclear dump deep inside a Nevada 
mountain are still on the drawing board, but the Energy 
Department is already acknowledging the facility will be too 
small to accommodate the nation's radioactive waste. 

The Bush administration has argued repeatedly that the proposed 
Nevada repository should be built so that radioactive waste now 
at commercial power reactors and federal sites in 39 states can 
be consolidated and better protected at a single location. 

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, under intense questioning from 
Nevada's two senators, conceded Thursday that the Yucca Mountain 
repository as currently envisioned could handle only a fraction 
of the waste expected to be generated by commercial power plants 
and the government in the coming decade and may have to be 
expanded. 

Thousands of tons of "this stuff is still going to be (stored) 
around the country," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., told Abraham, who 
acknowledged that probably would be the case. 

About 45,000 tons of radioactive waste currently are kept around 
the country. Another 20,000 tons are expected to be generated by 
power reactors before Yucca Mountain can be opened, Abraham said. 

If a federal license is obtained, the Yucca facility would be 
scheduled to accept its first waste shipments in 2010. Abraham 
said it would receive a minimum 3,000 tons of waste a year for 23 
years. The industry has estimated that reactors produce about 
2,000 tons of new waste annually. 

Ensign and his Nevada colleague, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, said 
those figures debunk the administration's national security 
argument, since thousands of tons of waste will remain without a 
central repository even after Yucca Mountain becomes filled to 
capacity. 

Still, insisted Abraham, any waste taken to Yucca Mountain would 
be waste no longer kept in less-safe temporary facilities 
including some near highly populated or environmentally sensitive 
areas. 

After the hearing, Abraham opened the possibility that the Yucca 
Mountain facility eventually might be expanded. Congress has 
limited its initial design to 77,000 tons of waste, but Abraham 
said a future energy secretary after 2007 can consider expansion. 

On the Net: Yucca Mountain: http://www.ymp.gov/ 
[http://www.ymp.gov/] 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 19 The New Republic Online: Nuclear Waste
       
by the Editors 
                                
Post date 05.17.02 | Issue date 05.27.02  E-mail 

Over the loud objections of both environmentalists and the 
state's political leadership, Nevada is now one step closer--in 
the eloquent words of Texas Representative Joe Barton--to 
reclaiming its "nuclear heritage." On May 8 the U.S. House of 
Representatives voted overwhelmingly to back the Bush 
administration's decision to proceed with long-delayed plans to 
establish a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 
some 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. More specifically, 
Republicans voted overwhelmingly to back the Bush 
administration's decision; Democrats were evenly split. Speaking 
for many on his side of the aisle, House Minority Leader Richard 
Gephardt predicted that transporting the nuclear waste from sites 
across the country would lead to truck and train wrecks, spilling 
lethal radiation across our schoolyards and neighborhoods. "This 
is not a question about isolating the risk," Gephardt warned 
fellow House members. "Yucca Mountain in reality simply spreads 
it around." But most House members dismissed these concerns. 

And now all that stands between Americans and a permanent home 
for the 40,000-plus tons ofradioactive material already awaiting 
transport are Gephardt's Democratic colleagues in the Senate, who 
think that opposing Yucca Mountain will help the party at the 
polls this fall. In other words, they're shamelessly putting 
politics ahead of safety. And we hope they fail.

While some technical questions remain, there is a clear 
scientific consensus that Yucca Mountain is well suited for 
long-term waste disposal. As we noted in this space six months 
ago (see "Waste Away," November 26, 2001), federal scientists 
estimate that area residents will experience less radiation from 
Yucca than they're getting from the sun or from the potassium in 
bananas. 

As for transporting the stuff, the Department of Energy says that 
virtually indestructible containers can be constructed. If, God 
forbid, a truck carrying nuclear waste were to overturn, nearby 
vehicles might be crushed by the massive containers, but they 
would not be contaminated by the radioactive materials within. 

Moreover, systematically consolidating waste at Yucca is vastly 
preferable to leaving the material at the 131 temporary 
facilities scattered across 39 states. The concrete casks in 
which the waste is currently stored were never meant as a 
permanent solution; the material they contain will remain toxic 
for years beyond the containers' life span. And it is much easier 
to ensure security at one central site than at several dozen 
geographically dispersed ones.

Unfortunately, for many Democrats these scientific arguments 
aren't as compelling as the political ones on the other side. For 
starters, Nevada Senator Harry Reid is vociferously opposed; and 
as majority whip he wields considerable power. Adding to his 
clout, Reid was instrumental in convincing Vermont's Jim Jeffords 
to abandon the GOP last spring, throwing the Senate back into 
Democratic hands. Shortly thereafter, freshly minted Majority 
Leader Tom Daschle appeared at a Reid fund-raiser to assure Yucca 
opponents, "As long as we're in the majority, it's dead." Also in 
Reid's corner are two deep-pocketed special interest groups: the 
casino industry--which fears that Yucca will scare tourists out 
of Vegas--and many environmental organizations, which think that 
if the nuclear industry has a permanent site for its waste, it 
will be emboldened to build more power plants. As a result, while 
38 Senate Republicans have come out in favor of the Yucca plan 
(versus only two against), 17 of the 27 Democrats with a stated 
position oppose making Yucca America's permanent repository.

Democrats are also keenly aware of the electoral potential of 
opposing the Yucca plan. Back in 2000, with the White House on 
the line, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney vowed to veto any 
attempt to build a temporary storage site at Yucca and implied 
that they opposed a permanent repository as well. Since then, the 
president has made the scientifically laudable but politically 
risky decision to reverse course, and Nevadans are furious. Yucca 
Mountain, Gephardt has predicted, "will be pivotal" not only in 
the swing state of Nevada--which boasts two contested House races 
this fall--but in several nearby states through which shipments 
of Yucca-bound waste will pass. In the Democrats' dream scenario, 
Bush's support of the Yucca dump--a particularly touchy subject 
out West, where property rights are a perennial hot-button 
issue--combined with a growing Latino presence, will help loosen 
the GOP's long-standing stranglehold over the region. But while 
Democrats hatch plans for partisan gain, tens of thousands of 
tons of nuclear waste continue to pile up in underprotected 
storage sites around the country. Daschle and Gephardt may be 
right that Bush will pay a political price because he's doing the 
right thing on Yucca Mountain. But the more important question 
is: What price will the country pay because the Democrats aren't? 
the Editors   

2002, The New Republic
*****************************************************************
 20 Bush administration raises Yucca stakes

The Pawtucket Times 

Copyright 2002 by United Press International.May 16, 2002

WASHINGTON, May 16, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) 
-- If Congress fails to override Nevada's objections to the 
proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, nuclear 
arms reduction efforts might suffer, Energy Secretary Spencer 
Abraham said Thursday during a Senate hearing.

Abraham's appeared before the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee during the body's first discussion on the Yucca 
override legislation. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the committee 
chairman, said two hearings next week will cover the state's 
objections and the opinions of neutral scientific bodies on the 
site, a 9,000-foot hill located about 90 miles northwest of Las 
Vegas. 

"It's my intention to schedule a business meeting on June 5 for 
the committee to vote on whether to report the resolution to the 
full Senate," Bingaman said. The House overwhelmingly passed its 
Yucca override on May 8. The Senate must pass its version by July 
25 for the project to move to a licensing phase, Bingaman said. 

If Yucca is defeated, a vital component of the Russian-American 
arms reduction plan will be gone, Abraham told the committee. The 
process envisioned by the White House would blend plutonium from 
nuclear warheads into non-weapons-grade reactor fuel for 
commercial use, he said. 

"Without the repository, I think that program will be set back, 
if not stalled," Abraham said. 

Joe Davis, a Department of Energy spokesman, told United Press 
International the Yucca project would handle only spent fuel and 
waste, not unmodified weapons-grade material. 

Abraham also took Yucca opponents to task for focusing on waste 
transport concerns. Any solution will involve shipments, he said. 
"Simply by incanting the words 'transportation of nuclear waste,' 
opponents are hoping they can incite public fear without any 
basis in fact," Abraham said in his prepared remarks. "This hope 
has become the last refuge for opposition to the project." 

Transportation issues nevertheless became a centerpiece of 
members' questions. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., the 
only committee member to speak against Yucca, challenged 
Abraham's assertion states will have a say in choosing the routes 
waste shipments will take. 

Bingaman allowed Nevada's two senators, Democrat Harry Reid and 
Republican John Ensign, to take part in the hearing, even though 
they are not part of the committee. The pair used the opportunity 
to tangle with Abraham, and not always cordially, on several 
areas of dispute. Reid appeared particularly disturbed by the 
secretary's comparison of nuclear waste and existing hazardous 
material shipments. 

"The three million tons of hazardous waste already shipped 
wouldn't even equal the danger posed by one spent fuel cask," 
Reid said. Ensign brought up the cost of the Yucca project, 
saying Congress would have to devote tax revenues to handling the 
estimated $58 billion cost. Abraham replied that the existing 
Nuclear Waste Fund, currently holding several billion dollars and 
generated by contributions from electric ratepayers, could pay 
for the site over time. 

Comments from the committee do not bode well for Reid and 
Ensign's attempts to scuttle the override. Several members, 
including Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, openly supported the 
override. The others, including Bingaman, posed their questions 
to allow Abraham to refute several criticisms of the project, and 
did not challenge the secretary's answers. 

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., asked if a General Accounting Office 
report on 293 technical issues contained any showstoppers for 
Yucca. Abraham said the issues represented a simple checklist to 
complete before licensing the site, adding that 41 have already 
been dealt with and another 50 or so should be completed by 
September. 

By SCOTT R. BURNELL, UPI Science News 

©The Pawtucket Times 2002 
*****************************************************************
 21 State GOP against Yucca, but wants negotiations if it's OK'd
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
May 18, 2002 
 
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Nevada Republican Party on Saturday said it 
supports the fight against Yucca Mountain, but wants the state to 
get something in return if it has to accept the nation's nuclear 
waste. 

Some Republicans said the platform issue adopted during the state 
GOP convention stems from a feeling of inevitability about the 
proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest 
of Las Vegas. 

Gov. Kenny Guinn said it doesn't mean "you're a bad person" for 
taking that stance. 

"We support Nevada's elected officials' fight against the Yucca 
Mountain project, but in the event the battle is lost, we urge 
Nevada public officials to work with the Bush administration for 
the maximum benefit for Nevada," the platform reads. 

Republican Robert List, a former Nevada governor, has been saying 
all along that Nevada ought to see what it can get in return for 
Yucca Mountain. 

Democrats strongly oppose negotiating for any benefits. 
Republican Party Chairman Bob Seale noted that negotiations would 
only take place if Yucca Mountain is approved. 

"There's no concession," Seale said. "The platform's clear - 
they're anti-Yucca Mountain. It's the same plank that's in the 
platform two years ago." 

Nevada's hopes of blocking Yucca Mountain are dwindling after a 
recent House endorsement of the project and indications the 
Senate may consider the issue as early as next month. 

Guinn had vetoed President Bush's endorsement of the project, 
which sent the matter to Congress. 

He has said he remains confident the facility will never be built 
and the battle will eventually be fought in court. Three Nevada 
lawsuits challenging the Yucca plan already are in the courts. 

The earliest Yucca Mountain could begin accepting spent nuclear 
fuel is 2010. 

"The legal fight has just begun," said Republican Brian Sandoval, 
who is running for attorney general. "We should fight this to the 
end." 

Also Saturday, Jack Oliver, deputy director of the Republican 
National Committee, told the party of the importance of winning 
Nevada's new 3rd Congressional District seat. 

The race - mainly between Clark County Commission Chairman Dario 
Herrera, a Democrat, and GOP state Sen. Jon Porter - is being 
watched closely by both parties in the battle for control of the 
House of Representatives. Republicans now lead Democrats 222 to 
211, with two independents. 

The party adopted 15 platform planks, including Question 2, which 
would amend the Nevada Constitution to forbid recognition of gay 
marriages, establishing a school voucher system and supporting 
the right to bear arms. 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 22 Bush backs desert nuclear dump 

- theage.com.au
 
By Toby Harnden

Yucca Mountain, Nevada
 May 19 2002
 
Deep inside a huge volcanic rock in the heart of a nuclear test 
area on the edge of the Mojave Desert is a hollowed-out chamber 
that has become the new Ground Zero for the war between President 
George Bush and American environmentalists.
 
According to Mr Bush, Nevada's Yucca Mountain is the ideal site 
to transport 77,000 tonnes of toxic waste from the four corners 
of America to be stored for the next 10,000 years.
 
The chamber is lined with aluminium and fibreglass insulation. 
Iron bolts are placed every metre or so to stabilise the rock. It 
is two-and-a-half kilometres back to daylight.
 
Yucca Mountain is remote, Mr Bush argues, and the waste will be 
stored beneath 300 metres of rock. 

Ranged against the President is an unlikely coalition of 
Democrats, casino owners in Las Vegas 160 kilometres away, and 
environmentalists emboldened by their recent victory in the 
Senate that put Mr Bush's plans for oil and gas exploration in 
Alaska on hold.
 
The White House is confident of victory. This month, the 
Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 306 to 117 
to approve the Bush plan. Senators are due to vote on Yucca in 
July and opponents admit they are struggling to secure a majority 
of votes.
 
Although the spectre of another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island is 
raised by opponents, much of the argument about Yucca Mountain is 
framed by September 11 and the threat of future terrorist 
attacks. The Bush administration argues it is much safer to store 
nuclear waste at a single site than at 131 locations in 39 
states.

- Telegraph
 
Copyright © 2002 The Age Company Ltd     
*****************************************************************
 23 Yucca EDITORIAL: The senators do well

Sunday, May 19, 2002
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 

Under intense questioning from Nevada's two senators, Energy 
Secretary Spencer Abraham acknowledged in Washington on Thursday 
that Yucca Mountain will be too small to accommodate all the 
nation's nuclear waste -- though he later added the solution 
might be to expand the facility. 

Because the Yucca Mountain repository as currently envisioned 
could handle only a fraction of the waste expected to be 
generated by commercial plants and the government over the next 
decade -- and because spent fuel must still be stored at each 
reactor site for years until it has cooled sufficiently for 
transport -- thousands of tons of "this stuff is still going to 
be (stored) around the country," even after Yucca is fully 
operational, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., prodded Mr. Abraham. 

The secretary acknowledged that would be the case. 

The admission is important because it substantially debunks the 
notion that Yucca Mountain will protect the nation against a 
hypothetical terrorist attack, by allowing all of the nation's 
high-level nuclear waste to be stored at one location at one 
time. 

Mr. Abraham said Yucca Mountain could begin receiving waste in 
2010, and could accept a minimum 3,000 tons of waste a year for 
23 years. But the industry has estimated that its reactors 
produce about 2,000 tons of new waste annually. 

Sen. Ensign and Democratic Sen. Harry Reid said those figures 
unmask the administration's national security argument, because 
thousands of tons of waste will remain without a central 
repository even after Yucca Mountain becomes filled to capacity. 

After the hearing, Mr. Abraham opened the possibility that the 
Yucca Mountain facility might eventually be expanded. Congress 
has limited its initial design to 77,000 tons of waste, but 
Abraham said the Nevada site actually has room for as much as 
120,000 tons. 

But that was mostly face-saving, since The Associated Press 
immediately pointed out, "It was unclear how such a move would 
affect the project's licensing or the likelihood of further legal 
challenges by Nevada." 

The battle against Yucca Mountain is hardly won. But the pro-dump 
force's newly cobbled-together "anti-terror" rationale now lies 
in tatters -- especially when the risks of shipping this material 
through 43 states are taken into account. 

Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
 24 Republicans adopt anti-Yucca statement

Sen. John Ensign urges delegates to the Nevada Republican Party 
convention Saturday to "make sure this party stands with its 
leaders" in opposing nuclear waste in Nevada. Photo by Denise 
Truscello/Review-Journal

Sunday, May 19, 2002
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
 
But platform plank says fight may be lost 
By JANE ANN MORRISON 
REVIEW-JOURNAL 

After some prodding from their top elected leaders, delegates to 
the Nevada Republican Party state convention Saturday adopted a 
platform plank on the Yucca Mountain Project -- the same one 
passed two years ago. 

The party activists supported a statement saying: "We support 
Nevada's elected officials' fight against the Yucca Mountain 
project, but in the event the battle is lost, we urge Nevada 
public officials to work with the Bush administration for the 
maximum benefit for Nevada." 

Although it wasn't as forceful as Sen. John Ensign had hoped, it 
was an improvement over the party's position Friday, when the 
platform committee hadn't made Yucca Mountain one of its top 15 
priorities. 

In the effort Saturday to get Yucca Mountain language into the 
party's platform, an anti-abortion plank was eliminated, angering 
some of the party's social conservatives. 

During the voting, several other Yucca Mountain planks failed. 

One would have been anathema to the party leaders -- it supported 
President Bush's decision to proceed with Yucca Mountain and 
urged elected officials to cooperate with the president. Another 
opposed spending additional state funds to fight Bush's decision, 
despite Gov. Kenny Guinn's efforts to raise money for a court 
battle and public relations effort. 

On Friday, platform committee chairman Bob Beers, a Republican 
assemblyman, said he doubted there would be any plank on Yucca 
Mountain. He said he sensed the rank-and-file party members are 
being persuaded that the repository is inevitable and that 
political leaders should start negotiating for benefits. 

The "Let's Make A Deal" approach has been strongly rejected by 
the party's top leaders, including Saturday's speakers at the GOP 
convention: Ensign, Guinn, Rep. Jim Gibbons, congressional 
candidate Lynette Boggs McDonald and attorney general candidate 
Brian Sandoval, who all reaffirmed it is important to keep 
fighting the battle. 

Gibbons, Ensign and Boggs McDonald all spoke before the platform 
was voted on, and Beers said afterward, "I think they made a 
difference." 

Guinn and Sandoval spoke while the platform votes were being 
counted. 

Ensign told the Republicans: "It is a principled stand to be 
against Yucca Mountain as an American." He cited the expense and 
national security issues and repeated his argument that more 
effort should be put into reprocessing nuclear waste. 

Ensign then asked for a "unanimous vote to make sure this party 
stands with its leaders to make sure it's in unanimous 
opposition" to nuclear waste. However, that language wasn't even 
under consideration and couldn't be added that late in the 
process, Beers said. Nor was that the position of many of the 
delegates. 

After his rousing speech, Ensign said he had planned to discuss 
Yucca Mountain, "but I didn't think I had to convince my own 
party." Gibbons, Ensign and Guinn all said that, no matter what 
the state party action was, they would continue fighting nuclear 
waste coming to Nevada by any means they can. 

"I still have my marching orders: Defend Nevada," Gibbons said. 

He also has been asked by the Bush administration to defend the 
president on last week's revelations about prior information on 
potential terrorist hijackings. Gibbons today is scheduled to 
appear on CNN and Fox News rebutting Democratic attacks on Bush. 

While conceding that Bush "should have disclosed" earlier that he 
had been briefed in August that Osama bin Laden's network might 
hijack American airplanes, Gibbons, a member of the House 
Intelligence Committee, said Democratic leaders had received 
similar briefings. 

Gibbons said in an interview there are "no other surprises, not 
that I know of" about any other advance intelligence warnings 
prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 

After the results were announced, Guinn compared the language in 
the Yucca Mountain plank to the recent Culinary Union vote in 
which members authorized a strike action even as they hoped no 
strike occurs. 

Guinn also warned that, if the Democrats keep making Yucca 
Mountain a partisan issue and bashing GOP congressional candidate 
Jon Porter for not being a strong enough opponent of Yucca 
Mountain, then he'll be prepared to enter the fray to stop the 
issue from becoming partisan. 

"If Dario Herrera wants to make it that way, we can certainly 
make it that way, too," he said, referring to Porter's Democratic 
opponent for the new 3rd Congressional District seat.
 
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
 25 Insure Nuclear Waste 

The Salt Lake Tribune -- 

Sunday, May 19, 2002   

    The question of safe disposal of nuclear waste will never be 
settled by wrangling ("N-Waste Cask Designers, Foes Wrangle on 
Safety," Tribune, May 5). Ultimately the nuclear disposal 
procedure will probably be determined by authoritarian mandate, 
but never by public wrangling. 

    Perhaps a fair settlement can be reached by requiring a large 
depository fee from the parties desiring to deposit their nuclear 
materials in Utah and Nevada (container manufacturers, the 
federal government, the state governments, industrial sources of 
contaminants, etc.). Also, it would be essential that the owners 
of nuclear wastes deposited in Utah would remain as owners 
forever and they should be required to post substantial long-term 
bonds to guarantee against future problems which may arise from 
their deposits. This would ensure our descendants to some degree 
against unanticipated radiation problems and groundwater 
contamination. 
    
    ROBERT HEATH Midvale 
    
  © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on
*****************************************************************
 26 SUWA Hates Hansen Plan

The Salt Lake Tribune -- 

Sunday, May 19, 2002   

BY BRENT ISRAELSEN 

   With the scent of lilac and wisteria wafting in the breeze, 
environmentalists gathered at Red Butte Gardens to say Rep. Jim 
Hansen's plan to use wilderness to thwart a nuclear-waste dump 
stinks. 

    "A piece of garbage" is how Larry Young, director of the 
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) characterizes it. 

    Hansen has put environmental activists in the unenviable 
position of opposing an anti-nuclear measure, but they appear 
comfortable in their opposition. Nothing, they say, not even 
stopping a nuclear-waste dump, is worth sacrificing Utah 
wilderness or the wilderness law. 

    The object of their wrath is a rider that Hansen successfully 
attached two weeks ago to the House defense authorization bill. 
The rider would create 500,000 acres of wilderness in Utah's 
western desert, including the Cedar Mountains, an area the 
nuclear power industry needs for a rail spur to the Goshute 
Indian lands in Skull Valley, where the industry wants to store 
some 40,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel. 

    By law, wilderness designation would preclude construction of 
a rail line. 

    "It will be highly effective in putting the last nail in this 
coffin," said Hansen's military aide, Bill Johnson. 

    Thanks largely to the Republican congressman's deliberate 
effort to keep the public in the dark about the 
anti-nuclear-waste motivation, the rider sailed through the House 
on May 10. 

    While Hansen and his staff tout the rider as quasi-brilliant 
legislative maneuvering, Young believes it would set a harmful 
precedent for wilderness. 

    "It would be the worst piece of wilderness legislation ever 
enacted by Congress," he said. 

    The rider contains a number of provisions designed to protect 
the Utah Test and Training Range, a broad military airspace above 
about 5 million acres of land from Hill Air Force Base to Nevada. 
Most of the land is under jurisdiction of the U.S. Bureau of Land 
Management (BLM). 

    It would give the Defense Department power over management of 
the public land. For example, the Interior Department, which 
currently manages the land, would need permission from the Air 
Force and Utah National Guard before it could revise any land 
management plans. 

    Although the rider would designate 500,000 acres of 
wilderness, it would allow the military to close the land to the 
public, build roads and install communications equipment. The 
rider also would bar the Interior Department from studying 
hundreds of thousands of acres of land for further wilderness 
consideration. 

    Young said a provision with such "far-reaching" aspects 
should be openly debated in congressional hearings, not attached 
to a huge bill such as defense appropriations. 

    He acknowledged, however, that if the provision contained 
wilderness language favored by SUWA, he would not oppose it. 

    SUWA, the Sierra Club and other activists say they support 
using wilderness designation to thwart the nuclear-waste 
proposal, but Hansen's approach is the wrong way to do it. 

    Johnson countered, that Hansen's approach is the only way. 

    The political reality in Congress is that a free-standing 
bill on Utah wilderness, especially one aimed at thwarting the 
nuclear-waste facility, would go nowhere. 

    Using his clout as chairman of the House Resources Committee 
and as a senior member of the Armed Service Committee, Hansen 
attached the Utah wilderness rider to the defense bill. 

    To get it there, Hansen had to make the rider relevant to the 
military, in this case by protecting Hill's airspace from any 
foreseeable encroachment. 

    Hansen has said he believes the rider will help save Hill, 
which provides about 20,000 Utah jobs, from the next round of 
base closings, expected in 2005. 

    Johnson said Hansen purposely kept the public and nuclear 
interests in the dark about the rider's other purpose of 
thwarting the Goshute facility out of fear of extensive lobbying 
by the nuclear industry. 

    "It is not possible to do what we did unless we were riding a 
must-pass bill. And that wouldn't have been possible had we put 
out a press release a week ahead of time saying we were trying to 
kill the Goshute proposal. If we did that we would have had to 
put out a press release the next day saying, 'Sorry. We didn't 
get it done.' " 

    Johnson said environmentalists are exaggerating the impacts 
of the provision, which he argued would not bar a future Congress 
from designating wilderness in the training range, and would not 
result in unchecked road-building or frequent public closures. 
    
  © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune 
*****************************************************************
 27 Profit is the motive behind push for Yucca 

Photo: Spent solid nuclear waste is stored in bunkers 

Las Vegas SUN
 
May 17, 2002 
 
Deregulation increases profitability of nuclear plants,
prompting expansion plans and push for Yucca

 By David Strow 
< [strow@lasvegassun.com] >

 WEEKEND EDITION: May 19, 2002

 Listening to nuclear-power proponents, you might believe the
industry could be the solution to America's energy problems.

 Coal plants vomit huge amounts of black, acrid smoke into the
air. Nuclear plants don't.

 Natural gas-fired plants don't pollute much, but the cost of
electricity that they produce gyrates wildly.

 When natural gas prices soar -- as they did last year -- so
does the price of the electricity produced. Nuclear plants don't
have this problem -- fuel costs are steady, and so is the cost
of electricity produced.

 Nuclear plants can also produce massive amounts of electricity,
far more than any other kind of power plant. A single nuclear
plant can provide sufficient electricity to power a major U.S.
city singlehandedly, and it can run for as long as two years
before refueling.

 Today 103 nuclear plants supply one-fifth of the electricity
used in the United States. Even Nevada, which has no nuclear
plants, draws 8 percent of its electricity from nuclear sources.

 But there's one rock-solid law in economics: Any benefit must
come with an associated cost. And nuclear power has a massive
cost: nuclear waste, one of the most toxic and dangerous
substances known to man.

 Radiation from unshielded nuclear rods is intensive enough to
kill a human within minutes -- and these spent rods currently
sit in storage at every nuclear plant in the country.

 Nevada officials estimate the rods will remain dangerously
radioactive for the next million years. That is more than five
times longer than modern man -- Homo sapiens -- has existed on
Earth.

 So it's not surprising that this nuclear material is a hot
potato that no state wants.

 In April, for example, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham tried
to force South Carolina to take possession of 34 metric tons of
weapons-grade plutonium at the Energy Department's Savannah
River nuclear site, where it could be reprocessed. South
Carolina has more nuclear plants than all but three states, and
draws more than half its power from nuclear sources.

 South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges responded by threatening to
block the route with armed state troopers -- and even said he
was willing to block the road with his own body -- until the
federal government puts the plutonium elsewhere.

 Hodges, however, has no such qualms about dumping the waste on
Nevada.

 "The nation's most constructive long-term course is to proceed
with the licensing and eventual operation of the Yucca Mountain
facility to relieve South Carolina and other involved states
from the heavy burden of nuclear waste and other materials
stored on site," Hodges wrote in an October letter to Abraham --
even though he admitted later in the letter that guaranteeing
Yucca's suitability for long-term storage was "unachievable."

 Burying 77,000 tons of nuclear waste under a mountain ridge in
Southern Nevada will free states such as South Carolina,
Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania from keeping waste that
their plants generate. And it will open the door for an
ever-shrinking group of nuclear power operators to expand
business, something unheard of since the Three Mile Island
disaster in 1979.

 "The big push to get Yucca Mountain open is really just about
getting the waste away from the reactor sites so they can build
more reactors in the future," said Bob Loux, Nevada Nuclear
Waste Project director.

 Nuclear operators reply that the federal government already
promised it would remove the waste when Congress passed the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982. So far they've paid $18
billion into a fund to deal with permanent waste disposal -- and
//gotten nothing.

 "The federal government has an obligation to take possession of
this material," said Craig Nesbit, spokesman for Chicago-based
Exelon Corp., the single largest operator of U.S. nuclear
plants. "Whether it's Yucca Mountain or another site is another
issue."

 Nuclear industry officials aren't willing to predict that their
budding renaissance will be dead if Yucca Mountain dies. But
they acknowledge it will become much more difficult.

 "I don't know if there is a yes or no answer, but I'd say it
certainly makes it less feasible," Nesbit said.

 A reborn industry

 Nuclear power has been discussed in such glowing terms before
-- in the 1950s and '60s. To cover the huge costs of building a
plant, utilities and municipal power agencies often split the
investment and ownership of new plants.

 In 1979 the near-meltdown at Three Mile Island, a nuclear plant
10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pa., put the clamps on any
further expansion of the nuclear industry. Within 100 miles of
TMI lie Baltimore and Philadelphia; within 200 miles are
Washington, New York and Pittsburgh.

 Orders for new plants vanished. Those that were already under
construction saw price tags explode as new safety requirements
went into effect. Nuclear plants went from gold mines to white
elephants.

 The situation remained into the 1990s. Then came deregulation
-- and nuclear power was back in vogue.

 Under deregulation, many regulated utilities were forced to
sell their generation assets, which put nuclear plants onto the
market. With the nation's demand for electricity soaring,
nuclear power plants became valuable assets -- even more so
because electricity can be sold at higher profit margins into
deregulated markets.

 First to move was New Orleans utility holding company Entergy
Corp., which acquired Massachusetts' Pilgrim nuclear power plant
in July 1999 for $81 million.

 Since then, nine nuclear plants have been sold. The latest was
April 15 when FPL Group, a Florida utility holding company,
announced it would buy New Hampshire's two-reactor Millstone
plant for $836.6 million.

 Prices for nuclear plants began shooting up after natural-gas
prices soared last year, Richard Myers, Nuclear Energy Institute
director of business policy, said.

 "Companies learned that volatility can be very painful," Myers
said. "Certainly recent sales have been more costly, but they
(nuclear plants) still look like very dependable, low-cost
sources of electricity."

 Just four companies have been buyers: Entergy, Exelon,
Virginia's Dominion Resources and FPL Group. Ironically, one
plant was the remaining Three Mile Island reactor, sold to a
joint venture of Exelon and British Energy in December 1999 for
$20 million.

 Following this buying spree, Exelon stands as the nation's
largest nuclear plant operator, with ownership interests in 19
plants. Catching up is Entergy, which owns nine and has signed a
deal to acquire a 10th. Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy Corp.
owns seven, followed by Dominion Resources and Atlanta-based
Southern Co. with six each.

 Combined, these five companies control nearly half of all U.S.
nuclear generators.

 When a nuclear plant is purchased, it is placed within a
separate subsidiary that sells electricity outside of a
regulated utility. By doing so, companies are able to generate
far higher profits than their previous owners.

 For a power plant owner, one of the biggest expenses is
depreciation, the gradual reduction in an asset's value.
Eventually, an asset can be completely depreciated, and the
expense disappears.

 But the end of depreciation does little to benefit a regulated
utility, which has a fixed profit margin. The elimination of an
expense such as depreciation is passed directly to ratepayers as
lower rates.

 This isn't the case with a nonregulated power seller. The end
of depreciation simply increases profit margins, making older
nuclear plants tremendously profitable.

 "Then it's just a question of keeping them running safely,"
Mitch Singer, Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman, said. "Then
it's pure gravy down the line."

 By specializing in nuclear generation, the small core of
companies is squeezing more and more electricity out of their
plants. Prior to the industry shift, the nation's nuclear plants
never ran, on average, higher than 80 percent of capacity -- the
theoretical maximum amount of electricity that the plants could
produce.

 In 1999 industry performance jumped to 87 percent, and in 2000
to 90 percent. By January the industry was running at 98.5
percent capacity. These numbers were achieved by shortening the
periods nuclear plants are taken out of service while fuel rods
are changed and maintenance is performed.

 As a result of greater efficiency and the economics of
deregulation, nuclear power is becoming quite profitable. For
example, in 1999 when Entergy bought its first nuclear plant,
its nuclear business accounted for 1 percent of its revenues and
3 percent of its net income. Last year it owned four plants,
which provided $789 million in revenues, 8 percent of the
company's total. On a net-income basis, nuclear power accounted
for 17 percent of Entergy's total profit in 2001.

 Considerable risk

 Some suggest that these kinds of profits are coming at a
considerable risk. Arjun Makhijani, president of the
Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research,
said that nuclear operators performed routine maintenance during
refueling periods.

 "Now they don't even have time to do that," Makhijani said.
"They're taking backup systems offline while operating (for
maintenance). There are times when they don't have backup
systems."

 It's a claim the nuclear industry hotly denies.

 "Absolutely not," Nesbit said. "You just don't go outside those
(safety) limits."

 Squeezing more life out of these plants is the immediate goal
of the industry. Many older plants have only a few years left on
operating licenses -- and that's started a push for license
renewals.

 The Nuclear Energy Institute says eight reactors so far have
received 20-year renewals. Another 15 have filed for renewal
while 27 more are expected to do so soon. These have proceeded
without a permanent repository, although waste continues to pile
up at the plants.

 However, the next step goes beyond simply extending the lives
of plants. What nuclear operators and the Bush administration
have in mind is nothing less than the drastic expansion of
nuclear power.

 It's a simple formula, Myers figures. The United States now has
800,000 megawatts of generation capacity. Twenty years from now,
it will need an additional 400,000 megawatts.

 "We believe that nuclear can and should and must represent some
portion of that new building, perhaps 50,000 to 60,000
megawatts," Myers said. "Having a diverse portfolio of fuels is
a good thing. Like an investment portfolio, you don't want to be
100 percent in equities."

 Construction on new plants could begin around 2006 or 2007,
with "a significant level" getting under way after 2010, Myers
said.

 A large nuclear plant generates roughly 1,000 megawatts of
electricity, suggesting another 50 to 60 nuclear reactors -- at
a minimum -- would have to be built. Yucca opponents say these
plans are among the biggest reasons for the push to build the
repository.

 "Without a repository, they can't even talk about it,"
Makhijani said. "It's impossible."

 The nuclear industry is reluctant to draw the same conclusion.

 "I do not think it is a prerequisite," Myers said. "What is
necessary is a plausible program to manage the spent fuel from
the plants. As long as it's moving forward, I think you have
what you need to justify the construction of new plants."

 On the same day President Bush recommended Yucca Mountain as
the nation's nuclear waste repository, his administration
offered three federal sites for companies to consider for new
nuclear plants.

 Since then, three companies -- Exelon, Entergy and Dominion
Resources -- indicated they will examine building nuclear plants.

 One major argument in favor of a Yucca repository has been
moving the waste away from nuclear plants to a central site. But
it is guaranteed that, as long as a nuclear plant is operating,
some waste will be stored there.

 Nuclear fuel rods can't simply be pulled from a reactor, placed
on a truck and shipped out. A freshly removed fuel rod is
extremely hot, and must be placed in a cooling pond for as long
as seven years before removal, Nesbit said.

 At many plants, those cooling pools have doubled as temporary
waste storage centers as the nuclear rods pile up. As these
pools run out of room, more operators are turning to "dry cask
storage" as a solution.

 Eighteen nuclear sites have dry cask storage centers, which are
essentially huge concrete bunkers. While they keep radioactive
material safely locked away, "these are not designed to be there
for 10,000 years," Nesbit said.

 But will Yucca Mountain be enough to hold all of the nuclear
waste scattered around the country? Unlikely, Makhijani said.

 Too much waste?

 At a minimum, 40,000 tons of waste now exists. The nation's
currently operating nuclear plants, even before relicensing,
will eventually double that amount, Makhijani estimates --
slightly more than Yucca's maximum capacity of 77,000 tons.

 Relicensing would increase that amount by another 40,000 tons,
Makhijani said. Waste from the military and new nuclear plants
would push up the total even farther.

 Add it up, and the ultimate amount of waste requiring disposal
within 20 to 30 years could exceed 120,000 tons -- 43,000 tons
more than Yucca is designed to hold.

 Singer said engineers have begun examining the possibility that
Yucca would be required to store more waste, and expressed
confidence it could.

 "Capacitywise, it could hold significantly more -- over 100,000
tons," Singer said.

 But Makhijani insists it isn't that simple. Tunnels would be
difficult to extend because of Yucca Mountain's fault structure,
he said.

 Cramming the waste in the tunnels more tightly would generate
more heat, and could risk cracking the rock meant to protect the
environment from the waste, Makhijani said.

 And that, he concludes, means that Yucca will not give other
states what they crave: a way to be rid of the waste forever --
unless a second repository is found.

 "We have lots of little piles around the country," Makhijani
said. "Now we're just adding one site. The only way to subtract
a site is to close the reactors." 

Photo: Spent solid nuclear waste is stored in bunkers 
Las Vegas SUN main page
 
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 28 N-Board Rejects Utah Plea 
 
The Salt Lake Tribune -- 

    Saturday, May 18, 2002   

BY JUDY FAHYS
 THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE 

    Dealing a blow to the state's case against storing nuclear 
waste upwind from Salt Lake City, a federal panel said Friday it 
won't look into the possibility that casks of spent fuel might be 
stranded if a utility consortium proposing the project goes bust 
someday. 

    The U.S. Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled the grim 
scenario is already being considered by regulators separately, so 
there is no need for the licensing panel to revisit cost-benefit 
studies that support building a waste-storage facility in Tooele 
County, 45 miles from Salt Lake City. 

    The decision on "orphaned" casks was a victory for an 
eight-utility consortium that wants to build the above-ground 
storage and a defeat for Utah state government, the facility's 
most vocal opponent, during the fifth week of licensing board 
hearings in Utah. 

    The facility proposed by the consortium, Private Fuel 
Storage, would hold the equivalent of all the spent nuclear fuel 
created in the United States so far. The fuel would be stored in 
huge casks of concrete and steel on the Skull Valley Reservation 
of the Goshute tribe in Tooele County. 

    State attorneys wanted the board to consider whether 
proponents are overconfident of the project's financial viability 
and, consequently, of the certainty that the casks will be 
removed when the project's 20-year license expires. The project 
only makes sense financially, the state contended, if cost 
estimates cover 40 years, which would include two decades needed 
to move the casks onto the site as well as the time necessary to 
relocate the waste to a permanent disposal facility. 

    Licensing Board Chairman Michael Farrar said there was no 
point in studying the financial question, and the long-term 
environmental impacts related to it, because money issues are 
already pending before another licensing judge. He added that his 
board had no way to clear up a dispute about "orphaned" casks 
that was raised in an environmental impact statement on the 
project. 

    "There is no assertion of environmental damage" in the 
state's request, Farrar said. 

    The consortium's financial plans, which must include money 
for removing the casks, have been under review by the licensing 
board since last year. Considered lethal for at least 10,000 
years, the waste would be coming from nuclear plants around the 
nation that have run out of underground storage on site. 

    Utah, which has no nuclear plants, has resisted having a 
waste parking lot within its borders for fear of becoming a 
permanent repository for depleted nuclear fuel if permanent 
disposal is not secured or if the proposed repository at Yucca 
Mountain, Nev., runs out of room. 

    The licensing board will resume its hearings in Salt Lake 
City for one week starting June 3 and conclude them over two 
weeks at its headquarters outside of Washington, D.C. Its final 
decision, originally expected last month, was pushed forward this 
week to late November. 

    On Wednesday, the state contended project proponents had used 
fuzzy math in calculating that there is just a tiny danger of a 
jet fighter crashing into the 100-acre facility. 

    New York nuclear-waste management consultant Marvin Resnikoff 
told the board this week that proponents had used an unproven 
mathematical formula to determine there is just a 
one-in-one-million chance an F-16 fighter jet will careen into 
the storage site, which lies on the flight path between Hill Air 
Force Base and the Utah Test and Training Range. 

    Though deemed improbable by the consortium and the staff for 
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the licensing board's 
parent agency, the true crash hazard has not been proved, Utah 
Assistant Attorney General Jim Soper said. 

    "We just don't know if this works or not," said Soper, adding 
finding a location for the waste "is one of the most important 
decisions the country is going to make." 

    Private Fuel Storage concluded that the risk of an F-16 
careening into the nuclear storage casks is lower than one in 
one-million by using a mathematical factor for fighter pilots 
steering their faltering planes past the site. The nuclear 
regulatory staff also validated that formula, although it has 
never before been used in licensing a commercial nuclear 
facility. 

    Proponents insist that, even if a crash does occur, the 
steel-and-concrete casks will not crack open. And, even if the 
casks did crack, the amount of radioactive material released will 
be small, equal to no more than a few X-rays. 

    If the state can convince the licensing board the risk is 
greater than one in one-million, proponents will need to review 
"what-if" scenarios that examine how people and the environment 
would be affected by crashes. The site, if approved, would hold 
44,000 tons of discarded fuel. 
   
  © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune
*****************************************************************
 29 Critics of Yucca disposal have no alternative 

Editorial: Wasteful worrying / 

Pittsburgh, PA

Saturday, May 18, 2002
 
The U.S. House of Representatives has decided by a 306-117 vote 
to proceed with a 24-year-old program to consolidate storage of 
American nuclear waste in a titanium-lined container to be buried 
in Yucca Mountain, Nev. It's the right approach to a difficult 
problem.

 Critics of the Yucca Mountain facility, to be located 90 miles 
northwest of Las Vegas, make several arguments. 

One is a variation on the generic argument -- with references to 
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl -- that nuclear power is unsafe. 
Never mind that the Three Mile Island incident could just as well 
be cited as an example of a swift and effective response to a 
problem at a nuclear power facility, or that Chernobyl was a 
product of outdated Soviet technology and lax maintenance. 

Actually, there is an environmental case to be made in favor of 
nuclear power, which arguably poses less of a threat to public 
health than the burning of fossil fuels. But, even if one opposes 
the use of nuclear power in the future, the problem of waste from 
the past remains.

 A more focused argument against the Yucca project is safety. 
What, critics ask, if there were an earthquake -- Yucca is in a 
seismically active area -- and the nuclear waste stored there 
were somehow released?

 The definitive response to that objection in our view is the 
fact that nuclear waste is currently stored at some 131 sites 
around the country, including six in Pennsylvania, each of them 
almost certainly more vulnerable to accident -- or terrorist 
attack, another much-cited scenario -- than Yucca will be when it 
is set up as planned. The Yucca storage facility will be closely 
guarded, state-of-the-art and subject to constant upgrading.

 Critics also note that the spent fuel at the current 131 sites 
will have to be transported across country by road or by rail to 
Yucca for storage, presenting opportunities for accidents. But 
that danger, if it exists, is much less than the risks associated 
with the current dispersion of spent fuel across the country. 
Indeed, the most worrisome aspect of transporting waste to Yucca 
is that, if news of the trips becomes known to extremist 
demonstrators, the transfer process could become both unpleasant 
and dangerous.

 Finally, opposition comes from Nevada politicians, some of whom 
understandably take a "not in my backyard" approach to the 
question. But it is not a question of burying the stuff under 
downtown Las Vegas. Yucca Mountain is truly in the middle of 
nowhere -- an area that is largely uninhabited and uninhabitable. 
Since the inception of the disposal project Yucca Mountain has 
been considered the best bet for the $58 billion project. It 
still is.

 In the end, even though no one really wants the spent nuclear 
fuel storage facility around, it has to be somewhere, and the 
House was right to say to the Nevadans that, due to their 
topography, demographics and experience in nuclear matters, they 
get it. The Senate should now follow the lead of the House in 
approving the project and President Bush should sign the bill 
when completed.
 

 Copyright ©1997-2002 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights
*****************************************************************
 30 Leavitt seeking N-waste support
 
[deseretnews.com] 

    Tuesday, May 14, 2002

By Lee Davidson
Deseret News Washington correspondent

       WASHINGTON — Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt spent Tuesday seeking 
Bush administration support for a one-two punch that Rep. Jim 
Hansen, R-Utah, quietly buried deep in the annual defense bill.

       Hansen attached a provision to create 500,000 acres of 
wilderness in the western desert beneath airspace of the Air 
Force's Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR).

       Those wilderness acres would just happen to block a rail 
spur needed to deliver nuclear waste to a repository proposed by 
Midwest utilities for the Goshute Indian Reservation, which 
Leavitt opposes.

       Hansen did not point all that out until after the bill 
passed the House. So, essentially, he beat the nuclear utilities 
at a fight they did not know was occurring, but the issue faces a 
tougher battle now in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

       Also, environmental groups are fighting the provisions, 
saying Hansen did not protect enough wilderness, his proposal 
would allow non-wilderness uses such as roads and military 
equipment and would not allow a reduction in the current number 
of training flights. Hansen has tried to stop environmental 
opposition by saying fighting his provision now amounts to 
approving nuclear waste storage in Utah.

       Leavitt spent Tuesday meeting with officials at the White 
House, the Interior and Energy departments and with Defense 
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to lobby for their support of the 
provisions.

       "People are generally unaware of the need for the 
wilderness to protect the training range. It's an education 
process," Leavitt said. He said various administration 
departments are in the process of reviewing it.

       "It's certainly important to the people of Utah on two 
counts," he said.

       "If nuclear waste is stored in that desert, it's only a 
matter of time before the UTTR is deemed to be too hazardous 
because we have 40,000 metric tons (of waste) in an area where 
two fighters have crashed and two cruise missiles have gone 
astray in the last 10 years," he said.

       "On the second count, it would protect the state from 
having high-level nuclear waste transported into that region," he 
said.

       Leavitt also said protecting the UTTR helps protect Hill 
Air Force Base from potential closure during a proposed round of 
base closures in 2005.

       He said Hansen's wilderness provisions "are vital to the 
ongoing vitality of the UTTR, the Hill Air Force Base and the 
Utah economy.

       "Given Utah's economic situation now, we can ill afford to 
have the viability of Hill Field undermined in any way. This 
would ensure the vitality and viability of that very important 
national defense asset," Leavitt said.
 
E-mail: lee@desnews.com [lee@desnews.com] 

 © 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company 
*****************************************************************
 31 Peace Action: Treaty Not All Its Cracked Up to Be
 
Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 23:04:04 -0500 (CDT)

 
Action Alert Treaty Not All Its Cracked Up to Be

This week's announcement of completion of a treaty with Russia to
reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads from over 6,000 each to
between 1,700 and 2,200 each ought to be cause for celebration for
those who cherish peace and disarmament. Yet a key provision of
the treaty and recent revelations of U.S. nuclear war plans give
us pause.

"The treaty will liquidate the legacy of the Cold War," President
Bush said this week in announcing that he and Russian President
Putin will sign the treaty at their summit meeting May 24 in Russia.

Not exactly.

While many details have not yet been announced, the U.S. persuaded
Russia to accept plans to store rather than dismantle a large number
of the warheads to be reduced under the treaty. These warheads
could be redeployed, and are an attractive terrorist target,
especially in Russia.

Far from liquidating the legacy of the cold war, the Senate is
contemplating more funding for Star Wars and for developing new
nuclear weapons. Should they uphold planned cuts to these programs
they will have an opportunity to move the US in a direction more
conducive to nuclear disarmament in the upcoming weeks.

Read more at: http://www.peace-action.org/home/senate.html

Call Your Senator at (202) 224-3121 See our Contact Congress section
at (http://www.peace-action.org/tools/congress.html) to find out
who your Senators are.

Thanks to your calls, last week the Senate Armed Service Committee
cut the budget request for missile defense from $7.6 billion to
$6.8 billion in the Defense Authorization bill. While this is a
good move, it is likely that an amendment to restore these funds
will be introduced in the coming weeks .

Urge your Senator to vote against any attempt to restore funding
for Star Wars.

US deployment of a missile shield is viewed by other countries as
an attempt on our part to guarantee a first strike capability. Star
Wars deployment will provoke other countries into developing more
nuclear weapons to overcome this perceived advantage.

Also last week, funding for a new nuclear weapon (called the Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator) that would be used in conventional combat
to hit targets deep within the ground was cut in a Senate Committee.
This action was an important step in the direction of stopping the
US from using nuclear weapons. However, an amendment will likely
be introduced in the coming weeks to restore funding for this
program.

Urge your Senator to vote against any funding for this new nuclear
weapon.

US development of a new nuclear weapons meant to be used in
conventional conflicts threatens nonproliferation. Other countries
will seek to develop similar capabilities in order to deter the US
from using this weapon.

Global security rests on our ability to reduce the threat posed by
nuclear weapons, please urge your Senators to uphold the cut in
funding for Star Wars and the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.

Carrie Benzschawel Program Associate Peace Action Education Fund
mailto:cbenzschawel@peace-action.org http://www.peace-action.org
202.862.9740x3041 fax: 202.862.9762 1819 H St., NW, #425 Washington,
DC 20006 -------------------------------------------- If you would
like to unsubscribe from one of our email lists, please email Carrie
Benzschawel at mailto:cbenzschawel@peace-action.org. Thank you.

The Peace Action Education Fund works for global elimination of
nuclear weapons, an end to the conventional arms trade, and cutting
military spending in order to address human needs.

*****************************************************************
 32 Congress Endorses NATO Expansion 

WN Network

Thu, 23 May 2002
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) &#8212; Underscoring the importance of the U.S. 
military alliance with Europe, Congress sent President Bush a 
bill he wanted Friday that endorses an expansion of NATO and 
authorizes security assistance for seven nations that hope to 
join. 

``The Cold War may be over, but the security and welfare of 
America and Europe are very closely linked,'' said Sen. Dick 
Lugar, R-Ind., a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee. ``And our common goal must continue to be the 
building of a Europe which is whole and free.'' 

The Senate approved the bill Friday, 85-6. The House passed it 
in November, 372-46. 

The vote occurred as Bush met with Slovenian Prime Minister 
Janez Drnovsek at the White House. Slovenia, formerly part of 
Yugoslavia, received money from the legislation. The other six 
that did are former Warsaw Pact members. 

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush and Drnovsek 
discussed the November NATO summit in Prague, where the 
alliance will decide which countries, if any, to invite in as 
members, as well as bilateral issues and ways to bring peace 
and stability to the Yugoslav region. 

Bush had asked Congress to pass the bill before he heads to 
Moscow next week for a summit with Russian President Vladimir 
Putin, Lugar said. That trip will include attendance at the 
NATO-Russia summit in Italy, plus visits to Germany, Russia 
and France. 

``This bill will help NATO extend the zone of stability 
eastward and southward on the continent so that some time in 
the next decade we'll be able to say, for the first time I 
think in modern history, that we have a Europe whole and 
free,'' said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Foreign 
Relations Committee. 

The measure expresses support for expanding NATO, in line with 
statements by Bush last June and by former President Clinton 
in October 1996. The legislatures of all 19 current NATO 
members would be asked to ratify inclusion of any new 
invitees. 

The bill also would authorize $55.5 million in military 
assistance for seven countries but does not specifically call 
for NATO admission for any of them. The aid: Bulgaria, $10 
million; Estonia, $6.5 million; Latvia, $7 million; Lithuania, 
$7.5 million; Romania, $11.5 million; Slovakia, $8.5 million, 
and Slovenia, $4.5 million. 

Croatia, Albania and Macedonia also want to join but are 
considered longer shots. 

The money &#8212; approved by Congress last year, without being 
specifically authorized &#8212; will ``help those candidate 
countries meet the alliance's stringent membership 
requirements,'' Biden said. 

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, criticized what she 
considered a failure to re-evaluate NATO's role given the new 
U.S.-Russia friendship, exemplified by the agreement &#8212; to be 
signed in Moscow &#8212; to cut nuclear weapons to 1,700-2,200 
warheads apiece. 

``This is a defensive alliance to protect the democracies of 
Western Europe from the communist threat of the East,'' said 
Hutchison, who voted for the measure. ``That threat has 
evaporated.'' 

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the Armed Services Committee's top 
Republican, said he voted against the bill because its 
rhetoric might make the seven nations think they have the U.S. 
vote for admission, and expanding NATO might hurt the alliance 
and impose more costs on the United States. 

``What we're doing is saying to the American taxpayer ... and 
the men and women of the armed forces of the United States, 
that an attack against one is an attack against all,'' Warner 
said. ``And such new members as we may admit, what do they 
bring to the table to participate in, first, deterring an 
attack, and, if necessary, repelling that attack?'' 

Warner said other NATO countries' military budgets are not 
increasing as quickly as the U.S. defense budget. 

``We've got to be a watchdog of NATO as we begin to invite 
more and more countries in under this umbrella, and it could 
well weaken the alliance,'' he said. 

Biden said the bill's passage is not a commitment to support 
any NATO aspirant. 

In 1998, the Senate debated for seven days before ratifying 
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as new NATO members, he 
said, predicting the Senate would conduct similar scrutiny of 
any nation invited to join in Prague. 

Current NATO members are Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech 
Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, 
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, 
Spain, Turkey and the United States. 

Voting against the bill were Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho; James 
Inhofe, R-Okla.; Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; Robert Smith, R-N.H.; 
Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Warner. The nine who did not vote 
were Kent Conrad, D-N.D.; Pete Domenici, R-N.M.; Michael Enzi, 
R-Wyo.; Judd Gregg, R-N.H.; Jesse Helms, R-N.C.; John McCain, 
R-Ariz.; Zell Miller, D-Ga.; Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, and 
Craig Thomas, R-Wyo. The rest voted for it. 


On the Net: 

The bills, S. 1572 and H.R. 3167: 
| | | | | | | | | | | | 
*****************************************************************
 33 Martin Schram: Keeping nukes in the right hands 

 TheCabin.net :: CabinWindow :: 

 --> Friday, May 17, 2002

Syndicated Columnist
 
Back in the Nuclear Ice Age of the Cold War, U.S.-Soviet arms 
limitation summits were all about the numbers. The superpower 
leaders ritually waited for the grand finale of their 
threat-reduction kabuki to unfurl the numbers of warheads and 
launchers that would be officially axed.

 Now this: A week before the upcoming Bush-Putin summit, all the 
numbers came out. And journalists didn't have to work and wheedle 
for a leak of this statistical top secret that of course was 
known by both sides but unknown by the people. President Bush 
simply announced them -- both nations will cut their arsenals by 
two-thirds over 10 years, to between 1,700 and 2,200 strategic 
nuclear warheads.

 The official willingness to make news with numbers means this 
will be one summit where the big threat-reduction discussion will 
not be about numbers at all. It will be about an international 
security crisis that is so severe that the two presidents are 
carefully not speaking about it publicly -- and may not even when 
they stand side-by-side for the television cameras at their 
summit's conclusion.

 The real crisis: Russia's nuclear weapons, nuclear material and 
other weapons of mass destruction are dangerously unsecured and 
are vulnerable to being stolen by terrorists or agents of 
aggressive nations. Also, Russia's top nuclear, biological and 
chemical warfare scientists and engineers are so poorly paid that 
they are being lured into working on weapons programs of other 
potentially aggressive nations.

 Experts of all political persuasions agree on the nature and 
severity of the threat. Last year, a distinguished panel headed 
by former Sen. Howard Baker, a Republican, and former White House 
counsel Lloyd Cutler, a Democrat, concluded that Russia has 
become a virtual "Home Depot" for would-be nuclear proliferators. 
The panel's report concluded: "The most urgent unmet national 
security threat to the United States today is the danger that 
weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia 
could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states."

 Over at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in 
Washington, strategic-arms expert Baker Spring observed that 
Russia's facilities for storing nuclear warheads and 
weapons-grade material are so understaffed and poorly secured 
that there is little comfort in knowing that the new accord would 
remove two-thirds of the warheads from their launchers and place 
them in storage. They could then fall into the hands of 
terrorists or aggressive states. Spring assessed it as a security 
conundrum: "For verification purposes, the safest place to keep 
them is on the missiles. But that's not so hot from the U.S. 
national security interest, because those missiles are still 
targeted at the United States."

 The United States has enacted several programs in the past 
decade aimed at helping Russia decommission its weapons of mass 
destruction, better secure its weapons and storage sites, and 
find decent-paying non-weapons jobs for Russia's weapons 
scientists and engineers. In 10 years, the Cooperative Threat 
Reduction Act, sponsored by then-Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and Sen. 
Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has financed the decommissioning or 
dismantling of 5,896 nuclear warheads, 1,212 ballistic and cruise 
missiles, 795 missile launchers, 92 long-range bombers and 21 
ballistic missile submarines.

 Bush originally proposed cuts in Nunn-Lugar program funding, 
then restored those cuts -- but has proposed no increases in the 
efforts to prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass 
destruction. Meanwhile, the House Armed Services Committee's 
Republican majority has proposed cuts in a number of related 
programs, including slashing a $133.6 million request for a 
chemical weapons destruction facility to just $50 million.

 Nunn, who is now co-chairs the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a 
nonprofit that works to reduce the risks of weapons of mass 
destruction, testified before his former Senate colleagues on May 
7: "... we are in a new arms race -- between those seeking to 
acquire weapons of mass destruction and those trying to stop 
them."

 The former Senate Armed Services Committee chairman noted that 
Bush had declared that "our top priority is to keep terrorists 
from acquiring weapons of mass destruction." Nunn added:

 "Unfortunately, the president's priority is not yet his 
administration's priority."

 (EDITOR'S NOTE: Martin Schram writes political analysis for 
Scripps Howard News Service.)
 			   		 	
*****************************************************************
 34 US Wants Better Russia Nukes Count
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
May 17, 2002 

WASHINGTON- President Bush may raise the issue of Russia's 
stockpile of short-range nuclear weapons when he meets with 
Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in Moscow. 

The arms-reduction treaty the two presidents will sign sharply 
cuts each nation's arsenal of long-range warheads over the next 
decade, but does not address tactical, or battlefield, weapons. 

A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of 
anonymity, expressed concern about the size of the Russian 
stockpile. 

The United States intends to ask Russia to account for these 
weapons and explain what it intends to do about them, but is not 
interested in engaging in formal negotiations, the official said. 

Russia has not said how many of these weapons it has, but 
estimates have ranged from 4,000 to 15,000. The U.S. stockpile is 
classified, but a non-governmental expert assessment puts the 
figure at 1,600. Of those, 320 are deployed in Europe while the 
remainder are in storage, the assessment said. 

Putin and Bush are expected to discuss ways to further reduce the 
proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials during their 
meetings. 

At next week's summit, Putin and Bush will sign a treaty under 
which long-range strategic warheads will be reduced to between 
1,700 and 2,200 on each side by the end of 2012, down from the 
approximately 6,000 each country has now. 

The official said the treaty - cutting the arsenals of 
globe-straddling nuclear weapons to a tenth of their Cold War 
peak - is the last of its kind. The Bush administration does not 
envision further negotiations or arms control treaties with 
Russia, given the warming of relations between Moscow and western 
nations, the official said. 

Bush will visit Moscow and St. Petersburg while he is in Russia. 
He will also visit France, Germany and Italy on the weeklong trip 
that begins Wednesday. 

U.S.-Russian relations have improved dramatically in the 
aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. But sharp economic 
disputes remain over U.S. duties on Russian steel and Russia's 
ban on imports of U.S. poultry. 

The official suggested the poultry dispute is making it hard to 
grant Russia's request that the United States lift the 
Jackson-Vanik amendment to a 1974 trade law that ties Moscow's 
trade privileges to its policies on Jewish emigration and other 
human rights. 

The administration doesn't have any problem with Russia's recent 
record on allowing emigration, but it does have concerns about 
its trade practices, the official said. 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 35 The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex 

New Zealand News - 

Dr Helen Caldicott:

18.05.2002
By PAT BASKETT 

It is hard to believe that the world is in more danger of nuclear 
holocaust now than at any time during the Cold War - and that it 
probably would have been even without the horrific events of 
September 11. 

If you can't face 200 pages of Caldicott's energetic, convincing 
expose of how weapons manufacturers have dominated US foreign 
policy and brought us to this terrible brink, spend five minutes 
in a bookshop and read the introduction. The 10 decisions of the 
Bush Administration which Caldicott considers are responsible for 
this situation are on page XVII. For more examples of their 
aggressive nuclear policy, turn to page three. 

Then flick back to the pie graph at the beginning of the book 
which shows the Discretionary Budget for last year, and ask 
yourself why the most powerful country in the world spends 49 per 
cent of that budget on the military. 

The answer is pretty much Caldicott's main thesis - that behind 
many of these decisions lies the ogre of corporate greed and the 
incredible power that money wields. 

Not only has the defence department been taken over, Caldicott 
shows, by unreconstructed, Reagan-era Cold War warriors, but many 
of its key players have, or held, senior positions with the major 
weapons manufacturing companies. The chapter giving details is 
aptly titled Corporate Madness and Death Merchants. 

Here are just two examples of their influence: the expansion of 
Nato to include several Eastern European countries (to Russia's 
alarm) was, Caldicott claims, entirely about weapons sales; after 
the Reagan years, weapons manufacturers (Lockheed Martin, Boeing 
and others) advocated ending a ban on sales to Latin America 
because of those countries' human rights abuses, and President 
Clinton's Directive 41 stated that arms sales were essential for 
preserving industrial jobs. 

Of course, it's not just the corporates. Somehow, George W. Bush 
and a whole administration have bought into a mindset which fails 
to perceive the fact that they have themselves spawned the 
dangers they use to justify their policies. 

This is one of the book's tragic ironies which fill you with 
despair. Note also that the Pentagon originally encouraged the 
creation of Lockheed Martin in 1993 because it wanted to avoid 
dealing with several smaller companies, and the result was lack 
of competition, higher prices and a mega-company with 
extraordinary power. 

The pursuit of that sublime folly known as Star Wars, or National 
Missile Defence, has driven erstwhile foes China and Russia into 
each other's arms, creating a bloc which the Bush Administration 
uses as further justification for defence. 

After the end of the Cold War the Administration of George Bush 
snr left a legacy of active arms control and unilateral 
disarmament programmes, but Clinton's ignorance of military 
matters - and his preoccupation with other, more salacious 
aspects of his presidency - led him to pass this important buck, 
and he failed to support those who advocated continuing Bush's 
policies. 

The name "heritage" will henceforth arouse deep suspicion 
because, according to Caldicott, the Heritage Foundation is one 
of the US Government's most influential think tanks, its enormous 
budget provided by transnationals such as Exxon, Phillip Morris 
and Hyundai. Caldicott gives the text of a petition circulated by 
the foundation in support of National Missile Defence, called the 
Citizens' Petition to Protect America Now (page 77). 

And if you ever read of the US Government's Stockpile Stewardship 
and Management Program - beware! It's nickname is Manhattan II, 
which more realistically describes its true purpose of designing, 
developing and testing new nuclear weapons. 

The worst horrors are in chapters on space and on nuclear war in 
the Gulf and Kosovo - space because it looks to the future (the 
Long Range Plan was written with the co-operation of 75 military 
corporations), and Kosovo and the Gulf because the use of weapons 
made from depleted uranium has left large areas contaminated by 
radiation for ever. 

Believe it or not, New Zealand is included in a list of countries 
either to which uranium weapons have been exported or where their 
production is encouraged. 

The book is overwhelming in its detail and the force of its 
arguments. Caldicott, the paediatrician with fire in her belly 
who so stirred us here in 1982, allows the information to speak 
for itself, and on the rare occasion she does make a plea it is 
all the more poignant. 

The book's disappointment lies in its copious footnotes, many of 
which refer to newspaper articles rather than primary sources, 
but there are some interesting website addresses. Scribe 
Publications $39.95 

* Pat Baskett is an Auckland journalist and writer. 

©Copyright 2002, New Zealand Herald        
*****************************************************************
 36 Cold War Redux

Newsday.com - 


THE BUSH-PUTIN SUMMIT 

The two leaders are set to reduce their nuclear arsenals by 
deactivating but not destroying warheads.

Nautilus Institute's archive of force structure studies 

By Hans M. Kristensen

      Hans M. Kristensen is senior researcher at the Nautilus 
Institute in Berkeley, Calif. and co-author of the "NRDC Nuclear 
Notebook" in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

May 19, 2002

This week, when President George W. Bush confers with Russian 
President Vladimir Putin at the NATO-Russia summit meeting in 
Rome, the two state leaders will sign a three-page agreement to 
reduce the number of nuclear warheads deployed on ballistic 
missiles and bombers. Under the terms of the agreement, each side 
will reduce its operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads 
to no more than 2,200 by 2012.

The White House has been busy heralding the agreement as the 
beginning of a new and deeper friendship between the two 
countries that "will liquidate the legacy of the Cold War." 
Russia has been a little more timid. "By signing an important 
treaty on reductions in strategic offensive arms," Russian 
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said, "we demonstrate once again our 
strong resolve to go ahead in reducing the nuclear threshold."

There is no doubt that U.S. and Russian relations are improving, 
which is a good thing. Whether this agreement liquidates Cold War 
legacy, however, is another question. The Rome summit will be the 
fourth time in the last seven months that we will have heard the 
"news" about reducing nuclear weapons to 1,700-2,200 warheads on 
each side, but details are few and important issues are left open 
or ignored entirely.

The most immediate question is what will happen to the thousands 
of warheads that are "reduced" and removed from operational 
status. According to Secretary of State Colin Powell, the 
agreement "does not deal with where the warheads go, or how they 
will be disposed of, stored or kept in place if they might be 
needed for test purposes or for replacement purposes."

Is that a good thing? Not when both sides had already agreed to 
destroy the warheads. The framework for a START III treaty, 
signed by the United States and Russia in 1997, would have 
brought strategic nuclear warheads on each side down to 
2,000-2,500, essentially what Bush and Putin have now agreed to 
(the new agreement appears lower because warheads on submarines 
and aircraft in overhaul are no longer counted). The agreement 
would have required actual destruction of warheads, something 
arms control agreements had never done before.

Have I missed something, or has everyone forgotten about this 
document?

About six months after the Start III framework was agreed to, 
STRATCOM, the Strategic Command that controls U.S. nuclear 
weapons, concluded in a white paper that "warhead elimination 
must be the centerpiece of post-START II arms control, and should 
come before further force structure reductions occur." Yet now 
Bush and Putin present us with an agreement that doesn't cut 
significantly deeper than START III and doesn't require 
destruction of a single warhead.

The agreement to be signed this week also trails the earlier 
framework in several other key areas: It ignores non-strategic 
nuclear weapons completely, allows for no better inspections of 
weapons storage facilities and legitimizes the existence of large 
"phantom arsenals" of non-operational warheads that can quickly 
be uploaded onto missiles and bombers.

The earlier agreement addressed non-strategic weapons, such as 
sea-launched cruise missiles and gravity bombs carried on fighter 
jets. The presidents agreed that negotiators would "explore, as 
separate issues, possible measures" to address this weapon 
category, which has never been subject to any arms control 
agreement. The agreement sought to increase transparency of 
strategic warhead inventories to improve clarity about what each 
side has and avoid misunderstandings, and "promote the 
irreversibility of deep reductions" through measures that would 
prevent any side from rapidly increasing its number of warheads.

We are talking big numbers: Once the 1,700-2,200 level has been 
reached in 10 years, the United States, under current plans, will 
hide an additional 7,800 intact warheads that can quickly be put 
back on missiles and aircraft. Russia in all likelihood will keep 
a similar number.

Since the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, both U.S. 
administrations and the Congress have been worried about the 
large stockpile of unaccountable Russian nuclear warheads. 
Concern has ranged from avoiding "loose nukes" being smuggled 
into other countries to the need for having more open books about 
how many warheads each side has in storage. Friends or not, our 
intelligence will continue to monitor those stockpiles carefully 
and their size will determine the limit for how deep we can cut 
in the next round of arms control.

Rather than building on the Clinton-Yeltsin accomplishments from 
1997, the Bush-Putin agreement takes us back by needlessly 
relinquishing significant arms control accomplishments that there 
is no need to give up. Transparency and irreversibility of 
nuclear reductions are not threats to U.S. national security, but 
lack of it is. Wrapping a backward deal in soft hugs and rosy 
remarks about newborn hugs and rosy remarks about newborn 
friendship between Washington and Moscow may work for public 
relations, but keep in mind that one of the reasons the U.S. 
military refused to cut below 2,000 operational deployed 
strategic warheads is a requirement to continue to plan nuclear 
strikes against Russia.

The Nuclear Posture Review recently completed by the Bush 
administration to guide force planning for the next decade 
states: "Russia's nuclear forces and programs, nevertheless, 
remain a concern. Russia faces many strategic problems around its 
periphery and its future course cannot be charted with certainty. 
U.S. planning must take this into account. In the event that U.S. 
relations with Russia significantly worsen in the future, the 
U.S. may need to revise its nuclear forces levels and posture." 
Friends, perhaps, but friends don't plan nuclear war against each 
other.

While the Bush-Putin agreement is a reversal of arms control 
policy, it is entirely consistent with the U.S. force planning 
that occurred throughout the 1990s. STRATCOM's studies from that 
period planned a slow and gradual reduction of the posture that 
preserved launch platforms and flexibility but reduced deployed 
warheads. These studies, which have been released under the 
Freedom of Information Act, aimed at a force level of around 
2,000 warheads. The "new" reductions don't seem to differ from 
that plan, but if the newfound U.S.-Russian friendship means 
something new, then the cuts must be deep enough and different 
enough to clearly show a change compared to the force levels 
envisioned five years ago.

But what does 2,000 warheads mean? Compared to the force level of 
12,000 in the 1980s, 2,000 warheads don't seem like a whole lot. 
Yet the degree of overkill embedded in this force level was 
clearly illustrated in "The U.S. Nuclear War Plan: A Time For 
Change," a report published by Natural Resources Defense Council 
June 2001. The report calculated that more than one-third of all 
Russians could be killed or severely injured if the 192 warheads 
onboard a single Trident submarine were brought to detonate over 
their targets.

How anyone can argue that more than that is needed to adequately 
deter any conceivable adversary is hard to understand, but under 
the new agreement the United States will maintain 14 Trident 
submarines (Russia will probably have fewer than a dozen missile 
submarines) in addition to 500 land-based missiles and nearly a 
hundred bombers.

The time frame of the new agreement is 10 years. Within that 
period, the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 
will meet twice (in 2005 and 2010) to review progress toward 
fulfillment of the treaty's obligations. Approximately 187 
countries have signed the treaty, under which non-nuclear weapon 
states promise not to develop nuclear weapons in return for the 
nuclear weapon states disarming the nuclear arsenals. Among these 
members are other nuclear weapon states that keep a watchful eye 
on how the U.S. and Russian postures develop, including China, 
whose own nuclear modernization plans greatly worry U.S. 
officials. Other states are important friends, such as Germany 
and Sweden, whose push for the United States and Russia to 
address non-strategic nuclear weapons now seems to have been 
rejected.

A strong nonproliferation treaty is one of the most important 
instruments to counter the spread of nuclear weapons to more 
countries, but many countries will see the Bush-Putin agreement 
as long-awaited but "old news." At the previous review conference 
in 2000, the parties to the treaty gave consensus to a 
comprehensive document, part of which pledged the "unequivocal 
undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total 
elimination of their nuclear arsenals."

There is nothing in the new Bush-Putin agreement that even hints 
to such an end goal, much less outline how to get there. Instead 
it is as if the two superpowers have agreed that as long as each 
side stays below 2,200 operationally deployed strategic warheads, 
it doesn't matter how many warheads they keep in storage or how 
many non-strategic weapons they have.

Targeting capabilities, operational flexibility and command and 
control will be upgraded continuously to allow rapid shifting of 
forces and warheads within preplanned strike missions, depending 
on who the enemy is in the future, and adaptive planning 
capabilities will be modernized to permit small-scale strikes 
against more opportunistic targets. It is, in a way, a nuclear 
posture on the loose. 

Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc. 
*****************************************************************
 37 Gambling with nuclear war

New Straits Times

Editorial

EVEN between sworn enemies, the deterrent value of nuclear 
weapons begins with a tiny bit of trust: each side must know 
something about the other to believe that neither will be crazy 
enough to use them. By the end of the Cold War, the United States 
and Russia had opened up their arsenals to each other 
sufficiently to make the likelihood of a nuclear exchange 
virtually nil. Not so for India and Pakistan. There is no trust 
between them to speak of, so no margin of safety can be fixed on 
how much their trigger fingers are itching.

That itch is greatest across the high-wire "line of control" in 
disputed Kashmir, where more than a million Indian and Pakistani 
troops face each other. Indian strategists have recently been 
mulling over the idea of a "limited war" to give those soldiers 
something more to do without triggering a nuclear response. This 
is exactly the kind of wishful thinking that puts nerves on edge, 
because Pakistan's inferiority in conventional forces would push 
it even closer to its nuclear option. Every time a terrorist 
"incursion" that can be linked via the Kashmiri insurgency to 
Pakistan occurs in India, the world holds its breath.

Last Tuesday's massacre of 35 people at an Indian army base near 
Jammu has painted both sides a few inches closer into their 
respective corners. With India baying for revenge and Pakistan 
wary of any concession that might be seen as a sell-out, the US, 
whose involvement is about the only thing keeping them apart, 
cannot make much headway. A visit to both countries by US 
Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca last 
week came up empty. There is little right now to prevent a band 
of renegade militants or a rush of excitement between nervous 
soldiers on the Siachen glacier from sparking off the first 
nuclear bombs since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Leave aside the implacable question of the future of Kashmir for 
the moment, and the crux of the matter boils down to the issue of 
terrorism. India insists that Pakistan abets and shelters 
Kashmiri militants. But more credit should be given to Pakistani 
President Pervez Musharraf who has gone as far as he can to 
satisfy India without putting his own leadership at risk. There 
is little point in undermining his credibility since he would 
almost certainly have lost his battle against radical Islam had 
he been democratically elected. Unbridled for some two decades, 
the problem of extremism in Pakistan is huge. Although 
Islamabad's effort seems small in comparison, Musharraf has taken 
the necessary first steps. Certainly, more needs to be done. But 
that will depend to a large extent on the Indian response. It 
would be difficult for Pakistan to handle its internal problems 
as long as war beckons on its borders.

If Pakistan is struggling to deal with its extremists, so is 
India. Tensions fuel the Hindu hotheads in Indian Prime Minister 
Atal Behari Vajpayee's BJP who see electoral dividends in a 
bellicose posture. Unanswered charges of complicity in the 
Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat do nothing to soothe the enmity 
nurtured since partition in 1947. Without a dampening of 
nationalist rhetoric, neither side can move towards a commitment 
to stay off the brink. Countries like Malaysia, which wants good 
relations with both India and Pakistan, will look on with dismay 
as nuclear weapons primed by bad blood keep both sides away from 
negotiating a solution to the Kashmir flashpoint.


Copyright © The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad, Balai 
Berita 31, Jalan Riong, 59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Powered by: 
Zope, Red Hat, Apache, Python, Php3, Perl s9.emedia.com.my 
*****************************************************************
 38 Russia hones its nuclear skills

Moscow is still committed to modernizing its current arsenal and 
developing new weaponry

Paul Webster

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

MOSCOW IT WAS the sort of encounter that packed the pages of Cold 
War thrillers back when the arms race was hot.

Flying east late last month, two giant Russian bombers designed 
to carry up to 16 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were only 60 
kilometres off the Alaska coast before American F-15 jets 
intercepted them. 

The Bear H bombers stayed on course into U.S. airspace just long 
enough to make the American pilots sweat a little, then circled 
back to base. 

The exercise was enough to remind Washington that although the 
Kremlin's superpower pretensions crumbled with the collapse of 
the Soviet empire in 1991, Russia remains a nuclear colossus. 

Over the last few months, Russia has sent a series of such 
signals, designed to deliver the message that, despite the treaty 
presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin plan to sign here 
this week pledging deep cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear 
arsenals, Russia is firmly committed to maintaining its status as 
a nuclear front-runner.

According to many observers, Putin has made refurbishing and 
strengthening Russian nuclear forces a top priority. 

Shortly after he was elected in 2000, he issued a national 
security blueprint emphasizing Russia's need for "nuclear forces 
that are capable of guaranteeing the infliction of the desired 
extent of damage against any aggressor state or coalition of 
states in any conditions and circumstances." 

According to Gen. Vasily Lata, who works at Russia's nuclear 
missile academy, Putin has worked hard to honour that commitment.

"We'll win not with numbers but with skills," Lata says about 
plans to cut the number of warheads.

"Russia is not involved in disarmament. We're just reducing the 
numbers of warheads to a reasonable level. In the meantime, we're 
developing new nuclear weapons and modernizing the ones we have.

"Over the last few years, improving our land-based nuclear 
weapons has been emphasized. In many ways, our systems are 
superior to the American ones and can easily beat American 
missile-defence plans."

In the late 1990s, Russia launched a program to build up to 50 
more of its most advanced nuclear-capable missiles a year. On 
Feb. 6, the deputy chief of Russia's general staff, Gen. Yuriy 
Baluyevskiy, announced that his country's intercontinental 
ballistic missile force had been successfully modernized during 
the 1990s and will remain "entirely satisfactory" for the rest of 
this decade.

Baluyevskiy said the modernization of naval nuclear forces is now 
the country's top military priority. 

This announcement had been expected since March, 2001, when the 
Russian government put in an order for 40 sea-launched ballistic 
missiles, the first major order since 1992.

Russia is currently building two new ballistic missile 
submarines, having just refurbished a third. 

Only weeks after the announcement about the naval nuclear 
build-up, Russian aircraft-industry officials announced plans to 
modernize all 15 of their Tupolev-160 bombers, the backbone of 
the air force's nuclear-attack wing.

Along with the modernization of Russia's land, sea and airborne 
nuclear-delivery forces, research continues at 10 ultra-secret 
nuclear cities, where an estimated 75,000 specialists work on new 
nuclear weaponry.

According to a 2001 study of the secret nuclear and missile 
complex by Russian demographer Valentin Tikhonov, key 
weapons-research programs have survived Russia's economic 
collapse and competition for research jobs in these centres is 
now growing. 

Ivan Safranchuk, of the Centre for Defence Information in Moscow, 
says Russian nuclear researchers intend to match U.S. plans for 
nuclear weapons that can be used in battlefield situations.

"They want to develop a less destructive nuclear weapon with 
limited radiation effects," Safranchuk says about Russia's 
research aims. Although Russian nuclear-weapons testing is 
forbidden by international treaty, money has been invested in a 
sophisticated program to allow weapons designers to match U.S. 
programs that test weaponry innovations in virtual settings using 
computer simulations. 

Says Lata: "Russia has similar test methods and models to the 
U.S. We support the idea of testing nuclear weapons virtually, 
maybe even more than the U.S. We're creating new weapons that 
way." 

Last week, the New York Times reported that the U.S. Joint Atomic 
Energy Intelligence Committee says it has evidence Russia is 
preparing to resume live nuclear tests.

Although the Russian government vigorously denied this claim, it 
has admitted conducting a series of so-called "subcritical" 
nuclear experiments in 1999, which it says are not banned.

And while Bush has praised Putin's commitment to cut its nuclear 
arsenal, numerous senior U.S. experts and officials have been 
expressing concern about Russia's nuclear-weapons program.

According to Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los 
Alamos National Lab, where U.S. nuclear weapons are designed, 
Russia has a major nuclear edge over the U.S. because the 
Russians "are able to produce and assemble nuclear-weapon 
materials and components at capacities many times that of the 
United States."

The U.S. currently is not assembling any new nuclear weapons.

Testifying before the U.S. Senate on March 19, Thomas Wilson, 
director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, said Russia 
will continue to rely on nuclear weapons and is building new 
missiles while upgrading others "to compensate for its diminished 
conventional military capability." 

That same day, CIA director George Tenet warned the Senate that 
"Moscow is likely to pursue a variety of countermeasures and new 
weapons systems to defeat a deployed U.S. missile defence."

The worries in Washington about Russia's nuclear ambitions appear 
to have triggered a response all too familiar to readers of Cold 
War fact and fiction.

A few a few days before Wilson and Tenet gave their warnings, 
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham appeared before the 
Senate's Armed Services Committee to answer questions about 
Russia's program to build new weapons.

He told the senators that the U.S. has decided to begin building 
warheads again by 2007. 

Paul Webster is a Canadian reporter based in Moscow.

Legal Notice:- Copyright 1996-2002. Toronto Star Newspapers 
Limited. All 
*****************************************************************
 39 Cold War Legacy

May 19, 2002  

SABRINA TAVERNISE

MOSCOW

ON Aug. 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear 
bomb on a windswept plain in eastern Kazakhstan. It was the 
beginning of the arms race with America, which included 559 
Soviet weapons tests over 40 years. 

Over 80 percent of those explosions took place at the test site 
on the Kazakh steppe called Semipalatinsk. Before 1963, the tests 
were conducted above ground and afterward in shafts a third of a 
mile underground. The effects were devastating for the 1.6 
million people in the region, many of whom had been nomads before 
Soviet times.

The Soviet government made the area a closed military test site 
and took few precautions to protect people in the area. One 
resident of a town at the edge of the site, Semipalatinsk-21, 
recalled in a recent interview that one test that went wrong on a 
hot August afternoon in 1962 caused the sky to go black with 
radioactive dust.

"I was very afraid," said the man, Sergei B. Krizhov, who was 8 
at the time. "We stayed at home for a week. A man came to our 
house dressed in protective gear. My mother sealed the windows 
against the dust."

He also remembered a day in which he played with friends on the 
carcasses of helicopters that had been dumped just outside the 
town. His father, who worked at the test site, later reprimanded 
him: the helicopters had been used to fly through explosion areas 
and were highly radioactive.

In 1999, the photographer Robert Knoth traveled to Semipalatinsk 
to document the conditions of those who lived through the testing 
program. The United Nations estimates that about 100,000 people 
in the area currently suffer from radiation-related diseases, and 
his photographs show a few of them.

This month, Russia and America are putting the finishing touches 
on an agreement to make deep cuts in their nuclear stockpiles and 
thus bury one legacy of the cold war. For those who live in 
Semipalatinsk, however, the legacy will live on. 

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Permissions | 
*****************************************************************
 40 Swissinfo International News

Russia unhappy with nuclear pact, says military chief

By Ron Popeski 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Less than a week before a Russia-U.S. summit, 
a top military negotiator has complained that Moscow remains 
deeply unhappy about U.S. plans to store rather than destroy 
nuclear warheads. 

General Yuri Baluyevsky spoke before presidents Vladimir Putin 
and George W. Bush were to sign a pact in Moscow slashing 
strategic nuclear arsenals to a third of current levels. 

Bush announced the deal on Monday in a surprise statement at the 
White House, saying it would "liquidate the legacy of the Cold 
War", and Putin said he was satisfied with it. 

Russian officials say the four-page treaty is a compromise with 
neither side compromising fundamental national interests. U.S. 
officials acknowledge the pact was clinched after Russian 
concessions to ensure a document was ready for the summit. 

Baluyevsky, Russia's deputy chief of staff and one of the pact's 
main negotiators, said Russia's leadership could not accept the 
notion of "operationally deployed warheads" under which stored 
warheads would not be counted in total arsenals. 

"There have been repeated declarations at the highest 
level...that the concept of operationally deployed warheads is 
unacceptable for Russia," Baluyevsky told a discussion on Mayak 
state radio on Saturday. 

"Hunters will find this easy to understand. Anyone with a gun has 
spare shells to use in it. But nuclear weapons are not the sort 
of gun you need spare shells for. You can't load a nuclear gun a 
second time." 

He said accepting the principle was "tantamount to giving a 
'green light' to other states who hold or want to hold nuclear 
weapons. I believe that storing weapons for what amounts to a 
'rainy day' is not the path we should be taking." 

Washington says it needs to store, not destroy, the warheads so 
it can respond to emerging threats from so-called "axis of evil" 
states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea. 

PUTIN STRATEGY 

The arms deal is part of Putin's strategy of aligning Russia with 
the West, underscored by his support for the U.S.-led war on 
terrorism, and boosting living standards in a country where about 
a quarter of the population lives in poverty. 

A day after the arms deal was announced, NATO agreed to the 
creation of a 20-member council with Russia to be inaugurated at 
a summit in Rome later this month. 

The arms treaty limits each side's arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 
warheads, instead of current levels of 6,000. The document 
contains no specific provisions on which warheads are to be 
eliminated though compliance is to be based on the START-1 treaty 
signed by the United States and Soviet Union in 1991. 

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview on 
Saturday that international relations had improved under Bush's 
leadership. Even his announced intention last year to disregard 
Russian objections and pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile 
Treaty in order to build a missile shield had had little effect. 

"The ABM treaty is about to lapse," Powell told Britain's 
Guardian newspaper. "The geo-strategic situation is not 
collapsing and no arms race is breaking out." 

But some Russian analysts suggest that the Russian public may 
object to the treaty's concessions and offer the first real 
resistance to Putin's foreign policy before the pact goes to 
parliament for ratification. The Communist opposition has already 
accused him of selling out the country. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry complained on Saturday that some 
U.S. officials were spreading false rumours that Russia planned a 
resumption of nuclear explosions at its testing ground in the 
Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.

18.05.2002 17:30, Reuters

*****************************************************************
 41 Russian nuke defences maintained 

news.com.au - 


[19may02]

From correspondents in Moscow
 				 				 				
RUSSIA would maintain the three ground, air and sea components of 
its nuclear arsenal despite planned arms cuts under a new 
agreement with Washington, a top military official said 
overnight.

"The nuclear triad will be maintained with the parameters that 
correspond to the national interests of the country," first 
deputy chief of staff Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky said, 
according to Interfax-Military News Agency.

 Baluyevsky said US-Russian negotiators would continue to settle 
details of implementing the treaty after it was signed at a 
summit next week in Russia between President Vladimir Putin and 
US President George W. Bush.

 "We are bound to move together with the United States regardless 
of disagreements that we have had, have and will have," 
Baluyevsky said.

 He said the final text of the agreement had nearly been 
finalised and was a "result of compromise that suits both 
parties".

 Under the agreement, Washington and Moscow will reduce their 
number of long-range strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 
2,200 by the end of 2012, down from the about 6,000 each country 
has now.
 					 				

The Associated Press
 				 
*****************************************************************
 42 The Warheads Left Out in the Cold 

(washingtonpost.com)
 
Sunday, May 19, 2002; Page B05 

This week in Moscow, President Bush and Russian President 
Vladimir Putin will sign an agreement to cut their arsenals of 
nuclear weapons by about two-thirds to between 1,700 and 2,200 
warheads each over the next decade. 

At the end of that period, the two countries still could deploy a 
total of more than 9,000 nuclear warheads. Fuzzy math? If the two 
sides stick to the ceilings, where will the extra 4,600 warheads 
come from?
 
The agreement only covers what are known as strategic nuclear 
weapons. Strategic weapons are those mounted on delivery systems 
that can go more than 3,440 miles. The accord says nothing about 
tactical nuclear weapons, which are just as lethal even though 
they aren't rigged to travel as far.
 
Here are some figures about currently deployed tactical nuclear 
weapons:
 
U.S. tactical nuclear forces: 



• 800 warheads deployed on fighter jets.
 
Russian tactical nuclear forces: 

• 1,000 warheads on land-based surface-to-air missile launchers. 

• 1,600 warheads on 400 fighter jets or bomber planes. 

• 500 warheads on submarines. 

• 400 warheads on naval-based attack aircraft. 

• 300 warheads on anti-submarine rockets and torpedoes.
 
But that's not all. Each nation also will keep active nuclear 
warheads -- both strategic and tactical -- in storage. That means 
the weapons won't be on launchers, but they have all their key 
components and could be put back onto bombers or missiles in a 
matter of days, weeks, or months depending on the type of weapons 
system. These warheads are called "responsive" or "spares," and 
are in a "ready for use configuration," as the Pentagon puts it.
 
U.S. responsive and spare stockpile: about 1,830 warheads. 
(Another 240 warheads are on the two Trident submarines that are 
undergoing maintenance at any given time.)
 
Russian responsives and spares: approximately 10,000 warheads. 
Because there aren't data exchanges between the two countries on 
this category of warheads, this number is just an estimate by 
Western experts.
 
The Pentagon's "Nuclear Posture Review," submitted to Congress in 
January, said, "Delivery systems will not be retired following 
initial reductions and downloaded warheads will be retained as 
needed for the responsive force." The report added, "The 
responsive force retains the option for leadership to increase 
the number of operationally deployed forces in proportion to the 
severity of an evolving crisis."
 
Still keeping count? Both countries also can continue to keep 
stockpiles of "inactive" warheads. These are missing some 
components, such as bottles of tritium gas that boost the power 
of the weapon. The United States has about 2,700 warheads in this 
category. No one is certain how many Russia has.
 
The Bush-Putin agreement will not prevent the development of a 
new generation of nuclear weapons. The Posture Review said the 
United States should develop new types of low-yield nuclear bombs 
better able to penetrate and collapse targets buried beneath 
ground.
 
"The strike element of the New Triad can provide greater 
flexibility in the design and conduct of military campaigns to 
defeat opponents decisively," the review said. "Nuclear weapons 
could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear 
attack, (for example, deep underground bunkers or bio-weapon 
facilities)." The review said that the Energy Department would 
reestablish "advanced warhead concepts teams" at each of the 
national laboratories and at the department's Washington 
headquarters.
 
-- The Outlook staff 

Sources: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Natural 
Resources Defense Council, GlobalSecurity.org 

© 2002 The Washington Post Company
*****************************************************************
 43   Russia hones its nuclear skills  

  [Thestar.com]   
  May. 19, 01:00 EDT   
  
Moscow is still committed to modernizing its current arsenal and 
developing new weaponry
  
Paul Webster
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
  
MOSCOW IT WAS the sort of encounter that packed the pages of Cold 
War thrillers back when the arms race was hot.

 Flying east late last month, two giant Russian bombers designed 
to carry up to 16 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were only 60 
kilometres off the Alaska coast before American F-15 jets 
intercepted them. 

The Bear H bombers stayed on course into U.S. airspace just long 
enough to make the American pilots sweat a little, then circled 
back to base. 

The exercise was enough to remind Washington that although the 
Kremlin's superpower pretensions crumbled with the collapse of 
the Soviet empire in 1991, Russia remains a nuclear colossus. 

Over the last few months, Russia has sent a series of such 
signals, designed to deliver the message that, despite the treaty 
presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin plan to sign here 
this week pledging deep cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear 
arsenals, Russia is firmly committed to maintaining its status as 
a nuclear front-runner.

According to many observers, Putin has made refurbishing and 
strengthening Russian nuclear forces a top priority. 

Shortly after he was elected in 2000, he issued a national 
security blueprint emphasizing Russia's need for "nuclear forces 
that are capable of guaranteeing the infliction of the desired 
extent of damage against any aggressor state or coalition of 
states in any conditions and circumstances." 

According to Gen. Vasily Lata, who works at Russia's nuclear 
missile academy, Putin has worked hard to honour that commitment.

"We'll win not with numbers but with skills," Lata says about 
plans to cut the number of warheads.

"Russia is not involved in disarmament. We're just reducing the 
numbers of warheads to a reasonable level. In the meantime, we're 
developing new nuclear weapons and modernizing the ones we have.

"Over the last few years, improving our land-based nuclear 
weapons has been emphasized. In many ways, our systems are 
superior to the American ones and can easily beat American 
missile-defence plans."

In the late 1990s, Russia launched a program to build up to 50 
more of its most advanced nuclear-capable missiles a year. On 
Feb. 6, the deputy chief of Russia's general staff, Gen. Yuriy 
Baluyevskiy, announced that his country's intercontinental 
ballistic missile force had been successfully modernized during 
the 1990s and will remain "entirely satisfactory" for the rest of 
this decade.

Baluyevskiy said the modernization of naval nuclear forces is now 
the country's top military priority. 

This announcement had been expected since March, 2001, when the 
Russian government put in an order for 40 sea-launched ballistic 
missiles, the first major order since 1992.

Russia is currently building two new ballistic missile 
submarines, having just refurbished a third. 

Only weeks after the announcement about the naval nuclear 
build-up, Russian aircraft-industry officials announced plans to 
modernize all 15 of their Tupolev-160 bombers, the backbone of 
the air force's nuclear-attack wing.

Along with the modernization of Russia's land, sea and airborne 
nuclear-delivery forces, research continues at 10 ultra-secret 
nuclear cities, where an estimated 75,000 specialists work on new 
nuclear weaponry.

According to a 2001 study of the secret nuclear and missile 
complex by Russian demographer Valentin Tikhonov, key 
weapons-research programs have survived Russia's economic 
collapse and competition for research jobs in these centres is 
now growing. 

Ivan Safranchuk, of the Centre for Defence Information in Moscow, 
says Russian nuclear researchers intend to match U.S. plans for 
nuclear weapons that can be used in battlefield situations.

"They want to develop a less destructive nuclear weapon with 
limited radiation effects," Safranchuk says about Russia's 
research aims. 

Although Russian nuclear-weapons testing is forbidden by 
international treaty, money has been invested in a sophisticated 
program to allow weapons designers to match U.S. programs that 
test weaponry innovations in virtual settings using computer 
simulations. 

Says Lata: "Russia has similar test methods and models to the 
U.S. We support the idea of testing nuclear weapons virtually, 
maybe even more than the U.S. We're creating new weapons that 
way." 

Last week, the New York Times reported that the U.S. Joint Atomic 
Energy Intelligence Committee says it has evidence Russia is 
preparing to resume live nuclear tests.

Although the Russian government vigorously denied this claim, it 
has admitted conducting a series of so-called "subcritical" 
nuclear experiments in 1999, which it says are not banned.

And while Bush has praised Putin's commitment to cut its nuclear 
arsenal, numerous senior U.S. experts and officials have been 
expressing concern about Russia's nuclear-weapons program.

According to Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los 
Alamos National Lab, where U.S. nuclear weapons are designed, 
Russia has a major nuclear edge over the U.S. because the 
Russians "are able to produce and assemble nuclear-weapon 
materials and components at capacities many times that of the 
United States."

The U.S. currently is not assembling any new nuclear weapons.

Testifying before the U.S. Senate on March 19, Thomas Wilson, 
director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, said Russia 
will continue to rely on nuclear weapons and is building new 
missiles while upgrading others "to compensate for its diminished 
conventional military capability." 

That same day, CIA director George Tenet warned the Senate that 
"Moscow is likely to pursue a variety of countermeasures and new 
weapons systems to defeat a deployed U.S. missile defence."

The worries in Washington about Russia's nuclear ambitions appear 
to have triggered a response all too familiar to readers of Cold 
War fact and fiction.

A few a few days before Wilson and Tenet gave their warnings, 
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham appeared before the 
Senate's Armed Services Committee to answer questions about 
Russia's program to build new weapons.

He told the senators that the U.S. has decided to begin building 
warheads again by 2007. 

Paul Webster is a Canadian reporter based in Moscow.

Legal Notice:- Copyright 1996-2002. Toronto Star Newspapers 
*****************************************************************
 44  Russia may be boosting Iran's nuclear arms 

Boston Globe Online: 

  NUCLEAR SHADOW

By Anne E. Kornblut and David Filipov, Globe Staff, 5/19/2002 

MOSCOW - It began as a promising business venture. The Russian 
government would use its reservoir of unemployed nuclear 
scientists to help Iran build a nuclear power plant, a 
sophisticated but harmless civilian complex nestled on the 
eastern banks of the Persian Gulf. 

But as work on the Bushehr power plant has progressed, so have 
Iran's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons technology, according to 
a well-connected Russian scientist and several former Russian 
officials. Contradicting the Kremlin's assertions, these sources 
say Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry, known as Minatom - a rogue 
force with almost no independent oversight - is providing a 
direct boost to Iran's nuclear weapons program, under the guise 
of the power plant. And US officials say Iran is on the cusp of 
reaching this dangerous goal because of the Russian help. 

''So what?'' said the Russian scientist, who has traveled to 
Bushehr several times, and who agreed to speak on condition of 
anonymity. ''The Iranians will acquire these weapons. Pakistan 
has them. Israel has them. Other countries have them. So what if 
Iran has them?'' 

That attitude, and the problem it reflects, is of escalating 
concern for US officials who have labeled the state of Iran a 
charter member of the ''axis of evil.'' It is also driving a 
wedge in US-Russian relations, which both sides might prefer to 
portray as rosy as Bush prepares to visit Moscow this week. Above 
all, the Iranian nuclear weapons program is an example of 
inconsistencies that President Bush, perhaps, should resolve as 
he enters a phase of his war on terrorism in a complex post-Cold 
War world, a place made murkier by autonomous relics like 
Minatom. 

The gray textures of the post-Cold War world, with its global 
corporations, international terrorist organizations, and 
autonomous relics like Minatom, can frustrate a search for 
clarity. 

Russian officials argue that the Bushehr power plant is an 
innocuous, and lucrative, effort to bring power to Iran, similar 
to the light-water reactor the United States is building for 
North Korea. 

In fact, under the rules of the International Atomic Energy 
Agency, countries with nuclear knowledge are required to help 
nonnuclear states to build power plants, and to safeguard the 
spent fuel to prevent it from being turned into weapons-grade 
material. Russia and Iran have both pledged to adhere to the 
agency's rules, to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power. 

But evidence abounds of far more extensive exchanges of nuclear 
information, according to CIA documents and interviews with 
dozens of senior Bush administration and Russian officials over 
the last two months. 

Beyond the $840 million that Iran is paying, officially, for the 
Bushehr power plant, Russian officials and scientists are engaged 
in clandestine technology transfers, money-laundering schemes and 
other transactions that have made a fortune for Russian 
officials, according to several officials interviewed by the 
Globe. 

And that, the scientist said, made it too dangerous to discuss in 
great detail. 

''This is a super-Mafia,'' the scientist said. ''Anything else I 
might tell you could result in conditions not conducive for life, 
for me, you and anyone else involved, if you know what I mean.'' 

And yet for all his threats to isolate nations that support 
terror in any form, Bush is unlikely to downgrade US ties to 
Russia over Moscow's ties with Iran, which in turn has ties to 
Hezbollah, which Bush considers a terrorist group. 

Administration officials are weighing sanctions against Russia, 
and Bush may raise the issue at his summit meeting with the 
Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, US officials said. 

Such concerns have been raised in Congress. ''Russia continues to 
supply significant assistance to many of Tehran's nuclear 
programs,'' said Senator Richard C. Shelby, the ranking 
Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 

Of Russia, Shelby said: ''I've been there, I've talked with them 
about these programs, and the president will be talking about 
this on the highest level. They have told us before that they 
would cooperate with us against proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction.'' 

''But,'' Shelby added, ''what they say and what they do are two 
different things.'' 

Iran, which has signed nonproliferation treaties, denies that it 
is seeking nuclear weapons technology. 

''There is nothing about production of nuclear weapons in the 
agreement signed between Russia and Iran on use of the atom for 
peaceful purposes, for generating electrical power,'' Gholam Reza 
Shafei, Iran's ambassador to Moscow, said at a news conference in 
February. 

Publicly, officials in Moscow insist that Russia has no interest 
in seeing Iran, a country they see as a regional rival but not an 
evil supporter of terrorism that is armed with nuclear weapons. 

But Minatom, the Russian atomic energy agency that is 
cash-hungry, has little regard for official Kremlin policy, and 
it seems to have no compunctions about any role it might have, or 
have had, in helping Iran to become a nuclear military power. 

A legacy of the Cold War, cloaked in secrecy, Minatom has ignored 
numerous agreements between Russian and US officials about Iran, 
and it is continuing to do so, many argue - funneling sensitive 
technologies to Iran on the side, under the cover of the Bushehr 
plant. 

''It is a serious issue,'' a senior US official said. ''We take 
it very seriously. Russia should think again about what it's 
doing.'' 

The matter has been a source of disagreement between the United 
States and Russia for almost a decade, and it had been a focus of 
almost every summit meeting that President Clinton held with his 
Russian counterparts. 

But over the past year and a half, a new dynamic has emerged: 
Despite his close relationship with Bush, Russian President 
Vladimir V. Putin is loath to be seen as bowing to US demands, 
especially by cracking down on an alliance with Iran that 
provides jobs for Russian scientists. 

Conceived under Stalin as the complex of laboratories and secret 
''closed cities'' where nuclear weapons were designed, built and 
mass-produced, Minatom is the epitome of Cold War-style secrecy. 
Nominally under control of the Russian government, Minatom does 
not, in fact, report to anyone on how it spends hundreds of 
millions of dollars, given the tight veil of confidentiality 
drawn over its operations. There are no independent regulatory 
agencies to monitor Minatom's activity, other than 
non-governmental organizations whose effect on Kremlin policy is 
limited. 

The current head of Minatom, Alexander Rumyantsev, insisted 
during a trip to Washington earlier this month that the light 
water nuclear reactor under construction in Iran cannot be used 
to develop material for weapons and does not pose a proliferation 
threat. Instead, he said, the project provides jobs in Iran for 
over 1,000 Russian specialists, as well as machine building firms 
in Russia, providing a much-needed boost to a sector that has 
suffered drastically since the end of the Cold War. Minatom is 
unable to sell its goods to western markets that remain closed to 
it, and nuclear scientists, no longer employed by the Soviet 
government, live in remote, impoverished communities, sometimes 
not receiving a paycheck for months, their desolation a source of 
constant worry for non-proliferation specialists. 

Bushehr, Rumyantsev told reporters in Washington, ''is not a 
source of proliferation of nuclear material.'' A Minatom 
spokesman in Moscow said the ministry needed 45 days to answer 
any further questions. The Bushehr plant is still under 
construction, and scheduled to be completed by early 2005. 

Iran, which has signed non-proliferation treaties, denies it is 
seeking nuclear weapons technology. 

''There is nothing about production of nuclear weapons in the 
agreement signed between Russia and Iran on use of the atom for 
peaceful purposes, for generating electrical power,'' Gholam Reza 
Shafei, Iran's ambassador to Moscow, said at a news conference in 
February. 

But ''Bushehr is just the tip of the iceberg,'' a senior US 
official in Moscow said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''We 
are quite convinced that dangerous tech transfers are still 
taking place. There may be some willful criminality in the Atomic 
Energy Ministry, and some agencies that are getting away with 
exports on their own.'' 

''I have no doubt that the building of an Atomic reactor in 
Bushehr is a cover-up for Iran's plans to build an atomic bomb,'' 
said Alexei Yablokov, a former senior adviser to President Boris 
Yeltsin on environmental issues, now the head of the Center for 
Russian Environmental Policy, a non-profit group. ''It is madness 
to build them reactors.'' 

He said that the spent nuclear fuel generated by any type of 
nuclear reactor contains enough uranium and plutonium for the 
creation of nuclear explosive devices at low cost. 

''In three months, 30 people with a college education could do 
it,'' Yablokov said. ''There is no distinction between civilian 
and military nuclear programs; that is why handing nuclear 
technology to such unstable countries as Iran is a suicidal 
step.'' 

According to Yablokov, in 1995 Minatom contracted to build two 
facilities that would allow the production of enriched uranium 
and plutonium needed to produce a nuclear weapon. Yeltsin halted 
this deal, but Yablokov said Iran's efforts to lean how to build 
a bomb have since been augmented by student exchanges and the 
transfer of knowledge from Russian specialists working in Iran. 

A CIA report last year said Iran is aggressively pursuing nuclear 
fuel-cycle capabilities, which ''can also support fissile 
material production for a weapons program.'' US officials also 
charge that Russia is helping Iran build long-range missiles that 
could reach Europe and beyond. 

And Maxim Shingarkin, a former officer in the Russian military's 
secretive 12th Department, which is in charge of strategic 
weapons, said that with the right knowledge, the reactor in 
Bushehr could produce weapons-grade plutonium. By replacing the 
control rods in the nuclear fuel assembly with rods filled with 
uranium 238 and bombarding the rods with neutrons, he said, the 
Iranians could produce enough plutonium, over time, to make 
several bombs. As a longtime purchaser of Russian conventional 
weaponry, Iran could obtain the uranium 238 from the depleted 
uranium shells of artillery ordnance. 

The Russian government does listen to US concerns about 
proliferation. After the US slapped sanctions on seven Russian 
firms it accused of peddling sensitive technologies or materials 
to Iran in 1998, Russia passed tough legislation putting in place 
strict controls on the export of sensitive technologies. 

But in Iran's closed system, it is difficult for outside 
intelligence to distinguish civilian technologies from equipment 
that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. For example, the 
US wanted to introduce sanctions against TsAGI, a major Russian 
aeronautics firm, for a wind tunnel supplied to Iran. But it was 
impossible for the US to tell whether the tunnel was of the type 
needed to test nuclear bombs. 

''From the early 1990s, our concern was that this large project 
would serve as a cover for more sensitive technical interactions 
between Russians and Iranians,'' said Robert Einhorn, the 
Assistant Secretary of the Bureau for Non-proliferation at the 
State Department in the Clinton administration. Now, he said, 
''the concerns we had have materialized.'' 

That presents a major set-back for weapons control programs, and 
a major problem for the Bush administration, partly of its own 
making: Bush distanced himself from Russia at the start of his 
term, and then, after first meeting Putin in Slovenia last 
summer, chose to focus on missile defense and the 1972 
Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. According to one former Defense 
Department official, Bush raised the matter of Iran with Putin 
during one of their four meetings since last year, but it has 
never been a focus of US discussions in public. 

Since January, however, when Bush first cited Iran as part of the 
''axis of evil'' in his State of the Union address, the 
administration has renewed its focus on the Islamic state and its 
efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. Under pressure to prove its 
innocence, Minatom head Rumyantsev traveled to Washington earlier 
this month to meet with US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and 
assure his US counterpart that Russians are not slipping 
sensitive material to Iran. After one meeting with Abraham, 
Rumyantsev admitted it was still a ''sensitive topic.'' 

According to several former and current US and Russian officials, 
Minatom is still a central part of the problem - aware of 
technology transfers and making a large profit from its 
illegitimate work, sometimes at the expense of the larger Russian 
budget. 

In January, Russia's Accounting Chamber issued a report detailing 
how $270 million in US aid intended to help clean up and build 
safe storage for the country's radioactive waste had disappeared. 
Tens of millions of dollars had also been diverted to ''research 
projects'' that, because of their secret nature, remained a 
mystery. 

The Accounting Chamber could not explain where this money goes, 
but Shingarkin said it disappears in various book-cooking and 
money laundering schemes. Some of the lost funds actually go to 
research institutes, which hastily rewrite old research reports 
and present them as work recently done. 

He said that the Iran project is no different. Minatom, 
Shingarkin claimed, had paid four times the going rate when it 
purchased ventilation systems from a Czech company for the 
Bushehr reactor. Shingarkin and the Russian scientist said 
officials had pocketed the difference. They did not know the 
actual amounts involved, only that it involved ''many millions'' 
of dollars, as Shingarkin put it. A Minatom spokesman said the 
ministry needed 45 days to answer any questions. 

''Sixty percent of the money is returned to Minatom officials in 
cash, which they pocket,'' said Shingarkin, who now works for the 
Moscow office of Greenpeace. ''I know, because in the past I have 
carried it.'' 

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 5/19/2002. 
*****************************************************************
 45 Savannah River (SC) and Wackenhut (WAK)
 
Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 13:13:07 -0500 (CDT)

 
"Gravitational fields of amorphous solid water [ASW] can save our
planet" ... what you should know about Bechtel, Westinghouse, the US
Army Corp of Engineers, and a South African Consortium of banks.

Physics News Update
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News

Number 325 (Story #2),  by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein

NUCLEAR WASTE FOREVER. 
http://www.geocities.com/our4horsemen/ladylewinsky.html

You can't make omelettes without breaking eggs, and the same is true
of nuclear power. Cranking out decades of reactor-based electricity
has meant breaking a lot of nuclei---the leftover consists of 30,000
tons of spent fuel rods in the US. Preparing for (or preventing)
nuclear war has spawned its own trove of nuclear-unstable matter:
400,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive waste; the biggest
repositories are at Hanford (WA) and Savannah River (SC).

 The June issue of Physics Today <http://www.aip.org/pt/>
looks at the problem of nuclear waste from a variety of angles: for
example, turning the waste products into a more manageable form such
as glass; studying the feasibility of permanent storage sites such as
the proposed vault at Yucca Mountain (NV); and comparing the
disposition of waste worldwide. The current stock of spent reactor
fuel is concentrated largely in only a few countries.
 The biggest inventories are in the US (18.3%), UK (16.6%), Canada
(15.4%), France (14.9%), and the former USSR (9.9%).

WACKENHUT CORRECTIONS CORP., 
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TODAY'S HEADLINES: 

"Experts say it is the most 
lethal garbage in the world"

THE SAVANNAH RIVER, S.C.
NUCLEAR
WEAPONS DUMP PROJECT, S.C. 

Summarized from an article by MATTHEW L. WALD, of the New York Times 

"The Curse of Yucca Mountain and Benzene" 

COLUMBIA, S.C. &#8212; For years the Energy Department has promised to
clean nearly all the radioactivity out of bomb wastes here that are to
be secured in giant concrete blocks. Now, faced with a cleaning
technology that it has been unable to make work properly for more than
a decade, department officials have reversed themselves.

A $2.4 billion factory at Savannah River, S.C., is processing the
giant amounts of radioactive sludge ... mixing it with molten glass,
and pouring the mixture into stainless steel canisters. The mixture
cools into glass logs, and about 1,200 of them have been made since
production began in 1996. The plan is to bury them deep underground
[some of the cannisters will be 1000 feet underground], presumably at
Yucca Mountain, Nev. [Yucca Mountain is near Las Vegas groundwater and
exactly adjacent to the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Sites of the
1950s], where they are supposed to be secure for thousands of years.

The new proposal to mix a sizable portion of the waste with cement
without cleaning it is adding to tensions between the federal
government and Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina, who has threatened
to use state troopers to block new shipments of plutonium into the
site, the Savannah River nuclear reservation here.

[On Friday, a federal judge in South Carolina ordered the Energy
Department to wait 30 days before beginning to ship weapons-grade
plutonium from Colorado to Savannah River. The order, which means that
no shipping can begin until June 15, came a week after Governor Hodges
filed suit to stop the shipments, which he opposes because of
uncertainties about the technology that would be involved in
converting the former nuclear weapons to still toxic powerplant fuel.]

Stored in 51 giant tanks, the mix of radioactive sludge, liquid and
salts is a legacy of the factories here that produced the United
States' atomic arsenal. Experts say it is the most lethal garbage in
the world.

The Energy Department [DOE], which designs, builds and maintains our
nuclear weapons, has a powerful motive to simplify the cleanup. Any
method that proves effective here will be duplicated at sites in Idaho
[most radionuclide wastes from our U.S. Navy nuclear operations are
currently stored at the Idaho National Environmental and Engineering
Facility], and Hanford, Washington [The Hanford Nuclear Site is a
560-square-mile tract of semi-arid land located within the Columbia
River Basin in southeastern Washington, about 50 miles north of the
Oregon border. The Columbia River flows through the Hanford Site
boundary. In early 1943, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers selected the
Hanford Site as their main location for nuclear reactor and chemical
processing facilities for the production, separation, and purification
of plutonium].

[... The suggested method of disposal] is cleaning the radioactive
salts by washing out radioactive cesium-137 and then mixing the salts
with cement. But the washing process also produces a volatile
compound, benzene, which makes the waste tanks vulnerable to fire or
explosion.

The U.S. Dept. of Energy's record with cement is spotty. In the 1980's
it tried to clean up a contaminated pond at the Rocky Flats plant, in
the suburbs of Denver, by mixing radioactive material with cement to
produce what officials called pondcrete. In months, the pondcrete
crumbled. A solution here will be a model for Hanford, Wash., where
there are more tanks, in worse condition, and where the department
recently broke ground for another glass factory.

At the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, James Hardeman,
manager of the Environmental Radiation Division, said, "They can call
it mudpies, it's still high level waste." [regarding the nearby
Savannah River Project]

"It should be buried at Yucca Mountain," Mr. Hardeman said. 

MORE PROFITS FOR WACKENHUT Managed Commercial Prisons: 
Mentally Disordered in U.S. Swing Between Jail, Hospital 

May 14, 2002 

Summarized from an article by Alan Elsner, National Correspondent 

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (Reuters) - Project Link, a six-year-old program
spearheaded by University of Rochester psychiatrists Steven Lamberti
and Robert Weisman, aims to identify severely mentally ill patients
like Collier and help them re-establish some semblance of a normal
life. The benefits to society could be immense.

"Jails and prisons have become the final destination of the mentally
ill in America. It's a huge problem. There are more mentally ill folk
in state prisons than in state hospitals. The Los Angeles County Jail
has become the nation's largest mental institution," said Lamberti.

"So many people are trapped in what I call a Bermuda Triangle of
prison, hospital and the streets," he said.

Project Link takes severely mentally ill patients -- there are
currently 45 enrolled -- and given each one a case worker, who makes
sure they take their medications, keep in touch with medical and
social service providers in the community.

Most private landlords are reluctant to rent rooms to mentally ill
tenants. But without stable housing, they are almost impossible to
treat.

COSTS DRASTICALLY CUT 

The program also drastically cut the costs of caring for participants,
from an estimated average of $62,500 per person to $14.500.

There is an estimated 5.6 million people with severe mental illness
currently living in the United States.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the number of available beds in mental
hospitals plummeted while the commercial prison population more than
doubled to around 2 million, of whom around 15 percent are believed to
be suffering from severe mental illness, according to various studies.
That totals out at around 300,000 people.

In Rochester, a city of around 750,000 near the shores of Lake
Ontario, a regional psychiatric hospital which once held over 3,000
inmates was cut to just 200 beds in the 1990s.

[summarized from a recent New York Times article, by Henri E. Cauvin] 

The 
Wackenhut Corrections Corp., (WAK)

... based in Florida, has become the world leader in private prison
construction and management. They are currently expanding into South
Africa, after having made great strides in the USA [especially Austin,
Texas], the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Carribean islands. WCC
is now building a 3,024 bed maximum security prison in South Africa,
financed by a consortium of SOUTH AFRICAN BANKS.

It is hoped by the consortium that this is only the first step of a
long and lucrative relationship that will rapidly expand.

WACKENHUT SERVICES, INC., the largest commercial builders of prisons
in the world, is also the contractor for the Department of Defense
[USA] and the contractor who is both well paid and responsible for
human security at the Savannah River Site[SRS], the largest nuclear
waste disposal compound in the world, ... Bechtel, Westinghouse, and
the US Army Corp of Engineers all pay WACKENHUT to get rid of
unneccesary risks and problems ... take for instance, prisoners, and
yes, nuclear toxins too! [it is assumed the prisoners will be
liquidated long before the nuclear "cakes" are vitrified]
<http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1999/ma99/ma99ferguson.html>

[quoting directly from the NEW YORK TIMES:] 

" [...] Authorities in Texas reclaimed control of a Wackenhut run
prison
in Austin after a dozen former employees were indicted late last year
on charges of sexually assaulting and harrassing inmates ... earlier
this year, authorities in Louisiana transferred the ENTIRE POPULATION
of a JUVENILE PRISON run by
Wackenhut after federal investigations contended that inmates
[JUVENILES] were beaten and deprived of adequate food and clothes."

--->>> check your Wall Street stocks and see which WACKENHUT prison
shares are ahead of the pack this week!! It's one of the best deals in
our "democracy" and "nuclear family" --- you can afford a pension and
your own private health insurance if you invest in penal colonies and
supernatant radioactive salts and RADIOACTIVE SALT CAKES!!!! <<<---

from the "SACRAMENTO BEE"

Q: Have you ever heard that the private prison industry is a good
investment? I heard that Wackenhut stock has soared lately. What do
you think?

-- M.E., Sacramento

A: Wackenhut Corp. (ticker symbol WAK) is an international provider of
security services that also manages privatized correctional
facilities.

For the 39 weeks ended Oct. 1, revenues rose 17 percent to $1.85
billion, but net income fell 4 percent to $13.5 million.

Late last month, the security service company advised Wall Street that
it expects to post earnings[.]

WACKENHUT, in bed for several lost weekends with the Pentagon, gets
two juicy prison contracts in Arkansas ... click here to read how
WACKENHUT is literally drooling over their company being selected to
expand Arkansas's 600-bed facility for adult female offenders to lock
down over 800 teenage females in prison beds.
<http://memphis.bcentral.com/memphis/stories/1999/07/12/newscolumn4.html>
*****************************************************************
 46 DOE drops plutonium shipping plan 

                        Tri-Valley Herald

Sunday, May 19, 2002 - 2:59:04 AM MST                                           

Decision a response to lawsuit, anti-nuclear activists say

By Staff Writer: Glenn Roberts Jr.
 			
LIVERMORE -- Responding to a lawsuit filed by a Livermore-based 
nuclear watchdog group, Energy Department officials said they 
have abandoned plans to send plutonium to Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory in substandard containers. 

Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment filed a 
lawsuit in February in an effort to block a series of shipments 
containing nuclear weapons-related plutonium parts bound for 
Livermore Lab from Rocky Flats, an Energy Department cleanup site 
in Colorado. 

Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley CARE's executive director, said, "This 
decision is a direct result of our lawsuit," adding that the 
Energy Department "was set to put these (containers) on the road" 
until the group took legal action. 

Jessie Roberson, Energy Department assistant secretary for 
environmental management, said in a statement Friday, "We want to 
move forward, rather than engage in unnecessary and costly 
litigation from environmental groups that could delay the 
environmental restoration of our Rocky Flats facility." 

Energy Department officials had approved an exemption -- which 
authorized shipments of large plutonium-containing parts in 
containers that did not meet all safety standards -- in order to 
expedite the shipments. 

For example, Energy Department communications stated that the 
containers could be crushed if the truck that carried them was 
hit by a train. And "if (the truck) was hit from behind by a 
large, heavy vehicle, the crush environment may occur." 

Another Energy Department document states that the containers "do 
not demonstrate compliance with the current ... performance 
requirements (most notably the dynamic crush test)." 

Roberson said in a Thursday memo to Everet Beckner, deputy 
administrator for defense programs for the Energy Department's 
nuclear security agency, that approval for the use of the 
substandard containers was "contingent on satisfactory completion 
of a safety analysis and reviews." 

"These reviews have yet to be com-pleted and need not be 
completed in light of the decision I have made to ship the 
materials in question in certified containers," she said. 

Joe Davis, an Energy Department spokesman, said Friday that the 
plutonium-contaminated parts bound for Livermore will be cut into 
smaller pieces so that they can fit into smaller containers that 
meet all safety standards. 

When asked whether those parts, once they are cut, will still be 
sent to Livermore Lab, Davis said, "As for the 125 items that 
were the subject of the lawsuit, those items will not be shipped 
to our site." 

Kelley said that Tri-Valley CARE's members are working with 
Earthjustice, the environmental legal-defense group that 
supported the lawsuit, to determine whether the lawsuit can be 
dropped. 

"We hope to resolve satisfactorily all the issues," Kelley said. 
"We want to (have) iron-clad assurance that they will not be 
shipping in these uncertified containers." 

Rocky Flats was also scheduled to ship plutonium to an Energy 
Department site in South Carolina using the sub-standard 
containers, though all plutonium shipments to South Carolina from 
Rocky Flats have been suspended pending negotiations between 
state and Energy Department officials. 

Though Energy Department officials have planned to complete 
cleanup at the Rocky Flats site by 2006, a report released by 
Energy Department investigators this week states that "missed 
milestones increase the risk of delays" to this closure date. 
Plutonium-packaging operations at the site are not expected to be 
completed until May 2003, a year behind schedule, the report also 
states.
 			 		   	 
©1999-2001 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
*****************************************************************
 47 Plutonium packaging a problem at Flats 

  [www.TheDailyCamera.com]   

By Katy Human 
Camera Staff Writer

South Carolina's refusal to accept plutonium shipments from
Rocky Flats isn't the only thing threatening the 2006 deadline
for cleanup of the former nuclear weapons plant. 

The company packaging Rocky Flats' weapons-grade plutonium into
containers is struggling to meet production schedules, which
could delay the plant's timely cleanup, according to a new
federal audit released Thursday. 

Kaiser-Hill was supposed to have packaged 9,800 kilograms —
nearly 11 tons — of highly radioactive plutonium metals and
oxides into about 1,900 containers by this month, according to
the Office of the Inspector General, but the work is less than
half done. 

The packaged plutonium originally was scheduled to be trucked to
South Carolina beginning last September, but an ongoing dispute
between the Department of Energy and South Carolina's governor
delayed shipments. A recent lawsuit filed by Gov. Jim Hodges
further postponed shipments until at least June 15. 

The new report expressed doubt about Kaiser-Hill's ability to
increase the speed of packaging, given technical problems that
have plagued the system: "... we remain concerned that the
current target of 140 containers per month may not be
realistic," it reads. 

It also recommends that Kaiser-Hill develop a contingency plan
for packaging the plutonium, in the event of a "catastrophic
failure" of the current system. 

John Corsi, spokesman for Kaiser-Hill, said he's confident the
company can package the remaining containers by early next year
with the current system. 

"We just did 48 containers last week," he said. "The machine's
working, and it's going to get us to 2006." 

The new report is available online at www.ig.doe.gov. Click on
"IG Reports." 

Contact Katy Human at (303) 473-1364 or

humank@thedailycamera.com.

Copyright 2002 The Daily Camera. 
*****************************************************************
 48 Rocky Flats won't use contested containers 

  [www.TheDailyCamera.com]   

By Katy Human 
Camera Staff Writer
 
Rocky Flats will not ship highly radioactive plutonium to South
Carolina and California in controversial shipping containers as
previously planned, a federal official announced Thursday. 
A California environmental group filed a lawsuit over the issue
in February, but Jessie Roberson, assistant secretary for
environmental management in the Department of Energy, said the
agency decided to use fully approved containers instead of
battling the issue in court. 

"We want to move forward, rather than engage in unnecessary and
costly litigation ... that could delay the environmental
restoration of our Rocky Flats facility," said Roberson,
formerly the Department of Energy manager at Rocky Flats. 
As part of the cleanup of Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons
plant south of Boulder, officials planned to send seven
trucks-worth of plutonium parts to Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory in California and additional shipments to South
Carolina in DT-22's. 

Using the DT-22's, relatively large, 45-gallon containers, would
have meant Rocky Flats workers could package many plutonium
parts wholesale, without having to cut them down to size first. 
But a California activist group argued that the federal
government had "illegally" exempted itself from environmental
laws in planning to use the containers, which did not pass crush
tests typically required for carrying large amounts of
plutonium. 

Ann Seitz, office manager for Tri-Valley Communities Against a
Radioactive Environment group in Livermore said she was happy to
learn that the Energy Department decided to drop the
controversial containers. 

"They obviously realized they had been caught and that they were
going to have more trouble trying to continue than simply making
shipments safe," she said. 

Seitz declined to comment on whether the lawsuit would be
dropped — group members need time to evaluate the news, she
said. 

John Corsi, spokesman for Kaiser-Hill, the company managing
Rocky Flats cleanup, said he assumed Rocky Flats workers will
need to do more "size reduction" work to fit plutonium parts
into smaller, approved containers. 

"We'll have to look into what this means," he said. 

Contact Katy Human at (303) 473-1364 or
humank@thedailycamera.com.

Copyright 2002 The Daily Camera.
    
*****************************************************************

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this 
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who 
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for 
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more 
information go to: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
*****************************************************************