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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 Government condemns North Korean nuclear plans
2 *U.S. Congratulates Roh, Predicts Cooperation*
3 Russia talks to North about nuclear issue*
4 'Roh-phoon' takes Blue House*
5 China Declares To Maintain Nuclear Weapons
6 Leave it to Blix, says France
7 Pak missile can carry nukes, but India secure:
8 US Intelligence Says Russia Helping Iran in Nuclear Arms Effort
9 US: Iraq sought uranium from Niger
10 Speaker receives Japanese delegation
11 IAEA says may need year for thorough Iraq report
12 UNMOVIC/IAEA Press Statement on Inspection Activities in Iraq
13 Last-minute reversal could tip election to hawk in South Korea
14 IAEA says Iraq must provide evidence it has no nukes
15 US: DES to invest $1 million with TVA
16 US: Anti-nuclear activist pushed reparations request
NUCLEAR REACTORS
17 [radiation-survivors] Thousands Rally Over Chernobyl
18 Caithness to get nuclear clean-up research centre
19 US: Life in a reactor?s shadow
20 US: NRC Oversight Panel to Meet with FirstEnergy in Lisle, IL, to
21 Bulgaria to close nuclear reactors
NUCLEAR SAFETY
22 [radiation-survivors] 80,000 MOD WORKERS BACK A-BOMB VETERANS
23 A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
24 [radiation-survivors] More doubts surface about Yucca site -
25 The perils of nuclear transport
26 US: NRC rejects two state claims attempting to block nuclear waste
27 US: Nuclear regulators back full-scale cask testing
28 US: Research facility begins transferring hot waste
29 More good news for Piketon
30 SELLAFIELD SACKS 12 OVER EMAIL ABUSE
31 Regulators debate testing of Yucca Mountain nuclear waste casks*
32 Nuclear waste: No way out?
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
33 Israeli fear of nuclear proliferation
34 THE SECRET WAR ON IRAQ
35 Nuke Chief: Little Change in Iraq Dossier
36 India rules out further nuclear tests
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
37 [radiation-survivors] Transuranic Waste Shipments Headed for
38 Editorial: Following the right course at Hanford*
39 Watchdog: Lab Out of Compliance With Air Regulations * *
40 New Flats cleanup levels disputed
41 Benton calls for FFTF study
42 Thompson Mechanical wins $4 million Hanford contract
43 Support for FFTF at issue
44 Radioactive waste agreement reached
45 CH2M Hill testing sprinkler device in waste tank
46 DOE CUTBACKS: National security at issue
47 Lab's laser reaches a milestone
48 Few seek INEEL management posts
49 SRS deserves new missions
50 Los Alamos Releases Credit Card Audit
OTHER NUCLEAR
51 Environmental changes under Bush
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 Government condemns North Korean nuclear plans
Friday December 20, 2002
19.12.2002 3.00 pm
The Government has denounced North Korea's threat to resume its
nuclear weapons programme, and asked it call a halt to the plans.
North Korea said last week it would reactivate nuclear facilities
that yield weapons-grade plutonium after it claimed the United
States had reneged on a deal to supply the North with energy
sources.
The country's nuclear facilities were frozen under a 1994
agreement with the US.
New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Phil Goff said the
Government "deeply regretted and opposed" the move.
"This development is a setback to efforts to resolve nuclear
issues on the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner," he said in
a statement.
"We have called upon North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme
and fulfil its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty."
Mr Goff said North Korea's decision would further erode the
international community's trust in the country.
"North Korea's apparent interest in pursuing a nuclear programme
is an obstacle to resolving critical economic problems with
international support," he said.
The Government delivered a strong message to North Korean
Ambassador Chon Jae-Hon, when he visited Wellington last week.
Mr Goff asked North Korea to stop the programme quickly and in a
verifiable manner.
- NZPA
©Copyright 2002, New Zealand Herald
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2 *U.S. Congratulates Roh, Predicts Cooperation*
/ Thu December 19, 2002 03:23 PM ET /
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday
congratulated Roh Moo-hyun on his victory in South Korean
presidential elections and said it expected coordination with
Seoul to continue against North Korean nuclear programs.
The liberal Roh's conservative opponent, Lee Hoi-chang, conceded
defeat on Thursday after an election campaign dominated by debate
on policy toward North Korea.
Roh's victory could complicate South Korea's relations with the
United States because Lee's views were closer to those of the
Bush administration, which favors trying to isolate Pyongyang.
Roh's campaign rode a tide of unprecedented anti-American
sentiment. Tens of thousands of Koreans took to the streets in
anger after a U.S. court martial acquitted two U.S. soldiers
whose armored vehicle crushed to death two teenage girls during
military exercises in June.
But State Department spokeswoman Amanda Batt said the United
States expected close relations with Seoul to continue.
"We warmly congratulate President-elect Roh on his victory and
look forward to working closely with him and his administration.
President-elect Roh has expressed his firm commitment to the
U.S.-ROK (South Korea) relationship and we are no less
committed," she said.
"We view his election as an opportunity for us to work with him
and his government to build an even stronger relationship for
this new century," she added.
Batt said Roh had strongly supported South Korea's military
alliance with the United States, which maintains 37,000 troops in
the country to deter any attack from the Communist north.
But Roh has also promised to pursue the "sunshine policy" of
outgoing President Kim Dae-jung, based on promoting contacts and
reconciliation with North Korea.
The Bush administration has grown increasingly skeptical about
the value of that policy, especially since the North Koreans
acknowledged in October that they were working on a
uranium-enrichment project for a weapons program.
Asked about the differences, Batt said, "The Republic of Korea
(South Korea) is the country most affected by the problem posed
by North Korean behavior and the U.S. coordinates very closely
with the ROK in formulating our policy."
"We expect to continue the closest consultation with South Korea
regarding North Korea and also trilaterally with Japan as we seek
a verifiable end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program and an
improved security and humanitarian situation on the Korean
peninsula," she added.
At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "The people of
South Korea have once again demonstrated the enduring vitality
and dynamism of democracy in their country."
"South Korea is a close friend and ally of the United States, and
(President Bush) looks forward to working closely with
President-elect Roh as the United States and the Republic of
Korea address the many challenges and opportunities that we face
together," he said.
Some U.S. business leaders expressed concern about the
president-elect's commitment to U.S.-backed economic reforms. The
long-time democratic activist has vowed to implement a five-day
working week and improve benefits for working people.
"We're hopeful that he'll put a good economic team in place and
will be open to addressing critical business interests including
labor and regulatory reform. But these are open questions given
his background and the jury is out," said Myron Brilliant,
executive vice president of the U.S.-Korea Business Council.
Reuters The Company Products &
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3 Russia talks to North about nuclear issue*
December 20, 2002
Russia has begun talks with North Korea to resolve issues
concerning Pyeongyang's nuclear programs, the Japanese Kyodo News
Agency reported yesterday, quoting a visiting senior Russian
official.
Alexander Losyukov, the Russian deputy foreign minister in charge
of the Asia-Pacific region, told Kyodo that Moscow had initiated
contact with Pyeongyang in an attempt to eliminate threats posed
by the North's nuclear weapons development programs.
Japan and Russia vowed Wednesday to collaborate in their efforts
for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, after a meeting in Tokyo
between Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Japanese Foreign
Minister Kawaguchi Yoriko.
¨Ï 2002 JoongAng Ilbo , Joins.com
. All rights reserved.
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4 'Roh-phoon' takes Blue House*
*by Koh Han-sun *
December 20, 2002
Roh Moo-hyun of the Millennium Democratic Party was elected as
Korea's 16th president yesterday.
Mr. Roh, a labor lawyer, survived a year of ups and downs,
igniting a spring "Roh-phoon," then seeing his party almost
disintegrate under him as his candidacy was all but written off.
But he surged late in the campaign and won a narrow but
convincing victory over Lee Hoi-chang of the Grand National
Party.
With 97.2 percent of the vote counted last night, Mr. Roh had 49
percent, Mr. Lee 46.5 percent. Kwon Young-ghil of the Democratic
Labor Party led a field of trailers who shared out the remaining
4.5 percent.
Even the last-minute repudiation by Chung Mong-joon of his
promise to support Mr. Roh did not interfere with the voters'
demand for change, although it threw MDP headquarters into
despair. Hours later, the headquarters was a frenzy of
champagne-popping joy and raucous cheering.
Mr. Roh thanked his campaign workers and the people for his
victory. He called for a new era of conversation and cooperation
and promised to seek help in difficult situations. He
congratulated his opponents Mr. Lee and Mr. Kwon for waging a
good fight.
Mr. Lee said he had failed to meet the demands of his supporters.
His heart was rent with grief, he said, when he thought of the
difficulties his party members would undergo for the next five
years. He said he would announce his future plans today.
Mr. Roh built his victory on sweeping margins in the Jeolla
provinces, where he won more than 90 percent of the vote, and
strong majorities in Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi province, where
45 percent of the voters are concentrated. He also led Mr. Lee in
the traditional swing regions of Daejeon and the Chungcheong
provinces. As expected, Mr. Lee carried his party's traditional
strongholds in Busan, Daegu and the Gyeongsang provinces.
Overall, Mr. Roh swept the western peninsula while Mr. Lee swept
the eastern region.
Exit polls conducted by three major broadcasting companies
proclaimed Mr. Roh the winner at 6 p.m., as the ballot boxes
closed. But then the votes had to be counted, to see if the exit
polls were accurate. For the first hour or so of counting Mr. Lee
maintained a razor-edge lead, but by the time a third of the vote
was in Mr. Roh had moved ahead, and he steadily pulled away.
The National Election Commission estimated voter turnout at 70
percent, the lowest in Korean history. Turnout was 82 percent in
the 1992 election and 81 percent in 1997. Experts said Mr.
Chung's late about-face kept his supporters and some of the
undecided away from the polls.
Turnout was reported especially light in Ulsan and the Gyeonggi
and Chungcheong regions, areas inclined to Mr. Chung. Intensive
political mudslinging and the lack of a candidate with strong
regional appeal also depressed the turnout.
Mr. Roh will immediately start talks with President Kim Dae-jung
about taking over the state administration. The president-elect
will organize a committee to organize the transition. He will
take the presidential office Feb. 25, 2003.
This was the first election in 31 years with none of the three
Kims -- Kim Dae-jung, Kim Young-sam and Kim Jong-pil -- vying for
president. With the shift in generations, political experts
predict that many of the old practices, such as money politics
and cronyism, will disappear. But another characteristic of the
"three-Kims" era -- voting along regional lines -- was hardly
diminished yesterday.
Election experts noted that negative campaigning largely failed
to boost popularity, and that candidates focused on presenting
attractive platforms. Voters were little moved by the GNP charges
that the National Intelligence Service had engaged in
indiscriminate wiretapping or the MDP allegations about alleged
corruption in Mr. Lee's family.
Instead, voters divided dramatically according to age. Exit polls
conducted by broadcasting companies found that voters over 50
preferred Mr. Lee, while younger voters in their 20s and 30s
backed Mr. Roh.
North Korea's announcement just a week before the election that
it would reactivate its nuclear program did not stampede voters
toward the more hawkish Mr. Lee. In previous elections, North
Korean threats at the last stage of campaigning have benefited
parties considered to be more conservative.
¨Ï 2002 JoongAng Ilbo , Joins.com
. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
5 China Declares To Maintain Nuclear Weapons
Fri 20 Dec 2002
/JOHN ROSS/
AN INTERNATIONAL centre of excellence to tackle the legacy of
nuclear plants is being planned for Caithness, a few miles from
the Dounreay complex.
The North Highland College in Thurso is leading the bid to set up
the Decommissioning and Environmental Remediation Institute as
part of the UHI Millennium Institute, the proposed university of
the Highlands and Islands.
The proposed research and training centre yesterday won the
backing of Brian Wilson, the energy minister, who said: "This is
a very appropriate initiative since Dounreay is at the forefront
of decommissioning internationally.
"It is wide open for companies in the Highlands and Islands,
which have gained experience at Dounreay, to apply these skills
wherever in the world decommissioning and clean-up is required."
It is also supported by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which is
decommissioning the Dounreay site over the next 60 years at a
cost of £4 billion, as well as High-lands and Islands Enterprise.
A bid will be made for European Regional Development Fund support
in March next year to part fund the development. It is
anticipated that from September 2003 the college will be able to
provide courses leading to BSc (Hons) in both mechanical and
electrical engineering with decommissioning studies through the
institute.
In collaboration with Aberdeen University, masters programmes
will also be available in areas such as project management,
safety engineering, reliability and risk management. Research
areas for up to ten PhD students will be identified and
supported.
The centre will focus initially on decommissioning nuclear sites,
but the college hopes to widen the remit to include the
decommissioning of other facilities, such as oil and gas plants.
Rosemary Thompson, the college?s assistant principal, NHC, said:
"This initiative is possibly one of the most ambitious
developments undertaken by the college.
"It represents the commitment by the board of management to
support local businesses and young people of the area, allowing
them to compete with larger companies and graduates outwith the
area for contracts or work at Dounreay.
" The college has already established formal links with Aberdeen
University and is forming additional partnerships with other
universities and nuclear companies across Europe to ensure that
the UHI can assume and maintain academic leadership in this new
field.
"The credibility and success of the institute in delivering on
its objectives will be achieved by working with an advisory
council, made up of senior nuclear industry representatives from
across Europe."
She said the new development will help address the needs of local
contractors who have been having difficulty recruiting engineers.
"Talented young people will be able to remain in the Highlands
where they may achieve high-level professional qualifications and
attractive employment opportunities," she said.
©2002 scotsman.com | contact
*****************************************************************
19 Life in a reactor?s shadow
MSNBC.com
The Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y., is only a
short drive from the 8 million residents of New York City.
By Tarannum Kamlani MSNBC
BUCHANAN, N.Y., June 5 ? All roads in this tiny village in
Westchester County lead to one place, the Indian Point nuclear
power plant. Just 1 1/2 square miles in area and with a
population of around 2,000, Buchanan has in its backyard one of
the most controversial of the 104 nuclear power plants in the
United States. As Congress ponders a proposal to make Yucca
Mountain in Nevada a national repository for nuclear waste,
residents here and in other New York suburbs debate the safety of
the plant itself and shipping its waste across the country.
AFTER DECADES of living next to one of the oldest
operating reactors in the country, Buchanan?s residents dismiss
claims that it?s a potential disaster area.
But the specter of American Airlines Flight 11 soaring
over Indian Point en route to its deadly destiny at the World
Trade Center ? and the subsequent discovery of American nuclear
plant blueprints in al-Qaida hideouts in Afghanistan ? has led to
calls from some Westchester County residents to shut the plant
down.
Still, the people of Buchanan remain loyal supporters of
Indian Point, where workers recently held a demonstration to
drive home the importance of plant jobs in the blue-collar town.
The plant accounts for about 95 percent of the village?s
tax revenues, as well as half of the local school district?s
taxes. The company that owns Indian Point, Entergy Corp., which
is based in New Orleans, financed the construction of a
recreation center in Buchanan last year.
MAP: Buchanan, New York ?The people who are afraid are
from the city or from Garrison,? a nearby wealthy community, says
Frank Apollonio, the owner of the Benvenuti Italian Deli, located
on Bleakley Avenue, which leads straight to the gates of Indian
Point.
?We?re so used to it being here,? says Frances Stellato, a
Bleakley Avenue resident. ?The walls are pretty thick, and the
people in charge are always checking things over,? she says.
* NEW YORK SUBURBS*
Around 20 million people live within 50 miles of Indian
Point, making the area the most densely populated region
surrounding a nuclear plant in the United States.
Opponents of the plant, many of whom would like to see it
shut down and its radioactive waste buried at the proposed Yucca
Mountain site in Nevada, cite studies that estimate that a
radioactive plume resulting from an attack would kill up to
300,000 people in Westchester County.
Entergy Corp. acquired Indian Point on Sept. 5, six days
before the terrorist attacks. Since then, the company says, it
has invested $3 million in safety measures at the plant, the only
one in the nation that has received a ?red finding? on the
federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission?s safety scale. The NRC
conducts ongoing inspections and issues findings using the colors
green, white, yellow and red, with green being the safest and red
the most dangerous.
Indian Point recently announced a plan to change the way
it stores the nuclear waste the plant has produced over the
years. The waste is now stored under water in pools that are 40
feet deep. But the plant?s operators decided ? in part to prepare
for the day when casks of waste may be shipped to Yucca Mountain
? to move the waste into dry casks.
MAP: Yucca Mountain In Westchester County, that plan
hasn?t stirred much controversy, mainly because many residents
want Indian Point?s 30-plus years of nuclear waste removed from
their midst.
?If those spent fuel rods are to be transported through
the village, I have faith that it will be done in a safe manner,?
said Daniel O?Neill, the recently elected mayor of Buchanan.
?I do think the casks are more secure,? state
Assemblywoman Sandra R. Galef told The New York Times in April.
?And it gets the spent fuel ready to move.?
* THE ANTI-NUKE MOVEMENT *
But the issue of moving the radioactive waste has its
detractors.
Riverkeeper, an environmental group that is one of Indian
Point?s harshest critics, would rather see the waste stay where
it is for now. The group reacted with alarm at the prospect of
moving the waste through Westchester?s towns and villages. Energy
map of america
?Moving 77,000 tons of waste is giving terrorists a moving
target,? says Alex Matthiessen, executive director of
Riverkeeper.
He said that shipping the waste to Nevada would merely
give ?the public the impression that something is being done,
when it?s a false solution.?
Many residents in the shadow of the plant appear content
to let the government decide the best course of action.
?I am one hundred percent behind the plant. There are
intelligent people watching over this town and the State of New
York,? said Bob Millen, a Buchanan resident. ?Those plans to move
the waste don?t worry me.?
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20 NRC Oversight Panel to Meet with FirstEnergy in Lisle, IL, to
Discuss the Systems Health Assurance Plan at Davis-Besse
NRC: News Release - Region III - 2002-067 -
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs,
Region III 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle IL 60532 www.nrc.gov
No. III-02-067 December 19,
2002 CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663 Viktoria Mitlyng
(630) 829-9662 E-mail:
The NRCs oversight panel, set up to coordinate the agencys
activities associated with the reactor vessel head degradation at
the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, will meet with FirstEnergy
officials on Monday, December 23, to discuss the utilitys review
of plant safety systems. The plant, which has been shut down
since February 16, is located in Oak Harbor, Ohio. The meeting
will be held at 9 a.m. CST at the NRCs Region III office, 801
Warrenville Road, in Lisle, Illinois. Visitors should report
first to the Second Floor reception area. The public is invited
to observe the business portion of the meeting and will have an
opportunity to make comments and ask questions of the NRC staff
before the meeting is adjourned.
Interested individuals unable to attend may listen to the meeting
via telephone by calling: (877) 546-1567 and entering pass code
xxx at the prompt. One hundred phone lines will be available.
Arrangements are also being made to make the meeting available
for viewing by video conference at the NRCs Headquarters Office,
One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Room O-3 B4,
Rockville, Maryland.
The meeting will focus on licensees proposed actions to address
findings identified by the utility and the NRC in the areas of
plant system design and system functionality reviews.
The NRC oversight panel, created on April 29, includes NRC
management and staff from its Region III office in Lisle,
Illinois; the NRC Headquarters office in Rockville, Maryland; and
the NRC Resident Inspector Office at the Davis-Besse site.
Documents on the Davis-Besse corrosion issue, including further
details on NRC's oversight panel activities, are posted on the
NRC's web site at: http://www.nrc.gov. Select Davis-Besse from
the Key Topics menu.
Thursday, December 19, 2002
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21 Bulgaria to close nuclear reactors
BBC NEWS | Europe |
Friday, 20 December, 2002, 02:29 GMT
[The Kozloduy nuclear power plant] First two reactors will be
shut down by the end of 2002
By Nick Thorpe BBC southeast Europe reporter
The closure of the two oldest units at a nuclear power station
in Bulgaria is due to begin, after many years of concern over
their safety and strong pressure from the European Union.
Over the next four years, four out of six reactors at Kozloduy
will be shut down, despite protests from the nuclear lobby and
opposition parties that the reactors are economically necessary.
The first Soviet designed reactors at Kozloduy on the river
Danube, 200 kilometres north of Sofia, came online in the late
1970s.
A series of accidents led to widespread international concerns
over their safety.
Those concerns focused in particular on the growing brittleness
of the reactor vessels and the lack of a containment building to
cope with a major accident should one occur.
EU conditions
But Bulgarian nuclear engineers argue that repairs, carried out
with international help, and supervision have resolved all safety
issues.
[Control room]
Bulgarian engineers say safety improvements have been made
They also say that Bulgaria needs the reactors
both for domestic energy supply and for export.
The country desperately wants to join the EU and was given a
target date of 2007 at the Copenhagen summit a week ago.
A condition of membership is the closure of the oldest four of
the six reactors at Kozloduy, which generate a little over half
of the plant's total capacity.
The centre-right government, led by Simeon Saxe-Coburg, the
former king, reluctantly agreed to the closures.
The first two reactors will be shut down by the end of this year
- reactors three and four will be closed by 2006.
The opposition socialist party has accused the government of
bowing to foreign pressure and have vowed to continue the fight.
© MMII | News Sources | Privacy
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22 [radiation-survivors] 80,000 MOD WORKERS BACK A-BOMB VETERANS
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 00:34:41 -0600 (CST)
http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/homepage/news/page.cfm?objectid=12455738&metho
d=sm_full&siteid=81959
AN 80,000-strong army of Ministry of Defence staff are swinging behind
the Sunday Mirror's campaign for justice for the British nuclear test
veterans.
The flood of support among serving defence staff will heap more
pressure on ministers to bow to demands for compensation for servicemen who
were forced to witness Atomic tests in the Pacific and Australia in the
1950s.
At the same time it emerged last week that Prime Minister Tony Blair
has agreed to a meeting to discuss the issue in the New Year with Labour MP
Ian Gibson and other backbenchers.
There have also been renewed efforts by MPs to press the Government to
acknowledge Britain's responsibility for the exposure of military personnel
to radiation. A new Commons motion demanding compensation for the vets has
attracted 79 signatures, despite the Government's insistence that it has no
responsibility for cancers, stillbirths and other deformities.
And now the leaders of all the unions in the Government defence
industry are getting together to back the campaign for justice.
Workers who service military bases, nuclear submarine bases and vital
military support units are weighing in behind their comrades and will this
week declare a joint statement in support of the Sunday Mirror campaign for
the vets.
Last night, Jack Dromey, the Assistant General Secretary of the giant
Transport and General Workers' Union, said: "It is about time we put our
weight behind the people who put their lives on the line for our country.
"They did it for us - the least we can do is declare our support for
them."
Union leaders will this week demand meetings with Ministers to press
home the veterans' case. However, Mr Dromey has insisted that the campaign
will never escalate into an industrial dispute.
He added: "We know that is not what the vets themselves would want.
"All they are asking for is a decent settlement for themselves and
their families.
"We demand, on behalf of all the people who back up our service
personnel, that our Government shows it respects those who served it then,
as well as now."
The moves follows a Sunday Mirror investigation into the grandchildren
of 350 veterans. which revealed their leukaemia rates are six times the
national average.
The number of descendants' babies born with deformities and other
crippling diseases is 10 times normal.
And the figure for Down's syndrome children is seven times normal.
Tony Blair was forced to agree to a meeting with backbench MPs over
the issue by cancer expert Dr Gibson.
It will be the first time in 20 years that a prime minister has agreed
to review the case of the vets and follows an internal Whitehall meeting at
which officials and Ministers agreed that the solution to the demands of the
vets needs to go to the very top.
A senior minister close to the case has told colleagues: "We need to
settle this.
"It is no longer a dispute over scientific data. It is clear that
there is a case for successive governments to answer.
"And we are the Government that has to answer."
c.mclaughlin@sundaymirror.co.uk
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23 A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy
| csmonitor.com
for 12/20/2002
GRAVEYARD: Southern Iraq, littered with tanks destroyed by the US
in the 1991 Gulf War, is contaminated by low-level radiation from
depleted uranium artillery. SCOTT PETERSON/GETTY IMAGES
If US fights Iraq, it would use a weapon that left a
radioactive trail in Gulf War.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
KHARANJ, IRAQ The rusting tanks are gathered in Iraq's
southern desert like an open-air exhibit of the 1991 Gulf War.
But these are not just museum pieces. This still radioactive
battlefield - and the severe health problems many Iraqis and
some US Gulf War veterans ascribe to it - may also be an omen of
an unsettled future.
As American forces prepare to take on Iraq in a possible Gulf
War II, analysts agree that the bad publicity and popular fears
about depleted uranium (DU) use in the first Gulf War, and later
in Kosovo and Afghanistan, have not dented Pentagon enthusiasm
for its "silver bullet." US forces in Iraq will again deploy DU
as their most effective - and most controversial - tank-busting
bullet.
War seems more imminent as the White House indicated late this
week that the decision for war could come by late January.
But this bleak desert just north of Iraq's border with Kuwait
and Saudi Arabia offers a window on the human impact nearly 12
years after a toxic stew of DU, chemical agents, pesticides, and
smoke from burning oil wells poisoned this war zone. Few suggest
that a new war, if it involves Iraqi armored resistance, will
have any less of an effect. "Nobody thinks about what is going
to happen when the shooting stops," says Robert Hewson, editor
of the London-based Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. "The people who
are firing [DU] will demand that they have it...they will not
want to go to war without it. The primary driver will always be
the mission and getting the job done."
DU is made from nuclear-waste material left over from making
nuclear weapons and fuel. American gunners used 320 tons of it
in 1991 to destroy 4,000 Iraqi armored vehicles and swiftly
conclude victory.
But the invisible particles created when those bullets struck
and burned are still "hot." They make Geiger counters sing, and
they stick to the tanks, contaminating the soil and blowing in
the desert wind, as they will for the 4.5 billion years it will
take the DU to lose just half its radioactivity.
Unaware of the risks, two shepherds earlier this week relaxed on
the ground as their sheep picked at scrub grass near one tank.
Similar tanks struck by DU during the Gulf War were deemed a
"substantial risk" and buried by US forces in Saudi Arabia or a
low-level radioactive waste dump in the US.
Pentagon spokesmen said yesterday that US troops are being given
no new DU protection training for any Iraq campaign. In the
mid-1990s, US troops were required to wear full protective suits
and masks within 50 yards of a tank struck with DU bullets.
Those rules, based on Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety
guidelines, were dramatically revised in the late 1990s.
In most cases, the rules now say, any face mask is sufficient.
Pentagon officials note their policy has been "inconsistent,"
but admitted in 1998 that their "failure" to alert soldiers to
the risks before the Gulf War resulted in "thousands of
unnecessary exposures." The latest rules, a US Army spokesman
said yesterday, "reflect the most current ... data regarding DU."
Critics charge that the official downplaying of DU's dangers
keeps the magic bullet in the arsenal, while thwarting
DU-specific compensation claims by Gulf War vets.
The Iraqi battlefield will be "very dangerous" in the aftermath
of a new war, says Asaf Durakovic, a former chief of nuclear
medicine at a veteran's hospital and head of the private Uranium
Medical Research Center. In the peer-reviewed journal "Military
Medicine" last August, he published results that 14 of 27 ill
Gulf War vets had DU in their urine nine years after the war.
Testifying before Congress in 1997, Dr. Durakovic predicted DU
will ensure that "battlefields of the future will be unlike
any...in history," and "injury and death will remain lingering
threats to 'survivors' of the battle for ... decades into the
future."
Though DU clearly enhances the chances of victory, some say the
price is too high. Risks are difficult to quantify, but US
military and expert reports indicate DU can be a hazard that may
cause cancer, and that total soil decontamination is impossible.
British troops deploying to Kosovo in 1999 were sent out with
full suits and masks, and told to use them "if contact with
targets damaged by DU ammunition is unavoidable." A report
commissioned by the US Army on the eve of the Gulf War found
that "no dose [of DU particles] is so low that the probability
of effect is zero." Another report by the British Atomic Energy
Agency used an estimate of 40 tons of DU to create a
hypothetical danger level, and predicted that that amount of DU
- one-eighth of what actually was fired - could cause "500,000
potential deaths."
"I don't think we know if DU can be used safely, and until we
know that, we shouldn't use it," says Chris Hellman, a senior
analyst with Washington's Center for Defense Information. "The
military's mindset is clear: 'This is war, war is hell...the guy
who shoots first wins, and he hits them with everything he has.'"
In the US, every aspect of DU creation, use, and disposal is
strictly controlled. The US Army alone has 14 licenses to handle
the substance. Disposal requires burial in low-level radioactive
waste dumps; particles must be mixed with concrete and encased
in two barrels.
But when it comes to fighting armor, no substance can match DU
bullets, denser than lead and self-sharpening. They burn through
armor on impact and are cheap. US gunners love them and say DU
saves lives on the front line.
This graveyard of tanks shows why. DU burns so hotly into its
target that a targeted tank's own ammunition ignites, causing a
blast that often rips the turret right off the top of a tank. In
the process, however, the DU round aerosolizes into a lethal
dust that emits alpha particles.
Though alpha particles have a limited range of a quarter-inch or
so, they pack a punch 20 times more powerful than beta or gamma
radiation, and can lodge easily in the body if inhaled or
ingested. Many US vets believe DU may also be a key factor in
Gulf War syndrome, the set of symptoms for which the Veteran's
Administration has already provided compensation for nearly 1 in
4 vets.
Iraqis say DU is a major cause of the severe health problems
such as cancer and birth defects that they graphically show are
surging in southern Iraq, though they do not have the clinical
capability to link DU to health problems.
"No one wins in war, everyone loses, and Basra will again be a
great battlefield," says Thamer Ahmad Hamdan, an orthopedic
surgeon in Basra. In 1998, when visited by the Monitor, he had
one box of x-rays depicting grotesque abnormalities. "Now it is
boxes," he says. "We will remember the Americans used this
again, that it was killing miserable people. Hopefully, they are
not going to do it."
Iraqi doctors say poverty, malnutrition, and poor water and
sanitation are key to current health problems, along with DU and
chemical exposures, and trauma from the last war. Jawad Khudim
al-Ali, director of the cancer ward at Basra's Saddam Teaching
Hospital, says pre-war cancer rates have increased 11-fold; the
mortality rate 19-fold.
While US war planners in the Gulf War and in campaigns since
have taken great care to minimize civilian casualties, the
longterm impact of DU is tough to define. And the reviled Iraqi
regime of Saddam Hussein may limit concerns of civilian
suffering, analysts say. "I don't think there is a consensus in
this country about whether war is the right thing to do," says
CDI's Hellman. "But there is a consensus that Saddam is right up
there with Satan on the evil-people-in-the-world list. And
therefore, whatever methods of warfare are going to bring him
down, and safeguard American troops in the process, is going to
be acceptable [to Americans]."
"If [fallout on civilians] was a serious consideration," concurs
Hewson, of Jane's, "we would not be contemplating a major land
battle in Iraq. At the levels where this stuff is being planned,
no tears are being shed for those people."
Abdulkarim Hussein Subber, a gynecologist at the Basra Maternity
and Children's Hospital, has three photo albums full of images
of unimaginable birth defects that he claims are six times more
prevalent today than before the Gulf War.
"We have become very familiar with these cases," Dr. Subber
says, adding that numbers have leveled off since expectant
mothers began using ultrasound to detect - and terminate -
severe cases. "The problem is [our patients] are afraid of being
pregnant again, because of the fear of malformations," Subber
says. "The problem is the pollution from the war."
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2002 The Christian Science
Monitor. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
24 [radiation-survivors] More doubts surface about Yucca site -
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 00:34:28 -0600 (CST)
http://www.thespectrum.com/news/stories/20021215/opinion/581290.html
IN OUR VIEW
The closer we get to nuclear waste being shipped to Yucca Mountain, the more
questions seem to arise.
On Thursday, researchers for the state of Nevada said tests show that
heated, mineral-rich water seeping into the nuclear waste dump could corrode
the supposedly impenetrable canisters, which would lead to a leak of
radioactivity. Those same researchers plan to provide more evidence of their
findings next month to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
The Department of Energy, a taxpayer-funded arm of the federal government,
doesn't seem interested. The agency dismissed the report Thursday with what
appears to be little thought, saying the researchers only were trying to
bolster the state of Nevada's case against having more than 77,000 tons of
nuclear waste shipped to the mountain located just 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas.
The study could be considered suspect because the researchers are, after
all, working for the state of Nevada, which vehemently opposes the dumping
of radioactive waste there. But that isn't all that different from the
federal government relying on the findings of researchers paid with tax
dollars to show that Yucca Mountain is a safe place to store the waste.
At the very least, the findings of the Nevada researchers deserve to be
tested, in cooperation with the federal government's scientists, to
determine if such conditions do currently, or could at some point in the
future, exist. After all, it will be about 10,000 years before this stuff is
no longer considered dangerous.
Another question that surfaced last week was whether nuclear waste would be
shipped, at least in the interim, to the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull
Valley just 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett voted in favor of Yucca Mountain last
summer because they had assurances from Private Fuel Storage, a consortium
of nuclear-powered utilities, that the organization's members would not put
waste in Skull Valley. Bennett, in a guest editorial published in July in
The Spectrum and Daily News, said he had written assurances from six of the
eight member companies that once the licensing phase was finished, they
would no longer push to store waste on the reservation. They simply needed a
place to store the casks in case Yucca Mountain wasn't ready on time to
comply with regulations in states where the waste is being produced.
The U.S. Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has pushed back its decision on
licensing for Skull Valley until next month because of motions filed by
Private Fuel Storage and opponents. Is that a good or a bad sign that waste
could be coming to Utah?
We won't have the answer now for more than a month.
With all the delays and questions, the fear all of us should have is that
our government could rush into storing waste at Yucca Mountain or Skull
Valley without having the answers.
How big of a problem could rushing into this storage issue be for the people
living in our state and in Nevada?
Just ask the "downwinders," the ones who survived, who were exposed to
nuclear fallout from weapons tests in the 1950s and 1960s. They already know
what can happen if things are rushed when it comes to radioactive materials.
Originally published Sunday, December 15, 2002
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25 The perils of nuclear transport
MSNBC.com
*California county near Yucca takes lead role on issue* June 4 --
When it comes to shipping nuclear waste, trucker Jim Christensen
worries about highway speeds. MSNBC.com's Miguel Llanos reports
from San Bernardino, Calif., on those and other concerns.
By Miguel Llanos MSNBC
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif., June 6 ? Unlike most Americans, Peter
Brierty is very aware and very concerned that highly radioactive
material would be shipped through communities nationwide if Yucca
Mountain in Nevada becomes the central repository for nuclear
waste. You might at first write him off as an anti-nuclear
activist with an axe to grind. But Brierty wears a badge ? that
of fire marshal for San Bernardino County, a vast area wedged
between Los Angeles and the state line with Nevada.
BRIERTY IS WORRIED about getting rural volunteer firemen
trained for nuclear accidents and about setting up a system to
monitor waste shipments as they pass though his county.
He says he?s not against Yucca, but he does want the
federal government to step in ? and soon ? to help communities
along transportation routes plan for worst-case scenarios. The
waste would be shipped by rail, truck and barges that crisscross
the 39 states where the spent nuclear fuel is now stored.
MAP: San Bernardino County
Some of those rail lines and highways run through San Bernardino,
which has seen explosive growth from Los Angeles suburban sprawl.
The county?s urban areas are busy night and day as trucks and
trains move freight between California and its seaports and the
rest of the United States.
?We have a transportation point that is not only a control
point for railroads, it?s also for truck traffic, for
high-pressure pipelines and for electric transmission,? Brierty
notes.
?If we have a release of radioactive waste we?re going to
end up with contamination that could dramatically affect the
national transportation scenario,? he says.
But Brierty also contemplates a second potential
nightmare: a radioactive release in a rural area near the state
line where firemen are volunteers aren?t trained for such
emergencies. ?Our primary concern is if we get a call at 2 a.m.
where an 18-wheeler flatbed carrying some of these casks, which
look like large water tanks, collides with a passenger vehicle,?
he says.
If such an accident occurred today, those firemen would
?come in not suspecting that it could be a radioactive,
contaminated rescue,? Brierty says.
* TIME FOR TRAINING?*
Fortunately, those scenarios wouldn?t play out for several
years ? 2010 is the earliest that Yucca would be open for
shipments. ** ? Nuclear waste: No way out?
? The
perils of nuclear transport
? Life in a
reactor's shadow
*3 of 3*
Life in a reactor's shadow
Joe Ziegler, a senior technical adviser to the Yucca
Mountain Project, notes that while the Energy Department might
want to do more advance work like local disaster training, under
the law that created the project such training can?t begin until
four to five years before shipments start.
?Until we get closer to transportation and Congress funds
us,? he says, ?we would not be able to do as much as we would
like.?
Moreover, specific transportation routes haven?t been
finalized, and won?t be until and unless the Energy Department
gets a green light from the Senate and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. The Senate must vote by the end of July, and approval
would let the Energy Department seek a license from the
commission at the end of 2004.
Ziegler isn?t convinced communities need to start planning
now, but he understands the concerns, and even the desire to keep
the nuclear waste shipments out of one?s own backyard.
?I believe that?s more a matter of perception than real
risk, but that perception is real,? he says.
* RISKS, REWARDS*
Yucca?s supporters argue that the risk of an accident or
successful terrorist attack on a shipment is extremely small and
that it?s a risk society is willing to take in exchange for a
reward ? in this case a cheap source of electricity.
Each year, there are 300 million shipments of hazardous
material in the United States. And 2,700 shipments of spent
nuclear fuel, the primary type of radioactive waste at issue
here, have been shipped 1.6 million miles over the last 20 years
without a single release of radioactivity, supporters say.
Yucca?s critics counter that never before will so much
radioactive waste have been shipped so far and for so long ? 24
years under the Yucca Mountain proposal.
The Sept. 11 attacks, they add, have raised the specter of
terrorism. That point is shared by the rail industry, whch has
shown reluctance to become a carrier and asked that, if it must,
the Energy Department require dedicated trains for nuclear waste
shipments.
Transporting the waste with other railcars increases
safety risks, Ed Hamberger, head of the Association of American
Railroads, told lawmakers earlier this year. That Energy
Department policy ?is driven no doubt by economic
considerations,? he added. ?I submit that the events of Sept. 11,
2001, have altered that calculation forever.?
* VARYING ESTIMATES*
Yucca Mountain: a national debate on nuclear waste
At issue in the case of an accident is how far radioactive
powder might be dispersed, how many people might be killed and
what kind of cleanup would be involved.
Yucca supporters and critics are far apart in their
predictions.
The Energy Department?s worst-case scenario predicts 48
cancer deaths from an act of sabotage on a truck shipment.
The state of Nevada, which has led the campaign to stop
Yucca, commissioned a study that estimated thousands of deaths.
The predictions were based on different assumptions.
Nevada took a scenario from a Baltimore rail tunnel fire in 2001,
where a train burned for three days and temperatures reached as
high as 1,500 F. Containers aren?t required to withstand that
kind of heat for that long, Nevada noted, but if a nuclear waste
container became enveloped in such a fire, it could melt,
allowing radioactive particles to disperse far and wide.
Nevada also points out that safety testing is done on
small-scale models and not full-scale containers, which can weigh
as much as 250 tons.
* CONTAINER SAFETY*
The Baltimore fire as well as Sept. 11 have led officials
to review the safety of containers.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates their
design, has said it is studying the ?lessons learned? in
Baltimore and is sponsoring a study to see how well the casks
withstand acts of sabotage and terrorism.
?We will decide within the next year whether changes are
needed in our physical security requirements,? NRC operations
official Carl Paperiello told lawmakers in April.
The commission also stands to become the central regulator
of Yucca. If the Senate approves the project, the commission
would eventually have to grant or deny an operating license. That
decision wouldn?t come before 2005, and the Bush administration
says that leaves plenty of time for outstanding issues to be
resolved.
That doesn?t reassure officials in San Bernardino. ?What is the
contingency plan? for these worst-case scenarios, asks Jon
Mikels, a county supervisor. ?How will the response and cleanup
teams be mobilized? Where are the workers and equipment to come
from? How will 42 square miles and everything in it be
decontaminated??
Ziegler reiterates his plea for patience and suggests
communities be careful about what they wish for when it comes to
training before transportation routes are finalized.
?If we started working with San Bernardino County,? he
says as an example, ?that might prejudice the decision? towards
using routes through the county. ?If I were living there I?d want
you to weigh all the options and not bias the selection towards
my area.?
** ? Nuclear waste: No way out?
? The
perils of nuclear transport
? Life in a
reactor's shadow
Life in a reactor's shadow
*3
of 3* 1. Nuclear waste: No way out?
2.
The perils of nuclear transport 3. Life in a reactor's shadow
*****************************************************************
26 NRC rejects two state claims attempting to block nuclear waste
Las Vegas SUN:
Today: December 19, 2002 at 9:00:29 PST
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has
handed down two rulings rejecting arguments made by the state in
an effort to prevent a nuclear-waste storage facility from being
built on an Indian reservation in Utah's western desert.
The commission said it was not its job to consider the possible
environmental impacts of a terrorist attack on the site proposed
for the Goshutes' reservation in Skull Valley, 45 miles southwest
of Salt Lake City.
It also asserted that that it does have the authority to license
a private storage site for spent nuclear-plant fuel.
State officials were not immediately sure whether they would
appeal Wednesday's rulings.
"These are very valid concerns, and we most respectfully disagree
with the commission's conclusions," said Dianne Nielson, director
of the state Department of Environmental Quality.
The rulings reduce the number of regulatory hurdles still facing
Private Fuel Storage, the utility consortium that has an
agreement with the tribe to establish the facility for storing
spent fuel rods pending creation of a permanent repository. That
facility is planned for Nevada.
"It's good news because it clears the NRC's plate of issues
related to PFS," said Sue Martin, PFS spokeswoman.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which does independent
legal and scientific reviews for the NRC, is expected to decide
next month on questions regarding finances, earthquakes,
wilderness and possible military aircraft crashes.
The licensing board previously has rebuffed more than two dozen
of the state's complaints, including those about the terrorism
risk and NRC's lack of jurisdiction. The NRC's rulings Wednesday
affirmed the board's past rejections.
The NRC ruling said Congress never explicitly took away the
agency's authority to license storage of spent fuel at private
sites, authority granted to the federal government under the 1954
Atomic Energy Act.
The state had argued that Congress, in subsequent nuclear waste
laws, never envisioned a storage area like the Skull Valley
proposal.
On the terrorism question, the NRC said the chances were
minuscule that a hijacker would commandeer a jetliner and
deliberately crash it into the casks of waste.
The agency said it would be improper for it to handle a national
security issue best left to defense and intelligence agencies.
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
27 Nuclear regulators back full-scale cask testing
Thursday, December 19, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
NRC points to need to build public's confidence in Yucca project
By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- Full-scale tests of nuclear waste shipping casks
would build the public's confidence in the Yucca Mountain Project
even though less expensive computer modeling can gain results
just as well, the government's chief nuclear regulators said
Wednesday.
While expressing confidence in simulations that have been used to
certify spent nuclear fuel canisters, Nuclear Regulatory
Commission Chairman Richard Meserve noted "intense public
concern" over planned shipments to a Nevada repository might
justify exposing full-sized containers to fires, steep drops and
water immersion to demonstrate durability.
The government wants to entomb spent fuel from commercial power
reactors and highly radioactive defense waste at Yucca Mountain,
100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
President Bush adopted the recommendation to build Yucca Mountain
in February, and the House and Senate approved it over the veto
of Gov. Kenny Guinn in May and July, respectively. The first
shipment of nuclear waste could arrive in 2010.
The commissioners commented at a meeting with their five-member
Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste that monitors the Yucca
Mountain Project and related issues.
A discussion among commissioners and the technical advisers
illustrated a debate taking place within the government on cask
testing.
A testing plan developed at Sandia National Laboratories expected
to be released this year is being revised and is expected to be
made public by spring, industry officials said.
Contributing to the revision was criticism by the nuclear waste
advisory panel that the test plan was "unrealistic."
"The proposed test protocols utilize extreme conditions, well
beyond those that would be encountered in actual transportation,"
committee members said in a June 28 letter to Meserve.
The advisers also said full-scale cask testing "may be a suitable
demonstration to increase public confidence in the safe
transportation of spent fuel but will not contribute
significantly to existing knowledge base."
On Wednesday, advisory panel member Milton Levenson told Meserve
that the casks' expense -- purchase of a railroad cask alone
would cost more than $1 million -- limits their effectiveness.
"If you do full-scale tests, the number you can afford to do is
very limited; you have very few data points," Levenson said.
"Highly instrumented work can be done on scale models and
significantly cheaper."
But Commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield drew an analogy with a car
buyer.
"You can meet with the best salesmen and automotive engineers to
explain how the car is going to work, but to convince a person to
buy, it requires them to sit in the car and drive it," he said.
Also at the meeting, the advisory board received a scolding for
failing to invite Nevada officials to give a presentation at a
transportation workshop last month.
"Nevada has a coterie of experts. It's a bit of a mistake not to
involve them routinely," NRC member Ed McGaffigan told panel
Chairman George Hornberger. "They may be out of the mainstream,
but part of your function is to hear all points of view."
Bob Loux, head of Nevada's nuclear projects agency, complained
after the Nov. 19-21 workshop where government and transportation
and nuclear industry representatives delivered their views on
waste shipping and safety research.
Nevada officials and environmental critics of the Yucca Mountain
Project contend there are potential safety gaps that raise
questions about the transportation effort.
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 Stephens Media
*****************************************************************
28 Research facility begins transferring hot waste
AP Wire | 12/19/2002 |
BEACON JOURNAL
Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Battelle Memorial Institute has begun trucking
highly radioactive waste to Washington state for temporary
storage. The material eventually will be buried in a special dump
in the New Mexico desert.
It is the most hazardous material left at Battelle's now-closed
nuclear laboratory in suburban West Jefferson. It is so
radioactive it had to be collected and packaged with robotic arms
guided from behind leaded-glass windows and 6-thick walls.
A truck loaded with 10 barrels of the waste pulled out of the
former hot-cell laboratory on Wednesday. The waste has been
stored in a 50-deep pool of water beneath the site.
About 110 more barrels will be sent in the spring, to avoid
sending shipments on roads in winter, said Joseph Gantos, program
manager for Battelle's cleanup of the site.
The research site was ready to ship the waste in 1991, but there
was no place willing to store it on an interim basis.
The transfer to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was made possible
by an agreement last week between Washington state and the U.S.
Department of Energy.
The material later will be sent to the government's Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
Battelle began its nuclear operations in 1942 with researchers
shaping uranium parts for the project to develop the atomic bomb.
In 1954, the institute purchased the first 400 acres of what
eventually would become the 1,200-acre West Jefferson complex in
Madison County.
Until the late 1980s, Battelle operated a half-dozen laboratories
for uranium and plutonium research.
Information from: The Columbus Dispatch
*****************************************************************
29 More good news for Piketon
chillicothegazette.com
Thursday, December 19, 2002
By GREG WRIGHT Gazette Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's new budget will include money to
build a uranium waste processing center in Piketon that could
bring hundreds of new jobs to the area, Sen. George Voinovich,
R-Cleveland, said Wednesday.
The uranium waste processing plant will hire up to 200 permanent
workers and 300 construction workers, Voinovich said. "Together
with Piketon being named as the site to test next-generation
enrichment technology, this news is a pretty good Christmas
present for southern Ohio," the senator said.
Rep. Rob Portman, R-Terrace Park, will represent Pike County
after Jan. 1 and said Wednesday's announcement was more great
news for the region.
"The project is proceeding as scheduled and that means more jobs
for our area, both in the short run and the long run," he said.
"This is another important step in helping to revitalize southern
Ohio and the communities that surround the plant."
More than 900 workers have been laid off at the 4,300-acre
Piketon uranium enrichment plant in the last two years, but the
announcement is the second piece of good economic news for area
residents this month.
Bethesda, Md.-based U.S. Enrichment Corp. on Dec. 4 picked the
Portsmouth plant as the site for a $150 million facility to test
a new method to refine uranium for nuclear power plant fuel. The
test facility will need 50 workers.
Bush's new budget, which will be released next month, will cover
the fiscal year 2004 beginning Oct. 1, 2003. Officials at the
White House Office of Management and Budget confirmed money for
the center would be requested, but would not say how much.
"They don't always release that before the budget is out,"
Voinovich's spokesman Scott Milburn said.
Despite White House backing, the money is not guaranteed.
Congress could reduce the president's request or even eliminate
funding.
The Energy Department awarded Uranium Disposition Services LLC in
Oak Ridge, Tenn., a 10-year, $558 million contract in August to
operate depleted uranium hexafluoride waste processing centers at
Piketon and in Paducah, Ky.
The president's funding request also will include money for the
Paducah site, White House officials said.
Depleted uranium hexafluoride is a byproduct of the uranium
enrichment process. Uranium Disposition Services will remove
fluoride from the waste, converting it to safer uranium oxide
that can be stored at low-level radioactive waste facilities. The
fluoride will be sold to industries.
There are 195,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride stored in
16,041 heavy metal casks at Piketon and 443,000 tons in 36,910
casks at Paducah. An additional 55,000 tons stored at a uranium
processing center in Oak Ridge will be transferred to Piketon.
Originally published Thursday, December 19, 2002
Copyright ©2002 Chillicothe Gazette. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
30 SELLAFIELD SACKS 12 OVER EMAIL ABUSE
- The Whitehaven News
By Karl Connor
BNFL has confirmed that "up to a dozen" Sellafield workers have
been dismissed for email abuse - with 20 more facing disciplinary
action.
The workers involved are evenly spread between contractors,
agency staff and BNFL employees.
A spokesman for BNFL refused to comment on the nature of the
e-mails - other than to say that they had been "inappropriate"
and "abuse of the system," but confirmed the sackings.
However, a source at the plant told The Whitehaven News that the
workers, the majority of which were based in the vitrification
department (an area where high level waste is turned into glass)
had been sacked for playing computer games.
The worker, who did not wish to be named, said: "The people have
been sacked for playing games on the computers, I don't fully
understand what games they are or how they work but they run
through the email system.
"To be honest I think it is a bit tight to sack somebody over
this kind of incident, although I can understand why the company
feels the need to keep tabs on what is going on with the emails,
security is much tighter since September 11 and e-mails are part
of the security.
"But as I say in the run up to Christmas it is a bit harsh to
actually dismiss somebody - none of them to my knowledge had
breached confidentiality or accessed material of an offensive or
pornographic nature, surely they could all have been given a
final warning at worst."
A spokesman for BNFL's media office said: "There has been some
disciplinary action against employees for abuse of our email
system.
"At present we have a number of up to a dozen who have been
dismissed with action being taken against other employees for
misuse of the system.
"BNFL has a very clear policy as regards the email system, we
must have for security purposes, and all people employed on site
are aware of the policy.
"We issue regular reminders to staff about the email policy but
in this instance there has been inappropriate use of the system.
"The guidelines clearly state that the email system is for
company related matters only."
The Whitehaven News understands that most of the 20 workers who
have already been or are about to go through the disciplinary
processes will receive a written warning, although the action
will depend on employees' previous disciplinary records.
It is not the first time that the nuclear giant has acted to
discipline employees over email misuse.
In February last year nine workers were suspended over a crude
email which contained an altered image of American cartoon
character Bart Simpson, that investigation was sparked off by a
complaint from an employee.
Some employees at that time were put on probation for periods of
up to two years and had pay docked.
At the time BNFL said: "We expect all our employees to abide by
the guidelines and to understand the consequences, both for
themselves and the company, of wilful abuse."
*****************************************************************
31 Regulators debate testing of Yucca Mountain nuclear waste casks*
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
December 19, 2002
Associated Press
Full-scale tests of nuclear waste shipping casks would build the
public's confidence in the Yucca Mountain project, the
government's chief nuclear regulators said.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard Meserve
said"intense public concern"over planned shipments to a Nevada
repository would justify the tests though less expensive computer
modeling could gain needed results.
But a nuclear waste advisory committee meeting Wednesday in
Washington, D.C. questioned the expense of full-scale testing.
Railroad casks would cost more than $1 million each.
Tests include exposing full-sized containers to fires, steep
drops and water immersion to demonstrate durability.
Engineers are revising a testing plan developed at Sandia
National Laboratories in New Mexico that is to be released by
spring, industry officials said.
The revisions were partially prompted by the five-member advisory
panel, which maintains the"extreme conditions"in testing are
unrealistic and would add little to the project.
Panel member Milton Levenson told Meserve on Wednesday that
computer scale modeling would be"significantly cheaper"than full
testing.
"If you do full-scale tests, the number you can afford to do is
very limited; you have very few data points,"Levenson said.
But commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield drew an analogy with a car
buyer.
"You can meet with the best salesmen and automotive engineers to
explain how the car is going to work, but to convince a person to
buy, it requires them to sit in the car and drive it,"he said.
Nevada officials and environmental critics contend there are
potential safety gaps that raise questions about transporting
waste to Yucca Mountain, which was approved by Congress in July
as the nation's radioactive waste dump.
The project recommended by President Bush would entomb highly
radioactive waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Shipment of
nuclear waste to the desert site could begin by 2010.
© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal , a Gannett Co. Inc.
*****************************************************************
32 Nuclear waste: No way out?
*Proposed tomb is scarred by issues of science ? and bad public
relations*
June 5 ? Yucca geologist John Hartley briefs visitors ahead of
the trip inside Yucca Mountain, the center of the national debate
over nuclear waste. MSNBC.com's Miguel Llanos reports.
By Miguel Llanos MSNBC
YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev., June 6 ? The slow ride into the belly of
Yucca Mountain offers time to reflect on the magnitude of what?s
going on here. Never before has man tried to dig a tomb shielding
us from something so deadly for so long ? at least 10,000 years.
What the $58 billion project would bury is 77,000 tons of highly
radioactive waste from nuclear power plants across the United
States.
FOR ABE VAN LUIK, a senior policy adviser for the U.S.
Energy Department?s Yucca Mountain Project, that engineering
challenge is what drives his dedication. And that dedication
makes him defensive about the work that?s gone into the project
so far ? $7 billion to pay for millions of manhours of research
and the exploratory tunnel that takes scientists and visitors
into the mountain.
?They try to make us look like dopes and doofuses,? he
says of critics. ?It?s time for the gloves to come off.? But
critics, including environmentalists and the state of Nevada, say
that even more time and thought should go into how to dispose of
the waste, especially since it would be lethal for thousands of
years.
Burying the waste in Yucca Mountain is ?extremely bad
science, extremely bad law and extremely bad public policy,? Gov.
Kenny Guinn, a Republican, told Congress shortly before the U.S.
House voted overwhelmingly last month to back President Bush?s
recommendation that Yucca go forward.
Guinn has fought back with lawsuits and even cut off water
to the project site, which sits on federal land between the
Nellis Air Force Base and the Nevada Test Site, home of the
nation?s nuclear weapons testing until 1992, when the tests were
banned. The water war has led Yucca engineers to build their own
oasis ? a million-gallon reservoir in a desert populated by
cacti, coyotes and pack rats.
Senate signs off on Yucca
* NUCLEAR?S FUTURE AT STAKE*
Yucca itself isn?t much of a mountain, more of a ridge
actually. And it?s remote ? some 100 miles northwest of Las
Vegas. But that?s too close for the state of Nevada, which fears
a stigma on its gambling mecca and has commissioned dozens of
studies raising issues about the safety of the site as well as
transporting the waste across the country.
Most of the waste is uranium pellets that have been used
to power nuclear reactors and remain radioactive even after they
are spent. Backed by environmental groups, Nevada says the
nation?s nuclear waste should remain where it is now ? in storage
at the nuclear plants where the waste was generated ? until a
more suitable burial ground is found. ?It could be possible that
in 15-20 years we?ll have better technology, we?ll know a better
location for a repository, or we?ll have better science for
dealing with it,? says Susan Gordon, director of the Alliance for
Nuclear Accountability. The Bush administration has pushed hard
for Yucca because it wants to expand the use of nuclear power,
which now provides 20 percent of the nation?s electricity. The
industry wants to build 50 new nuclear power plants by 2020 at
existing sites, but says it won?t have enough space to expand
unless the waste is moved.
*Nuclear dumpsite* *?* Scientific and engineering questions
linger.
Bush signed off on the project in February, and the last
legislative hurdle was the Senate, where Yucca was approved in
early July. But even with approval, the project still needs a
license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and no shipments
would start before 2010.
* ?COWARDLY? CONGRESS*
The federal government first promised to create a
permanent repository when it committed to nuclear power in the
1950s, and funds for disposal are built into the rates of nuclear
power customers.
After studying disposal options that ranged from deep sea
burial to flying the waste into space, the Department of Energy
in the 1980s settled on an underground repository and came up
with a short list of nine sites.
But in 1987, Congress, unhappy with the high cost of
choosing a site, ordered that only Yucca be considered.
Washington state and Texas also were leading states, but Yucca
critics say Nevada lost out because it didn?t have the political
clout to block its selection.
Van Luik says he understands the anger. Congress ?cowardly
tried to shove it down the throat of Nevada,? he says.
But once the decision was made, he adds, it was the Energy
Department?s task to study and test Yucca?s suitability. Since
then, Nevadans have been ?scared by their politicians,? Van Luik
says.
Yucca Mountain would house spent nuclear fuel and high level
radioactive waste. Click a category from the menu above for
details on the project. *Spent nuclear fuel* from nuclear
reactors. Once a year, a third of the nuclear fuel is replaced
with new fuel. This used fuel is called spent nuclear fuel and is
highly radioactive.
*High-level radioactive* waste from the reprocessing of spent
nuclear fuel. *Transuranic radioactive waste,* resulting mainly
from manufacture of nuclear weapons.
*Uranium mill tailings* from the mining, milling of uranium ore.
*Low-level radioactive waste,* generally in the form of
radioactively contaminated industrial or research waste.
*Naturally occurring* radioactive material.
Spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste contain
short- and long-lived radionuclides.
Most radionuclides in the repository will decay to insignificant
levels within several hundred years.
Some radionuclides will take many thousands of years to decay to
nonthreatening levels.
The wastes are currently stored at commercial nuclear power
plants and Department of Energy facilities throughout the United
States.
Spent nuclear fuel is stored in specially designed water-filled
pools and above-ground dry storage facilities. However, storage
pools are reaching capacity at some nuclear power plants.
The Energy Department's current plan is to monitor the repository
for at least 50 years once the last waste package has been
disposed.
After the monitoring phase, DOE plans to seal the tunnels and
post a guard at the gate for as long as necessary.
Source: Environmental Protection Agency
* THE SCIENCE*
Yucca scientists note that more time has gone into
studying and testing the site than in sending the first man to
the moon.
?I have more confidence in this than opening a coal mine,?
says John Hartley, a geologist with the Yucca project. ?They
wouldn?t play all the ?what ifs? that we play here.?
Yucca Mountain: a national debate on nuclear waste
But the review board created by Congress to monitor Yucca
hasn?t shown the same confidence.
In a report issued just before Bush?s recommendation, the
Nuclear Waste Review Board said its confidence level was ?weak to
moderate? due to the ?many assumptions? that went into the
project.
By law, Yucca scientists don?t have to be as rigorous in
their projections of the nuclear waste?s fate beyond 10,000
years. But the board said those projections could be critically
important in analyzing whether water might rust the waste
containers over tens of thousands of years, allowing
radioactivity to seep into the water table below.
Some outside observers concur. ?No solid experiments or
theory confirm the predictions that casks can survive without
corrosive penetration for 10,000 years, let alone several hundred
thousand years, when the most severe groundwater contamination is
expected? says Thomas Pigford, a nuclear engineering professor at
the University of California, Berkeley.
MSNBC environment coverage
*****************************************************************
33 Israeli fear of nuclear proliferation
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 11:36:45 -0600 (CST)
The banalization of nuclear weapon," Ha'aretz (Dec 18, 2002)
By Reuven Pedhatzur
Last week the U.S. administration took another step on the dangerous road
toward turning nuclear weapons into a legitimate military instrument used for
offensives even if the U.S. is not facing an existential danger. This is a
genuine revolution in attitudes toward nuclear weapons and has far-reaching
implications regarding their use. The new American concept also has an
influence on Israel's own nuclear weapons policies.
While during the Cold War, atomic bombs were meant as a deterence against a
rival's use of such weapons, in the last year the Bush administration has been
conducting a process of legitimization of nuclear weapons as valid instruments
for use against countries that are not armed with nuclear bombs and, according
to the six-page memo issued by the president, against terror organizations as
well. America has thus abandoned one of the traditional cornerstones of its
nuclear policy. Nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort, when
America is in grave danger, but rather a legitimate and desirable weapon for
the management of war.
"The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to
respond with overwhelming force - including through resort to all of our
options - to the use of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and
friends and allies," the president's memo emphasized when it was published
last week under the title "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass
Destruction." In a briefing to reporters, meant to clarify the president's
intentions, a senior official said the "options" Bush was referring to
included nuclear weapons.
The innovation in the doctrine adopted by the president appears on its third
page. Since it is very possible that U.S. deterrence could fail, says the
administration, the U.S. will have no choice but to take preemptive action to
destory storehouses of weapons of mass destruction held by countries or
organizations that might use those weapons against U.S. citizens. In other
words, for the first time, the U.S. is threatening to undertake preemptive
nuclear strikes against potential threats that are not nuclear. That is
precisely the case in Iraq, which does not yet have nuclear bombs but only
chemical and biological weapons. There can be no doubt that among other
things, the U.S. administration is preparing the ground for its assault.
The administration went a step further, when it made clear that it plans to
change its traditional policies regarding the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, policies that until now have been based on diplomatic measures
and economic pressure. Bush emphasizes that he means to undertake an activist
policy also based on the use of military force, and if necessary, nuclear
weapons, to prevent the proliferation of weaponry that endangers the free
world.
In a secret appendix to the memo, the administration proposes targets in
addition to Iraq for this new activist enforcement policy: Syria, Iran, North
Korea and Libya, adding Libya and Syria to the "axis of evil," making them
declared targets of American military operations if they do not comply with
demands to cease equipping themselves with weapons of mass destruction.
The new doctrine is the third step taken by the White House this year on the
way to the banalization of nuclear weaponry. Previously there was a document
leaked at the start of the year, under the title Nuclear Posture Review, and
then the president's National Security Strategy paper was issued in September.
In both cases, the administration began formulating a new nuclear policy that
was finalized in the document issued last week.
One of the interesting aspects of the policy is the intent to accelerate
development of "small" nuclear weapons, to enable the activist enforcement
policy to hit well-defined targets in countries and terrorist groups that do
not comply with American demands. Of course there's no operational or moral
justification for this and the use of "small bombs" is as grave as the use of
strategic nuclear weapons. However, the Bush administration is trying to give
logical and rational cover to its policies. Thus, tactical nuclear weapons,
which both superpowers had the sense to remove from the European continent
decades ago, are back as just another routine instrument of war.
The new legitimacy granted by the U.S. to the use of nuclear weapons against
"rogue states," most of which are in the Middle East, has ramifications for
Israeli policy. If nuclear weapons are legitimate weapons that can be used for
"preemptive" strikes, then seemingly the nuclear threshold has also been
lowered for Israel's commitments.
That could be the start of a dangerous slide down the slope toward a national
security policy that we got as glimpse of this month in declarations by
top-level political and military policymakers about the need to respond with
"strategic weapons" in case of any Iraqi attack. In that context it's worth
reminding the policymakers that they should not forget that what superpowers
are allowed to do, little countries that depend on the superpowers are
prohibited from doing.
*****************************************************************
34 THE SECRET WAR ON IRAQ
Thursday 19 December 2002 06:34pm
John Pilger
THE American and British attack on Iraq has already begun. While
the Blair government continues to claim in Parliament that "no
final decision has been taken", Royal Air Force and US fighter
bombers have secretly changed tactics and escalated their
"patrols" over Iraq to an all-out assault on both military and
civilian targets.
American and British bombing of Iraq has increased by 300 per
cent. Between March and November, according to Ministry of
Defence replies to MPs, the RAF dropped more than 124 tonnes of
bombs.
From August to December, there were 62 attacks by American F-16
aircraft and RAF Tornadoes - an average of one bombing raid every
two days. These are said to have been aimed at Iraqi "air
defences", but many have fallen on mostly populated areas, where
civilian deaths are unavoidable.
Under the United Nations Charter and the conventions of war and
international law, the attacks amount to acts of piracy: no
different, in principle, from the German Luftwaffe's bombing in
Spain in the 1930s as precursor to its invasion of Europe.
The bombing is a "secret war" that has seldom been news. Since
1991, and especially in the last four years, it has been
unrelenting and is now deemed the longest Anglo-American campaign
of aerial bombardment since World War Two.
The US and British governments justify it by claiming they have a
UN mandate to police so-called "no-fly zones" which they declared
following the Gulf War. They say these "zones", which give them
control of most of Iraq's airspace, are legal and supported by UN
Security Council Resolution 688.
This is false. There are no references to no fly zones in any
Security Council resolution. To be sure about this, I asked Dr
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was Secretary General of the United
Nations in 1992 when Resolution 688 was passed. "The issue of no
fly zones was not raised and therefore not debated: not a word,"
he said. "They offer no legitimacy to countries sending their
aircraft to attack Iraq."
In 1999, Tony Blair claimed the no fly zones allowed the US and
Britain to perform "a vital humanitarian task" in protecting the
Kurds in the north of Iraq and the ethnic Marsh Arabs in the
south. In fact, British and American aircraft have actually
provided cover for neighbouring Turkey's repeated invasions of
northern, Kurdish Iraq.
TURKEY is critical to the American "world order". Overseeing the
oilfields of the Middle East and Central Asia, it is a member of
Nato and the recipient of billion of dollars' worth of American
weapons and military equipment. It is also where British and
American bombers are based.
A long-running insurrection by Turkey's Kurdish population is
regarded by Washington as a threat to the "stability" of Turkey's
"democracy" that is a front for its military which is among the
world's worst violators of human rights. Hundreds of thousands of
Turkish Kurds have been displaced and an estimated 30,000 killed.
Turkey, unlike Iraq, is "our friend".
In 1995 and 1997, as many as 50,000 Turkish troops, backed by
tanks and fighter aircraft, occupied what the West called
"Kurdish safe havens".
They terrorised Kurdish villages and murdered civilians. In
December 2000, they were back, committing the atrocities that the
Turkish military commits with immunity against its own Kurdish
population.
For joining the US "coalition" against Iraq, the Turkish regime
is to be rewarded with a bribe worth $6billion. Turkey's
invasions are rarely reported in Britain. So great is the
collusion of the Blair government that, virtually unknown to
Parliament and the British public, the RAF and the Americans
have, from time to time, deliberately suspended their
"humanitarian" patrols to allow the Turks to get on with killing
Kurds in Iraq.
In March last year, RAF pilots patrolling the "no fly zone" in
Kurdish Iraq publicly protested for the first time about their
enforced complicity in the Turkish campaign. The pilots
complained that they were frequently ordered to return to their
base in Turkey to allow the Turkish air force to bomb the very
people they were meant to be "protecting".
Speaking on a non-attributable basis to Dr Eric Herring, a senior
lecturer in politics at Bristol University and a specialist on
Iraqi sanctions, the pilots said whenever the Turks wanted to
attack the Kurds in Iraq, RAF patrols were recalled to base and
ground crews were told to switch off their radar - so that the
Turks' targets would not be visible. One British pilot reported
seeing the devastation in Kurdish villages caused by the attacks
once he had resumed his patrol.
AMERICAN pilots who fly in tandem with the British, are also
ordered to turn their planes around and turn back to Turkey to
allow the Turks to devastate the Kurdish "safe havens".
You'd see Turkish F-14s and F-16s inbound, loaded to the gills
with munitions," one pilot told the Washington Post. "Then they'd
come out half an hour later with their munitions expended." When
the Americans returned to Iraqi air space, he said, they would
see "burning villages, lots of smoke and fire."
The Turks do no more than American and British aircraft in their
humanitarian guise. The sheer scale of the Anglo-American bombing
is astonishing, with Britain a very junior partner. During the 18
months to January 1999 (the last time I was able to confirm
official US figures) American aircraft flew 36,000 sorties over
Iraq, including 24,000 combat missions.
The term "combat" is highly deceptive. Iraq has virtually no air
force and no modern air defences. Thus, "combat" means dropping
bombs or firing missiles at infrastructure that has been laid to
waste by a 12-year-old embargo.
The Wall Street Journal, the authentic voice of the American
establishment, described this eloquently when it reported that
the US faced "a genuine dilemma" in Iraq. After eight years of
enforcing a no fly zone in northern (and southern) Iraq, few
targets remain. "We're down to the last outhouse," one US
official protested.
I have seen the result of these attacks. When I drove from the
northern city of Mosul three years ago, I saw the remains of an
agricultural water tanker and truck, riddled with bullet holes,
shrapnel from a missile, a shoe and the wool and skeletons of
about 150 sheep.
A family of six, a shepherd, his father and his wife and four
children, were blown to pieces here. It was treeless, open
country: a moonscape. The shepherd, his family and his sheep
would have been clearly visible from the air.
The shepherd's brother, Hussain Jarsis, agreed to meet me at the
cemetery where the family is buried. He arrived in an old Toyota
van with the widow, who was hunched with grief, her face covered.
She held the hand of her one remaining child, and they sat beside
the mounds of earth that are the four children's graves. "I want
to see the pilot who killed my children," she shouted across to
us.
The shepherd's brother told me, "I heard explosions, and when I
arrived to look for my brother and family, the planes were
circling overhead. I hadn't reached the causeway when the fourth
bombardment took place. The last two rockets hit them.
"At the time I couldn't grasp what was going on. The truck was
burning. It was a big truck, but it was ripped to pieces. Nothing
remained except the tyres and the numberplate.
"We saw three corpses, but the rest were just body parts. With
the last rocket, I could see the sheep blasted into the air."
It was not known if American or British aircraft had done this.
When details of the attack were put to the Ministry of Defence in
London, an official said, "We reserve the right to take robust
action when threatened." This attack was significant, because it
was investigated and verified by the senior United Nations
official in Iraq at the time, Hans Von Sponeck, who drove there
specially from Baghdad.
He confirmed that nothing nearby resembled a military
installation.
Von Sponeck recorded his finding in a confidential internal
document entitled, "Air Strikes in Iraq", prepared by the UN
Security Section (UNOHCI).
HE also confirmed dozens of similar attacks and these are
documented - attacks on villages, a fishermen's wharf, nearby a
UN food warehouse. So regular were the attacks that Von Sponeck
ordered UN relief convoys suspended every afternoon.
FOR this, Von Sponeck, a senior United Nations civil servant with
a distinguished career all over the world, made powerful enemies
in Washington and London.
The Americans demanded that Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General,
sack him and were surprised when Annan stood by his chief
representative in Iraq.
However, within a few months, Von Sponeck felt he could no longer
run a humanitarian programme in Iraq that was threatened both by
the illegal bombing and by a deliberate American policy of
blocking humanitarian supplies.
He resigned in protest, just as his predecessor, Denis Halliday,
a Deputy Under Secretary of the UN, had done. Halliday called the
US and British-driven embargo "genocidal".
It is now clear from official documents that the United States is
preparing for a possible slaughter in Iraq. The Pentagon's
"Doctrine for Joint Urban Operations" says that unless Baghdad
falls quickly it has to be the target of "overwhelming
firepower". The resistance of Stalingrad in World War Two is
given as a "lesson".
Cluster bombs, deep penetration "bunker" bombs and depleted
uranium will almost certainly be used. Depleted uranium is a
weapon of mass destruction. Coated on missiles, and tank shells,
its explosive force spreads radiation over a wide area,
especially in the desert dust.
Professor Doug Rokke, the US army physicist in charge of cleaning
up depleted uranium in Kuwait told me, "I am like most -people in
southern Iraq. I have 5,000 times the recommended level of
radiation in my body. What we're seeing now, respiratory
problems, kidney problems, cancers are the direct result.
"The controversy over whether or not it's the cause of these
problems is a manufactured one. My own ill-health is a testament
to that."
THE most devastating weapon of mass destruction was briefly in
the news last week when Unicef, the United Nations children's
Fund, released its annual State of the World's Children report.
The human cost of the American-driven embargo of Iraq is spelt
out in statistics that require no comment.
"Iraq's child mortality rate has nearly tripled since 1990 to
levels found in some of the world's least-developed countries, "
said the report.
"The country's regression over the past decade is by far the most
severe of the 193 countries surveyed. Unicef said that a quarter
of Iraqi babies were now underweight and that more than a fifth
were stunted from malnutrition."
Under the rules of the embargo, Iraqis are allowed less than £100
per person with which to sustain life for an entire year.
To date, the cost of the current, "secret" and illegal British
bombing of Iraq is a billion pounds.
December 19, 2002
*Santa Fe New Mexican* *_home_*
By JEFF TOLLEFSON | The New Mexican 12/19/2002
* A local watchdog group Wednesday alleged that Los Alamos
National Laboratory is not in compliance with the Clean Air Act,
countering an independent audit released in October that
indicated the lab has fulfilled its obligations under the federal
law. *
In accordance with the 1996 settlement of a Clean Air Act lawsuit
filed by Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, South
Carolina-based Risk Assessment Corp. has conducted three audits
in the past four years looking at emissions of radioactive
particles at the lab. The third, released this fall, determined
the lab had met its obligations and that a fourth audit would not
be necessary. But Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety is
challenging that determination and calling for a fourth audit.
Although Wednesday's report cites several problems with the third
audit, it focuses on the emission of radioactive particles into
the air from hundreds of smaller facilities at Los Alamos, The
lab uses computer modeling to determine radioactive emissions
from these facilities, but Concerned Citizens maintains the lab
must periodically take actual measurements to ensure the modeling
is based on accurate information.
"How do you tell whether a facility is complying with the
regulations? Well, you take measurements," said Arjun Makhijani,
who heads the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in
Washington, D.C. Makhijani is serving as a technical advisor to
Concerned Citizens as part of the court settlement.
Laboratory spokesman James Rickman said the laboratory
"respectfully disagrees" with Concerned Citizens' interpretation
of the law. He noted that both the independent auditors, chosen
by the lab and Concerned Citizens, as well as the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, have determined the lab has met
its obligations.
"One thing we want to make clear is, the laboratory is in
compliance with the Clean Air Act. To suggest otherwise is
irresponsible and disingenuous," he said.
He said the Clean Air Act requires such measurements as part of a
"quality assurance" program. Although an earlier agreement
between the lab and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
allowed the lab to skip these periodic measurements, Makhijani
said this agreement was terminated in 1999. As such, he argued,
the lab must abide by the Clean Air Act and conduct on-site
measurements at these facilities.
"There are hundreds and hundreds of places where emissions are
not monitored," Makhijani said.
Rickman said the lab is operating under a 1994 memorandum of
understanding between headquarters of both the U.S. Department of
Energy and the EPA. The agreement established a way of
calculating a conservative estimate of total radioactive
emissions based on the total amount of the radioactive materials
used in these facilities each year, he said.
Rickman said the lab believes its method of calculating overall
annual doses is more accurate since random sampling of these
facilities would vary depending on the time and type of activity
under way.
"What you would see out of those sources is so infinitesimally
low (that) it's not going to give you any meaningful data," he
said.
George Brozowski, regional-health physicist for the EPA in
Dallas, said he would need to review agreements with the lab and
take another look at the Clean Air Act before weighing in on the
debate.
Nonetheless, Brozowski noted, "As far as the Environmental
Protection Agency is concerned, Los Alamos is in compliance."
Citing recent allegations of lab cover-ups and a culture that
tends to deny rather than address problems, Makhijani argued that
the self-reporting system used to estimate emissions at these
smaller laboratories is equally "open to abuse."
As evidence that pressure from management can affect the
reporting of significant safety violations, Wednesday's report
included a statement from Bill Parras. Contacted Wednesday, the
former lab employee alleged that he was demoted and ultimately
fired in 1995 for questioning a superior who refused to report a
fire in 1993 in one of the glove boxes at Technical Area 55, the
lab's main plutonium facility.
John Till, president of Risk Assessment Corp., which conducted
the audits, could not be reached for comment. When releasing the
final audit in October, however, Till praised the audit process
and the lab for its "unprecedented openness" while commending its
progress during the last few years.
Joni Arends of Concerned Citizens acknowledged the lab has made
significant progress but said it now needs to complete its
obligations under the Clean Air Act. While her group plans to
enter into the dispute resolution process laid out in the court
settlement next month, Arends said, she expects the issue to wind
up back in federal court.
Get Copyright Clearance
Santa Fe New Mexican
*****************************************************************
40 New Flats cleanup levels disputed
The Daily Camera: Broomfield
Comment sought on new plan for cleaning plant
By Katy Human, For the Enterprise
December 18, 2002
WESTMINSTER — A new cleanup plan for Rocky Flats has earned
general support from politicians and local government officials,
but some residents of nearby communities say it doesn't go far
enough.
At a public hearing Tuesday, about a dozen people spoke against
a plan for new cleanup levels at the former nuclear weapons site
south of Boulder.
They acknowledged that the new plan is safer and more thorough
than previous versions and that it meets state and federal
regulations, but they are asking for more.
"Legality and safety are not identical," said LeRoy Moore, an
activist with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center.
"Plutonium in the environment poses an essentially permanent
danger."
Rep. Mark Udall, D-Boulder, and Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.,
expressed their support for the new cleanup plan in a letter,
and several other local government officials spoke in general
support of it.
Plutonium, which can cause cancer, was used for several decades
at Rocky Flats to make parts of nuclear bombs, and it still
taints some of the site's buildings and soils. So do other
dangerous chemicals, from uranium to organic solvents.
Under the proposed new plan, Rocky Flats workers would scour
more plutonium and other dangerous contaminants from surface
dirt than originally planned. To do so while also preventing the
cleanup budget from growing, they willleave behind more buried
contamination, including old pipes buried more than 3 feet deep.
The Department of Energy, which owns Rocky Flats and expects to
turn it into a wildlife refuge by 2006, hosted Tuesday's meeting
six weeks before public comments are due on the new cleanup
plan.
Buried contamination didn't sit well with Victor Holm, chair of
the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board, and many other
speakers. Miles of old waste pipes snake through the soil below
and between buildings at Rocky Flats, and contaminated pipes
could be exposed through erosion.
"We'd like to see all process waste lines between and around old
plutonium buildings be removed," Holm said.
He and others also said they worried about the long-term future
of Rocky Flats, and making sure money is available for
unforeseen problems in the future.
Gene Schmidt, the new Department of Energy manager for Rocky
Flats, assured him and others that the government is committed
to the future health of area citizens.
"We think our cleanup is safe," he said. "If we're proven wrong,
the department remains committed to remediate whatever we need
to remediate."
Sam Dixion of Westminster, chair of the Rocky Flats Coalition of
Local governments, thanked Flats officials for their hard work
on a plan she said reflected much of what her community had
asked for.
Dixion said she remains concerned about cleanup plans for some
buried contamination, and will address that in written comments
later.
Copyright 2002, The Daily Camera and the E.W. Scripps Company.
All rights
*****************************************************************
41 Benton calls for FFTF study
This story was published Fri, Dec 13, 2002
By John Stang Herald staff writer
Benton County contends recent changes in the Fast Flux Test
Facility's situation bolsters its legal case calling for a full
environmental impact study before the reactor can be shut down.
The county filed those arguments last week in U.S. District
Court.
During the next two months, the county and the Department of
Energy are expected to submit back-and-forth written arguments
over whether the federal agency should soon proceed with closing
the dormant reactor.
Oral arguments are scheduled for Feb. 25 in the Federal Building
in Richland. U.S. District Judge Ed Shea's decision on the
environmental impact study will be issued sometime after that.
The Benton County government, spearheaded by county Commissioner
Claude Oliver, filed a lawsuit Nov. 8 in an attempt to force DOE
to conduct a full environmental impact study.
In the past two years, DOE twice decided that not enough missions
could be found to economically justify resurrecting the FFTF.
Benton County and a local grassroots group, Citizens for Medical
Isotopes, want to revive the reactor, citing its capability to
create medical isotopes to combat cancer.
The private group is not a plaintiff, a move to nullify Oliver's
potentially conflicting roles as a county commissioner and as
president of Citizens for Medical Isotopes.
DOE's Richland office referred questions on the county's latest
court filing to the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters. When
the Herald called Washington, D.C., midafternoon Pacific Standard
Time, it was past closing time at DOE's headquarters, and no one
could be reached for comment.
In its filing, the county argued:
-- DOE's recent decision to fund FFTF's shutdown with
environmental cleanup money, instead of with the agency's nuclear
energy money, creates an environmental impact. That's because
FFTF will compete for money with other DOE cleanup projects at
Hanford and elsewhere, said attorney John Bolliger, who
represents Benton County in the litigation.
-- A recent Fluor Hanford proposal
to eventually store FFTF's nonirradiated and slightly irradiated
nuclear fuel at the Plutonium Finishing Plant has environmental
consequences to be studied. Fluor has been submitting draft FFTF
shutdown plans to DOE as the two figure out the best way to close
the reactor.
Meanwhile, DOE and Fluor recently agreed to finish most of the
PFP's cleanup by 2006, instead of the previous deadline of 2009,
leaving mostly demolition work to be tackled after that date. The
county's filing argued the combination of the accelerated PFP
work plus the proposal to send FFTF fuel to the PFP lead to
environmental consequences to be studied.
-- The big picture has changed with Tommy Thompson, U.S.
secretary of Health and Human Services, asking Energy Secretary
Spencer Abraham last month to consider FFTF as a source of
medical isotopes.
Oliver and Bolliger also pointed to DOE pondering if a
closed-down FFTF should be sealed off or demolished to create a
natural landscape. Fluor's draft plans lean toward sealing.
Oliver and Bolliger contended sealing and leaving the main
reactor building creates a long-term environmental threat,
arguing that requires a full environmental impact study.
Such a study usually takes several months, or possibly more than
a year, to finish. If the FFTF supporters win in court, they
would gain many extra months to pursue their cause. If the FFTF
supporters lose, DOE is scheduled to continue shutdown efforts in
March.
Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
42 Thompson Mechanical wins $4 million Hanford contract
This story was published Fri, Dec 13, 2002
By the Herald staff
Thompson Mechanical Contractors Inc., a Richland-based subsidiary
of Zellweger Luwa Group, has won a contract worth about $4
million to provide a cooling tower for the Hanford Waste
Treatment and Isolation Plant.
Bechtel National Inc., lead contractor on the $5.6 billion
project to treat radioactive and hazardous tank wastes, signed a
contract with Thompson on Wednesday.
Under the contract, the company will provide engineering,
procurement and construction of the cooling tower, which will be
centrally situated at the treatment site and will cool multiple
buildings. The cooling system is needed because the melters used
to vitrify the wastes generate excessive heat.
The cooling tower is to be complete by April 2004.
Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
43 Support for FFTF at issue
This story was published Sun, Dec 15, 2002
By John Stang Herald staff writer
The Tri-City organization whose middle name used to be nuclear is
growing tepid in its support for keeping a Hanford research
reactor alive, charges one of the most zealous backers of saving
the Fast Flux Test Facility.
Claude Oliver, president of Citizens for Medical Isotopes and a
Benton County commissioner, is openly suggesting some board
members of the Tri-City Economic Development Council are working
behind the scenes to sabotage efforts to save FFTF.
The motive, Oliver implied, is financial gain. But he stopped
short of making any direct accusations and didn't offer a theory
about how anyone might benefit from a secret anti-FFTF effort.
TRIDEC, which once was known as the Tri-City Nuclear Industrial
Council, remains on record as opposed to permanently shutting
down the experimental reactor, which is owned by the Department
of Energy.
Oliver said he wants full public disclosure of the financial
interests of all 39 members of the Tri-City Economic Development
Council board.
He specifically wants Bob Ferguson, head of Nuvotec and TRIDEC's
board vice chairman for Hanford programs, to be the first to
disclose his financial interests.
"Bob Ferguson is the power behind TRIDEC," Oliver said.
Ferguson, a longtime Tri-Citian who once led the Washington
Public Power Supply System and before that played a key role in
FFTF's construction, has been out of town for several days and
could not be reached for comment. During the 1990s, he led
pro-FFTF lobbying efforts.
TRIDEC's two top officials -- board Chairman Frank Armijo and
President Bill Martin -- dismissed Oliver's suspicions as
unfounded and say disclosure of financial interests of the
volunteer board is unwarranted.
"It's a ridiculous request and concept," Martin said.
What's more, the contention that Ferguson runs TRIDEC is
misguided, he said. "Bob Ferguson does not control TRIDEC. No one
individual holds sway over the group."
Oliver's criticisms are the latest chapter in a decade-long
battle over saving FFTF.
In the past two years, DOE twice decided not enough missions
exist to justify resurrecting the reactor. Right now, the
shutdown is stalled by a lawsuit filed by Benton County.
Tri-City leaders have presented a united front in efforts to
convince DOE to save the reactor until a week ago, when longtime
FFTF supporter Vic Parrish, chief executive officer of Energy
Northwest (the successor to WPPSS), wrote an opinion column for
the Dec. 8 Tri-City Herald that said the revival battle is lost,
and Tri-Citians should focus on obtainable goals.
He became the first Tri-City leader to take that stance publicly.
Mike Lawrence, a former Richland DOE manager and another
high-profile leader in the Tri-City nuclear community, wrote a
letter to the editor that backed Parrish. Lawrence stressed he
wrote as a private individual.
Oliver believes Parrish acted as a front man for some unnamed
people interested in the FFTF shutting down.
"He has been prompted by other forces in the community to do
this," Oliver said.
Parrish said he wrote the column on his own, however. As the head
of Energy Northwest and a community leader, he said, he felt it
was time to address the issue realistically. Martin and Armijo
also said no one in TRIDEC tried to influence Parrish.
"Vic Parrish? No one could convince him to do anything unless he
thought it was the right thing to do," Armijo said.
Last summer, when the TRIDEC board unanimously supported studying
FFTF as a potential source of medical isotopes to combat cancer,
the action came after some internal debates and discussions.
"TRIDEC had several of the same questions Vic Parrish mentioned
in his article concerning the FFTF," Armijo said. "TRIDEC never
received clear answers to these questions. Nonetheless, TRIDEC
passed a resolution in support of the FFTF again just a few
months ago."
Parrish's column noted the unsuccessful searches for a viable
private owner-operator for FFTF, the long and uncertain federal
licensing process, obtaining liability insurance and the disposal
of radioactive wastes.
"Unfortunately, it seems that whoever asks what seem to be very
valid questions concerning the FFTF initiative, those individuals
get maligned. I believe this hurts the FFTF cause when rather
than addressing issues, individuals' intentions or motivations
get questioned," Armijo said.
TRIDEC's board is to meet Thursday, although FFTF is not on the
agenda. "But I'm sure it will be discussed," Armijo said.
TRIDEC, a private nonprofit corporation, is among the Tri-Cities'
most influential institutions and often receives state and
federal economic development grants. Members include small and
large businesses, governments, colleges, Hanford contractors,
state representatives and other interests.
Lawrence, Oliver and Ferguson are on the board. Parrish is not,
but Energy Northwest official Jack Baker is. Its board has always
included the Herald's publisher as well.
Board policy requires members to disclose conflicts of interest,
says they cannot represent TRIDEC in conflict situations and must
abstain from voting on those matters.
The two officials on the board from Fluor Hanford, which runs the
FFTF, routinely abstain on FFTF-related votes, Martin said, as
does Lawrence because Battelle, his employer, handles some FFTF
interests.
Armijo and Martin said full public disclosure of the board
members' financial interests would discourage people from serving
on a volunteer board.
Martin said chairman-elect Sandy Matheson plans to review
conflict-of-interest rules with all board members when she
assumes her post in January.
Oliver already walks a conflict-of-interest tightrope as a county
commissioner and president of Citizens for Medical Isotopes. The
Benton County Prosecutor's Office has reviewed that situation and
concluded that Oliver could ethically hold both posts, but also
warned him to be careful.
As a result, Citizens for Medical Isotopes did not join Benton
County in the federal lawsuit trying to force DOE to conduct a
full environmental impact study prior to closing FFTF.
Oliver believes Benton County, Citizens for Medical Isotopes and
U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., are the only ones left lobbying
wholeheartedly for FFTF in Washington, D.C.
He contended TRIDEC's Washington, D.C., lobbyists have not been
as aggressive as they should be.
Sam Volpentest, who is in charge of TRIDEC's lobbying of the
federal government, was ill Friday and unavailable to discuss
Oliver's contentions.
Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
44 Radioactive waste agreement reached
This story was published Tue, Dec 17, 2002
By John Stang and Chris Mulick Herald staff writers
OLYMPIA -- Washington won't contest a plan by the federal
government to send some transuranic wastes to Hanford if the
state and Department of Energy can agree by March 1 on how to
deal with Hanford's solid radioactive wastes.
DOE and the state made the arrangement late Friday as Washington
was on the brink of filing a federal lawsuit on the matter, Gov.
Gary Locke announced Monday. U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria
Cantwell, both D-Wash., also discussed the issue with DOE late
last week.
Under the deal, the state will let DOE send 170 barrels of
transuranic wastes to Hanford in return for the two sides
agreeing on milestones by March 1 to deal with the site's
radioactive low-level, transuranic and mixed radioactive-chemical
wastes.
Those milestones are to be added to the Tri-Party Agreement, the
legal pact that governs Hanford's cleanup.
Meanwhile, DOE agreed to an earlier stance -- two barrels of
Hanford's transuranic wastes will be shipped out for every barrel
imported from another DOE site.
"This allows us to give a little to get a lot in return," said
Tom Fitzsimmons, director of the state Department of Ecology.
DOE's Hanford Manager Keith Klein said: " 'A little in, a lot
out' about characterizes this agreement."
The first outside transuranic wastes will head to Hanford on
Wednesday from a small Battelle site near Columbus, Ohio, and
from a small DOE-related lab near San Francisco.
DOE originally planned to start shipping these wastes to Hanford
in early November. DOE wants to take transuranic wastes from
small sites unable to check and repack these materials -- and
send them to Hanford, which has those capabilities. Hanford will
store those wastes until they are shipped to a permanent
underground storage site near Carlsbad, N.M.
But the state objected.
Washington's Department of Ecology didn't like DOE sending
outside wastes to Hanford without the state knowing the overall
volumes and timetables of future shipments. The state wants a
legal say over those factors.
Also, the state didn't like Hanford not having timetables for
dealing with its own transuranic, mixed and low-level wastes in
the Tri-Party Agreement.
Talks dragged out because DOE didn't want to get locked into
numerous enforceable deadlines. And Washington and DOE have
different interpretations on whether a state can regulate federal
transuranic wastes. DOE was reluctant to set a precedent with
Washington that other states might try to copy.
State Attorney General Christine Gregoire said Washington's
threat of a filing a lawsuit Monday prompted DOE to reach
Friday's agreement. "I have the scars to prove it," Klein said.
Fitzsimmons said two more factors will come into play this
spring.
One factor is that DOE recently agreed to redo a draft
environmental impact study on Hanford's transuranic, mixed and
low-level wastes. A draft unveiled a few months ago was heavily
criticized because it was too skimpy to be effective. The state
expects DOE to produce another draft around March that will
include estimates of how much wastes other DOE sites might send
to Hanford.
A second factor is that DOE, Washington and other states with DOE
sites might swap information on their waste problems this spring.
That is supposed to clarify which sites would ship what volumes
to which receiving sites to help the national nuclear cleanup
effort.
Meanwhile, the new DOE-Washington agreement to be reached by
March 1 will address Hanford's:
n Transuranic wastes, which are junk in 55-gallon barrels. These
are highly radioactive and take thousands to millions of years to
decay. Hanford has 37,000 barrels buried on-site. Hanford also
has a facility to examine those barrels and their contents to
make sure they meet the New Mexico repository's requirements and
to fix those barrels if needed.
n Buried mixed wastes. Right now, technology has not been
perfected to neutralize chemical-laced radioactive wastes.
Hanford is expected to produce 70,000 cubic meters of its own
mixed wastes and receive another 140,000 cubic meters from other
DOE sites.
n Low-level wastes, which are slightly radioactive junk in
55-gallon barrels. Hanford still has to examine most of its
low-level wastes and fix the barrels before reburying them.
Hanford is expected to produce 140,000 cubic meters of its own
low-level wastes and receive up to another 200,000 cubic meters
for other DOE sites.
In return, Hanford has the state's OK to receive 115 barrels of
remote-handled transuranic wastes and 10 barrels of
contact-handled transuranic wastes from Ohio, plus 15 to 34
barrels of remote-handled wastes and 11 barrels of
contact-handled wastes from California over the next several
months.
"Contact-handled" means a worker in protective clothes can touch
the barrel. "Remote-handled" means the wastes are so radioactive
that only remote-control equipment can touch the barrels. The New
Mexico site does not have a federal license yet to accept
remote-handled transuranic wastes. And Hanford needs to improve
its capabilities to process remote-handled wastes.
The Carlsbad site is supposed get its remote-handled waste
license between 2004 and 2006.
Fitzsimmons said Hanford is supposed to ship the imported
remote-handled transuranic wastes soon after that. But Gerald
Pollet, director of Heart of America Northwest, contended
imported remote-handled wastes likely will stay at Hanford into
the next decade.
Pollet contended most imported wastes will be stored in unlined
trenches in central Hanford, increasing the risk of rainwater
sweeping radioactive substances into the ground water.
Meanwhile, DOE spokeswoman Colleen Clark said imported
transuranic and mixed wastes will be stored in above-ground 200
West Area buildings or inside T Plant. Imported low-level wastes
will be buried in concrete vaults inside trenches, she said.
Pollet also said Heart of America has obtained a copy of a DOE
proposal to ship remote-handled transuranic wastes to Hanford
from three DOE-related labs in California and the Nevada Test
Site.
Pollet said: "DOE picked the two easiest sites (with Columbus and
San Francisco) to snooker Washington to allow wastes in, and get
the camel's nose under the tent (to make it easier for DOE to add
extra waste shipments to Hanford)."
However, Clark said no plan currently is in the works for Hanford
to import wastes from additional sites. But if DOE believes in
the future that it makes sense for Hanford to receive wastes from
other small sites, the agency will evaluate that possibility on a
case-by-case basis, she said.
Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
45 CH2M Hill testing sprinkler device in waste tank
This story was published Wed, Dec 18, 2002
By John Stang Herald staff writer
It looks like an upside-down lawn sprinkler.
But it's Hanford's first real-life experiment with removing solid
radioactive gunk from inside one of its huge underground waste
tanks.
Two weeks ago, CH2M Hill Hanford Group turned on the sprinkler
hanging inside Tank U-107, allowing it to spray and gradually
turn radioactive salt cake in the tank into waste-laced water to
be pumped out.
By February, CH2M Hill and the Department of Energy's Office of
River Protection hope to dissolve and pump out 100,000 gallons of
the 320,000 gallons of solids inside Tank U-107.
Then they'll spend a couple of months analyzing whether the
technique works effectively, said Jim Thompson, the Office of
River Protection's single-shell tanks project manager, and Terry
Sams, CH2M Hill's retrieval and closure projects strategic
planner.
If the technique appears successful, CH2M Hill and DOE will
discuss the study results with Washington's Department of Ecology
to see if the state approves of the technique.
This sprinkler system is one of three techniques Hanford is
considering to remove solid wastes from its 177 underground tanks
-- which include 149 older, leak-prone single-shell tanks.
The tanks hold 53 million gallons of wastes. More than 22
millions are liquid, with most in 28 newer double-shell tanks
awaiting eventual glassification. But 31 million gallons of solid
wastes are in all 177 tanks.
DOE recently set a goal to remove all liquid and solid wastes
from 26 to 40 tanks by the end of 2006, then close those tanks.
First, however, officials need to decide the best way to do that.
The first technique to be tested is the sprinkler system in Tank
U-107.
The second technique will be to insert hoses and pumps into tanks
S-102 and S-112 to more forcefully break up and dissolve solid
wastes so they can be pumped out. This will be attempted in late
2003.
The third technique will use a tank crawler -- a miniature
bulldozer teamed up with a huge vacuum cleanerlike device -- that
is expected to be tested in Tank C-104, possibly in 2004.
CH2M Hill and DOE will study the capabilities and limitations of
each technique. The idea is to match the proper techniques with
the types of wastes inside each tank, Sams and Thompson said.
Sams and Thompson believe the pace of cleaning out the 26 to 40
tanks will speed up after the tests because the equipment can be
duplicated so several tanks can be pumped out simultaneously.
Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
46 DOE CUTBACKS: National security at issue
Thursday, December 19, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Nevada workers worry about more than being laid off
By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Federal worker LaTomya Glass stands Wednesday outside the the
Energy Department's office in North Las Vegas where more than 60
percent of the National Nuclear Security Administration staff
faces layoffs or transfers.
Emotional fallout hit the Energy Department's work force in North
Las Vegas on Wednesday, the day after the National Nuclear
Security Administration announced a plan for deep cutbacks and
transfers that will affect two-thirds of the federal staff that
oversees the Nevada Test Site.
Five employees said in interviews on their lunch hour that they
are scared, disheartened, confused and worried that national
security will be affected as field work at the test site takes on
more responsibilities to counter terrorism with less personnel to
oversee the effort as well as maintain the test site's mission to
keep U.S. nuclear weapons safe and reliable.
"I just bought a house and I've been looking for three years. Now
I'm going to have to start thinking about selling it and I might
have to go somewhere I don't want to go," said LaTomya Glass, a
13-year public affairs employee who stands to be among the 20
percent of the administration's work force facing a nationwide,
across-the-board downsizing. Some of it will occur through
attrition and job phase-outs by Sept. 30, 2004.
"Definitely, my future with the NNSA is over with," Glass said.
For different reasons, all five said the force-reduction plan
doesn't make sense. One said he hopes Congress will realize its
shortcomings and retain much of the federal staff of 237 who work
in the $39 million office building that the government built five
years ago to support the agency's Nevada operations.
"It's scary to us that the operational aspects are done in the
field, yet the biggest cut is to field operations," said Steve
Curtis, program manager for National Emergency Response, a
program aimed at improving the nation's ability to respond to a
radiological disaster.
"If you look at it from a common sense perspective, you should
put the assets in the field. The opposite is happening here," he
said. "It's hard to see the logic of how this fits."
The plan outlined by National Nuclear Security Administration
acting chief Linton Brooks would reduce the federal work force of
the Nevada office by more than 60 percent over the next two years
and shift some of its responsibilities to New Mexico.
This would leave all but 80 of the local offices vacant and
consolidate "service center" personnel such as procurement, legal
and support staff into an older building at New Mexico's Kirtland
Air Force Base. The administration's Washington, D.C.,
headquarters will see a reduction from 421 to 292 workers and its
Oakland, Calif., office will close entirely.
Brooks, in an e-mail to Nevada workers, said streamlining the
administration more than two years after it was created as a
branch of the Department of Energy was necessary to increase
efficiency by removing duplication. He said Nevada was not
singled out to suffer the brunt of the reorganization.
One analyst, Steven Miller, policy director for the Nevada Policy
Research Institute, a private, free-market think tank, said in
general the reorganization plan appears to be an admission of an
overgrown bureaucracy.
"You would expect if the federal government itself thinks it's
got too much bureaucracy they probably do," Miller said.
Carol Shelton, a national security project manager at the Nevada
office, said the issue isn't whether or not some degree of
reorganization is needed. "The issue," she said, "is `Has Nevada
been disproportionately targeted?' "
She said if the cuts are too deep, it could result in a knowledge
gap in critical arenas of national security that will become
increasingly more difficult to fill as the more experienced
workers retire and those who have gained experience are let go.
Some of the workers who were interviewed said they felt Nevada's
congressional delegation was "out of the loop."
A spokeswoman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Reid and Sen.
John Ensign, R-Nev., "were left out of the loop by the Bush
administration."
"Senator Reid is going to fight and do whatever it takes to try
and keep those jobs," said the spokeswoman, Tessa Hafen.
Ensign's spokeswoman Sari Mann said the senator talked to Brooks
late Monday and was assured that Nevada will retain close to 100
jobs.
Likewise, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., complained in a letter to
Brooks on Tuesday.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., in a letter Wednesday to Brooks,
said the plan is "is deeply troubling" and comes "at a time when
the Nevada Test Site is dramatically expanding its core
functions."
One Nevada employee, Tammie Henderson, said she felt the state's
delegation was less effective than Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.,
who "was on top of his game" to get the service center activities
consolidated in his state.
"No one stepped up and fought for us," said Henderson, a contract
specialist and small-business program manager who has worked more
than 10 years at the Nevada office after starting as a summer
intern from Fort Valley State University in Georgia.
"You're told a week before Christmas that your office will no
longer be in existence. What a way to start the holiday season,"
Henderson said.
Kirsten Kellogg, an eight-year employee of the Nevada office who
was hired through a student career program said she fears she
will be among the first to lose her job as a public affairs
specialist.
"It's scary," she said, "because I thought this would be a
career."
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 Stephens Media
*****************************************************************
47 Lab's laser reaches a milestone
Contra Costa Times | 12/19/2002 |
[cctimes.com - The cctimes home page]
Light spawns renewed hope for simulated nuclear testing in
Livermore
By Andrea Widener CONTRA COSTA TIMES
LIVERMORE - Light has coursed through what will be the world's
largest laser for the first time, a milestone that Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory officials say proves the project is moving
in the right direction.
Scientists and engineers building the National Ignition Facility
reached the important goal, aptly called "first light" a year or
more ahead of the laser's new, federally mandated schedule.
The achievement puts the once troubled laser project a step
closer to its goal to simulate temperatures and pressures found
only in circumstances such as nuclear explosions, to avoid the
need for underground nuclear testing.
Four of the laser's 192 beams were fired in a millisecond pulse
of infrared light that streamed through the stadium-size
building, stopping just short of the laser's immense spherical
target chamber. First light was achieved last week, on Dec. 11.
Lab scientists created a second, more powerful light pulse this
week on Wednesday, which alone makes it the world's second
largest laser, they said.
"It is a really gratifying experience that we have pulled this
off," project director Ed Moses said.
The first four-part laser pulse surpassed the lab team's goals
for what shape the beam should have and what energy it should
produce, Moses said. The laser easily created 13,000 joules of
energy rather than the 10,000 joules that had been required.
This is a major accomplishment for a laser project that three
years ago was in shambles. Unanticipated problems with dirt
creating cracks on the laser's glass, as well as management
issues that hid the problems, left the laser at least $1 billion
over budget and four years behind schedule.
Since then, the laser's management has been revamped, and the
team has met its revamped financial and schedule goals, Moses
said. Under their new schedule, the laser will be completed in
2008, at a total cost of $2.23 billion, but it will begin doing
experiments as early as 2004.
"I am pleased that the scientists and engineers have moved this
important project ahead of schedule," said Linton Brooks, who
heads the lab oversight National Nuclear Security Administration.
First light "is an important first check. ... If you can't do
this, you can't do anything later," said Stephen Dean, president
of Fusion Power Associates, a group of scientists interested in
the laser for its fusion research. "Everything we have heard is
that the laser is on schedule and on budget."
The National Ignition Facility is designed to replicate the
intense temperatures and pressures found only inside a nuclear
explosion or the sun with 192 laser beams focused on a target
smaller than a pea. The laser is a major piece of a Department of
Energy program called stockpile stewardship that, through
computer simulations and experiments, aims to eliminate the need
for underground nuclear tests.
"NIF is on target and meeting -- even exceeding -- the aggressive
milestones the lab set for it," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher,
D-Alamo, who has been vital in fighting for the laser's funding
in her role representing the lab's home district. "NIF is getting
one step closer to delivering on its promise to enable further
breakthroughs in fusion energy and to strengthen the science that
allows us to never have to detonate a nuclear weapon in order to
ensure its reliability."
Studying fusion for future power production is another research
goal. Scientists hope the laser will be the first to reach
ignition, the point where you get more power out than you put in.
"It is the only facility in the world that is capable of igniting
(a target), so everyone that is working on inertial fusion for
energy is depending on the NIF," Dean said.
Eventually the laser will produce 1.8 million joules of power, a
hundred times more than it did in its first successful test of
one of the first small bundles of four laser beams, each 16
inches square.
This week's test created 43,000 joules, about 10,000 joules of
energy from each laser beam -- or the energy needed to run a 60
watt light bulb for 15 hours. Eventually, each beam will be
expected to produce 20,000 joules of energy or more, and the
laser team is gradually working up to that goal.
This week's test "gets us up into a world-class energy system
now," said Craig Wuest, the laser's assistant director.
Construction on the laser's immense building has been complete
for almost a year. Now the building's entrances are labeled with
posters proclaiming "Laser light is coming."
Work has been focused specifically on that goal since then, Moses
said, as he walked through the building filled with fresh paint
and construction workers putting together the laser. By April,
lab scientists hope to meet their next major goal: getting
ultraviolet light into the massive target chamber.
"Slowly but steadily NIF is building up a head of steam," he
said.
Reach Andrea Widener at 925-847-2158 or awidener@cctimes.com.
*****************************************************************
48 Few seek INEEL management posts
KTVB.COM | News | Idaho News on Demand
12/18/2002
Associated Press
IDAHO FALLS - The Department of Energy is having problems drawing
candidates for two top positions in the Idaho operations office.
The department is extending the application deadline until next
Monday and advertising in selected newspapers across the country.
Fewer than a dozen people responded to the postings on federal
job sites for a manager and deputy manager jobs through last
week. However, since the ads appeared last weekend, dozens of
applications have poured in.
The state manager's job has been open for over year since the
last manger, Bev Cook, moved to a higher Energy Department job in
Washington DC. The deputy director is also retiring in April.
The two oversee day-to-day operations at the Idaho National
Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. With 7500 workers,
INEEL is one of the state's largest employers.
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49 SRS deserves new missions
Lowcountry NOW: Local News - Voices of Carolina:
12/19/02
The author, state Rep. Robert S. "Skipper" Perry Jr.,
represents District 81 in Aiken County.
Voices of Carolina: SRS deserves new missions
By Rep. Robert S. "Skipper" Perry Jr. Voices of Carolina
I deliberately waited until after the election to send this
information about plutonium and how the people who operate the
Savannah River Site are safely handling it. ...
South Carolina has tremendous opportunities to attract major
missions to the Savannah River Site over the next few years. All
of these will be high-tech operations with highly paid, skilled
employees.
Two of these missions are part of a joint Russian-American
program to safely dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium in each
county from their weapons programs. These are the Pit Disassembly
and Conversion Facility the Department of Energy estimates will
cost nearly $1 billion to build and will employ 500 to 900 people
to run it, and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility that
will cost about $2 billion to build and employ at least 700
people to run.
These two missions are now scheduled to come to SRS.
Another very important facility that we have an opportunity to
get for SRS is the Modern Pit Facility that will recycle old pits
into new pits.
A pit is a hollow sphere of plutonium that is a component of
thermonuclear weapons. Because of the shutdown of DOE's Rocky
Flats plant in Colorado, the United States does not presently
have the capability to make a pit.
Such a facility is essential because pits don't last forever,
and also because the United States may want to design and build
new weapons, which would require new pits.
Current estimates are that the Modern Pit Facility will cost
between $2 billion and $4 billion to build and will employ about
1,500 people. SRS will have competition from several other DOE
sites for the Modern Pit Facility, but SRS is clearly the best
site for it.
The three projects above involve the processing of plutonium.
Because anti-nuclear zealots and many in the popular press have
greatly exaggerated the health risks of plutonium, I recommend
reading factual and objective information about plutonium that
was prepared by the Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, a
nonprofit nuclear education group in Aiken. (The group can be
reached at 1-800-299-2682 or cnta@mindspring.com; its Web site is
www.c-n-t-a.com.)
It is very reassuring to know that SRS made, processed and
shipped 46,000 kilograms of plutonium during the Cold War without
having any significant incidents.
SRS has had an outstanding overall safety record throughout its
50-year history. Perhaps because of that, it has had outstanding
support from state and local leaders, and area citizens. It is
important for this support to continue so that we can
successfully compete for these new, high-tech missions.
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50 Los Alamos Releases Credit Card Audit
Guardian Unlimited | World Latest |
[UP]
Thursday December 19, 2002 10:20 AM
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Nearly $4.9 million in employee credit
card purchases at Los Alamos National Laboratory were not
processed properly, were questionable or had been disputed by the
lab and not credited by the bank, according to an audit report.
The report is the result of a three-month investigation by a team
led by former Energy Department Inspector General John Layton,
who was contracted by lab officials to review LANL's credit card
program after potential irregularities were discovered.
``We have concluded that internal control weaknesses existed in
the (purchase card) program, which left LANL vulnerable to fraud
and abuse,'' Layton said in a Dec. 12 letter to lab director John
C. Browne.
``Numerous cardholders failed to reconcile monthly purchase card
statements and managers did not ensure that these statements were
appropriately reviewed. Purchases were made in violation of LANL
policies and procedures,'' Layton said in the letter.
A spokeswoman for the lab said LANL accountants have been
reviewing the report, attempting to close out accounts and
resolve any charges the report described as disputed.
Thus far, the accountants had tracked down all but $316,000 in
questionable transactions, unreconciled accounts and disputed
purchases, spokeswoman Linn Tytler said.
University of California auditors were double-checking the lab's
accounting, she said. UC manages the lab for the U.S. Energy
Department.
The report accuses several employees of using the lab's credit
cards to buy goods unrelated to their work, including a Ford
Mustang, jewelry and casino cash advances. The employees were not
identified by name.
The lab contracted PricewaterhouseCoopers to audit the purchase
card program. The firm reviewed 170,000 transactions from Oct. 1,
1998, through June 30, totaling $120 million. Auditors also
interviewed 36 employees.
Browne said in a statement Wednesday that he was satisfied with
the report, noting auditors did not find rampant abuse. Brown
called the report a ``valuable guide'' for the lab as it
continues to overhaul the purchase-card program.
The lab has been under scrutiny since the purchase-card
irregularities were discovered.
The FBI, DOE Inspector General, and two congressional committees
are investigating the card program as well as allegations of
theft of lab equipment.
Investigators from the House Energy and Commerce Committee are at
the lab this week interviewing people about the alleged
irregularities.
Browne said the lab has already fired one employee for using a
lab credit card to buy food, gas and get cash advances. He said
the lab was waiting to take action against three others pending
results of the DOE inspector general's investigation.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers is continuing its review of the lab's
purchasing system and is expected to issue another report in
February.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
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51 Environmental changes under Bush
By JOAN LOWY December 18, 2002
A sampling of key environmental decisions under President Bush:
NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT
- Bush has appointed a task force to recommend ways to
"streamline" the 32-year-old National Environmental Policy Act,
considered the "Magna Carta of environmental laws" by
environmentalists. The administration has also challenged the
scope of the act in key court cases. The law requires federal
projects be reviewed for the potential environmental impacts
before they can go forward. It has been used as a lever to halt
environmentally damaging projects, but developers complain that
legitimate proposals have also been blocked.
AIR POLLUTION:
- In November, the administration unveiled new rules that
will allow older, dirtier power plants to make modifications
enabling them to stay in operation longer without adding
expensive, state-of-the-art pollution control equipment. Industry
officials said the new regulations eliminate burdensome
requirements that were preventing electric utilities from
improving their facilities. Critics said the action weakened a
key portion of the Clean Air Act aimed at bringing old plants
into compliance with modern pollution standards.
- In a much watched decision last year, EPA Administrator
Christine Todd Whitman affirmed a rule proposed by the Clinton
administration that will reduce air pollution from large trucks
and buses and reduce sulfur levels in diesel fuel.
- In August, Bush proposed legislation to cut power plant
emissions of three key pollutants - sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
oxide and mercury. The White House says the plan would cut air
pollution more than any previous presidential initiative, but
critics says the proposal takes too many years to reach its goals
and sets weak reduction targets for mercury.
WATER:
- In May, the administration approved a new rule allowing
the Army Corps of Engineers to give mining companies permits to
dump debris from mountaintop removals into rivers, streams and
wetlands.
- In August 2001, Whitman announced that General Electric
Co. would have to clean up PCBs it had dumped for years into New
York's Hudson River, a project that could cost $460 million.
- In June 2001, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed
changes to the federal "no net loss of wetlands" policy adopted
more than a decade ago. The changes, finalized seven months
later, gave the corps greater latitude to grant permits to
developers to dredge and fill wetlands and streams and eliminated
the requirement that a new acre of wetlands be created for every
acre destroyed by development.
- In April 2001, EPA announced a delay in implementing a
tougher standard for arsenic in drinking water proposed by the
Clinton administration but opposed by industry and some
municipalities. When a scientific panel later reported that even
the tougher standard proposed by Clinton might not be enough to
protect public health, the administration implemented that
standard rather than an even more stringent standard that some
scientists and environmentalists said was necessary.
- Upon taking office in January 2001, Bush put a hold on
regulations proposed by the Clinton administration that were
designed to control overflows of raw sewage from inadequate and
poorly maintained sewer systems. Sewage system operators had
supported the regulations, but withdrew their support after Bush
took office saying the proposal would cost too much.
PUBLIC LANDS:
- The president has aggressively sought to open protected
public lands and coastal areas to oil and gas drilling. Opening
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling was a
key portion of Bush's energy plan. The administration has
approved oil and gas leases off the Florida and California
coasts, setting aside previous drilling moratoriums. The
administration also approved for the first time oil and gas
drilling in a national monument, the Canyons of the Ancients
National Monument in Colorado. A federal judge halted the project
after environmental groups sued.
- Bush recently proposed regulations to make it easier
for timber companies to selectively cull trees from the nation's
forests, saying that thinning forests will reduce forest fires.
Environmentalists say the president has used the threat of forest
fires as an excuse to increase logging, which acerbates the risk
of fire.
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- In March 2001, Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto
Protocol, the treaty that sets country-by-country targets for
reducing the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate
change. Bush said the treaty would be too costly for the U.S.
economy and expressed doubt about the scientific certainty of
global warming.
- Also in March 2002, Bush abandoned his campaign pledge
to introduce legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from
coal-fired power plants. Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse
gas responsible for global warming.
ENERGY:
- In May 2001, the president proposed a sweeping energy
plan focused on increasing domestic production of oil, gas, coal
and nuclear power through tax breaks and other incentives.
Critics said the plan promotes polluting sources of energy at the
expense of clean energy sources and conservation.
- The administration has opposed proposals to
significantly raise the corporate average fuel economy of cars
and trucks, opting instead for a token increase in the fuel
economy of sport utility vehicles and other light trucks of 1.5
miles per gallon by 2007. Average fuel efficiency is at its
lowest level since 1980.
INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL COOPERATION
- Bush declined to join nearly 100 other heads of state
at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa in
September, sending Secretary of State Colin Powell instead. The
U.S. delegation to the largest global environmental summit in a
decade opposed any expansion of existing environmental treaties
or commitments.
- Bush won praise from environmentalists in April 2001
when he announced his support for the Stockholm Convention, a
treaty that mandates the worldwide phase-out of a dozen highly
toxic and persistent chemicals, including dioxins, PCBs and
pesticides such as DDT. However, since then the administration
has hindered Senate passage of implementing legislation,
effectively undermining the treaty, environmentalists say.
Source: Compiled by Scripps Howard News Service
Joan Lowy is a reporter for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail
LowyJ(at)shns.com
. Copyright © 2002 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All
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