***************************************************************** 05/21/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.130 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: NRC Proposes to Remove Some Financial Information Requirements 2 Vietnam Steps Up Preparation for Nuclear Power Plant NUCLEAR REACTORS 3 US: Poor security at reactors: report 4 US: NRC Task Force to Assess Lessons Learned from Davis-Besse Reacto 5 US: NRC Staff Approves Transfer of Operating License for Vermont 6 US: NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to Meet June 6 - 8 7 US: Fired for Faulting Nuke Evac Plan — W'chester Exec 8 US: Gov. Schweiker Extends PA National Guard Presence At Nuclear NUCLEAR SAFETY 9 US: Ohio to swallow KI pill 10 US: U.S. Has $20Bln Plan for Nuclear Safeguards 11 US: More Uranium Safeguards Urged 12 US: Sick workers plan protest 13 US: Former nuclear plant workers await payment on health claims 14 US: School boards deciding whether to offer pills to protect from 15 US: Two studies warn of terrorist threat 16 US: The nation's hefty price for protection 17 US: Rumsfeld: Terrorists Will Get Nukes NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 18 US: Yucca Mountain Touted For Nuclear Waste Site 19 Taipower criticized for waste handling on Orchid Island 20 US: BLM Director Kathleen Clarke speaks Monday on the Red Rock 21 US: Experts to bolster Nevada's push against Yucca 22 US: Nuclear Waste Shipping Issue Stumps Senate 23 US: Yucca Mountain is a smart move 24 US: State prepared for moving waste material by rail, roads 25 US: Editorial: Undermining state's fight against Yucca 26 US: Ex-NTSB official seeks Yucca vote delay 27 US: Sound Site for Nuclear Waste 28 US: Nevada official warns Wyoming about nuclear waste shipments 29 Russian Court blocks n-waste deal 30 US: Opinions:Bush's Yucca decision is wise 31 US: Opinions:Nuke industry buys votes for Yucca Mtn. with junket 32 US: Ex-NTSB chair: Senate needs transport plan before Yucca vote 33 US: Delay sought after alert 34 US: New Technology Assists in Waste Sorting NUCLEAR WEAPONS 35 Four years after Pokharan the nuclear danger is now! 36 Still Missing: A Nuclear Strategy 37 Senior lawmaker predicts swift ratification of U.S.-Russian arms US DEPT. OF ENERGY 38 Serpentinite Soils and Environmental Management at Hunters 39 Re: Savannah River (SC) and Wackenhut (WAK) 40 Rocky Flats: A package deal 41 perspective: Flats cleanup will take time 42 Letter urges DOE to join suit OTHER NUCLEAR 43 Finding Rich Fodder in Nuclear Scientists ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 NRC Proposes to Remove Some Financial Information Requirements for Reactor License Renewal NRC: Press Release - 2002 - 59 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] No. 02-059 May 20, 2002 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing to amend its regulations to remove the requirement that power reactor licensees that are not electric utilities submit financial information in their license renewal applications. The NRC believes that its financial review processes conducted during initial licensing, license transfers or, as proposed in this rule, the transition from electric utility to non-electric-utility status, provide a sufficiently comprehensive framework to assess financial qualifications. The agency does not believe that the license renewal process is sufficiently unique to warrant a separate financial review. Non-power reactor licensees are not affected by the proposed rule change and will continue to be required to submit financial qualifications information when applying for a license renewal. Currently, NRC regulations do not require electric-utility applicants for initial operating licensees and the renewal of those licenses to submit financial qualifications information. The NRC removed this requirement in 1984, based on the premise that the ratemaking process ensures that an electric utility applying for a nuclear power plant license has the funds needed to operate the facility safely. However, non-electric-utilities, which do not participate in the ratemaking process, are required to submit information on financial qualifications to the NRC for an initial operating license, during license transfer and at the license renewal stage. The Commission believes that current regulatory processes adequately ensure that non-electric-utilities are financially qualified before and after receiving a renewed license and that the NRC can detect any deterioration in a licensee's financial condition before it impacts public health and safety. Under these processes, applicants other than electric utilities are required to submit projections of revenues and expenses for the reactor being licensed for the first five years of operation, or transfer of a license. The NRC evaluation of the financial qualifications of an entity other than an electric utility applicant is based on the submitted five-year projections of income and expenses and on current information from financial rating service publications such as Moody's and Value Line. In addition, the NRC proposes to create a Section 50.76, a requirement segregated from paragraph 50.33(f)(2), to its regulations in Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which would require licensees that are transitioning from an electric utility to a non-electric-utility without going through license transfers to submit sufficient financial information to allow the NRC to determine whether the licensee remains financially qualified to conduct the activities authorized by the license. The comment period for the proposed rule expires 75 days after publication of a Federal Register notice on this subject, expected shortly. Comments after then will be considered if practical to do so, but the Commission can only ensure consideration of comments received on or before this date. Comments may be mailed to the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555-0001, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff. They may be delivered to 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. on federal workdays. They can also be submitted via the NRC's rulemaking web site, at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov [http://ruleforum.llnl.gov] . ***************************************************************** 2 Vietnam Steps Up Preparation for Nuclear Power Plant Source: Xinhua News Agency Date: 05/20/2002 23:33 Story Filed: Tuesday, May 20, 2002 11:33 PM EST HANOI, May 21, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Vietnam has stepped up preparation for building its first commercial nuclear power plant. The Vietnamese government has recently approved a feasibility study of the nuclear power plant in the country's central region, according to a report of the local daily Vietnam News (VNS) on Tuesday. According to studies by the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute and Ministry of Industry, the plant optimally would have a capacity of 1,200-1,400 megawatt. It could begin supplying electricity to the national power network as early as 2017 Currently, local scientists are evaluating 20 possible construction locations within the central coast region, with a heavy focus on safe and economical criteria. Six localities have been short listed so far, including two sites in provinces of Quang Binh and Phu Yen, two in Binh Thuan province, and other two in Ninh Thuan province. VNS claims that nuclear energy is not a foreign concept to Vietnam, since the country has safely and effectively operated a nuclear facility in Da Lat in the country's central highlands (Tay Nguyen) for the past 20 years, albeit for research purposes. Copyright 2002 XINHUA NEWS AGENCY. ***************************************************************** 3 Poor security at reactors: report news.com.au - [21may02] WASHINGTON: Concerns have been raised about inadequate safeguards of uranium used at hundreds of civilian research reactors in 58 countries. A report released today urges the United States and Russia to launch a global effort to end the use of highly enriched, or weapons-grade, uranium at these research facilitates. In most cases the uranium was provided by either the United States or Russia. "There is a great recognition that this is not just a Russia problem, but that this is really a global problem," said Matthew Bunn, one of the authors of the report produced by a group of researchers at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The report says there are 345 operating or idle research reactors in 58 countries that have highly enriched uranium that could be converted for use in a weapon by terrorists if they were to obtain the material. "Security at these hundreds of buildings varies widely from excellent to appalling," the report says. "In some cases security is provided by a single sleepy watchman and a chain-link fence." The report says that despite the heightened awareness since the September 11 terrorist attacks, "the US and global response to the threat of nuclear terrorism are not remotely commensurate with the threat". The authors urge that US President George W Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will have a summit this week on nuclear arms reduction, also agree to accelerate efforts to secure and account for nuclear materials worldwide. Bunn said the technology existed to better account for nuclear materials in all countries and keep them secure. "Terrorists are racing to get weapons of mass destruction. We should be racing to stop them," said former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based nuclear non-proliferation group that helped produce the report. While the report calls for increased spending and a new commitment to safeguarding Russia's nuclear materials, it also warns of the threats posed by the highly enriched uranium around the globe in research reactors in 57 other countries. It cites a closed reactor near Belgrade; a reactor in Ukraine that has 75kg of highly enriched uranium; and a reactor in Belarus with 300kg of similar-grade uranium. All three reactors are described as "impoverished" with no money to tighten security. The authors urge a $US50 million ($90.66 million) a year program to fund a uranium "take-back" and get research institutions to switch to using low-enriched uranium that does not pose a weapons threat. Most of these reactors use highly enriched uranium supplied by the United States or Russia under agreements that require certain security measures. But the report says monitoring and spot checks by both countries had been shoddy and infrequent. Even if problems are found, there is no money for security improvements, the report says. The Associated Press [http://news.com.au/people] ***************************************************************** 4 NRC Task Force to Assess Lessons Learned from Davis-Besse Reactor Vessel Head Degradation NRC: Press Release - 2002 - 60 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] No. 02-060 May 20, 2002 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Executive Director for Operations has assigned an independent task force to assess lessons-learned related to the degradation of the reactor vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio. The Task Force will conduct an independent evaluation of the NRC staff's regulatory processes related to assuring reactor vessel head integrity in order to identify and recommend areas of improvement applicable to the NRC and/or the industry. The scope of the task force effort will include the following five areas: reactor oversight process issues, regulatory process issues, research activities, applicable practices used in the international community, and the NRC's generic issue process. The task force will be headed by Arthur T. Howell, III, Director of the Division of Reactor Safety, in NRC's Region IV Office in Arlington, Texas, and will include specialists from Region IV as well as the NRC's Region II Office in Atlanta, Georgia, the Office of Nuclear Material Safety & Safeguards, the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, and the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. Representatives from the state of Ohio will also have an active role in the task force review activities. The task force will address the following areas: a. Reactor Oversight Process Issues - evaluate the underlying causes of the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head degradation, and assess whether enhancements to the NRC's reactor oversight process are warranted. b. Regulatory Process Issues - evaluate regulations, the licensing review process, and other NRC regulatory processes such as generic communications to determine whether enhancements are warranted. c. Research Activities - determine whether there are any issues associated with the NRC process of using reactor operating experience and the results of various research programs, including research performed by NRC, requiring improvement. d. International Practices - identify and evaluate foreign regulatory practices related to reactor vessel head degradation to possibly enhance NRC programs and practices. e. Generic Issue Process - evaluate the NRC process for identifying and responding to emerging technical issues, including the implementation of short-term and long-term follow-on efforts by the licensee and NRC. The task force is expected to complete the review by early September. It will then prepare a written report containing conclusions, findings and recommendations that will be made public. ***************************************************************** 5 NRC Staff Approves Transfer of Operating License for Vermont Yankee to Entergy Corporation NRC: Press Release - 2002 - 61 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] No. 02-061 May 21, 2002 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has approved the transfer of the operating license for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power station from Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation to subsidiaries of Entergy Corporation. As provided by NRC regulations, the staff's approval of the license transfer became effective on May 17. On October 5, 2001, Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. and Entergy Corp. jointly submitted an application to the NRC requesting approval for the license transfer. The key issues considered by the NRC included Entergy's technical and financial qualifications to maintain Vermont Yankee as well as decommissioning funding assurance. A copy of the NRC's approval letter and accompanying safety evaluation report will be placed in the NRC's Public Document Room, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Room O-1 F23, Rockville, MD 20852 (telephone 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737) and added to the Agency-wide Documents Access and Management System. Help in using ADAMS is available by calling the Public Document Room. ***************************************************************** 6 NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to Meet June 6 - 8 in Rockville, Maryland NRC: Press Release - 2002 - 62 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] No. 02-062 May 21, 2002 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) has scheduled a meeting June 6 - 8 in Rockville, Maryland, to discuss, among other items, circumferential cracks in reactor control rod drive mechanism penetration nozzles and welds, as well as reactor pressure vessel head degradation at the Davis-Besse facility in Ohio. The meeting, which is open to the public, will be held in Room T-2B3 of the agency's Two White Flint North building, at 11545 Rockville Pike. It will begin at 8:30 a.m. each day. A complete agenda is attached. For additional information on the meeting or schedule changes, please contact Dr. Sher Bahadur at 301-415-0138. ACRS Meeting Agenda THURSDAY, JUNE 6, CONFERENCE ROOM 2B3, TWO WHITE FLINT NORTH 8:30 - 8:35 A.M. Opening Remarks by the ACRS Chairman (Open) Opening statement Items of current interest 8:35 - 10:30 A.M. CRDM Cracking of Vessel Head Penetrations and Vessel Head Degradation (Open) Remarks by the Subcommittee Chairman Briefing by and discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding issues related to the investigation of circumferential cracks in PWR control rod drive mechanism (CRDM) penetration nozzles and welds, and reactor pressure vessel head degradation at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant. Representatives of the nuclear industry may provide their views. 10:30 - 10:45 A.M. ***BREAK*** 10:45 - 12:15 P.M. Technical Assessment Generic Safety Issue (GSI)-189, "Susceptibility of Ice Condenser and Mark III Containments to Early Failure from Hydrogen Combustion During a Severe Accident" (Open) Remarks by the Subcommittee Chairman Briefing by and discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding its technical basis and proposed recommendations for resolving GSI-189. Representatives of the nuclear industry may provide their views, as appropriate. 12:15 - 1:15 P.M. ***LUNCH*** 1:15 - 2:15 P.M. Technical Assessment of GSI-168, Environmental Qualification of Low-Voltage Instrumentation and Control Cables (Open) Remarks by the Subcommittee Chairman Briefing by and discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding its technical basis and proposed recommendations for resolving GSI-168. Representatives of the nuclear industry may provide their views. 2:15 - 3:30 P.M. Development of Reliability/Availability Performance Indicators and Industry Trends (Open) Remarks by the Subcommittee Chairman Briefing by and discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding the staff's initiatives to integrate the NRC programs for risk-based analysis of reactor operating experience into the reactor oversight process, specifically the development of reliability/availability performance indicators and industry trends. Representatives of the nuclear industry may provide their views. 3:30 - 3:45 P.M. ***BREAK*** 3:45 - 4:45 P.M. Technical and Policy Issues Related to Advanced Reactors (Open) Remarks by the Subcommittee Chairman Briefing by and discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding technical and policy issues related to advanced reactors. 4:45 - 5:00 P.M. ***BREAK*** 5:00 - 7:15 P.M. Proposed ACRS Reports (Open) Discussion of proposed ACRS reports on: CRDM Cracking of Vessel Head Penetrations and Vessel Head Degradation Technical Assessment of GSI-189, "Susceptibility of Ice Condenser and Mark III Containments to Early Failure from Hydrogen Combustion During a Severe Accident" Technical Assessment of Generic Safety Issue-168, "Environmental Qualification of Low-Voltage I&C Cables" Development of Reliability/Availability Performance Indicators and Industry Trends Confirmatory Research Program on High Burnup Fuel (Tentative) Technical and Policy Issues Related to Advanced Reactors (Tentative) FRIDAY, JUNE 7 8:30 - 8:35 A.M. Opening Remarks by the ACRS Chairman (Open) 8:35 - 10:00 A.M. Proposed Rulemaking to Endorse National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 805, "Performance-Based Standard for Fire Protection for Light Water Reactor Electric Generating Plants" (Open) Remarks by the Subcommittee Chairman Briefing by and discussions with representatives of the NRC staff and the Nuclear Energy Institute regarding the proposed rulemaking to endorse NFPA 805 fire protection standard, and related matters. 10:00 - 10:15 A.M. ***BREAK*** 10:15 - 11:15 A.M. Generic Resolution of Voids in the Concrete Containment (Open) Remarks by the Subcommittee Chairman Briefing by and discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding the generic resolution of the issue of voids in the concrete containment walls. 11:15 - 12:00 Noon. Future ACRS Activities/Report of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee (Open) Discussion of the recommendations of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee regarding items proposed for consideration by the full Committee during future ACRS meetings. Report of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee on matters related to the conduct of ACRS business, and organizational and personnel matters relating to the ACRS. 12:00 - 12:15 P.M. Reconciliation of ACRS Comments and Recommendations (Open) Discussion of the responses from the NRC Executive Director for Operations to comments and recommendations included in recent ACRS reports and letters. 12:15 - 1:15 P.M. ***LUNCH*** 1:15 - 7:15 P.M. Proposed ACRS Reports (Open) Discussion of proposed ACRS Reports on: CRDM Cracking of Vessel Head Penetrations and Vessel Head Degradation Technical Assessment of GSI-189, "Susceptibility of Ice Condenser and Mark III Containments to Early Failure from Hydrogen Combustion During a Severe Accident" Technical Assessment of GSI-168, "Environmental Qualification of Low-Voltage I&C Cables" Development of Reliability/Availability Performance Indicators and Industry Trends Proposed Rulemaking to Endorse NFPA 805 Fire Protection Standard Confirmatory Research Program on High Burnup Fuel (Tentative) Technical and Policy Issues Related to Advanced Reactors (Tentative) SATURDAY, JUNE 8 8:30 - 10:00 A.M. Proposed ACRS Reports (Open) Continue discussion of proposed ACRS reports. 10:00 - 10:15 A.M. ***BREAK*** 10:15 - 11:30 A.M. Discussion of Topics for Meeting with the NRC Commissioners (Open) Discussion of topics for meeting with the NRC Commissioners on July 10. 11:30 - 12:45 P.M. ***WORKING LUNCH*** 12:45 - 1:45 P.M. Format and Content of the 2003 ACRS Report on the NRC Safety Research Program (Open) Remarks by the Subcommittee Chairman Discussion of the format, content, schedule, and assignments for the 2003 ACRS report to the Commission on the NRC Safety Research Program. 1::45 - 2:45 P.M. Proposed Papers for the Quadripartite Meeting (Open) Discussion of proposed papers on the following: Safety Culture and Safety Management Risk-Informed Regulation Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis and Code Issues Stress Corrosion Cracks in Pressure Retaining Components in Nuclear Power Plants Risk Analysis of Spent Fuel Storage 2:45 - 3:00 P.M. Miscellaneous (Open) Discussion of matters related to the conduct of Committee activities and matters and specific issues that were not completed during previous meetings, as time and availability of information permit. NOTE: Presentation time should not exceed 50 percent of the total time allocated for a specific item. The remaining 50 percent of the time is reserved for discussion. Thirty-Five (35) copies of the presentation materials should be provided to the ACRS. ***************************************************************** 7 Fired for Faulting Nuke Evac Plan — W'chester Exec New York Daily News Online | News and Views | City Beat | Monday, May 20, 2002 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Westchester official working on the evacuation strategy for a nuclear emergency, who was fired last week by the county executive, says he was sacked for criticizing the plan. County Executive Andrew Spano's office said Christopher Kozlow, deputy commissioner for emergency services, was let go Thursday because he had not attended to his duties, which included working with the school districts in the evacuation zone around the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan, 35 miles north of Manhattan. "We are working to make this plan better, and in most areas we are, but when the bottom line came in dealing with education issues, school district issues, no concrete plans have come forth," said Susan Tolchin, Spano's spokeswoman. "Chris just wasn't there, and we've fallen behind in preparing for the [evacuation] drill on Sept. 24. His performance has been sorely lacking." Kozlow retained lawyer Jonathan Lovett, who said Kozlow was fired because "as an expert, he was telling people who are pencil-pushers that what they were doing is not sufficient to protect the lives of the people of Westchester." Lovett said that as a deputy commissioner, Kozlow "can't fight the firing, but the way he was fired and the reason he was fired are illegal." "They're stepping all over his First Amendment rights, and we intend to see that something is done about that." ***************************************************************** 8 Gov. Schweiker Extends PA National Guard Presence At Nuclear Power Plants Until Dec. 31 -- Extends Sept. 11 Disaster Emergency Proclamation for Third Time Provides Additional $1 Million for Security Costs to Protect Health and Safety of PA Families Summary: HARRISBURG, Pa., May 20, 2002 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker today extended the Sept. 11 disaster emergency proclamation for a third time, and announced that the Pennsylvania National Guard will continue its joint security mission with State Police at the Commonwealth's five nuclear facilities until Dec. 31. Story Filed: Monday, May 20, 2002 4:12 PM EST HARRISBURG, Pa., May 20, 2002 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker today extended the Sept. 11 disaster emergency proclamation for a third time, and announced that the Pennsylvania National Guard will continue its joint security mission with State Police at the Commonwealth's five nuclear facilities until Dec. 31. "Pennsylvania has made tremendous progress in the fight against terrorism, and I am confident that the Commonwealth's readiness and vigilance are high," Gov. Schweiker said. "Still, as recent days show us, the threat of terrorism remains, and there is still a need to ensure that Pennsylvania's most sensitive facilities receive the highest level of protection we can provide. "That is why I today am extending the National Guard's joint mission with the State Police at the state's five nuclear facilities until the end of the year. Additionally, I am providing another $1 million in order to cover future costs associated with protecting our communities and the Commonwealth's security." Gov. Schweiker first extended the original proclamation in December to provide additional security throughout the holiday season, and then for a second time on Feb. 27. That second extension would have expired on June 7. "Even before Sept. 11, this Administration was working with the operators of the state's nuclear facilities to ensure they are fully prepared to handle long-term security concerns," Gov. Schweiker said. "Pennsylvanians can rest assured that we'll continue to work with plant operators to ensure these facilities remain secure today and into the foreseeable future." In the proclamation, Gov. Schweiker made an additional $1 million in emergency funds available to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency to cover security costs. In November 2001, Gov. Schweiker directed the National Guard to join State Police in a joint security mission at the state's nuclear facilities. The State Police had been providing security since Sept. 11. To help advance Pennsylvania's anti-terrorism initiative, on Feb. 5 Gov. Schweiker named Earl Freilino, a 30-year veteran of the FBI, as Pennsylvania's first Homeland Security Director. A native of Leechburg, Armstrong County, Freilino began his new job on Feb. 19. In his 2002-03 budget, Gov. Schweiker has proposed an unprecedented $200 million in state and federal funding for security and emergency-response efforts across the Commonwealth. It includes funding to deploy a second Urban Search and Rescue team for use strictly within Pennsylvania; upgrading security at Commonwealth-owned buildings throughout the state; completing the Statewide Public Safety Radio Network; and forming and training Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). For more information, visit the PA PowerPort at www.state.pa.us, PA Keyword: "Homeland Security." CONTACT: Dave Hixson, Deputy Press Secretary of Pennsylvania Office of the Governor, +1-717-783-1116. Copyright © 1997-2002, divine, inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 9 Ohio to swallow KI pill The News-Herald Dino DiSantoMay 21, 2002 State to distribute potassium iodide to residents living near nuclear reactors. Ohio has decided to accept potassium iodide pills for people living near nuclear power plants, but has yet to develop a specific plan to get the pills to residents. Ohio Department of Health Director J. Nick Baird notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on May 7 that the state wanted the pills. But a decision on how the pills, better known as KI, will actually be distributed to residents still hasn't been made. Instead, a state KI Planning Committee will be formed with representation from the local emergency management agencies, local health districts, school districts and the Ohio Pharmacy Association. Ohio's decision to accept the pills means that 82,100 residents of Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula counties who live within 10 miles of the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in North Perry Village will receive potassium iodide. Residents, though, won't be the only ones to receive the pills. The state has asked for 200,800 pills to be distributed within the 10-mile radius of Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp.'s 1,320 megawatt reactor. The rest of the pills will be distributed as follows: * 100,000 for the transient population. * 2,400 school districts. * 1,000 employees who work in Lake County, but live outside of the area. The Lake County Health District will receive a $15,000 grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of Atlanta for their efforts in assisting with the distribution of KI. Northeast Ohio won't be the only area of the state affected. In all, Ohio has asked for 319,500 pills. Ottawa County, home to the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station, and East Liverpool City, near the Beaver Valley Power Plant in Pennsylvania, also will participate in distribution of KI. The state is expected to receive the shipment of the pills within the next 45 days. By the time the pills arrive, the state is hoping to have started working out details on distribute the pills through the formation of its statewide committee. Roger L. Suppes, chief of the bureau of radiation protection for the Ohio Department of Health, said the state is leaning toward distributing the pills through local pharmacies. This route would provide the state the opportunity to demonstrate distribution of medications associated with the national pharmaceutical stockpile and bio-terrorist events, Suppes said. By accepting KI, Ohio becomes the 12th state to request the free pills. The states that already have asked for KI include: Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey and Vermont. The idea of distributing KI has been around for more than two decades. But it wasn't until after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that the idea became a reality. On Feb. 1, the NRC signed a $1 million contract to buy up to 6 million doses of KI that could help prevent thyroid cancer. Iodine is one of about 200 radioactive elements created when the uranium atom splits, as occurs in a nuclear reactor. Potassium iodide, if taken shortly after exposure to radiation, blocks the thyroid gland's intake of radioactive iodine, providing some protection against thyroid cancer and certain other diseases. It proved effective in preventing thyroid cancer among adults and children in the path of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. However, officials worry that stockpiling the pills would make people less likely to evacuate in the event of a nuclear accident. Also, potassium iodide will not protect people from radiation burns, radiation sickness and other forms of cancer in a nuclear accident. ©The News-Herald 2002 ***************************************************************** 10 U.S. Has $20Bln Plan for Nuclear Safeguards Tuesday, May. 21, 2002. Page 3 By David Ljunggren Reuters OTTAWA -- The United States is pressing its key partners to sign on to a new $20 billion plan to speed up nuclear nonproliferation projects in Russia in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and thereby prevent hostile groups from obtaining weapons-grade material, diplomats said. But they said some members of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations feared Washington might be moving too quickly with its "10 plus 10 over 10" plan, under which the United States would give $10 billion while the rest of the G-7 would also come up with $10 billion over 10 years. Washington, which has already committed around $1 billion next year under existing programs to help Russia decommission the vast former Soviet nuclear arsenal, is determined to prevent al-Qaida and other organizations from taking advantage of leaky security at Russian nuclear sites, the diplomats said. "This is a very ambitious nonproliferation plan. I think Sept. 11 focused people's attention as to how great the dangers of nuclear proliferation are," one G-7 diplomat said. Details of the plan have yet to be worked out but it is designed to boost efforts to help Moscow deal with the 30,000 nuclear weapons and the highly enriched uranium and plutonium stocks it inherited when the Soviet Union broke apart. Last year, a bipartisan U.S. task force said the need to secure Russian nuclear weapons, materials and scientific knowledge was "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States." U.S. officials first put forward Washington's new plan in mid-April and are determined that it should be formally announced at a summit of leaders of the Group of Eight nations -- the G-7 plus Russia -- in the Canadian Rocky Mountain resort of Kananaskis in late June. The focus on nonproliferation intensified with the announcement by U.S. President George W. Bush that he planned to sign a treaty with Russia this week under which the two nations would cut their nuclear stockpiles. Diplomats said G-7 nations were of three minds about the new U.S. plan -- Germany and Canada supported it fully; Britain and France liked the concept but wanted more details; while Italy and Japan were less enthusiastic, in part because of the cost but also because of widespread corruption in Russia. U.S. officials are now suggesting that instead of handing over billions of dollars to Russia, G-7 countries could forgive some of their Soviet-era debt on the understanding that Moscow spent an equivalent sum on nonproliferation efforts. President Vladimir Putin on Monday urged the government to draft proposals for the disposal of aging nuclear and chemical weapons stockpiles inherited from the Soviet Union, The Associated Press reported. He ordered the Cabinet to allocate money for the purpose when it writes next year's budget. [http://www.themoscowtimes.com ***************************************************************** 11 More Uranium Safeguards Urged Las Vegas SUN May 20, 2002 WASHINGTON- As Russia and the United States step up security of their nuclear materials, a new report raises concerns about inadequate safeguards of uranium used at hundreds of civilian research reactors in 58 countries. The report released Monday urges the United States and Russia to launch a global effort to end the use of highly enriched, or weapons-grade, uranium at these research facilitates. In most cases the uranium was provided by either the United States or Russia. "There is a great recognition that this is not just a Russia problem, but that this is really a global problem," said Matthew Bunn, one of the authors of the report produced by a group of researchers at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The report said there are 345 operating or idle research reactors in 58 countries that have highly enriched uranium that could be converted for use in a weapon by terrorists if they were to obtain the material. "Security at these hundreds of buildings varies widely from excellent to appalling," said the report. "In some cases security is provided by a single sleepy watchman and a chain-link fence." The report said that despite the heightened awareness since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "the U.S. and global response to the threat of nuclear terrorism are not remotely commensurate with the threat." The authors urged that President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will have a summit this week on nuclear arms reduction, also agree to accelerate efforts to secure and account for nuclear materials worldwide. Bunn said the technology exists to better account for nuclear materials in all countries and keep them secure. "Terrorists are racing to get weapons of mass destruction. We should be racing to stop them," said former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based nuclear nonproliferation group that helped produce the report. While the report called for increased spending and a new commitment to safeguarding Russia's nuclear materials, it also warned of the threats posed by the highly enriched uranium located around the globe in research reactors in 57 other countries. It cited a closed reactor near Belgrade, Yugoslavia; a reactor in Ukraine that has 75 kilograms of highly enriched uranium; and a reactor in Belarus with 300 kilograms of similar-grade uranium. All three reactors were described as "impoverished," with no money to tighten security. The authors urged a $50 million-a-year program to fund a uranium "take-back" and get research institutions to switch to using low-enriched uranium that does not pose a weapons threat. Most of these reactors use highly enriched uranium supplied by the United States or Russia under agreements that require certain security measures. But the report said monitoring and spot checks by both countries have been shoddy and infrequent. Even if problems are found, there is no money for security improvements, said the report. "Vulnerable nuclear material anywhere could be stolen and made into a terrorist bomb that would be a threat to everyone, everywhere," said the report, calling for "a globalized approach" aimed at securing these materials. The report, "Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action," was written by Matthew Bunn, John Holdren and Anthony Wier and published by Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom and the Nuclear Threat Institute. On the Net: Nuclear Threat Initiative: http://www.nti.org [http://www.nti.org] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 12 Sick workers plan protest [www.TheDailyCamera.com] By Katy Human Camera Staff Writer Nearly two years ago, federal officials proudly unveiled a plan to take care of people like Wally Gulden, who worked at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant for nearly three decades and is surviving a cancer that nearly killed him. "Justice has finally come," proclaimed then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. For decades, the government helped its contractors fight workers' claims of illness, Richardson admitted. New legislation would reverse the strategy, Richardson said, promising compensation and medical help for tens of thousands of sick workers or their survivors. But help hasn't arrived for Gulden and dozens of other Rocky Flats workers who got sick while building Cold War nuclear weapons for the Department of Energy. Energy officials insist it's coming soon, but federal workers and their families plan to protest in Denver Friday, to criticize proposed changes to the program they have been counting on for medical help, and to voice their frustration. "I'm protesting the ineptness of the U.S. Government," said Gulden, now in remission from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. "They broke too many promises." He applied last July for help from the new program, and hasn't heard back yet. Gulden said it's just not clear what's causing the hold up — he recently got a call requesting more medical documents, which should have been sent from Rocky Flats long ago. The decision on his case may also be delayed because the Energy Department still hasn't convened doctors panels to review cases. The experts are supposed to asses whether it's likely workers got sick from their Energy work or for some other reason. Terrie Barrie of Craig is helping Gulden organize the protest; Barrie's husband George worked at Rocky Flats for seven years during the 1980s, and now has a gastrointestinal disease, she said. Benign tumors keep popping up on his body. "I'm hoping that the Department of Energy will get enough pressure and realize that they're doing it wrong," Barrie said. She wants the government to deliver on its promise of helping pay the medical bills — her husband's typically exceed $400 per month. Both houses of Congress approved the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act in the fall of 2000. The act was to provide $150,000 to workers who developed certain kinds of cancer and lung disease after being exposed to toxic materials; and it promised other workers legal help in applying for state worker's compensation. Nineteen months later, the rules that govern part of the program still haven't become law; the Energy Department submitted a draft to the Office of Management and Budget earlier this month. Barrie and others worry that Bush administration officials aren't committed to their predecessors' program. But Department of Energy officials insist their intentions are good and that sick workers will find the revised program, which could become law within a few months, helpful. "It's very complicated legislation," said Beverly Cook, assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety and Health. "But I think many of the issues that people are struggling with are going to be dealt with." A program with two parts Part of the confusion lies in the fact that the program has two parts, one already put in place by the Labor Department, the other in development by the Energy Department. The Labor Department got the easier half, said Roberta Mosier, deputy director of that program. Workers with one of several short-listed illnesses can apply to get medical help and a lump sum payment — $150,000 or $50,000, depending on the illness. The covered diseases are either clearly or probably caused by exposure to the radioactive metals uranium and plutonium, or to a toxic metal called beryllium, which was used in nuclear weapons. Mosier's department pays sick workers, or their relatives if the workers have died, and considers applications from those with a few other diseases. The Energy Department's portion of the program deals with workers who have cancer and other disease that might — or might not — have been caused by exposure to toxic substances during their Energy Department employment. The Labor program has been running since last year, Mosier said, and has sent checks to about 40 current and former Rocky Flats workers or their close relatives; 806 people have applied, and many of those applications have not been processed. Charlie Johnson got one of those checks, but he's not doing well, said Mildred Johnson, his wife. Her husband retired healthy from Rocky Flats in the early 1990s, Mildred said. But his health has plummeted in the last decade, first with prostate cancer and then two brain tumors. "We're praying," she said. Charlie Johnson worked at Rocky Flats for nearly 30 years and also spent about eight years refining uranium in Paducah, Ky., his wife said, where many workers received heavy radiation exposures. Her son John took care of the compensation money application, Mildred said, but he declined to speak about his experience with the program. Many people complain that it's slow. According to Labor Department figures, 26,051 applications have been filed during the last year; 3,111 have been accepted, about 2,692 paid and 739 have been denied — the rest remain undecided. "The government admitted making us sick," said Jerry Tudor, a cancer-ridden former Energy Department worker in Oak Ridge, Tenn. "If they've admitted it, go ahead and pay us." Still under review The Energy Department's draft rules governing its program are currently under interagency review at the Office of Management and Budget, said Energy's Cook. As written by Congress, the program is supposed to create physician panels to check out the medical histories of sick energy workers, to see if their illnesses were likely caused by their work for the country. With a positive finding, the worker would get legal help applying for state worker's compensation. But no panel is in place and Barrie frets that the Energy Department's slow pace reflects lack of interest. She says she has no doubt that her husband is sick because he was exposed to radiation while working at Rocky Flats. "They keep finding all these things wrong with him .... how could they not be related?" she asked. She and her husband tried to get workers compensation for him in 1995, she said, but the company George worked for at Rocky Flats — Rockwell International — fought the claim with lawyers and medical experts paid to raise doubt. "Oh, it was horrible. There was no way we could win," she said. Michael Patrick, a Berthoud attorney who has helped many Rocky Flats employees fight for worker's compensation, said that sort of experience is typical. "Fighting claims ... became a calculated procedure," he said. "Subcontractors knew that they were legitimate claims, and they defended against them anyway." The Energy Department reimbursed, and still reimburses, contractors for such legal expenses, said the Department's Cook. Barrie said she was delighted to hear, nearly two years ago, that the government intended to break the cycle of denial. "I was ecstatic, I was, oh, I was almost in tears over it," Barrie said when she heard Congress had passed the law. "We won! We won! "I did realize it was going to take time to implement this," she said, "but we're still stuck in limbo." Not only do she and her husband have to wait for the rules to be finalized, she's fearful that a draft version of the rules, published in late February, doesn't reflect the legislation's original intent. U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Boulder, and several of his House colleagues are also concerned; they sent a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham saying so earlier this month. The draft rules, they wrote, would let government contractors continue fighting worker's compensation claims in court, with continued federal reimbursement. "The law sought to remove procedural barriers to compensation claims ..." read the letter. "Under this rule, workers will never receive the justice that Congress — on a bipartisan basis — had intended for diseases and disability incurred while working at DOE facilities." Reps. Udall, Ted Strickland, D-Ohio; Ed Whitfield, R-Ky.; Tom Udall, D-N.M.; and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., signed the letter. Cook said that it is not her department's "intent" to let contractors fight claims. She would not discuss the contents of the draft document, because it is not final. Cook said she expects to hear back from the Office of Management and Budget within weeks. Once that happens, she said, a final rule will be written into the Federal Register, and Energy staff can then begin processing the thousands of applications already stacking up. Contact Katy Human at (303) 473-1364 or humank@thedailycamera.com. May 19, 2002 Copyright 2002 The Daily Camera. All rights reserved. Any ***************************************************************** 13 Former nuclear plant workers await payment on health claims Charlotte Observer | 05/20/2002 | [http://www.charlotte.com] Associated Press AIKEN, S.C. - Robert Lee Kelly figures the machine he uses to help him breathe is the price he paid for giving his children a better life. The former Savannah River Site employee uses the inhaler three to four times a day. He said his lungs were scarred 40 or 50 years ago, working around asbestos and other toxic chemicals. "I've been having a lot of sickness -- shortness of breath, my bones aching," Kelly said. "But I'm still dragging along. I'm sure we got a hold of some of those chemicals down there." Plenty of former SRS employees have stories of life-threatening illnesses suffered after working at the nuclear-weapons complex near Aiken. More than 2,000 are seeking federal compensation for diseases they say resulted from their work. The government admitted during the Clinton Administration that its nuclear weapons program probably is liable for some diseases. Illnesses include colon cancer, lung cancer, breathing disorders, kidney diseases and lymphoma. More than 100,000 people worked at the Savannah River Site after it opened in the early 1950s, Department of Energy spokesman Bill Taylor said. During its peak, the site employed more than 25,000 people at one time, he said. Nationally, more than 26,000 claims have been filed seeking compensation of up to $150,000 because of exposure to radiation and some toxic materials at nuclear weapons sites. So far, virtually none of the $199.6 million paid in claims has gone to SRS workers because it has taken time for the government to get the program off the ground, federal officials say. Some former employees are skeptical at the federal government's pledge that checks will be sent within two months. Many filed claims last year. "They are dragging their feet," said Mervin Russell, a cancer victim who worked 30 years at SRS. "We don't know what is going on." Many of the sick said their illnesses are the price paid to help the government make the nuclear weapons that kept the Soviet Union in check. "I would do it again," said Edgefield resident Bill Brunson, a retired SRS worker who struggles to breathe. For Kelly, working at SRS meant giving his family the good life. During the early 1950s, Kelly said he brought home $200- $250 a week, far better than the 50 cents a day farmers in the area made. "I'm not angry," the 72-year-old Aiken resident said. "At the time, I needed a job, and I was glad for the job. We raised three children and put them through college. I bought me a home out of it." ***************************************************************** 14 School boards deciding whether to offer pills to protect from nuclear emergency Monday, May 20, 2002 By [http://wire.ap.org] NORTH HAMPTON, N.H. - The question of whether public schools should offer children potassium iodide pills after an emergency at the Seabrook nuclear plant has taken on greater urgency. Last week, U.S. intelligence officials confirmed they have received threats that terrorists will strike a nuclear power plant in the Northeast on July 4. Officials familiar with the investigation said the government is taking the threats seriously, though they have preliminarily determined that the information is not credible enough to act upon. Potassium iodide blocks the thyroid gland's absorption of cancer-causing radioactive iodine, to which children are most susceptible. State emergency officials have been discussing the issue with towns and schools inside Seabrook's 10-mile evacuation zone since February, when Gov. Jeanne Shaheen accepted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's offer of free potassium iodide pills. Those dicussions have intensified since word of the latest threat surfaced. Kim Kisner is chairwoman of the North Hampton school board and has two children in the North Hampton School. For her, the issue is a logistical headache. "You need permission, procedures for how to distribute it, and some people say our first priority is to evacuate. There are questions about how much time before we're notified, and how much time it takes for a person to be exposed to radiation," she said. "There are all kinds of what-if scenarios that have to be thought through." Phillips Exeter Academy decided last fall to stockpile its own cache of 2,000 potassium iodide pills, according to assistant principal Tom Hassan. "In the wake of Sept. 11, we were doing our planning. We said: 'Let's figure out what we need.' We updated our evacuation plan, then somebody said: 'What about potassium iodide?'" Hassan said, adding: "Let's hope we never, ever cross that bridge." Pat Shepard of North Hampton has two children at the North Hampton School. She wants more data on any side-effects of the pills, but said she would "probably support" giving them to her kids. "Let's face it, if it happened, it would be disastrous," said Shepard. "That's an easy one. If that thing blows and I'm here 2 miles away, I'll want one. Can I have a pill for my dog, too?" Jim Van Dongen, spokesman for the state Office of Emergency Management, said it's up to school boards to decide whether to distribute the pills to school-children. "You can't give a kid an aspirin without a parent's permission," he said. "So you have to go through the paper mill of permission slips, and that's not easy. Then if there's an accident or a terrorist threat or some reason to distribute potassium iodide, how do you physically do that? Line up kids at the nurse's office?" The state has stockpiled 350,000 doses of potassium iodide, at two 130-milligram pills each, with a shelf life of five years, he said. Meanwhile, Van Dongen said people can buy the pills on their own. At least two pharmacies sell it over the counter in Hampton and Seabrook. Seabrook plant spokesman Alan Griffith said the question of whether to distribute potassium iodide is a state public safety issue, "not a plant issue." But he said the likelihood of a terrorist attack or accident at Seabrook is "is extremely remote." © [http://www.concordmonitor.com] and New Hampshire Patriot P.O. Box 1177, Concord NH 03302 603-224-5301 ***************************************************************** 15 Two studies warn of terrorist threat Boston Globe Online: Print it! Says nuclear attack could be launched By John Aloysius Farrell, Globe Staff, 5/21/2002 WASHINGTON - The United States faces a substantial threat of a terrorist nuclear attack on an American city, and the federal government is not doing enough to prevent it, two scientific teams concluded in independent studies released yesterday. ''The possibility that terrorists could acquire a nuclear weapon and explode it in a US city is real,'' a team of researchers from Harvard University reported. ''While efforts to reduce the chances of this happening have been underway since long before last September 11, and have recently been bolstered in some respects, the size and the speed of the US and international response is not yet remotely commensurate with the magnitude of the threat.'' The detonation in an urban setting of even a rudimentary nuclear device - of 1 to 10 kilotons, pirated from a military arsenal or constructed from stolen plutonium or enriched uranium - would devastate a circular area of one or two miles in diameter and kill tens of thousands of people. Both reports note that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda have a demonstrated interest in acquiring nuclear technology. The Harvard group points out the ease of smuggling a small amount of nuclear explosives into the United States along its massive coasts and borders. It also notes that terrorists have already used weapons of mass destruction (nerve gas and anthrax spores) against civilian targets. The two organizations, The Project on Managing the Atom, at Harvard, and the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, offer policymakers prescriptions that could effectively reduce the threat, most of which deal with securing Russia's military and civilian stockpiles of nuclear materials. ''At a very low cost in some very specific ways the United States, with a small funding increase, could drastically reduce the vulnerability of the Russian stockpiles to terrorist access,'' said Paul Bledsoe, a spokesman for the Federation of American Scientists. The study said that lax controls over nuclear material in Russia and other nations represents an ''urgent threat to the security of the United States.'' The US government has recognized the threat posed by terrorism in the nuclear age, and invested millions of dollars in the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program and other American and international efforts, the reports note. But ''to date, initial `rapid upgrades' - such as bricking over windows or piling heavy blocks on top of material - have been accomplished for only 40 percent of the weapons-usable nuclear material in Russia; less than one-seventh of Russia's stockpile of highly-enriched uranium has been destroyed; the infrastructure to create jobs for the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons workers who will lose their jobs in Russia in the next few years has not yet been built,'' the Harvard study warned. ''The president has made clear that we must do all we can to keep the world's most dangerous technologies out of the hands of the world's most dangerous people, and that our nonproliferation and threat-reduction assistance to Russia and other former Soviet states plays an essential role in that effort,'' said White House spokeswoman Anne Womack. ''We are also urging our allies to expand their work in this critical area,'' she said. The study ''was intended as a report card to see where we are nine months later'' after the attacks, said James Walsh, the executive director of The Project on Managing the Atom. ''We're not in very good shape. The political attention and financial resources have lagged. What we are doing vs. what we should be doing remains a great contradiction.'' Both reports urge the United States to invest more money and work with international organizations and other nations to consolidate plutonium and enriched uranium stores in more secure locations. They also recommend the acceleration of existing programs that transform weapons-grade uranium into low-enriched uranium, which is not as well suited for the construction of bombs. The two groups identify the world's academic and civilian research reactors as a particular source of concern since dozens of those sites maintain stores of high-enriched uranium, suitable for nuclear weapons, under marginal security. This story ran on page A2 of the Boston Globe on 5/21/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. ***************************************************************** 16 The nation's hefty price for protection Orange County Register - Top News May 21, 2002 Dams, nuclear power plants and national monuments have been placed under heightened security. National guardsmen have been deployed at borders and airports. More than a billion doses of antibiotics have been distributed. America has changed since Sept. 11, with the federal government investing $10.6 billion in homeland security. A White House list of security measures includes: Law enforcement activities • Established the Homeland Security Advisory System for the dissemination of information regarding the risk of attacks. • Deployed more than 4,000 FBI special agents to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks, the largest criminal investigation in history. • Responded to more than 8,000 cases of anthrax attacks or hoaxes. • Required financial institutions to verify the identities of persons opening accounts and granted immunity to financial institutions disclosing suspicious transactions. • Established Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Forces among federal, state and local law enforcement. • Launched Operation Green Quest to dry up sources of terrorist funding, freezing assets of 192 individuals and organizations. • Increased security at highly visible national monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Border and port security • Expanded the grounds of inadmissibility to include aliens who publicly endorse terrorist activity. • Required foreign students to get student visas prior to their admission to the country. • Placed the nation's air, land and seaports of entry on Alert Level 1, requiring a more thorough examination of people and cargo. • Deployed approximately 1,600 National Guardsmen to assist in securing the nation's borders. Transportation security • Significantly expanded the Federal Air Marshal program. • Developed new passenger boarding procedures and trained flight crews for hijackings. • Required all airport personnel to undergo background checks. • Limited airport access. • Deployed more than 9,000 National Guardsmen to airports. Health and food security • Dispensed antibiotics to thousands of persons potentially exposed to anthrax mail attacks. • Acquired more than a billion doses of antibiotics and small pox vaccines. • Distributed $1.1 billion to states for bioterrorism preparation. • Strengthened systems to protect the food supply. Environmental and energy security • Provided security training to drinking water and waste-water utilities. • Provided security training for chemical and pesticide manufacturers. • Conducted vulnerability assessments of energy infrastructure throughout the country. • Created a 24-hour network to ensure energy producers have up-to-date information from law enforcement. • Provided continuous security at dams, reservoirs and hydroelectric power plants, including Hoover, Grand Coulee and Shasta dams. • Placed nuclear power plants across the nation on the highest level of security. Source: The White House and Register News reports. The Orange County Register ***************************************************************** 17 Rumsfeld: Terrorists Will Get Nukes Summary: WASHINGTON (AP) -- Terrorists are sure to eventually acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told senators Tuesday. Story Filed: Tuesday, May 21, 2002 12:12 PM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- Terrorists are sure to eventually acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told senators Tuesday. Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea are developing such weapons of mass destruction and will supply them to terrorists to which they already are linked, Rumsfeld said. ``They (terrorists) inevitably will get their hands on them and they will not hesitate to use them,'' Rumsfeld told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. Meantime, Tom Ridge, who heads the White House office of domestic security, said new terror warnings have not prompted U.S. officials to raise the nationwide alert status because the intelligence on possible attacks is too vague. Rumsfeld declined to discuss specific terrorist threats, saying the government sees hundreds a day and as many as 90 percent of them are designed to test the government's response. ``They jerk us around, try to jerk us around, and test us,'' Rumsfeld said. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that while the war on terror has hurt al-Qaida, the terrorist network remains a threat. ``Just like a wounded animal is the most dangerous, they (al-Qaida) still pose a threat to our armed forces,'' Myers said. Ridge said predictions that terrorists may target unnamed apartment buildings, for example, were not enough to change the nation's security alert from ``yellow'' -- the third-highest of five stages -- and retain the system's credibility. ``It wasn't actionable in the sense that we're going to change a national level of awareness, but it was informational,'' Ridge told the World Economic Forum at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Faced with criticism for belatedly releasing terrorist information it had before the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration may routinely release intelligence information, he added. ``We have two choices: You can either keep it to yourselves or you can share it,'' Ridge said. ``And under the circumstances, depending on the source and the specificity and a few other circumstances and conditions, we may share it.'' Ridge was the latest member of the Bush administration to predict that more terror attacks on Americans are ``not a matter of 'if', but 'when.''' The predictions are based in part on new intelligence suggesting plotting by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network has been on the rise over the past few weeks, said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. But this sort of increase in volume has happened several times before -- even since Sept. 11. The official portrayed the intelligence as a new peak in a high-and-low cycle of terrorist threats that counterterrorism authorities have tracked for years. The last peak was in March, when al-Qaida financial activity and communications stepped up. That was linked to al-Qaida leader Abu Zubaydah, who was subsequently captured in Pakistan. Another peak in threat reporting took place last summer and is now regarded as evidence of al-Qaida's preparations for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and Washington. Other peaks have come and gone, and no attack has taken place. Publicly, officials are making sobering warnings. ``There will be another terrorist attack. We will not be able to stop it,'' FBI Director Robert Mueller told a meeting of the National Association of District Attorneys on Monday. ``It's something we all live with.'' He said suicide bombers like those who have attacked Israeli buses and restaurants are inevitable in the United States. His words -- ``I wish I could be more optimistic'' -- came one day after Vice President Dick Cheney said it was almost a certainty the United States would be attacked again by terrorists. The blunt new warnings are designed to give Americans better notice and protect Bush against second guessing in the event of another attack, said a senior administration official with knowledge of U.S. intelligence and White House strategy. Under fire for its handling of terrorism intelligence before the September attacks, the administration is fighting Democratic-led efforts to have an independent commission rather than existing congressional intelligence committees study its performance. Democrats last week pointed to the disclosure of a July 10 memo from a Phoenix FBI agent who was concerned about a large number of Arabs seeking pilot, security and airport operations training at at least one U.S. flight school, along with the disclosure that Bush had been told in an Aug. 6 intelligence briefing that al-Qaida might attempt a hijacking aimed at Americans. The administration has said the information was not specific enough for it to take concrete action. The Justice Department said Monday that Attorney General John Ashcroft did not learn until weeks ago of the Phoenix memorandum. ``The attorney general was not briefed in any detail with any specificity about the document known as the Phoenix memo until approximately a month ago,'' a Justice official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But The New York Times in Tuesday's editions reported that Ashcroft and Mueller were told a few days after Sept. 11 about the Phoenix memo. The newspaper said neither Ashcroft nor Mueller briefed Bush and his national security staff until recently about the contents of the memo. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, asked repeatedly Tuesday whether Bush had seen the memo, said he was not entirely certain about that, but said Bush has ``heard of it now.'' Fleischer said it immediately became known in the moments after the Sept. 11 attacks that the hijackers had been trained at American flight schools. In fact, just hours after the hijackers' identities were determined, government officials had tracked their paths through the flight schools and sent FBI agents to them. Fleischer repeatedly refused to criticize the FBI or Justice Department for not telling Bush until recently about the Phoenix memo and said that Bush will not make judgments about the agencies based on ``the snippet of the day.'' Associated Press writer Ron Fournier contributed to this report. Copyright © 2002 Associated Press Information Services, all rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 18 Yucca Mountain Touted For Nuclear Waste Site ctnow.com: May 21, 2002 STAMFORD -- One of the key lobbyists for opening Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository brought the campaign to Connecticut Monday, urging business leaders to push the state's two senators to support the plan. John Sununu, who once served as chief of staff to former President George Bush, told members of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce that opening Yucca makes sense and would be safe. He accused opponents of using illegitimate scare tactics in their campaign. Opponents, including the governor of Nevada, voice concerns about the safety of the site and plans to transport tons of spent nuclear fuel across the country. Sununu, co-chairman of a campaign by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to support Yucca, said utility ratepayers in Connecticut already have contributed more than $500 million toward the waste repository, which was supposed to open in 1998. At a chamber breakfast in Cromwell, he said the U.S. Senate will vote soon on whether to override the veto of the plan by Nevada's governor, Kenny Guinn, and he urged chamber members to lobby Sens. Christopher J. Dodd and Joseph I. Lieberman, both D-Conn., to support the override. Neither has yet taken a stance. Sununu came to the breakfast as a guest of Connecticut Yankee, the now closed nuclear plant in Haddam. Teamsters Vote To Strike UPS If Contract Negotiations Fail The Teamsters voted overwhelmingly to strike if contract negotiations fail with United Parcel Service Inc. Preliminary results show that 93 percent of the UPS Teamsters who voted during weekend balloting support a walkout if an agreement is not reached this summer after the current contract expires, union spokesman Bret Caldwell said. About 75 percent of locals had reported by Monday. The union would not provide turnout numbers or a vote count. The current five-year contract expires July 31. Final strike vote results are expected in about a week. UPS is the largest single Teamsters employer. UPS spokesman Norman Black cautioned that the vote is a normal part of the negotiating process, and should not be taken as a barometer of the progress. World Wrestling Announces Stock Buyback From NBC STAMFORD - World Wrestling Entertainment said Monday it has repurchased 2,307,692 of its Class A common shares at $12 each from NBC for a total cost of about $27.7 million. A World Wrestling spokesman said that NBC, a unit of General Electric Co., had initially purchased the 3 percent stake upon the launch of the failed XFL professional football league venture. The spokesman said the repurchase of the shares from GE essentially ends the current relationship between the two companies. World Wrestling said the buyback represents about 3 percent of its total common shares outstanding. The company now has 70.6 million common shares outstanding, compared with 72.9 million prior to the repurchase. The company noted that it has about $292 million in cash balances. World Wrestling, a media and entertainment company based in Stamford, develops, produces and markets television programming, pay-per-view programming and live events. Nasdaq To Delist Stamford Company Electric Lightwave Inc. said Monday that it will be delisted from the Nasdaq National Market at the opening of business Friday. The company, a competitive local exchange carrier, said it received a Nasdaq determination indicating that it had failed to regain compliance with the market value of publicly held shares and minimum bid price requirements for continued listing. Shares of Electric Lightwave (ticker symbol ELIX) closed down a penny Monday, at 68 cents. Electric Lightwave, which is based in Stamford, provides Internet, data, voice and dedicated access services to communications-intensive businesses and the e-commerce market. The firm operates high-speed fiber-optic networks that interconnect major markets in the West, and operates a leading national Internet and data network. Electric Lightwave is 85 percent owned by Citizens Communications Co., a provider of wireline communications services to 2.48 million telephone access lines in 24 states. Stamford-based Citizens Communications said last week that it plans to make a cash tender offer for all of the outstanding publicly held Class A common shares of Electric Lightwave that it does not own. ctnow.com is Copyright © 2002 by The Hartford Courant ***************************************************************** 19 Taipower criticized for waste handling on Orchid Island The Taipei Times Online: 2002-05-21 Tuesday, May 21st, 2002 By Chiu Yu-Tzu STAFF REPORTER The Cabinet-level Atomic Energy Council (AEC) criticized the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower, ₯xΉq) yesterday for delays in transferring radioactive waste on Orchid Island to new barrels. "We are unsatisfied with Taipower's performance in preparing for its re-barreling project at the site," Chiou Syh-tsong (ͺτΏόΑo), AEC vice chairman, said yesterday at a press conference. Chiou said Taipower should begin transferring the waste to new barrels by June 2004. Between May 1982 and May 1996, 97,672 barrels of low-level radioactive waste were sent to the interim radioactive repository, which covers 1km2 of the island. According to the AEC, which supervises Taipower's nuclear-related work, only 3,200 barrels have been put into new drums. AEC officials said it remains uncertain when the final repository for the low-level radioactive waste would be built, but transferring the waste to new barrels should have not been delayed like this. Taipower attributed the delay to local opposition, which prevented Taipower from shipping new stainless steel barrels to the island in 2000 and last year, AEC officials said. "We will push Taipower to carry out the project by June 2004 anyway and shorten the time expected to finish it," Chiou said, adding that Taipower estimated that project might take seven years. According to the AEC, before launching the project, Taipower would first have to build three facilities, but that it had started on only two of them. One is a mobile room which could extract barrels stored underground. The other facility being built is a treatment center, where broken barrels will be reinforced with cement and polluted barrels decontaminated. AEC officials said that it would press Taipower to apply for a construction license for building a closed depository, where re-barreled waste could be stored before it is relocated. Chiou said that a Cabinet-level commission being established to tackle the relocation project might be able to reduce the time it will take to re-barrel the waste and move it to a permanent repository. Chiou yesterday stressed that Taipower's idea to build the nation's first final repository for low-level radioactive waste on a small islet in Wuchiu (―QΛϊ) township, Kinmen County, was infeasible because of its proximity to China. "No country in the world builds repositories for low-level radioactive waste near its borders," Chiou said. "We prefer to follow international precedent." The AEC's Radiation Monitoring Center released the results yesterday of analysis of 300 samples it had taken from the island. The results suggested that the exposure rate on the island was found to be between 0.037 and 0.052 micro-Sv per hour, which is within the acceptable variation of background environmental radiation. This story has been viewed 261 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/05/21/story/0000136945] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 20 BLM Director Kathleen Clarke speaks Monday on the Red Rock Canyon Visitor Center's 20th anniversary. Photo by DENISE TRUSCELLO/ REVIEW-JOURNAL Tuesday, May 21, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP CONFERENCE: BLM chief: We'll do the job Tasks daunting, but agency able, Clarke insists By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL Guiding an agency that has a stake in Nevada issues ranging from urban growth to wildland fires to future access to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, Kathleen Clarke said Monday that the Bureau of Land Management is meeting the challenges. The most prominent issue facing the BLM in Southern Nevada is how public lands will fare in meeting recreation and conservation needs as fast-paced growth continues. "It's the enormity of the job that's the challenge," said Clarke, who made her first visit to Las Vegas since she was confirmed by the Senate as BLM director in December. In town to attend the BLM's National Partnership Conference, she was given a helicopter tour of the area Monday. Speaking at the Red Rock Canyon Visitor Center 20 years after it opened, Clarke said she will rely in part on public-private partnerships to preserve the integrity of BLM lands for wildlife while accommodating the recreational needs of the visiting public. Her philosophy: "To make sure multiple use doesn't become multiple abuse." She said she views public lands as resources of U.S. citizens. "I truly believe the public lands don't belong to the agencies that manage them." A past director of Utah's Department of Natural Resources, Clarke said she realizes the important role public lands play in providing 30 percent of the nation's energy resources. But while oil and gas exploration will continue, she said she wants to make sure that when industry taps those resources, it is held accountable for balancing energy production with quality of life. People who use public lands for recreation and exercise need to practice "citizen-centered stewardship" that's in line with BLM management goals, "to make sure the things we do are user friendly." The challenge for the BLM this summer will be wildland fires as a drought persists. "Across the West we are looking at a very dreadful situation," she said, noting that her agency has nearly doubled the number of firefighters in some areas since last year. "I think we are well-positioned to take it on," Clarke said about the fire season. If the Senate overrides Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the repository, she said, BLM probably would have public meetings if the Energy Department seeks rights of way to reach the mountain. "We'll go through a full scoping process," she said. Regarding the nation's wild horse population, of which about half is in Nevada, Clarke said her goal is to keep herds in line with food and water supplies on the open ranges. "I believe we have got to get to those herd management numbers," she said. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 21 Experts to bolster Nevada's push against Yucca Tuesday, May 21, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Nevada's senators plan to present authorities on transportation, terrorism and health when they present their case in Congress this week against the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The experts will convey a message that the project will carry health and safety ramifications for people around the country, not just Nevada, officials said. "This is a national issue, not a Nevada issue," Greg Bortolin, a spokesman for Gov. Kenny Guinn, said Monday. The presentations will come Wednesday, when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee convenes the second of three Yucca Mountain hearings. The panel is gathering information before voting next month whether to approve President Bush's designation of the mountain ridge for nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel disposal. Guinn won't appear before the Senate, Bortolin said. He said Guinn aides participated in forming the Senate strategy with Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., and the governor approved of it as a way to underscore the state's message. Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said witnesses will include Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, through which nuclear waste shipments could travel on their way to Nevada; Dr. Stephen Prescott, executive director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute, affiliated with the University of Utah; and Michael Irvins, a police officer from Pomona, Calif., and a former truck driver. Also testifying will be Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Robert J. Halstead, a transportation adviser to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects; and James David Ballard, a professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Mich., who has advised the Nevada agency on terrorism issues associated with the repository and nuclear waste transportation. Halstead and Ballard testified in April at a House transportation hearing on behalf of Nevada. Gilinsky has participated in Nevada-sponsored briefings on the shortcomings of the proposed repository. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 22 Nuclear Waste Shipping Issue Stumps Senate The Ledger: Florida News Sunday, May 19, 2002 By CORY REISS Ledger Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- That his state is far from the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada doesn't convince Florida Sen. Bill Nelson that he should support it. Spent fuel would have to get there somehow, and the threat of a truck or train accident, terrorist sabotage and other unlikely scenarios conjure nightmarish images that cause the Democrat to balk. The shipments would move through or near many cities and towns in his state, possibly including Lakeland, Ocala, Gainesville and Tallahassee. On the other hand, Florida has more than 2,100 tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting at three reactor sites, and nobody likes that. "This will be one of the major votes in 2002," Nelson said after rattling off a list of questions he still has. He's one of about 30 senators who don't know whether they'll vote for the repository when it reaches the Senate floor, possibly in July. They are targets for heavy lobbying by both sides. Recent polls show that between 45 and 48 senators favor the Yucca Mountain site, making the fight against it an uphill battle in the 100-member chamber. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group has built seven mock transportation casks that it plans to send out along possible routes on flatbed trucks to draw attention to what communities can expect. This month, Public Citizen issued a report on campaign donations made by the political action committees of companies belonging to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying group. In an effort to paint votes as bought, it reported that Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat and Yucca Mountain supporter, received $56,000 since 1997 and that Nelson has taken more than $30,000. All told, according to the group, senators received more than $5 million in five years. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which includes Graham, began hearings Thursday. If the Nevada site opens in 2010 as planned, the transfer of 77,000 tons of nuclear waste would be conducted until the mountain is full, about 2036. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said that would involve about 175 shipments per year from 131 sites in 39 states. In Florida, proposed routes would send special casks of waste up Interstate 95 from two reactors near Fort Pierce and south of Miami or on a CSX rail line that runs through Central Florida. In some regions, there is more than one rail line in Stars an area, and preliminary maps produced by the Department of Energy are not clear about which track would be used. It appears that this track runs through Winter Haven. Waste from a reactor at Crystal River could take Interstate 75 north or be put on a train that appears to cross I-75 just north of Gainesville. In North Carolina, which is sitting on more than 2,000 tons of radioactive waste, opponents are targeting Democratic Sen. John Edwards. Two years ago, he voted against Yucca Mountain but switched when Carolina Power and Light promised not to build a new storage pool near Raleigh if the Nevada site is opened. Environmentalists want him back on their side, but a spokesman said Edwards would support the project, as will Republican Sen. Jesse Helms. North Carolina's five commercial reactors include two in Brunswick County owned by Progress Energy, formerly Carolina Power and Light. Spent fuel from southeastern North Carolina would move by rail across the state or via Interstate 40 through Raleigh and points west. Waste already is regularly shipped by rail from Brunswick County to a holding facility south of Raleigh because onsite storage is full, according to the Department of Energy. Abraham recently told the Senate committee that transportation would be safe, with an infinitesimal chance of a nuclear spill. If the Senate were to vote no, upholding a veto of the plan by Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn last month, the waste probably would stay where it is until "makeshift, undesirable alternatives" are built, Abraham said. Then it would be moved anyway. "It will end up in a variety of places under a variety of transportation processes," he said. The House on May 8 approved Yucca Mountain 306-117, a lopsided victory that opponents of the project expected. "The big battle really has always been the Senate," said Lisa Gue, a policy analyst for Public Citizen. Critics are playing up the fear factor. "It's not a question of if, but when and where and how severe these accidents will be," Minority Whip Harry Reid of Nevada said in a prepared statement this month. "And an accident involving a container of deadly nuclear waste is no routine fender-bender. A collision or fire involving a 25-ton payload of nuclear waste could kill thousands." Two teen-agers trying to escape a work camp March 6 hopped aboard a train bringing waste from South Carolina to storage pens at the facility near Raleigh, fueling arguments that the shipments already are vulnerable. The number of shipments would increase greatly with Nevada as a destination. Also, a train wreck in Central Florida last month became immediate fodder in the debate. "I'm confident they can transport it," said Rep. Dan Miller, a Florida Republican who voted for Yucca Mountain but whose district is not in the proposed path of the shipments. "I can't think of an alternative -- to store it in these sites forever?" The routes outlined by the Department of Energy are not final, Abraham said. Alex Veitch, a coordinator for the Sierra Club, said the uncertainty is another cause for concern because Congress is poised to approve of a plan with fuzzy details. That should concern anyone near a highway or rail line, he said, because the plans could change. online@theledger.com [online@theledger.com] ***************************************************************** 23 Yucca Mountain is a smart move Journal and Courier Online - In the News - Opinions posted Monday, May 20th 2002 By Jack C. Corpuz, For the Journal and Courier Some 48,000 metric tons of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and the defense program are currently stored at 131 widely dispersed sites in 39 states. Most of the waste sites are at nuclear power plants, and people who live within a few miles of them are understandably concerned about their vulnerability to terrorist attacks. In Indiana and other states, the question being asked is whether moving the radioactive waste across the country on trucks and trains for storage in a remote underground repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is safer than leaving it where it is. The answer is undeniably "yes." In fact, the answer may hold the key to the success of the government's energy security program, an endeavor in which we all have a stake. A growing body of evidence suggests that the United States has the technology -- and more importantly, the experience -- to ship the waste safely. We've been moving highly radioactive material around this country for 40 years, whether it's spent fuel from nuclear plants or high-level radioactive waste from the defense program. Indeed, there have been more than 3,000 shipments of spent fuel since the early 1960s, without a single accident that caused a release of radiation. It is not by chance that the shipment of radioactive waste has an unblemished safety record. Casks that hold the spent fuel are thick cylinders with tons of shielding material. Those designed for truck transportation weigh between 25 and 40 tons. Railroad casks weigh up to 120 tons. They are built to take the toughest punishment, and must prove it before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will certify their designs. A series of rigorous tests is used to demonstrate the ability of casks to withstand impact at high speeds, extremely hot fires, submersion or a possible puncture. The casks have not failed. Besides, spent fuel is a solid ceramic inside metal rods, easy to manage and control. It can't spill or leak the way a liquid or gas could. Spent fuel can't explode. The material is far safer at Yucca Mountain, stored in chambers under thousands of feet of rock beneath the desert floor and protected by tight security at the nearby Nellis Air Force Range, than spread across the country at scores of reactor sites. Long-term storage at the reactor sites is unacceptably risky. There are too many storage sites, many located near major rivers or the ocean, each one compounding risk. Besides, continuing on-site storage sidesteps the problem; it does not solve it. Nuclear power plants were designed to produce electricity, not serve as de facto repositories for spent fuel. The shutdown of nuclear plants that provide 20 percent of the nation's electricity without releasing any noxious gases or other pollutants is not a credible solution to the waste problem. But this seems to be the goal of some critics. To suspend electric power to more than 60 million Americans who benefit from nuclear-generated electricity would pose greater risk to public health and safety than shipping the waste to Nevada. As for shipping, never mind that the transport of radioactive materials has an excellent safety record. For years -- and with scarcely any opposition -- spent fuel from research reactors in Europe and Asia has been shipped to the United States and transported long distances for storage at the Savannah River defense installation in South Carolina. Canisters holding plutonium-contaminated waste from nuclear defense installations in Idaho, Washington and other states -- which are known as transuranic wastes and must be isolated for at least 10,000 years -- are being transported daily to an underground government repository in southeastern New Mexico. The first shipments began three years ago, and they have been carried out with absolute safety. Now is the time to resolve the nuclear waste problem. Physical reality -- not arguments about hypothetical risks or anti-nuclear biases -- ought to inform decisions vital to the economic and national security of the United States. If plutonium-contaminated waste can safely be disposed of in a New Mexico repository, surely the same can be done with spent fuel at Yucca Mountain. Corpuz is a radiation chemist in Indianapolis. Other Opinion Headlines from Monday, May 20th 2002 Copyright © 2001, Federated Publications, Inc. A Gannett Site. Service [http://www.jconline.com/services/terms.shtml] ***************************************************************** 24 State prepared for moving waste material by rail, roads The Sun Herald | 05/20/2002 | Posted on Mon, May. 20, 2002 [story:PUB_DESC] By BETH MUSGRAVEand TOM WILEMON THE SUN HERALD JACKSON - Mississippi officials say there isn't much they can do if Congress decides to ship millions of pounds of nuclear waste on South Mississippi rails and roads in coming years. But many say they aren't worried, because there is already radioactive material on Mississippi roads. The Bush administration is pushing a plan that would place approximately 154 million pounds of nuclear waste on the nation's roads and rails to be taken to Nevada's Yucca Mountain, where it would be buried and stored. The nation has accumulated nearly 100 million pounds of radioactive waste that needs to be disposed of. According to the plan, some of that radioactive waste would travel on Interstate 10 and the CSX rail line that traverses the Coast. Although the news of more radioactive waste on Mississippi highways did catch some state bureaucrats by surprise, many said the state would be prepared. "There really isn't much we could do about it," said Phil Bass, director of pollution control for the Department of Environmental Quality. "We can't restrict multistate commerce. As regulating agencies we have very limited controls." Amy Bissell, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said her agency hasn't been contacted about the proposed plan yet, but the state already has a radioactive transportation program in place. Bissell said she is not aware of any hazardous material being transported by rail. Radioactive material routinely travels Interstate 55 and Interstate 20, she said. Those drivers have to undergo intensive training and a battery of tests. Also, the specially designed trucks that carry radioactive waste are followed by satellite from state line to state line. "This material has so many redundant safety checks in place," Bass said. "There are a lot of hazardous materials that have less restrictions." Gasoline, for example, may not have as many restrictions but can cause a multitude of problems when spilled, he said. The state also has a safety and alert network for all hazardous material, not just nuclear waste, Bissell said. "We get a warning from MEMA, which says what is being carried and where," said Linda Rouse, director of the Harrison County Civil Defense. Rouse then forwards that information to the fire departments so if there is an accident, firefighters will know how to handle it. Beth Musgrave can be reached at 896-2331 or at bamusgrave@sunherald.com [bamusgrave@sunherald.com] ***************************************************************** 25 Editorial: Undermining state's fight against Yucca Las Vegas SUN: May 21, 2002 Over the weekend delegates at the Nevada Republican Party's annual convention adopted a plank in their platform that claims to support Nevada's elected officials in their fight against the Yucca Mountain project. But you have to wonder about the party activists' sincerity. The state GOP's view on Yucca Mountain was weakened by defeatist language that also said "in the event the battle is lost, we urge Nevada public officials to work with the Bush administration for the maximum benefit for Nevada." It sounds as if the party's platform was ghostwritten by Robert List, the nuclear power lobbyist and former Republican governor of Nevada who says we should negotiate for benefits in return for receiving the dump. Even the tepid statement that was adopted nearly didn't make it: Originally the delegates were ready to pass their platform with no reference to Yucca Mountain at all. GOP activists aren't doing any favors for Gov. Kenny Guinn, Sen. John Ensign and Rep. Jim Gibbons, all Republicans who have done their best to stop a nuclear waste dump. Nevada Republican elected officials, meanwhile, are upset with Democrats, who not only have scored partisan political points by singling out Republican national leaders' support for Yucca Mountain, but who also have criticized Nevada congressional candidates Jon Porter and Lynette Boggs McDonald for cozying up to these same high-profile politicians. But Democrats are only stating the obvious when they note that it was President George Bush, a Republican, and GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert who have led the push for Yucca Mountain's approval. Nevada's Republican elected officials shouldn't spend too much time chiding Democrats: At least the Democrats back the fight being waged by Guinn, Gi bbons and Ensign. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 26 Ex-NTSB official seeks Yucca vote delay Las Vegas SUN: May 21, 2002 Hall says nuke waste casks need further study By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- The Senate should not vote on Yucca Mountain until nuclear waste shipping containers are tested further, the former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said today. Former NTSB chief Jim Hall said that if Yucca Mountain is constructed, the Energy Department would have to launch an unprecedented waste shipping campaign to transport waste from 131 sites nationwide to Nevada in what could be the toughest transportation safety challenge of the 21st century. "We need to look at a full risk assessment; we need to look at what can go wrong and what is the likelihood of something going wrong and look at the consequences," Hall said. Hall served for seven years with the NTSB, primarily as chairman. The agency is charged by Congress to investigate airline accidents and other major transportation accidents. The board studies transportation safety issues and makes recommendations for preventing future accidents. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., drafted Hall about a month ago to help trumpet the message that transporting high-level nuclear waste to Yucca would be dangerous. Hall was retained by Nevada officials to bring his credibility and expertise to the transportation debate, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Director Bob Loux said. Hall is being paid $100,000 from Nevada's anti-Yucca fund, a collection of state and private money, Loux said. Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., are engaged in a high-stakes battle to convince senators to oppose the proposal to ship the nation's most radioactive waste to the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas for permanent burial. A vote is expected in July. Hall sent a letter today to senators urging them to delay a Yucca vote. It was a big request -- the Senate is required by law to vote within 90 days of Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the project. Guinn filed the veto April 8. Hall argues that the DOE was irresponsible in seeking congressional approval for Yucca Mountain with no detailed plans for transportation, including shipping methods, routes and accident preparedness. "In light of Sept. 11, this lack of a comprehensive, well thought-out plan is, in a word, appalling," Hall said in his letter. Hall briefed reporters today, saying he wanted to increase the media attention nationwide on waste shipping. Hall said he was not against nuclear power and said he had taken no personal stance on Yucca Mountain. New designs of steel containers used to haul waste are being developed for use in the Yucca shipping campaign. Scale-model tests, along with computer simulations, have been overseen by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates the containers. But Nevada officials since 1999 have said full-scale crash, burn and drop tests are needed. "Anything you can say about past performance frankly doesn't mean much in this brave new world that the DOE is pushing us into," said Bob Halstead, a waste shipping expert hired by Nevada officials. Scale-models and computers cannot reveal exactly how the containers would hold up in a terrorist attack or accident, Hall agreed. About 3,000 shipments of high-level nuclear waste have been made safely since the 1960s, nuclear industry officials say. But Hall said the sheer volume of waste headed to Yucca creates unprecedented challenges. "The number of things that can go wrong will increase exponentially," Hall said in his letter. Hall also told reporters he had "great reservations" about the DOE's ability to manage preparations for a massive waste shipping campaign that is expected to take several decades. He said DOE officials are too invested in the project to be objective in setting strict safety standards. Still, Hall said federal agencies are capable of preparing local and state governments for waste shipping accidents -- if they invest the time and money, which has not happened yet. Hall is scheduled to make his arguments to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Thursday during a Yucca Mountain hearing. Nuclear industry officials, including Melanie Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, brushed off Hall's call for a vote delay. They argue that scale-model and computer testing offer sophisticated, highly accurate predictions about how waste containers would hold up in real-world accidents. They also point to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which may conduct full-scale tests by 2004 as part of a new review of container strength. But full-scale tests have not received final approvals, an NRC spokeswoman said today. Any doubts about casks can be dispelled, nuclear industry consultant Eileen Supko said today. "There is more than enough time prior to the start of shipments to address a whole range of questions," Supko said. Nevada officials made Hall chairman of what they are calling the Transportation Safety Coalition, which opposes waste shipments to Yucca. It includes: the American Public Health Association; Environmental Working Group; National Environmental Trust; Physicians for Social Responsibility; U.S. PIRG; and Nevada's own Yucca watchdog, the state Agency for Nuclear Projects. Hall, a Tennessee native and resident who lives near a nuclear plant that produces electricity for his part of the state, was appointed to the NTSB in 1993 by President Clinton. Hall was the on-scene board member for a number of high-profile accident investigations, including the January 1994 Ringling Brothers Circus train derailment in Florida; the August 1997 Amtrak accident in Kingman, Ariz.; and the single-engine plane crash in July 1999 that killed John F. Kennedy Jr. and wife, Carolyn. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 27 Sound Site for Nuclear Waste (washingtonpost.com) Tuesday, May 21, 2002; Page A16 In her May 14 letter, Public Citizen's Joan Claybrook said, "Incredibly, there has never been a rigorous scientific search for the best long-term options" for disposal of nuclear waste. President Carter initiated a review of alternatives in 1979, following his policy to change course and forgo reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors. The federal Interagency Review Group recommended geologic disposal, and that was adopted as national policy by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. A key finding of that act was that "federal efforts during the past 30 years to devise a permanent solution to the problems of civilian radioactive waste disposal have not been adequate." Ms. Claybrook's proposal to leave waste where it is -- in 131 locations in 39 states -- and "search for a solution based on sound science" sounds like another delay and open-ended quest for an unknown disposition approach. The way the Department of Energy intends to store the waste at Yucca Mountain does not preclude possible reprocessing in the future, because the repository will not be sealed for up to 300 years. In the meantime it does store the waste in a superior site. BRIAN O'CONNELL Director Nuclear Waste Program Office National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Washington © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 28 Nevada official warns Wyoming about nuclear waste shipments [http://www.trib.com/] Casper Star-Tribune Casper, Wyoming Tuesday, May 21, 2002 CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- A Nevada official says it's time for Wyoming's congressional delegation to realize the potential impact radioactive waste shipments may have on the state. Marta Adams, Nevada's senior deputy attorney general and a Cheyenne native, said the shipments should worry people throughout Wyoming. The waste may be trucked through the state under a plan before Congress to consolidate the radioactive material in Yucca Mountain, Nev. Wyoming Congresswoman Barbara Cubin voted for the bill. The Senate has yet to vote. If senators approve the bill, Adams said, nuclear waste could travel along the Interstate 80 corridor about every 10 hours for more than 30 years. The shipments would cross through about 44 states. "This is something that should concern everybody along the route," she said. But a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., said fears about the number of shipments on I-80 are overstated. "The Department of Energy hasn't made those decisions yet," press secretary Dan Kunsman said. "It's premature to say there will be however many shipments across Wyoming, or what they will be." A plan to transport the material will be secondary to approval of a permanent storage place, he said. The absence of a formal transit route shouldn't ease Wyoming's fears, Adams said. "I want people to know that it's not something that only affects Nevada," she said. She is dubious of assurances from the nuclear industry lobby that radioactive material will be transported safely inside thick-walled, impact-resistant carriers. "But what we're looking at here is an unprecedented shipping campaign. In the first year of Yucca Mountain, shipments would exceed anything we've seen in 40 years. "We can't assume there will be the normal accident ratio." Yucca Mountain is at the western edge of the federal government's Nevada Test Site, 90 miles from Las Vegas. The state of Nevada has filed lawsuits over Yucca Mountain water rights, radioactivity standards and the criteria on which the Department of Energy made its recommendation to store waste there. ***************************************************************** 29 Russian Court blocks n-waste deal Appeals board of Supreme Court upholds decision blocking import of nuclear waster from Hungary for storage in Russia Yahoo! News - Tue May 21, 9:16 AM ET MOSCOW - The appeals board of Russia's Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld an earlier decision blocking the import of nuclear waste from Hungary for storage in Russia. In February, the Supreme Court handed a major victory to environmentalists when it struck down a government decision that would have allowed waste from the Paks nuclear power plant to be permanently stored in Russia. The environmentalists argued that under a 1992 law, Russia may import spent fuel rods from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary for reprocessing, but it must return the waste to the countries of origin for permanent storage. In 1998, the government proposed accepting nuclear waste from the Paks plant for storage in the Urals mountains in a bid to earn much needed cash. Greenpeace, the For Nuclear Safety environmental movement and citizens of the Chelyabinsk region in the Urals sued the government, accusing it of selling Russia's territory for nuclear waste storage and ignoring environmental and health dangers. Last year, President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) signed a law that is expected to widen the practice of importing waste. It allows for the import of spent nuclear fuel from countries besides Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary for reprocessing and storage. (mb/sk) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 30 Opinions:Bush's Yucca decision is wise Augusta Georgia: Web posted Tuesday, May 21, 2002 Letter to the Editor President George W. Bush made a wise decision when he endorsed Yucca Mountain as the burial site for spent nuclear fuel. Yucca Mountain is at the Nevada Test Site, a very remote location where nuclear weapons were tested for over 40 years. The mountain has been through 20 years of rigorous evaluation. Taken into account are geology, water table and natural hazards such as volcanic activity, earthquakes and flooding. All the studies conclude the site is safe. Nuclear plants provide 20 percent of the electricity consumed in the United States. The price of nuclear energy has continually decreased. It is now less expensive to produce electricity at nuclear plants than by burning fossil fuels (e.g., coal, natural gas, oil). The plants have resulted in significant reductions of greenhouse gases, mercury and other toxic emissions due to their environmentally friendly operation. The nuclear industry has the best safety record of any industry in our country. Maintaining the current schedule for opening Yucca Mountain must be a national priority. It is safer and more theft-proof to store the waste inside a mountain than to keep it spread out across the nation. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 made a promise to provide permanent storage for spent nuclear fuel by 1998. Under this law, the ratepayers have been taxed more than $15 billion. The industry is still forced to store spent fuel at the individual plants across the country - at the customer's expense. Many sites have been forced to build extra storage, and consumers pay for this too. About $7 billion have been spent preparing and studying Yucca Mountain. It is time the nation kept its promise. Jeffery R. Brault, Augusta (Editor's note: The writer is the chair of the Savannah River Section of the American Nuclear Society.) Name: [http://augusta.com] . ***************************************************************** 31 Opinions:Nuke industry buys votes for Yucca Mtn. with junket 05/21/02 Augusta Georgia: Letter to the Editor The nuclear industry is funding a junket for congressional staffers. Accommodations and wining and dining at an exclusive members-only nightclub are made available for key staffers for several members of the House of Representatives, courtesy of the nuclear power industry. The Nuclear Energy Institute bankrolled the junket for 22 congressional staffers, as the House prepared to vote on whether to override the Nevada governor's veto of the Bush administration's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump designation. That designation was made despite 329 unresolved scientific and technical questions and concerns about the safety of transporting 77,000 tons of high level nuclear waste across the country and mounting evidence that Yucca Mountain, which sits on an aquifer in an earthquake zone, is a dangerous place to store radioactive waste. The Las Vegas excursion is one of several that the NEI has provided to members of Congress and their staff over the past several months. Each trip reportedly includes a short visit to Yucca Mountain, but the obligatory tour of Yucca Mountain appears more as a footnote in the program of the weekend's junket that was circulated under the heading "Countdown to Vegas." The NEI has been providing the Las Vegas junket to staffers and members of Congress on an ongoing basis for several months and it reportedly includes free drinks, free shows, golf and gambling in the hope that this courting of congressional staffers will influence lawmakers and, subsequently, buy their votes on the Yucca Mountain project. It would seem we have the best little Congress that money can buy. Ellen Parker, Augusta [http://augusta.com] . ***************************************************************** 32 Ex-NTSB chair: Senate needs transport plan before Yucca vote MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer Tuesday, May 21, 2002 (05-21) 07:26 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall says the Senate should not vote on the Yucca Mountain project until the government provides a detailed plan for transporting highly radioactive waste to Nevada. "In light of September 11th, this lack of a comprehensive, well-thought-out plan is, in a word, appalling," Hall wrote in a letter to each senator Tuesday. The government also should demonstrate through full-scale testing that shipping containers of radioactive waste can withstand a major accident or terrorist attack, Hall said. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said last week that transportation methods and routes have not been decided. Neither has full-scale testing been done on the casks the government plans to use to move spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear reactors and federal sites in 39 states. "We're doing this backward," Hall said. "There's no meaningful transportation plan in place." Hall announced Tuesday that he is joining the organized opposition to Yucca Mountain as chairman of the newly formed Transportation Safety Coalition. He acknowledged he is being paid by the Washington-based lobbying effort to oppose the Yucca Mountain project. The House of Representatives voted May 8 to endorse President Bush's decision to send the country's nuclear waste to Nevada, voting to override the state's objections to a radioactive dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Hall said he will testify Thursday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. A vote in the Senate is expected in late July. Senators can kill the project by siding with Nevada. If the Senate joins the House in endorsing the project, the Energy Department would next seek approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate the facility. It is scheduled to open no earlier than 2010. Abraham has said the government has time to devise a safe transportation plan that incorporates post-Sept. 11 security concerns. The energy secretary and other Yucca supporters also have argued that radioactive materials have been safely transported for decades. But Hall said the amount of waste contemplated in the Yucca plan -- 77,000 tons -- dwarfs what has been shipped previously. "The number of things that can go wrong will increase exponentially," he said. As head of the safety board from 1993 to 2001, Hall directed the investigation into the 1996 TWA crash off Long Island, N.Y., that killed 230 people. He also investigated the safety of Boeing 737 rudders, an issue that arose from the 1994 crash of USAir Flight 427 near Pittsburgh, in which 132 people died. "I'm all too familiar with the human and economic toll caused by air, rail, truck and marine accidents," he said. Yucca Mountain: [http://www.ymp.gov] / [Buy The San Francisco Chronicle] Get 50% off home ©2002 Associated Press   ***************************************************************** 33 Delay sought after alert 05/21/02 Augusta Georgia: Technology: [http://wire.ap.org/] COLUMBIA - Concerns expressed during the weekend by Vice President Dick Cheney about terrorist threats should force a delay in shipments of weapons-grade plutonium to Savannah River Site, Gov. Jim Hodges said Monday. Mr. Hodges is trying to halt plans to ship tons of surplus plutonium from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant to SRS for conversion to fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. He is concerned that the Bush administration will back away from a commitment the Energy Department made to South Carolina under the Clinton administration to ship the waste out of the state after conversion. "In light of the administration's clear warning, I am even more concerned about the safety of shipping weapons-grade plutonium across our nation's highways," Mr. Hodges said in a letter Monday to U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. The Energy Department said it first heard about Mr. Hodges' concerns from the news media. "We would have thought that if Governor Hodges were seriously concerned about potential terrorist threats, he would have made sure to communicate his concern directly to the secretary and been less eager to communicate it to the press," department spokesman Joe Davis said. "The only credible risk to public safety from these shipments comes from Governor Hodges' recent threats of roadblocks and armed confrontation at the border." Mr. Hodges says he will do anything necessary, including lying in the road to block trucks, to keep the material out of South Carolina unless there is a firm commitment to remove it. [http://augusta.com] . ***************************************************************** 34 New Technology Assists in Waste Sorting EarthVision Environmental News IDAHO FALLS, Idaho, May 20, 2002 - Developed for its capability to sort hazardous waste, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) are now demonstrating a new technology, which will help the agency with environmental cleanups. This new technology has been developed for the "Handling and Segregating System for 55-gallon drums," called HANDSS-55. Its immediate goal is to assist the Department of Energy (DOE) in the environmental cleanup of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina by sorting and preparing waste for shipment to an appropriate geological repository. Many components of the system are being prepared by INEEL, including the waste sorting, volume reduction and system integration and control modules. Other components, including the waste repackaging module, are being prepared by the Savannah River Technology Center. The modules can operate as stand-alone units, or can be combined to accommodate various waste handling needs. HANDSS-55 technology is an innovative approach to the safe processing of transuranic waste, which is stored in 55-gallon drums, at the Savannah River Site. The workers that screen these containers for objects that do not match disposal requirements must be protected from the waste, which makes INEEL's new technology's remote capabilities crucial in reducing human exposure to dangerous chemicals. INEEL's waste sorting module is capable of open waste drums remotely and can also remove unwanted waste. The technology attempts to replicate human capability in terms of seeing, reasoning and integrating random information and being able to transform the input into physical action. The system can open waste drums, remove and open plastic liners containing wastes and placing the contents of each drum on a sorting table. One of the critical aspects of this technology is a three-dimensional imaging system that develops either a picture or contour map of the items that have been placed on the sorting table. The system defines the objects' size, shape and relationship to other objects and based on the images it perceives, decides how far to rotate or move vertically and horizontally to pick up a particular object and place it in an appropriate container. The system is developed to react to unknown conditions every time it opens a 55-gallon drum. INEEL was selected by DOE's Environmental Management Office of Science and Technology for the project because of its demonstrated history in developing systems capable of safely handling transuranic waste. More information about HANDSS-55 and other INEEL projects is available by visiting www.inel.gov. ***************************************************************** 35 Four years after Pokharan the nuclear danger is now! The Daily Star: Editorial PageEditorial Page Volume 3 Number 959 Tue. May 21, 2002 Praful Bidwai writes from New Delhi The India-Pakistan nuclear balance-sheet is strongly negative. Four years on, both have lost security. Nuclear weapons have become a liability. Nuclearisation hasn't given India or Pakistan a greater voice in world affairs. Pakistan could soon return to its pre-September 11 "failing state" status once the US is through with its South Asian "anti-terror war". India's profile has risen in Washington--despite, not because of, nuclear weapons, and because the Vajpayee government has become America's client-partner. That's no invitation to the world's high table. It is a fateful, frightful coincidence that an India-Pakistan conflict should seem imminent on the fourth anniversary of their nuclear tests. India has cranked up its military machine, already on high alert for four months. A "limited" strike across the Line of Control still cannot be ruled out. Nor can harsh diplomatic measures. The likelihood of a military conflict has greatly increased after Jammu's ghastly May 14 terrorist attack. The visits of US officials Richard Armitage and Christina Rocca only highlight that grave danger. The danger has certainly not passed. A "limited" strike on Pakistan won't reflect wisdom or rationality on New Delhi's part. Rather, it will demonstrate India's frustration at Islamabad's refusal to take "action" on the list of 20 "terrorists", most of them unconnected with the December 13 Parliament attack. Pakistan may be dishonest in claiming it cannot stop militants crossing the LoC, given the terrain. But India too has practised brinkmanship and sent contradictory signals. Is its bottom-line "action" against the 20, or an end to border-crossing? A "limited" strike is unlikely to bend Pakistan to India's will--except through mediation by the US, at a high cost. "Limited" strikes will probably lead to open warfare which could escalate into a nuclear catastrophe. Highlighting this deadly prospect is a sensational (London) Sunday Times report. This says the Pakistani army mobilised its nuclear arsenal against India during the 1999 Kargil war without the knowledge of Prime Minister Sharif. Citing senior White House adviser Bruce Riedel, it says the US had "disturbing information" that India and Pakistan "were heading for a deadly descent into full-scale conflict, with a danger of nuclear cataclysm". This gives a hair-raising edge to well-founded fears that Kargil had a serious potential for nuclear escalation. This Column then recorded that India and Pakistan exchanged nuclear threats no fewer than 13 times. Kargil was the world's biggest-ever conflict between two nuclear weapons-states. Although Mr Riedel is silent on this, it is likely that India too drew up plans to use nuclear weapons. The Sunday Times discloses that: Nuclear weapons were mobilised for actual use during a large-scale conflict, involving 40,000 Indian troops, numerous air-strikes and naval manoeuvres. The chances of use are highest in war. Pakistan's elected Prime Minister was totally unaware of his army's nuclear preparations. He was told that terrible truth by Mr Bill Clinton in Washington. The army fully controls Pakistan's nuclear activities--to the point of blocking information from civilian leaders. Earlier, Ms Benazir Bhutto had to beg the CIA to brief her on Islamabad's nuclear capability. Her own army denied her that--as Prime Minister! When reminded by Mr Clinton of how close the US and the USSR came to nuclear war in 1962, an "exhausted" Mr Sharif recognised the "catastrophic" danger, and "said he was against [the preparations], but worried for his life back in Pakistan". A troops pullback followed--much to Gen Pervez Musharraf's annoyance. Then came the coup, thanks to the Sharif-Musharraf conflict. These disclosures should chill many spines. They highlight how irresponsible Pakistan's military leaders are, and how irrational calculations could start a nuclear conflict. But this can only give Indians cold comfort. For it is India's leadership which cajoled, taunted and chided Pakistan into crossing the nuclear threshold. Mr Sharif first balked at the prospect of testing. He decided on the blasts only after Mr L.K. Advani made his May 18 Kashmir speech, warning Pakistan that the "geopolitical situation" had changed. In nuclear war, it doesn't take two to tango. A single move can produce catastrophic consequences. Wreaking nuclear devastation upon the adversary after he has bombed you can only be an act of revenge, not of regaining security. Indian leaders deceived themselves that nuclear weapons would miraculously instill sobriety into khaki brains. They committed a colossal blunder in capitulating to RSS pressure. The tests fulfilled not a national-consensual project, but a unique Hindutva obsession. No party other than the BJP has demanded India's full-scale nuclearisation--right since 1951. South Asia's 1.3 billion-plus people are paying for the historic stupidity of Vajpayee, Sharif & Co. We could all turn into particles of radioactive dust. The danger is not imaginary. The CIA's "Global Threat-2015" report says the risk of nuclear war is highest in South Asia and will remain "serious". Director George Tenet testified: "If India were to conduct large-scale offensive operations into Pakistani Kashmir, Pakistan might retaliate with strikes ... in the belief that its nuclear deterrent would limit the scope of an Indian nuclear counter-attack". One of India's few genuine strategic experts, Gen V.R. Raghavan, concurs. He says a limited India-Pakistan conflict is likely to escalate to the nuclear level. A first-generation nuclear bomb dropped on Mumbai or Karachi will kill 800,000-plus people, flatten most buildings, destroy communications, and contaminate vast swathes of land with radioactive poisons for thousands of years. There is no military, civil or medical defence against nuclear weapons. There is no cure for the health injury they cause. The costs of nuclear weapons can be unbearable. The expenditure, of anything like Rs. 60,000 to 100,000 crores, on a small Indian nuclear arsenal will bankrupt the state and cripple the already feeble social sector. This would spell failure of the state. No lighter will be nuclearisation's political costs: reduced global stature, internationalisation of Kashmir, and subservience to the US. The India-Pakistan nuclear balance-sheet is strongly negative. Four years on, both have lost security. Nuclear weapons have become a liability. Nuclearisation hasn't given India or Pakistan a greater voice in world affairs. Pakistan could soon return to its pre-September 11 "failing state" status once the US is through with its South Asian "anti-terror war". India's profile has risen in Washington--despite, not because of, nuclear weapons, and because the Vajpayee government has become America's client-partner. That's no invitation to the world's high table. Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist. The Daily Star Internet Edition ***************************************************************** 36 Still Missing: A Nuclear Strategy (washingtonpost.com) By Sam Nunn, William Perry and Eugene Habiger Tuesday, May 21, 2002; Page A17 This week in Moscow, President Bush and President Vladimir Putin will sign a treaty reducing the number of U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear warheads over a 10-year time period. Reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons is vitally important and this is a strong step forward, but there is clearly more urgent work to be done. President Bush knows this. Well before Sept. 11, he cited the threats from nuclear material that cannot be accounted for, from rogue nations, nuclear theft and accidental launch. He talked of the need to "constrict the supply of nuclear materials and the means to deliver them" and the need to "cut off the demand for nuclear weapons by addressing the security concerns of those who renounce these weapons." He said the United States "should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status." At his previous summit with Putin, Bush said, "Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction." The administration's challenge is to put forward a coherent strategy for fulfilling the president's goals. So far it has not. The most likely, most immediate, most potentially devastating threat America faces is the threat of nuclear terrorism. This puts us in a new nuclear arms race -- between terrorist efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and our efforts to stop them. Acquiring weapons materials is the hardest step for the terrorists to take, and the easiest step for us to stop. We and our allies should be taking every possible action to help make the tons of nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere secure from terrorist theft or purchase. But we're not. The budget for these efforts remains essentially flat -- even though, at the current rate, it will take years to secure the remaining 60 percent of nuclear material in Russia that is not adequately protected. The administration needs immediately to put forward new ideas, come up with new funding and recruit new partners to secure the raw materials of nuclear terrorism in Russia and elsewhere. On the question of nuclear weapons policy, some in the Bush administration are considering and openly discussing steps that would take us in the opposite direction from the path pointed out by President Bush, including expanding options for nuclear attacks, widening the number of targeted nations and developing new nuclear weapons variants. While each of these ideas may have a plausible military rationale, their collective effect is to suggest that the nation with the world's most powerful conventional forces is actually increasing its reliance on nuclear forces. If other nations follow this example, they will increase their reliance on nuclear weapons and undercut the cooperation we must have to defend the United States against nuclear terrorism. If our nation moves in this direction, we will increase our ability to deal with unlikely threats -- and decrease our ability to deal with the likely threats. We addressed the Cold War's threats by confrontation with Moscow. There can be no realistic comprehensive plan to defend America against today's threats that does not depend on cooperation with Moscow. It appears that both President Bush and President Putin understand this, but their challenge is to get their own teams heading in this direction. This week: (1) Both Bush and Putin should pledge to ensure that nuclear, chemical and biological materials and weapons in both countries are safe, secure and accounted for -- with reciprocal monitoring sufficient to assure each other and the rest of the world that this is the case. (2) The United States and Russia should launch a global coalition against catastrophic terrorism by encouraging and assisting all countries in adopting the same high standards to keep weapons of mass destruction and their essential ingredients secure from terrorists. NATO should make this its top priority, and the new relationship with Russia could be a big help. (3) The two presidents should insist on an accurate accounting and adequate safeguards for tactical nuclear weapons, including a baseline inventory of these weapons and reciprocal monitoring. These are the nuclear weapons most attractive to terrorists -- even more valuable to them than fissile material, and much more portable than strategic warheads; yet they are not covered by present treaties or agreements. (4) Both presidents should order their military leaders, in joint consultation and collaboration, to devise operational changes in the alert status of their nuclear forces that would reduce toward zero the risk of accidental launch or miscalculation and increase the decision time before each president would be required to make the fateful decision to launch. They should begin with an operational stand down of the weapons on both sides that are now scheduled for reductions. (5) Both presidents should pledge that the treaty they are signing will be supplemented by additional agreements to ensure transparency, verifiability, irreversibility and stability. The goals of stability and irreversibility would be substantially advanced by agreeing to dismantle nuclear weapons from each nation's stockpile. This summit gives President Bush and our nation the opportunity to advance our top national security imperatives. We are not assured of having this opportunity tomorrow. We must seize it today. There is much at stake. Sam Nunn is a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. William Perry is a former secretary of defense. Gen. Eugene Habiger, USAF (Ret.), is former commander of U.S. strategic nuclear forces. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 37 Senior lawmaker predicts swift ratification of U.S.-Russian arms deal in Russian parliament Yahoo! News - AP World Politics Tue May 21,10:13 AM ET By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer MOSCOW - Despite nationalists' grumbling that Russia caved in to the United States to strike a nuclear arms deal set to be signed during this week's presidential summit, a senior lawmaker on Tuesday predicted its trouble-free ratification by the Russian parliament. Alexei Arbatov, a deputy head of the parliament's defense affairs committee, said that the lower house dominated by pro-government moderates will quickly rubber-stamp the deal. "There are no doubts that any treaty signed by the president will be easily approved," Arbatov said at a news conference. The accord which is to be signed by President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin) during their summit in Moscow this week foresees cuts in each country's nuclear arsenals to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads from the approximately 6,000 that each is now allowed. The U.S. administration, initially reluctant to codify the nuclear arms reductions, has agreed to Moscow's push for a formal treaty but brushed off Russian complaints about the Pentagon's plan to stockpile some of the decommissioned weapons rather than destroy them. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov met with lawmakers Tuesday to gather support for the government's policy toward the United States, describing the nuclear deal as the best compromise that Russia could hope for. "It was the most that we could get," Ivanov said. "The main achievement is that we have managed to preserve the negotiation process." Ivanov also said that the new treaty would free Russia from constraints on its strategic nuclear forces contained in previous agreements, such as the ban on the deployment of land-based missiles with multiple warheads — the kind of weapons preferred by the Russian military for cost reasons. Ivanov said that a declaration to be signed by the two presidents during the summit would reflect the "limited character" of the conceived U.S. missile defense and the U.S. pledge that it wouldn't threaten Russia. Ivanov also sought to allay lawmakers' concerns about U.S. military deployment in Central Asia for the war in Afghanistan, saying that Moscow would try to "determine the timeframe for their presence." "This issue can't leave us unconcerned," he said. Russia's Communists and other hardliners have assailed the nuclear deal and Putin's support of the deployment of U.S. forces in the ex-Soviet republics as national treason. Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov said Tuesday that the party leaders would meet this weekend to condemn the treaty and prepare a motion of no-confidence in the government — a symbolic move given the Communists' weak presence in the lower house. Arbatov insisted that Russia negotiated the best deal it could after the Russian military had announced plans to cut its nuclear forces because of a fund shortage even without any agreement with the United States. "The program of reduction of Russia's strategic nuclear forces has cut the ground from under the feet of our negotiators," Arbatov said. "When you try to bargain without having anything to offer, it's hard to get any concessions from your partner." He said that the United States' consent to formalize cuts in a treaty was a victory for Russia given the fact that the Pentagon could afford having as many warheads as it wanted, unlike the cash-strapped Russian military. (vi/mb) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 38 Serpentinite Soils and Environmental Management at Hunters Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 22:13:19 -0500 (CDT) Soils are the dynamic products of the interaction of parent material, climate, water and air, microorganisms, and organic matter over time, as well as land uses and environmental releases. Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS) in San Francisco contains features of soils altered by mechanical and hydraulic filling and the environmental releases associated with U.S. Navy activities. At HPS, the Navy collected and analyzed about 9,100 soil samples from 2,100 soil borings, 2,400 groundwater samples from 445 monitoring wells, 235 grab water samples, and 560 sediment samples, under the Navy’s Comprehensive Long-Term Environmental Action Navy (CLEAN). The Department of the Navy, Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Engineering Field Activity West, is conducting soil and groundwater investigations at HPS as required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA). These studies were undertaken under the Navy’s CLEAN program to fulfill the requirements of the Navy’s Installation Restoration Program. They evaluate the nature and extent of contamination, its potential human health and ecological risk, and the feasibility for remedial actions, if needed, in preparation for transfer of these properties to the City of San Francisco for civilian reuse. Altered soils features that adversely affect the environment at HPS are:  The Franciscan bedrock source material of primarily serpentinite for fill contains naturally occurring arsenic, beryllium, and average chromium, manganese, and nickel, at concentrations that exceed EPA residential Preliminary Remediation Goals (PRG). The source material for fill contributes naturally occurring copper, lead, mercury, nickel, and silver to shallow groundwater at concentrations that are elevated relative to EPA National Ambient Water Quality Criteria (NAWQC) for saltwater life. The non-engineered, disordered, non-compacted and extremely heterogeneous and disordered fill material has permitted leaky storm drains and sanitary sewer lines to sink below the shallow groundwater table and serve as groundwater sinks, inducing baywater flow inward and into the shallow aquifer, and acting as a groundwater sink to inadvertently remove onsite groundwater to San Francisco Bay through leaky storm drains or to San Francisco’s Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant through leaky sewer lines. The fill is not currently subject to significant liquefaction, land subsidence, or differential settlement, but may have some lateral spreading potential as shoreline bulkheads degrade. In addition, land use and releases from Navy and related industrial activities have contributed metals, volatile and semivolatile organic compounds, pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), and petroleum hydrocarbons to soil and groundwater. This field trip will visit, weather, time, and access permitting, (1) the scenic overview of the facility from the Officers Club (Building 901) and nearby soil erosion and rock slide area in Parcel A, (2) Franciscan Bedrock outcrop, associated bedrock springs, and Pump Station “A” (Building 819) near the Supply Storehouse and Offices (Building 813) in Parcel A, (3) various road cuts and soil types, and (4) soil excavation pits. formerly Naval Station Treasure Island, Hunters Point Annex, ~ 500 ac of land, ~500 ac offshore. On land, ~90 ac of bedrock hill and ~410 ac of artificial fill lowlands. Method of filling - Used about 27 million cubic yards of fill, about = of which is bedrock-derived. Initially, dredged material was hydraulically infilled to sea level to make a base, then bedrock was mechanically emplaced. Serpentinite - State rock, metamorphic, (Mg, Fe)3Si2O5(OH)4. It is characterized by fibrous crystals; the group includes the minerals antigorite and the asbestos chrysolite. Magnetic. Rich in magnesium and iron and several trace elements, especially chromium, cobalt, nickel. – nearly aluminum-free. The derived soils are low in carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Bedrock is about 75 million years old, artificial fill is less than 75 years old. Bedrock -- ~80% serpentinite with lesser amounts of graywacke, shale, and chert. Estimated cleanup costs: $150+ million to $600+ million Estimated cost to upgrade sewers and storm drains: $50+ million to $200+ million ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This summary was prepared for the American Association for the Advancement of Science Pacific Division 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, June 19-23,1999 and Western Society of Soil Science “Serpentine Soils of the San Francisco Bay Area Field Trip.” Information in this summary was derived from publicly available documents which were produced through the CLEAN contract and from other sources. ***************************************************************** 39 Re: Savannah River (SC) and Wackenhut (WAK) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 22:41:08 -0500 (CDT) I know of a retired Air Force intelligence spook that invested in Wackenhut and he made a mint. He did not think it was an unethical investment in the merchandising of prisoners and their lives and bodies. vannevar_marut@hotmail.com (Vannevar Bush Marut) wrote in message news:... "Gravitational fields of amorphous solid water [ASW] can save our planet" ... what you should know about Wackenghut, Bechtel, Westinghouse, the US > Army Corp of Engineers, and a South African Consortium of banks. Physics News Update The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 325 (Story #2), by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein NUCLEAR WASTE FOREVER. http://www.geocities.com/our4horsemen/ladylewinsky.html You can't make omelettes without breaking eggs, and the same is true of nuclear power. Cranking out decades of reactor-based electricity has meant breaking a lot of nuclei---the leftover consists of 30,000 tons of spent fuel rods in the US. Preparing for (or preventing) nuclear war has spawned its own trove of nuclear-unstable matter: 400,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive waste; the biggest repositories are at Hanford (WA) and Savannah River (SC). The June issue of Physics Today looks at the problem of nuclear waste from a variety of angles: for example, turning the waste products into a more manageable form such as glass; studying the feasibility of permanent storage sites such as the proposed vault at Yucca Mountain (NV); and comparing the disposition of waste worldwide. The current stock of spent reactor fuel is concentrated largely in only a few countries. The biggest inventories are in the US (18.3%), UK (16.6%), Canada (15.4%), France (14.9%), and the former USSR (9.9%). WACKENHUT CORRECTIONS CORP., our #1 Paramilitary Inc. (WAK) ... for a complete and official table, dilineating ALL the main nuclear and radiation bad guys, many working for or with Wackenhut or the Carlyle Group, click here! WACKENHUT! Think Westinghouse! World Leader in Private Prison Construction & Management and Paramilitary Security at our Nuclear Waste Disposal Facilities ... hey look, if you have been lucky enough not to have been locked down in prison in our present "no-justice" democracy, then at least invest in this prisons craze and get rich while you're still on the outside! TODAY'S HEADLINES: "Experts say it is the most lethal garbage in the world" THE SAVANNAH RIVER, S.C. NUCLEAR WEAPONS DUMP PROJECT, S.C. Summarized from an article by MATTHEW L. WALD, of the New York Times "The Curse of Yucca Mountain and Benzene" COLUMBIA, S.C. — For years the Energy Department has promised to clean nearly all the radioactivity out of bomb wastes here that are to be secured in giant concrete blocks. Now, faced with a cleaning technology that it has been unable to make work properly for more than a decade, department officials have reversed themselves. A $2.4 billion factory at Savannah River, S.C., is processing the giant amounts of radioactive sludge ... mixing it with molten glass, and pouring the mixture into stainless steel canisters. The mixture cools into glass logs, and about 1,200 of them have been made since production began in 1996. The plan is to bury them deep underground [some of the cannisters will be 1000 feet underground], presumably at Yucca Mountain, Nev. [Yucca Mountain is near Las Vegas groundwater and exactly adjacent to the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Sites of the 1950s], where they are supposed to be secure for thousands of years. The new proposal to mix a sizable portion of the waste with cement without cleaning it is adding to tensions between the federal government and Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina, who has threatened to use state troopers to block new shipments of plutonium into the site, the Savannah River nuclear reservation here. [On Friday, a federal judge in South Carolina ordered the Energy Department to wait 30 days before beginning to ship weapons-grade plutonium from Colorado to Savannah River. The order, which means that no shipping can begin until June 15, came a week after Governor Hodges filed suit to stop the shipments, which he opposes because of uncertainties about the technology that would be involved in converting the former nuclear weapons to still toxic powerplant fuel.] Stored in 51 giant tanks, the mix of radioactive sludge, liquid and salts is a legacy of the factories here that produced the United States' atomic arsenal. Experts say it is the most lethal garbage in the world. The Energy Department [DOE], which designs, builds and maintains our nuclear weapons, has a powerful motive to simplify the cleanup. Any method that proves effective here will be duplicated at sites in Idaho [most radionuclide wastes from our U.S. Navy nuclear operations are currently stored at the Idaho National Environmental and Engineering Facility], and Hanford, Washington [The Hanford Nuclear Site is a 560-square-mile tract of semi-arid land located within the Columbia River Basin in southeastern Washington, about 50 miles north of the Oregon border. The Columbia River flows through the Hanford Site boundary. In early 1943, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers selected the Hanford Site as their main location for nuclear reactor and chemical processing facilities for the production, separation, and purification of plutonium]. [... The suggested method of disposal] is cleaning the radioactive salts by washing out radioactive cesium-137 and then mixing the salts with cement. But the washing process also produces a volatile compound, benzene, which makes the waste tanks vulnerable to fire or explosion. The U.S. Dept. of Energy's record with cement is spotty. In the 1980's it tried to clean up a contaminated pond at the Rocky Flats plant, in the suburbs of Denver, by mixing radioactive material with cement to produce what officials called pondcrete. In months, the pondcrete crumbled. A solution here will be a model for Hanford, Wash., where there are more tanks, in worse condition, and where the department recently broke ground for another glass factory. At the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, James Hardeman, manager of the Environmental Radiation Division, said, "They can call it mudpies, it's still high level waste." [regarding the nearby Savannah River Project] "It should be buried at Yucca Mountain," Mr. Hardeman said. MORE PROFITS FOR WACKENHUT Managed Commercial Prisons: Mentally Disordered in U.S. Swing Between Jail, Hospital May 14, 2002 Summarized from an article by Alan Elsner, National Correspondent ROCHESTER, N.Y. (Reuters) - Project Link, a six-year-old program spearheaded by University of Rochester psychiatrists Steven Lamberti and Robert Weisman, aims to identify severely mentally ill patients like Collier and help them re-establish some semblance of a normal life. The benefits to society could be immense. "Jails and prisons have become the final destination of the mentally ill in America. It's a huge problem. There are more mentally ill folk in state prisons than in state hospitals. The Los Angeles County Jail has become the nation's largest mental institution," said Lamberti. "So many people are trapped in what I call a Bermuda Triangle of prison, hospital and the streets," he said. Project Link takes severely mentally ill patients -- there are currently 45 enrolled -- and given each one a case worker, who makes sure they take their medications, keep in touch with medical and social service providers in the community. Most private landlords are reluctant to rent rooms to mentally ill tenants. But without stable housing, they are almost impossible to treat. COSTS DRASTICALLY CUT The program also drastically cut the costs of caring for participants, from an estimated average of $62,500 per person to $14.500. There is an estimated 5.6 million people with severe mental illness currently living in the United States. In the 1980s and 1990s, the number of available beds in mental hospitals plummeted while the commercial prison population more than doubled to around 2 million, of whom around 15 percent are believed to be suffering from severe mental illness, according to various studies. That totals out at around 300,000 people. In Rochester, a city of around 750,000 near the shores of Lake Ontario, a regional psychiatric hospital which once held over 3,000 inmates was cut to just 200 beds in the 1990s. [summarized from a recent New York Times article, by Henri E. Cauvin] The Wackenhut Corrections Corp., (WAK) ... based in Florida, has become the world leader in private prison construction and management. They are currently expanding into South Africa, after having made great strides in the USA [especially Austin, Texas], the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Carribean islands. WCC is now building a 3,024 bed maximum security prison in South Africa, financed by a consortium of SOUTH AFRICAN BANKS. It is hoped by the consortium that this is only the first step of a long and lucrative relationship that will rapidly expand. WACKENHUT SERVICES, INC., the largest commercial builders of prisons in the world, is also the contractor for the Department of Defense [USA] and the contractor who is both well paid and responsible for human security at the Savannah River Site[SRS], the largest nuclear waste disposal compound in the world, ... Bechtel, Westinghouse, and the US Army Corp of Engineers all pay WACKENHUT to get rid of unneccesary risks and problems ... take for instance, prisoners, and yes, nuclear toxins too! [it is assumed the prisoners will be liquidated long before the nuclear "cakes" are vitrified] [quoting directly from the NEW YORK TIMES:] " [...] Authorities in Texas reclaimed control of a Wackenhut run prison in Austin after a dozen former employees were indicted late last year on charges of sexually assaulting and harrassing inmates ... earlier this year, authorities in Louisiana transferred the ENTIRE POPULATION of a JUVENILE PRISON run by Wackenhut after federal investigations contended that inmates [JUVENILES] were beaten and deprived of adequate food and clothes." --->>> check your Wall Street stocks and see which WACKENHUT prison shares are ahead of the pack this week!! It's one of the best deals in our "democracy" and "nuclear family" --- you can afford a pension and your own private health insurance if you invest in penal colonies and supernatant radioactive salts and RADIOACTIVE SALT CAKES!!!! <<<--- from the "SACRAMENTO BEE" Q: Have you ever heard that the private prison industry is a good investment? I heard that Wackenhut stock has soared lately. What do you think? -- M.E., Sacramento A: Wackenhut Corp. (ticker symbol WAK) is an international provider of security services that also manages privatized correctional facilities. For the 39 weeks ended Oct. 1, revenues rose 17 percent to $1.85 billion, but net income fell 4 percent to $13.5 million. Late last month, the security service company advised Wall Street that it expects to post earnings[.] WACKENHUT, in bed for several lost weekends with the Pentagon, gets two juicy prison contracts in Arkansas ... click here to read how WACKENHUT is literally drooling over their company being selected to expand Arkansas's 600-bed facility for adult female offenders to lock down over 800 teenage females in prison beds. ***************************************************************** 40 Rocky Flats: A package deal Denver Post.com editorial Monday, May 20, 2002 - A federal decision prevents the Rocky Flats cleanup from getting sidetracked, but leaves important questions unresolved. The biggest obstacle to closing Rocky Flats by the 2006 deadline isn't a dispute over shipping containers, however. The real problem is a political standoff that stranded Rocky Flats without a place to send plutonium once it's properly packaged. Managers at the mothballed nuclear bomb trigger factory north of Golden had asked U.S. Department of Energy headquarters for permission to truck plutonium-laced bomb parts in containers called DT-22s. The containers, which are a little smaller than an oil drum, are approved for some radioactive wastes, but haven't passed a crush test that DOE requires for plutonium packages. A new analysis of the DT-22s would have taken months - and would have been challenged in court no matter what the results. However, last week Assistant U.S. Energy Secretary Jessie Roberson, a former top boss at Rocky Flats, denied the request. Her reasons weren't based on engineering concerns, but on a common-sense conclusion that DOE shouldn't waste time on a matter that would have invited time-consuming litigation yet wasn't essential to meeting the cleanup goals. Her move left unanswered whether DOE can use DT-22s for plutonium bomb parts in the future. DOE doesn't have any containers that both pass the crush test and are large enough to handle existing bomb parts. So while the issue no longer matters to Rocky Flats, it may arise again when Uncle Sam mops up nuclear messes at other DOE facilities nationwide. DOE should determine if the DT-22s can pass the crush test, or, if not, devise a new container that is both large and meets crush-test standards. Meanwhile, Rocky Flats must design industrial systems to let workers slice up atomic bomb parts to fit the smaller, crush-test-approved shipping containers, without exposing its employees to the multiple hazards associated with the radioactive, fissionable, flammable and toxic plutonium. In the past, Rocky Flats workers have done yeoman-like work dismantling glove boxes, plumbing and other pieces of the former atomic bomb factory. But potential risks to workers when they cut up bomb parts, rather than just place them in shipping containers, shouldn't be understated. Rocky Flats won't be any closer to closure if the filled containers just sit on the site, however. The facility already has a great deal of plutonium packaged and ready to ship. It can't move the stuff, though, because of a feud between the federal government and South Carolina over the future of DOE's Savannah River facility. While important, questions about the safety of plutonium packages are a sideshow to the bigger issue of whether Rocky Flats can keep a shipping schedule that ensures its timely closure. The Denver Post ***************************************************************** 41 perspective: Flats cleanup will take time Denver Post.com By Len Ackland Sunday, May 19, 2002 - After researching and writing about the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant for many years, I didn't think anything could surprise me about the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors. [0519rocky] Rocky Flats workers clean out glove boxes in a Building 707 production room during an April 19 tour for the Ted Scripps Fellows in Environmental Journalism, hosted by the CU Center for Environmental Journalism. On the cover: Ruth Atkinson, a radiation-control technician, peers into the camera while dressing out after working in Building 707. I've seen everything from blundering and lies to efficiency and candor about the highly contaminated facility, whose last six tons of weapons-grade plutonium are supposed to be shipped to South Carolina so the site can be "cleaned up" by 2006. But until I read The New York Times on April 17, I had no idea that the DOE and the Kaiser-Hill company, its current contractor, could perform miracles. There it was, in black and white: Kaiser-Hill "believed it would meet the 2006 deadline regardless of when the plutonium began the move," according to Times reporter David Firestone. He wrote that a company spokesman confirmed this extraordinary perspective, which the spokesman now denies. Taken to its logical conclusion, the statement suggests that the Dec. 15, 2006, cleanup deadline could be met even if Kaiser-Hill began shipping plutonium to the DOE's Savannah River Site in South Carolina the day before. That would indeed be a miracle. The DOE has been planning to ship nine truckloads of plutonium a month from Rocky Flats, based on the security measures required to load and unload the large semi-sized transport trucks and the availability of these vehicles, according to Jeremy Karpatkin, a DOE spokesman at the plant. Such a shipping schedule would take about 13 months to complete, he said. No problem? Wrong. For that scenario to succeed, the shipments should have begun a few days ago if the plant is to meet the 2006 closure deadline, due to the building decontamination and demolition required after the plutonium is gone. These six tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough to readily make about 1,500 nuclear weapons, will thwart the timely cleanup of Rocky Flats if they aren't shipped offsite in the near future. The shipments were actually slated to begin last year, but were delayed by the rancorous dispute between South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, a Democrat, and the DOE. Hodges is demanding a firm guarantee from the Bush administration that the six tons of plutonium from Rocky Flats and 28 tons from other sources will be transported out of his state after being processed. Lacking a guarantee, the flamboyant Hodges has said he will call out the state police or lie on the road himself to stop the plutonium shipments. Republican Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado is demanding that Hodges get out of the way so Rocky Flats can get cleaned up. Both of these politicians are running for re-election in their respective states, and undoubtedly think the well-publicized controversy will win them local votes. But the political jockeying has distorted the plutonium shipping issue. The DOE insists that there is, in fact, some wiggle room regarding the schedule. Karpatkin said that the 13-month shipping schedule might be shortened somewhat if Washington decided to put more resources into the project. Already, the DOE agreed on May 9 to postpone its shipments originally planned for mid-May until mid-June to enable a federal judge to hear a lawsuit brought by Hodges over the issue. On the other hand, the shipping schedule isn't anywhere near as flexible as reporter Firestone implied in his one-dimensional Times article, which framed the issue as pure politics. The reason is obvious. Workers won't be able to complete the lengthy, tedious and dangerous job of decontaminating and then demolishing Rocky Flats Building 371 until the six tons of plutonium inside it have been removed. With two stories above ground and two below, this heavily guarded, steel-reinforced building sits in a 30-acre corner of the plant's former "protected area," surrounded by chain-link fences topped with razor wire. Building 371 has just one entrance gate. "Removing the plutonium from 371 is the long pole in the tent," Barbara Mazurowski, the DOE's Rocky Flats manager, told me last fall. "If we don't get the plutonium off site, we can't meet the objectives of closure." DOE and Kaiser-Hill officials estimate that once the plutonium is gone, it will take four months to close the high-security area. Cleanup and demolition of Building 371 and the ground around it will then take 38 months. Based on the work currently occurring in the other three major plutonium buildings at Rocky Flats - and the more than two years it took to complete the demolition of a much smaller, less contaminated building in December 1999 - the estimate for Building 371 seems optimistic. A 'fitting' quote To bolster his contention in an April 17 New York Times story that the Rocky Flats plutonium shipping schedule is pure politics, reporter David Firestone committed a journalistic sin that would have earned any of my journalism students an "F." He took a quote by Kaiser-Hill President Alan Parker out of context. I know that because the quote was from an article I wrote for last November's Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazine. In that article, I mentioned Parker's argument that the dispute over plutonium shipments wouldn't affect cleanup work at Rocky Flats "in the short term." That sentence was followed by this one: "Noting that the first shipment is scheduled to take place before November [2001], he [Parker] added, "I'm not particularly interested about when the first shipment goes, just the last one." When I asked Firestone in a telephone interview why he had removed the introductory, contextual phrase from the quote, he said, "It seemed appropriate to me." Regarding the quote itself, Firestone said, "I think it fit the point I was making." Yes, indeed. Case closed. - Len Ackland Taking down a former plutonium-production building isn't like tearing down a garage. The sprawling production areas in these buildings are contaminated from top to bottom with varying combinations of radioactive elements, beryllium dust and residue from toxic chemicals used between 1952 and 1989, a period when Rocky Flats processed plutonium and manufactured nuclear fission bombs primarily used to detonate hydrogen bombs. Decontaminating and cleaning out the buildings means that workers - dressed in stuffy anti-contamination suits and full-face respirators - must cut the stainless steel glove boxes, other equipment and hundreds of miles of piping into small pieces and load them into nuclear waste barrels. Layers of paint, applied during the production years as a quick-and-dirty method of covering radiation contamination, must be scraped off walls and floors before the buildings can be demolished. Cleanup is a risky business, as demonstrated at the end of 2000 when 11 workers in Building 771, once known as the most dangerous building in America, received unexpected internal doses of plutonium. Trying to speed up the decontamination and demolition process could unnecessarily cause more harm to workers. The DOE already has fined Kaiser-Hill hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past three years for safety violations. Demolition of the Rocky Flats buildings, including Building 371, is estimated by Kaiser-Hill to generate more than 270,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste, enough to fill 1.3 million 55-gallon drums. This waste is to be hauled to dumps in New Mexico, Nevada and Utah. And for Building 371 to be turned into waste by December 2006, the weapons-grade plutonium now stored there must be out by June 2003 - a little more than a year from now - which brings us back to the 13-month shipping schedule. Even if the South Carolina shipping dispute is resolved, there are many other reasons that the $7.1 billion Rocky Flats cleanup could extend past 2006. For example, The Denver Post recently reported safety issues involving containers in which plutonium will be shipped. Problems regarding shipments of nuclear waste to other sites could arise. And possible snags could occur in the cleanup of the other big plutonium buildings, particularly 776-777, where a nearly catastrophic fire in 1969 caused deep contamination. Numerous uncertainties exist. But the 2006 date, established when former Denver Mayor Federico Pen~a ran the DOE during the Clinton administration, is just a target. Missing it would have financial consequences by boosting the total cleanup costs currently estimated at $7.1 billion. But - assuming that Rocky Flats doesn't become a permanent plutonium storage facility - a missed deadline is unlikely to have other long-term consequences. And yet there are already long-term consequences sometimes hidden by the DOE's "cleanup" and "closure" rhetoric. Regardless of when Rocky Flats is officially "closed," parts of the site will remain seriously contaminated. A few years ago, plant officials said that about 100 acres would simply be bulldozed and capped. They now say they don't know exactly how much land will be capped rather than being cleaned up. They do estimate that the costs of monitoring and caring for the contaminated land after plant closure will amount to between $10 million and $12 million a year for the foreseeable future. That cost, while a small percentage of the current $664 million yearly budget, is a tangible reminder that the results of making weapons of mass destruction at Rocky Flats won't go away for a long time - longer than the 24,000-year half-life of plutonium. All contents Copyright 2002 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 42 Letter urges DOE to join suit The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Tuesday, May 21, 2002 An attorney for whistle-blowers that filed a lawsuit against Lockheed Martin sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy seeking a meeting. By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 The U.S. Department of Justice believes there is merit to claims that Lockheed Martin filed false environmental reports to receive millions of dollars in bonuses when it managed the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, according to an attorney for three current and former workers who filed a whistle-blower suit. Even so, attorney Charles J. Cooper claims that the U.S. Department of Energy, which owns the compound and monitored Lockheed's management practices, is reluctant to join the suit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds to the federal government. Cooper has sent a letter to DOE's top attorney, Lee S. Liberman Otis, asking for a meeting to discuss the case. "We continue to believe — as do the justice department, the U.S. attorney's office in Kentucky and the Environmental Protection Agency — that the case has strong merit ...," Cooper said. "We hope DOE will join the Justice Department and the EPA in supporting the continued prosecution of our claims." The letter was sent as the U.S. Attorney's office in Louisville has asked a judge to give the federal government 60 more days to decide whether it wants to join as a plaintiff in the suit. It is the 10th extension sought by the U.S. attorney's office since the suit was filed in June 1999. It appears this could be the last request for an extension. The motion seeking the extension states that attorneys for the whistle-blowers will "oppose any further motions for extension of time after this request." If approved, the deadline will be extended from Friday to July 16. Federal involvement is significant because with it comes almost unlimited resources to investigate and prosecute with the suit. Cooper and Joe Egan, another attorney representing the plant workers, said they will pursue the case even if the federal government decides not to join. Egan said the case was strengthened by evidence uncovered by federal investigators in the past three years. At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars paid as bonuses to Lockheed and its predecessor companies for meeting environmental standards that the suit claims were not met while the company operated the plant for DOE from 1982 to ’92. The suit claims Lockheed made false statements to DOE concerning illegal storage and disposal of radioactive waste, unlawful exposure of workers to lethal contaminants and contamination of groundwater and soil with plutonium, neptunium and other radioactive materials. Revelations made in the suit gained nationwide attention and prompted then-DOE Secretary Bill Richardson to visit Paducah and admit that some management practices at the plant resulted in workers' being exposed to hazardous materials and widespread pollution. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Campbell would not comment on Cooper's letter to DOE. Campbell said a number of meetings have been held with Lockheed to discuss the case and to try to settle the claims in the suit. He said more meetings are scheduled to try to settle the case without a trial, which would be costly for both sides. He declined to characterize the tone of the discussions and would not predict whether a settlement will be reached by July 16. In the motion seeking the latest extension, Campbell said attorneys for both sides believe additional discussions would be useful. Lockheed has strongly denied wrongdoing and has denied that it has tried negotiating with the Justice Department to settle the case. A Lockheed spokesman said his company's meetings have been to answer questions and to cooperate fully with the investigation. Those who filed the suit — plant workers Charles Deuschele, Garland Jenkins and Ronald Fowler; the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental watchdog group; and Thomas Cochran, nuclear program director for the council — could receive up to 25 percent of any amount refunded to the federal government. In the letter to DOE, Cooper said follow-up investigations and revelations by DOE indicate that environmental conditions at the Paducah plant are worse than alleged in the original complaint. He gave as examples "the widespread burial of hundreds of tons of classified nuclear weapons parts, the discovery of tritium contamination on site and recently the discovery that even DOE's new sanitary landfill is contaminated with plutonium, neptunium and technetium." Campbell said he made a recommendation last fall to his superiors in Washington regarding whether the government should become involved. He would not say what he recommended but said he has submitted additional information based on new interviews and documents reviewed in recent months. The Sun reported last fall that Campbell had recommended that the government join in the suit but that DOE was opposing the recommendation. The recommendation was pending in the office of Attorney General John Ashcroft. ***************************************************************** 43 Finding Rich Fodder in Nuclear Scientists May 21, 2002 A CONVERSATION WITH | HUGH GUSTERSON By CLAUDIA DREIFUS BOSTON — Say the word "anthropologist" and images of Margaret Mead in Samoa or Bronislaw Malinowski among the Trobriand Islanders may spring to mind. But for Dr. Hugh Gusterson, 43, a professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the intensive scrutiny of scientific investigation is applied not to island natives but to mostly affluent white men with "Ph.D." affixed to their names. Since 1984, Dr. Gusterson has studied nuclear weapons scientists based at the Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories, exploring the ways they adjust to culture-shattering events like the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. The results of his research are described in "Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War," published in 1996. Now he is working on a sequel, and a book of essays is due in 2003. Dr. Gusterson lives in Somerville, Mass., with his wife, Dr. Allison Macfarlane, and their 6-month-old child, Graham. Dr. Macfarlane is a geologist specializing in nuclear waste. Around M.I.T., the Gustersons are known as the "nuclear couple." "Why shouldn't I study nuclear weapons scientists?" Dr. Gusterson asked. "Anthropology is the study of humanity and this is a part of human life." Q. How did you first decide to study the folkways and mores of nuclear weapons scientists? A. It started for me in the 1980's. I was in graduate school, Stanford, where I'd been admitted to do African anthropology. Before that, I'd worked as an activist for the nuclear freeze in San Francisco. What I thought about, whenever my mind was at rest, was the arms race — why it existed, how to stop it. One day, while I was still with the nuclear freeze, I was sent to a high school to debate a weapons designer from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Tom Ramos. I was shocked to discover that I really liked him, as a person. Till that moment, people on the other side of the debate were very abstract to me. I'd never met any of them. Yet, my whole life was devoted to undoing their work. I began to wonder more about what kind of people they were. Back at Stanford, I began thinking about dropping Africa and wondering about doing fieldwork at Livermore, this famous nuclear weapons lab only a hour's drive from the university. In 1984, it was unusual to be doing fieldwork in your own culture. If you did it at all, you studied down — ghetto residents, welfare mothers. Nowadays, there's a fast-growing field, the anthropology of science. Q. How did you find your way into a tight community of scientists? A. There was an undergraduate in my department whose father worked at Livermore. My adviser said, "Why don't you drive down there and see so-and-so's father?" So I drove there one evening. I had really intended to just to talk with him about the feasibility of doing this research. This gentleman, who was a weapons designer, immediately asked me if I had brought a notebook and when I said yes, he said, "I will now tell you my life history." He then spent the next three hours reciting his story. He came from this aristocratic family in North Korea. He had escaped from North Korea as a very young man. When he came to the U.S., he learned physics. He wanted to work on nuclear weapons to make a contribution to the struggle against communism. This man led me to other people in the lab. Thereafter, whenever I interviewed someone, I'd ask my subject to refer me to others. I also began a program of "deep hanging out." I moved to the town of Livermore. My roommates often worked at the lab. I went to local churches, to bars, to the singles group. I ate lunch at the lab's cafeteria. Q. What's the difference between your methods of getting to know scientists and spying? A. I always identified myself and explained what I was doing. In anthropology, there are strong ethics codes. People have a right not to be studied if they don't want to be. Q. What kind of information did your hanging out with scientists net? A. For starters, I was surprised to find out how many weapons scientists were liberals — at least at Livermore. The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where they also do nuclear research, is a somewhat more Republican place. Many of the Livermore weapons scientists had been active against the Vietnam War when they were younger; some had been active in the civil rights movement. One guy had been a Vietnam protester in graduate school. But when he got out of school, it was a very bad time in the physics job market, and he didn't have many options. He decided if he took a job as a conventional weapons designer, he'd be making weapons that actually killed people. On the other hand, as a nuclear weapons designer he felt that he was making weapons that would save people's lives through "strengthening deterrence." Q. Were the weapons designers interesting people? A. They were often mavericks, eccentrics. One of my favorites was an H-bomb designer, who when I gave a presentation on my research showed up dressed in a loincloth and carrying this goat's head with a rattle inside it. Every time I made a point, he'd shake the goat's head. He was satirizing me, I think. He was saying, "We are your primitives. We are your `boys in the woods.' " Q. So what moved the scientists? A. Some people, like the Korean gentleman, wanted to fight communism. Others liked working in a place that had the best equipment, lots of support staff and really interesting science to do. People often said that there was something intoxicating about the physics. It becomes deeply fascinating to try and figure out how to make the weapons make a bigger bang with less plutonium or how to reshape the inner configuration of the weapon. These guys worked at it 60, 70, 80 hours a week, and the testing of their designs was what they lived for. It captured all their imaginative resources. They were making a small star. A hydrogen bomb is a small star you've created on earth. I became fascinated by what the tests meant to these scientists. I found their mannerism became so intense when they talked about nuclear tests. If you were an elite designer, you spent 18 months preparing for this event that lasts for two shakes of a lamb's tail. They might go weeks and weeks without a getting a good night's sleep as they approach this climactic moment of The Test. Q. Why was testing the weapons so important? A. That's when they got their feedback. They got to know whether they had understood the physics by whether the bomb goes off, and it goes off with the strength they predicted. I think there's this sense of transcendent power: to mobilize that force, to make the earth move. It's the biggest bang you can make and it's your bomb that does that! But I think also at a deep unconscious level, this is where the scientists convinced themselves, "We're in control the weapons, they don't control us." You build the bomb, you predict how it will work, you see the prediction come true, and you say, "I'm in control of this." But I also think at the end of the day that scientists just like to do experiments. Q. How did your subjects react to the 1992 halt of American nuclear weapons testing? A. They talked a good deal about being thrown away. There was one guy who put a sign on his office door, "Will work for food." It was only when this bargain was struck between the Clinton administration and the weapons labs people that some of this anxiety abated. The government agreed to buy them all sorts of expensive equipment that simulated nuclear weapons tests. But the older guys will say that nothing can really replace a live nuclear test. The younger guys have this forlorn wistfulness about having missed out on something really important. Nowadays, some of the guys go camping at the Nevada test sites on weekends. It's their sacred place. Q. How did you perceive the marriages and personal relationships of your weapons scientists? A. I often found emotional distance in their relationships. I think the physicist's temperament is not one that's conducive to emotional intimacy, by and large, anyway. On top of that, the demands of classification and secrecy can cause a tremendous distance in a marriage, cause a lot of pain. The women who did best at being married to physicists were very independent resourceful women who expected to live independent lives. Q. How were you changed by your time among the weapons scientists? A. I came into the project like many antinuclear activists, convinced that the bomb was a threat to human survival, afraid of it, full of bad dreams about it. Interestingly, over time, I absorbed the weapons scientists' sense of ease with the bomb. I no longer have the bad dreams I used to have about nuclear war. In some ways, I'm like the monogamous anthropologist who has spent years with a polygamous group: seeing men with four wives comes to seem natural, after a while. But then, I think, if you're not changed by the culture you've studied, you haven't done the fieldwork properly. 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