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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Nuclear agency official sent to prosecutors for bribery
2 UK: Big energy companies caught in controversy
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
3 US: Drought may force power plant to power down*
4 US: Campaigning About A-Plants, but Without Actual Power
5 US: NRC Staff to Meet with Exelon to Discuss Two Preliminary 
6 US: NRC Announces the Availability of License Renewal Application fo
7 US: NRC official concerned about safe restart of nuclear power plant
8 US: Davis-Besse staff questions bosses' safety commitment 
9 US: NRC Official Concerned On Restart Of Ohio Nuclear Plant
10 US: A Nuclear Power Fissure 
11 US: Exelon cited for mishandling Peach Bottom incidents 
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
12 US: Lawmaker: US nuclear risk 'unacceptable'*
13 US: Tungsten found in Fallon tests
14 Service lane cordoned off at Paris airport after minor 
15 US: Fallon Fast
16 French Pacific nuclear workers want health checks
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
17 LES official says a list of proposed sites planned
18 US: Nuclear waste may be target
19 Rep. Hawk voices concern about proposed enrichment plant 
20 US: Nuclear waste left in Webster will cost taxpayers
21 US: Letter to Sen. Bingaman RE: Yucca Mountain Earthquake
22 US: Yucca: Socialist Solution 
23 US: SMUD completing nuclear fuel transfer project - 
24 US: Letter to Rep. Barton RE: Yucca Mountain Earthquake
25 US: Toxic dump a blast for nuclear families 
26 US: Anti-Yucca Mtn. Campaign grows
27 US: Taxpayers to help pay $9.6 million to dispose of nuke waste
28 Uranium Plant ?Final Site? To Be Known By Sept. 15*
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
29 Sharing the Evidence on Iraq
30 Iraq accuses USA and UK of human rights violations
31 US: Ely so deep in lonely Nevada desert, bin Laden probably couldn't
32 U.S. concern over Iraq is weapons, not terrorism
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
33 Democratic Lawmaker Faults Bush for Weak Nuclear Security          
34 Cut in DOE security may be a threat
35 Hanford plans to dig trench storage
36 Editorial: Beef up security at DOE sites
37 Security at US nuclear labs called unacceptable
38 Fernald cleanup nears halfway point - 
39 Tauscher touts debt swap for security 
40 Public speaks; DOE listens 
41 Governor in OR Thursday 
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
42 Ignore the election-year cries of Congress 
43 MIT physicist who discovered positronium, dies at 85 
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Nuclear agency official sent to prosecutors for bribery

  Thursday, August 22, 2002

Wednesday, August 21, 2002 at 17:15 JST

TOKYO ? 

Police sent additional papers to prosecutors Wednesday on 
a Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official for allegedly 
receiving about 11.4 million yen in bribes from a former computer 
software company executive in return for giving him government 
information on nuclear power plants.

Toshiyuki Takahashi, 45, is suspected of receiving the bribes 
between May 1998 and July 1999 from Yoshinori Okamoto, 39, for 
leaking government information, including designs of nuclear 
plant facilities, according to the police. 

(Kyodo News)

Japan Today Discussion


*****************************************************************
 2 UK: Big energy companies caught in controversy

THE environmental credentials of three multi-national companies 
operating in Scotland were yesterday called into question by 
green campaigners.

 British Energy, the Scottish-based nuclear company, Lafarge, the 
global aggregate giant, and Aventis CropScience, the 
genetically-modified crops firm, were labelled corporate 
"baddies" and "planet trashers" by Friends of the Earth Scotland.

 The environmental group added their names to a "global roll of 
dishonour" it is to produce at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg 
next week.

 Kevin Dunion, of FoE Scotland, said the three companies 
symbolised the gulf between rhetoric and reality.

 "We have targeted these three because they make it a prominent 
policy to have environmental credentials," he said. "Our 
experience over a sustained period leads to us forming another 
opinion of them."

 FoE accused British Energy of trying to promote nuclear power as 
a green, sustainable option, despite there being "no safe 
disposal strategy" for nuclear waste.

 Lafarge was highlighted for its proposals for a 600 million 
tonne superquarry on Harris, despite local opposition and having 
had the scheme turned down by the government.

 Aventis CropScience was criticised for its contaminating of 
seeds used in GM crop trials and for its claimed attempts to 
block the publication of herbicide safety data by the government.

 Mr Dunion said companies "cannot masquerade as partners in 
sustainable development". He continued: "British Energy has 
suffered in a free market yet wants even more taxpayers' money to 
prop up its ailing fortunes.

 "Lafarge is pressing ahead through the courts with its plans for 
a massive superquarry even though its projections of national 
demand for aggregate have been exposed as hugely inflated.

 "Aventis has shown a cavalier approach to its GM crop trials by 
insisting that we have to accept that contamination of seeds and 
the countryside will take place.

 Mr Dunion said many companies were intending to use next week's 
World Summit as an opportunity to present their green 
credentials.

 He said such businesses were keen to promote improvements in 
areas such as emissions and pollutant levels while continuing to 
allow their core operations to damage the environment.

 "Global corporations want to be centre stage at the World 
Summit," he said. "In return they are expecting less regulation, 
more market opportunities, and assistance with new developments."

 - Aug 21st

*****************************************************************
 3 Drought may force power plant to power down*

By Mika Elizabeth Foley August 21, 2002

*The Lake Anna nuclear power plant may have to shut down within 
the next two weeks if drought conditions do not change in that 
area, according to Sheriff CJ Feldman of the Orange County 
Sheriff's Office.*

The water from the lake is used to cool the power plant's 
reactors.

The water level average for this time of year is 250 feet, and if 
it goes to 244 feet the plant must be shut down. As of last 
week's report the water level was at 246 feet.

According to several citizens who live on or near the lake, the 
water level has been decreasing about an inch a day.

"There is just hardly any water running into the lake. Small 
streams and creeks are drying up," said Feldman.

/ŠArcom Publishing Inc. - Fauquier Times-Democrat 2002/
*****************************************************************
 4 Campaigning About A-Plants, but Without Actual Power

The New York Times 

August 21, 2002*  

*By MATTHEW L. WALD*

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 ? Both candidates for the Democratic 
gubernatorial nomination in New York are trolling for votes by 
saying that they want the Indian Point nuclear reactors closed. 
The Republican incumbent, in a shift, refuses to rule out the 
idea.

But there is a problem. The 48-year-old federal law under which 
nuclear power is regulated provides no role for governors in 
nuclear safety. States, the Supreme Court has ruled, can make 
decisions about whether, and where, a reactor or other type of 
power plant can be built, but not about reactor safety. The 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sole jurisdiction.

"The decisions from the courts have been very clear, that the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the authority to regulate the 
plants in terms of their safety of operations," said the 
commission's chairman, Richard A. Meserve, in an interview. "That 
is not an authority that is exercised by the states. The states 
do not have any power to order a shutdown of a plant for safety 
reasons."

For a time, there was an exception for one plant, Indian Point 3. 
The reason was that New York State owned it, along with the James 
A. FitzPatrick reactor near Scriba, N.Y.

But the state sold them to Entergy two years ago, for $967 
million. Now, according to experts, the state has little 
leverage.

"You don't regulate nuclear safety if you're a state," said Jay 
E. Silberg, a lawyer at Shaw Pittman, which does extensive work 
for reactor operators. The firm represented the New York Power 
Authority in the sale of Indian Point 3, and also does work for 
Entergy.

Still, since Sept. 11, anxiety has grown in Westchester over the 
Indian Point nuclear reactors' vulnerability to terrorist attack, 
and with the suburbs usually a critical battleground in the 
general election, all of the candidates have sought to address 
concerns about the plants' safety. How much of their rhetoric is 
meaningless posturing?

Andrew M. Cuomo in particular has sought to make it an issue. Mr. 
Cuomo lives in Westchester, and his brother-in-law is Robert F. 
Kennedy Jr., whose environmental organization, Riverkeeper, has 
recently made closing Indian Point a focus.

Riverkeeper has been broadcasting radio ads critical of the plant 
and of George E. Pataki, the two-term governor who is seeking 
re-election in November. Perhaps in response, Mr. Pataki has 
hired a former director of the Federal Emergency Management 
Agency to review the emergency plans, promising a report by 
December.

The two Democratic gubernatorial campaigns concede that a 
governor alone cannot shut the plant, but they argue that a 
governor could exert enough pressure through public calls and 
legal maneuvers to make it all but impossible for the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission to ignore their wishes.

Both camps say that had Mr. Pataki not signed off on federally 
required evacuation plans for the plants in January, it would 
have set in motion a process that could have led to the closing 
of the plants.

Steven Greenberg, a spokesman for H. Carl McCall, the state 
comptroller who is Mr. Cuomo's principal opponent, said Mr. 
McCall would use public pressure to "begin the decommissioning 
process."

Peter Ragone, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said that Governor 
Pataki had failed to act when he had the chance. "The governor 
had an opportunity to show leadership on the issue and decline to 
certify the emergency plans surrounding Indian Point," Mr. Ragone 
said. "He could have lobbied the relevant federal agencies ? FEMA 
and N.R.C. ? to shut down the plant unless and until it could be 
made safe."

But this is not clear to the N.R.C. itself. Mr. Meserve, asked if 
a state could force a plant to shut by boycotting the emergency 
planning, pointed to the case of the Seabrook plant in the New 
Hampshire town of the same name. The state of Massachusetts, with 
several towns inside the 10-mile emergency planning zone, refused 
to approve emergency plans. The plant got its license anyway.

Mr. Meserve, who was not then on the five-member commission, said 
the license was granted "in recognition of the reality that if 
adverse circumstances were to arise, it would be irresponsible of 
the state not to have an emergency plan," and that while it might 
boycott drills, it would not boycott response to a radiation 
leak.

That was in 1990. The previous year, the N.R.C. said it would 
license the Shoreham nuclear plant, on Long Island, even though 
New York State said evacuation was not possible.

What, then, could a governor do? Even Alex Mathiessen, the 
executive director of Riverkeeper, acknowledged that a governor's 
main tool would be the "bully pulpit" of the office.

Shoreham is, though, a precedent of sorts. Mario M. Cuomo, 
Andrew's father, who was governor at the time, reached an 
agreement with the Long Island Lighting Company to shut it.

But there are crucial differences, experts say. One is that Lilco 
was a utility regulated by New York State. Consolidated Edison, 
which built and operated Indian Point 2 until it sold it to 
Entergy, was such a company. But Entergy, based in Jackson, 
Miss., is not regulated by the state.

"The changes in ownership make a difference," said Peter 
Bradford, who was chairman of the Public Service Commission when 
the Shoreham deal was struck.

"Certainly the shutting down of Shoreham came about in no small 
part because Lilco was a state-regulated utility," Mr. Bradford 
said "The order that really led to the shutdown was one the 
public service commission issued, saying Lilco should demonstrate 
that it was going to have adequate power supplies for the 
forthcoming two or three summers, or make clear-cut provisions 
for an alternative approach that would allow them to get by 
without Shoreham.

"It's hard to see a situation where the Public Service Commission 
or the state could issue a similar order to Entergy today," he 
said.

New York could try to buy the reactors, Mr. Bradford said, but 
might have to pay more than Entergy paid for them, since the 
company would probably estimate their value according to 
anticipated profits, which most experts believe makes them worth 
more than the company paid. (Calculating the price paid is 
difficult; Unit 3 was sold as part of a package with FitzPatrick, 
and both plants were sold in a deal that included a contract for 
the sellers to buy back the electric power for several years.)

Calculating the value would require estimating the future price 
of electricity on the wholesale market, and estimating how 
reliably the reactors will run, and for how long.

At Synapse Energy, a consulting firm in Boston that recently 
produced two reports on the reactors for plant opponents, David 
Schlissel, a nuclear expert, said, "If I could foresee the future 
like that, I'd go to Las Vegas."

Entergy would argue that Indian Point's value to it is as part of 
a system, with some economies of scale, said Larry Gottlieb, a 
spokesman for the company. Mr. Gottlieb is based in White Plains 
at an office that the company established to oversee the two 
Indian Point plants, FitzPatrick, and Pilgrim, in Plymouth, 
Mass., and it just closed on Vermont Yankee, near the 
Massachusetts border. Some energy experts believe that the plants 
are highly profitable for Entergy.

The procedure for Shoreham was simpler, because that deal was 
made in the days when reactor owners were regulated utilities. In 
Shoreham's case, the state calculated the amount spent to build 
the plant, deducted what the public service commission might 
label an "imprudent" investment, and made an offer to Lilco.

A state could try to use its power of eminent domain to take a 
plant. But Mr. Silberg, the industry lawyer, said that a plant 
owner could argue in court that doing so for safety reasons was 
illegal. A state could use eminent domain for urban redevelopment 
or building a highway or some similar purpose, he said, but the 
proper procedure for safety concerns would be to petition the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
*****************************************************************
 5 NRC Staff to Meet with Exelon to Discuss Two Preliminary 
Inspection Findings at Peach Bottom
 
  NRC: Press Release Region I - 2002 - 53 - 

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 
www.nrc.gov
   
  No. I-02-053           August 20, 2002 CONTACT:     Diane 
Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331     E-mail: 
opa1@nrc.gov [opa1@nrc.gov]   
  
  Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with officials of 
Exelon Generation Company on Friday afternoon, August 23, to 
discuss two preliminary inspection findings of low to moderate 
safety significance at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant. The 
two-unit plant is located in Peach Bottom Township, Pa., and 
operated by Exelon. The regulatory conference will be held at 
1:30 p.m. in the Public Meeting Room at the NRC's Region I 
office, 475 Allendale Road in King of Prussia, Pa. The public is 
invited to observe the business portion of the meeting and will 
have an opportunity to ask questions of NRC staff before the 
meeting is adjourned.
 	 	 
Exelon requested the meeting to discuss its evaluation of the two 
preliminary findings. The first finding, which is preliminarily 
characterized as "white" -- an issue of low to moderate safety 
significance -- is associated with Exelon's inadequate critique 
of a February emergency preparedness exercise. Emergency 
preparedness exercises are held to identify performance and 
procedural deficiencies through a critique process. The exercises 
are designed to ensure that the company will take timely and 
appropriate corrective actions to prevent these problems from 
occurring during an actual emergency. To make safety drills 
effective, the plant staff's critiques of emergency preparedness 
drills must be thorough and self-critical.
 	 	 
         The second finding, also characterized as "white," stems 
from an untimely "Alert" classification during an actual event in 
June. (The NRC uses several classifications for significant 
events at nuclear power plants, ranging from the least 
significant category of "Unusual Event," increasing to "Alert," 
"Site Area Emergency" and "General Emergency," the most 
significant.) On June 2, the carbon-dioxide fire-suppression 
system for the emergency diesel generator room unexpectedly 
discharged. It took the company 31 minutes to declare an Alert 
due to a toxic gas release into a vital structure. NRC 
regulations require that companies promptly classify emergency 
situations. Specifically, the identification and classification 
of emergencies should be accomplished within 15 minutes after 
emergency action levels are met.
 	 	 
Under its safety significance determination process, NRC 
officials classify certain conditions at nuclear power plants as 
being one of four colors which delineate increasing levels of 
safety significance, beginning with "green" and progressing to 
"white," "yellow" or "red." Information presented by the company 
at the Regulatory Conference will be used by the NRC staff, along 
with its inspection findings, to determine the final safety 
significance of the problems.
 	 	 
"White" inspection findings can lead to additional NRC 
inspections.
 	 	 
The details of the NRC inspection findings are discussed in 
Inspection Report 02-07, which is available online in the NRC's 
electronic reading room. This report -- with the accession number 
ML022000347 -- may be viewed in the NRC's ADAMS document system, 
accessible at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. The 
final significance determination will be available on the NRC web 
site at: 
www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/regulatory/enforcement/current.html#reactor.
 
  


*****************************************************************
 6 NRC Announces the Availability of License Renewal Application for 
R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant
 
  NRC: Press Release - 2002 - 92 - 

 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] www.nrc.gov   

  No. 02-092     August 20, 2002   
  
  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is announcing the 
availability of an application for a 20-year renewal of the 
operating license of the R.E. Ginna nuclear power plant. 
Rochester Gas &Electric Corp. submitted the application on July 
30. The plant is located in Wayne County, New York. The current 
operating license for the facility expires on September 18, 2009.
 	 	 
A copy of the application will be available on the NRC web site 
at: 
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications.html.
 
The application also is available through the NRC's Agencywide 
Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). Help in using 
ADAMS is available by contacting the NRC Public Document Room 
staff at 301/415-4737 or 1/800/397-4209, or by sending a message 
to pdr@nrc.gov via e-mail.
 
In addition, a copy of the license renewal application is 
available at the Rochester Public Library, in Rochester, N.Y., 
and at the Ontario Public Library, in Ontario, N.Y.
 
The NRC staff is currently conducting an initial review of the 
application to determine whether it contains enough information 
for the required formal review. If the application has sufficient 
information, the NRC will formally "docket," or file, the 
application and will announce an opportunity to request a 
hearing.
   


*****************************************************************
 7 NRC official concerned about safe restart of nuclear power plant

Las Vegas SUN: 

Today: August 21, 2002 at 9:20:50 PDT 
 By M.R. KROPKO ASSOCIATED PRESS 

OAK HARBOR, Ohio (AP) - It's not yet clear whether FirstEnergy 
Corp. has made the changes needed to ensure a safe restart of the 
Davis-Besse power plant, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission official 
said. 

"I believe that this is the basic issue and the root cause and 
the issue you have to grapple with," Jack Grobe, chairman of a 
special NRC oversight panel, told FirstEnergy at a hearing 
Tuesday afternoon. 

The panel's credibility was the focus of a walkout at a Tuesday 
evening NRC hearing at the same location. 

About 25 protesters from a group called Citizens Campaign to 
Close Davis-Besse walked out after telling the panel that they do 
not have confidence in its oversight. 

The group includes at 50 members from several local environmental 
and anti-nuclear organizations, according to member Steve Miller 
of Toledo. The plant alongside Lake Erie has been shut down since 
February, when inspectors discovered during routine maintenance 
that boric acid had corroded a steel cap that covers the reactor 
vessel. 

As a result, the NRC is investigating the safety of reactor 
vessel heads at 69 pressurized-water reactors across the nation. 

At issue before the oversight panel is whether Davis-Besse 
violated federal safety rules last year when it kept operating 
while the reactor lid was cracked and leaking. 

Grobe said during the afternoon hearing at Oak Harbor High School 
that boric acid corrosion of the lid was not surprising, based on 
technical issues known in the industry for years. 

FirstEnergy last week confirmed that its nuclear division made 
mistakes at the plant about 25 miles east of Toledo. 

Lew Myers, chief operating officer of FirstEnergy Nuclear 
Operating Co., said that before the corrosion was discovered, 
there had been communications problems and a feeling of 
complacency among the Davis-Besse workforce. He said the plant's 
history of reliable performance made employees hesitant to bring 
up problems. 

"We were tremendously embarrassed by the reactor head issue and 
the missed opportunities," Myers said. 

The company said it's now encouraging workers to discuss problems 
as soon as they know about them. Myers said FirstEnergy wants to 
"set the standard of returning Davis-Besse to service in a safe 
and reliable manner and doing the job right the first time. We 
have to fix the problem and not try to justify it away." 

NRC panel member Jon Johnson, the deputy director of the 
commission's office of nuclear reactor regulation, toured the 
plant Tuesday and spoke with employees. 

He said FirstEnergy has a lot of work to do to accomplish its 
safety goals. "You've got to get the trust back of your 
employees. They said action speaks louder than words," Johnson 
said. 

FirstEnergy officials said at the hearing that they are waiting 
for the NRC's permission to begin installing the replacement 
reactor lid, which has been at Davis-Besse since July 18. 

Akron-based FirstEnergy will spend as much as $75 million to 
replace the reactor lid. It wants to reopen the plant by the end 
of the year. 

FirstEnergy operating companies serve 4.3 million electric 
customers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. 

On the Net: First Energy: www.firstenergycorp.com Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 8 Davis-Besse staff questions bosses' safety commitment 

The Plain Dealer
                                       
Ohio News

08/21/02
 John Mangels and John Funk Plain Dealer Reporters Oak Harbor

- Despite a summer's worth of repairs, inspections and management 
changes at the crippled Davis-Besse nuclear plant, the utility's 
own survey shows its employees are not yet ready to believe that 
things are turning around. 

       They also aren't sure that their new bosses really want to 
hear about lingering problems and safety concerns. 

        FirstEnergy Corp. officials have to regain that trust for 
the plant to reopen and operate safely, the company's own 
management and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed at a 
lengthy plant progress meeting yesterday. 

        A survey in early 1999 measuring nuclear workers' comfort 
with notifying their bosses of possible safety issues without 
fear of reprisal showed the FirstEnergy's nuclear division had a 
problem. 

        Results improved somewhat in a follow-up study done this 
January, just a few weeks before inspectors found a rust hole in 
the reactor's lid. 

        Now that FirstEnergy has made wholesale management 
changes and is embarking on a $145 million-plus series of repairs 
at the plant 87 miles west of Cleveland, the new bosses wanted to 
know if anything had changed morale-wise. 

        What they found was that confidence had sunk to the 1999 
level. "I think it means we have to put together a proactive plan 
to solicit issues from employees and work on the communications 
and trust issues," said Bill Pearce, the nuclear division's vice 
president of oversight. 

        Employees need to believe that "we value the information 
and will act on it without hesitation," Pearce said. 

        FirstEnergy Nuclear's Chief Operating Officer Lew Myers 
noted the difficulty of confronting your managers and the risks 
that speaking up may increase your workload. 

        One of the NRC's senior officials said he saw those 
employee concerns firsthand in the last few days during a visit 
and chats with workers. 

        "You've got a lot of work to do," said Jon Johnson, 
deputy director of the agency's office of nuclear reactor 
regulation, which will play a role in deciding when the reactor 
is allowed to restart. "What I think you've got to do is get the 
trust back from your employees. 

        "You have a skilled staff. You need to provide them with 
your expectations and values. My question is, what are your 
values?" Johnson said. "I couldn't tell from visiting the plant." 

        "Our values are safety, communication, teamwork, customer 
focus," Myers said. "That's the [FirstEnergy] way." 

        The 1,600 plant workers and contractors who are swarming 
to inspect and repair the reactor and its surrounding equipment 
and containment building have made substantial progress, 
FirstEnergy officials told the special NRC panel overseeing the 
task. But the work has not been without setbacks. 

        An NRC check found problems with the qualifications of 
newly trained Davis-Besse inspectors and the procedures they were 
using to look for equipment damage - damage caused by corrosive 
airborne acid that had leaked for years through cracks in the 
reactor's lid. The boric acid normally is an ingredient in the 
reactor's coolant. 

        The inspection program flaws, which constituted two 
violations of NRC regulations, prompted FirstEnergy to halt the 
checks, hire 20 more-experienced contractors to redo the 
inspections, and retrain its own workers to a higher standard. 

        Those inspections and numerous ongoing "walkdowns" to 
eyeball and document the condition of reactor equipment found 
that the overall condition of the plant was generally good. 

        But there were more signs of the sloppy attitudes toward 
safety and maintenance that had allowed the rust hole to grow 
unchecked and undetected for at least six years. 

        Workers recovered debris that had accumulated on the 
reactor building's floor and behind equipment - nails, screws, 
duct tape and wire ties. 

        "We were not pleased," said FirstEnergy Nuclear's 
engineering director, Jim Powers. 

        The debris potentially could clog intakes for the 
reactor's emergency cooling system sump pumps. "This is an 
example of cleaning up these areas and establishing higher 
standards," Powers said. 

        Painters putting a new coat on the reactor building's 
steel liner had to stop work in July when the plant's newly 
aggressive quality assurance teams discovered that the extra 
layer of paint would have affected the containment building's 
ability to withstand increased heat from a reactor accident. The 
company decided only to spot-paint areas that were peeling. 

        The 3,500 hours of inspections found some good news: 
Despite a small gap between the containment building's concrete 
floor and its steel walls, no water had seeped inside. 

        And although groundwater had leaked through the thick 
concrete outer wall and pooled against the liner, tests showed 
the liquid did not contain steel-devouring microbes, the company 
said. 

        The NRC has not yet seen results of the testing, said 
senior metallurgist Mel Holmberg. 

        It remains to be seen whether the massive amount of work 
to get the plant and its management rehabilitated to the NRC's 
satisfaction gets done by FirstEnergy's year-end timetable. 

        "It's too early to project," said NRC oversight panel 
Vice Chairman Bill Dean. The company hasn't indicated when it 
expects to be done with its work, he said, and the NRC has yet to 
schedule its own inspections of the plant. 

To reach these Plain Dealer reporters: 

jmangels@plaind.com, 216-999-4842 

jfunk@plaind.com, 216-999-4138 

Š 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. 

*****************************************************************
 9 NRC Official Concerned On Restart Of Ohio Nuclear Plant

Yahoo - 

Tuesday August 20, 6:34 pm Eastern Time

 OAK HARBOR, Ohio (AP)--The chairman of a special regulatory 
panel says it isn't clear whether FirstEnergy Corp. has made the 
changes it needs to ensure a safe restart of the Davis-Besse 
power plant in Ohio. 

"I believe that this is the basic issue and the root cause and 
the issue you have to grapple with," Jack Grobe, chairman of the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel, told the company at a 
hearing Tuesday.

 The plant has been shut down since February, when inspectors 
discovered during routine maintenance that boric acid had 
corroded a steel cap that covers the reactor vessel.

 As a result, the NRC is investigating the safety of reactor 
vessel heads at 69 pressurized-water reactors across the nation.

 At issue before Grobe's oversight panel is whether Davis-Besse 
violated federal safety rules last year when it kept operating 
while the reactor lid was cracked and leaking.

 Grobe said during the hearing at Oak Harbor High School that 
boric acid corrosion of the lid was not surprising, based on 
technical issues known in the industry for years.

 FirstEnergy last week confirmed that its nuclear division made 
mistakes at the plant, which is about 25 miles east of Toledo.

 Lew Myers, chief operating officer of FirstEnergy Nuclear 
Operating Co., said that before the corrosion was discovered, 
there had been communications problems abd a feeling of 
complacency among the Davis-Besse work force. He said the plant's 
history of reliable performance made employees hesitant to bring 
up problems.

 The company said it is now encouraging workers to discuss 
problems as soon as they know about them. He said FirstEnergy 
wants to "set the standard of returning Davis-Besse to service in 
a safe and reliable manner and doing the job right the first 
time. We have to fix the problem and not try to justify it away."

 Akron-based FirstEnergy will spend as much as $75 million to 
replace the reactor lid. It wants to reopen the plant by the end 
of the year.

 FirstEnergy operating companies serve 4.3 million electric 
customers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

 The NRC on Monday rejected a petition from 14 public-interest 
groups who want to appoint an outside panel of experts to verify 
that appropriate measures to protect the public are being taken 
at the plant.

 The NRC said it turned down the petition because its oversight 
efforts, combined with those of special committees the company 
has formed, are sufficient to reassure the public that reasonable 
safety measures have been taken. 

Copyright Š 2002 Dow Jones. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 10 A Nuclear Power Fissure 

(washingtonpost.com)
 
USEC's Plans for Advanced Plant, Pacts With Russia Cause a Split 
in Energy Industry 

By Kenneth Bredemeier
 Washington Post Staff Writer
 Monday, August 19, 2002; Page E01 

No electric utility in the United States has ordered construction 
of a new nuclear power plant in more than two decades. Yet these 
are heady days for Nick Timbers, president and chief executive of 
USEC Inc., the nation's only supplier of enriched uranium fuel 
for commercial nuclear plants.
 
Carved out of the federal government, when it was known as the 
U.S. Enrichment Corp., and turned into a public company four 
years ago, USEC has struggled financially in its infancy while 
competing against foreign, government-supported companies. 
Nonetheless, it has gained the biggest foothold in the world 
enrichment market, all the while using Cold War-era technology to 
manufacture about half of the enriched uranium it sells to the 
owners of the world's 433 reactors.
 
Now, however, the occasionally blunt Timbers thinks that in a 
matter of months, USEC has achieved, through a variety of 
decisions and agreements, a stability that bodes well for his 
company's future. Longtime acerbic critics of USEC's operations 
remain skeptical of that viewpoint, but Timbers dismisses them as 
foes "fighting yesterday's battles," academics and energy 
industry analysts who never wanted the federal government to spin 
off USEC in the first place.
 
Earlier this year, in a pair of rulings sought by USEC, the 
Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission 
decided that two of USEC's three competitors in the enrichment 
business, Eurodif, a French government-owned company, and Urenco, 
a consortium of British, Dutch and German government and 
corporate entities, had unfairly dumped their products at cheaper 
prices in the U.S. market. As a result, Eurodif has now been 
forced to pay an extra 53.5 percent duty and Urenco 3.7 percent.
 
Then, a few weeks ago, USEC signed two agreements it considers 
crucial. One of them was with the Russian government-owned 
enrichment company Tenex for a market-based pricing plan starting 
in January that could save USEC millions of dollars in the next 
12 years as USEC continues to buy nuclear fuel reprocessed from 
Russian nuclear warheads under a 20-year U.S.-Russian "Megatons 
to Megawatts" pact that already has converted bomb-grade material 
capable of making 6,000 nuclear warheads into commercial nuclear 
reactor fuel. About half of the nuclear fuel USEC sells to 50 or 
60 utilities here and abroad comes from the decommissioned 
Russian warheads.
 
In the other agreement, USEC and the Energy Department committed 
to work together to develop an advanced centrifuge uranium 
enrichment plant by the end of this decade and have it 
operational by 2010 or 2011 to replace the antiquated, 
50-year-old gaseous diffusion technology USEC now uses at its 
Paducah, Ky., plant.
 
William H. "Nick" Timbers, the graying, roundish-faced USEC 
leader, waxes poetic at the recent turn of events for USEC, 
seemingly convinced that nothing but good fortune awaits the 
firm.
 
"All these things that have happened are an extraordinary story," 
Timbers said.
 
Under the current, fixed-price arrangement with the Russian 
government running through the end of 2002 to buy their 
bomb-grade material, Timbers said, "we were paying them more than 
we could sell it for. The deal became uneconomical. We 
renegotiated with the Russians for values that float with the 
marketplace.
 
"This is one of the key building blocks of this company, putting 
it on a solid financial and operating basis," Timbers said 
recently at the company's Bethesda headquarters. "This was an 
essential resolution, a very significant accomplishment."
 
Timbers declined to predict how much the company would save under 
the deal, but USEC agreed to pay the Russian government the $8 
billion originally guaranteed under the 20-year plan to dismantle 
the nuclear warheads and turn them into fuel for electricity 
generation.
 
"Promises made, promises kept," Timbers said, referring to the $8 
billion figure. "The way it was going, probably we were on a path 
to paying more than that."
 
He said the pact with the Energy Department was "part and parcel 
of creating a solid platform. We believe it will be the most 
efficient technology in the world."
 
Given the contentious nature of USEC's existence -- whether it 
should be privatized out of the government; the closing of its 
production facilities at a plant in Piketon, Ohio; the drop in 
the price of its shares from $14 at its inception to its current 
$7 value -- it is not surprising that many of the firm's critics 
continue to think that Timbers's view of the company's prospects 
is wildly overstated. Also, previous attempts to update USEC's 
production methods have not panned out.
 
Some critics say they think the Russian deal will fall apart. 
Others suggest that the company may not survive in the long term, 
that it will not be able to find the money to build its 
enrichment plant. Moreover, some critics think a Urenco-led 
consortium, including three large U.S. nuclear power utilities, 
that is in the early stages of seeking approval to build an 
enrichment plant in the United States will upstage the USEC 
effort and open sooner.
 
Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate at the Managing the 
Atom project at Harvard University, said of the new Russian 
agreements, "They're good for the company, but are they good 
enough?"
 
Bunn said USEC still "is the highest-cost producer [of enriched 
uranium] in an oversupplied market. It's not a comfortable 
position to be in."
 
Jeff Combs, president of UX Consulting Co., an Atlanta 
nuclear-fuel consulting firm, said that "as a company, they do 
the lobbying very well [to secure favorable contracting 
provisions]. They describe themselves as a global energy company, 
but they're actually a global lobbying firm. Their technology is 
sort of antiquated."
 
He questioned whether USEC will be to raise the estimated $1.5 
billion necessary to build the enrichment plant. He said that if 
one new enrichment plant is built in the United States, he would 
bet on the success of the Urenco-led group known as the LES 
Partnership.
 
Peter Lenny, president of Urenco's U.S. marketing operation, said 
that the Urenco partnership, which includes such energy industry 
heavyweights as Duke Energy, Entergy Corp., Exelon Corp., 
Westinghouse Electric Co. and Cameco Corp., a Canadian uranium 
mining firm, hopes to send its application for the plant to the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2002, win approval by 
mid-2004 and open it by the end of 2006, years before a new USEC 
plant would be running.
 
Timbers said his firm's technology will prove superior in the 
long run. "I'm more concerned what we do, not others," he said. 
"We're very confident the USEC centrifuge will be the most 
efficient in the world."
 
As for the capital needed, Timbers said: "I believe there will be 
the financial resources for the company, possibly new investors. 
The finances have not been determined yet."
 
Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), in whose district USEC once 
operated the Piketon plant and still maintains a large clean-up 
force of workers, scoffed at the notion: "Where's USEC going to 
get the resources to deploy a new technology . . . unless the 
federal government bails them out? I think they'll come to Uncle 
Sam for it. If they fork it over again, what did we accomplish by 
privatization?"
 
One longtime critic of USEC's operation is Thomas Neff, a senior 
researcher at Center for International Studies at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who in a New York Times 
op-ed article first publicly suggested the use of the 
decommissioned Russian warheads as commercial nuclear fuel.
 
Although Timbers declined to discuss fuel prices under the new 
deal with the Russians, Neff said that the country will receive 
$440 million next year compared to $500 million this year.
 
Neff predicted the Russians will become so disenchanted with the 
deal that they will back out of it. "My sense is that the 
Russians can't live with that," Neff said. "They're already 
complaining."
 
USEC has grown so annoyed at Neff's critiques of the company that 
it has prepared a list of his predictions that it says have been 
proven wrong over the years.
 
Timbers said: "I don't see that other companies get the flock of 
critics we do. His predictions are inaccurate, misleading and 
sometimes very malicious. It's a classic example of someone 
fighting yesterday's battles," in this case the 1990s fight over 
whether the company should have been privatized. "I hope we can 
break this chain of cynicism that we've had for years."
 
James Schlesinger, a secretary of energy during the Carter 
administration who now serves on a USEC strategic advisory 
council, said that "given the agreement with the Russians, 
[USEC's prospects] are good."
 
He said he sees no reason why the deal with the Russians would 
fall apart, saying, "It's backed by the American government and 
the Russian government."
 
Ernest J. Moniz, an undersecretary of energy during the Clinton 
administration and a new member of the USEC council, agreed about 
the Russian deal, saying, "Right now it's as stabilized as it's 
ever been." And because USEC's stock dipped below $5 a share in 
2000 and now has recovered to Friday's close at $7.53, Timbers 
likes to note that in the past two years, counting both share 
appreciation and dividends, investors in the firm have had a 
total return of 125 percent, well ahead of the performance of the 
declining market in that period.
 
Stock analyst Scott Sprinzen of Standard & Poor's Corp. in New 
York takes a more neutral view of USEC. "It seems like things 
have stabilized with the company after a period of deterioration 
since the initial public offering," he said. "Its financial 
performance had been sliding.
 
"But their earnings are still just fair and they face some major 
challenges, particularly in their future production," Sprinzen 
said. "What's the capital cost for the new technology?"
 
But those concerns are for days and weeks down the road, leaving 
Timbers to reach a simple conclusion: "The agreements we've 
reached are good for this company, good for this country's energy 
independence."
 
Š 2002 The Washington Post Company
*****************************************************************
 11 Exelon cited for mishandling Peach Bottom incidents 
                                       
Intelligencer Journal
   
LancasterOnline.com 
  
Wednesday, August 21 

By Rebecca Ritzel Intelligencer Journal Staff

   The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to take action against 
Exelon Nuclear for mishandling two emergency incidents, one real 
and one simulated, at Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station.

 The NRC will meet with Exelon officials Friday at 1:30 p.m. at 
the commission's regional office, 475 Allendale Road, King of 
Prussia, to discuss the problems at the southern York County 
plant. The public can attend the meeting and pose questions to 
NRC staff.

 Exelon requested the meeting to provide the NRC with additional 
information before the commission issues penalties for the 
incidents. The company could be ordered to pay fines, repeat 
emergency drills or allow additional inspections.

 "Whenever we take an enforcement action, we give (the company) a 
chance to come in with their side of the story," NRC spokesman 
Neil Sheehan said. "These problems relate to a plant's 
preparation to handle an emergency. We take them very seriously."

 The NRC says Exelon leniently critiqued a biannual simulated 
emergency held at Peach Bottom last February. NRC inspectors, who 
were on site during the drill, said Exelon did not report 
breakdowns in communication during the mock crisis.

 According to the NRC, the reactor operators should have declared 
a "general emergency" --the highest safety alert --when water in 
the simulated reactor dropped to a dangerously low level, Sheehan 
said. Instead, Exelon's site director declared a general 
emergency later in the drill, without talking to the operators.

 The NRC also cited a June 2 incident, when a fire-extinguishing 
system unexpectedly discharged in the plant's emergency diesel 
generator room. Peach Bottom employees were evacuated from that 
area of the plant, and no one was hurt. Exposure to the gas in 
the extinguishers could have been life-threatening.

 Whenever that area of the plant is evacuated, Exelon is required 
to declare an alert and notify the appropriate authorities, 
including the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, within 15 
minutes.

 According to an NRC report issued July 19, Exelon waited 31 1/2 
minutes before declaring an "alert." In terms of severity of 
nuclear incidents, an alert is the second-lowest. Such incidents 
are categorized, in descending order of severity, as: general 
emergency, site-area emergency, alert or unusual event.

 "Under our regulations, they're supposed to make those calls in 
a very timely manner so the appropriate authorities can be 
notified," Sheehan said. "Every second is precious when you're in 
the midst of an emergency. While this didn't pose a threat, the 
concern is how the situation would be handled during a serious 
emergency."

 The NRC records problems that occur at nuclear power plants and 
takes action --ranging from citing a no-fine violation to 
shutting down a reactor --against plant operators. Both of Peach 
Bottom's safety violations were of low to moderate significance, 
according to the NRC.

 Regulators are in the process of evaluating whether Exelon 
should be granted licenses to continue operating two of Peach 
Bottom's reactors into the 2030s. The company's license to 
operate the Unit 2 reactor expires in 2013. Its Unit 3 license 
expires in 2014. The Unit 1 1/2 reactor was permanently shut down 
in 1974.

 During relicensing proceedings, the plant received positive 
environmental reviews from the NRC. But at a public safety 
meeting last week, inspectors said Peach Bottom must upgrade and 
evaluate some equipment before the aging plant can be relicensed.

 The NRC expects to issue its relicensing decision in July. 

Š2001 Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 12 Lawmaker: US nuclear risk 'unacceptable'*

By Sharon Otterman
From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk

Published 8/20/2002 6:29 PM

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- A Democratic lawmaker said Tuesday 
that deep staff cuts, persistent security flaws and funding 
shortages have created an "unacceptable level of risk" of 
terrorism at U.S. nuclear facilities, adding that President 
George W. Bush's funding policies were partially to blame.

"Based on the information that the Department of Energy has 
provided me about the state of security at its nuclear weapons 
facilities, I believe we continue to face an unacceptable level 
of risk that terrorists could successfully target these sites," 
Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey told reporters.

Markey, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce 
committee, called on Bush to provide the Department of Energy 
with $300 million requested by the agency for post-Sept. 11 
security upgrades. That request was part of the $5.1 billion 
spending bill rejected by the president at his economic forum in 
Waco, Texas, last week.

"The president is playing a dangerous game when he vetoes 
critical security resources as a strategy to revive the economy," 
Markey said.

In response, the White House said Tuesday that more than enough 
money had been appropriated in 2002 for nuclear weapons security, 
including $60 million in supplemental funding that had not been 
spent by March.

"The American nuclear weapons complex is one of the most secure 
facilities in the world. It is critical to ensure this security, 
and the president's policies reflect this commitment," White 
House deputy press secretary Claire Buchan said.

Markey's report, based on data provided by the Energy Department 
in May and other analyses, stated that the number of security 
guards at nuclear facilities had fallen nearly 40 percent in the 
last 10 years.

Though some security improvements had been made after Sept. 11, 
the report stated that the Department of Energy had not yet 
permanently upgraded its security regulations since the terror 
attacks.

The report also indicated that many security experts had left the 
department.

It also referred to a recent case in which two Yemeni citizens 
trained by the Energy Department as part of an international 
anti-terrorism program had disappeared. The case has been turned 
over to the FBI, the report said.

The Energy Department, for its part, countered Tuesday by stating 
that nuclear facilities were secure.

Staff cuts were due to a scale-back in nuclear weaponry after the 
Cold War, and hundreds of additional guards that have been hired 
since Sept. 11 were not reflected in the report, said Bryan 
Wilkes, a National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman.

"There is nothing new in this report. Our security is strong: 
it's safe in all of the sites around the country," Wilkes said.

Following a comprehensive review of security procedures at U.S. 
nuclear sites after the Sept. 11 attacks, Energy Secretary 
Spencer Abraham said that many, if not all of the recommendations 
had been acted upon.

"I can reassure you that our weapons complex remains safe and 
secure and the protection systems at our sites are robust, 
reliable and responsive to evolving security challenges," Abraham 
wrote in a May 3 letter to Markey.

However, Markey cited letters from the Energy Department to the 
White House Office of Management and Budget warning of serious 
risks if additional funding requests for post-Sept. 11 security 
upgrades were not met.

A $379 million Energy Department request, made in March, was "to 
meet urgent and compelling requirements for safeguards and 
security, emergency response and energy security and assurance 
activities," according to the budget request.

"Failure to support these urgent security requirements is a risk 
that would be unwise," Abraham wrote in the March 14 request.

However, the White House, which -- according to Buchan -- had 
already approved $374 million in supplemental funding for nuclear 
security after Sept. 11, judged that the additional funds were 
not necessary.

On Aug. 13, a $300 million request was turned down by Bush within 
the $5.1 billion supplemental spending bill. Markey said he plans 
to reintroduce the request when Congress returns in September.

According to the report, the total number of protective-force 
personnel in the Energy Department complex went from 7,091 in 
1992 to 4,262 in 2001, with a significant cut in armed guards.

In other findings, the report said that more than 38 successful 
cyber attacks took place in 2001 in the nation's most important 
nuclear labs, including the Argonne National Laboratory in 
Illinois, Sandia in New Mexico, Lawrence Berkeley Lab in 
California and Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee.

While the White House said that numerous internal and external 
reviews have attested to the security of the nuclear weapons 
complex, Markey said he disagreed with that assessment.

"Numerous congressional, independent and executive branch 
investigations have concluded that DOE (Department of Energy) 
security is gravely lacking," his report states.

Copyright Š 2002 United Press International
*****************************************************************
 13 Tungsten found in Fallon tests
 
  August 21, 2002   
    
 No data linking metal to leukemia, but questions remain
 
   [fmullen@rgj.com]   

RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
	
[Carol Rubin, of the CDC, addresses residents of Fallon on 
Tuesday concerning high levels of tungsten found in tests. - 
Marilyn Newton/RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL]                            

Marilyn Newton/RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL                                                                   

Carol Rubin, of the CDC, addresses residents of Fallon on Tuesday 
concerning high levels of tungsten found in tests.                                                              

For more information:

 The CDC released Tuesday partial results of blood and urine 
samples. Results still to come are: 

o Trace elements, including chromium and nickel.

 o Radioactivity, including radon, alpha/beta/gamma radiation and 
uranium isotopes.

 o Pesticides, such as malathion, parathion, promethon, DDE 
organochlorides and organophospates.

 o Major ions, such as calcium, chloride, sodium, sulfate, 
silicon, magnesium, potassium and fluoride.

 o Infectious agents, including antibodies and pieces of viruses, 
including common viruses and retroviruses. A retrovirus can 
incorporate itself within the hosts DNA and is related to some 
cancers and AIDS, according to medical dictionaries. 

o Volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, other solvents and 
fuels. 
			 			 
FALLON  Federal health officials said Tuesday that urine tests 
on leukemia patient families and Fallon control group families 
showed high levels of the metal tungsten in the bodies of both 
groups.

 Our results engender several questions, said Dr. Carol H. 
Rubin, chief of the health studies branch at the federal Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention. Where is it coming from and 
how is it getting into peoples bodies?

Rubin said there is no data linking tungsten with leukemia.

The levels of tungsten found were 11 times higher than in the 
reference population used for a national CDC toxics study, Rubin 
said. She said 80 percent of the 205 people tested in Fallon had 
tungsten levels that exceeded the reference population.

No geographic pattern was found, she said, and there was no 
difference in the results between the case families and control 
families.

Since 1997, 16 children connected with Fallon have been diagnosed 
with leukemia and three have died. The expected rate of leukemia 
in Churchill County is one case every five years. State and 
federal health authorities have been investigating the cancer 
cluster for more than a year.

The CDC took blood, urine and cheek-swab samples last year and 
analyzed them for dozens of metals, chemicals, pesticides and 
other contaminants. On Tuesday, state and federal investigators 
reported the results of the metals tests at a public meeting at 
the Fallon Convention Center attended by about 200 people.

Investigators said the elevated rate of tungsten in the urine of 
the residents was the most significant factor noted.

Tungsten is not a known carcinogen and is not listed as hazardous 
by state and federal environmental or occupational health 
agencies. But scientists say very few studies have been done on 
tungsten and little is known about its effects on humans.

Laboratory studies indicate tungsten can be toxic in conjunction 
with other substances, such as cobalt. An Air Force study noted 
the metal can damage cells.

 I suppose that may have something to do with the cancer, but 
apparently no one knows enough about tungsten to say much about 
it, said Matt Warneke, whose daughter, Annastacia, 7, has 
recovered from leukemia. Maybe its genetics. Maybe everyone 
here has it in their systems but because of our genes, our kids 
are affected by it.

Or maybe its a red herring and doesnt mean anything.

Researchers also found unusually high levels of arsenic in the 
test subjects urine. Rubin said because Fallons water contains 
arsenic at twice the national standard, the levels were much 
higher than expected.

She said the people in the study who had very high levels of 
arsenic were advised to consult their doctors. Arsenic can cause 
lung, skin and bladder cancer but hasnt been linked to leukemia.

Rubin said the tests showed the subjects did not have high 
readings for other metals, such as mercury. But she said the 
results of the tests for chromium and nickel are pending.

 A factory that operated in Fallon from 1996 until last year used 
chromium and nickel for the manufacture of molds used for auto 
parts. The factory came under public scrutiny for its use of 
nickel carbonyl, a toxic compound, but Nevada environmental 
regulators said the plant did not emit the chemical into the 
environment in dangerous amounts.

 Rubin said because the readings for tungsten and arsenic were so 
high the CDC decided to report to the community as quickly as 
possible.

Tungsten, also called wolfram, is a steel-gray to tin-white metal 
naturally occurring in the Earths crust, according to 
metallurgical dictionaries. A major use of tungsten is in the 
production of hard metals, such as tungsten carbide, which is 
common in rock drills and metal cutting tools. The metal is mined 
in Nevada, with 17 inactive tungsten mines in Churchill County 
alone. In Fallon, at least one plant, Kennametal Inc., uses it.

The tested families, the scientists and the public officials are 
trying to determine where the tungsten in the residents bodies 
is coming from. 

Medical experts said tungsten, when ingested, generally is 
eliminated from the human body within two days. 

Although Fallon well water was tested by the U.S. Geological 
Survey twice since 1995, the USGS did not test for tungsten. 
Officials said the USGS will test tap water for the metal and 
that dust samples collected from the 69 Fallon families homes 
will be screened for tungsten and arsenic.

Because of the way the urine samples were collected, it had to 
have been a recent exposure (to tungsten), said John Osterloh, a 
CDC investigator. If its representative of whats in peoples 
bodies all the time, then it would have to be a continuous 
exposure on a daily basis.

CDC officials said the biological test reports are preliminary 
and all the agencies involved will continue to study the results 
and compare them with the findings of the environmental tests, 
which are due to be released in the fall.

Assemblywoman Marcia de Braga, D-Fallon, said the CDC report is 
interesting but may or may not shed light on the cause of the 
leukemia cluster.

The contamination may be part of the equation, she said. That, 
in conjunction with something else, that triggered the leukemia.

But even if it has nothing to do with the cancer, lets find out 
whats happening and fix it. Its as the CDC doctor told us in 
the beginning: dont wait for science to explain everything. If 
we find something thats wrong, lets clean it up.
 		   		   				
Š Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a  [http://www.gannett.com] 
Newspaper.
*****************************************************************
 14 Service lane cordoned off at Paris airport after minor 
radioactive leak
 	
CANOE.CA 

August 21, 2002 Service lane cordoned off at Paris airport after 
minor radioactive leak PARIS (AP) -- Authorities cordoned off 
part of a service lane at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport after 
it was slightly contaminated by radioactive medical material, 
France's nuclear safety agency said Wednesday.  Jean-Luc 
Pasquier, a spokesman for the agency, said there was no risk for 
passengers. 

 Police found a crumpled package with a radioactive warning label 
lying on the service lane on Saturday, said a statement from the 
agency, known by its initials IRSN. 

 The package, which likely was crushed by a passing vehicle after 
falling off a luggage trolley, said it contained radioactive 
material generally used by doctors to treat thyroid cancer, the 
agency said. 

 Pasquier said one lane of the service road, along a length of 
about 30 to 40 metres, remained cordoned off Wednesday. 

 He said the contaminated area would likely be cleaned up within 
two or three days. Even uncleaned, radioactivity levels would 
naturally drop to normal levels of their own accord in a maximum 
of eight to 10 weeks, he added. 

 Pasquier said it was safe for vehicles to pass through the 
contaminated zone but that airport employees were instructed to 
avoid the area on foot for the next few days. The access road is 
used only by workers at the airport to move between two 
terminals, he said. 

 "The situation is not dangerous today," said Pasquier. 

[http://www.canoe.ca/copyright.html] Š 2002, CANOE, a
*****************************************************************
 15 Fallon Fast

Houston Press 

  "Seeing and Believing"
 Details: Through September 8; 713-743-9530.

Here's a scary idea: Take photographs of the leaders of the 
countries with the largest nuclear stockpiles in the world and 
blend them into a composite portrait, weighting each photograph's 
contribution to the composite by the size of his or her 
stockpile. In the early 1980s, the heads of state in question 
would have been Leonid Brezhnev, Deng Xiaoping, François 
Mitterand, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. (I said it was 
scary.) The ratio would be about 55 percent Reagan, 45 percent 
Brezhnev and less than 1 percent for the other three. Nancy 
Burson tried this little experiment in 1982 and came up with 
Warhead I, giving a chilling face to the nuclear nightmare under 
which most of us have lived our entire lives. 

The face is usually our starting point for defining identity, our 
own and others', and "Seeing and Believing: The Art of Nancy 
Burson," now at the University of Houston's Blaffer Gallery, is 
full of faces. This mid-career survey -- organized by Terrie 
Sultan, the Blaffer's director, and Lynn Gumpert, director of New 
York University's Grey Art Gallery -- follows Burson's interest 
in identity issues from her early fascination with the aging 
process through the 2000-2001 series, Guys Who Look Like Jesus. 

The earliest work here is Five Self-Portraits at Ages 18, 30, 45, 
60 and 70 (1976), for which Burson had a makeup artist "age" her 
(and "de-age" her, for that matter). The results are 
spectacularly unconvincing. But, working with scientists at MIT, 
she developed a considerably more successful software program, 
The Method and Apparatus for Producing an Image of a Person's 
Face at a Different Age (1976), that was subsequently used to 
help find several missing children. In fact, it was later 
licensed to the FBI for that purpose.

Based on the fact that we all age the same way (essentially, our 
faces grow out and down), the technology, displayed here as The 
Age Machine (1990), allows you to scan your face into an 
interactive computer station and see what you might look like in 
20 years or so. 

The other programs at the computer station are outgrowths of some 
of Burson's other concerns during her career: The Anomaly Machine 
(1995-1996) deals with facial irregularities; The Couples Machine 
(1999) will make you androgynous; and The Human Race Machine 
(2000) is an emphatically personal iteration of the artist's 
truism -- which cannot be asserted too often -- that "there is no 
gene for 'race.' " 

Burson's interest in what is now called morphing lasted through 
the '80s. Along with Warhead I, she made a composite of mankind, 
blending white, black and Asian by percentage of world 
population, as well as a composite of six men and six women to 
see which sex would dominate (somewhat reassuringly, the female 
does). To explore standards of feminine beauty, she produced two 
composites, one using the faces of '40s and '50s film stars; the 
other, '70s and '80s film stars. Neither composite is terribly 
appealing, perhaps because beauty depends on the individual -- 
the idiosyncratic, rather than the norm.

As if to prove that point, between 1988 and 1990, Burson made a 
series of large Polaroid composite portraits, most of which would 
be at home on an (original) Star Trek set: a woman given a doll's 
eyes, faces with bald cranial extensions, a man with mildly 
reptilian features. The soft beauty of these black-and-white 
portraits draws you in past the anomalies. 

The heart of this exhibit is a series of formal portraits from 
1994 and 1995, part of a larger series called Special Faces. 
These large format Polaroid photographs, Rembrandtesque in their 
lush color and rich lighting, portray sitters with facial 
anomalies or prostheses, people with congenital conditions and 
survivors of cancer. These faces possess a calm dignity; some 
even express an open curiosity, inviting your gaze, welcoming it. 
The ravishing beauty of these portraits combines with the warmth 
and candor of the sitters to make you want to stay with them 
awhile. 

Burson's most recent series, Healing and Pictures of Health, are 
the most problematic works in the survey. The former is concerned 
with primarily the community of healers, people who can marshal 
some kind of energy to, for example, shrink tumors (note: they 
are not faith healers). Burson sought to photograph this energy. 
In Gary (2000), a vertical, red-rimmed yellow flare of light 
hovers before the subject, while Nancy (1996) appears to be 
sitting in a dry ice cloud. These are, if nothing else, 
remarkable portraits of faith and hope; the expression on the 
face of the (presumable) mother in the background of JP with 
Sammy (2001) says it all. 

Pictures of Health involves microscope photographs of healthy and 
unhealthy cells; the juxtaposition of the blooming world of a 
healthy human lymphocyte with a sick one's barren moon is 
compelling. The idea is "to assist people in picturing their own 
health," Burson tells the curators in the catalog interview. But 
the series also includes "aural fingerprints" captured by a gas 
discharge visualization camera, demonstrating the aural 
difference between, say, anger and love: Anger seems asymmetrical 
and looks like much harder work. 

The problem with these two series is that after spending the 
first part of her career manipulating photographic images, Burson 
now wants us to accept the veracity of the photograph as an 
objective record. There is a contradiction here, but it's not 
fatal. What finally persuades is the obvious sincerity of the 
artist; that's why the Special Faces series is at the heart of 
Burson's work. There, the integrity, generosity and empathy that 
inform Nancy Burson's work are most evident. In recognition, it 
would be churlish not to curb our skepticism. 


  houstonpress.com | originally published: August 22, 2002   

*****************************************************************
 16 French Pacific nuclear workers want health checks

Radio Australia News - 

Former French Pacific nuclear test site workers are demanding a 
thorough medical follow up and possible compensation after the 
release of a report showing higher rates of cancer among the 
group.

In the 30 years until testing was halted in 1996, France exploded 
nearly 200 nuclear devices at Moruroa and nearby Fangataufa 
atolls in French Polynesia.

A group representing more than 1,000 former workers at the sites 
says it will present its demands to French overseas minister 
Brigitte Girardin when she makes her first visit to Polynesia 
this week.

The group says a study by the French national institute of health 
and medical research shows the cancer rate in the two atolls is 
34 per cent, twice the French national average.

21/08/2002 18:22:31 | ABC Radio Australia News
 
*****************************************************************
 17 LES official says a list of proposed sites planned
 
<http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/>

Story published in the Johnson City Press:
8/21/2002.

By Chris Garland Erwin Bureau

ERWIN ? Only days after the Louisiana Energy Services in 
Washington, D.C., reported no ?short list? of proposed plant 
sites to come, Europe-based LES Chairman Pat Upson said yes, 
there will be a ?short list? in seven to 10 days.

Upson gave the update in a phone interview Tuesday from Urenco 
headquarters in Marlow, south of England. ?There will be a short 
list announcement about the proposed location?s from the LES team 
in Washington, D.C. Nothing will go out without my authority,? he 
said. George Dials, president of the LES partnership in 
Washington, will coordinate with Upson when the list is released.

Urenco is the main company in the LES consortium looking to build 
a $1.1 billion uranium enrichment plant somewhere in the United 
States. News broke about the plant locally in June after 
landowners near Tinker Road, Unicoi, were approached by the 
Unicoi County Economic Development Board.

Upson said at one point LES reported there would not be a short 
list produced. However, since there was some talk to the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission about a list in a meeting this month, LES 
has reconsidered.

The LES chairman said he could not say how many sites will be on 
the list.

Announcement of the final site location remains mid- September, 
Unicoi County Executive Paul Monk said Tuesday. ?I know they have 
delayed the announcement. We don?t have a date, but I will be 
anxiously awaiting the decision.?

Unicoi Alderman Johnny Lynch said, ?LES?s delay tactics allow the 
agony and controversy to continue in a small community ? a 
community that these decision makers, living in a foreign 
country, obviously don?t know or care about.

?As for the feelings of the Citizens for the Preservation of the 
Valley Beautiful, this just reaffirms our dedication and allows 
us more time to reach the silent majority ? the silent majority 
who do not want a uranium enrichment facility in this area.?

The citizens group continues to meet about once a week at Lynch?s 
Farmhouse Gallery and Gardens in Unicoi. ?It is a confusing 
thing; first they say one thing and do anther. As far as we are 
concerned, we are in it the long run. If they come up with an 
answer tomorrow or three weeks from now ? we are there,? Lynch 
said.

/(Contact Chris Garland at cgarland@johnsoncitypress.com 
<mailto:cgarland@johnsoncitypress.com>)./

Š 2001-02 Johnson City Press and Associated Press All Rights 
Reserved This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten 
or redistributed.

Johnson City Press 204 W.Main St. ? Johnson City, Tennessee 37605 
423.929.3111

*****************************************************************
 18 Nuclear waste may be target
 
This story was published Tue, Aug 20, 2002
 
By the Herald staff
 
Some security experts worry the most vulnerable terrorist target 
may not be nuclear reactors around the country, but the waste 
they produce.
 
Hanford has a few potential targets -- all within concrete 
structures -- such as Energy Northwest's spent fuel pool. And 
Hanford is moving leftover Cold War spent nuclear fuel from the K 
Basins to a huge underground vault.
 
Highly radioactive cesium and strontium capsules are in another 
indoor pool in central Hanford.
 
And as Hanford's plutonium is converted into less deadly forms, 
it is stored in a vault behind thick concrete walls.
 
Finally, Hanford has 53 million gallons of radioactive wastes in 
huge underground tanks beneath at least 6 feet of earth. 

Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This 
*****************************************************************
 19 Rep. Hawk voices concern about proposed enrichment plant 

Elizabethton Star - Online Edition

By Kathy Helms-Hughes
 STAR STAFF
 khughes@starhq.com
 
   Citizens for the Preservation of Valley Beautiful continued 
their strategy sessions Tuesday night with nearly 70 persons in 
attendance, among them newly elected state Rep. David Hawk of 
Greeneville, representing the 5th District.

    Some residents said they had received word that announcement 
of a site location for a $1.1 billion uranium enrichment facility 
known as Louisiana Energy Services could come within the next 
seven days.

    Rep. Hawk, who unseated long-time Rep. Zane Whitson, a 
proponent of the gas centrifuge facility, in the Aug. 1 General 
Election, said that though "issues did arise in Unicoi County, 
the way vote totals came in, it would not have mattered in terms 
of the numbers of votes in Unicoi County.

    "Population had as much to do with electing me as anything. 
Greene County makes up two-thirds of the electorate."

    Hawk said that after he took his stance of opposition against 
the Urenco-led project, "I was told that my stance meant nothing 
to whether or not this plant would locate here. They said there 
was nothing I could do about it, the plant was coming in."

    Hawk said he does not believe that the uranium enrichment 
plant is the right match for Unicoi County. "I don't think it's 
the right match for the population and work force, I don't think 
it's the right match for the region in terms of the types of 
industry we need to locate in the community.

    "I want Unicoi County to know that I am here to be their 
voice. If they have concerns about issues, I need to know about 
those concerns and I want to take them up with the powers that 
be, so to say. I want to make sure that any industry that is 
located in Unicoi County is a positive for all those considered. 
You have landowners to consider, you have schoolchildren to 
consider, you have people who need jobs to consider."

    According to Hawk, the industry will not solve the county's 
employment needs. "Unicoi has one of the higher unemployment 
rates in the region. It has for quite some time. This is a plant 
that is several years down the road and it is not guaranteed to 
provide the first job to a Unicoi County resident.

    "From what I understand, the expertise that it takes to work 
in this, it takes so many years in college and is to such a 
precise degree, that there are very, very few individuals in 
Unicoi County High School that are going to school themselves to 
physically work in this plant. I have to look at all the 
different factors and weigh them equally," Hawk said.

    Among persons opposed to the LES plant who spoke at Tuesday's 
meeting was Wilhemina Williams of Chuckey, representing the 
Friends of the Nolichucky River Valley Inc.

    Williams said her organization was formed about three years 
ago when Johnson City threatened to put a sewage treatment plant 
next to the Davy Crockett State Park. 

   "We thought that was the most foolish thing they could do. Why 
would they want to put a sewer treatment plant next to one of the 
most attractive and most visited state parks in the state of 
Tennessee?"

    That park has 220,000 visitors each year, she said, and the 
proposed treatment plant was 27 miles from the city of Johnson 
City.

    "My family has been on this land down in Chuckey since 1777, 
so the 'Valley Beautiful' is certainly what they came here for 
and what they stayed here for," Williams said.

    "Of course, if you know anything about economic development 
and development in general, you know that to attract development 
you've got to put in a sewer plant and put in infrastructure and 
then the people will come. What they forgot was where they chose 
was Class A soil. This is alluvian soil that is compared to the 
Nile River Valley, and the farmers in this valley have been here 
for hundreds of years. Before white man, Indians were farming 
this land," according to Williams.

    Local farmers banded together. "They didn't know in 
Washington County who they were up against until all of those 
farmers started showing up at the Washington County Council 
meetings. We got not only in their face, but we were in the face 
of the people in Nashville, we were in the face of everybody that 
we could get in front of, and shaking our fingers at them and 
letting them know that this was not where it needed to be," 
Williams said.

    "We found out from that experience that you have to pull out 
every stopper that you can to stop these things. What they forgot 
was that agriculture is a very important industry and an 
important part of our economy in this area. You look at this land 
and you think, 'Oh gee, it's beautiful.' Nothing is going on 
here.

    "Well, they forget that, that 'nothing going on' is the corn 
and the tomatoes and the watermelons and all of the agriculture 
that's being produced," she said.

    Williams is concerned not only about impact to agriculture 
from a new plant and from processes conducted at Nuclear Fuel 
Services in Erwin, but also the high cancer rate in the area of 
Northeast Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, West Virginia and 
Southeastern Kentucky. "We are in one of the three hot spots in 
the whole United States for cancer rates," she said. 

   "I live on the river. I live in Chuckey. There's not a house, 
I don't think, up and down the river in the area that we live in 
that's not affected by cancer. We don't have good data on what 
causes that cancer, where it's coming from, but we do drink the 
Greeneville city water that's comes into the Chuckey Utility 
District," she said. That water has its genesis in the Nolichucky 
River which runs through Unicoi and Greene counties. 

   "The cancer rates are a real concern to us. Every day, 
especially this summer, I've watched the tomato fields being 
irrigated directly out of the river. I know that that water 
probably contains heavy metals and that those heavy metals are 
being directly deposited on the soils."

    Williams said she is concerned that more nuclear industry in 
the area will not only impact the agricultural industry, but also 
could ruin the region's historical and environmental tourism. 

   "I would hate for a company that would hire maybe 250 people 
to [ruin it] for those 220,000 people who come here and visit 
every year," she said. 
  
Copyright Š 1996 - 2002 Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc. 
Elizabethton, Tennessee 37643 - 423.542.4151 
*****************************************************************
 20 Nuclear waste left in Webster will cost taxpayers

   HoustonChronicle.com - 

Aug. 21, 2002, 10:21AM
 
Taxpayers to help pay $9.6 million to dispose of nuke waste

 By TONY FREEMANTLE
 Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Environment Writer

 For five years regulators failed to force a Houston company that 
manufactured radioactive materials to comply with a state law 
requiring it to have a plan and the financial ability to clean up 
any mess it made. 

  [nuke] Chronicle file photo Taxpayers will split the $9.6 
million bill with the federal government to clean up the 
radioactive material left near Hobby Airport and in Webster after 
Gulf Nuclear of Louisiana went bankrupt. 
  

The oversight may have complicated the state's chances of getting 
the company, Gulf Nuclear of Louisiana, to pay for the cleanup. 
The federal government and taxpayers will now have to pay $9.6 
million to decontaminate and demolish a highly radioactive 
building that once housed the company's manufacturing operation 
in Webster. 

Documents kept by the Texas Department of Health, the agency 
charged with licensing and regulating businesses that deal with 
radioactive material, show that beginning in 1995 it failed to 
follow the law and force Gulf Nuclear to submit a decommissioning 
and funding plan. The error was only discovered in mid-2000 
shortly before Gulf Nuclear's parent company, The GNI Group, 
filed for bankruptcy. 

In the interim, conditions inside the facility, which until 1992 
had manufactured radioactive devices used mainly in the oil and 
medical industries, deteriorated to such an extent that in July 
2001 the Health Department slapped Gulf Nuclear with an emergency 
order to secure the building in a "manner that prevents the 
release of radioactive material into the environment." 

"The bureau determined that the lack of adequate security and 
maintenance (and) the threat of abandonment of the facilities in 
the bankruptcy process create an emergency that requires 
immediate action to protect the public health and safety and the 
environment," the order warned. 

For more than 20 years, Gulf Nuclear operated two facilities 
south of downtown Houston -- the Webster location at 202 Medical 
Center Blvd., and another in the 9300 block of Tavenor, near 
Hobby Airport. 

In January, after it became clear the two facilities would 
essentially be abandoned, the U.S. Environmental Protection 
Agency began a complex and dangerous cleanup using mostly 
Superfund emergency money. 

A review of Health Department records and numerous interviews 
shows that, for many reasons, virtually everyone associated with 
the facilities -- from state regulators, to independent 
contractors, to Gulf Nuclear officers, to attorneys on all sides 
-- grossly underestimated the extent of the contamination, 
largely at the Webster site, and what it would cost to clean up. 

When Gulf Nuclear was finally forced by the state in 2000 to 
submit a decommissioning and funding plan, it estimated the cost 
to be about $1.6 million, and downplayed what was on the site, 
Health Department officials said. The state rejected that plan, 
and pegged the cost at about $4.5 million.

When the EPA got involved in October, it estimated the price tag 
would be about $8.5 million. A trustee for the properties and 
other estates in GNI's bankruptcy case now says it will cost 
about $9.6 million. 

Part of the reason for the escalation in cost, said Philip 
Shaver, head of uranium and nuclear waste management in the 
Health Department's Bureau of Radiation Control, is that Gulf 
Nuclear could have been "deliberately trying to hide something" 
from the state inspectors who visited the facilities annually. 

"I guess nobody knew the extent of what was there," Shaver said. 
"There were a lot of unknowns and if someone is deliberately 
trying to hide something from us, I don't know what we can do." 

When the EPA entered the Webster building in January, even 
Superfund cleanup veterans were shocked at what they found. 

"Housekeeping was extremely poor," said Greg Fife, the EPA's 
onsite coordinator in a Jan. 27 memo. "Protective containers were 
left open, radium needles are scattered on the floor, and the 
ventilation system is highly contaminated. ... Some areas have 
radiation levels high enough to provide the yearly permissible 
dose in a very short period of time." 

Among the radioactive materials used at the laboratory were 
Americium-241, beryllium, cesium-137 and irridium-192. Americium 
is so toxic it cannot yet be legally disposed of in the United 
States, leaving the government with the only option of storing 
the substance until the proposed underground nuclear waste 
repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is ready. 

Radioactive rats and roaches also have been discovered at the 
Webster site. Shaver and other Health Department officials 
acknowledge Gulf Nuclear's failure to submit a decommissioning 
and funding plan may have compromised the state's earlier efforts 
to get money out of the bankruptcy to cover the cleanup, but they 
insist that it would never have been enough to cover the entire 
cost. 

Houston attorney Randy Williams was appointed to represent the 
estates and pay off the creditors after GNI's bankruptcy case 
went from Chapter 11, where the company is protected from 
creditors while it tries to reorganize, to Chapter 7, where it 
liquidates its assets. He said the issue of the state getting 
money back may be moot since it now cannot be compensated at the 
expense of the main creditor, in this case Bank of America. 

Perhaps the best chance to save the state from getting stuck with 
the Webster and Tavenor sites came when Texas City lawyer and 
businessman John W. Lyons, a former GNI group board member, 
offered to buy all GNI's assets and place $3.5 million in a 
decommissioning fund, essentially offering to clean up both Gulf 
Nuclear locations. 

"We were prepared to take on the problem and that was rejected," 
said Marvin Isgur, Lyons' attorney. "It would have been a 
mistake, but we were ready to do it. I think there was a belief 
fostered by the financial advisers for GNI that they could have 
gotten a better price." 

Lyons eventually bought GNI's assets for $11 million. The Webster 
and Tavenor properties were not included in the sale. 

In September, state Assistant Attorney General Hal Morris, sent 
an e-mail to his clients at the Health Department, whom he 
represented in the bankruptcy case, announcing that Lyons' 
original offer to buy everything and clean up the nuclear mess 
had been rejected and that his new offer of $11 million will 
"undoubtedly all go to Bank of America, the secured creditor." 

"Having no funds with which to remediate the GNL radiated assets 
... the two facilities will need to be addressed with State 
Funds. ... It is indeed a sad day for the taxpayers of this 
state. We tried our best. I'm very sorry." 

A spokesman for the state attorney general's office said the 
state and the EPA will be filing a joint administrative claim to 
recoup some of the cleanup expenses from GNI. 

*****************************************************************
 21 Letter to Sen. Bingaman RE: Yucca Mountain Earthquake

August 21, 2002

The Honorable Jeff Bingaman, Chair Committee on Energy and 
Natural Resources United States Senate 364 Dirksen Building 
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Bingaman:

I am writing to bring to your attention the enclosed Department 
of Energy (DOE) documents related to the Yucca Mountain Project, 
received in response to a request filed by Public Citizen in 
accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.

As you know, an earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter Scale was 
recorded about 12 miles away from Yucca Mountain, Nevada, on June 
14, 2002. The same day, the DOE?s Yucca Mountain Site 
Characterization Office issued a statement declaring "no damage 
to any Yucca Mountain Project facilities, structures or the 
underground Exploratory Studies Facilities." Public Citizen 
requested copies of all source material used to make this 
determination.

To our dismay, the response to our request included only one 
document ? an e-mail message from Douglas Weaver - that predates 
the DOE?s June 14^th statement and upon which the assessment of 
"no damage" was presumably based. This preliminary e-mail message 
reports only a walk-through visual inspection of the surface area 
and portions of the tunnel.

According to documents received, a more thorough visual 
inspection was conducted the following day. The evaluation of 
convergence pin data and MPBX data, required by the Department?s 
Management Plan to Verify Ground Support in Underground Yucca 
Mountain Project Facilities Following a Seismic Event, was not 
completed until July 29^th .

Given the unprecedented nature of the Yucca Mountain repository 
project and significant uncertainties that persist in the DOE?s 
analyses of the site, we would expect the agency to err on the 
side of precaution and make definitive statements based only on 
thorough research. Yet clearly the Department?s June 14^th 
statement of "no damage" was premature and at the time lacked 
conclusive supporting evidence. The DOE?s tendency to casually 
dismiss potentially significant events in this manner undermines 
the credibility of its "scientific" and policy

recommendations regarding the proposed repository. Indeed, the 
public cannot expect to have confidence in ? and Congress should 
not accept ? the pronouncements of an agency that appears more 
committed to dogmatically defending the nuclear industry?s 
repository interests than honestly assessing new information and 
evaluating the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site.

We are concerned that the rush-to-judgement evidenced in the 
DOE?s handling of the June 14^th earthquake may characterize 
other aspects of the agency?s work on the Yucca Mountain Project 
as well. As chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, 
we hope you will investigate this issue further and use your 
influence to hold the Department of Energy accountable to a 
higher standard of professional conduct befitting a federal 
agency.

Sincerely,

Wenonah Hauter Director, Public Citizen?s Critical Mass Energy 
and Environment Program

/Enclosures:/

/Department of Energy statement, June 14, 2002 Department of 
Energy FOIA response to Public Citizen, August 5, 2002/

/cc  The/ /Honorable Harry Reid The Honorable John Ensign/


Public Citizen
*****************************************************************
 22 Yucca: Socialist Solution 
 
The Salt Lake Tribune -- 

Wednesday, August 21, 2002   

    Having attended Nancy Jane Woodside's press conference of 
Aug. 6, I feel it is important to raise some issues left 
unaddressed by Mike del Muro's story (Tribune, Aug. 10). Ms. 
Woodside's statement that people in the East "get the jobs and 
the energy and all we get to be is the garbage bucket" is more 
telling than it may seem at first glance. 

    Ms. Woodside was asked what her solution to the problem of 
nuclear waste would be. She offered two plans. The first was to 
build nuclear power plants here in the West, because letting the 
East have all the power, but none of the waste, was unfair. 
"Yucca Mountain should be for our waste," she commented. 

    The second plan was much more surprising. In the midst of 
talking about nuclear waste, she asked the question, "What about 
Geneva Steel? It's a big facility sitting there not being used 
for anything." 

    The idea of building nuclear reactors here in Utah is 
unappealing, but the thought of storing nuclear waste at Geneva 
Steel is ludicrous. Taking over a private venture for government 
use is an example of pure socialism. Furthermore, the mere 
suggestion that we shove nuclear waste into a building in the 
middle of a populated area shows a lack of understanding of the 
entire issue. I am appalled that these kinds of ideas are flowing 
from the local Democratic candidate. 
    
    TAD DAVIS Provo 
    
  Š Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune
*****************************************************************
 23 SMUD completing nuclear fuel transfer project - 

2002-08-20 - Sacramento Business Journal
 
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District on Wednesday will 
remove the last of 21 canisters loaded with used nuclear fuel 
from the now-closed Rancho Seco Nuclear generating station. 

The canisters will be inserted and sealed in the storage facility 
located on SMUD property adjacent to Rancho Seco, marking the end 
of a project begun in April 2001 to move used nuclear fuel from a 
water-filled pool to a dry storage facility. 

Using a huge, thick-walled steel transportation cask, SMUD fuel 
teams moved the used nuclear fuel at Rancho Seco from the 40-foot 
deep water-filled cooling pool, where it has been stored 
temporarily, to a dry storage facility located on the property. 
SMUD says that dry storage is proven to be the safest, and most 
cost-effective method of long-term storage of used fuel. SMUD 
says it will save about $5 million a year in operating costs by 
having the used fuel in dry storage. 

Final disposal of the used fuel is the responsibility of the U.S. 
Department of Energy. SMUD expects that the DOE will begin moving 
one or two canisters per year to its permanent storage site at 
Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada beginning in 2013, with the 
last fuel being removed in about 2027. 

SMUD staff is now left with the job of processing and cleaning 
the cooling pool. The water from that pool will eventually be 
released "at drinking water quality" into Clay Creek, SMUD says. 
The fuel storage racks, stainless steel pool liner, and water 
cooling system will be removed and disposed of as low-level 
radioactive waste to a licensed radioactive waste facility. 

Copyright 2002 American City Business Journals
*****************************************************************
 24 Letter to Rep. Barton RE: Yucca Mountain Earthquake

August 21, 2002

The Honorable Joe Barton, Chair Committee on Energy and Commerce 
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality United States House of 
Representatives 2125 Rayburn Building Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Barton:

I am writing to bring to your attention the enclosed Department 
of Energy (DOE) documents related to the Yucca Mountain Project, 
received in response to a request filed by Public Citizen in 
accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.

As you know, an earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter Scale was 
recorded about 12 miles away from Yucca Mountain, Nevada, on June 
14, 2002. The same day, the DOE?s Yucca Mountain Site 
Characterization Office issued a statement declaring "no damage 
to any Yucca Mountain Project facilities, structures or the 
underground Exploratory Studies Facilities." Public Citizen 
requested copies of all source material used to make this 
determination.

To our dismay, the response to our request included only one 
document ? an e-mail message from Douglas Weaver - that predates 
the DOE?s June 14^th statement and upon which the assessment of 
"no damage" was presumably based. This preliminary e-mail message 
reports only a walk-through visual inspection of the surface area 
and portions of the tunnel.

According to documents received, a more thorough visual 
inspection was conducted the following day. The evaluation of 
convergence pin data and MPBX data, required by the Department?s 
Management Plan to Verify Ground Support in Underground Yucca 
Mountain Project Facilities Following a Seismic Event, was not 
completed until July 29^th .

Given the unprecedented nature of the Yucca Mountain repository 
project and significant uncertainties that persist in the DOE?s 
analyses of the site, we would expect the agency to err on the 
side of precaution and make definitive statements based only on 
thorough research. Yet clearly the Department?s June 14^th 
statement of "no damage" was premature and at the time lacked 
conclusive supporting evidence. The DOE?s tendency to casually 
dismiss potentially significant events in this manner undermines 
the credibility of its "scientific" and policy

recommendations regarding the proposed repository. Indeed, the 
public cannot be expected to have confidence in ? and Congress 
should not accept ? the pronouncements of an agency that appears 
more committed to dogmatically defending the nuclear industry?s 
repository interests than honestly assessing new information and 
evaluating the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site.

We are concerned that the rush-to-judgement evidenced in the 
DOE?s handling of the June 14^th earthquake may characterize 
other aspects of the agency?s work on the Yucca Mountain Project 
as well. As chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, 
we hope you will investigate this issue further and use your 
influence to hold the Department of Energy accountable to a 
higher standard of professional conduct befitting a federal 
agency.

Sincerely,

Wenonah Hauter Director, Public Citizen?s Critical Mass Energy 
and Environment Program

/Enclosures: Department of Energy statement, June 14, 2002 
Department of Energy FOIA response to Public Citizen, August 5, 
2002/

/cc. The Honorable Rick Boucher, Ranking Member The Honorable Jim 
Gibbons, Nevada The Honorable Shelley Berkley, Nevada/

Public Citizen
*****************************************************************
 25 Toxic dump a blast for nuclear families 

Radioactive site becoming hot spot 

www.sfgate.com] 

Radioactive site becoming hot spot 

Stephanie Simon, Los Angeles Times [chronfeedback@sfchronicle.com] 
Wednesday, August 21, 2002 
Š2002 San Francisco Chronicle. URL: 

Weldon Spring, Mo. -- They had a little time after picking 
peaches and before swimming, so Marie and Tom Burrows decided to 
take their grandson Zack to the nation's newest tourist 
attraction: an enormous pile of radioactive waste. 

His flip-flops flapping as he ran, 9-year-old Zack Aiello 
scrambled up the mini-mountain of boulders that entombs waste 
from decades of bomb making: TNT, asbestos, arsenic, lead and, 
above all, uranium, purified here in this St. Louis suburb to 
power the Atomic Age. From the top of the mound, seven stories 
up, Zack scanned the sprawl of the dump. "Cool," he judged. 

"Am I glowing?" his grandma teased, laughing. 

Talk about a tourist hot spot. After a cleanup that has lasted 16 
years and cost nearly $1 billion, the U.S. Department of Energy 
has opened Weldon Spring to the public. Visitors can hike up the 
nuclear dump or check out the Geiger counters in a new museum, 
set up in a building that was once used to check uranium workers 
for contamination. 

A six-mile bike trail on the property will open soon, winding 
past the massive waste "containment cell" and along an old 
limestone quarry that just a decade ago was packed with 
radioactive rubble, TNT residue and crumpled metal drums oozing 
chemicals. 

ONE OF MANY SITES
 
Weldon Spring is the first of more than 120 industrial sites in 
the U.S. nuclear weapons complex to near complete cleanup. Even 
after billions of dollars of high-tech scrubbing, many of them, 
like Weldon Spring, will retain a radioactive repository. But 
federal officials maintain that when the waste is entombed 
between thick layers of clay and rock, it's safe for the public 
to visit. 

At a time of fierce debate about the proposed nuclear repository 
at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, proponents say that giving public 
tours of containment cells may offer reassurance that 
radioactivity can be controlled. 

Politicians in a dozen states have protested transportation 
routes that would ship nuclear material through their turf. But 
at Weldon Spring, families will soon be able to hike through a 
complex where clumps of yellow uranium ore were scattered 
casually about as recently as the mid-1980s. 

The museum lays out every detail of the cleanup process, down to 
a photo of a worker mowing the lawn in full protective gear and 
respirator. Visitors can feel the impermeable synthetic liners 
used in the containment cell, which covers 45 acres. They can 
study models showing how the waste is trapped in the center of 
the dump, surrounded by clay and stone barriers up to 40 feet 
thick. 

Yet there's little information about why such elaborate 
precautions are necessary -- little about the danger of 
radiation, the cancers many uranium workers suffered, the 
environmental damage caused by federal employees chucking 
radioactive waste in open-air lagoons through much of the 1950s 
and '60s. 

'NOTHING GLAMOROUS'
 
"There is nothing glamorous about the history of Weldon Spring," 
said Dr. Daniel McKeen, a local pathologist who has long raised 
health concerns about the site. 

State officials bristle as well, saying that the museum may make 
people think that every scrap of waste from decades of weapon 
production has been locked inside the cell. In truth, uranium 
persists, at low levels, along a spring in a nearby wildlife 
refuge. TNT from a World War I ordnance factory at Weldon Spring 
has been found in drinking water two miles away. Groundwater near 
the uranium plant is contaminated with a dangerous chemical 
called trichloroethylene. 

"This whole ribbon-cutting ceremony totally distracts from the 
remaining work that needs to be done," said Ron Kucera, deputy 
director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. 

Š2002 San Francisco Chronicle.   Page A - 2                                                                                                                                             
*****************************************************************
 26 Anti-Yucca Mtn. Campaign grows
 
The Inyo Register
 
August 15, 2002
 
National association passes resolutions in opposition as DOE 
considers possible funding setbacks
 
By Darcy Ellis
 
Thanks in part to protest from Inyo County representatives, a 
formal declaration of support for Yucca Mountain's designation as 
a nuclear waste repository was shot down recently.
 
Andrew Remus, Inyo County, Yucca Mountain Project Office 
coordinator, told the Board of Supervisors this week that a 
resolution in favor of the chosen Nevada. site was denied 
approval at last month's National Association of Counties annual 
conference in Washington, D.C.
 
The resolution had, more specifically, officially backed 
President Bush's decision to validate the Department of Energy's 
nomination of Yucca Mountain, Nev. as the storage site for the 
nation's nuclear waste.
 
"(It) was successfully defeated at steering and subcommittee 
levels due to the efforts of Inyo County's representatives at the 
conference," Remus reported, "and was not adopted by the NACO 
General Assembly."
 
Remus attended the week long conference specifically on behalf of 
Inyo County in regards to the, Yucca Mountain Project, which at 
this, stage has been given thumbs up by the US Senate as well 
-despite heavy protest from Nevada representatives.
 
Supervisor Ervin Lent was in attendance on behalf of the county 
in general, and has often been outspoken on the Yucca Mountain 
topic while at NACO gatherings.
 
According to Remus, two other Yucca Mountain resolutions were far 
more successful.
 
One of them, requesting the Department of Energy to develop 
policies for mitigation of impacts that might result from 
transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain, was formally supported 
by the Board of Supervisors at the request of Clank County, Nev., 
prior to the July conference.
 
The transportation aspect of the Yucca Mountain Project is of 
particular concern to Inyo County, it has been reported, since 
the DOE plans to use a two-lane tboroughfare running through the 
southeast portions of the county. State Route 127, heavily 
traveled by tourists en route to Las Vegas and Death Valley, has 
been identified by the DOE as a likely route.
 
Another resolution that was received more positively during the 
conference was one supporting a single repository, Remus 
reported. Both it and the transportation impact mitigation 
resolution were adopted as part of NACO's policy platform, he 
continued.
 
At Tuesday's board meeting in Independence, Remus also gave 
county supervisors an update on the current status of the Yucca 
Mountain Project.
 
According to Remus, Congress is currently debating DOE program 
funding for Fiscal Year 2002-03, which could lead to money woes 
where the Yucca Mountain Project is concerned.
 
"The level of funding of the Yucca Mountain Project will 
seriously influence DOE's ability to initiate the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission license-preparation phase of the program," 
he stated in his staff report, "and maintain the science program 
supporting any future license application."
 
The DOE must receive proper licensing from the NRC before the 
first shipment of waste can be accepted at the site_
*****************************************************************
 27 Taxpayers to help pay $9.6 million to dispose of nuke waste

HoustonChronicle.com <http://www.houstonchronicle.com>

/Aug. 21, 2002, 10:21AM/

*By TONY FREEMANTLE*
*Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Environment Writer*

For five years regulators failed to force a Houston company that 
manufactured radioactive materials to comply with a state law 
requiring it to have a plan and the financial ability to clean up 
any mess it made.

nuke * Chronicle file photo * Taxpayers will split the $9.6 
million bill with the federal government to clean up the 
radioactive material left near Hobby Airport and in Webster after 
Gulf Nuclear of Louisiana went bankrupt.

The oversight may have complicated the state's chances of getting 
the company, Gulf Nuclear of Louisiana, to pay for the cleanup. 
The federal government and taxpayers will now have to pay $9.6 
million to decontaminate and demolish a highly radioactive 
building that once housed the company's manufacturing operation 
in Webster.

Documents kept by the Texas Department of Health, the agency 
charged with licensing and regulating businesses that deal with 
radioactive material, show that beginning in 1995 it failed to 
follow the law and force Gulf Nuclear to submit a decommissioning 
and funding plan. The error was only discovered in mid-2000 
shortly before Gulf Nuclear's parent company, The GNI Group, 
filed for bankruptcy.

In the interim, conditions inside the facility, which until 1992 
had manufactured radioactive devices used mainly in the oil and 
medical industries, deteriorated to such an extent that in July 
2001 the Health Department slapped Gulf Nuclear with an emergency 
order to secure the building in a "manner that prevents the 
release of radioactive material into the environment."

"The bureau determined that the lack of adequate security and 
maintenance (and) the threat of abandonment of the facilities in 
the bankruptcy process create an emergency that requires 
immediate action to protect the public health and safety and the 
environment," the order warned.

For more than 20 years, Gulf Nuclear operated two facilities 
south of downtown Houston -- the Webster location at 202 Medical 
Center Blvd., and another in the 9300 block of Tavenor, near 
Hobby Airport.

In January, after it became clear the two facilities would 
essentially be abandoned, the U.S. Environmental Protection 
Agency began a complex and dangerous cleanup using mostly 
Superfund emergency money.

A review of Health Department records and numerous interviews 
shows that, for many reasons, virtually everyone associated with 
the facilities -- from state regulators, to independent 
contractors, to Gulf Nuclear officers, to attorneys on all sides 
-- grossly underestimated the extent of the contamination, 
largely at the Webster site, and what it would cost to clean up.

When Gulf Nuclear was finally forced by the state in 2000 to 
submit a decommissioning and funding plan, it estimated the cost 
to be about $1.6 million, and downplayed what was on the site, 
Health Department officials said. The state rejected that plan, 
and pegged the cost at about $4.5 million. When the EPA got 
involved in October, it estimated the price tag would be about 
$8.5 million. A trustee for the properties and other estates in 
GNI's bankruptcy case now says it will cost about $9.6 million.

Part of the reason for the escalation in cost, said Philip 
Shaver, head of uranium and nuclear waste management in the 
Health Department's Bureau of Radiation Control, is that Gulf 
Nuclear could have been "deliberately trying to hide something" 
from the state inspectors who visited the facilities annually.

"I guess nobody knew the extent of what was there," Shaver said. 
"There were a lot of unknowns and if someone is deliberately 
trying to hide something from us, I don't know what we can do."

When the EPA entered the Webster building in January, even 
Superfund cleanup veterans were shocked at what they found.

"Housekeeping was extremely poor," said Greg Fife, the EPA's 
onsite coordinator in a Jan. 27 memo. "Protective containers were 
left open, radium needles are scattered on the floor, and the 
ventilation system is highly contaminated. ... Some areas have 
radiation levels high enough to provide the yearly permissible 
dose in a very short period of time."

Among the radioactive materials used at the laboratory were 
Americium-241, beryllium, cesium-137 and irridium-192. Americium 
is so toxic it cannot yet be legally disposed of in the United 
States, leaving the government with the only option of storing 
the substance until the proposed underground nuclear waste 
repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is ready.

Radioactive rats and roaches also have been discovered at the 
Webster site.

Shaver and other Health Department officials acknowledge Gulf 
Nuclear's failure to submit a decommissioning and funding plan 
may have compromised the state's earlier efforts to get money out 
of the bankruptcy to cover the cleanup, but they insist that it 
would never have been enough to cover the entire cost.

Houston attorney Randy Williams was appointed to represent the 
estates and pay off the creditors after GNI's bankruptcy case 
went from Chapter 11, where the company is protected from 
creditors while it tries to reorganize, to Chapter 7, where it 
liquidates its assets. He said the issue of the state getting 
money back may be moot since it now cannot be compensated at the 
expense of the main creditor, in this case Bank of America.

Perhaps the best chance to save the state from getting stuck with 
the Webster and Tavenor sites came when Texas City lawyer and 
businessman John W. Lyons, a former GNI group board member, 
offered to buy all GNI's assets and place $3.5 million in a 
decommissioning fund, essentially offering to clean up both Gulf 
Nuclear locations.

"We were prepared to take on the problem and that was rejected," 
said Marvin Isgur, Lyons' attorney. "It would have been a 
mistake, but we were ready to do it. I think there was a belief 
fostered by the financial advisers for GNI that they could have 
gotten a better price."

Lyons eventually bought GNI's assets for $11 million. The Webster 
and Tavenor properties were not included in the sale.

In September, state Assistant Attorney General Hal Morris, sent 
an e-mail to his clients at the Health Department, whom he 
represented in the bankruptcy case, announcing that Lyons' 
original offer to buy everything and clean up the nuclear mess 
had been rejected and that his new offer of $11 million will 
"undoubtedly all go to Bank of America, the secured creditor."

"Having no funds with which to remediate the GNL radiated assets 
... the two facilities will need to be addressed with State 
Funds. ... It is indeed a sad day for the taxpayers of this 
state. We tried our best. I'm very sorry."

A spokesman for the state attorney general's office said the 
state and the EPA will be filing a joint administrative claim to 
recoup some of the cleanup expenses from GNI.

The Law Offices of Jeffrey H. Rasansky, P.C. Birth Injury Cases

*****************************************************************
 28 Uranium Plant ?Final Site? To Be Known By Sept. 15*

<http://www.xtn.net>

*125 West Summer Street - Greeneville, TN - (423) 798-0545*

Source:/ The Greeneville Sun <http://greene.xtn.net> /
08-20-2002

Louisiana Energy Services (LES) will not make public its ?short 
list? of potential sites for a $1.1 billion uranium enrichment 
plant, but will announce its final site selection by Sept. 15, 
according to a spokesman for the international consortium.

Peter Lenny, an official of Urenco, the European firm that heads 
the LES consortium, told The Elizabethton Star on Friday that the 
consortium does not plan to reveal to the public which locations 
are on its short list of finalists.

The Star reported Lenny?s comments in its Sunday edition.

A 100-acre tract in the Town of Unicoi had been proposed as a 
potential site for the uranium enrichment plant, which would 
prepare uranium for conversion into fuel for commercial nuclear 
power plants.

Other sites that have been mentioned as logical choices include a 
site in the City of Lynchburg in Campbell County, Va., and 
another site near Wilmington, N.C. Lenny told the Star, however, 
that the LES consortium expects to announce its choice for the 
plant location by Sept. 15.

LES, a consortium made up of Urenco, Fluor-Daniel and affiliates 
of U.S. electric power companies Exelon, Entergy and Duke Energy, 
is in the process of setting up an office in Washington, D.C., 
according to Nan Kilkeary, who has been named public relations 
officer for LES.

Š 2002 East Tennessee Network - R.A.I.D. (Regionalized Access 
*****************************************************************
 29 Sharing the Evidence on Iraq

The New York Times 

*August 21, 2002*  

The Bush administration has floated a succession of possible 
justifications for war with Iraq ? Saddam Hussein's purported 
links with international terrorism, Baghdad's membership in a 
worldwide "axis of evil," Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear 
weapons. Few firm facts have been offered in support of any of 
these claims, but there have been frequent allusions to secret 
intelligence information that officials are unwilling to make 
public.

This is a troubling pattern, especially now that President Bush 
has said he will base his decisions about Iraq on the latest 
intelligence reports. Intelligence findings should guide 
presidential policy. That is their principal purpose. But the 
country ought not to be led into war on the basis of information 
the American people are not allowed to share. That is not how our 
democracy works.

Raw intelligence reports cannot be published without compromising 
confidential sources and methods. But the basic intelligence 
evidence that underlies critical national decisions can and must 
be made public. Past administrations have done that repeatedly, 
for example, by displaying spy-plane photos of Russian missiles 
in Cuba in 1962 or releasing cockpit-to-tower conversations 
recorded during Moscow's downing of a Korean passenger jet in 
1983. Before last fall's airstrikes in Afghanistan, Prime 
Minister Tony Blair of Britain presented a compendium of 
intelligence findings linking Osama bin Laden and the Taliban to 
the Sept. 11 attacks. If Mr. Bush means to propose launching a 
preventive war against Iraq, he must do no less.

The case for publicly presenting the evidence is all the more 
compelling since many of the administration's past claims on Iraq 
have been challenged by independent experts. Administration 
officials themselves acknowledge that there is no convincing 
intelligence evidence linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist 
attacks.

Although Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concedes that the 
administration has an obligation to put crucial facts before the 
American people, he continues to make uncorroborated assertions. 
Earlier this month on NBC Nightly News Mr. Rumsfeld asserted the 
presence of Al Qaeda members in Iraq. When asked by Tom Brokaw 
whether there was hard evidence of that, Mr. Rumsfeld 
dismissively answered, "I know that." Yesterday Mr. Rumsfeld made 
essentially the same assertion, but was not ready to make the 
supporting evidence public.

What top national security officials claim to know but refuse to 
discuss isn't good enough. Americans cannot seriously deliberate 
issues of war and peace while they are denied the relevant facts.

<http://email.nytimes.com/>
*****************************************************************
 30 Iraq accuses USA and UK of human rights violations

Pravda.RU 


 Civilian deaths continue ten years after Gulf War

 Civilian deaths continue ten years after Gulf War

The Iraqi health authorities have issued new data claiming that 
internationally banned weapons, including Depleted Uranium 
deployed during the Gulf War are continuing to cause casualties 
among civilians. 

A picture of Huthaifa Gharim Mohammad Sultan, a young boy 
residing in Mosul, has been released by the Iraqi News Agency. It 
is claimed that he suffers from skin cancer, a high incidence of 
which has spread throughout the areas of Iraq where DU weapons 
were used. The skeleton-like frame supports a hairless head, 
without eyebrows, with red eyes, trying to smile through parched 
lips. 

It is claimed that there are hundreds of others like Huthaifa, 
in a country which in 1989 was confirmed by the UNO as having the 
best health system in the region. The UN-imposed embargo has led 
to a decline in services, resulting in a severe shortage of 
medicines and vaccines being available. 

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY 
PRAVDA.Ru 

*****************************************************************
 31 Ely so deep in lonely Nevada desert, bin Laden probably couldn't 
find it
 
 AN AMERICAN PORTRAIT / Sept. 11 - Aug. 21 / Untouched by terror / 

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer [kfagan@sfchronicle.com]        
Wednesday, August 21, 2002 -->   
  
Ely, Nev. -- Since Sept. 11, the nation has grappled with what it 
means to be an American in the wake of a historic tragedy. Our 
staff is traveling across the U.S. and the spectrum of the 
American experience for American Portraits, which will appear 
through Sept. 11, 2002. 

Dennis Danner is slowly bleeding a Budweiser dry at the Hotel 
Nevada with some pals, slot machines blinking all around. On 
disability since hurting his back operating a crane, the last 
thing on his mind is terrorism, let alone the specific terrorism 
of Sept. 11. 

Danner wants a job, like a lot of folks in this tiny town at the 
edge of nowhere. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are just names on 
the satellite TV news, and guffaws erupt at the very concept that 
they could have much relevance here. 

Or pose a threat. 

"They'd have to find us first, and that'd be some trick," Danner 
says amid his buddies' chuckles. "They'd probably crash into the 
desert or some mountain first." 

The back of beyond -- that's what people call this place on the 
long end of U.S. Highway 50, a road so little used and stunningly 
empty that animals crouch on its daytime warmth with impunity. 

A few feet away from Danner, retired rancher George Bell feeds 
another handful of nickels into the Keno Plus slot machine and 
looks up for a moment, his face an impassive mass of leathery 
wrinkles. 

"Nobody ever even mentions terrorists around here, and it beats 
the hell outta me why they would," he grunts, turning back to the 
slot screen. "That's just city stuff, right?" 

That's how it is in this historic mining outpost of about 4,000 
souls nearly a year after four hijacked jetliners exploded 
America into a new era of war and fear. If there is one place in 
the nation so far away from anything that life carries on as 
normal, this is it. 

With the last copper mine having shut down three years ago, Ely 
was already staggering economically by the time the World Trade 
Center became rubble. The news from that terrible day had the 
town buzzing and worried, to be sure, and a few flags went up in 
windows -- but by the end of the week, people were pretty much 
back to worrying about rattlesnakes, jobs and the teeth-rattling 
snowstorms set to hit, as usual, in October. 

PATRIOTISM RUNS DEEP

 
And how could it be any other way? locals ask. Like most American 
small towns, patriotism runs deep here, but when you live at 
least four hours' drive from anything resembling a big city -- 
Ely is 350 miles east of Reno -- it's hard to maintain a high 
level of panic for long. Or even for days. 

There have been no National Guardsmen or cops on bridges here to 
remind them of what's going on. No speeches from politicians 
pledging to defend against "evil-doers." Nobody within a day's 
drive who even knows anybody affected by the attacks in New York 
or Washington. There's no military recruiting office. 

It is fitting that a crater on Mars is named after this town. The 
high desert here -- Ely is more than a mile above sea level -- 
looks like a desolate planet, an impression driven home all the 
more when you look at a map and see that it is absolutely the 
most isolated outpost in the Western United States. 

And folks like that just fine. 

"As far as I'm concerned, they ought to glass everything from the 
Red Sea to Pakistan with nukes, but it's really hard to grasp 
what it all means when you live this far out," says Byron 
Collins, a Persian Gulf Navy veteran who runs a welding shop. 
"I'm very glad I live here. You feel safe. Away. Down to earth." 

Stand in the middle of Aultman Street, the main drag, on any 
afternoon and you can swivel your head 360 degrees and see 
craggy, sagebrush-studded hills or flat desert stretching into 
empty horizons so far away the skies seem to inhale them. Highway 
50, dubbed "the loneliest road in America," winds through on 
Aultman, but a lot of times the only thing blowing down the 
pavement is dust swirls. 

AMERICANA AND A WHOREHOUSE
 
Fun for the kids means deer hunting in the hills or cruising 
through the little downtown, which has all the requisites of 
remote American life: A J.C. Penney store, an old-timey 
drugstore, a dot of a City Hall and another dot of a courthouse, 
and -- this being the Silver State -- the Hotel Nevada casino and 
a whorehouse. Houses spread off for several blocks in all 
directions, mostly bungalows and a lot of dirt yards with 
abandoned ore buckets, bleached steer skulls and ranch tools as 
decoration. 

Those who live here either were born to it with no choice or were 
attracted by its isolation. They're not dumb hicks, they'll tell 
you -- there are pharmacists, engineers, people with college 
degrees among the unemployed miners and people tending the dozens 
of motels serving Highway 50 truckers. They are just Americans 
who like to be left alone. 

"Ely not only allows you to withdraw from everything -- it allows 
you no choice," says Frank Jameson, 60, who retired here after a 
lifetime up close with murderers and disasters as a psychologist 
on the Pasadena police force. "It's not that people here aren't 
concerned. Their concerns are very specific and local -- school, 
jobs, medical services. 

"I can walk around town, and I don't have to hear about what 
President Bush is doing about the military, what the anthrax 
threat is, or any of that stuff, " he says as the sun sinks over 
his restored Victorian-style home and kids bat baseballs in the 
park across the street. "My head is clear here in a way it could 
never be in Los Angeles." 

Satellite hookups have brought an array of TV channels to Ely 
during the past decade, but the true conduit for news is still 
the little Ely Times weekly newspaper. It runs two Alley Oop 
cartoons in every issue and fills its front page with more 
practical matters than Afghanistan commando raids, things like 
Elks Club scholarship winners and when the mobile dental clinic 
will be in town next. 

WARS COME AND GO

 
"We're not totally cut off from the world -- we just have to go 
out and find it when we need it," says 85-year-old Dale Miller, 
whose family has for generations owned the Economy Drug and Old 
Fashioned Fountain, which isn't really old-fashioned because it 
never went out of fashion here. "I've seen World War II, the 
Korean and Vietnam wars all come and go, and at least then they 
needed our copper. Now there's this, and I must say that even 
though people were shook up at 9/11 and word about that anthrax, 
it all passed very quickly. 

"The worst thing is the younger generation leaving to get work 
because the mines closed," Miller says. "But that's just the 
economy. Here that doesn't have anything to do with planes flying 
into buildings." 

Ely was incorporated in 1887 as a stagecoach stop -- the Pony 
Express ran right by here, too -- and a minuscule silver-mining 
community, but at the turn of the century it mushroomed to 5,000 
people when a cluster of copper mines opened. Over the next 70 
years, more than $1 billion in copper was dug from the rough 
hills, and in the boom times -- cyclical with copper demand -- 
luminaries from Gary Cooper to Wayne Newton came to the Hotel 
Nevada to party. 

President Lyndon Johnson even visited once, an irony considering 
the most famous person born in Ely was President Richard Nixon's 
wife, Pat. 

But as the mines played out, so did the town's fortunes. In 1989, 
the state opened a maximum-security prison 10 miles away, tucked 
out of view behind a mountain, but the 350 jobs it brought made 
hardly a ripple in the local economy. Over the 1990s, every mine 
left in the area closed, erasing thousands of jobs, and since 
1999 the population has plummeted 20 percent and the city has 
continually fought severe budget deficits. 

Some folks joke that a terrorism adventure -- like the arrest of 
pipe bomb suspect Luke Helder on the other side of the state in 
May -- might even liven things up. 

Fat chance. 

TERRORISM WOULD BE EXCITING
 
Soda clerk Stephanie Hays, 18, allows as much as she whips up a 
batch of cherry fizzies at Miller's Old Fashioned Fountain for a 
trio of high school girls. Dinah Shore croons "Love and Marriage" 
on the store speakers overhead. "It sure would be exciting if 
something like terrorism happened here, but I'm glad it doesn't," 
Hays says, sighing. "We don't have gangs or even much crime here, 
and if it wasn't for TV we wouldn't know anything about all that 
stuff. 

"Anything bad happens, it's back East or in California or some 
other place I've never been. And probably never will go to." 

Ely's population is 90 percent white, and most of the rest are 
Native American. There's a heavy Mormon presence in town and no 
mosques or synagogues to stoke debate over the violent happenings 
in Israel, a country that may be in everyone's Bibles but 
otherwise seems far, far away. 

"I've never been to a city or seen anyone who's a Jew or an 
A-rab, so I couldn't tell you what that's like," says Rosella 
Whistler, a retired nurse's aide. She watches her dog, Suzie, rub 
against an old bathtub that serves as a planter in her front 
yard, then yanks on her chain when she sniffs too close to a 
prized steer skull. 

"All I know about them in the city is the smog and traffic I see 
on TV, and I try not to watch too much of that because it 
depresses me with stuff that never happens here," Whistler says. 
"Those terrorists would never come to Ely, so I don't worry about 
them." 

THE BEST-SELLER IS A BIRD GUIDE
 
If you are what you read, there is probably no better bellwether 
than Book Ends, the only bookstore in Ely. The best-seller there 
is still the same as it was before last September -- the Audubon 
Society's "Sibley Guide to Birds."

Tom Clancy and "Lord of the Rings" are also on the shelves, but 
there's nothing resembling the terrorism or Middle East analyses 
that fill display tables in San Francisco and Berkeley. 

"Nobody's ever asked for any books about Osama-bin-whatsit or any 
of those other fellers here, so I never ordered any," owner Faye 
Mullins says with a grin. 

Across the street at the Hotel Nevada, retired prison guard 
Margaret Ferguson says that even if her neighbors knew every last 
detail about Al Qaeda's next move, it wouldn't make one whit of 
difference. In fact, soon enough nothing will make much 
difference because terrorism is just a tiny part of a big story, 
she says while she methodically jams nickels into the Winning 
Touch slot machine. 

"Armageddon is coming, it says so in the Good Book, and this is 
as good a place to be as any," Ferguson says. She's the fourth 
person in the past three hours to voice the same fear in random 
conversations along Main Street, and when told that she nods 
sagely. 

"Yep, we're no fools here," Ferguson murmurs, squinting up and 
taking a long pull off her cigarette. She turns back to her 
machine. "Armageddon. Mark my words." 

E-mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com 
[kfagan@sfchronicle.com] . 

Š2002 San Francisco Chronicle.   Page A - 1 
*****************************************************************
 32 U.S. concern over Iraq is weapons, not terrorism
 
[deseretnews.com] 
 	
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
 	   	 
Chief threat from Saddam is chemical, biological, nuclear
By John J. Lumpkin Associated Press writer 

WASHINGTON  Although the U.S. government labels Iraq as a 
sponsor of terrorism, Saddam Hussein's government exports 
relatively little compared to some of its neighbors, U.S. 
officials say.

       The chief threat to American interests from Iraq is from 
Saddam's chemical and biological weapons, and his quest for 
nuclear weapons, according to U.S. defense and intelligence 
officials. A secondary concern is that he could supply these 
weapons to terrorist groups, although there is no evidence he has 
done this, or intends to.

       U.S. counterterrorism officials have been searching high 
and low for evidence linking Iraq to international terrorist 
networks  in part to feed the appetites of those in the 
government who want reasons to depose Saddam. But they have come 
up with few hard connections.

       Iran and Syria are accused of ties to far larger and more 
active terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah.

       "The Iraqis have been very concerned about getting their 
hand caught in the cookie jar," said Vince Cannistraro, a former 
CIA counterterrorism chief. "They're not doing terrorism against 
the United States and haven't been for a long time, as much as 
the people in the Defense Department would like to point to that 
as a reason to attack Saddam."

       He said most of the terrorist groups and leaders located 
in Iraq were active in the 1980s but retired to Iraq to avoid 
international law enforcement efforts.

       Probably the best-known terrorist group associated with 
Iraq is the Abu Nidal Organization, a splinter group of the 
Palestine Liberation Organization that primarily targets Arab 
moderates and Israel.

       Its leader, whose real name is Sabri al-Banna, was found 
dead of gunshot wounds in Baghdad last week, according to 
Palestinian officials. Who killed him is unclear.

       Abu Nidal moved to Iraq in 1998, according to the State 
Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism" publication. Many of 
the group's followers come from Palestinian refugee camps in 
Lebanon.

       The Abu Nidal group is not known to have attacked Western 
targets since the 1980s.

       The Palestinian Liberation Front, another splinter group, 
is also based in Iraq, according to the State Department. One 
faction of the group is believed responsible for the 1985 attack 
on the cruise ship Achillle Lauro, which led to the death of an 
American.

       Iraq has also been making payments of up to $25,000 to 
families of Palestinian suicide bombers since the 
Israeli-Palestinian clashes began in September 2000.

       The U.S. government also says Iraq supports the People's 
Mujahadeen of Iran, a group dedicated to the overthrow of the 
religious government of Iran. Iraq and Iran are enemies.

       The State Department regards the group as a terrorist 
organization. However, a significant number within Congress 
oppose that designation, saying the United States should support 
the group's effort against the Iranian theocracy.

       Iraq has not been conclusively linked to Osama bin Laden's 
al-Qaida terror network. Officials say that while opposing the 
United States is a common goal, bin Laden's motivations are 
religious, while Saddam's are to seek secular power.

       Some al-Qaida members have turned up in Iraq, according to 
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others.

       "Are there al-Qaida in Iraq? The answer's yes, there are. 
It's a fact," he said Aug. 7.

       But other officials say that doesn't mean al-Qaida and 
Saddam's government are linked. Some small groups of al-Qaida 
also have traveled through Iran and Iraq, but not to stay. 
Instead, U.S. officials say they returned to their home countries 
on the Arabian peninsula and elsewhere.

       Nor does the United States have any evidence of Iraqi 
complicity in terrorists using Iraq as a transit corridor, 
officials said.

       Many U.S. officials now discount reports that Mohammed 
Atta, the chief hijacker on Sept. 11, met with an Iraqi 
intelligence operative in Prague in April 2001.

       The Iraqi government denied such a meeting ever occurred, 
and charged the reports were fabricated to justify making Iraq a 
target in the U.S.-led war on terror. Atta is now believed to 
have been in the United States during the time he was supposed to 
have been meeting with the Iraqi operative.

       The Iraqi was being watched by Czech security officials 
because they feared he might be involved in plotting an attack on 
Radio Free Europe's offices, which are headquartered in Prague, 
Czech officials have said.

       In 1993, U.S. warships fired 24 cruise missiles at Iraq's 
intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for what the 
United States called a plot to assassinate former President 
George H.W. Bush.

       Nevertheless, the former president's national security 
adviser, Brent Scowcroft, wrote this week in The Wall Street 
Journal there is little evidence of Saddam's ties to 
international terrorism.

       "Indeed, Saddam's goals have little in common with the 
terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him 
to make common cause with them," he wrote.
 	 
 Š 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company 
*****************************************************************
 33 Democratic Lawmaker Faults Bush for Weak Nuclear Security          

FOXNews.com
 
[politics@foxnews.com]                                                 
     	
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
 			 				 					 			   			     			     			     			 			
WASHINGTON  A Democratic lawmaker said that security forces at 
nuclear weapons labs around the country have been so depleted 
that terrorists could get a hold of nuclear materials and use 
them against the United States.

 		 		 	 	 		 			 				
"Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda have made it very clear that 
nuclear facilities are at the very top of the list of terrorist 
targets in our country," Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., told 
reporters hearing about the results of a 250-page report produced 
by the Department of Justice. "Terrorists work successfully by 
using the assets of the United States against the United States. 
They did it on Sept. 11. They would do so again if we did not 
protect those most valuable and vulnerable assets against 
successful terrorist attack."
 			 				
Markey said that security at the Department of Energy-operated 
sites have been cut nearly 40 percent over the past 10 years from 
7,091 to 4,262. He listed 10 sites located near urban areas, 
including Denver, Colo., and California's Bay area, that contain 
enough weapons grade plutonium and enriched uranium to build 
crude nuclear devices. 
			 				
He added that experts have told him that a group of terrorists 
could quickly build and detonate a dirty bomb once inside. 
			 				
In May, when the DOE handed over the report to Markey, Energy 
Secretary Spencer Abraham insisted his agency's primary priority 
is national security. 
			 				
"We have taken several steps to meet increased security 
challenges since Sept. 11," he said. "We are refining our risk 
management approach, combining this approach with strong line 
management accountability and effective independent oversight, 
and continually searching for and implementing new and better 
security tools and techniques."
 			 				
A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration said 
Markey's numbers don't paint an accurate picture. Security was 
cut back as some facilities closed at the end of the Cold War and 
hundreds of guards have been hired since Sept. 11. 
			 				
"Do we want more money? Sure. Could we use it? Sure. Who 
couldn't? But are things any less safe without more money? 
Certainly not," said NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes. "Any 
implication that nothing has changed in our security since Sept. 
11 is patently ridiculous."
 			 				
Markey said that he is going to request an additional $300 
million to next year's water and appropriations bill currently 
being reviewed by Congress.
 			 				
"The Department of Energy, by its own admission, does not have 
adequate resources to provide security at these facilities," 
Markey said.
 			 				
Markey blamed the Bush administration for withholding nearly $325 
million approved by Congress in an additional emergency 
supplemental bill this year. President Bush last week refused to 
release a $5.1 billion fund because he said much of it was 
wasteful and he only had the choice to release all or none.
 			 				
NNSA received $653 million to protect nuclear facilities and 
shipments this year, up from $411 million spent by DOE last year, 
said Amy Call, spokeswoman for the White House Office of 
Management and Budget.
 			 				
Markey also said records showed computer hackers have broken into 
DOE computers numerous times since 1999. The breaches varied in 
their severity, but some were "root-level" compromises, which 
meant the hacker had enough access that a virus could be 
installed.
 			 				
Wilkes said the hacking was not a coordinated effort. He said no 
classified or sensitive information was compromised and 
safeguards have been added to prevent future such attacks.
 			 				
Fox News' Catherine Herridge and the Associated Press contributed 
to this report.
 			 	 	   
  

	 	
     	
     	 
	 	 	   	 [politics@foxnews.com]    	     	     	     	 	 	
     	
     	

   
  	

 		
 		     		     		 	

   
    
    

  
    			 			
                                                                  
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write to [comments@foxnews.com] ŠAssociated Press. All rights 
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be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.             

Fox News Network, LLC 2002. All rights reserved. All market data 
delayed 20 minutes.                                             
     		
*****************************************************************
 34 Cut in DOE security may be a threat
 
This story was published Tue, Aug 20, 2002
 
By The Associated Press and the Herald staff
 
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy has cut its security force 
by 40 percent over the last decade, jeopardizing the security of 
nuclear materials and installations, a Democratic congressman 
said Monday.
 
Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts released figures showing that, 
between 1992 and 2001, DOE whittled its security forces from 
7,091 employees to 4,262 in 2001, a 40 percent reduction. The 
number of uniformed guards fell by 38 percent in that period.
 
The Hanford Patrol has dropped from 425 people in 1991 to 
approximately 200 today, although there has been some recent talk 
of increasing those numbers.
 
Among DOE facilities hit were the Strategic Petroleum Reserves in 
Louisiana, where security forces were reduced from 233 to 113. 
Security personnel at the Nevada Test Site were cut from 276 to 
115. Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons plant outside Denver, 
had security forces cut from 380 to 154.
 
"It is clear that DOE has continued its long tradition of 
aggressive indifference to the security of its nuclear weapons 
facilities," Markey said in a statement.
 
Bryan Wilkes, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security 
Administration, said the figures don't paint an accurate picture 
of the security status. He said there was a force reduction after 
the Cold War, as facilities were shut down, but there has been a 
dramatic increase in hiring since Sept. 11, which is not 
reflected in Markey's figures, which only go through 2001.
 
"There are reasons for it to have gone down and there are reasons 
we've amped it back up," Wilkes said. "It is unfair to compare a 
post-Sept. 11 security world with a pre-Sept. 11 security world. 
You can't do it."
 
Wilkes said Markey has been briefed on the changes but seems to 
be sensationalizing the figures for political gain. Copyright 

2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This material may not 
*****************************************************************
 35 Hanford plans to dig trench storage
 
This story was published Tue, Aug 20, 2002
 By John Stang Herald staff writer 

Hanford tentatively plans to dig several huge trenches to store 
low-activity radioactive tank waste permanently after it is 
glassified.
 
The Department of Energy has scheduled a meeting at 6 p.m. today 
at the Richland Red Lion hotel to hear public comment on the 
project.
 
The meeting is a step toward preparing a draft environmental 
impact study due by October. No deadline is set for final 
recommendations.
 
The trenches are linked to Hanford's plans to build and operate a 
complex to convert the site's 53 million gallons of radioactive 
tank wastes to glass.
 
The project calls for wastes to be chemically separated into 
high-level and low-activity radioactive wastes.
 
Hanford plans to convert the high-level wastes into glass logs, 
temporarily store them in a huge underground vault in central 
Hanford and eventually ship them to permanent storage at Yucca 
Mountain, Nev. About 90 percent of the waste is expected to be 
low-activity material, which would be buried at central Hanford.
 
The concept envisions digging about six huge trenches to store 
the low-activity wastes in 712-foot-tall, 4-foot-diameter 
cylinders.
 
Originally, Hanford considered putting low-activity wastes in a 
long-abandoned vault in the 200 East Area.
 
DOE believes using the old vault or digging new trenches would 
have about the same environmental effects, but digging trenches 
would be significantly cheaper, said Gae Neath, DOE document 
manager for the study.
 
The estimated cost for renovating the old vault and using it is 
$892 million. The estimated cost for the six trenches is $678 
million, said Jim Rasmussen, director of DOE's Office of River 
Protection's environmental management division.
 
Hanford has not settled on dimensions yet, but the trenches would 
be about 30 feet deep, 900 feet long and 26 feet wide. Each would 
cover about the same area as one of Hanford's defunct chemical 
processing plants.
 
The trenches would be lined and covered with different types of 
asphalt, gravel and soils to keep out water.
 
No construction timetable has been set. The first trench is 
supposed to be ready for the first low-level wastes in 2007. The 
trenches are expected to hold 81,000 canisters of the wastes.
 
Current plans don't take into account DOE's recent plans to look 
at neutralizing some low-activity tank wastes by methods other 
than glassification.
 
DOE plans to study whether some low-activity wastes can be more 
efficiently neutralized by mixing them with grout, using an 
alternative form of glassification or using chemicals and extreme 
heat to convert them into pebble-size crystals. Preliminary lab 
tests are expected to take at least a year.
 
The environmental impact study will have to determine if such 
wastes should earmarked for the trenches or disposed in another 
way, officials said. 

Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This 
*****************************************************************
 36 Editorial: Beef up security at DOE sites

Las Vegas SUN: 

Today: August 21, 2002 at 9:09:09 PDT 

 In March the Energy Department asked the White House not once, 
but twice, for $379 million in emergency security funding for its 
installations, many of which house nuclear weapons, nuclear waste 
or other dangerous materials. Each time, however, the Bush 
administration turned down the requests, even though the Energy 
Department's chief financial officer privately had warned that 
the department's current security budget was insufficient in 
light of possible terrorist threats. Congress tried to do the 
right thing in July when it disregarded the White House's 
decision and went ahead and appropriated $360 million for 
security at Energy Department installations as part of the 
overall $5.1 billion emergency spending bill. But a week ago 
President Bush rejected the entire emergency spending bill, a 
terrible decision in light of concerns about the dangerous world 
we live in following Sept. 11.

 Rep. Richard Markey, D-Mass., who opposes Bush's decision, 
believes that security at Energy Department facilities hasn't 
been given the kind of attention it deserves, a situation that he 
says stretches back to the Clinton administration and the first 
President Bush. According to Markey, between 1992 and 2001 the 
Energy Department reduced its security forces from 7,091 
employees to 4,262. Close to home, security personnel at the 
Nevada Test Site was cut from 276 to 113. Sure, overall 
operations at the Nevada Test Site were scaled back significantly 
following the nuclear testing ban in early 1990s, but that 
doesn't mean that there still isn't a need for a strong force. 
And now that the federal government plans on sending tons of 
bomb-grade plutonium to the Test Site from the Los Alamos Nuclear 
Laboratory, where Energy Department officials believe the facilit 
y is more vulnerable to a terrorist attack, it's even more 
important that security be upgraded at the Test Site.

 When Congress returns from its summer recess, Markey wants to 
provide $300 million for security at Energy Department facilities 
by tacking the money onto a water and energy appropriations bill, 
a move we support. We hope that this time reason will prevail 
upon the administration to endorse the measure. 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 37 Security at US nuclear labs called unacceptable
 
(08/21/2002) (Agencies)
 
The Bush administration is not doing enough to secure US nuclear 
weapons facilities from terrorists, who could quickly use 
materials stored there to make atomic bombs, a Democratic 
congressman alleged in a new report released on Tuesday. 

Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey said lax security at Department 
of Energy facilities such as New Mexico's Los Alamos National 
Laboratory and California's Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory posed "an unacceptable level of risk that terrorists 
could successfully target these sites." 

Markey, a senior Democratic member of the House of 
Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, blamed Bush 
administration budget cuts and foot-dragging by the Energy 
Department almost a year after the Sept. 11 attacks. 

"It is clear that the DOE has continued its long tradition of 
aggressive indifference to the security of its nuclear weapons 
facilities," he said. "Incredibly, the White House has twice 
refused to fund security activities described by the secretary of 
energy as 'urgent security needs."' 

US officials dismissed the report as inaccurate and unfair. "It 
judges a post-Sept. 11 world on pre-Sept. 11 information," said 
Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security 
Administration. 

The report was based on more than 250 pages of documents provided 
to Markey by the Energy Department. Ten major US nuclear 
facilities, many located near major urban areas, hold enough 
weapons-grade plutonium or enriched uranium to build crude 
nuclear bombs, it said. 

"Experts have told me that a group of suicidal terrorists could, 
once inside a nuclear weapons facility, quickly build and 
detonate a dirty bomb or a homemade nuclear bomb capable of 
achieving explosive critical yield," Markey said. 

The Energy Department in March requested almost $380 million in 
extra funds to bolster its nuclear security measures, but the 
bulk of the request was denied by the White House Budget Office. 

Congress then included $138 million for nuclear security in a 
recent emergency spending bill but US President Bush said he 
would not spend that money -- or another $5 billion in other 
congressional priorities -- due to budget constraints. 

The report also found the Department of Energy had reduced the 
numbers of security guards at nuclear facilities by nearly 40 
percent in the last 10 years, with a greater numbers of armed 
guards being cut than unarmed guards. 

Wilkes said the figure was correct but did not reflect that many 
of those cuts were made years ago as US weapons research programs 
were wound down after the end of the Cold War. 

"We've hired a great deal more security officers since Sept. 11," 
he said. "We took immediate action to improve the security of our 
sites." 

Copyright 2002 By chinadaily.com.cn. All rights 
*****************************************************************
 38 Fernald cleanup nears halfway point - 

2002-08-19 - Cincinnati Business Courier
 
Thursday, Aug 22, 2002   

The Department of Energy and Fluor Fernald have demolished 48 
percent of the structures remaining at the former Fernald uranium 
processing facility. 

Fernald is located on 1,050 acres in Crosby Township, about 18 
miles northwest of Cincinnati. During the Cold War, Fernald 
produced about 500 million pounds of uranium products for the 
U.S. weapons program, and the facility later created uranium fuel 
elements for nuclear reactors in Washington and South Carolina. 

Since 1994, 107 structures at the site have been demolished. The 
next major project is the five-story Pilot plant, where operating 
prototypes for Fernald's production process were developed. In 
December, Fluor Fernald will begin demotion of the Analytical 
Laboratory. The site is expected to be completely remediated by 
late 2006. 


  [Get Copyright Clearance]     Copyright 2002 American City 
Business Journals
*****************************************************************
 39 Tauscher touts debt swap for security 

Forgiven billions Russia saves would help protect nuclear pile
 
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau 
[eepstein@sfchronicle.com] Wednesday, August 21, 2002 -->   
  
Russia has two things in abundance -- billions of dollars in 
foreign debt and scads of old nuclear weapons and fuel. 

To East Bay Rep. Ellen Tauscher, an experienced Wall Street hand, 
that combination has the makings of a deal that she says could 
improve America's security and help Russia's still-limping 
economy. 

The idea, which is gaining support in Congress and in the Bush 
administration, is for the United States to forgive about $3 
billion in Russian foreign debt left over from the old Soviet 
Union. In return, Russia would spend the money saved on 
intensified efforts to secure and destroy thousands of nuclear 
weapons. 

"We can literally buy down our risk that a Russian nuclear weapon 
will be stolen and aimed at us," Tauscher, a third-term Walnut 
Creek Democrat, told a House International Relations Committee 
hearing before Congress left on its current recess. 

While Tauscher sees an enormous benefit, mainly in preventing 
Russian nuclear weapons or weapons-grade uranium or plutonium 
from falling into the hands of international terrorists, critics 
say it's not a good idea to forgive the debt. They also say 
Russia pays lip service to the idea of preventing proliferation 
of nuclear weapons and fuel, then turns around and builds a 
nuclear power plant in Iran, one of the three nations President 
Bush has labeled an "axis of evil." 

SWAPS HAVE BEEN USED BEFORE
 
So-called debt swaps like that proposed by Tauscher are nothing 
new. "Eco- swaps," in which poor nations are forgiven part of 
their foreign debt in return for environmental improvements, have 
been around for about a decade. And while there is debate among 
diplomats and international economic experts about the merits of 
completely forgiving the often-crippling debts run up by some of 
the world's poorest nations, Russia is considered too advanced 
for such treatment, even if its economy remains half-broken in 
the wake of 70 years of communism. 

"I don't believe we should get into a situation where we 
willy-nilly forgive debt," said Tauscher, a former stock and bond 
trader. 

The Tauscher plan, which would cost the United States $150 
million over the first two years, would be in addition to $1.2 
billion in U.S.-financed programs already operating in the 
republics of the former Soviet Union. 

"We're already spending millions of dollars a year in Russia," 
she said. "If we can balance that against increasing American 
security and helping the Russian economy, we should." The swap 
would help Russia by keeping money at home and providing more 
employment to people hired to secure and dismantle the weapons. 

Worries about the fate of aging Russian nuclear weapons and the 
vast system of Soviet-era weapons labs are much more than 
academic. A recent Senate report cited three disturbing instances 
that have sparked fears -- increased since the Sept. 11 attacks 
-- of a terrorist nuclear bomb or "dirty bomb," in which 
conventional explosives are used to spread poisonous 
radioactivity. 

The cases cited include a conspiracy at one of Russia's largest 
nuclear weapons facilities to steal enough highly enriched 
uranium for a nuclear bomb; an attempt by an employee at a 
weapons facility to sell designs to agents of Iraq and 
Afghanistan; and the theft of radioactive material from a Russian 
submarine base. 

MONEY TO COMPLY WITH TREATY
 
Russia is going to need money to pay for compliance with the 
latest U.S.- Russia nuclear weapons reduction treaty. That pact, 
awaiting Senate ratification, calls for Russia to dismantle more 
than 3,000 long-range weapons. 

The Russians already have about 13,000 strategic and short-range 
nuclear weapons in stockpiles. 

Experts say the Tauscher bill, which is similar to legislation in 
the Senate, is a good idea. "There is no question debt reduction 
would advance United States nonproliferation efforts," said James 
Fuller of the nuclear defense nonproliferation program at Pacific 
Northwest National Laboratory in Idaho. 

He said the debt program should be in addition to a planned 
international aid effort dubbed "10 plus 10 over 10." This idea, 
agreed to by leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized 
nations, calls for the United States to spend $10 billion in 
Russia over 10 years, a figure to be matched by other leading 
Western nations. In addition, there is an effort to get other 
lending nations to join the United States in any debt swap. In 
all, Russia still has about $71 billion in Soviet-era foreign 
debt on its books. 

"The best way to ensure Russian cooperation is to earmark the 
debt swap as an increase in aid and to give Russia a partnership 
role in running such a program," Fuller said. 

Alan Larson, the undersecretary of state whose portfolio includes 
the nonproliferation effort, praised the debt swap idea but 
didn't commit the administration to supporting it. The Russian 
government of President Vladimir Putin likes the idea. 

"It's a very innovative option," Larson said. "The administration 
will consider this exceptional way of funding nonproliferation 
activities because of the unique burden Russia faces." 

But opposition to the debt swap is easy to find in Congress. "I'm 
not a big fan of forgiveness of debt," said Rep. Steve Chabot, 
R-Ohio, at the House hearing. "You invite future instances of 
countries' going into debt expecting it will be forgiven later 
on. I'm generally going to be fairly skeptical." 

E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com 
[eepstein@sfchronicle.com] . 

Š2002 San Francisco Chronicle.   Page A - 10 
*****************************************************************
 40 Public speaks; DOE listens 
 
   The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News --

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

by R. Cathey Daniels Oak Ridger staff 

The public has spoken, and the Department of Energy has listened, 
according to a reindustrialization specialist with the Oak Ridge 
Operations office.

 Susan Cange of ORO said Wednesday that due to public and agency 
input, the approximate 490-acre environmentally sensitive portion 
of the 1,000-acre Horizon Center industrial park would remain 
under DOE ownership rather than be transferred to the Community 
Reuse Organization of East Tennessee.

 Cange also said that the rest of the parcel considered suitable 
for development would be transferred to CROET likely in November.

 "We're completing the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) 
documentation as well as the transfer agreements, as well as 
working on completion of the lease arrangements," said Cange of 
the arduous process of transferring federal land to private 
ownership.

 That process has proved controversial as many agencies, both 
federal and state, as well as local organizations and private 
individuals lined up to protest the transfer of the exclusionary 
zone, or environmentally sensitive land.

 The city of Oak Ridge, while at one time requesting the land be 
protected, eventually surrendered its self-sufficiency rights on 
the property to ease the transfer to CROET and sent a letter to 
DOE asking that the entire parcel be transferred.

 DOE then served up what many considered a short public comment 
period, which the city's Environmental Quality Advisory Board 
missed due to meeting scheduling. The Oak Ridge City Council, 
still trying to ease the transfer of the entire parcel, 
reluctantly agreed to send their environmental adviser's 
recommendations, albeit late, to DOE under cover letter stating 
the comments were not necessarily the thoughts of council.

 But EQAB's concerns were echoed and confirmed by the U.S. Fish 
and Wildlife Services, the Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness 
Planning, the Tennessee Conservation League, the Advocates for 
the Oak Ridge Reservation, the Citizens' Advisory Panel of the 
Local Oversight Committee and others.

 At the July CROET meeting Executive Director Lawrence Young said 
that the public had been heard and that the organization was 
working with DOE toward a transfer that would not include the 
exclusionary zone.

 With the park sitting nearly empty, CROET earlier this year 
issued a proposal to DOE asking the federal agency to transfer 
the land under a two-year-old set of guidelines known as the 
"Transfer Rule." This rule, used by only a handful of entities 
around the country, allows for transfer of land to the private 
sector for less than fair market value.

 The transfer would enable CROET to sell the property, which is 
considered much more conducive to filling the park than lease 
arrangements.

 The federally funded CROET has invested approximately $9.5 
million into the development of the industrial park's 
infrastructure, according to information from DOE. About 70 
percent of the infrastructure is complete.

 Currently the park has only one tenant, Theragenics Corp. The 
Atlanta-based company has constructed a $25 million 
state-of-the-art facility that will be used to manufacture its 
radioactive rice-sized cancer treatment product known as 
"Theraseed."

 The city's Industrial Development Board is currently in 
negotiations with local development company R Enterprises to 
start a speculative building program on the property. That effort 
has been eased by CROET's efforts at securing grant funding.

 According to Cange, the environmentally sensitive land will 
remain in a lease arrangement with CROET, and DOE will be 
responsible for the oversight of that property "to ensure they 
meet the requirements."

 In January 1996, DOE executed a lease for the land known as 
"Parcel ED-1" to CROET for the purpose of developing an 
industrial/business park, now Horizon Center. The lease 
subsequently became effective in April 1998.
 
R. Cathey Daniels can be contacted at (865) 220-5515 or 
danielsrcd@oakridger.com [danielsrcd@oakridger.com] .

[http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ŠCopyright The Oak Ridger 
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 41 Governor in OR Thursday 

The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News --

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

Dignitaries are expected to be on hand for the official 
"ground-breaking" at 10 a.m. Thursday for the Joint institute for 
Computational Sciences and the Oak Ridge Center for Advanced 
Studies at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

 The $10 million facility, located on the main ORNL complex, is 
funded by the state of Tennessee and will be managed jointly by 
the University of Tennessee and the laboratory.

 Gov. Don Sundquist, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, and UT 
President John Shumaker are scheduled to participate in the 
ceremony.

 Officials were asking those interested in sending a 
representative to call ORNL Communications and Community Outreach 
at (865) 576-1946 no later than 5 this evening.

 The Joint Institute marks a first-time partnership between ORNL, 
UT and the state of Tennessee, according to an ORNL press 
statement.

[http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ŠCopyright The Oak Ridger 
*****************************************************************
 42 Ignore the election-year cries of Congress 

Wednesday, August 21, 2002
 Copyright Š Las Vegas Review-Journal 
EDITORIAL: Spending only what's needed
 
Seemingly anxious to jump aboard any spending program with an 
"anti-terror" label -- willing even to reinvigorate languishing 
pork-barrel expenditures already in the hopper by re-casting them 
as somehow "terrorism related" -- Congress went on a spending 
spree in the aftermath of last September's attacks, in the end 
authorizing $4 billion in "security" spending above and beyond 
what the administration says it really needs. 

Quite sensibly, President Bush has been careful to pick and 
choose among the profligate piles of taxpayer cash thus offered 
up, making independent judgments about where the money can really 
be of use, in some cases opting to spend far less than authorized 
by congressmen anxious to wrap themselves in expensive patriotic 
banners. 

For instance, the administration last year sought $26.7 million 
for security spending at Department of Energy facilities. 
Congress instead appropriated a whopping $360 million. (Hey, it's 
not their money.) But Mr. Bush decided last week to spend only 
the $26 million initially sought. 

This now brings election-year cries from Democrats such as Rep. 
Ed Markey of Massachusetts, essentially demanding that the money 
has been authorized, and now it had darned well better be spent, 
whether it's actually needed or not. 

"The Department of Energy, by its own admission, does not have 
adequate resources to provide security" at its facilities, Rep. 
Markey warns. The congressman then cites statistics that make it 
sound as though guard shacks have been left abandoned in the past 
11 months, replaced with signs reading, "Come in and take 
whatever you want." 

Why, Rep. Markey warns, Energy Department figures indicate the 
number of guards protecting nuclear materials and facilities in 
this country has actually been has been slashed by 40 percent! 

Arriving at the fine print, however, we find Rep. Markey 
acknowledging that the cited reduction in DOE security forces 
(from 7,091 employees to 4,262) actually occurred between 1992 
and 2001 -- during the wind-down from America's victory in the 
Cold War, when many such facilities were in fact being closed or 
downsized. 

The bulk of the cuts thus came during the Clinton administration, 
including a reduction from 276 to 115 of security personnel at 
the Nevada Test Site -- where overall activity and staffing 
levels were in the process of being slashed precipitously, of 
course. 

National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan Wilkes 
replies that America's nuclear stockpile is safe, and that 
hundreds of new or returning guards have been hired since Sept. 
11 -- numbers not reflected in Rep. Markey's figures. "Any 
implication that nothing has changed in our security since Sept. 
11 is patently ridiculous," Mr. Wilkes reports. "Could we use 
(more money)? Sure; who couldn't? But are things any less safe 
without more money? Certainly not." 

In fact, the National Nuclear Security Administration received 
$653 million to protect nuclear facilities and shipments in the 
current year -- a sharp increase from the $411 million spent on 
security throughout the Energy Department last year, according to 
Amy Call, spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management 
and Budget. 

Post mortems of the security failures of Sept. 11 events 
increasingly indicate the problem was not a lack of information 
or personnel, but a lack of proper coordination. To the extent 
that's true, throwing money at the problem -- insisting that 
federal agencies rush out and hire vast numbers of ill-trained 
personnel to put on fancy new uniforms and trip over one another 
-- could easily do more harm than good. The administration is to 
be congratulated for avoiding that pitfall.
 
Copyright Š Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
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 43 MIT physicist who discovered positronium, dies at 85 

Boston Globe Online: Print it!
 
By Associated Press, 8/21/2002 03:21 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) Martin Deutsch, a physicist at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology who helped develop atomic 
weapons and later discovered an elemental form of matter, has 
died. He was 85. 

Deutsch died Friday at his home in Cambridge. His family said the 
cause of death has not been determined. 

''There was nothing in life that he didn't want to understand. 
That was the hallmark of his life,'' said his wife of 63 years, 
Suzanne. 

In 1951, at age 34, Deutsch confirmed the existence of 
positronium, a hydrogen-like atom without a nucleus that exists 
for as little as 1/10 of a billionth of a second. The discovery 
corroborated the quantum theory of electrodynamics for a 
two-particle system. 

''It was a spectacular production on Martin's part,'' said 
Francis Low, MIT physics professor emeritus, who worked with 
Deutsch on positronium experiments in the school's Laboratory for 
Nuclear Science. 

Deutsch headed the laboratory from 1973-79 and was succeeded by 
Low, who described Deutsch as ''a remarkably knowledgeable man, a 
fire hose of information.'' 

Born in Vienna on Jan. 29, 1917, Deutsch was the child of 
doctors. His mother, a psychiatry professor at the University of 
Vienna, became Sigmund Freud's last pupil, and Freud appointed 
her director of his Training Institute of the Vienna 
Psychoanalytic Society in 1923. 

A fervent anti-fascist, Deutsch said in a 1998 interview with The 
Boston Globe that he was ''a product of my culture, which is the 
culture of Vienna Jews.'' At age 17, he moved to Zurich, 
Switzerland, after participating in the Austrian resistance to 
the fascists. 

In 1935, he came to the United States with his mother. Though 
they intended to return to Europe within weeks, they stayed and 
settled in Cambridge. 

Deutsch enrolled at MIT and received a bachelor's degree in 1937, 
then a Ph.D. in 1941, completing in six years a course of study 
that typically takes 11. He worked on the atomic bomb as part of 
the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M. After the war, Deutsch 
returned to MIT as Manhattan Project colleagues built the 
Laboratory for Nuclear Science. 

''The next five or six years were harvest years for me. Ideas 
that had germinated during the war years led to others, and 
somehow, it seems everything I touched turned to gold,'' he said. 

Among his students was the late Henry Kendall, who won the Nobel 
Prize in 1990 for his co-discovery of the quark. Deutsch retired 
from MIT in 1987. 
    
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