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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Kelly Says No Final Decision on Status of North Korea Agreed Framewo
2 TXU adds to Hewitt's nuclear headache
3 A war that can't be won
4 North Korea says 1994 nuclear agreement with Washington has collapse
5 Pyongyang's nukes - 
6 US suspects Iran is becoming greater nuclear threat -
7 Nukes: the weapon of yesterday - 
8 US: Early Release of the Annual Energy Outlook 2003
9 US:  
10 Taipei: Nuclear conference opens 
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
11 US: Man fined after driving through nuke plant security *
12 US: NRC denies petition seeking nuclear plants' shutdown
13 New China N-plant on line amid loan fears - 
14 US: NRC Assigns New Resident Inspector at Pilgrim Nuclear Plant
15 US: U.S. refuses to close nuke plant (Indian Point)
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
16 India: Radiation dose exposure safe in Kakrapar: DAE
17 US: Worker safety concerns surfacing with lawsuit -
18 US: Nuke drill tests crisis response* 
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
19 AU: Nuclear waste sparks debate*
20 Kazakhstan reveals solution to its nuclear waste crisis: import 
21 Kazakhstan eyes EU N-waste
22 IEER: Comments to NRC on proposed LES enrichment plant in 
23 Radioactive waste stored has doubled in 15 years
24 Some grill LES on proposed uranium enrichment plant *
25 US: Chatham votes against nuclear shipments*
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
26 Inspection of a Trident nuclear submarine 
27 Pakistan's Bhutto said to have overseen Korea nuclear deal
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
28 UC-managed nuclear research lab under investigation for missing item
29 Parsons Corp. selected to create uranium storage facility at Y-12
30 Livermore lab may lose top-dog status
31 Charge DOE to store, not just ship, wastes
32 Los Alamos Lab Property Said Missing
33 Residents can discuss SRS emissions
34 Energy Secretary Lauds Stanford University's New Global Climate 
35 Los Alamos Laboratory Memo Says Nearly $1.3 Million in Computers,
36 Lawsuit: Radiation records were altered 
37 DOE will keep WWII-era calutrons in service 
38 Plutonium waste will be shipped to WIPP 
39 MSC completes $1.2 million upgrade of rolling mill 
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
40 Energy industry bows to pressure
41 Seismic survey peers beneath Ancients monument
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Kelly Says No Final Decision on Status of North Korea Agreed Framework

International Information Programs
Washington File </products/washfile/>

Washington File 20 November 2002

(Assistant Secretary of State's Nov. 19 press briefing) (4750)

The U.S. government has not made any final decision about the 
status of its Agreed Framework with North Korea following North 
Korea's admission that it has been working on a uranium 
enrichment program for nuclear weapons, says a top U.S. official.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs 
James A. Kelly told reporters at a briefing November 19 at the 
Foreign Press Center in Washington that "No final decisions have 
been made and no final statements have been made by the U.S. 
Government" on the agreement.

"The U.S. view on the Agreed Framework is that the North Koreans 
said it was nullified and we guess it's been nullified. But we 
are not in any rush to make decisions on all aspects of it," 
Kelly said.

Kelly said that North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kang 
Suk-joo made it clear to him that North Korea's uranium 
enrichment program "was something that North Korea was proceeding 
with" despite earlier agreements to abandon such projects.

In response to a reporter's question, the Kelly said there are no 
U.S. plans for a U.S. military response.

"When the President (Bush) was in South Korea last February, and 
in some remarks since, he made clear that we had no intention or 
plans to attack or invade North Korea," Kelly said.

North Korean officials, he said, "keep emphasizing a threat 
posture which simply does not exist, and their sovereignty has 
not been challenged" by the United States.

When asked if the United States was looking to China for help in 
resolving the situation in North Korea, Kelly replied that "China 
has not made any promises, and I have not made any demands, but 
we very much hope that they can be helpful in resolving this 
serious problem."

He added that U.S. officials have "had some very good exchanges, 
quite a number of them, with China on the problem of North 
Korea.... But this is a private and sensitive matter for China, 
and I don't expect that they are going to state exactly what they 
are going to do."

Following is the official transcript of the press briefing:

(begin transcript)

James A. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and 
Pacific Affairs Foreign Press Center Briefing Washington, DC 
November 19, 2002

[Transcript Prepared by Diversified Reporting Services, Inc.]

MR. DENIG: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to 
the Foreign Press Center. We are delighted to have with us this 
afternoon James Kelly, the Assistant Secretary for East Asian and 
Pacific Affairs.

The last one and a half months have been extraordinarily busy for 
him. He has made three trips to the Northeast Asia region and he, 
of course, also was down in Mexico for the APEC meeting and also 
in Crawford for the bilateral summit.

We are delighted to have him here today to talk about 
developments in the region. And I would ask you, when you pose 
your questions, to please use the microphone, identify yourself 
and your news organization. And I would encourage you, given the 
number of people here, to keep your questions relatively brief so 
that we can have longer answers.

Mr. Secretary.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Thank you. I won't have an opening 
statement today. We can go right to the questions.

QUESTION: I'm Marie-Hebert Feister (ph), Economic Review. Mr. 
Kelly, there has been some confusion or disputing about what you 
were told when you were in North Korea. Can you tell us again 
what Kang Suk-joo told you in your meeting?

And secondly, can you talk a little bit about the evidence that 
you presented, and particularly whether Pakistan was part of the 
equation, as was reported in The Washington Post recently?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: On October 3rd and 4th, I visited 
North Korea and I had four meetings there. Two of the meetings 
were with Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-guan, and one on 
Thursday, the 3rd, and the other in the morning. These were quite 
long meetings where I made my entire presentation and he made a 
presentation and we had a further exchange. They were pretty 
close to about three hours long.

On the second day, which was scheduled to be the last full day of 
my meetings there, I also met with Kim Yong-nam, the President of 
the Supreme People's Assembly and the nominal president of North 
Korea. And then the last meeting I had was with First Vice 
Foreign Minister Kang Suk-joo.

And the initial meetings with Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-guan, 
I made my presentation which indicated that we now had a 
precondition which we had not had in the past, which was that we 
had information that North Korea had a covert uranium enrichment 
program and that this was another way of proceeding towards 
nuclear weapons and that this was a big problem for us and that 
they needed to dismantle it right away before we could fully 
engage in a whole range of things that might well be and might 
well still be mutually beneficial.

And I asked him not to reply right away, that it was a detailed 
presentation, and I asked that they give full consideration to it 
and reply after they had fully considered. But he insisted on 
replying quite rapidly and said that my assertion was a 
fabrication and that it was -- he didn't like it.

In the last meeting, though, with First Vice Foreign Minister 
Kang, I never really gave my presentation. He spoke from the 
beginning. It wasn't such a long meeting. And his remarks clearly 
showed -- there were eight different mentions of the uranium 
enrichment project -- that this was something that North Korea 
was proceeding with, that they considered the Agreed Framework 
nullified, and I would stress that they said it was nullified 
because of assertions of U.S. misbehavior, with which I do not 
agree. And that was essentially his point.

And I did not confront him or the others with evidence of the 
uranium enrichment program. I just said that we knew that they 
were doing it and that this was a serious violation of numerous 
international agreements and that it was causing a serious 
problem.

And so that was the genesis of the reply. It wasn't the 
convincing nature of my evidence. To the best of my knowledge, 
the name of the country Pakistan never came up during my two days 
there.

QUESTION: My name is Nai Chen-ma (ph) from Hong Kong Phoenix 
Television. Mr. Kelly, with respect to China's relationship with 
North Korea, do you believe China has significant leverage with 
North Korea to convince it to stop its nuclear weapons program? 
And how does the U.S. expect China to use its leverage with North 
Korea? And also, what more could or should U.S. and China do to 
eliminate the threat?

Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Well, I visited China most recently 
last week. A week ago today, I was in China for talks. This was 
the second time in the last month that I had visited China to 
discuss this topic.

I don't know how much influence China has with North Korea. I 
guess it probably has more influence than the U.S. does -- 
because of a long and friendly relationship -- but China has made 
it very clear that they are not in favor of nuclear weapons on 
the Korean Peninsula and so I think, in many respects, we share 
interests. North Korea has not made -- or, I'm sorry, China has 
not made any promises and I have not made any demands, but we 
very much hope that they can be helpful in resolving this serious 
problem.

QUESTION: My name is T'ae yong Kim, Aram (ph) News Agency, Korea. 
The US State Department has not officially announced that the 
Geneva agreements between North Korea and the United States has 
been scrapped, but the United States recently suspended the fuel 
shipment to North Korea, which amounts to practical scrapping.

And what is your official position? What is the official position 
of the State Department about the agreements?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: First of all, the US did not announce 
the ending of the fuel shipments. That was announced by the 
Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization board of 
directors, which includes the Republic of Korea, Japan, U.S. and 
the European Union, in New York, I believe, last Thursday.

The US view on the Agreed Framework is that the North Koreans 
said it was nullified and we guess it's been nullified. But we 
are not in any rush to make decisions on all aspects of it. This 
is an agreement that has acted for some eight years and there are 
a number of different elements to it.

Among other things, of course, its very first paragraph suggests 
that it's -- or asserts that it's aimed at preventing nuclear 
weapons on the Korean Peninsula, and that's, of course, exactly 
the uranium enrichment program that would constitute a violation 
of that. So no final decisions have been made and no final 
statements have been made by the US Government on that.

We did say that the current shipment that, I guess, is being 
delivered now in North Korea is the last one for which there are 
funds, and I think that statement speaks for itself.

QUESTION: My name is Yun (ph). I'm with the Kyunghyang Shinmun 
(ph), Korean. Mr. Kelly, I want to ask you about a newspaper 
report this morning which said that Bush administration will 
refrain from doing anything drastic regarding North Korean policy 
before a new South Korean president assumes office in January.

Also in the report, a high-ranking, senior government official 
said that he hopes the new South Korean Government will scrap the 
Sunshine Policy of outgoing President Kim Dae-jung. I want to ask 
you your comment about this. And also, are you satisfied with the 
level of support you're getting from South Korea regarding North 
Korean nuclear issue?

Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Was the official, an unnamed official 
in the newspaper story, that you cited?

QUESTION: It didn't say anything about that.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: No, okay. So, it is very hard to 
comment about statements made in news stories by unnamed 
officials. I'm here as a named official. (Laughter.) And the fact 
is, I've visited Seoul four times in the last month and a half. I 
think we have an excellent level of cooperation.

And democratic countries have one president at a time, and the 
President of the Republic of Korea is Mr. Kim Dae-jung; and as 
long as he is President, I believe until the 23rd of February, 
he's responsible for the government of that country, and that's 
the government with which we will deal.

And so I wouldn't use the terms that that newspaper article said. 
As I did say, we've had excellent cooperation from the Government 
of South Korea and I would not associate myself with those other 
remarks.

QUESTION: My name is Hakajiri (ph) with Asahi Shimbun (ph) of 
Japan. The KEDO executive board statement says that not only 
heavy fuel oil, but also other KEDO activity with North Korea, 
will be reviewed. So does this mean that the light-water reactor 
project could be abandoned if North Korea doesn't dismantle the 
highly enriched uranium program?

Thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Well, I don't want to speculate on 
what might or might not be done. I think that statement makes 
very clear that all those activities that are under the control 
of the KEDO executive board are going to come under review.

The only one that had to be reviewed because this shipment of oil 
was actually at sea was the heavy fuel oil shipment for this 
month and those coming up, certainly, over the next couple.

The support of the taxpayers of the Republic of Korea and of 
Japan and, in the case of the heavy fuel, of the U.S.A. is 
essential to that continuing on. And since the uranium enrichment 
program of North Korea, not to mention some of their recent 
public assertions, is a serious problem with written agreements, 
I think these questions remain very much open, but I do not think 
that they have been fully decided yet.

QUESTION: Hello. My name is Nakano (ph) from Nippon Television 
Network. You said all that KEDO activities now come under review, 
but as United States, do you consider any other penalties against 
North Korea if the country does not stop developing nuclear 
weapons?

Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: I really can't speculate on what might 
come. We've made very strong representations when I was in North 
Korea and since that it's important that North Korea dismantle 
this uranium enrichment program. There's no place for atomic 
bombs on the Peninsula of Korea, and this does not, in my view, 
contribute to North Korea's security.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, Steve Collinson with AFP. The Thai 
Government has reacted rather angrily to a number of reports in 
U.S. and other media about the potential for a terrorist attack 
similar to the Bali bombing in Thailand in one of the beach 
resorts or Bangkok. I'm interested to know what the U.S. position 
on the Thai Government's antiterrorism measures are following the 
publication of these reports.

And in the same region, I would be interested to know your 
perception on the dialogue process in Burma following the visit 
of Mr. Ismael, Razali Ismael, last week and the apparent lack of 
any progress following that visit.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: I think Thailand is doing an 
outstanding job in pursuit of the war against terror. But this is 
a very difficult campaign and every country, certainly including 
the U.S.A., has had and may well continue to be having this 
exposure to terrorists. And so, as a result of this and a result 
of things that have occurred in Southeast Asia, it's necessary 
that we provide appropriate warning to our citizens. It's just 
not fair to have these threats circulate around and be handed in 
some closely held manner from one government employee to another.

It's a requirement of our law and policy that what the government 
knows about this sort of warning and threat has to be shared with 
our citizens. And yes, I think there has been some unhappiness in 
Thailand about the advisories that have been put out which in no 
case represent a warning against travel to Thailand. They don't 
do that. They simply state the conditions and the difficulties 
and ask that travelers be mindful of that. And that also applies 
to most of the other countries of Southeast Asia, as well. And 
the fact is, when tourism is a very important local industry and 
something like this comes out, sometimes the tendency is to 
criticize the messenger rather than the problem.

With respect to your question on Burma. Yes, Tan Sri Razali had, 
I think, his ninth visit to Rangoon last week, and it appears as 
though not a great deal of progress was made. I have to say 
there's -- hopes had started to pick up with the progress of 
dialogue last summer and it doesn't seem to be getting very far. 
There are still an awful lot of political prisoners held and a 
lot of restrictions on freedom in Burma that are of serious 
concern.

QUESTION: Central News Agency, Taiwan. I would like to press you 
a little bit more on China. Given China's connection to North 
Korea and given their stated position on nukes, or no nukes on 
the Peninsula, and given the improvement in the ties between the 
U.S. and China, one would have thought that the U.S. would expect 
Beijing to do a little bit more in terms of helping to cope with 
the situation in North Korea. I'm wondering whether you can 
elaborate a little bit on your discussion with the Chinese 
officials.

And if I may ask you a question about Taiwan, your good friend C. 
J. Chen, Taiwan's representative to the U.S., is now in Taiwan 
facing some tough questions about an incident which happened on 
September 26th involving our first lady, Madame Chen, at Dulles 
Airport. I'm wondering whether you could tell us a little bit 
about how the U.S. handled that incident in which Madame Chen was 
subjected to some security check and whether you could confirm 
press reports from Taiwan that Secretary Powell called President 
Chen to offer his apology or regret.

Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: With respect to the first question, I 
don't think it's helpful to try to describe expectations. The 
fact is, we've had some very good exchanges, quite a number of 
them, with China on the problem of North Korea. I was -- I left 
there quite encouraged. But this is a private and sensitive 
matter for China and I don't expect that they are going to state 
exactly what they are going to do.

So my purpose of being there was to describe to them in 
considerable detail what our position was on these things and 
what our recent discussions had been in Seoul and Tokyo and our 
views about the things that North Korea had said and the evidence 
we had of things that they were doing. And I received very 
serious attention to those issues.

With respect to the visit of Madame Wu, the First Lady of Taiwan, 
it's my understanding that she had a very excellent visit here.

I wasn't at Dulles airport and I'm not able to report on the 
details there, but if there's anyone here who has not had to 
remove their shoes at the airport or undergo a very careful 
security check -- well, I certainly have had to go through that.

Now, I'm not the First Lady of Taiwan, and we very much hope that 
representatives and those important people from friendly places 
receive a warm welcome. But there have been a number of cases, 
quite understandable, I think, given the very strong security 
procedures, in fact, in which for one problem of communication or 
another, that tight security procedures have been used against 
distinguished visitors. There's been a lot of press attention, 
for example, to that in Malaysia, recently, too.

So, that said, I don't think I would comment any further, other 
than we're very concerned that our visitors here have a uniformly 
respectful reception at all times. And Secretary Powell certainly 
shares that view with me.

QUESTION: Now that the 16th Party Congress in China is over -- 
oh, I'm sorry. Charles Snyder of the Taipei Times.

Now that the 16th Party Congress is over, do you get a sense, 
does the administration get a sense that there might be any 
change in the new Chinese leadership and their policies at all 
towards Taiwan?

And during the -- just before the 16th Party Congress, during the 
-- around the time of the summit, a number of Chinese ships 
apparently violated Taiwan space. Is the administration concerned 
over those, and did the President mention that during his meeting 
with Jiang Zemin?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: I'm not aware of the details that you 
mentioned about a number, especially, of war ships, encroaching 
into what you described as Taiwan space.

I don't think -- I can't really identify anything in the 16th 
Party Congress. This is something for people like yourselves to 
analyze. The process went on, I think, largely as it had been 
suggested that it would. We look forward to working with the new 
leaders of China, and that's really about all that I can say.

I didn't detect anything in the remarks that were made last week, 
privately or publicly, that would suggest any difference in the 
views of the PRC towards Taiwan.

QUESTION: Kigan Go (ph) with (inaudible) Times, Korea.

Secretary Colin Powell yesterday said that United States 
recognized the sovereignty of North Korea. Is it your official 
position to recognize the North Korean Government or regime?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Yes. I don't want to get tangled in 
language about diplomatic recognition, but yes, we recognize 
they're a member-state of the United Nations. I don't think that 
there's something else. We have a lot of serious problems with 
the government, but I think the context of what Secretary Powell 
said was really referring to all of the statements that have been 
coming from North Korea that keep talking about threats, and 
there really haven't been any threats.

When the President was in South Korea last February, and in some 
remarks since, he made clear that we had no intention or plans to 
attack or invade North Korea. They keep emphasizing a threat 
posture which simply does not exist, and their sovereignty has 
not been challenged. Their behavior has been what has been 
challenged and this violation of written treaties in pursuing the 
development of nuclear weapons.

QUESTION: John Zhan with Power TV of Taiwan.

Sir, just to follow up on the previous question my colleague here 
just asked, could you confirm that Secretary Powell called 
President Chen Shui-bian to apologize for the incident, and, if 
you could, what did he apologize for?

Thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: No, I can't confirm it and I won't 
confirm it.

QUESTION: Chris Cockel, from The China Post of Taiwan.

How, if at all, do you believe the recently passed defense 
authorization bill, which seeks stronger U.S.-Taiwan relations, 
will impact U.S.-Taiwan-China relations?

Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: It's my understanding that the defense 
authorization bill requires a report, I believe, from the 
President to the Congress, and I take that as an expression of a 
view that's been very well and very long held by the Congress and 
is articulated, in particular, in the Taiwan Relations Act that 
expresses very strong concern that military pressure and military 
threats not be brought onto Taiwan. And that's certainly 
something that is very much shared by the U.S., and I'm sure that 
the reports that the Congress has requested will be forwarded to 
them at the appropriate time.

QUESTION: Secretary Kelly, Nadia Chow with The Liberty Times. 
There are two questions that have never been confirmed by the 
U.S. Government.

After the Crawford meeting, Chinese media reported that President 
Bush accepted invitation to visit China next year for the third 
time. And also, a Xinhua News Agency report President Bush told 
President Jiang that he opposed Taiwan independence, but which in 
the official conference he used to not support.

We're just wondering, can we confirm are these true, or actually 
you have a different version from the Chinese report?

Thanks.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: The press conference that was held in 
Crawford with the two presidents, at that time President Bush 
expressed our policy, that we do not support Taiwan independence. 
There has been no change in American policy and there was no 
change in the meeting or out of the meeting with respect to our 
position on Taiwan.

The fact is, the President cited our longstanding policies, the 
communiqués, the Taiwan Relations Act, to peaceful resolution, 
those elements that have always gone into our statements before. 
And I think it would be a mistake to try to parse every single 
word uttered privately and publicly and to try to juxtapose those 
and try to interpret a change of policy when clearly there has 
not been a change of policy.

What was the other part?

QUESTION: The invitation.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Oh, the invitation.

Yes, there was an invitation to the President to come to visit 
China. I'm not certain that it had a particular time and I'm not 
certain that the President's reply, which was, I think, a general 
appreciation for that invitation, had any particular date on it. 
So that I think it would probably be a mistake to pencil in a 
particular visit of the President to Taiwan for 2003. But I think 
he does have some hope or expectation --

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: I'm sorry.

(Laughter.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Yeah. Let me try to be clear. To 
Beijing. The President, of course, visited Shanghai a year ago, 
and he visited Beijing last February. And I don't know when he 
will visit China anywhere, including Beijing, again, and I don't 
think there's any commitment to do so in 2003.

QUESTION: Ch'oe (ph) from South Korea's Munhwa Broadcasting.

North Korea and Japan again. There's some controversy what Kang 
Suk-joo had said to you, and even though your remark. The former 
Ambasador Donald Gregg said that Kang Suk-joo did not admit HEU 
program in North Korea. They just said that they are entitled to 
develop nuclear program, not -- they are not comment on HEU.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Let me say this about that.

First, Vice Minister Kang Suk-joo definitely admitted that North 
Korea was pursuing a uranium enrichment program; and (b), he did 
say, and there have been subsequent public statements, that North 
Korea is entitled to a nuclear weapons program. Excuse me. North 
Korea is not entitled to a nuclear weapons program because they 
signed the Nonproliferation Treaty in 1985. So that this is an 
ongoing signal of a violation of a treaty to which North Korea is 
a party.

QUESTION: Do you have verbatim of what Kang Suk-joo had said to 
you?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Yes, I do, and I don't intend to 
release it.

QUESTION: May I have one more question, please?

There's some news organizations' reports on KEDO, that -- 
actually I would like to elaborate the news organization, NSK, 
Japanese media, and The Washington Times in this town -- US will 
be back off from KEDO and dismantling KEDO system and then United 
States is scheming new framework for targeting the US nuclear 
program.

What is your position on that?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Would you restate that question, 
because I, frankly, did not understand exactly what you were 
saying?

QUESTION: United States does not have an intention to be involved 
in KEDO.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: That's not our position at this time.

MR. DENIG: We have time for one last question.

QUESTION: Marion Wilkinson from The Sydney Morning Herald 
newspaper.

On Monday, the Australian Government issued a new terrorist 
threat about a potential attack in Australia. I wonder if you 
could tell us, was that new threat regional or, to your 
knowledge, just confined to Australia; and what prompted it, to 
your knowledge; and what advice are U.S. citizens traveling to 
Australia being given?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: I have to confess, I'm probably not as 
-- I am aware that there was this threat, and it's my 
understanding that it was within Australia, and that it was given 
the notice that you describe. I'm not aware if we have changed 
our website about travelers to Australia or not. It's certainly 
one of a series of the threats that I was referring to earlier 
that we would take very seriously.

MR. DENIG: We have time for one more quick one.

QUESTION: Hi, Mr. Kelly. I am Tada Stabato (ph), TV Asahi, Japan.

My question is about Charles Robert Jenkins, who defected to 
North Korea and married a Japanese abductee there.

Jenkins said recently in an interview in a magazine that he wants 
to go to Japan in 2005 because the statute of limitation on his 
desertion will run out this year. Could you tell me, what is the 
United States Government's policy with regard to him?

And one more question. When you went to Japan, you were asked by 
Shinzo Abe, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, if amnesty would be 
granted to Jenkins. How will you deal with this request?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KELLY: Mr. Abe, the Deputy Chief Cabinet 
Secretary, we did discuss the case of Mr. Jenkins. I don't recall 
him making the particular request that you describe, and there 
are some ongoing discussions.

Mr. Jenkins disappeared -- apparently walked to North Korea on 
his own, many, many years ago. We have tried to be in contact 
with him over the years by making requests in North Korea, and 
have never, never been in contact. It takes Japanese journalists 
to do that.

So there remain serious charges under the law that are there on 
Mr. Jenkins, and I think they're going to have to be resolved 
whenever he chooses to return. I hope he wouldn't wait that long, 
but we're not able to make any assurances before a full 
investigation would be made whenever the condition or whenever 
the gentleman would present himself.

And thank you very much, I will look forward to coming back again 
some time.

(end transcript)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, 
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
*****************************************************************
 2 TXU adds to Hewitt's nuclear headache

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | 

Mark Milner and Terry Macalister Thursday November 21, 2002 The 
Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk]                
 		
The government's dilemma over whether to continue to support 
British Energy deepened last night as Britain's power generation 
industry plunged into crisis in the wake of the collapse of TXU 
Europe. Tuesday's decision to put TXU into administration 
yesterday shut down one power station and left the country's 
biggest plant, the huge Drax facility in Yorkshire, facing a 
financial crisis. 


Trade secretary Patricia Hewitt has until November 29 to decide 
whether to continue to provide finance for British Energy, which 
has already received £650m from the government. It has promised a 
statement next week. 

She is under pressure from rival power producers not to support 
the nuclear industry but knows she cannot allow such a sensitive 
business to fail. 

"We are still looking at the situation. Intensive discussions are 
going on. At the moment we have not made a decision," she said 
yesterday. 

The government's problem was underlined by Liberal Democrat trade 
and industry spokesman, Vince Cable, who warned that others in 
the industry were unlikely to accept continued support for 
British Energy when they too were facing a crisis as a result of 
the fall in wholesale electricity prices. 

"It would be surprising if the government does not face a legal 
challenge over British Energy," he said. 

Drax's financial problems follow the cancellation of a contract 
with TXU. It now has to sell its output on the open market at 
lower prices. 

"[Drax] can work through this. They don't have to close the door. 
The problem is they will struggle to generate enough cash to pay 
their debts. The only way they can work through this is by 
restructuring debt," Jan Willem Plantagie, a credit analyst at 
Standard and Poor's, said. 

The fallout from TXU Europe's plight also hit UK Coal which said 
it expected to take a £6m exceptional charge in its full year 
figures. Its shares fell 2.25p to 48p. 

It said the termination of TXU contracts would release it from 
unwanted obligations, saving the company £5m by April 2003. 
Scottish & Southern said it was facing financial losses of £175m 
as a result of TXU non-payments. "It would have been advantageous 
for everybody if TXU Europe had been allowed to work through its 
problems rather than be rushed into administration," a 
spokeswoman said. 

TXU Europe's 5.5 million British retail customers are safe. That 
side of the business has been bought by Powergen for £1.37bn. 
	
Useful links

British Energy [http://www.british-energy.com/] Department of 
Trade and Industry [http://www.dti.gov.uk/] British Nuclear Fuels 
Ltd [http://www.bnfl.co.uk/website.nsf/default.htm] Campaign for 
Nuclear Disarmament [http://www.cnduk.org/] Greenpeace 
[http://www.greenpeace.org/homepage/] HSE nuclear glossary 
[http://www.hse.gov.uk/nsd/ilrwglos.htm] UK atomic energy 
authority [http://www.ukaea.org.uk/] National Radiological 
Protection Board [http://www.nrpb.org.uk/] Friends of the Earth 
[http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/dump_nuc 
lear/index.html] World Nuclear Association 
[http://www.uilondon.org/] World Nuclear Transport Institute 
[http://www.wnti.co.uk] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
 3 A war that can't be won

   Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | 

The west isn't just losing the fight against terrorism

- it is fuelling it across the globe            
 		
Seumas Milne Thursday November 21, 2002 The Guardian 
[http://www.guardian.co.uk]                
 		
This time last year, supporters of George Bush's war on terror 
were in euphoric mood. As one Taliban stronghold after another 
fell to the US-backed Northern Alliance, they hailed the advance 
as a decisive blow to the authors of the September 11 atrocities. 
The critics and doom-mongers had been confounded, cheerleaders 
crowed. Kites were flying again, music was playing and women were 
throwing off their burkas with joyful abandon. 

As the US president demanded Osama bin Laden "dead or alive", 
government officials on both sides of the Atlantic whispered that 
they were less than 48 hours from laying hands on the al-Qaida 
leader. By destroying the terrorist network's Afghan bases and 
its Taliban sponsors, supporters of the war argued, the Americans 
and their friends had ripped the heart out of the beast. 
Washington would now begin to address Muslim and Arab grievances 
by fast-tracking the establishment of a Palestinian state. 
Downing Street even published a rollcall of shame of journalists 
they claimed had been proved wrong by a hundred days of triumph. 
And in parliament, Jack Straw ridiculed Labour MPs for suggesting 
that the US and Britain might still be fighting in Afghanistan 12 
months down the line. 

One year on, the crowing has long since faded away; reality has 
sunk in. After six months of multiplying Islamist attacks on US, 
Australian and European targets, civilian and military - in 
Tunisia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Russia, Jordan, Yemen, the US and 
Indonesia - western politicians are having to face the fact that 
they are losing their war on terror. In Britain, the prime 
minister has taken to warning of the "painful price" that the 
country will have to pay to defeat those who are "inimical to all 
we stand for", while leaks about the risk of chemical or 
biological attacks have become ever more lurid. After a year of 
US military operations in Afghanistan and around the world, the 
CIA director George Tenet had to concede that the threat from 
al-Qaida and associated jihadist groups was as serious as before 
September 11. "They've reconstituted, they are coming after us," 
he said. 

In other words, the global US onslaught had been a complete 
failure - at least as far as dealing with non-state terrorism was 
concerned. Tom Daschle, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, was 
even more brutal. Summing up a litany of unmet objectives in the 
US confrontation with militant Islamism, he asked: "By what 
measure can we say this has been successful?" But most galling of 
all has been the authentication of the latest taped message from 
Bin Laden himself, promising bloody revenge for the deaths of the 
innocent in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. This was the man 
whose capture or killing was, after all, the first objective of 
Bush's war. And yet, along with the Taliban leader and one-eyed 
motorbiker Mullah Omar, the mastermind of America's humiliation 
remains free. 

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan itself, the record is just as dismal. 
By using the heroin-financed gangsters of the Northern Alliance 
to overthrow the Taliban regime and pursue al-Qaida remnants ever 
since, the US has handed over most of the country to the same war 
criminals who devastated Afghanistan in the early 1990s. In 
Kabul, the US puppet president Hamid Karzai can rely on foreign 
troops to prop up his fragile authority. There, and in a few 
other urban centres, some girls' schools have re-opened and the 
worst manifestations of the Taliban's grotesque oppression of 
women have gone. 

But in much of what is once again the opium capital of the world, 
the return of the lawlords has meant harsh political repression, 
lawlessness, mass rape and widespread torture, the bombing or 
closure of schools, as well as Taliban-style policing of women's 
dress and behaviour. The systematic use by Ismail Khan, who runs 
much of western Afghanistan with US support, of electric shock 
torture, arbitrary arrests and whippings to crush dissent is set 
out in a new Human Rights Watch report. Khan was nevertheless 
described by the US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently as 
a "thoughtful" and "appealing" person. His counterpart in the 
north, General Dostam, has in turn just been accused by the UN of 
torturing witnesses to his troops' murder of thousands of Taliban 
prisoners late last year, when he was working closely with US 
special forces. 

The death toll exacted for this "liberation" can only be 
estimated. But a consensus is growing that around 3,500 Afghan 
civilians were killed by US bombing (which included the 
large-scale use of depleted uranium weapons), with up to 10,000 
combatants killed and many more deaths from cold and hunger as a 
result of the military action. Now, long after the war was 
supposed to be over, the US 82nd airborne division is reported to 
be alienating the population in the south and east with 
relentless but largely fruitless raids and detentions, while 
mortar and rocket attacks on US bases are now taking place at 
least three times a week. As General Richard Myers, chairman of 
the US joint chiefs of staff, puts it, the US military campaign 
in Afghanistan has "lost momentum". 

All this has been the inevitable product of the central choice 
made last autumn, which was to opt for a mainly military solution 
to the challenge of Islamist terrorism. That was a recipe for 
failure. By their nature, terrorist or guerrilla campaigns which 
have deep social roots and draw on a widespread sense of 
injustice - as militant Islamist groups do, regardless of the 
obscurantism of their ideology - cannot be defeated militarily. 
And as the war on terror has increasingly become a war to enforce 
US global power, it has only intensified the appeal of 
"asymmetric warfare" to the powerless. 

The grievances al-Qaida is able to feed on throughout the Muslim 
world were once again spelled out in Bin Laden's latest edict. 
But there is little sign of any weakening of the wilful western 
refusal to address seriously the causes of Islamist terrorism.

Thus, during the past year, the US has armed and bolstered 
Pakistan and the central Asian dictatorships, supported Putin's 
ongoing devastation of Chechnya, continued to bomb and blockade 
Iraq at huge human cost, established new US bases across the 
Muslim world and, most recklessly of all, provided every 
necessary cover for Ariel Sharon's bloody rampages through the 
occupied Palestinian territories. In most of this, despite Tony 
Blair's muted appeals for a new Middle East peace conference, 
Britain has played the role of faithful lieutenant. 

Now, even as "phase one" of its war on terror has been seen to 
have failed, the US shows every sign of preparing to launch phase 
two: its long-planned invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Perhaps some of the intensity of the current warnings about 
terrorist threats is intended to help soften up public opinion 
for an unpopular war. But what is certain about such an act of 
aggression is that it will fuel Islamist terrorism throughout the 
world and make attacks on those countries which support it much 
more likely. If such outrages take place in Britain, there can no 
longer be any surprise or mystery about why we have been 
attacked, no point in asking why they hate us. Of course, it 
wouldn't be the innocents who were killed or injured who would be 
to blame. But by throwing Britain's weight behind a flagrantly 
unjust war, our political leaders would certainly be held 
responsible for endangering their own people. 

s.milne@guardian.co.uk [s.milne@guardian.co.uk] 
	
Useful links Al-Qaida profile - US department of state 
[http://library.nps.navy.mil/home/tgp/qaida.htm] FBI most wanted 
- Osama Bin Laden 
[http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/topten/fugitives/laden.htm] Jane's 
International Security News 
[http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/misc/j 
anes010928_1_n.shtml] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
 4 North Korea says 1994 nuclear agreement with Washington has collapsed

canada.com </> » News </news/> » Story
Wednesday » November 20 » 2002
 
Canadian Press

SEOUL (AP) - North Korea said Thursday that a 1994 nuclear 
agreement with the United States has collapsed because of the 
U.S.-led decision to suspend fuel oil deliveries to the communist 
country.

But in a vaguely worded statement, North Korea's Foreign Ministry 
appeared to leave open the possibility that the deal might be 
salvaged. It said an earlier appeal for a non-aggression pact 
with the United States was aimed at preventing the nuclear 
agreement from being "derailed at any cost."

It said such a pact was the only "realistic solution to the 
nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula" and did not say it had any 
plans to restart a suspected nuclear weapons program that was 
frozen under the 1994 deal.

Last week, the United States and its allies, South Korea, Japan 
and the European Union, suspended deliveries of fuel oil to the 
energy-starved North to punish it for violating the 1994 pact by 
embarking on a second nuclear weapons program.

The oil deliveries are part of the pact known as the Agreed 
Framework that required a U.S.-led consortium to build two modern 
nuclear reactors in North Korea. In exchange, the North agreed to 
dismantle a suspected nuclear weapons program using plutonium.

Despite recent revelations that the North has a second nuclear 
program, an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman 
said the blame for the erosion of the Agreed Framework lay with 
the United States.

"Now that the U.S. unilaterally gave up its last commitment under 
the framework, the (North) acknowledges that it is high time to 
decide upon who is to blame for the collapse of the framework," 
the spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's official 
news agency, KCNA.

It was the first time that North Korea has publicly said it 
considered the agreement to have collapsed.

After visiting Pyongyang in October, the U.S. assistant secretary 
of state, James Kelly, said North Korean officials told him they 
considered the 1994 agreement dead. At that time, he said, they 
admitted to the second nuclear program that uses highly enriched 
uranium to build bombs.

In recent months, North Korea had repeatedly threatened to 
abandon the accord, complaining about delays in the construction 
of the reactors. It also accused Washington of trying to 
undermine its political system and even invade, citing President 
George W. Bush's labelling of the North as part of an "axis of 
evil," along with Iran and Iraq.

The North Korean spokesman said the U.S. assertion that the North 
violated the Agreed Framework "is a burglary logic of 
America-style superpower chauvinism that a big country may 
threaten a small country as it wishes but a small country should 
not try to cope with such threat."

The North has offered to resolve U.S. security concerns if 
Washington signs a non-aggression treaty with it. But the United 
States has ruled out any talks unless the North first scraps its 
uranium-based nuclear program.

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, 
speculated that the North Korean statement was "a diplomatic card 
to pressure the United States" into negotiations.

Earlier Thursday, China, North Korea's biggest ally, urged the 
two sides to salvage the Agreed Framework.

The agreement "is useful in realizing a nuclear-free Korean 
Peninsula," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said. 
"China hopes that the relevant parties can carry out their 
obligations."

© Copyright  2002 The Canadian Press

*****************************************************************
 5 Pyongyang's nukes - 

NOV 21, 2002

PYONGYANG'S Stalinist regime continues to befuddle as it engages 
in brinkmanship and subterfuge. North Korean state radio 
announced last Sunday that the country had nuclear weapons, only 
to clarify the next day that it was 'entitled' to have them 
because of the threat it faced from the United States. Does North 
Korea have nuclear bombs or not? American and Chinese 
intelligence believe it has. Whatever it is, the announcement 
that was clarified muddies the water further. Clearly, North 
Korea is playing games to rattle the South Koreans and the 
Japanese into pressuring the US to give it what it demands. It 
reflects the rising tensions between Pyongyang and Washington 
over the cut-off in fuel supplies to the North Koreans from next 
month, after they admitted that they still had an active 
uranium-enrichment programme.
 				 				 
Clearly, North Korea is using its nuclear capability as a ploy to 
wring more economic aid and political concessions from the US. It 
has no recourse other than blackmail. There is no doubt that 
Pyongyang must abandon its nuclear weapons programme to ease 
tensions in the Korean peninsula. The US must insist on this. The 
sensible thing for North Korea to do now is to state 
unequivocably that it will forsake nuclear weapons. Otherwise, 
there is no reason for Washington to negotiate with it. North 
Korea ought to change course now. Doing this will not just save 
its sinking economy, it will also improve the chances of 
establishing normal relations with Washington. North Korea is in 
desperate straits. Its impoverished people are dying from hunger. 
It is now trying to prop up a crumbling economy by cutting 
subsidies and raising wages. Withdrawal of foreign aid will 
worsen the acute energy shortages in North Korea. The US should 
work with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia to convince 
Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions. Together, they can be 
more effective in making aid conditional on the North Koreans 
scrapping their nuclear weapons programme.
 				 				 
For Asia's rogue regime, the best way to break out of its poverty 
trap is to end its self-imposed isolation and undertake drastic 
economic reforms. Its new willingness to engage Seoul and Tokyo 
shows it intends to open up the hermetically-sealed country. Its 
nuclear brinkmanship has been a way of getting the world to pay 
attention to its problems. This is a measure of its desperation. 
The North Koreans want to normalise diplomatic and economic ties 
with the US, even though Washington has branded it as one of the 
three countries in the 'axis of evil' alongside Iraq and Iran. 
Because the US has not responded positively to their overtures, 
they believe that the Americans are only interested in destroying 
them. Despite this paranoia, Pyongyang can be persuaded to stop 
its nuclear programme. Therein lies an opportunity for 
rapprochement. It had, after all, opened a nuclear site for 
American inspection during the Clinton era and froze the testing 
of long-range missiles. But the Bush administration is deeply 
sceptical of North Korean motives. Divining the intentions of the 
highly secretive leadership in Pyongyang is a hazardous exercise. 
Still, it is better to give the North Koreans the benefit of the 
doubt. For all their bluster against the Americans, they want to 
get engaged with Washington. This is an opening the Bush 
administration should not miss. It is the best way to defang 
North Korea of its nuclear capability. Nothing must detract 
America from this task. 
 		     		  
The Straits Times 
*****************************************************************
 6 US suspects Iran is becoming greater nuclear threat -

theage.com.au
 
November 22 2002
By Knut Royce, Earl Lane
Washington
 
While the Bush administration has focused public attention on 
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, Iran's nuclear 
weapons program has in recent months begun to appear more 
worrisome than Iraq's, according to US intelligence.
 
Administration officials and nuclear proliferation specialists 
say Iran is trying covertly to produce weapons-grade uranium or 
plutonium. A US official with access to intelligence reporting on 
non-proliferation acknowledged in an interview that Iran's 
nuclear weapons effort is more developed than Iraq's. The 
official asked not to be identified.
 
With no fanfare, director-general of the UN's International 
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the UN's International 
Atomic Energy Agency - in Baghdad to search for Saddam Hussein's 
alleged nuclear weapons facilities - planned a trip soon to look 
at nuclear sites in Iran. 

Dr ElBaradei said he hoped to visit sites that might be part of 
an effort by Iran to acquire a complete nuclear fuel cycle, 
including what many experts believe will include an ability to 
produce bomb-grade plutonium.
 
The US Government considers Iran the most active state sponsor of 
international terrorism, far more than Iraq, and President George 
Bush has included Iran in his "axis of evil" along with Iraq and 
North Korea. 

Iran is developing a medium-range ballistic missile that would be 
capable of striking Israel, experts say. 

While some parts of the Iranian leadership have moderated their 
anti-Western rhetoric in recent years, key leaders in charge of 
the military have not and the hardline Iranian leaders still call 
for the destruction of Israel. 

What worries US officials and experts most is Iran's interest in 
technology for the production of nuclear reactor fuel and the 
handling of spent fuel. This "fuel cycle" can include 
reprocessing of the spent fuel to extract weapons-grade 
plutonium, a step specialists in and outside the US Government 
are convinced the Iranians want to take.
 
"They are pursuing clandestinely through false trading companies 
and a variety of other means an intensive effort to develop those 
attributes of the fuel cycle which are necessary" to building 
nuclear weapons, said John Wolf, assistant secretary of state for 
non-proliferation.
 
Morteza Ranandi, press attache at Iran's UN mission in New York, 
denied this week that his government has any interest in nuclear 
weapons. "Our program is for energy and peaceful aims only," Mr 
Ranandi said.
 
The International Atomic Energy Agency is taking a wait-and-see 
stance. Mark Gwozdecky, an agency spokesman, said Iran had the 
right to build facilities for fabricating and processing nuclear 
fuels as long as it declared their existence at the appropriate 
time and opened them for inspection.
 
- Newsday
 
Copyright © 2002 The Age Company Ltd     advertise
*****************************************************************
 7 Nukes: the weapon of yesterday - 

theage.com.au
 
November 22 2002

The US doesn't need them, and their existence makes others want 
them, writes Paul Keating.

John Howard said in the House of Representatives last week that 
"the ultimate terrorist nightmare would be if weapons of mass 
destruction were to fall into the hands of Osama bin Laden and 
his cohorts". I couldn't agree more. The threat that terrorists 
might launch attacks on our cities is real.
 
Howard went on, however, to draw from that threat the conclusion 
that "efforts must be sustained by the nations of the world to 
remove from the hands of people who might capriciously use them, 
weapons of mass destruction".
 
He was obviously preparing the ground for an argument that a 
unilateral attack on Iraq is the same thing as war on terrorism 
because Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons may be used or might 
fall into the hands of terrorists.
 
In fact, terrorists are likely to find their weapons in more 
familiar circumstances - from fissile material leaking out of the 
insecure stockpiles in the former Soviet Union, or, as we almost 
certainly saw with the anthrax attacks in the United States last 
year, from within the American defence establishment itself.
 
But Howard's use of that word "capriciously" was revealing. It 
suggests that sober, thoughtful, non-capricious use of such 
weapons could be contemplated. 

The idea that underpins such thinking comes to the heart of the 
problem for me. It is based on the notion that somehow we can 
keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of 
irresponsible and dangerous people, while maintaining them for 
the right sort of people - people, in other words, like us and 
our allies.
 
We are probably now stuck with the phrase "the war on terror", 
but it is a dangerously misleading metaphor for the dangers we 
face. For most people it conjures up images of a clear enemy, 
fixed battles, military or intelligence solutions and, at the end 
of it all, an unconditional victory over our opponents.
 
Instead, we are engaged in a long struggle on many fronts against 
shifting groups and individuals. Some time ago I labelled this a 
Mad Max kind of world. To prevail, we need better intelligence 
gathering, more effective protective security, military action in 
some cases and civilian aid in others.
 
But as important as any of that, we need to engage in the 
struggle for ideas. Unless we address the circumstances that 
spawn the recruitment of terrorists, we will never succeed in 
stemming their rise.
 
We could begin by acknowledging the way in which the world has 
changed but how the structures of power haven't.
 
The world is still set up on the model that existed in 1947 and 
it is not run cooperatively. From the United Nations to the 
International Monetary Fund to the Group of Eight, it needs 
root-and-branch change, one that acknowledges more fairly the 
weight and interests of particular countries and regions. India, 
China and the Middle East come immediately to mind.
 
And if we are to have any hope of confronting the universally 
acknowledged danger of more states acquiring nuclear weapons and 
terrorists getting hold of them, we have to accept that it means 
getting rid of them for everyone.
 
If we take the view that some may have them but others may not, 
where is the line to be drawn? Who will be judged a capricious 
user, in Howard's phrase, and who not? Saddam Hussein? Kim 
Jong-il in North Korea? America's friend General Pervez Musharraf 
in Pakistan? Israel? And what future tin-pot dictator?
 
So long as some nations reserve the right to have nuclear 
weapons, others will ask, "Why not us?" And there is no 
defensible answer to the question. The only way is to get weapons 
of mass destruction out of everyone's hands, and not just the 
hands of everyone except those with a Caucasian complexion. This 
week, former US president Jimmy Carter called for the US to set 
an example in disarmament. He said: "Quite often the big 
countries that are responsible for the peace of the world set a 
very poor example for those who might hunger for the esteem or 
the power or the threats that they can develop from nuclear 
weapons themselves."
 
Nuclear weapons were devised as a weapon of indiscriminate 
destruction - one that does not discriminate between military 
targets and civilian populations - which is why they have not 
been used since their indiscriminate power of destruction was 
demonstrated to the Japanese in 1945. It is why American 
battlefield commanders refer to them as "junk"; they are weapons 
that such commanders will never get to deploy. And why would they 
when the US has such hegemony in weapons of accuracy which can 
surgically take out military targets within built-up civilian 
populations?
 
We no longer keep nuclear weapons to contain the Soviet Union. 
Nuclear weapons cannot and do not deter terrorists - they can 
only entice them. We no longer contemplate using nuclear weapons 
against military targets. It is why many Americans now ask "why 
have them?", especially when their presence encourages less 
worthy states to acquire them.
 
The penny seems never to have dropped for the American right. US 
dominance with weapons of accuracy and its overwhelming capacity 
to project power is allowed to be levelled by any punk state or 
terrorist group that decides to develop, or is able to obtain, a 
crude nuclear weapon. And such a weapon is more likely to be 
delivered in the bowels of a freighter or to be placed 
surreptitiously as an act of terrorism than it is to arrive via 
an intercontinental ballistic missile.
 
In any case, nuclear disarmament is already a solemn commitment - 
made under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - of 
the five declared nuclear powers. It was a bargain struck with 
the non-nuclear states to halt the spread of weapons in return 
for the weapon states working towards their elimination.
 
This goal will not be easy. It was never going to be easy. But it 
must happen. It requires intrusive inspection regimes and, as we 
see with Iraq, a willingness by the international community to 
back up commitments with force. But nuclear weapons are not 
needed. They are the biggest of all accidents waiting to happen.
 
It was exactly these issues, the dangers related to the spread of 
nuclear weapons, that caused the government I led to commission 
the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, 
which presented the first practical de-nuking document in the 
world - a report since pigeonholed by the Coalition.
 
When the commission reported in 1996, it based its practical and 
realistic recommendations on the fundamental assumption that "the 
proposition that large numbers of nuclear weapons can be retained 
in perpetuity and never used - accidentally or by decision - 
defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination 
of nuclear weapons and the assurance that they will never be 
produced again."
 
Since the Canberra Commission report, India, Pakistan and now 
North Korea have signed themselves into the nuclear club. More 
will join.
 
Australia has no nuclear weapons but we have two particular 
strengths that give us standing in this debate. The first is our 
solid alliance with the United States. The second is our 
effective national experience in arms control, and particularly 
nuclear and chemical weapons control. There are few contributions 
we could more usefully make to the struggle against terrorism.
 
Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating writes regularly for The 
Age.
 
Copyright © 2002 The Age Company Ltd
*****************************************************************
 8 Early Release of the Annual Energy Outlook 2003

  Released November 20, 2002
 (Next Release: November 2003) PDF Format 

Link to Annual Energy Outlook 2002 

Complete Report will be Available in Early January 2003
 
Key Energy Issues to 2025 

As has been typical over the past few years, energy prices were 
extremely volatile during 2002. Spot natural gas prices, about $2 
per thousand cubic feet in January, rose to between $3 and $4 per 
thousand cubic feet by the fall. Average wellhead prices, which 
are moderated by the inclusion of natural gas bought under 
contract, also increased over the year. Crude oil prices also 
rose in 2002, mainly because of reduced production by the 
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties (OPEC) and, to a 
lesser degree, fears about the potential impact of military 
action in Iraq. Crude oil prices began 2002 at roughly $16 per 
barrel and were between $25 and $30 per barrel by the fall. 

The impact of near-term price trends is reflected in the Annual 
Energy Outlook 2003 (AEO2003), but long-term energy markets are 
less influenced by near-term trends, such as supply disruptions 
or political actions, and more by the long-term fundamentals of 
energy markets. AEO2003 focuses on these long-term fundamentals, 
including the availability of energy resources, developments in 
U.S. electricity markets, technology improvement, and the impact 
of economic growth on projected energy demand and prices through 
2025. 

A major consideration for energy markets through 2025 will be the 
availability of adequate natural gas supplies at competitive 
prices to meet growth in demand. AEO2003 projects growing 
dependence on major new, large-volume natural gas supply projects 
for both domestic and imported supplies to meet future demand 
levels, including deepwater offshore wells, new and expanded 
liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities, the Mackenzie Delta 
pipeline in Canada, and an Alaskan pipeline that would allow 
delivery of natural gas to the lower 48 States. 

Net imports accounted for 55 percent of total U.S. oil demand in 
2001, up from 37 percent in 1980 and 42 percent in 1990. That 
trend is expected to continue. A growing portion of imports is 
projected to be refined petroleum products, such as gasoline, 
diesel fuel, and jet fuel, assuming the future availability of 
those products in world markets. 

While no new nuclear plants have been built in recent years, 
existing facilities have substantially improved their performance 
and lowered operating costs. Further, it has become common 
practice to request extension of the operating licenses of 
nuclear plants from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). 
As a result, the downturn in nuclear generating capacity and 
generation previously expected is now anticipated to be delayed 
or eliminated. A more recent phenomenon has been uprating of 
nuclear plant capacity. The AEO2003 forecast, reflecting those 
trends, projects an increase in nuclear capacity and generation. 

Economic Growth 

The U.S. economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), is 
projected to grow at an average annual rate of 3.0 percent from 
2001 to 2025 in AEO2003, similar to the 3.1 percent rate 
projected in AEO2002 for 2001 to 2020. Most of the determinants 
of economic growth are similar to those in AEO2002, but there are 
some important differences. For example, the projection of 
vehicle miles traveled, estimated using macroeconomic variables 
such as GDP growth, population, and income, is higher in this 
year’s AEO. Light-duty vehicle miles traveled are projected to 
grow by 2.4 percent per year through 2020 in AEO2003, compared 
with 2.2 percent in AEO2002. This projection, which is more 
consistent with recent historical trends, increases the projected 
demand for transportation fuels. 

Energy Prices 

The average world oil price is projected to increase from $22.01 
per barrel (2001 dollars) in 2001 to $25.83 per barrel in 2003, 
then to decline to $23.27 per barrel in 2005. Rising prices are 
projected for the longer term, to roughly $25.50 in 2020 (about 
the same as in AEO2002) and roughly $26.50 in 2025 (Figure 1), 
largely due to higher projected world oil demand. In nominal 
dollars, the average world oil price is expected to reach 
approximately $48 per barrel in 2025. 

World oil demand is projected to increase from 76.0 million 
barrels per day in 2001 to 112.0 million barrels per day in 2020 
(less than the AEO2002 projection of 118.9 million barrels per 
day) due to lower projected demand in the former Soviet Union and 
in developing nations, including China, India, Africa, and South 
and Central America. World oil demand, including both 
conventional and unconventional oil supplies, grows to 123.2 
million barrels per day by 2025 in AEO2003. Growth in oil 
production in both OPEC and non-OPEC nations leads to relatively 
slow growth in prices through 2025. OPEC conventional oil 
production is expected to reach 60.1 million barrels per day in 
2025, more than double the 28.3 million barrels per day produced 
in 2001. The forecast assumes that sufficient capital will be 
available to expand production capacity. 

Non-OPEC conventional oil production is expected to increase from 
45.5 to 58.8 million barrels per day between 2001 and 2025. A 1.0 
million barrel per day decline in production in the 
industrialized nations (United States, Canada, Mexico, Western 
Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) is more than offset by 
increased production from Russia, the Caspian Basin, Non-OPEC 
Africa, and South and Central America (in particular, Brazil). 
Russian oil production is expected to continue to recover from 
the lows of the 1990s and to reach 10.4 million barrels per day 
by 2025, 44 percent above 2001 levels. Production from the 
Caspian Basin is expected to exceed 5.0 million barrels per day 
by 2025, compared with 1.6 million barrels per day in 2001. By 
2025, projected production from South and Central America reaches 
6.3 million barrels per day, up from 3.7 million barrels per day 
in 2001. Non-OPEC African production is projected to grow from 
2.7 million barrels per day in 2001 to 6.9 million barrels per 
day by 2025. 

Average natural gas prices (including spot purchases and 
contracts) are projected to drop from $4.12 per thousand cubic 
feet in 2001 to $2.75 per thousand cubic feet in 2002. After 
2002, natural gas prices are projected to move higher as 
technology improvements prove inadequate to offset the impacts of 
resource depletion and increased demand. Natural gas prices are 
projected to increase in an uneven fashion as higher prices allow 
the introduction of major new, large-volume natural gas projects 
that temporarily depress prices when initially brought on line. 
Prices are projected to reach about $3.70 per thousand cubic feet 
by 2020 and $3.90 per thousand cubic feet by 2025 (equivalent to 
more than $7.00 per thousand cubic feet in nominal dollars). 

At roughly $3.70 per thousand cubic feet, the 2020 wellhead 
natural gas price in AEO2003 is more than 35 cents higher than 
the AEO2002 projection, due to a downward revision of the 
potential for inferred natural gas reserve appreciation and a 
reduced expectation for technology improvement over time. As 
demand for natural gas increases, expected technology 
improvements do not completely offset the effects of resource 
depletion. 

In AEO2003, the average minemouth price of coal is projected to 
decline from $17.59 in 2001 to about $14.40 per short ton (2001 
dollars) in 2020, remaining at about that level through 2025. 
Prices decline because of increased mine productivity, a shift to 
western production, and competitive pressures on labor costs. 
AEO2003 is less optimistic about future productivity improvements 
in the Powder River Basin than was AEO2002, which projected 
average coal prices of roughly $13.10 per ton by 2020. 

Average electricity prices are projected to decline from 7.3 
cents per kilowatthour in 2001 to a low of 6.3 cents (2001 
dollars) by 2007 as a result of cost reductions in an 
increasingly competitive market where excess generating capacity 
has resulted from the recent boom in construction and the 
continued decline in coal prices. Electricity industry 
restructuring contributes to declining projected prices through 
reductions in operating and maintenance costs, administrative 
costs, and other miscellaneous costs. After 2008, average real 
electricity prices are projected to increase by 0.4 percent per 
year as a result of rising natural gas prices and a growing need 
for new generating capacity to meet electricity demand growth. 
Real electricity prices reach 6.6 cents per kilowatthour in 2020 
in AEO2003, identical to the price in AEO2002, and 6.7 cents per 
kilowatthour by 2025 as natural gas prices continue to increase. 

Energy Consumption 

Total energy consumption in AEO2003 is projected to increase from 
97.3 to 130.1 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) between 
2001 and 2020, an average annual increase of 1.5 percent. This 
projection is slightly below the 2020 projection of 130.9 
quadrillion Btu for total consumption in AEO2002. By 2025, total 
energy consumption is projected to reach 139.1 quadrillion Btu in 
AEO2003. While total energy consumption levels in 2020 are 
similar in AEO2002 and AEO2003, consumption by sector shifts; in 
particular, transportation consumption is higher and industrial 
consumption is lower by 2020 in AEO2003. 

Residential energy consumption is projected to grow at an average 
rate of 1.0 percent per year between 2001 and 2025, with the most 
rapid growth expected for computers, electronic equipment, and 
appliances. By 2020, projected residential demand is 24.5 
quadrillion Btu (slightly higher than the 24.3 quadrillion Btu 
projected in AEO2002). Slightly greater growth in the number of 
households explains the relatively higher level of energy demand 
in AEO2003. By 2025, total residential energy consumption is 
projected to reach 25.4 quadrillion Btu. 

Commercial energy demand is projected to grow at an average 
annual rate of 1.6 percent between 2001 and 2025, reaching 23.5 
quadrillion Btu in 2020 (slightly higher than the 23.2 
quadrillion Btu in AEO2002) and 25.3 quadrillion Btu by 2025 in 
AEO2003. The most rapid increases in demand are projected for 
computers, office equipment, telecommunications, and 
miscellaneous small appliance uses. Commercial floorspace is 
projected to grow by an average of 1.6 percent per year between 
2001 and 2020, identical to the rate of growth in AEO2002 for the 
same time period. 

Industrial energy demand in AEO2003 is projected to increase at 
an average rate of 1.3 percent per year between 2001 and 2025, 
reaching 41.7 quadrillion Btu in 2020 (significantly lower than 
the AEO2002 projection of 43.8 quadrillion Btu) and 44.4 
quadrillion Btu in 2025. The lower level of energy consumption in 
AEO2003 in 2020 is partly the result of adopting an updated 
definition of what is included in industrial energy consumption. 
In earlier AEOs, industrial energy consumption included demand by 
combined heat and power (CHP) plants that were essentially 
independent power producers (IPPs), producing electricity but 
little steam. The energy demand of such “nontraditional” CHP 
plants is now included in the electric power sector. 

Transportation energy demand in AEO2003 is projected to grow at 
an average annual rate of 2.0 percent between 2001 and 2025, 
reaching 40.4 quadrillion Btu in 2020 (0.8 quadrillion Btu higher 
than in AEO2002) and 44.0 quadrillion Btu by 2025. The higher 
level of consumption in the transportation sector results from a 
higher forecast of vehicle miles traveled and a lower level of 
vehicle efficiency. Light-duty vehicle miles traveled are 
projected to grow by 2.4 percent per year through 2020 in AEO2003 
(compared with 2.2 percent per year in AEO2002) and by 2.3 
percent per year through 2025. Consistent with recent trends, 
less improvement is projected for the average fuel efficiency of 
new light-duty vehicles than in AEO2002. New light-duty vehicle 
efficiency is projected to reach 25.6 miles per gallon by 2020 in 
AEO2003 (down from 27.2 miles per gallon in AEO2002) and 26.1 
miles per gallon by 2025. 

Total electricity demand is projected to grow by 1.9 percent per 
year from 2001 through 2020 (the same as in AEO2002) and 1.8 
percent per year from 2001 to 2025. Rapid growth in electricity 
use for computers, office equipment, and a variety of electrical 
appliances in the residential and commercial sectors is only 
partially offset by improved efficiency in these and other more 
traditional electrical applications; however, demand growth is 
expected to slow as regional and national market saturation is 
reached for air conditioning and some other applications. 

Total demand for natural gas is projected to increase at an 
average annual rate of 1.8 percent between 2001 and 2025 (Figure 
2), from 22.7 trillion cubic feet to 34.9 trillion cubic feet, 
primarily because of rapid growth in demand for electricity 
generation. With higher projected prices, total natural gas 
demand in 2020 (32.1 trillion cubic feet) is projected to be 1.6 
trillion cubic feet lower in AEO2003 than in AEO2002. 

In AEO2003, total coal consumption is projected to increase from 
1,050 to 1,444 million short tons between 2001 and 2025, an 
average increase of 1.3 percent per year. Projected total coal 
demand in 2020 (based on short tons) is almost identical to that 
in AEO2002 despite some shifts between sectors. Industrial coal 
demand is lower and electricity generation coal demand is higher 
in AEO2003 as a result of the definitional changes in the data 
mentioned above and higher natural gas prices in AEO2003 that 
lead to higher projected demand for coal in the electric power 
sector. 

Total petroleum demand is projected to grow at an average annual 
rate of 1.7 percent through 2025 (reaching 29.17 million barrels 
per day), led by growth in the transportation sector, which is 
expected to account for about 75 percent of petroleum demand in 
2025. Projected demand in 2020 (27.13 million barrels per day) is 
higher than in AEO2002 by 470 thousand barrels per day due to 
higher transportation demand. 

Total renewable fuel consumption, including ethanol for gasoline 
blending, is projected to grow at an average rate of 2.2 percent 
per year through 2025, primarily due to State mandates for 
renewable electricity generation. About 55 percent of the 
projected demand for renewables in 2025 is for electricity 
generation and the rest for dispersed heating and cooling, 
industrial uses (including CHP), and fuel blending. The projected 
demand for renewables in 2020 in AEO2003 is 0.6 quadrillion Btu 
lower than in AEO2002, reflecting an update in historical 
statistics primarily regarding electricity generation at pulp and 
paper plants that lowers the expectation for biomass use at 
industrial CHP plants. 

Energy Intensity 

As energy prices increased between 1970 and 1986, energy 
intensity, as measured by energy use per dollar of GDP, declined 
at an average annual rate of 2.3 percent as the economy shifted 
to less energy-intensive industries, product mix changed, and 
more efficient technologies were adopted (Figure 3). With slower 
price increases and growth in more energy-intensive industries, 
intensity declines moderated to an average of 1.4 percent per 
year between 1986 and 2001. Energy intensity is projected to 
continue to decline at an average annual rate of 1.5 percent 
through 2025, as continued efficiency gains and structural shifts 
in the economy offset growth in the demand for energy services. 

Energy use per person generally declined from 1970 through the 
mid-1980s but began to increase as energy prices declined in the 
late 1980s and 1990s. Per capita energy use is projected to 
increase in the forecast, with growth in demand for energy 
services only partially offset by efficiency gains. Per capita 
energy use increases by 0.7 percent per year between 2001 and 
2025 in AEO2003. 

Electricity Generation 

Generation from natural gas, coal, nuclear, and renewable fuels 
is projected to increase through 2025 to meet growing demand for 
electricity and offset the projected retirement of existing 
generating capacity, mostly fossil steam capacity being displaced 
by more efficient natural-gas-fired combined-cycle capacity 
brought online in the past few years and still being constructed 
(Figure 4). The projected levels of generation from power plants 
using coal, nuclear, and renewable fuels are higher than in 
AEO2002 due to higher projected natural gas prices and uprates 
and life extensions of nuclear plants. 

The natural gas share of electricity generation is projected to 
increase from 17 percent in 2001 to 29 percent in 2025, including 
generation by electric utilities, IPPs, and CHP generators. The 
share from coal is projected to decline from 52 percent in 2001 
to 48 percent in 2025 as a more competitive electricity industry 
invests in less capital-intensive and more efficient natural gas 
generation technologies. Nonetheless, coal remains the primary 
fuel for electricity generation through 2025, and AEO2003 
projects that 74 gigawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity 
will be constructed between 2001 and 2025. 

Nuclear generating capacity is projected to increase slightly 
from 2001 to 2025 in AEO2003. Primarily because of the relatively 
favorable economics of competing technologies, no new nuclear 
facilities are expected to be built through 2025; however, fewer 
expected nuclear retirements (as a result of life extensions), 
uprating of existing capacity, and an expectation of higher 
natural gas prices lead to a projection of more nuclear capacity 
than in AEO2002. No new nuclear power plants have been built in 
the United States for many years, however, and the economics of 
new plants are highly uncertain. Total nuclear capacity is 
projected to increase from 98.2 gigawatts in 2001 to a peak of 
100.4 gigawatts by 2006 as a result of uprates before declining 
to 99.6 gigawatts by 2025. Uprates of 4.2 gigawatts offset 
retirements of 2.8 gigawatts between 2001 and 2025. 

Renewable technologies are projected to grow slowly because of 
the relatively low costs of fossil-fired generation and because 
competitive electricity markets favor less capital-intensive 
natural gas technologies over coal and baseload renewables in the 
competition for new capacity. Where enacted, State renewable 
portfolio standards, which specify a minimum share of generation 
or sales from renewable sources, are considered in the forecast. 
Federal subsidies for renewables (in particular, wind) are also 
included in the forecast. 

Total renewable generation, including CHP, is projected to 
increase from 298 billion kilowatthours in 2001 to 476 billion 
kilowatthours by 2020 in AEO2003, an increase of 2.5 percent per 
year. Growth in renewable generation was projected to grow at a 
slower 2.1 percent per year between 2001 and 2020 in AEO2002. 
Total renewable generation reaches 495 billion kilowatthours by 
2025 in AEO2003. 

Energy Production and Imports 

Total energy consumption is expected to increase more rapidly 
than domestic energy production through 2025. As a result, net 
imports of energy are projected to meet a growing share of energy 
demand (Figure 5). Projected U.S. crude oil production declines 
to 5.3 million barrels per day by 2025 in AEO2003, an average 
annual rate of 0.4 percent between 2001 and 2025. Production is 
0.2 million barrels per day lower in 2020 than in AEO2002 due to 
projected reduced production from the lower-48 onshore by 2020, 
particularly from enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations. The 
lower level of lower 48 production in AEO2003 relative to AEO2002 
is partially offset by projected increased production from Alaska 
and higher levels of production from the lower 48 offshore. Total 
domestic petroleum production (crude oil plus natural gas plant 
liquids) increases from 7.7 million barrels per day in 2001 to 
8.0 million by 2025 due to an increase in the production of 
natural gas plant liquids (Figure 6). 

By 2025, net petroleum imports, including both crude oil and 
refined products on the basis of barrels per day, are expected to 
account for 68 percent of demand, up from 55 percent in 2001. 
Despite an expected increase in domestic refinery distillation 
capacity of 3 million barrels per day, net refined petroleum 
product imports, on the basis of barrels per day, account for a 
growing portion of total net imports, increasing from 15 percent 
in 2001 to 34 percent by 2025. 

Driven by growth in natural gas demand, domestic natural gas 
production is projected to increase from 19.5 to 25.1 trillion 
cubic feet between 2001 and 2020, an average rate of 1.3 percent 
per year. Domestic production is increasingly dependent on 
unconventional and more costly conventional resources in both the 
onshore and offshore. Projected production in 2020 is 3.4 
trillion cubic feet lower than in AEO2002 because of a reduction 
in the assumed potential of inferred natural gas reserves, 
updates to the economics of production, and reduced expectations 
for technology improvement for unconventional gas. After 2020, 
domestic production in AEO2003 increases noticeably with the 
projected completion of an Alaskan pipeline. Total domestic 
natural gas production reaches 26.8 trillion cubic feet by 2025 
in AEO2003. 

Despite the projected increase in domestic natural gas 
production, an increasing share of U.S. gas demand is met by 
imports, including pipeline imports from Canada and Mexico 
(including some from an expected facility in Baja California, 
Mexico), and LNG. Three of the four existing U.S. LNG import 
facilities are open, and the fourth has announced plans to reopen 
in spring 2003; and three of the four have announced capacity 
expansion plans. Net imports of natural gas are projected to 
increase from 3.7 trillion cubic feet (16 percent of total 
demand) in 2001 to 7.8 trillion cubic feet (22 percent of total 
demand) in 2025. 

As domestic coal demand grows in AEO2003, U.S. coal production is 
projected to increase from 1,138 million short tons in 2001 to 
1,359 million short tons by 2020, an average rate of 0.9 percent 
per year. Projected production in 2020 is 38 million short tons 
lower than in AEO2002. By 2025, U.S. coal production is projected 
to reach 1,440 million short tons in AEO2003. Net coal exports 
are expected to fall throughout the AEO2003 forecast, reflecting 
declining coal demand in some countries and intense competition 
from other international producers. 

Renewable energy production is projected to increase from 5.5 to 
8.7 quadrillion Btu between 2001 and 2020, with growth in 
industrial biomass, ethanol, and all sources of renewable 
electricity generation. Renewable energy production in 2020 is 
0.6 quadrillion Btu lower than projected in AEO2002, due to lower 
expected levels of industrial biomass use and generation from 
geothermal energy, offsetting higher levels of wind energy. By 
2025, renewable energy production reaches 9.2 quadrillion Btu in 
AEO2003. 

Carbon Dioxide Emissions 

The AEO projections do not include future policy actions that 
might be taken to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide 
emissions from energy use are projected to increase from 1,559 to 
2,082 million metric tons between 2001 and 2020 in AEO2003, an 
average annual increase of 1.5 percent. This forecast is 
consistent with the 2,088 million metric tons of emissions 
projected in AEO2002 in 2020. By 2025, total carbon dioxide 
emissions are projected to reach 2,237 million metric tons in 
AEO2003 (Figure 7). While total emissions in 2020 are virtually 
the same as in AEO2002, the amount varies by sector. Projected 
industrial carbon dioxide emissions were 5 percent higher in 2020 
in AEO2002 due to differences in the definition of what is 
included in the industrial sector. As a result of the 
definitional change, carbon dioxide emissions in the electric 
power sector are higher in AEO2003 in 2020 by 6.7 million metric 
tons (1 percent). Carbon dioxide emissions are higher by 14.6 
million tons in 2020 in the transportation sector in AEO2003 due 
to projections of less improvement in vehicle efficiency and more 
vehicle miles traveled.
*****************************************************************
 9  
               Decision prompts nuclear reaction 
              the Marshfield Mariner - o n l i n e
 
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Decision prompts nuclear reaction 

By Dan Gravel / dgravel@cnc.com 
Wednesday, November 20, 2002

 






Duxbury has once again taken the lead in trying to protect
citizens from a catastrophe at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station
in Plymouth, but at least one Marshfield selectman is not sure
if the town should follow suit.
 Last week Duxbury selectmen passed a resolution advocating the
immediate start to move spent nuclear fuel to secured dry cask
storage "to better protect the health and well being of the
citizens of the Town of Duxbury."
 Duxbury officials claim such a measure would make the facility
storing spent fuel resistant to attack. The resolution was
proposed to Duxbury selectmen by that town's very active nuclear
advisory committee. Chairwoman of the committee, Mary Lampert,
has been an outspoken advocate of trying to increase safety at
the nuclear plant and hopes the resolution approved by Duxbury
selectmen, which will be voted on at Town Meeting in the spring,
will eventually lead to results.
 The town has no authority to require safer methods of storing
spent fuel at the plant, but if other towns do likewise and
attempt to pressure Entergy, operators of the nuclear power
plant, and legislators, positive steps could follow, said
Lampert.
 "We want to see it happen that other towns do what Duxbury
did," said Lampert. "This issue has been identified, we know
terrorists are here, we know nuclear plants are on the
terrorists' shortlist [of potential targets], we know the spent
fuel pool is vulnerable to attacks. There is a safer way to
store that material."
 Plant spokesman David Tarantino said the plant has both spent
fuel pool storage and dry cask storage and does not favor one
method over the other.
 "This is a pretty clear anti-nuclear move by [Mary] Lampert
over there in Duxbury," he said. "Both means of storage are safe.
 "There is no way we can take all the fuel out of the fuel pool
and put it in dry cask storage because it needs to cool down for
five years."
 Marshfield Selectman Jim Fitzgerald is not in agreement with
Duxbury selectmen or the nuclear advisory committee.
 "I don't think we have a particular role in this from a
Marshfield standpoint," said Fitzgerald. "I'm not feeling
particularly unsafe. Part of the way we defeat terrorism is by
going on with our lives in a normal fashion."
 Fitzgerald is happy with security measures at the plant and
comfortable with Marshfield's own emergency operations plan. He
said he would have no desire to create a nuclear advisory
committee in Marshfield.
 Earlier this month selectmen approved a plan to distribute
through local pharmacies potassium iodide, a drug that could
battle the effects of a release of radioactive materials at the
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant. Duxbury voters approved their own
potassium iodide distribution plan two years ago.
 Now Lampert would like area towns to again follow Duxbury's
lead, this time on dry cask storage of spent fuel, which might
be a tough sell.
 "Clearly by action on the local level," she said, "we can help
bring about change on the national level."
 


  



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*****************************************************************
 10 Taipei: Nuclear conference opens 

1/180376 [http://www.taipeitimes.com] 

By Chiu Yu-Tzu 

STAFF REPORTER 

Enhanced information transparency and better communication with 
residents will help nuclear power suppliers to gain public 
trust, Japanese power companies said in Taipei yesterday in 
response to recent safety concerns over Japanese nuclear plants. 

At the opening of the 17th Sino-Japan Seminar on Nuclear 
Safety, Japanese power experts said that they had carried out a 
comprehensive self-review following Tokyo Electric Power's 
(TEPCO) failure to disclose damage to some of its reactors. 

"The public confidence in Japan's nuclear power industry has 
been wiped out because of recent scandals and that makes the 
promotion of the electric power industry more challenging," said 
Koji Washio (øl§À©¯¥q), representative director of Tohoku 
Electric Power. 

Japan has been generating nuclear power since its first 
commercial nuclear plant opened in 1966. It now has 52 nuclear 
reactors, supplying more than 30 percent of the nation's 
electricity. 

In July, 2000, allegations of document falsification were made 
to the Japanese government by a worker at General Electric 
International. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry 
(METI) launched a full-scale investigation. 

On Aug. 29, METI announced a catalogue of faults at many many 
of the plants run by TEPCO, including cracks in reactor shrouds 
resulting from inappropriate maintenance between the late 1980s 
and early 1990s. 

The scandal was one of the main focuses of yesterday's 
conference at Taipei's Grand Hotel with a report by Masao Takuma 
(¦v¶¡¥¿¤Ò) from the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, attributing 
the cover-ups to several factors, including dysfunctional 
corporate governance. 
Historically, nuclear industries in Taiwan and Japan have built 
close ties through the exchange of experience and technologies 
in past decades. The next Sino-Japan Seminar on Nuclear Safety 
will be held in Sendai, Japan. 

Washio, leader of the 26-member group from Japan, stressed the 
importance of enhancing transparency of information to eliminate 
public fears. 

"I think the nuclear industry in Taiwan has faced similar 
difficulties. So I strongly suggest that power suppliers in 
Taiwan communicate with residents to gain support," Washio told 
the Taipei Times. 

More than 150 Taiwanese nuclear power experts participated in 
the conference to exchange opinions on the operation of nuclear 
power plants, nuclear safety, emergency measures and the 
management of radioactive waste. 

Japanese experts are scheduled to visit a number of plants as 
well as the construction site of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant. 

Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 11 Man fined after driving through nuke plant security *

11/21/2002

* A 53-year-old man from Lebanon, Lebanon County, who drove his 
vehicle through security at the Susquehanna Steam Electric 
Station nuclear power plant in Salem Township on Nov. 13, was 
found guilty of criminal trespass and criminal mischief. *

District Justice John E. Hasay of Shickshinny fined Clifford C. 
Zearfoss $500 and ordered him to pay $950 for damages to a 
barrier.

State police at Shickshinny said Zearfoss pulled up to the main 
gate at 6:56 a.m. outside the nuclear power facility, state Route 
11, Salem Township, and was directed by security personnel to 
roll down his window for an identification/authorization check.

According to the affidavit of probable cause, Zearfoss 
accelerated his vehicle and struck a construction barrier while a 
guard was standing behind it.

Police said Zearfoss proceeded past the main gate and onto PPL 
property.

A state police security detail pursued Zearfoss and quickly 
apprehended him in the parking lot of a receiving area.

/©The Citizens Voice 2002/

*****************************************************************
 12 NRC denies petition seeking nuclear plants' shutdown

November 20, 2002, 4:40 PM EST

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) _ The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has 
denied a petition from the environmental group Riverkeeper to 
close the Indian Point nuclear power plants pending a review of 
security measures.

A year after the petition was filed, the NRC said upgrades and 
improvements introduced by plant owner Entergy Corp. since the 
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks should address some of Riverkeeper's 
concerns.

But the organization's leader, Alex Matthiessen, said the NRC's 
response was "a P.R. document meant to protect this company and 
this industry." He called the NRC "an absolute shill for the 
industry they regulate."

In addition to the shutdown, Riverkeeper had requested:

_A permanent no-fly zone in the air space within 10 nautical 
miles of Indian Point;

_A revision of emergency response plans "in order to account and 
prepare for possible terrorist attacks";

_A conversion of Indian Point's spent fuel storage from a 
water-cooled system to a less vulnerable one in a bunkered 
structure.

All those requests were denied, although the NRC said that the 
emergency plan is intended to cover "a wide spectrum of events" 
and that Entergy has announced plans to move toward such a fuel 
storage system.

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press
Newsday.com
*****************************************************************
 13 New China N-plant on line amid loan fears - 

NOV 21, 2002

BEIJING - 

The latest reactor in China's ambitious nuclear 
programme has begun generating power but its operators could have 
problems repaying foreign loans incurred.
 				 				 
While the success of the latest phase of the US$2.9 billion 
(S$5.1 billion) Qinshan plant is being trumpeted, sweeping 
reforms to China's power industry could make it difficult for the 
new reactor to compete against cheaper sources of electricity. 
				 				 
China's demand for electricity is rapidly expanding and the 
Qinshan plant will help supply power to the booming city of 
Shanghai - provided there is no setback as a result of the 
reforms.--

AFP, China Daily/Asia News Network 
				 		 		   		     	 	 		
The Straits Times 

*****************************************************************
 14 NRC Assigns New Resident Inspector at Pilgrim Nuclear Plant
 
NRC: News Release - Region I - 2002-066 - 

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 
www.nrc.gov
   
  No. I-02-066                          November 21, 2002 
CONTACT:     Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 
337-5331                     E-mail:  [opa1@nrc.gov]
  
  Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials in King of Prussia, 
Pa., have selected Christopher Welch as the new resident 
inspector at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth, Mass. 
He joins Senior Resident Inspector William Raymond at the site. 
Russ Arrighi, who had been an inspector at Pilgrim since 1997, 
was recently reassigned to a position in the Office of Nuclear 
Reactor Regulation at NRC Headquarters in Rockville, Md. 

Welch joined the NRCs Region I office in 1997, as a reactor 
engineer. Most recently, he was a resident inspector at the 
Robert E. Ginna nuclear plant near Rochester, N.Y. Prior to 
joining the NRC, he worked as an assistant chief test engineer at 
the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, N.H. Welch earned a 
Bachelor of Science degree in marine engineering from the 
Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Welch, his wife and three 
children live in Sandwich.
 
Every commercial nuclear power plant in the U.S. has at least two 
NRC resident inspectors. They have an office where they work at 
the facility, conducting regular inspections and monitoring 
significant work projects.
 
The Pilgrim resident inspectors can be reached at 508/747-0565.

Thursday, November 21, 2002        
*****************************************************************
 15 U.S. refuses to close nuke plant (Indian Point)

Democrat &Chronicle: 

  [Rochester, NY]     

The Associated Press 

(November 21, 2002)  WHITE PLAINS  The Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission has denied a petition from the environmental group 
Riverkeeper to close the Indian Point nuclear power plants 
pending a review of security measures. 

A year after the petition was filed, the NRC said upgrades and 
improvements introduced by plant owner Entergy Corp. since the 
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks should address some of 
Riverkeepers concerns. 

But the groups leader, Alex Matthiessen, said the response was 
meant to protect this company and this industry. He called the 
NRC an absolute shill for the industry they regulate. 

Riverkeeper also requested the following: + A permanent no-fly 
zone in the air space within 10 nautical miles of Indian Point. + 
A revision of emergency response plans in order to account and 
prepare for possible terrorist attacks. + A conversion of Indian 
Points spent fuel storage from a water-cooled system to one in a 
bunkered structure. 

All the requests were denied. 

Entergy has announced plans to move toward a bunkered fuel 
storage system. 


*****************************************************************
 16 India: Radiation dose exposure safe in Kakrapar: DAE

<http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_email.asp?id=99004>
SCIENCE-ATOMIC
NEW DELHI, NOV 21 (PTI)

The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has clarified that 
radioactive emissions from Kakrapar Atomic Power Plant in Surat 
are well below the international norms and there is no threat to 
the workers.

Reacting to reports in a section of media which claimed that the 
radiation dose to workers at the plant was higher than the norms, 
the Department said "radiation exposure was well within the 
regulatory limits and there is no threat to workers' lives".

Radioactivity releases from all the nuclear power stations in the 
country have been "much less" than the limits laid down by the 
Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, the DAE said, according to an 
official release.

The board prescribes the limits of radioactive emissions from 
these power stations in line with the recommendations of the 
International Commission on Radiological Protection.

All required safety provisions are incorporated right from the 
design stage to construction, commissioning and operation levels 
of the nuclear power plants, DAE said.

Safety status is continuously monitored and reviewed during 
operation and upgradation taken up wherever necessary, it said 
adding adequate security measures are also in place at various 
atomic centres in the country to prevent any theft of nuclear 
material.

RELATED STORIES _21-Nov-2002_

©Hathway Investments Private Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
 17 Worker safety concerns surfacing with lawsuit -

chillicothegazette.com
 
Thursday, November 21, 2002   

 Long-time employee accuses plant of health-risk coverup By 
KIRRAN SYED Gazette Staff Writer 

PIKETON -- Dan Minter, the PACE union president at the Piketon 
Uranium Enrichment Plant, said he is not surprised by allegations 
that past plant management may have deliberately placed workers 
at risk to radiation overexposure. 

However, he said he will be angry and upset if a long-time 
worker's allegations that employees were placed at risk as late 
as the mid-90s prove to be true because of safety improvement 
efforts by federal agencies and employees. 

"Up to about 1993 or so, the plant was under a different 
management team. I believe the safety has improved greatly 
throughout the 1990 era," Minter said. "In 2002, if we found that 
someone's (radiation) dose was being zeroed, I would be alarmed 
and very concerned." 

In a recently unsealed federal lawsuit against Lockheed Martin, 
Lockheed Martin Utility Services and USEC (before privatization), 
long-time security guard Jeff Walburn alleges the companies 
placed him at risk to radiation overexposure, according to 
reports by the Associated Press. 

By using altered, false and unreliable radiation exposure 
readings to create the impression of a safe work environment, the 
AP reports says, the companies were able to qualify for federal 
government safety bonuses. 

Minter admits employee safety was not a priority in the past, 
which is why he is not surprised by allegations that plant 
operators falsified radiation readings at some point. 

However, he said, he will be upset and angry if Walburn's 
allegations that such activities occurred in the mid-90s, after 
Cold War pressures to produce at all cost eased, turn out to be 
true. 

"I believe that many times in the past, during the Cold War era, 
safety became a lower priority than production activities," he 
said. "The U.S. government was at or near a war with the 
U.S.S.R." 

"It appears that there was an effort not to disclose information 
and even potentially cover up information so that it would not be 
made available," he said. 

When the Cold War ended and nuclear security tensions eased in 
the early-90s, he said, greater attention was placed on 
regulation and worker safety. 

Minter said significant improvements in safety began when the 
Department of Energy's self-regulation at the plant was sharply 
scaled back and other agencies became involved in oversight. 

"DOE self-regulated itself for years," he said. "It (drove) them 
to perhaps make a decision that was not in the best interests of 
the workers." 

However, he said, real accountability did not come until 1998 
when the plant came under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's 
oversight. In the next few years, the EPA increased involvement 
and the PACE union created a safety program. 

"I believe it was (NRC oversight) that changed the safety culture 
in that it had independent regulatory oversight," Minter said. 
Investigations during this time period led to the current 
compensation plans for ill employees, he said. 

Minter said he is not aware of any cases other than Walburn's 
alleging radiation reporting abuses occurred into the mid-90s. 
However, he said, if Walburn's allegations are proven to be true, 
it is likely other victims exist. 

"Obviously, if that happened with Jeff, it may have happened to 
others and we don't have an answer (why)," he said. "There's 
certainly no good excuse." 

(Syed can be reached at 772-9364 or via e-mail at 
[ksyed@nncogannett.com] 

Originally published Thursday, November 21, 2002
 
   [http://www.chillicothegazette.com/index.html] | Copyright 
©2002 Chillicothe Gazette. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 18 Nuke drill tests crisis response* 

Last modified: November 20. 2002 12:00AM 

*By Trista Talton* 
/Staff Writer/ 

trista.talton@wilmingtonstar.com
<mailto:trista.talton@wilmingtonstar.com> 

Don Riffle delivers instructions from a mobilecommand post to 
teams in the field during Tuesday'sdisaster drill focused on the 
Brunswick Nuclear Plant. STAFF PHOTO - KEN BLEVINS 

A worst-case scenario played out Tuesday in an exercise that 
tested local, state and federal agencies' responses to a 
radiation leak from the Brunswick Nuclear Plant. 

About 400 people worked to disseminate information about a 
pretend radiation leak, streaming information from plant workers 
to local emergency personnel and ultimately to the public. The 
training is conducted every two years, and the players are graded 
by officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

Workers created a joint information center in the basement of a 
building at Brunswick Community College at Supply. Laptops, 
telephones and eraser boards were used to help manage and track 
the situation ? a radiation plume cloud on the loose. 

While two field teams were directed to chase the radiation, 
emergency management officials were calling shots about when to 
inform the public of the incident and whether to evacuate certain 
areas. 

"Part of what we're testing is our ability to notify the public 
through the news media," said Renee Hoffman, public information 
officer with the state Department of Crime Control and Public 
Safety. 

Should such an event occur, people living and working within a 
10-mile radius of the plant would be notified first. These people 
receive packets of information on a regular basis informing them 
of proper precautions in an emergency. 

While personnel in the joint information center worked behind 
closed, guarded doors Tuesday, a group of state employees waited 
to test possibly exposed air and materials in a mobile office at 
the National Guard post off Kerr Avenue. 

The office is an older-model bus transformed into a 
communications center and lab divided by a wooden door. On the 
floor of the lab is plastic, and the countertops are hidden under 
an absorbent paper towel-like protector that can be easily 
removed if it's exposed to contamination. Pretend samples of 
contaminated vegetation were handed to lab workers through a 
small window in the rear of the bus. 

"We don't want to spread around the radioactivity," said Dale 
Dusenbury, radiation protection specialist. 

He pulled a container out of a device that detects radiation. A 
nearby computer fingerprinted the sample, detecting radiation 
levels. 

"Hopefully, this lab functions to tell you what's in a sample," 
Mr. Dusenbury said. "That's the answer that we have to give to 
decision makers." 

Outside the mobile unit was a portable monitor. Workers stepped 
in the monitor's frame, and it took radiation readings. 

The mobile unit will remain in the area today, where samples will 
undergo mock testing. The exercise wraps up today in Raleigh.

On Friday, the plant will receive a report from FEMA detailing 
the strengths and weaknesses of the emergency response, said Mike 
McCracken, communications supervisor with Progress Energy at the 
Brunswick Nuclear Plant. 

"There's always room to improve," Mr. McCracken said. 

Trista Talton: 343-2070 

trista.talton@wilmingtonstar.com 
*****************************************************************
 19 AU: Nuclear waste sparks debate*

KATHY STONE Thursday, 21 November 2002

The city council is gearing up for a battle with the Federal 
Government over a proposal to transport truckloads of radioactive 
waste through Dubbo to an outback dump.

Councillors voted to alert the Government and local members about 
their "concern and opposition" to the movement of the hazardous 
material in the Dubbo local government area.

But they also refused to tie their efforts to other concerned 
organisations such as the Friends of the Earth Australia, which 
is running a nationwide campaign to scuttle the project.

The debate led to claims by Richard Mutton that radioactive waste 
was already being stored "in a shed not far from the saleyards". 
The manager of that facility said the statement was untrue.

A meeting of council on Monday night will decide whether to adopt 
the hard line proposed by its works and services committee 
earlier this week. Dawn Fardell warned her colleagues not to 
stick their heads in the sand.

"There is no use saying it won't happen when it is highly 
possible," she said.

"I thoroughly oppose any hazardous material coming through here 
whether it be low level or high level."

An internal report to the committee said Dubbo was located on one 
of two potential transport routes to a proposed waste dump in 
South Australia.

As yet there had been no consultation with council.

The unwanted radioactive material, predominantly produced at the 
Lucas Heights Reactor in Sydney, was described as "long-lived, 
highly toxic and difficult to isolate from people and the 
environment".

The waste is classified as hazardous for up to 30 years and 
radioactive for about 300. Concerns about the outback routes were 
raised during the recent Local Government Association conference 
in Broken Hill.

"My concern is whether our emergency services have the capacity 
to handle an accident with radioactive waste," Allan Smith said. 
"My experience, up until two years ago, is that they don't have 
that capacity."

"There may be safer ways to transport the material than road 
transport...we need to get it off the road and onto rail."

Several councillors rejected the tough stance. Gerry Peacocke 
said they were in danger of "going off half-cocked" with no 
evidence that the government was contemplating such a proposal.

"I think we'll look foolish coming out of the blue and opposing 
something that might never happen," he said. "We need some direct 
information from the Commonwealth."

But Cr Fardell said waiting could be perilous. "I think we should 
show our concern before it actually happens," she said.

"We didn't know the Federal Government's policy on the RAAF base 
and look how we've lost control of that."

ruralbookshop <http://www.ruralbookshop.com.au>
*****************************************************************
 20 Kazakhstan reveals solution to its nuclear waste crisis: import 
more
 	 
 Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | 

Central Asian state hopes to be Europe's nuclear dump
		
Paul Brown, environment correspondent in Kazakhstan Thursday 
November 21, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk]                
 		
Kazakhstan, the largest central Asian republic, already scarred 
by uranium mines and by having been the main Soviet nuclear 
testing ground, is planning to become the world's first 
commercial importer of nuclear waste. 

The national atomic company, Kazatomprom, hopes to start the 
imports within a year. The aim is to make enough profit from the 
trade to allow it to deal with Kazakhstan's own gigantic waste 
problem. 

In an interview with the Guardian, Mukhtar Dzhakishev, 
Kazatomprom's president, said the company was looking to the UK 
and other "crowded" EU countries which had not solved their own 
waste problems to take advantage of the open spaces of central 
Asia. He said the waste would be transported by rail across 
Russia. 

He believes a few hundred thousand barrels of extra nuclear waste 
can be disposed of safely in a country with only 16 million 
inhabitants, but which is the ninth largest in the world. The 
venture could earn the company between £20bn and £30bnover 30 
years, he calculates. 

He plans to charge EU countries £3,000 to dispose of a barrel of 
waste, making £2,400 a barrel profit for Kazakhstan. A bill 
reversing Kazakhstan's policy of banning the import of nuclear 
waste is before the country's parliament. 

The Kazakhs plan to build a nuclear depository, but in the 
meantime will store imported waste in old uranium mine workings 
where there is already heavy radioactive contamination. 

Mr Dzhakishev said importing waste from rich countries was the 
only way of raising the more than £1bn required to begin dealing 
with his country's nuclear legacy. 

The company still mines uranium to make fuel for nuclear reactors 
in Russia but there are more than a dozen disused mines and more 
than 233,000 tonnes of radioactive waste to be made safe - as 
well as large quantities of contaminated equipment. 

Mr Dzhakishev said: "We get $10 for extracting a cubic metre of 
uranium. We would get $100 to deposit the same amount of nuclear 
waste. 

"If our depositories took 99% of domestic barrels and 1% from 
outside, the extra radioactivity would hardly register but the 
profit would be enormous. The question is, shall we do it or not? 
The answer is, we should." 

The most controversial part of Kazatomprom's plan is to import 
intermediate as well as low-level waste. 

Intermediate-level waste contains plutonium which takes 200,000 
years to decay sufficiently to be safe and the UK and other EU 
countries have taken the decision that it can only be buried in 
deep, stable rock formations. 

The company says that "medium-level" waste, as Mr Dzhakishev 
calls it, is safe in 1,000 years and does not contain plutonium. 
He intends to bury it in trenches dug in a deep clay layer in the 
east of the country near the town of Aktau, close to the Caspian 
sea and the border of Turkmenistan. 

Mr Dzhakishev claimed that he had the encouragement of the 
International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for the plan. Mark 
Guozdecky, from the IAEA, said the agency had been in talks with 
Kazakhstan about importing nuclear waste. 

"We do set standards for dealing with transboundary transport of 
waste but they are advisory rather than compulsory. We would be 
willing to advise if asked," he said. 

Timur Zhantikin, chairman of the Kazakhstan atomic energy 
committee, the country's nuclear regulatory body, has only 23 
staff to oversee the safety of the vast nuclear legacy in his 
country. 

"We have a very large quantity of nuclear waste in this country 
and no funds to deal with it," he said. 

"On the other hand we do not yet have a depository or even an 
exact site for one, and I have yet to see designs for one. 

"Before import is allowed I have to issue a licence to make sure 
both the transport and the proposed depository is safe. I do not 
have any information which would allow me to do that," he said. 
The provisional site for the dump is at the opposite end of the 
country from the former Soviet nuclear test site of Semipalatinsk 
which was the scene of 468 nuclear tests - a third of them 
atmospheric. 

This testing has left a strong anti-nuclear feeling in the 
country and there is alarm at the idea of importing more waste 
before the country has dealt with its own problem. 

Dissent is a risky business in Kazakhstan where the president, 
Nursultan Nazarbaev, behaves more like an old-style Communist 
dictator than a democrat. Opposition journalists are attacked and 
newspaper offices catch fire but some environmental groups are 
still prepared to speak out. 

Sergei Kuratov, chairman of the environmental pressure group 
Green Salvation, said: "In a country rich in oil it is crazy to 
suggest that we cannot afford to deal with our own nuclear waste 
and want to import yet more. 

"This is a country building a new capital city in the north 
called Astana and spending one hundred times more on a grandiose 
foreign ministry than the entire budget for dealing with nuclear 
waste. 

"The same is repeated again and again. It is just another 
money-making venture." 

Vadim Nee, a lawyer for another environmental group, the Eurasia 
Partnership said: "The World Bank is worried about corruption in 
Kazakhstan. 

"In our current situation there is no guarantee of public safety, 
no system for compensation, no confidence in the ability of 
customs to deal with these cargoes. 

"Everyone has a human right to a safe environment - but 
apparently not here." 

[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
 21 Kazakhstan eyes EU N-waste

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | 

Thursday, 21 November, 2002, 02:16 GMT [Stand-off in 
demonstration   AP] Nuclear wastes excite passions, as here in 
Germany
 		 	 	 	 	 	 
By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent in 
Almaty, Kazakhstan                                         

Kazakhstan, a country deeply scarred by the legacy of the nuclear 
arms race, plans to import other countries' civil nuclear waste. 

It hopes to earn enough from the trade to pay for the disposal of 
its own waste stockpile. 

But it has no depository able to accept any waste consignments 
from abroad. 

And it appears ready to flout international regulations on 
nuclear waste treatment. 
	
You will look in the eyes of the entire world not only eccentric, 
but half-witted      
   	
   	Professor Alexei Yablokov 	   	

To the dismay of many Kazakhs, the country's Parliament is to be 
asked to amend the existing law banning the import and burial of 
foreign radioactive waste. 

The company responsible for running the import programme, 
assuming it is approved, is Kazatomprom, the national nuclear 
company. 

Its president, Mukhtar Dzakishev, says cleaning up the country's 
own nuclear waste mountain of more than 220 million tonnes will 
cost $1.1bn, a sum Kazakhstan says it cannot afford. He believes 
importing waste could earn Kazakhstan $30-40bn over the next 30 
years. 

Risk refuted 

Mr Dzakishev said: "We will charge $5,000 per 200-litre barrel of 
waste, giving us a profit of $4,000. 
		 			
[Blast at Semipalatinsk   AP ] A final explosion ends 
Semipalatinsk's career
 		 		 			  
"We'll be dealing only with low- and intermediate-level waste, 
which will become harmless in 1,000 years. 

"None of the wastes will contain plutonium, and we can bury them 
temporarily in shallow pits, old uranium mines, until a 
depository is built for them at Aktau on the Caspian." 

Nirex, the UK's nuclear waste disposal company, says intermediate 
waste may include spent reactor fuel which contains plutonium. 

That has a half-life of 200,000 years, and in the UK any such 
waste must be buried in deep depositories. 

The main Soviet nuclear test site during the Cold War was in 
Kazakhstan, at Semipalatinsk. 

Nearly five-hundred nuclear bombs were detonated at 
Semipalatinsk, the world's biggest nuclear testing ground, during 
its working life, and the Kazakh Government estimates that more 
than a million people were exposed to radiation as a result. 

Many people living near the site suffered birth defects or 
cancers because of the tests, although they were not told what 
was happening at the site. 

International controls claim 

Semipalatinsk, which was so secret that it did not even appear on 
maps of Kazakhstan, was closed in 2000. 

Mr Dzhakishev said cancer rates in Kazakhstan had risen by 8.3% 
in the last five years. 
		 			
[Nuclear waste train   AP] French nuclear waste heads for Germany
 		 		 			  
He told BBC News Online: "It will take six months to a year 
before parliament can amend the existing legislation on waste 
imports. 

"Then we shall be able to announce we have sites conforming to 
international standards for these categories of waste. 

"The trade will be controlled by the International Atomic Energy 
Agency (IAEA). The imports could start within a year of the 
parliamentary vote." 

Russian rival 

The IAEA, which is based in Vienna, said it had discussed the 
issue of importation with the Kazakh Government, but added: "It 
cannot be said that the IAEA has encouraged Kazakhstan to pursue 
importing radioactive waste." 

The role at the IAEA was to explain the international safety 
regime and the requirements for disposal, the agency said. 
Professor Alexei Yablokov is a member of the Russian Academy of 
Sciences, and president of his country's Centre for Environmental 
Policy. 

He said he thought Kazakhstan's neighbours would refuse to allow 
waste imports to cross their territory. 

He said: "It's a big problem. You will look in the eyes of the 
entire world not only eccentric, but half-witted." 

Last year, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a 
controversial law on nuclear imports, paving the way for 
thousands of tonnes of spent fuel to enter Russia. But Kazakhstan 
hopes to beat him to it. 

© MMII | News Sources | Privacy 
*****************************************************************
 22 IEER: Comments to NRC on proposed LES enrichment plant in 
Tennessee 

[http://www.ieer.org/index.html] | 
                                
 Comments of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research 
to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on White papers presented by 
LES (Louisiana Enrichment Services) regarding the proposed 
enrichment plant at Hartsville, Trousdale County, Tennessee Arjun 
Makhijani and Annie Makhijani 14 November 2002 by e-mail 
TCJ@nrc.gov 

Analysis of need and the no-action alternative
 
The need for the project must be assessed according to two 
primary criteria:
 
  1. the market for enrichment services in light of existing 
supply as well as demand 

  2. national security considerations, including the current, 
projected, and desirable downblending of both Russian and US 
highly enriched uranium (HEU) for the purposes of fulfilling 
non-proliferation and disarmament commitments as well as for 
reducing the risks of nuclear diversion, especially in the 
aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. However, 
the analysis by LES does not provide an analysis of either of 
these considerations. Rather it makes reference to "Congressional 
policy pronouncements" that there is an established need for a 
domestic source of uranium enrichment capacity. This is a 
completely insufficient basis for asserting the need for a 
project that will have a major impact on the supply of enrichment 
services as well as on national and global security.
 
LES must provide the documentation and analysis on the basis of 
which it is asserting the need for the project. If it is going to 
rely on congressional policy pronouncements, then the economic 
and technical basis of those pronouncements must be set forth in 
sufficient detail for an independent assessment of their validity 
to be made. There is no way in which the NRC or any other body 
can assess the soundness of LES's assertion unless such 
documentation and analysis is provided.
 
The current enrichment capacity as well as the existing 
commitments and projects to downblend surplus military HEU in 
Russia and the United States into LEU reactor fuel taken together 
indicate that there is no need for the LES project in the short- 
and medium-term. 

  + There is enough LEU (Low Enriched Uranium) for about 6 years 
to fuel all the U.S. reactors at the current rates of consumption 
from the down-blending of the remaining 350 metric tons of 
Russian surplus HEU at Portsmouth Ohio by USEC (US Enrichment 
Corporation), assuming 1.5 percent enriched blendstock. 

  + The down blending of the remaining 120 metric tons of US 
surplus LEU will provide fuel for the U.S. reactors for about 1.5 
years at the current rate of consumption, assuming natural 
uranium blendstock. 

This means that a total of almost 8 years of U.S. demand for 
enrichment services is already in the pipeline due to the 
downloading of military HEU that has been declared surplus. The 
U.S. annual demand is 11 to 12 million SWUs per year. The 
downblending of military HEU is occurring at a slower rate than 
desirable for security reasons to prevent a huge surplus of LEU 
fuel on the market.
z In addition, the United States Enrichment Corporation has an 
agreement with the U.S. DOE to keep the Paducah plant open until 
it brings a centrifuge plant on line. The separative work 
capacity of the Paducah plant is about 11 million kilograms, 
though USEC now rates the usable capacity as 8 million kilograms. 
Hence the available SWU capacity from commercial and military 
over the next ten years is about 170 million kg. (80 million 
commercial, plus about 90 million equivalent in downblended fuel) 
while the demand is only 120 million SWU in the same period. 
Thus, there is already a huge surplus of LEU fuel in the 
pipeline. It is already slowing down downblending in Russia, 
which is detrimental for security reasons.
 
Furthermore in 1993, the RAND Corporation estimated that in the 
year 2003 the U.S. surplus of HEU would be 339 tons. Other 
estimates range as high as 600 metric tons (total including the 
already declared surplus). A U.S. declaration of further 
surpluses is likely to result in Russian declarations as well, 
especially if there is a market for the fuel at reasonable 
prices. Further, the reduction of nuclear weapons under the 
Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT) signed in the Spring 
of 2002 by the United States and Russia is likely to increase the 
HEU surplus over the medium-term. This is very desirable for 
security reasons, especially as further downblending will remove 
large amounts of weapons usable HEU from potential diversion.
 
Approval of a project to build a new enrichment will hinder 
declarations of more surplus HEU. There are likely to be 
commercial pressures against such declarations in the face of a 
continuing glut in LEU market when both commercial SWU capacity 
and equivalent SWU capacity from downblending are taken into 
account. Moreover, LES has not specified whether and how its 
planned project would affect the government's plan to develop 
advanced centrifuge technology in collaboration with the United 
States Enrichment Corporation.
 
The down blending of military U.S and Russian HEU into LEU not 
only provides LEU for the U.S. market but is crucial for reasons 
of international security, and disarmament commitments under 
Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of nuclear 
weapons. The construction of the LES uranium enrichment plant by 
creating an overproduction of LEU accompanied by a potential 
depreciation of the price of uranium fuel would interfere with 
the only effective program of disposition of surplus fissile 
material. 

The fuel fabrication of nuclear fuel from the surplus of military 
HEU has also the advantage of circumventing most the front-end - 
uranium mining, milling, conversion, and enrichment - of the 
nuclear fuel cycle. These operations specially uranium mining and 
milling are hazardous to the workers and create huge amounts of 
wastes, radioactive and well as chemical, with their associated 
hazards to workers and the public. 

Depleted uranium tails disposition
 
According to Section 3113 of the 1996 USEC Privatization act the 
DOE "shall accept for disposal low-level radioactive waste, 
including depleted uranium if it were ultimately determined to be 
low- level radioactive waste, generated by [...] any person 
licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate a 
uranium enrichment facility under sections 53, 63, and 193 of the 
Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2073, 2093, and 2243).
 
On this basis LES suggests that the NRC incorporate this 
provision in its Order as a "plausible strategy" for the 
disposition of the depleted uranium tails.
 
1. Current and proposed uses of depleted uranium
 
Depleted uranium is still classified as a source material and 
might remain so for some time. It has been used as fertile 
material to produce plutonium in the U.S. breeder reactor 
program. Although there is no ongoing breeder reactor program the 
desire for such a program is strong within some sections of the 
nuclear establishment. The amount of DU is already so vast that 
there is no prospect that such a use could come anywhere near to 
constituting a major use even if breeder reactor technology were 
to be revived in the coming decades. There is no room in this 
application for DU resulting from new enrichment services.

Until now the utilization of depleted uranium, based purely on 
its physical properties, has involved very small amounts compared 
to the supply already at hand. More recently proposals have been 
made that could, if implemented, use up the entire inventory of 
depleted uranium. It has been proposed that the shielding 
properties of uranium could be used to fabricate casks for the 
transport and interim storage of the nation's spent fuel and high 
level wastes. However like the storage of spent fuel and high 
level wastes, this use of depleted uranium would be temporary. 
Once the spent fuel is removed from the casks, the problem of the 
disposal of depleted uranium will still remain. In effect, the 
use of DU for transportation and interim storage casks is simply 
another method of interim storage for years or decades but it 
does not solve the problem of DU disposal.

Further, by proposing that these casks could be integrated in the 
waste package going into Yucca mountain, the industry has 
implicitly acknowledged what IEER is arguing below, that is: the 
radiological properties of depleted uranium dictate that it ought 
to be disposed of in a deep geological repository. Two other 
proposed uses of depleted uranium are:

  + a material to fill the voids of the spent fuel waste packages 
and,
 

  + as structural components of spent fuel waste package 

It is claimed that they "may (1) reduce the long-term potential 
criticality in the repository, (2) improve repository 
performance, (3) provide radiation shielding" but also that they 
will (4) dispose of excess DU." (Emphasis added) This approach 
also further validates IEER's analysis that the radiological 
properties of DU are such that it should be disposed of in a deep 
geologic repository.

Therefore LES will have to devise a plan for the disposition of 
the depleted uranium tails, including plans for long-term storage 
on site for a period of several decades as well as a plan for its 
ultimate disposal in a deep geological repository.

2. NRC default classification of depleted uranium
 
However, in cases where it might be disposed of as a waste the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has put it by default into the 
category of class A low-level radioactive waste according to 10 
CFR 61.55 (6). 10 CFR 61.55 allows near surface disposal. 
However, the inappropriateness of this default classification is 
demonstrated by the NRC's own assessment that shallow-land burial 
of depleted uranium could result in unacceptably high doses to 
future generations. 

3. The scientific reasons for disposing DU in a deep repository 

We reproduce below the scientific reasons why depleted uranium 
should be put in the same classification as transuranic wastes 
for the purpose of waste management and disposal. This would mean 
that depleted uranium would have to be placed in a deep 
geological repository.

The current definition of TRU waste according to 40 CFR 191.01 
(i) is: ". . .waste containing more than 100 nanocuries of 
alpha-emitting transuranic isotopes, with half-lives greater than 
twenty years, per gram of waste . . . ."

What matters to health and environmental considerations is the 
specific activity of the radioactive wastes, the nature of the 
radiation being emitted during the radioactive decay (alpha or 
beta and whether the decay is accompanied by gamma radiation) 
and, the energy per radioactive decay. Depleted uranium is, in 
these essential respects, the same as the transuranic 
constituents of TRU waste. The specific ways in which uranium or 
the transuranic radionuclides in TRU waste might affect people 
will, of course, depend on the chemical form of the waste, the 
packaging, and the disposal method. 

There is one nominal difference between TRU waste and depleted 
uranium. TRU waste consists of elements with atomic numbers 
greater than or equal to 93 -- that is of elements with atomic 
numbers greater than uranium, whose atomic number is 92. But this 
is a difference of nomenclature; it has no bearing upon health 
and environmental issues.
 
A. Properties of depleted uranium 

  1. Specific Activity
 
The radioactivity per unit weight (specific activity) of depleted 
uranium metal is dominated by its principal constituent, 
uranium-238. It also depends somewhat on the exact extent to 
which uranium-235, and hence also uranium-234, have been 
separated and passed into the enriched uranium stream. It may 
vary from about 360 nanocuries/gram to about 450 nanocuries/gram. 
Even assuming that only uranium-238 remains, the specific 
activity would be still about 340 nanocuries/gram which is 3.4 
times higher than that defining transuranic waste.
 
The specific activity of other chemical forms is somewhat lower 
than for uranium metal, because when radioactive uranium is 
chemically bound with non-radioactive isotopes of elements like 
oxygen and fluorine, its specific activity is correspondingly 
lower. Table 1 shows the specific activity of four forms of 
depleted uranium. For convenience we have assumed a single 
reference value of 360 nanocuries/gram for the specific activity 
of uranium metal which is the lowest practical value in the range 
cited above.
 
Table 1 also shows, for reference, the minimum specific activity 
of transuranic waste as defined by regulations and the 
radioactivity of ore containing 0.2 percent uranium.
 
                             Table 1
    Specific Activities of various chemical forms of depleted
            uranium, TRU waste and 0.2% uranium ore 
                                
  
Chemical form     
Specific activity, nCi/g   
  
uranium metal (U)     
360   
  
uranium oxide (U3O8)     
300   
  
uranium tetrafluoride (UF4)     
270   
  
uranium hexafluoride (UF6)     
240   
  
transuranic activity in TRU waste     
>100 (See note 2)   
  
0.2 % uranium ore     
4 (See note 3)   

Notes for Table 1: 
1. Specific activities of the four forms of uranium have been
rounded to two significant figures, and that of uranium ore to
one significant figure.
 
2. The minimum limit of 100 nanocuries/gram of transuranic
elements for waste to be classified as TRU waste includes only
those isotopes of transuranic elements with half-lives greater
than 20 years. The most common isotope in TRU waste that is
eliminated from the counting in this way is plutonium-241, which
has a half-life of 14.4 years. However the decay product of
plutonium-241, americium-241 is included in TRU waste because it
has a half-life of about 432 years. All these uranium isotopes
we are dealing with in these comments have half-lives far longer
than 20 years.
 
3. The specific activity of 0.2 percent uranium ore shown
includes all decay products of uranium-238 up to and including
radium-226, assuming they are in secular equilibrium with
uranium-238. Radon-222, and its decay products are not included. 

It is clear from Table 1 that depleted uranium is comparable in
specific activity to transuranic waste. This conclusion is
independent of the chemical form of the depleted uranium. Note
that depleted uranium is far more radioactive than uranium ore
because the ore is mixed with large quantities of
non-radioactive materials. Thus, putting depleted uranium in
mines is in no way like replacing the original material that was
mined out of the ground. Rather it is analogous to putting TRU
waste in the ground.
 
  1. Mode of decay, energy of decay, and half-life 
The main radionuclide of concern in most TRU waste is
plutonium-239. Other radionuclides that are present in
significant quantities are plutonium-240, plutonium-238,
neptunium-237, and americium-241. The predominant mode of decay
of all of these radionuclides is alpha decay. That is also the
case with all three uranium isotopes (uranium-238, uranium-234,
and uranium-235) present in depleted uranium. In all these
cases, the emitted alpha particles have energies between 4 and 6
MeV, so that the total energy deposited in tissue per picocurie
of radioactive material in the body is the same. Thus, once a
unit of radioactivity of TRU waste or of depleted uranium is in
the body, the amount of radiation dose per unit of time is
approximately the same.
 
Table 2 shows the principal characteristics of concern of the
main radionuclides in TRU waste and in depleted uranium. Note
that the decay products of uranium-238 build up over hundreds of
thousands of years, and we have ignored these for the sake of
argument in these comments.3 
                             Table 2
     Properties of Uranium Isotopes and Selected Transuranic
                            Elements 
                                
Isotope     
Main decay mode     
Alpha particle energy, MeV     
Half-life, years     
Comments   
  
uranium-238     
Alpha     
4.1     
4.46 billion         
  
uranium-234     
Alpha     
4.8     
245,000         
  
neptunium-237     
Alpha     
4.8     
2.14 million         
  
plutonium-238     
Alpha     
5.5     
87.7         
  
plutonium-239     
Alpha     
5.1     
24,110         
  
plutonium-240     
Alpha     
5.1     
6,537         
  
plutonium-241     
Beta     
see note 2     
14.4     
not included in TRU waste definition   
  
americium-241     
Alpha     
5.5     
432     
strong gamma emitter   

Notes: 
1. All energies rounded to two significant figures. The alpha
emitting radionuclides emit alpha particles with more than one
characteristic energy, with each energy level being produced
with a known probability. The alpha particle energy shown is an
approximate average of these particles energies, weighted by the
emission probability.
 
2. Plutonium-241 is not included in the definition of TRU waste
since it has a half-life of less than 20 years. Its beta
particle energy is 0.021 MeV. 
Conclusion
 
When existing capacity and ongoing down blending program of HEU
are taken into account, there is no need for an additional
domestic uranium enrichment capacity in the near to medium term.
Further, it would be highly desirable to defer consideration of
any new capacity for national and global security reasons since
construction of new enrichment capacity will hinder additional
surplus declarations both in the United States and Russia, given
that existing downblending has already created an effective
overcapacity in enrichment services. 

Therefore, the "no action alternative" will have to be addressed
by both LES and the NRC staff taking into account the current
and potential situation regarding the blending down of surplus
military HEU. 

The disposition of depleted uranium tails will need to be
addressed based on the radiological hazards of this material
that require that it be disposed of in a deep geological
repository. The construction of such a repository will be a
major economic and political hurdle facing DU disposal, and
hence the proposed plant. LES must address it before any
environmentally credible application for a new enrichment plant
can be considered.   

*****************************************************************
 23 Radioactive waste stored has doubled in 15 years

Independent.co.uk <http://www.independent.co.uk>

By Marie Woolf Chief Political Correspondent

21 November 2002

The amount of radioactive waste being stored in Britain has more 
than doubled in the past 15 years.

The Government has released figures showing that stocks of 
nuclear waste, including high-level waste that will remain 
hazardous for tens of thousands of years, increased from 45,580 
cubic metres in 1986 to 92,103 cubic metres last year.

MPs, environmental campaigners and figures within the nuclear 
industry say the waste is a permanent hazard, which could result 
in a catastrophe if terrorists breached security.

Most reprocessed nuclear waste, often originating in Japan and 
Germany, is stored at Sellafield in Cumbria.

The UK has been creating nuclear waste for more than 50 years but 
ministers admit they do not know how much is stored in Britain 
because no central records were held before 1984.

A spokesman for Nirex, the body responsible for dealing with 
nuclear waste, said that the problem needed to be handled with 
greater urgency. Nirex has called for independence from its 
owners, the nuclear industry, to give it more legitimacy.

"This is going to be dangerous for a very, very long time and 
people need to face up to it," said a spokesman for Nirex. 
"Radioactive waste exists and society as a whole needs to take 
responsibility."

Michael Meacher, the Environment minister, released the figures 
on stored waste in a letter to Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat 
environment spokesman. "I am afraid that no central records are 
held of the wastes in store for the period 1973 to 1984," Mr 
Meacher said in his letter.

Mr Baker said he was shocked by the increase and accused the 
Government of a "cavalier and irresponsible approach" to a 
problem that will have "major implications for future 
generations".

He said: "At the present time it's hardly sensible to be storing 
a huge mountain of nuclear waste when the world situation is as 
volatile as it is."

British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) said that one reason for the big 
rise in stored waste was the opening of the Thermal Oxide 
Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) at Sellafield in the early Nineties. 
It insisted that the storage facilities were completely safe "for 
decades to come.

"When we reprocess we are left with radioactive material, which 
we can't do anything with. It's extremely radioactive. It is 
stored safely. The high-level waste we turn into a glass form, 
which is passive," said a BNFL spokesman.

"We have reprocessed 50,000 tons at Sellafield since the 
mid-Sixties."

Much of the waste at Sellafield is stored in metal drums, which 
are surrounded by concrete. These are put in concrete-lined 
trenches that are then landfilled.

But environmentalists believe the radioactive material still 
poses a threat and that it can cause cancer.

"We believe the waste isn't safely stored because it hasn't been 
treated and is in a raw form that could explode or catch fire if 
it is hit in a terrorist incident," said Rachel Western, nuclear 
researcher at Friends of the Earth.

The Government is planning to set up an interdependent body to 
help to resolve the problem of how to deal with Britain's growing 
radioactive waste stockpiles.

<http://www.independent.co.uk
*****************************************************************
 24 Some grill LES on proposed uranium enrichment plant *

Thursday, 11/21/02

By KATHY CARLSON /Staff Writer/

*LaFAYETTE, Tenn *? About 75 Midstate residents lobbed questions 
last night at elected officials, environmentalists and a 
representative of the international group that wants to build a 
uranium enrichment plant in Trousdale County.

Last night's meeting took place in this town in Macon County, 
just a county away from where Louisiana Energy Services has 
proposed building a $1.1 billion enrichment facility.

Participants' questions ad-dressed property values, safety and, 
more than once, what LES would do with depleted uranium ''tails'' 
left over after the enrichment process. LES representative George 
Byers said that LES had proposed, in an earlier application to 
build a facility in Louisiana, that tails be put in old uranium 
mines.

The company is studying a U.S. Department of Energy contract to 
build a tails facility and also is looking at a private company's 
plan to build a similar facility in Utah.

When pressed on the question, Byers said, ''I just ask you to 
trust the fact that we heard you all loud and clear.''

Someone from the audience was heard asking the question, 
''Trust?''

Macon and Trousdale are among the five Midstate counties whose 
representatives make up the Four Lake Regional Industrial 
Development Authority, which owns the land on which LES wishes to 
build the plant and which must decide whether to sell or lease 
the 260 acres to LES.

At an open forum Tuesday in Trousdale County, about 150 people 
had gathered in a high school gym and strained to hear about a 
dozen officials and residents talk about a trip last week to a 
gas-centrifuge uranium enrichment plant in Netherlands. The plant 
is like the one that Louisiana Energy Services proposes to build 
in the county and is owned by Urenco, a European company that is 
among those in the LES consortium. Urenco operates no plants in 
the United States. The Hartsville plant, if approved and built on 
schedule, would be the country's first commercial enrichment 
plant using centrifuge technology.

People asked questions at both meetings by writing them on cards, 
with their names, and then submitting them to the panel.

Many Trousdale meeting participants said they didn't think their 
questions on the plant were being answered by either those who 
took the trip or by a representative of LES.

''This is our home,'' said Orti Tucker, a 15-year resident of 
Hartsville, who said she opposed the plant. She wanted opponents 
to hold their own town meeting with their own experts to ''let 
our voices be heard.''

The LES proposal also came up Monday night at the end of the 
Smith County Commission's regular monthly meeting.

At all three county meetings, participants raised the possibility 
of holding referendums on the issue.

Next Monday, the Trousdale County Commission will take up on 
first reading the issue of rezoning the bulk of the 260 acres on 
which LES proposes to build the plant.

LES has set a deadline of Jan. 30 for filing with the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission to license the proposed enrichment plant. 
It estimates that the licensing process could take up to two 
years. Once a plant is licensed, construction would be-gin. LES 
projects that the plant would start operation in late 2006 or 
early 2007.


HOME <http://www.tennessean.com/> 
© Copyright 2002 The Tennessean A Gannett Co. Inc. 
*****************************************************************
 25 Chatham votes against nuclear shipments*

By: Joseph Pardington November 21, 2002

*Resolution asks attorney general to stop Progress Energy's 
fuel-rod train*

By JOSEPH PARDINGTON Herald Staff Writer

PITTSBORO - The Chatham County Commissioners voted 3-2 on Monday 
to ask North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to halt 
Progress Energy's transportation of spent nuclear fuel rods to 
this part of the state. Voting for the resolution were: Chairman 
Gary Phillips, Vice Chairwoman Margaret Pollard and the 
resolution's author, Commissioner Bob Atwater.

Commissioners Carl Outz and Rick Givens voted against the 
resolution.

Before voting on Atwater's revised resolution, the commissioners 
first tabled a resolution provided to them by the North Carolina 
Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (N.C. WARN), a non-profit 
group that has been an outspoken critic of CP&L/Progress Energy. 
Each of the commissioners commented on the original resolution 
before voting on it. Outz, Givens and Pollard voted to table the 
original resolution.

Phillips and Atwater voted against tabling the resolution. The 
board then voted in favor of Atwater's revised resolution.

"I think its matter of common sense that we are experiencing a 
level of unnecessary risk by transporting this material," Atwater 
said. Atwater's resolution asks Cooper to stop the shipments 
until federal security measures are in place.

Spent nuclear fuel rods are the nuclear byproduct generated by 
nuclear power plants. This material is cooled for at least five 
years in pools approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 
When the rods are sufficiently cooled, some nuclear plants move 
them to dry storage, while Progress Energy leaves them in pools. 
Nuclear plants that run out of storage space ship the spent fuel 
rods to another plant.

Progress Energy, formerly CP&L, transports spent fuel rods from 
its Robinson plant in Hartsville, S.C., and its Brunswick plant 
Southport to Shearon Harris in southwestern Wake County, because 
Harris was built to accommodate four nuclear reactors and the 
other two plants have limited storage, said Progress Energy's 
Sharon Hall, communications manager at Harris. Robinson and 
Brunswick were built with the idea of sending spent fuel to the 
federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., and 
Yucca is not finished yet, Hall added.

At Monday's meeting, about 50 people cheered for the passage of 
the revised resolution. Some wore signs with a picture of a train 
surrounded by a red circle and covered with a strike-through line 
on 4-inch by 5-inch construction paper. In the back of the room, 
a man held aloft a sign saying, "Nuclear waste is unsafe. Halt 
the train." The crowd stood to applaud Judy Hogan of Moncure who 
spoke out against Progress Energy's policy of shipping via train 
spent fuel rods from one plant to another. Hogan described 
several doomsday scenarios.

Hogan asked what would happen if terrorists attacked the trains, 
what would happen if the trains ran off the tracks and who would 
evacuate the thousands of people within a 10-mile emergency zone 
surrounding Shearon Harris in the event of a nuclear accident.

Progress Energy community relations manager Cathy Hawkins said 
the company is committed to the safety of its employees and the 
public. "We have been shipping spent fuel for 14 years with no 
safety accidents," Hawkins said.

Hawkins compared the catastrophic warnings to scenes from 
Hollywood movies. Hawkins said spent fuel is shipped in robust, 
state-of-the art containers, with safety as the foremost 
concern."Spent fuel is shipped dry and cannot explode," she told 
the audience.

Hall said the company keeps law-enforcement officials informed 
about every shipment while keeping details of the shipments 
secret from most employees and the general public.

"We have very stringent emergency plans. We have very close 
coordination with state, federal and local law enforcement 
regarding the shipments," she said. "We keep all the details of 
these shipments extremely confidential. There are very few people 
in the company that even know any of the specifics."

/©The Sanford Herald 2002/

*****************************************************************
 26 Inspection of a Trident nuclear submarine 
 
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 00:13:32 -0600 (CST)

 
Inspection of a Trident nuclear submarine 

by Petter Joelson 9:06pm Mon Nov 18 '02 
(Modified on 7:18am Tue Nov 19 '02)  
phone: 07881818487 petterjoelson@yahoo.se  

At 11pm Friday 15th November, me and Elisa from Trident Ploughshares
got into a nuclear submarine in Devonport, England. We set off the
fire alarm on the submarine and told the workers and security staff
about the illegality of the Trident submarines under international
law. 

Trident Ploughshares is since 1998 fighting the British nuclear
weapons with nonviolent direct action. Britain has got four Trident
nuclear submarines with a capacity of more than 1000 Hiroshima bombs.
In March this year, the British minister of defence, George Hoon
threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iraq. 

One of these submarines, called Vanguard, is currently being fixed and
fuelled with radioactive material at the Devonport dockyard in the
south west of England. 

Trident Ploughshares have had a disarmament cammp in Devonport the
14th-19th November. By inspections, blockades and other actions, we
have been trying to stop the Vanguard from further use. 

The British government has been one of the loudest voices for an
attack against Iraq if they don't grant access for the UN weapons
inspectors. At the same time the government is ignoring the advisory
opinion from the International Court of Justice from 1996, saying that
the possession or threat to use nuclear arms is generally illegal. 
Elisa and I decided to inspect the facilities for weapons of mass
destruction in the Devonport Dockyard. At Friday evening at 9.30 we
went from the Trident Ploughshares campsite to the Dockyard. After
some time of walking through itching bushes outside the fence, we
found a good spot to climb it. We put some thick plastic that we found
on top of the sharp edges of it and then managed to get over. It was a
walk of about 300 meters to the Trident dock, and we passed a tennis
court, some houses and docks for other ships. No guards or polices
were in sight and the few people, walking or in cars, that we passed
didn't seem to take any notice about us. 

My mouth was dry and my legs soft like spaghetti when we reached the
final fence, just outside "Vanguard". There it was, the submarine that
can wipe out whole cities with a single strike. It was covered with
construction works and white plastic and was huge. We made a small
door in the fence with our bolt cutters we had brought and went on
towards the submarine. There were still no guards visible so we went
on board. At this stage we were not really sure about what to do.
After we had been inside of it and seen the holes on the outside were
they fire the missiles, we decided to press an alarm button. The first
alarm button we found didn't work, so we went to the other side of the
submarine and found two fire alarm buttons. We pressed the first one
(this was at 11.30 according to the police, and we had probably been
on and inside of the sub for 20 minutes). Nothing happened in a couple
of minutes, so we pressed the other one too. Then lots of workers,
maybe 10-20 came up from the lower parts of the submarine, just were
we were standing. We explained to them that we were from Trident
Ploughshares and that the submarine is illegal, but they seemed to be
more keen on having a break than to discuss legal matters with us. So
they went to a nearby building. After another couple of minutes
security staff turned up and showed us the way to the office just next
to the sub. The walls in there were covered with electrical diagrams
of the missile system and other things I didn't understand. The staff
offered us tea and coffee and we were chatting for a while until the
police turned up and arrested us at 11.55. 

No one saw us getting in, but the police confiscated out two pairs of
bolt cutters and "Nuclear Weapons for Beginners" - a guide Elisa had
brought, as evidence. 

On 16th of December, the local court in Plymouth will set a date for
our trial. 

elisa.silvennoinen@joensuu.fi 
petterjoelson@yahoo.se 
http://sweden.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=32989&group=webcast

www.tridentploughshares.org
*****************************************************************
 27 Pakistan's Bhutto said to have overseen Korea nuclear deal

Reuters 

20 November, 2002 19:55 GMT+08:00

By Jane Macartney, Asian Diplomatic Correspondent

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - North Korea had the nearest thing to a 
nuclear delivery system suitable for Pakistan's purposes. 
Pakistan had the bomb and the means to teach Pyongyang to make 
its own.

The time was the mid-1990s, both states were beleaguered. North 
Korea was isolated from the world of its own volition, by its 
dogged adherence to the ideology of juche, or self-reliance, 
created by late Great Leader Kim Il-sung.

Pakistan was a pariah, in trouble and slapped with sanctions 
because everyone -- or at least the United States -- was pretty 
sure it was clandestinely engaged in trying to obtain missile and 
fissile technology from China.

In what has become a classic manoeuvre, the two outcasts found a 
way into each other's arms and arsenals and created one of the 
most frightening nuclear threats on earth, say Pakistani sources 
close to the talks who declined to be identified.

Negotiations must have gone on for at least a decade between the 
two militaries -- the Koreans eager to develop nuclear weapons, 
the Pakistanis desperate for a strategic delivery system that 
would ensure a potent deterrent to neighbouring India.

MILITARY MANOEUVRES

A heaven-sent opportunity presented itself in 1993 when newly 
elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto decided her first foreign 
visit should take her to close ally China. Oddly enough, she then 
made a two-day side-trip to Pyongyang.

That visit seemed incongruous at the time. Bhutto said her visit 
would focus on economic relations, including North Korean 
assistance in building small hydroelectric dams in Pakistan.

In fact, the trip had other power systems in mind, said one 
Pakistani source.

Bhutto had undertaken the tour at the behest of her military, 
which wanted a chance to sit down with their North Korean 
counterparts and hammer out details of a deal they had been 
negotiating for some time, the source said.

"The military basically just told her what to do and she went 
along," said the source. "That was the deal she made with the 
army for winning office."

A spokesman for Benazir Bhutto in London could not be reached for 
comment.

She was accompanied by Defence Minister Aftab Shabban Mirani, but 
he played no key role, the source said. Taking a quiet back seat 
in the delegation but running the show were Pakistan military 
officers, if not also the powerful Inter Services Intelligence 
agency, the source said.

Those two days of talks were a chance to start the laborious 
business of reaching a deal to enable Pakistan to swap its 
uranium enrichment technology for North Korea's Nodong ballistic 
missile.

The Nodong is not hugely sophisticated. It is believed to be an 
enhanced version of the Soviet Scud B surface-to-surface missile 
with a range of 1,000 km -- long enough to deliver a device 
against South Korea, or India.

Uranium enrichment was perfect for North Korea. Using gas 
centrifuge technology it could enrich uranium to weapons-grade 
status and stash it underground. That was not the case with less 
versatile plutonium, available at the Yongbyon plant but above 
ground and easily monitored by space imaging.

No one is prepared to go on the record about just who did what 
when.

RUMOURS, BUT WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE?

Reports go that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist known as 
the father of Pakistan's bomb, has visited North Korea several 
times, at least once in recent years.

In 1999, the Times of India reported a 1995 deal between a North 
Korean firm, Changgwang Sinyong (CSC), and Khan Research 
Laboratories. According to North Korean expert Aidan 
Foster-Carter, CSC is an arm of the Fourth Machine Industry 
Bureau of Pyongyang's Second Economic Committee, which means it 
is military.

Few doubt that Pakistan's Ghauri-III missile is essentially a 
North Korean design, the British expert wrote last year.

Just last year, the commander of the North Korean air force, 
Colonel-General O Kum-chol, paid a week-long visit to Pakistan, 
Foster-Carter said. Local news sources were tight-lipped on the 
agenda, most merely saying that the two sides "discussed matters 
of professional interest".

This month Pakistan denied a report suggesting it had given 
recent assistance to North Korea's nuclear programme.

The Washington Post said Washington had evidence suggesting that 
Pakistan had assisted Pyongyang's nuclear efforts just a few 
months ago -- much later than previously disclosed.

Whatever the timing, the issue faces the U.S. administration with 
a difficult choice since, under U.S. law, the president must 
suspend economic and military aid if a country transfers nuclear 
technology without international safeguards.

Pakistan was sanctioned for such behaviour in the past but 
penalties were waived after Washington's anti-terror war began in 
the wake of the September 11 suicide attacks on U.S. cities.

Current military leader Pervez Musharraf may still be flavour of 
the month in Washington for his aid in that war.

But more answers may be forthcoming from exiled Benazir Bhutto 
who was in Pyongyang when the military seized the opportunity to 
buttress their own defences with a deal that has since shocked 
the world.

*****************************************************************
 28 UC-managed nuclear research lab under investigation for missing items

<http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/home.asp>
*Thursday, November 21, 2002 </news/home.asp>*

Allegations of corruption at Los Alamos National Laboratory prompt
director to request inquiry

By *Noah Grand* DAILY BRUIN REPORTER ngrand@media.ucla.edu

Federal inspectors are investigating allegations that management 
has covered up illegal activities at Los Alamos National 
Laboratory, which is managed by the University of California.

The investigation comes after nearly $3 million worth of items 
disappeared or were reported missing from the nuclear research 
lab in the last three years, according to an internal document 
obtained by the Albuquerque Journal.

Lab director Dr. John Browne requested the investigation in early 
November after anonymous allegations of corruption affecting 
national security were reported by other news organizations.

"It was important to have investigators come in quickly," said 
Los Alamos press aide Jim Danneskiold.

Acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security 
Administration Linton Brooks endorsed Browne's inquiry.

The NNSA works with the lab and the UC to develop nuclear weapons 
and maintain the safety of the United States' nuclear weapons 
stockpiles.

Officials from the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector 
General launched the investigation Monday, 10 days after the UC's 
top official in charge of laboratory oversight, John McTague, 
announced his intention to leave this position.

UC press aide Jeff Garberson said McTague's announcement is not 
connected to the investigation.

"He had decided to retire several months ago and was just waiting 
for right time," Garberson said.

Garberson said McTague would not comment on the investigation. 
His resignation is effective once the UC appoints his 
replacement.

Garberson said the university will cooperate with the 
investigation.

"The DOE review will run its course and the laboratory, 
university and Department of Energy will all take action as 
appropriate," Garberson said.

The UC oversees the operations of three national laboratories ? 
including Los Alamos ? for the Department of Energy and the NNSA.

Lab directors, including Browne, are appointed by the 
university's president, while the federal government provides lab 
funding.

The Office of Inspector General confirmed in a statement that 
charges against laboratory management are being investigated, but 
the UC is not specifically mentioned.

The office would not say when the investigation will be concluded 
and will not make additional comments until the investigation is 
over, according to press aide Wilma Slaughter.

The university might conduct its own investigation after federal 
authorities finish their investigation, Garberson said.

Los Alamos has been the target of other federal investigations in 
recent months.

In October the FBI got warrants to search the homes of two lab 
workers, alleging they have used lab credit cards to buy more 
than $50,000 of unapproved merchandise.

With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.
<mailto:news@media.ucla.edu> for questions or concerns about this 
article.
*****************************************************************
 29 Parsons Corp. selected to create uranium storage facility at Y-12

By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer
November 21, 2002

OAK RIDGE - Parsons Corp. announced Wednesday it has won a
contract to design a new storage facility for highly enriched
uranium at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. 

The value of the design contract was not released, but the total
cost of the federally funded project, including construction, is
estimated at $184 million. 

The new uranium facility will consolidate stocks of the
bomb-making material currently housed in multiple buildings at
Y-12, which was constructed during World War II for work on the
Manhattan Project. 

The storage complex is billed as the first major project in the
plant's modernization program, which could cost billions of
dollars over the next couple of decades. 

Jack Scott, president of Parsons' infrastructure and technology
business unit, said the California-based firm will help create
"a state-of-the-art facility for the storage of materials
critical to national security." 

Other modernization projects are in the offing at Y-12,
including a $37 million purification facility for work on
unspecified classified materials, and a $260 million complex for
processing of beryllium for weapons uses. 

Bill Brumley, the federal manager at Y-12, said construction of
the new uranium vaults is expected to start in September 2004,
with first operations in September 2008. 

Work on the purification facility is scheduled to start in April
2003, with first operations in December 2004, Brumley said.

Construction of the beryllium plant is tentatively planned for
June 2006, with startup operations in August 2010, he said. 

Frank Munger may be reached at 865-482-9213 or
twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. 				
 				
*****************************************************************
 30 Livermore lab may lose top-dog status

Oakland Tribune Online
	
Article Last Updated: Thursday, November 21, 2002 -
 		   	 	
Facility probably won't be 'headquarters lab' for Homeland 
Security Department

By Lisa Friedman and Ian Hoffman STAFF WRITERS

In the beginning, the White House put Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory at the center of the Homeland Security Department 
universe. 

Then Bush's staff blinked: They'd made a billion-dollar 
misjudgment that thousands of bureaucrats and scientists could 
have caught -- if any had been consulted. 

Today, with President Bush ready to sign into law the most 
ambitious remake of U.S. government since 1947, a new game plan 
is taking shape for how the $37 billion agency will muster 
science and technology in America's defense. 

And while Livermore, and Sandia National Laboratories in 
California are poised for a huge role, the original White House 
notion of giving a single laboratory a governing hand over money, 
and research and development appears, if not entirely dead, at 
least politically unfeasible.                  

  President Bush calls Republican Sen. Trent Lott and assembled 
lawmakers about the Homeland Security legislation from his Air 
Force One office during his flight to Prague, November 19. Bush 
plans to sign the legislation into law next week and will then 
face the mammoth task of carrying out the biggest U.S. government 
reorganization in a half century and making it all work. (Wire)   

Still hopeful, Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, wrangled a measure 
freeing the Bush administration to designate a "headquarters 
lab." And Bay Area business boosters expect Washington will warm 
to Livermore and Sandia as the nation's anti-terror capitol, 
sending billions in research dollars rippling across the region's 
tech economy. 

Instead, a broader picture is emerging of 10 or more government 
and university research centers, orchestrated out of Washington, 
where scientists are suffused with a Cold War-style singularity 
of purpose and hot-war urgency. 

All the brick-and-mortar pieces of this network -- Congress gave 
the new agency no home in D.C. -- would fly the new colors of the 
Department of Homeland Security. They will compete for prominence 
-- and for research funds that insiders peg this year at between 
$1 billion and $3 billion. 

This amount will almost certainly swell as the nation confronts 
limitless vulnerabilities, scientists deliver new generations of 
technological answers and lawmakers safeguard their re-election 
by upping the ante for domestic defense. 

"This is going to be a long, twilight struggle with the terrorist 
threat," said Parney Albright, the White House assistant director 
for homeland and national security. The race for 
homeland-security work and dollars unofficially began last 
spring, when President Bush decided to consolidate the nation's 
domestic defense work into a cabinet-level agency.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card led a secret working group 
of five top Bush advisers and their aides in reorganizing the 
federal government. None were government science experts. But 
Homeland Security Adviser Tom Ridge and at least one of his aides 
knew Livermore was heavily invested in dealing with the most 
feared and lethal attacks on domestic soil: CBRN -- chemical, 
biological, radiological and nuclear. Making Livermore a one-stop 
shop for the new agency was simple and seemed logical. 

It also was a monumental miscalculation that ignored history, 
politics and the nature of science. 

The hasty decision set the stage for infighting in both Congress 
and the nation's scientific bureaucracies. Throughout the Cold 
War, the labs clashed over turf and made pacts when it paid or 
was too painful not to. Their directors often sat down with 
federal executives and lawmakers and divvied up the pie according 
to political power and competence. But no lab takes orders from 
another lab. 

"If Livermore was going to be a first among equals, the vision 
was you would have federal officials working with people at 
Livermore to decide what should be done and where," said John 
Harvey, director of policy and planning analysis at the National 
Nuclear Security Administration, the nuclear weapons agency 
associated with the U.S. Energy Department. "Obviously, some of 
the other NNSA laboratories looked at this as putting them 
second. Now the trends are more towards equality." 

"I think it would be a mistake for the secretary to establish a 
pecking order," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the outgoing 
chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee 
with primary authority over the DOE labs. 

Republican takeover in the Senate means the chairmanship will 
pass back to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a six-termer revered by 
labs at home and in California as "Saint Pete" for his dual role 
as their advocate and regulator. He hammered Livermore as lead, 
saying the lab had failed to deliver its pet project -- a giant 
laser-fusion machine -- without more than $1 billion in overruns 
and years of delays. The subtext was obvious: The usual code of 
silence that shelters the labs and their troubled projects from 
peer attack is suspended. 

After his tirade, a senior Sandia executive decided to stem the 
bloodletting and urged a meeting of weapons-lab directors -- 
Livermore's Mike Anastasio, Los Alamos' John C. Browne and 
Sandia's C. Paul Robinson. They talked and, according to one 
attendee, "Even Mike realized it was a nonstarter." They agreed 
the feds, not one of the contractor-run labs, should order funds 
or research at other labs. 

Asked about the Bush administration's "lead lab" idea, Domenici 
said, "I don't think they'll do one." 

Said Tauscher: "I don't believe Sen. Domenici will do anything 
that will deter the ability of this country to defend itself." 

Reassigning Livermore also raised a potential conflict with 
another Bush priority -- maintaining and upgrading the nuclear 
arsenal without nuclear testing -- the job that pays 70 percent 
of Livermore's bills. NNSA officials reminded the White House 
that taking all of Livermore was out of the question. 

Lastly, anti-terror experts for the National Academy of Sciences 
suggested the White House plan concentrated too much on weapons 
of mass destruction -- Livermore's forte -- perhaps at the cost 
of developing anti-terror drugs or dealing with more likely 
threats: tanker trucks and ordinary bombs. 

The original White House plan to swipe a fifth of Livermore's 
staff and nearly all its budget was a public-relations nightmare. 
Homeland Security assistant director Albright is widely 
recognized as the man sent to clean up the mess. 

The administration quickly backtracked, saying it saw Livermore 
rather as a "center of excellence" for anti-terrorism research. 
"We thought better of taking all of Livermore very, very 
quickly," said Albright. 

Congressional insiders who care deeply what role Livermore and 
the nation's other nuclear weapons laboratories will play in the 
Homeland Security Department say these days, when it comes to 
science and technology issues, Albright is, in the words of one 
aide, "the man with the plan." 

Now Albright is pushing yet another vision for the labs -- one 
that does not single out the California lab as top dog. 

Albright wants Sandia, Los Alamos and Livermore to designate some 
operations to the Department of Homeland Security. In planning 
for the transfer of programs to the new agency, he recently asked 
weapons lab executives to identify buildings that could house 
agency employees and spoke of "little Department of Homeland 
Security flags flying over the tops of the roofs" of various 
buildings at all three weapons labs. 

He painted a picture of chemists, biologists and physicists who 
"think and breathe homeland security" eating together and 
"identifying in a career sense with homeland security." 

Albright acknowledged that there probably will be more activity 
at Livermore lab than other labs because it already hosts the 
bulk of the Department of Energy's anti-terrorism programs. But 
he said he wants the national labs to compete -- but for ideas, 
not money "or some badge that says 'Center of Excellence.'" 

He said, however, that there will not be any management decision 
to designate a lead laboratory. And he adamantly opposes putting 
any one lab in charge of directing research and development 
dollars. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers are rushing to pencil in their own designs 
for the federal pot of anti-terror gold. 

"They sort of put everyone's favorite idea in the bill," said 
Harvard public-policy professor Lewis Branscomb, chairman of a 
National Academy of Sciences panel on using science and 
technology to fight terrorism. By Branscomb's count, Congress has 
just created half a dozen entities for research alone. Each one 
is mandatory. 

Congress and the White House then agreed on choices. Tauscher got 
in the final bill that the secretary "may designate" a lab or 
site as a "headquarters laboratory." She said afterward, "We're 
hoping that since the president designated Livermore once, that 
he will again." 

The same bouyant confidence is evident at the Bay Area Economic 
Forum, a pro-business and technology group that sees a big 
Department of Homeland Security presence at Livermore and Sandia 
labs as a shot in the arm for a region sagging from post-Sept. 11 
and Silicon Valley economic woes. 

Forum leaders drew lab, business and government officials 
including San Francisco's Willie Brown to Treasure Island this 
summer to tender support. 

They say the Bay's five universities, six national labs and 
research centers, combined with high-tech and bio-tech 
industries, make it the most innovative pocket of the country, a 
natural for turning anti-terror science into real-world tools. 
Forum leaders trek to Washington early next month to lobby key 
players in the new agency. 

If Washington revives the Livermore-as-lead idea, forum president 
Sean Randolph sees billions of dollars a year flowing into the 
Bay Area, either through the labs or influenced by its 
scientists' word and ties. 

Meanwhile, although the precise shape of the new department's 
technology effort hasn't been decided, White House staff have 
offered widely varying answers in an apparent effort to preserve 
political support. 

Albright, however, remains noncommittal about Livermore's -- and 
the Bay Area's -- prospects for claiming the largest chunk of 
lucrative department research. "How we bring these all together 
is not decided," he said. Will there be a single lead lab? "Time 
will tell. Excellence always bubbles to the top." 
		   	 	
©1999-2002 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers

*****************************************************************
 31 Charge DOE to store, not just ship, wastes
 
Published Nov. 20, 2002
 
The Hanford Communities coalition is sending the wrong message 
with its proposal for a surcharge on transuranic wastes shipped 
to Hanford from other Department of Energy sites.
 
The idea recently was floated by the group, which represents 
county and city governments near the nuclear reservation.
 
The coalition hopes to extract some cash for each barrel of 
wastes coming to Hanford to offset the effects on roads and 
government services.
 
Granted, the timing is right. The Washington Department of 
Ecology and the Energy Department are negotiating an agreement on 
temporary storage of the outside wastes, and the concerns of 
Hanford's closest neighbors ought to be addressed in those talks.
 
But payments simply to defray costs to local governments look too 
much like an endorsement of more wastes at Hanford, if the price 
is right. 

What's needed is an approach that addresses the biggest worry - 
that Hanford will become a dumping ground for the Energy 
Department's other nuclear sites.
 
That's not the Energy Department's stated intent. The agency says 
it plans to use Hanford facilities to prepare barrels of 
transuranic wastes for eventual shipment to a permanent 
underground storage site at Carlsbad, N.M.
 
Current plans are modest, calling for bringing only 150 barrels 
of transuranic wastes from a site in Columbus, Ohio, to Hanford. 

That could change, however. The Energy Department has literally 
thousands of barrels containing wastes contaminated by highly 
radioactive plutonium and other transuranics stored at Hanford 
and elsewhere.
 
Tri-Citians and other Northwesterners know DOE's priorities are 
no more permanent than the politicians who help set them. Despite 
its assurances, more wastes may end up at Hanford, and for longer 
periods, than anyone anticipates.
 
Instead of a windfall in the form of surcharges, Hanford 
Communities ought to be looking for assurances that federal 
budget constraints or other unforeseen problems won't strand the 
incoming barrels at Hanford.
 
One approach that state and local government ought to consider is 
a storage fee that escalates if deadlines for removing the wastes 
aren't met.
 
There may be other ways of encouraging DOE to live up to its 
promises, too. Whatever the details, the final plan should make 
it prohibitively expensive to make Hanford a permanent dump for 
the Energy Department's other sites. What's your opinon? 

Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This 
*****************************************************************
 32 Los Alamos Lab Property Said Missing
 
Las Vegas SUN: 

November 20, 2002 By DEBORAH BAKER ASSOCIATED PRESS 

SANTA FE, N.M.- A memo released by whistleblowers at Los Alamos
National Laboratory says nearly $1.3 million worth of computers,
phones and other property was unaccounted for in the budget year
2001. 

Pete Stockton, senior investigator for the Project on Government
Oversight, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group that received
the memo, said missing computers pose "one hell of a potential
security problem." 

"There's no way they can assure us those computers didn't have
classified information on them," said Stockton, who was a
special assistant to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson - now New
Mexico's governor-elect - in the Clinton administration. 

The inventory of missing items also included two printers whose
custodian was listed as Wen Lee. There was no immediate
confirmation as to whether that person was Wen Ho Lee, a former
scientist who was fired and accused of lab security violations
in downloading nuclear codes. 

No other employee by that name appears on a lab telephone list. 
Lab spokeswoman Linn Tytler did not respond on Wednesday to
repeated requests for comment on the Lee notation and the memo
overall. 

"I haven't heard anything from the lab about that, and I'm sure
if they thought he had two of their printers, I would have heard
from them," said John Cline, one of Wen Ho Lee's lawyers. 

Lee was charged with 59 counts of mishandling data and spent
nine months in solitary confinement before pleading guilty in
September 2000 to a single count of using an unsecured computer
to download a defense document. A federal judge freed him with
an apology. 

The memo from the nuclear weapons laboratory's chief financial
officer, dated April 10 of this year, was distributed
anonymously. Stockton said he believed it was from the same lab
employees who released another memo earlier. 

The whistleblowers claim that lab leaders have been covering up
criminal activity including credit card, purchasing and voucher
fraud. 

The Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General was at
the lab this week investigating allegations of wrongdoing. 
The Albuquerque Journal reported Sunday that internal lab
documents indicated nearly $3 million worth of lab-owned items
disappeared or were reported missing between 1999 and 2001. The
newspaper cited a March report from the lab's Office of Security
Inquiries. 

The April 10 memo from Thomas M. Palmieri, the lab's chief
financial officer, cited "disturbing negative trends regarding
Laboratory management of Government property." 

It said missing property from the budget year 2001 inventory
totaled $723,000 - nearly triple that of the previous year - and
lost or stolen property totaled $533,000. 

"We are still trying to account for these items," the memo said. 
"Neither the Lab or DOE, can accept $1.3M in unaccounted
property. We must do a better job protecting and accounting for
the Government property that we manage for DOE," Palmieri wrote. 

The memo said corrective action plans were to be developed. 
"Our intent is that property management at this institution be a
non-issue a year from now," the memo said. 

Inventories attached to the two memos listed missing property
including computers, cellular telephones, cameras and copiers,
as well as more technical equipment. 

Steve Aftergood, who coordinates the Project on Government
Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists said any
information left on those computers would be so specialized that
it would be "useless or even incomprehensible" to the average
user. 

But it's a different matter if the computers fell into the hands
of foreign intelligence personnel, Aftergood said. 

If nothing else, Aftergood said, the situation "illustrates a
serious flaw in the security procedures at the lab - and if this
particular incident did not pose a threat, it suggests that a
future incident could well do so, unless the defects are
corrected." 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 33 Residents can discuss SRS emissions
 
Augusta Georgia: Metro:

Web posted Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:00 p.m. EST

By Eric Williamson [eric.williamson@augustachronicle.com] South 
Carolina Bureau 

AIKEN - A hearing tonight at Silver Bluff High School will give 
the public an opportunity to air its concerns on Savannah River 
Site air quality issues.

 The meeting is mandatory to gain continued permitting by the 
state Department of Health and Environmental Control.

 Carl Richardson, the director of DHEC's engineering services 
division, said SRS is in compliance with state and federal air 
standards.

 The permitting renewal reflects a change in the law requiring 
consolidated licensing. Sites emitting pollution used to be 
licensed individually.
 
SRS emits a number of different toxins into the environment as 
part of its yearly operations, but the state wants to make sure 
they are in quantities too small to harm humans or wildlife.

  A public hearing on SRS air emissions will be at 7 p.m. today 
at Silver Bluff High School, 64 DeSoto Drive in Aiken.

Among groups expected to speak in opposition to the permitting is 
the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.

 According to a news release issued by the group, "The new air 
pollution permit for SRS would allow over 13 million pounds of 
toxic air pollution to be dumped into the air every year."

 The group contends the cumulative effect from radioactive 
processing plants, coal-fired power plants, diesel generators, 
soil vapor extraction units and a waste incinerator on the 
Department of Energy reserve is an increased danger to public 
health.

 "(SRS) is held to the same standards as any other industrial 
activity would be in the state," Mr. Richardson said.

 He said the meeting is meant for the public to present potential 
flaws in the permitting, rather than as a question-and-answer 
session, but he said questions are welcome before and afterward.

 Reach Eric Williamson at (803) 279-6895 or 
eric.williamson@augustachronicle.com

[eric.williamson@augustachronicle.com] . 

Augusta Chronicle
*****************************************************************
 34 Energy Secretary Lauds Stanford University's New Global Climate 
and Energy R&D Program 
 
energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release

RELEASE DATE: November 20, 2002 

WASHINGTON, DC -- Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham today 
hailed Stanford University's announcement of a new program to 
research and develop promising energy technologies that will 
reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. With commitments 
amounting to $275 million over 10 years from companies such as 
ExxonMobil, General Electric, Schlumberger and others, the 
university's work will be aimed at developing advanced 
technologies in the areas of transportation, electric power, 
fuels, carbon sequestration and end use. 

"The Stanford initiative will serve as an important national 
resource in helping to address the serious issue of climate 
change," Secretary Abraham said, congratulating Stanford 
University and its corporate sponsors. "This effort will play an 
important role in President Bush's climate change strategy, which 
focuses on directing R&D investments into high-priority areas 
where breakthrough technologies can make the difference in 
reducing greenhouse gas intensity while maintaining economic 
growth." 

"The Department of Energy looks forward to working with the 
Stanford team and sharing information and expertise in order to 
further strengthen and focus our climate change research efforts, 
build public-private partnerships in applied research, and expand 
international collaborative activities," Abraham added. 

Media Contact: Release No. PR-02-244 

*****************************************************************
 35 Los Alamos Laboratory Memo Says Nearly $1.3 Million in Computers,
Property Unaccounted For* *

<http://www.sfnewmexican.com>

November 20, 2002

By DEBORAH BAKER | Associated Press 11/21/2002

* SANTA FE?A memo released by whistleblowers at Los Alamos 
National Laboratory says nearly $1.3 million worth of computers, 
phones and other property was unaccounted for in the budget year 
2001. *

Pete Stockton, senior investigator for the Project on Government 
Oversight, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group that received 
the memo, said missing computers pose "one hell of a potential 
security problem."

"There's no way they can assure us those computers didn't have 
classified information on them," said Stockton, who was a special 
assistant to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson - now New Mexico's 
governor-elect - in the Clinton administration.

The inventory of missing items also included two printers whose 
custodian was listed as Wen Lee. There was no immediate 
confirmation as to whether that person was Wen Ho Lee, a former 
scientist who was fired and accused of lab security violations in 
downloading nuclear codes.

No other employee by that name appears on a lab telephone list.

Lab spokeswoman Linn Tytler did not respond on Wednesday to 
repeated requests for comment on the Lee notation and the memo 
overall.

"I haven't heard anything from the lab about that, and I'm sure 
if they thought he had two of their printers, I would have heard 
from them," said John Cline, one of Wen Ho Lee's lawyers.

Lee was charged with 59 counts of mishandling data and spent nine 
months in solitary confinement before pleading guilty in 
September 2000 to a single count of using an unsecured computer 
to download a defense document. A federal judge freed him with an 
apology.

The memo from the nuclear weapons laboratory's chief financial 
officer, dated April 10 of this year, was distributed 
anonymously. Stockton said he believed it was from the same lab 
employees who released another memo earlier.

The whistleblowers claim that lab leaders have been covering up 
criminal activity including credit card, purchasing and voucher 
fraud.

The Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General was at the 
lab this week investigating allegations of wrongdoing.

The Albuquerque Journal reported Sunday that internal lab 
documents indicated nearly $3 million worth of lab-owned items 
disappeared or were reported missing between 1999 and 2001. The 
newspaper cited a March report from the lab's Office of Security 
Inquiries.

The April 10 memo from Thomas M. Palmieri, the lab's chief 
financial officer, cited "disturbing negative trends regarding 
Laboratory management of Government property."

It said missing property from the budget year 2001 inventory 
totaled $723,000 - nearly triple that of the previous year - and 
lost or stolen property totaled $533,000.

"We are still trying to account for these items," the memo said.

"Neither the Lab or DOE, can accept $1.3M in unaccounted 
property. We must do a better job protecting and accounting for 
the Government property that we manage for DOE," Palmieri wrote.

The memo said corrective action plans were to be developed.

"Our intent is that property management at this institution be a 
non-issue a year from now," the memo said.

Inventories attached to the two memos listed missing property 
including computers, cellular telephones, cameras and copiers, as 
well as more technical equipment.

Steve Aftergood, who coordinates the Project on Government 
Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists said any 
information left on those computers would be so specialized that 
it would be "useless or even incomprehensible" to the average 
user.

But it's a different matter if the computers fell into the hands 
of foreign intelligence personnel, Aftergood said.

If nothing else, Aftergood said, the situation "illustrates a 
serious flaw in the security procedures at the lab - and if this 
particular incident did not pose a threat, it suggests that a 
future incident could well do so, unless the defects are 
corrected."

/©Santa Fe New Mexican 2002/
*****************************************************************
 36 Lawsuit: Radiation records were altered 

[http://enquirer.com] 

Thursday, November 21, 2002 

The Associated Press 

COLUMBUS - A lawsuit accuses the operators of the Portsmouth 
Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon of altering the records of 
workers' exposure to radiation to qualify for federal government 
safety bonuses. 

The lawsuit was filed in 2000 in U.S. District Court under the 
false-claim act, but a judge unsealed it just last week, the 
Columbus Dispatch reported. 
Plant security guard Jeff Walburn contends in the lawsuit that 
Lockheed Martin, Lockheed Martin Utility Services and U.S. 
Enrichment Corp. used false and unreliable exposure readings to 
receive incentive payments for operating a safe work environment.

The false-claim act allows a civilian to sue on behalf of the 
federal government when it overpays a supplier because of 
alleged fraud. 

USEC and Lockheed Martin both declined to comment. 
If Mr. Walburn wins, he could receive a cut of damages awarded 
to the U.S government. 

Mr. Walburn's attorney, Steve Edwards, said he has depositions 
from two employees who said they altered 400 to 600 records per 
year. 
"We have evidence in Jeff's case that his records were changed 
twice," Mr. Edwards said. 

The plant helped produce weapons-grade uranium and handled 
plutonium during the Cold War. 
The plant was closed last year but operations to decontaminate 
it are continuing. 
Congress two years ago approved payments to workers exposed to 
radiation at the plant who have been diagnosed with cancer. 

Piketon is 100 miles east of Cincinnati. 

Copyright [http://cincinnati.com/copyright] 1995-2002. The 
*****************************************************************
 37 DOE will keep WWII-era calutrons in service 

The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 

1:50 p.m. on Thursday, November 21, 2002 

The U.S. Department of Energy is retaining capability in Oak 
Ridge for producing stable, non-radioactive isotopes. 

DOE earlier planned to dismantle the World War II-era machines, 
called calutrons, which can electro-magnetically separate 
elements into their slightly different atomic forms. They were 
built originally to separate U-235 for the atomic bomb dropped 
on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. 

Even though these machines have not been operated for about 
four years, a report by DOE's inspector general says it was 
important to keep them in a workable condition until another 
domestic source is created. 

The report says some stable isotopes are needed for defense and 
homeland security purposes and argues that the United States 
could not depend on Russia or other outside sources. In 
addition, some of the stable isotopes are used to help produce 
radioisotopes for medicine and industry, auditors said. 

An isotope is any of two or more forms of an element having the 
same or closely related chemical properties and the same atomic 
number but different atomic weights. 

[http://www.oakridger.com/contact/index.html] 

[http://www.oakridger.com] 
All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger 
*****************************************************************
 38 Plutonium waste will be shipped to WIPP 

The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 

1:50 p.m. on Thursday, November 21, 2002 

CARLSBAD (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship 45 
truckloads of plutonium waste from a former nuclear weapons 
factory near Denver to a federal underground dump in southern 
New Mexico. 

The announcement, published Monday in the Federal Register, 
reverses a position the department took in February. 

At the time, officials said two troublesome tons of plutonium 
waste now sitting at the old Rocky Flats factory would not be 
sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. 

The department's notice says that nearly half of the waste is 
now destined for WIPP. 

Assistant Energy Secretary Jessie Roberson said Tuesday the 
department reconsidered after realizing a portion of the two 
tons had a low-enough plutonium concentration to meet WIPP's 
disposal criteria. 

That explanation did not sit well with DOE critics, who said 
the department misled them when it announced in February that it 
had no plans to send any of the plutonium to WIPP. 

"It looks to me like once again we've been lied to," said Don 
Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center. 

Hancock's fear is that the agency will follow up its current 
decision with other small shipments that gradually add up to the 
two tons. 

"They just seem to want to piecemeal this whole thing so that 
people don't get excited," he said. "But when you put lots of 
little together, it ends up being lots of plutonium, none of 
which was supposed to go to WIPP." 

The problem plutonium stands in the way of a DOE commitment to 
finish cleaning up Rocky Flats so it can be permanently closed. 
To do that, the plutonium must be sent elsewhere. 

The department's plan satisfies New Mexico's two senators, who 
had complained in January when it looked like the entire two 
tons were headed to WIPP. 

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said that by only sending the 
lower-concentration portion, the department is adhering to 
existing rules about WIPP disposal. 

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said he has been assured that the 
waste is comparable in all relevant respects to the waste 
already being shipped to WIPP. 

The portion to be sent to WIPP is 18 percent plutonium mixed 
with other chemicals, which Roberson said meets WIPP disposal 
criteria. 

Roberson said the department still does not have a plan for the 
remaining ton, which has a plutonium concentration higher than 
the 20 percent permitted at WIPP. 

[http://www.oakridger.com/contact/index.html] 

All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger 
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 39 MSC completes $1.2 million upgrade of rolling mill 

The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 

1:50 p.m. on Thursday, November 21, 2002 

Manufacturing Sciences Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of 
British Nuclear Fuels Limited, Inc, located in Oak Ridge has 
announced the completion of a $1.2 million upgrade to their 
four-high, reversing rolling mill. The rolling mill upgrade 
integrates new state of the art electronic computerized controls 
along with a renewal of the mill's mechanical components. Quad 
Engineering Inc, based in Toronto, Ontario Canada was the 
general contactor for the project. The project was completed in 
four weeks thanks to the combined effort of the contractor and 
MSC employees, according to an MSC press release. 

Dave Brown, general manager stated in the release, "We have 
made this large capital investment to ensure that we continue to 
meet and exceed our customers' expectations of high quality and 
on-time delivery of rolled products, now and in the years ahead."

The rolling mill was last upgraded in 1985 when it was 
purchased by MSC. Over the years, the mechanical components have 
worn and replacements for some of the original electrical 
components have become unavailable. 

The mechanical and electrical upgrade significantly increases 
the reliability of the mill and ensures that the company can 
maintain the dimensional tolerances, according to the release. 

MSC employs 39 people at its manufacturing plant located at 804 
South Illinois Ave. MSC was founded in 1982 to produce depleted 
uranium sheet and plate for defense and research applications. 
BNFL acquired MSC in 1998. In 1999, MSC began to market toll 
rolling and manufacturing services to the non-radioactive 
specialty metals industry. 

border="0"> [http://www.oakridger.com] 
All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger 
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 40 Energy industry bows to pressure

Tri-Valley Herald Online
	
[http://www.trivalleyherald.com/]  	   	   	   

Article Last Updated: Thursday, November 21, 2002 -
 		   	 	
Stanford, Exxon Mobil announce $225-million deal to find 
eco-friendly sources of power

By FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Stanford University and a coalition of energy companies led by 
Exxon Mobil Corp. said Wednesday they would spend $225 million 
over the next decade to develop new technologies to meet the 
energy and environmental needs of a growing world population. 

The creation of the Global Climate and Energy Project, a 
worldwide alliance of researchers from industry and academia, 
drew oohs and ahhs from academics and words of caution about the 
potential for corporate interests to pollute science. 

Environmentalists were stunned by the size and scope of the 
10-year project, although they said its ultimate value to society 
would only be known if and when the research makes its way into 
real-world applications. 

"We're talking about changing the very manner in which we power 
the world," said Sanjay Correa, technology leader of the global 
research arm of General Electric, which gave $50 million to the 
effort.                         

Exxon contributed the lion's share -- $100 million -- to 
Stanford, which said Wednesday that it would focus on developing 
technologies that help satisfy the world's growing energy needs 
in a more environmentally friendly way. 

"We recognize that solutions must meet the test of practicality 
and cost. They must be readily accepted and implemented," said 
Stanford President John Hennessy. Still, "fundamental new 
knowledge will be needed to create a platform for novel 
solutions." 

Areas to be probed include energy transportation, alternative 
power and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. 

It will also cast a global net, striving to bring power to the 
estimate one to two billion people who lack access to electricity 
for heat, light or transportation, said Lynn Orr, a petroleum 
engineering professor who will step down as dean of Stanford's 
earth sciences school to direct the program. 

But the program won't delve into the controversial science behind 
global warming, Orr said.

 And that had some describing the industry-led effort as a 
"stalling tactic," particularly since Exxon -- the world's 
largest oil and gas producer -- is skeptical of studies that link 
rising global temperatures with emissions from power plants, cars 
and other manmade products. 

Shell Oil Co. has invested $1 billion in renewable energy. BP 
Amoco PLC is the world's biggest vendor of solar systems, noted 
Ross Gelbspan, author of "The Heat is On: The Climate Crisis, the 
Cover-up, the Prescription." 

"By Contrast, Exxon is pretending that what is needed is research 
that will not bear fruit for 10 or more years," Gelbspan said. 

Others urged vigilance, particularly as the public rarely gives 
universities the benefit of the doubt in public-private 
partnerships. 

"You start thinking like a member of one of these companies or 
you imbibe their view of the world just because you're spending a 
lot of time with them," said Rob Socolow, one of the lead 
investigators at a similar program at Princeton University.               
	 	
©1999-2002 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
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 41 Seismic survey peers beneath Ancients monument

Durango Herald Online
 
  [La Plata Economic Development] 
 
November 21, 2002
 
By Suzy Meyer Cortez Journal
  
Vibroseis buggies climb an old uranium-exploration road in the 
southwestern portion of Canyon of the Ancients National Monument 
on Tuesday.   

Three energy companies are wrapping up a project they hope will 
give them a clearer picture of the resources that lie beneath a 
portion of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, and they 
say they’ve acquired the knowledge in the least-destructive way 
possible.
 
The three companies – Legacy Energy, Red Willow Production 
Company (the energy company of the Southern Ute Tribe) and Robert 
L. Bayless Produce, all leaseholders in the project area – 
compose an exploration partnership that contracted with Western 
Geophysical to perform seismic studies for oil and natural gas in 
an area near the Ismay Trading Post in the southwestern portion 
of the monument.
 
The North Mail Trail vibroseis project abuts a similar 
exploration performed in 1995. The 20-square-mile project area 
encompassed 9,600 acres on the monument and 3,136 acres of 
adjoining private land but actually disturbed less than 250 
acres.
 
Seismic surveys have three components:
 
  + A seismic source, in this case vibroseis trucks: These large 
vehicles (unlike their earlier counterparts, "thumper trucks" 
that produced shock waves by dropping a 6,000-pound weight onto 
the ground from a height of about 10 feet) generate weak sound 
waves at predetermined frequencies through the controlled motion 
of a 3,876-square-inch vibrator pad resting on the ground. 
Vibroseis trucks, or "buggies," have special flotation tires that 
spread the weight over a large area to minimize surface 
compaction. The weight per square inch is equivalent to that of a 
sport-utility vehicle, Western GeCo officials said. + Receivers, 
called geophones: The vibrations originating from the vibroseis 
buggies bounce off different subsurface rock layers, and remote 
geophones sense those reflections, or echoes. + Recording 
equipment: Seismic data is transmitted to support vehicles that 
never have to leave existing roads. When analyzed, that data 
provides comprehensive information about subsurface geological 
formations. "We have to do a bunch of processing and computer 
manipulation to the data and what we end up getting is a 
three-dimensional image of the rock layers," said Claudia Rebne, 
vice-president and geophysicist for Legacy Energy. "Then we’re 
able to delineate where ancient reefs are located. Those are the 
productive reservoirs.
 
"Once we identify that, we have a very good chance of finding 
hydrocarbons. If we used traditional 2-D seismic testing, we 
might have a drilling success of about 25 percent. This 3-D 
seismic gives us a drilling success rate of up to 75 percent."
 
Without seismic testing, the number of successful wells compared 
to the number drilled is extremely small. In the 1950s, 
wildcatters – speculative well drillers – had a success rate of 
just 3 percent.
 
A higher success rate means a lower proportion of resource damage 
because the energy companies can avoid drilling wells that never 
produce.
 
"We think that 3-D seismic is the environmentally beneficial way 
to explore on sensitive places like the monument," Rebne said. 
"Seismic impacts are short-term and minimal.
 
"If we can delineate productive reservoirs and increase our 
drilling success rate substantially, in the long run it will mean 
fewer wells in the area and less surface and environmental 
impact."
 
 
 
ENVIRONMENTAL OBJECTIONS ALLAYED
 
Concern over those impacts prompted the San Juan Citizens 
Alliance to challenge the seismic project after it was approved 
by the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the 
monument. Canyons of the Ancients contains what may be the 
highest concentration of archaeological sites in the nation and 
is also habitat for two "sensitive species" of lizards, the 
long-nosed leopard lizard and the desert spiny lizard. Although 
neither lizard is considered threatened or endangered, their 
populations are being monitored.
 
A lawsuit challenging the BLM decision to award the exploration 
permit was filed shortly after the permit was issued, and a 
10-day temporary restraining order was issued on Aug. 20 by a 
federal judge in U.S. District Court in Denver. A hearing was 
scheduled for the end of September, but Judge Lewis Babcock 
strongly encouraged representatives for the plaintiffs, energy 
companies and the BLM to meet to explore settlement options or at 
least narrow the issues related to the case.
 
"The plaintiffs actually approached the energy companies and 
said, ‘If you guys are willing to do this, we may be willing to 
drop our case,’" Rebne said. "Primarily, we ended up moving a few 
source points, generally in areas that were on open leases, from 
off-road positions to roads."
 
"Both groups worked out a practical solution. Environ-mentalists 
knew exactly what they wanted to protect, and the oil industry 
folks knew exactly what they wanted to do," said Jay Tuchton, 
director of the Earthjustice Environmental Law Clinic, which 
represented the environmental groups in the lawsuit challenging 
the seismic project, at the time of the settlement.
 
"We knew we had a good chance of winning this lawsuit, but we 
looked at those sourcepoint moves and felt that it really didn’t 
hurt our data quality, so we were willing to do that," Rebne 
said. "We felt that it was better to settle and move forward with 
our seismic project."
 
The delay caused by the lawsuit, along with fall rainstorms, has 
endangered some of Legacy Energy’s leases on the monument. Some 
of those leases come due in late February, and in order to renew 
them, the company will need to initiate permitting and drilling 
of a well on each lease by that time. Rebne said her company was 
considering a request to the BLM to suspend the lease-termination 
date to compensate for delays beyond Legacy’s control.
 
RESOURCE PROTECTION
 
Approximately 25 percent of the vibroseis work was done on 
existing roads, including some created during the Cold-War years 
of uranium exploration, Rebne said, but there aren’t enough roads 
to provide a seismic map of the whole area. Only the vibroseis 
buggies traveled off-road. All receiving and recording equipment 
remained on existing roads.
 
The archaeological field work had been completed last year. The 
energy companies provided the BLM with a map showing proposed 
locations for receivers and sources, and an archaeologist 
physically surveyed all of the vehicular access routes and 
vibroseis point locations.
 
"That’s done prior to permit issuance," Rebne said. "In a 
100-foot corridor, they look for archaeological sites. If they 
find one, we have to move our survey around the site to avoid and 
protect the cultural re-sources."
 
During the surveying, the archaeological surveillance continues. 
"Everyone has been working very hard to make sure that all 
compliance procedures are followed," said project archeologist 
Carol De-Francia of 4-Corners Archaeo-logical Service. "Our 
archaeological monitors have worked side by side with the vibe 
trucks and layout crews, every day, from sun-up to sundown."
 
A wildlife biologist also surveyed the project area ahead of time 
to identify lizard burrows and habitat, and accompanied the 
vibroseis trucks in those areas. "We did our best to avoid those 
areas and mitigate any impacts on the lizards," Rebne said.
 
Monument manager LouAnn Jacobson agreed. "Having just been out 
there, I can say that the company is being very, very careful to 
minimize impacts," Jacobson said. "They have worked very hard to 
avoid all the archaeological sites and to minimize any kind of 
off-road travel beyond the seismic buggies."
 
A larger issue is the objection of environmental groups to 
resource extraction on public lands, but that question is not one 
to be decided within the scope of a single exploration project. 
The monument proclamation allows energy exploration on existing 
leases, and the interim management document allows for seismic 
exploration. Changing those rules would be a matter of federal 
policy.
 
AN ECONOMIC FORCE
 
Balancing the objections to such uses of the monument are 
concerns by Montezuma County officials about the county’s budget, 
which depends heavily on taxes generated by oil, gas and carbon 
dioxide from the western part of the county. CO2 stores are 
predicted to be depleted within the two to three decades, and as 
revenues from those activities decrease, county commissioners 
hope oil-and-gas wells within the monument may take up some slack 
both in the tax base and in the local employment picture.
 
The area of the current seismic exploration lies outside the 
McElmo Dome, the source of local CO2 production. Some producing 
wells, especially if they can be located without the resource 
damage of hit-and-miss drilling, seem like a good thing to many 
residents of an economically strapped county.
 
As voters cast the ballots that would give him a seat on the 
commission, candidate Dewayne Findley and current commissioner 
Kelly Wilson toured the North Mail Trail project area Tuesday, 
visiting the site of the 1995 vibroseis survey. Very few remnants 
of that survey remained evident, a testament to the success of 
reclamation techniques.
 
"If things follow in the past of the project we did in 1995, in a 
couple of years we won’t be able to tell they were there," 
Jacobson said in a phone interview. "They’ve come up with a 
pretty good strategy for reclamation and are going beyond some of 
the requirements we put in the permit."
 
"Our goal is to make sure people don’t notice those temporary 
vibe tracks and get on them and start to create roads," Rebne 
said. "Mother Nature will heal herself and the vibe tracks will 
fade away. The big point is to keep others from traveling on them 
while they’re still visible."
 
That’s an important issue within Canyons of the Ancients because 
much of the vandalism to archaeological sites is what resource 
managers term "vehicle-based."
 
"People usually see what they think is a road and say, ‘Hey, 
let’s see where it goes,’" said Tuchton, the environmental 
group’s attorney. "Almost all of your destruction in these areas 
is vehicle-based. A person doesn’t walk five miles to spray-paint 
a kiva." All the parties involved hope not.
 
"The long-term impacts out there are going to be very, very 
minimal, and I hope we’ll get some good information that will 
also help to minimize any impact from development of the existing 
leases," Jacobson said.
 
Rebne is confident that will happen. "How many of you have ever 
seen a seismic operation? There’ve been other 3-D surveys on 
monument lands, and a ton of 2-D surveys on monument lands. It’s 
been going on since the 1950s or 1960s.
 
"If people haven’t noticed us for the past 50 years, even though 
we’ve been out there working, I think that says something good 
about our operations."
 	   	 	
Contents copyright © 2002, the Durango Herald. 
    
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