***************************************************************** 05/23/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.132 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: Energy Task Force Documents Show Industry Influence 2 Vietnam considers building first nuclear power plant 3 Vietnam closer to first commercial nuclear plant 4 Finland set to boost atomic power against E.U. trend 5 Vietnam considers building first nuclear power plant NUCLEAR REACTORS 6 US: NRC to Hold Regulatory Conference with Entergy Operations, Inc. 7 Hungarian NPP to load Soviet reactors with British fuel 8 US: Davis-Besse Nuclear plant probe focuses on acid leak 9 US: Restarting the Browns Ferry Reactor 10 Ukrainian reactor shut down after minor accident NUCLEAR SAFETY 11 Nuclear-safety experts to evaluate risk to public of depleted NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 12 US: Yucca opponents met with skepticism 13 US: Opponents Spar Over Nuke Waste Site 14 US: Experts say DOE plays down Yucca risks 15 US: YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Senators told risks of shipping 16 US: Editorial: Recycling an old idea on nuclear waste 17 US: Nevada enlists help to fight nuclear waste dump 18 US: NRC chief backs safety of nuke waste shipments 19 US: State to file sixth lawsuit against Yucca 20 US: Actor Cromwell criticizes Yucca dump 21 US: Herrera leads anti-Yucca speakers at public hearing 22 US: Allow Goshute Gambling 23 ALI LOVES SELLAFIELD CHALLENGE 24 UK: BNFL: RE-BUILDING BRIDGES TO JAPAN 25 UK: SELLAFIELD SAFETY STARTS TO MEET NEW TARGETS 26 US: NEVADA LEADERS BRING YUCCA FIGHT TO UTAH 27 Russia planning nuclear waste burial facility on Arctic 28 US: Just say no to Yucca, Rocky says NUCLEAR WEAPONS 29 US: FCNL: Legislative Action Message (5/23/02) 30 Why nuclear conflict is a real threat 31 Indian strategic nuclear command to be in place next month 32 Army inducts nuclear attack resistant shelters 33 Junk Treaty Avoids Russia's Real Non-proliferation Problems 34 Straw warns that dispute over Karachi could escalate into nuclear 35 India/Pakistan: Looking into the nuclear abyss 36 AU: Concerns over increased tension between nuclear neighbours 37 Mothballed warheads pose continuing threat 38 US: Little fine print, and lots of loopholes 39 The Moscow Relationship US DEPT. OF ENERGY 40 HAB to consider federal plan to speed cleanup at Hanford 41 DOE proposes uranium management program 42 PACRO approves $85,000 more for park 43 Nuclear events, scientists, even spies inspire thousands of OTHER NUCLEAR 44 Canada tries to duplicate nuclear fusion experiment 45 ADVANCED PROPULSION IDEAS COME OF AGE 46 Senate Panel Issues White House Subpoenas Over Enron ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Energy Task Force Documents Show Industry Influence Environment News Service: By Cat Lazaroff WASHINGTON, DC, May 22, 2002 (ENS) - Vice President Richard Cheney's energy task force met with industry representatives 25 times for every one contact with conservation and public interest groups, shows a review by the group whose lawsuit prompted the release of thousands of Energy Department documents. The review was released the same day that the energy agency delivered another 1,500 pages of previously withheld task force information. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has now been provided more than 13,000 pages of documents by the Energy Department (DOE) after winning a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The DOE was the lead agency working with the Cheney task force, called the National Energy Policy Development Group, which was commissioned by President George W. Bush in January 2001 to develop a national energy policy. [Abraham] In February, a federal court ordered the release of all documents related to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's involvement with the White House energy task force. (Photo courtesy DOE [http://www.energy.gov/] ) During the course of its operation, the energy task force received input from hundreds of corporations, organizations and individuals. After searching the DOE documents for evidence of task force contacts with outside groups, the NRDC says that energy industry lobbyists enjoyed extraordinary access to the panel. The data shows that industry representatives had 714 direct contacts between January 2001 and September 2001, while non-industry representatives had only 29. The NRDC could not definitively categorize another 105 direct contacts. "A year ago the Cheney task force issued recommendations that read like a wish list for energy companies," said NRDC senior attorney Sharon Buccino. "When it came to developing the administration's environmentally and fiscally reckless energy policy, it was all industry all the time." The representatives tallying the most direct contacts with the energy task force were from some of the nation's largest and most influential energy companies and trade associations - industries that stood to benefit from the president's policies to boost domestic energy production. Some of them also are major donors to President Bush and Republican congressional candidates. For example, the Nuclear Energy Institute had contact with the task force 19 times. This group contributed $437,404 to Republican candidates and the Republican Party from 1999 to 2002. Energy giant Southern Company, a group that contributed $1,626,507 to Republican candidates and the GOP from 1999 to 2002, had contact with the task force seven times. [Cheney] Vice President Richard Cheney headed the National Energy Policy Development Group. (Photo courtesy The White House [http://www.whitehouse.gov/] ) For the purpose of NRDC's analysis, meetings, phone calls, letters, memos or Email communication with the task force was classified as direct contacts. The conservation group excluded indirect contacts, such as reports, press releases, hearing statements and information obtained from websites - the avenues by which the task force has admitted to gathering most of its input from environmental organizations. Based on these criteria, Exelon Corporation, a utility and energy company, had contact with the task force six times, and has contributed $910,886 to Republican candidates and the GOP from 1999 to 2002. The Edison Electric Institute, which contributed $598,169 to Republican candidates and the GOP from 1999 to 2002, had contact with the task force 14 times. The National Mining Association had contact with the task force nine times, and has contributed $575,496 to Republican candidates and the GOP from 1999 to 2002. The American Gas Association had contact with the task force eight times, and has contributed $480,478 to Republican candidates and the GOP over that period. Perhaps most damning, the now defunct Enron Corporation had contact with the task force four times, in addition to the six times that Vice President Cheney has reported meeting with company officials. Enron contributed $2,480,056 to Republican candidates and the GOP from 1999 to 2002. The NRDC points out that these contacts represent only were ones in which Energy Department staff participated. Other direct contacts with the energy task force, for example through the vice president's office, are not included in these tallies because the Bush administration has refused to release that information. The NRDC review defined industry contacts to include companies, trade associations, and law and consulting firms representing energy interests. NRDC did not distinguish the type of industry, so its numbers for the energy industry includes a handful of alternative energy groups. [Cabinet] The Bush Cabinet discusses the National Energy Policy. From left: EPA Administrator Christie Whitman, Education Secretary Rod Paige, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Secretary of State Colin Powell, President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta (Photo courtesy The White House [http://www.whitehouse.gov/] ) Likewise, the non-industry category includes think tanks that the NRDC claims are heavily financed by energy interests. The unknown category represents entities that NRDC was unable to identify or categorize. Today, after quickly reviewing about 1,500 additional documents that the DOE delivered to the NRDC on Tuesday, the conservation group said it has uncovered evidence showing the Bush administration adopted several energy policies requested by Chevron Corporation. The company provided several recommendations, ranging from easing federal permitting rules for energy projects to relaxing standards fuel supply requirements, versions of which were ultimately included in the president's national energy plan. For example, Chevron CEO David O'Reilly recommended that the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) "charge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator to identify and address federal barriers to permitting energy projects." The task force then recommended that "the President issue an Executive Order to rationalize permitting for energy production in an environmentally sound manner by directing federal agencies to expedite permits and other federal actions necessary for energy related project approvals on a national basis." "The administration has unlawfully delayed the release of some of the most embarrassing evidence of industry involvement in the Bush energy plan," said Buccino, noting that Tuesday's delivery came 41 days after a court ordered deadline for the DOE to release the information. Other documents released Tuesday reveal involvement by the National Mining Association, the National Petroleum &Refiners Association, General Motors and other major industries in the development of the Bush energy plan, the NRDC says. On March 1, 2001, energy lobbyist Haley Barbour, former head of the Republican Party, sent Cheney a memo arguing against federal regulation of emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. "A moment of truth is arriving in the form of a decision whether this administration's policy will be to regulate and/or tax CO2 as a pollutant," Barbour wrote. "The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore." [Bush] President George W. Bush has opted against federal regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. (Photo by Eric Draper courtesy The White House [http://www.whitehouse.gov/] ) On March 13, 2001, President Bush announced that he would not seek to cap CO2 emissions from power plants. On March 16, 2001, former Senator Jack Kemp sent Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham a letter on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has been linked with energy industry groups. Kemp's letter lauded the administration for the way it handled the CO2 issue and credited the Competitive Enterprise Institute for "giving the president intellectual support and political cover to 'do the right thing.'" In return, Kemp asked Abraham to attend the group's annual fundraising dinner two months later. Abraham spoke at the dinner, promoted the administration's energy plan and thanked CEI for its "good work." Also on March 16, Jane Hughes Turnbull, a member of the National Coal Council, wrote to Abraham to announce her resignation from the Council, calling the president's decision not to regulate CO2 emissions "profoundly shortsighted [and] an obvious and expedient response to industry interests." "Pressure from the National Coal Council contributed to this decision," Turnbull wrote, noting that the council's "leadership was intent on bolstering the economic well being of the industry, if need be at the expense of the environment." "The coal industry and an industry front group appear to be dictating our nation's energy future," said NRDC's Buccino. "The administration's policy may signal a glowing future for big energy companies but it's a bleak one for the environment and public health." [grid] Coal fired power plants, which provide more than half of America's electricity supply, also produce much of the nation's air pollution. (Photo courtesy National Renewable Energy Laboratory [http://www.nrel.gov/] ) The NRDC will return to court on Thursday to seek additional task force documents from the DOE and the Department of Interior. That same day, the Sierra Club will be in court for the first hearing in the group's lawsuit seeking records from Vice President Cheney's office and other task force entities under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The Sierra Club suit has been consolidated with a similar suit filed by Judicial Watch. Tomorrow the court will consider the U.S. government's motions to dismiss both lawsuits. "When the Bush Administration wrote its energy policy, big oil and energy companies were given the red carpet treatment, but the public was shut out of the process," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. "Americans deserve to know what happened behind those closed doors, and the law requires it." More information, including a list of the DOE's outside contacts related to the task force, is available at: http://www.nrdc.org [http://www.nrdc.org] . To review political campaign contributions from the energy sector, visit the Center for Responsive Politics' website at: http://www.opensecrets.org/new/energy_task_force/index.asp [http://www.opensecrets.org/new/energy_task_force/index.asp] Email the Environment Editor [news@ens-news.com] ***************************************************************** 2 Vietnam considers building first nuclear power plant Thu May 23, 8:08 AM ET By TRAN VAN MINH, Associated Press Writer HANOI, Vietnam - Vietnam's government will set up a group to study the feasibility of building the country's first nuclear power plant, an official said Thursday. The group of government representatives and scientists is expected to submit its findings to the National Assembly for approval late next year, said the official of the National Institute of Atomic Energy. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the plant would require an investment of dlrs 3 billion to dlrs 6 billion to build. Vietnam's electricity consumption has increased by 12 percent to 15 percent a year in recent years. Currently, the country produces 5,500 megawatts to 6,000 megawatts a year, 55 percent of which is generated by hydropower plants, the official said. The country will need 20,000 megawatts to 30,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020, and nuclear power is needed to help meet that demand, he said. Other analysts, however, have questioned whether a poor country like Vietnam with sizable natural gas, coal and hydroelectric resources should turn to nuclear power. The institute has selected six places in four central provinces as possible locations for a nuclear power plant — one in Quang Binh, one in Phu Yen and two each in Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan provinces, the official said. He said several countries, including Russia, China and South Korea (news - web sites), have offered to sell Vietnam technology for building nuclear power plants. Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 3 Vietnam closer to first commercial nuclear plant Asia Times: Southeast Asia [Asia Times Online HANOI - Vietnam has moved one step closer to building its first commercial nuclear power plant after the government's approval of a recent pre-feasibility study. According to the study, the plant could begin supplying nuclear-generated electricity to the national power network as early as 2017. The report also addressed safety issues for the nuclear power plant, which are a major concern. Scientists assure the public that current advanced technologies are safe. According to studies by the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute and Ministry of Industry, the plant optimally would have a capacity between 1,200 and 4,000 megawatts. A comparable plant with a 1,000MW capacity would cost between US$1.5 billion and $2 billion in initial investments. Officials expect the country that supplies the technology will also provide the necessary loans to finance the project. Despite the extraordinary investment requirements, scientists believe the nuclear power plant can compete successfully with existing electricity plants fired by imported coal. Experience dictates that, for countries that must import fuel sources to generate electricity, such as Japan and South Korea, nuclear-generated electricity is usually the cheapest alternative. Nuclear energy is not a foreign concept to Vietnam, since the country has safely and effectively operated a nuclear facility in Da Lat in the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) for the past 20 years, albeit for research purposes. Currently, scientists are evaluating 20 possible construction locations within the central coast region, with a heavy focus on safety and economic criteria. For safety requirements, the designated site should not be earthquake-prone or in proximity to volcanoes, and must be situated above sea level. In terms of economics, the facility should be built in close proximity to the national electricity network and adjacent to localities that consume electricity to minimize losses in transmittance. Ideally, the site will also be near a seaport, so materials can be easily transported. Six locations have been shortlisted so far, including two sites in Quang Binh and Phu Yen provinces, two in Binh Thuan province, and another two in Ninh Thuan province. (Asia Pulse/VNA) ©2001 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd. Room 6301, The Center, 99 Queen's Road, Central, Hong Kong ***************************************************************** 4 Finland set to boost atomic power against E.U. trend - 5/23/2002 - ENN.com Thursday, May 23, 2002 By Paul de Bendern, Reuters HELSINKI — Finland looks set to become the first west European country in more than a decade to approve the construction of a new nuclear reactor in a move aimed at meeting future energy needs and greenhouse gas targets. Parliament is expected to approve Friday by a very slim majority the five-party coalition government's proposal to build a fifth nuclear power station, but as some members are undecided, it is not yet a done deal, according to recent opinion polls. If it approves the bill, it will be the first such plan since 1991, when France authorized the construction of a new reactor, completed two years ago, Greenpeace International said. Ever since the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, which spread radiation across Europe, western European governments have sought alternative energy sources. And no commercial nuclear power plant has been ordered in the United States since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, where there was a partial reactor core meltdown. Pro-nuclear campaigners say a yes vote in Finland will get Western Europe moving toward more nuclear power, as Eastern European and Asian countries are already building reactors. "It will help leaders in Western Europe persuade their public," said John Ritch, director-general at the World Nuclear Association, an organization promoting nuclear power. The antinuclear lobby has criticized the government for casting aside health and security risks, particularly important since the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States. They also say it is caving in to industry. "This is vested interest of the Finnish industry," said Tobias Muenchmeyer, nuclear expert at Greenpeace, referring to the fact that some of Finland's biggest companies, like Fortum and UPM-Kymmene, would fund the construction. LIFT ECONOMY, CUT GREENHOUSE GASES The government says it needs more reactors to ensure economic growth, meet targets of the 1997 Kyoto accord on climate change, and cut its dependence on Russia, which provides most of its imported energy. Some 71 percent of energy is imported. It would cost up to 2.5 billion euros (US$2.32 billion) to build the reactor, and it would be completed in 2008 at the earliest. But first parliament will need to approve a separate plan for the actual construction. The European Union has left the decision on nuclear energy up to each member country. Recent opinion polls show that a slight majority of Finns back more nuclear power, partly because Finland will be able to meet its Kyoto targets. Under the Kyoto pact, developed nations agreed to curb emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for blanketing the globe and driving up temperatures. Rich nations aim to cut their emissions of gases like carbon dioxide blamed for global warming by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The Environment Ministry says it is on track to meet that target but says one of the challenges is to cut its reliance on coal, which accounts for 10 percent of its electricity supply. The Green Party, a government member that has threatened to quit if parliament backs the proposal, was critical. "Nuclear power wards off the greenhouse phenomenon like a shot of liquor a hangover," said Osmo Soininvaara, chairman of the Green Party. (Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo) Copyright 2002, Reuters All Rights Reserved Network Inc. Copyright © 2001 Environmental News Network Inc. ***************************************************************** 5 Vietnam considers building first nuclear power plant Thu May 23, 8:08 AM ET By TRAN VAN MINH, Associated Press Writer HANOI, Vietnam - Vietnam's government will set up a group to study the feasibility of building the country's first nuclear power plant, an official said Thursday. The group of government representatives and scientists is expected to submit its findings to the National Assembly for approval late next year, said the official of the National Institute of Atomic Energy. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the plant would require an investment of dlrs 3 billion to dlrs 6 billion to build. Vietnam's electricity consumption has increased by 12 percent to 15 percent a year in recent years. Currently, the country produces 5,500 megawatts to 6,000 megawatts a year, 55 percent of which is generated by hydropower plants, the official said. The country will need 20,000 megawatts to 30,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020, and nuclear power is needed to help meet that demand, he said. Other analysts, however, have questioned whether a poor country like Vietnam with sizable natural gas, coal and hydroelectric resources should turn to nuclear power. The institute has selected six places in four central provinces as possible locations for a nuclear power plant — one in Quang Binh, one in Phu Yen and two each in Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan provinces, the official said. He said several countries, including Russia, China and South Korea, have offered to sell Vietnam technology for building nuclear power plants. Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 NRC to Hold Regulatory Conference with Entergy Operations, Inc. NRC: Press Release Region IV - 2002 - 25 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 www.nrc.gov No. IV-02-025 May 23, 2002 CONTACT: Breck Henderson Phone: 817-860-8128 Cellular: 817-917-1227 E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov [opa4@nrc.gov] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will hold a regulatory conference with officials of Entergy Operations, Inc., operator of River Bend Nuclear Station, a nuclear power plant near St. Francisville, La., on Monday, June 3. Conferees will discuss a potential "yellow" inspection finding involving River Bend's emergency preparedness plan. The meeting, which is open to public observation, will begin at 1 p.m. in NRC Region IV offices in Arlington, Texas. The public will have the opportunity to ask questions of the NRC staff before the meeting is adjourned. The NRC will discuss with Entergy an inspection finding with a preliminary determination of "yellow," meaning it may have substantial safety significance. The finding was identified in an inspection completed on March 20 and involves the apparent failure to develop a range of protective actions, provide emergency response information and update the emergency plan for members of the public who routinely use facilities located inside the River Bend owner controlled area. This oversight could have prevented these people from being notified promptly, included in protective actions or provided with radiological monitoring in the event of a plant accident releasing radioactive material. The inspection finding also may be a violation of NRC safety requirements. The NRC evaluates regulatory performance at commercial nuclear power plants with a color coded significance determination process which classifies regulatory findings as being in one of four color categories: green, white, yellow, or red in increasing order of regulatory safety significance. ***************************************************************** 7 Hungarian NPP to load Soviet reactors with British fuel Hungary's only nuclear power plant, Paks, plans to buy part of its enriched uranium fuel from British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) in a bid to cut costs and diversify supplies, Paks officials said yesterday. Vladislav Nikiforov, 2002-05-23 11:00 "We are looking at having at least one of our [reactor] block supplied with fuel from BNFL," Paks general director Csaba Baji told a news conference, Reuter reported. Paks has four Soviet-type VVER-440 pressurised water reactors, the first of which became operational in 1982. Last year Paks produced 14.126 GWh of power or 39.1 percent of the country's total consumption. A state-level contract gives Russia exclusive rights to supply Hungary with enriched uranium rods for its nuclear plant, but Russia is already in breach of the contract as it has stopped taking back spent nuclear fuel. Back in October 1998, Russian PM signed a decree allowing the importation and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from the Paks nuclear power plant in Hungary to the Mayak reprocessing facility near the Urals city of Chelyabinsk. Alarm was raised when the first 23 tonnes of SNF arrived at Mayak and a number of Chelyabinsk environmental groups, as well as "Greenpeace," stopped the remainder of the shipment with a suit in the Supreme Court. The federal government, however, intervened with an appeal. On Tuesday this week the Russian Supreme Court upheld its 1998 decree ruling blocking a 377-tonne-shipment of Hungarian spent nuclear fuel which had been granted passage into the country by the governmental decree. Paks deputy director Gabor Vamos said that Paks did not negotiate with BNFL on the possibility sending waste of reprocessing at BNFL facilities in Britain. "This was not an issue with BNFL, as we were quite spoiled by Russia," Vamos told Reuter. "Their service [of storing the waste] was and, should it restart, will be unique in the world." Russian Ministry of Nuclear Energy (Minatom) equipped with the law favouring spent fuel imports, approved last year, is trying out exactly that scheme. Minatom intends to propose its customers to take back SNF — no questions asked. Other nations, such as France and Great Britain, ships waste generated from SNF reprocessing back to the country of origin. But Paks officials have other considerations as well. Mr Vamos said that buying fuel from BNFL would provide healthy competition to its Russian supplier. "Russia can go practically as low as it wants to with the price but it won't do so as long as it has no competitor," Vamos said. Paks President Gyorgy Meszaros said that the firm was currently looking at extending the plant's lifespan by 20 years from the originally planned 30 years up to 2012. "In 2012, when the first reactor should be stopped, it will chug on merrily for I hope another 20 years," Meszaros said. Meszaros said that after a ruling this year in which Hungarian energy watchdog MEH acknowledged extra costs of Paks, the company would probably triple its profits in 2002 to 4.5 billion forints ($17.19 million) on sales of around 100 billion. Last year state-owned Paks posted a pre-tax profit of 1.442 billion forints on sales of 85 billion forints, Reuter reports. Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President: Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no [webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 8 Davis-Besse Nuclear plant probe focuses on acid leak Beacon Journal | 05/23/2002 | [http://www.macon.com] By JIM MACKINNON Akron Beacon Journal FirstEnergy Corp.'s damaged Davis-Besse nuclear power plant continues to draw intense scrutiny. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of Investigations, which looks into possible civil and criminal wrongdoing, is probing FirstEnergy's handling of Davis-Besse. The NRC's investigative arm is likely to examine when First-Energy discovered boric acid damage at Davis-Besse and whether company officials have fully disclosed all the information they have about the plant's maintenance and upkeep. Other departments of the NRC are examining the plant from an engineering and safety standpoint. The Davis-Besse power plant in Oak Harbor has been shut down since mid February because unprecedented damage to a reactor vessel head was discovered during a safety inspection. A Davis-Besse executive sent a memo to employees on May 16 telling them about the Office of Investigations process and advising them of their rights and responsibilities. ``To investigate allegations of wrongdoing, including possible criminal conduct, the NRC relies on investigations performed by OI. If a company is the subject of an NRC OI investigation, the OI will usually send one or two investigators to talk to employees and to review company records,'' the memo reads. The two-page memo encourages employees to cooperate, be accurate and tell the truth. FirstEnergy has not withheld any information from the NRC regarding Davis-Besse, company spokesman Todd Schneider said. ``We made a mistake in not recognizing the condition of the head, but nothing criminal,'' he said. ``If we were aware of the condition of the head (last year), we would have shut the plant down immediately.'' The NRC Office of Investigations process does not necessarily mean there is a criminal investigation, Schneider said. ``We've had OI investigations before'' at FirstEnergy's nuclear plants that have not led to charges, he said. FirstEnergy would not be alone in coming under the gaze of the NRC's Office of Investigations. At any given time the office has several ongoing investigations, an NRC spokesman said. The office generally seeks to find if there has been any willful or deliberate misconduct, violations of NRC regulations or withholding of information, he said. If the NRC proves there was wrongdoing, the penalties can be high, he said. For example, the NRC in 1997 fined Northeast Utilities $2.1 million for violations at the Millstone nuclear units in Connecticut, he said. Meanwhile, a congressional investigator met with Davis-Besse management yesterday to find out how the damage occurred and the significance to the nuclear power industry. The investigator, who works for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, probably will give a report after Congress reconvenes after Memorial Day, said Rep. Paul Gillmor, R-Old Fort. Gillmor, chairman of the subcommittee on Energy and Hazardous Materials, called for the investigation last week. Also yesterday, a Washington-based anti-nuclear group said it has questions about Davis-Besse documents filed with the NRC that say workers pressure-washed significant amounts of dry boric acid off the 150-ton steel vessel head in April 2000, but did not report any significant corrosion underneath. The documents, essentially work orders, will be given to the NRC's Office of Investigations, said Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information &Resource Service. FirstEnergy has fully addressed the work orders in its ``root cause'' report given to the NRC, Schneider said. The NRC announced this week it has created a task force to evaluate its own handling of Davis-Besse, and to assess lessons learned from it. Nuclear power opponents have criticized the NRC for letting FirstEnergy postpone inspecting Davis-Besse for safety-related issues last year. It was among a dozen reactors the NRC wanted inspected by Dec. 31 to check for cracking in fuel control rod nozzles. FirstEnergy persuaded the NRC to let it run Davis-Besse through mid-February. After the plant was shut down, the subsequent inspection found boric acid leaks from cracked nozzles had caused two cavities. One went nearly all the way through the more than 6-inch-thick steel vessel head. A thin layer of stainless steel prevented coolant from spewing into the containment chamber, which critics said would have been the worst nuclear incident in the United States since the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or [jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com] ***************************************************************** 9 Restarting the Browns Ferry Reactor (washingtonpost.com) Thursday, May 23, 2002; Page A32 The nuclear industry's best near-term prospect for "resurrecting" nuclear power underscores the economic shortsightedness of such an effort [news story, May 16]. The Tennessee Valley Authority has decided to restart the 1,280-megawatt unit at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Decatur, Ala. Browns Ferry Unit 1 was mothballed in 1985 because of noncompliance with federal safety standards and poor economic performance. The $1.7 billion restart of the unit, if it comes in on budget, would provide generation capacity for $1,300 a kilowatt. By comparison, a natural gas-fired plant can be built for $400 to $600 per kilowatt; even if natural gas prices double over the long term, a natural-gas-fired plant would still produce electricity more economically. Wind turbines cost less than $1,000 per kilowatt to construct and have no fuel costs, insulating utilities from the risk of fuel price volatility. But the option that is the most economical, yet frequently garners the least attention, is to reduce electricity demand. In 2000, Florida Power and Light reduced demand by 941 megawatts at a cost of $170 per kilowatt, roughly one-eighth the estimated cost of energy from a restarted Browns Ferry Unit 1. CHRISTOPHER SHERRY Washington The writer is research director for the Safe Energy Communication Council. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 10 Ukrainian reactor shut down after minor accident Thu May 23, 4:59 AM ET KIEV, Ukraine - Reactor No. 2 at the Zaporizhia nuclear power station automatically shut down due to flaws in the operating system, news reports said Thursday. Representatives from Ukraine's state nuclear energy utility, Energoatom, said no breaches in radioactivity limits or safety protocols occurred during the Wednesday night incident, according to the Interfax news agency. The reactor is expected to be functional sometime Thursday. No other details were available. The same reactor had been shut down Sunday for scheduled maintenance. Technicians later reconnected the reactor after installing a cooling system generator. Operators had reduced the capacity of the No. 4 reactor at the Zaporizhia plant on Saturday after a malfunction in its circulation pump, officials said. Ukraine was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, when a reactor at the Chernobyl plant exploded, spewing radiation over Europe. Chernobyl was closed down for good in 2000, but disassembly works continue. Minor malfunctions at Ukraine's four remaining nuclear power plants occur frequently, but don't usually cause radiation leaks. Currently, eight of 13 Ukrainian reactors are functioning. (tv/adc) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 Nuclear-safety experts to evaluate risk to public of depleted uranium in old aircraft parts Radioactive waste in scrapyard Montreal - canada.com network DON MACDONALD Montreal Gazette Thursday, May 23, 2002 GAZETTE Old aircraft engines lie in a container at the former Dominion Metal scrapyard in Saint-Constant. Nuclear-safety inspectors are to visit a South Shore scrapyard tomorrow to investigate a report that radioactive waste is being stored on the site. A spokesman for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission said his agency was contacted April 29 about six radioactive aircraft engines as well as a pile of contaminated pipes on the property, which is surrounded by farmland. James Leveque said commission officials will visit the scrapyard with personnel from Quebec's Environment Department. A department spokesman said the inspection is scheduled for tomorrow. Leveque played down the potential for health risks. Any radioactivity will likely be at low levels, he said. The radioactivity would have come from depleted uranium that was used in aircraft as ballast, Leveque said. "We have to get on to the site and see what's going on there - what is radioactive and what isn't and to what degree," said Leveque, adding his agency's Laval office had been contacted about the material by a person he refused to identify. When contacted yesterday, Saint-Constant mayor Daniel Ashby said he was unaware the waste was in his municipality. After inquiring Ashby called back to say he'd been reassured by authorities there was no need to be alarmed over health risks. Still, he blasted provincial authorities for keeping the municipality in the dark about the presence of the material. "I deplore the fact that the departments involved didn't inform us of this," he said. On a visit to the scrapyard this week, The Gazette was shown an open container sitting in a field packed with what appeared to be disused aircraft engines. Kenny Billingsley, the former general manager of Dominion Metal, said the material is emitting low-level radiation. On another part of the property, Billingsley also pointed out a jumble of dozens of rusting barrels that he said contain a type of sludge which is considered toxic waste. He said the drums had been there for years. Several were broken open. The Environment department spokesman said its inspectors will check out that waste at the same time as the aircraft engines are examined tomorrow. Dominion Metal, one of Canada's largest and oldest wholesalers of scrap metal, collapsed last year in a spectacular bankruptcy. Massive losses in commodity trading pushed it into bankruptcy with debts of about $50 million. The nuclear-safety regulator confirmed yesterday that Dominion had been licensed to handle depleted uranium at its Saint-Constant yard and had received scrap aircraft parts. Billingsley, who now works for the yard's new owner, claimed the engines were brought to the yard after his former employer's bankruptcy. But bankruptcy trustee Yves Vincent, who works for Richter & Associates, said aircraft engines were on the site at the time of the bankruptcy. The former president of now-bankrupt Dominion Metal, Lorne Perlman, couldn't be reached for comment. A spokesman for the municipality of Saint Constant identified the scrapyard's new owner as Frank Di Menna. In an interview, Di Menna acknowledged being advised that radioactive material was on the property before he bought it. He said took possession of the property only late last week and is acting to ensure the engines and contaminated sludge are properly handled. "I'm doing things the right, proper way," he said. - Don Macdonald's E-mail address is dmacdonald@thegazette.southam.ca. © Copyright 2002 Montreal Gazette ***************************************************************** 12 Yucca opponents met with skepticism United Press International: By Scott R. Burnell UPI Science News From the Science & Technology Desk Published 5/22/2002 4:40 PM WASHINGTON, May 22 (UPI) -- Nevada's attempt to sustain its veto of the proposed nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, was met with some derision Wednesday during a Senate hearing. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is considering a resolution to override the veto. The House passed an override resolution earlier this month, and now the full Senate must do the same by July 25 for the project to move into a Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing phase. Despite efforts to accommodate Gov. Kenny Guinn, R-Nev., and other elected state officials, the only witnesses before the committee were Robert Halstead, an adviser to the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects who lists Wisconsin as his home, and other out-of-state experts. Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, the committee's ranking member, found the discrepancy disturbing. "I can only conclude that perhaps Nevada's interest is not of the intensity I once thought it was, otherwise we'd be hearing from Nevadans," Murkowski said. "This would have been important, because the Nuclear Waste Policy Act ... is ambiguous on the criteria for the state of Nevada to veto the site." Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the committee chairman, said the witnesses had been selected by Nevada Sens. Harry Reid, Democrat, and John Ensign, Republican, in conjunction with Guinn's office. Although neither Reid nor Ensign sit on the committee, Bingaman allowed them to take part in the hearing. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., was skeptical of the state's response to Yucca. "I hope that when we talk about this issue we can try to get down to the facts and not the scare issues that are being used currently," he said. Halstead led off the testimony by attacking the Department of Energy's current environmental impact statement for the Yucca project. Most telling is the lack of a transportation plan for spent nuclear fuel and other waste, he said. "Construction of a repository at Yucca Mountain would result in tens of thousands of shipments of high-level nuclear waste," Halstead testified. "After 24 years (of shipments) under DOE's proposal, there would still be 49,000 metric tons of waste at 63 commercial sites. It is not clear what DOE intends to do with that waste." Murkowski said the Bush administration would be required to finalize its transportation plan during the licensing process. Halstead was among the witnesses who raised the specter of an antitank missile attack against a spent fuel shipment. Halstead said such an incident would require at least $10 billion to clean up, in order to avoid thousands of latent cancer cases. A UPI examination of the issue, however, indicates the chances of such a scenario are very remote, even without taking into account existing technology for defending against such weapons. The DOE is trying to "stampede the nation into adopting Yucca," said Victor Gilinsky, a former NRC head now advising Nevada in its fight. The department failed to meet its responsibility to show Yucca's geologic features constitute a suitable site, he said. The basis for such action is the mistaken belief that a long-term storage facility is needed to expand the use of nuclear power in the country, Gilinsky said. NRC regulations would allow further storage of spent fuel at commercial reactors for several decades, enough time to find a better solution, he said. Copyright © 2002 United Press International ***************************************************************** 13 Opponents Spar Over Nuke Waste Site Las Vegas SUN: May 22, 2002 WASHINGTON- Supporters and critics of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site sparred Wednesday over whether thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste can be shipped safely. Robert Halstead, a consultant for the state of Nevada, said claims by the Energy Department that waste would likely be shipped to the proposed dump 90 miles from Las Vegas largely by rail and be limited to 175 shipments a year were "unrealistic." Those claims ignored the fact that many of the reactor sites do not have rail connections, he said. He also said no full-scale tests have been done - or are required - to ensure shipping casks will protect the highly radioactive material during a terrorist attack or serious accident. Halstead, testifying before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the Energy Department's own analysis estimated there would be at least 450 shipments a year if most are shipped by rail, and 2,200 a year if most end up being shipped by highway over a 24-year period. The Energy Department recently said it is speeding up development, along with the states through which the waste would travel, of a detailed transportation plan. Senators supporting the Yucca Mountain project reiterated Energy Department claims that in 30 years of shipping nuclear waste there has never been a release of radioactive material harmful to the public or the environment. According to materials distributed by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade group for the nuclear power industry, a 1999 study by Sandia National Laboratory concluded the release of radioactivity would be extremely small even if a waste shipment cask were hit by a "high energy weapon." The group also noted a DOE analysis that suggested a sabotage of a rail shipment would result in just nine latent cancers. Halstead said there were 11 transportation accidents involving used nuclear fuel shipments between 1957 and 1964, including several involving radioactive releases requiring cleanup. "The record clearly indicates accidents do happen," he maintained. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho accused the waste site's critics of waging "a campaign of fear" and ignoring the potential risks of keeping the 77,000 tons of waste that would be destined for Nevada, at reactor sites around the country. But Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, charged that it is Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham who has been guilty of "fear mongering" by suggesting the waste isn't safe where it is. Abraham frequently has justified moving ahead with Yucca Mountain by arguing that a central location provides better security and by noting that much of the waste now is kept near urban population centers. Salt Lake City Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson worried about the impact to his city if the Yucca Mountain repository bringing nuclear waste shipments nearby from all over the country. "A catastrophic loss of life could accompany a single major accident," he said. "Such a scenario is almost a certainty. Human error is inevitable." Stephen Prescott, executive director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, said many Westerners who haven't forgotten that the federal government misled them about contamination from years of atomic bomb testing at the Nevada Test Site adjacent to Yucca Mountain are skeptical. "We are told again that the risks are low," he said. President Bush in February concluded that the 20 years of scientific study of the Yucca Mountain site is enough to go ahead with an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for construction and operating permits. Nevada vetoed Bush's decision as the state is allowed under a 1982 nuclear waste law. It is now up to Congress to decide whether to override the Nevada veto. The House already has done so. The Senate is expected to vote on the matter in late June or early July. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 14 Experts say DOE plays down Yucca risks By Doug Abrahms [online@rgj.com] RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL 5/22/2002 11:13 pm WASHINGTON — The Energy Department is playing down the risks of accidents or terrorist attacks on proposed cross-country nuclear waste shipments to Yucca Mountain, experts told a Senate energy hearing on Wednesday. “These cargoes have the potential to be used as weapons of mass victimization,” said James Ballard, a professor who specializes in terrorism research at Michigan’s Grand Valley State University. Potential attacks could come from international terrorists or radical domestic groups, such as Earth First! or the Sagebrush Rebellion, Ballard told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Anti-nuclear activists derailed a train in Minnesota in 1986 by removing 39 feet of track to protest shipments of nuclear waste, he said. “From a strictly security and safety standpoint, these materials are better off where they sit — behind the security of walls and fences, protected by trained and professional plant security,” said Ballard, a terrorist consultant to Nevada. Wednesday’s hearing was the third in the Senate, where the fight over the location of a permanent nuclear waste dump is more contentious and Nevada’s lawmakers have more clout to try to derail the plan. Nevada’s governor vetoed Bush’s decision as the state is allowed under a 1982 nuclear waste law. The House has overridden the veto. The Senate is expected to vote on the veto in late June or early July. Nevada’s experts showed up at the hearing, but most senators on the committee did not. Outside of Nevada Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign, only the committee chairman, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., stayed for the hearing. A few showed up at the beginning to make remarks and then left. Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said that since no officials from Nevada testified Wednesday, it must mean they have no objection to selecting Yucca Mountain as the site for the nation’s nuclear waste facility. “I was looking forward to hearing from the governor and the legislature about the reasons for the state’s veto” of Yucca Mountain as the nuclear repository,” he said. “Instead, we have a slate of witnesses who will speak to the issues unrelated to the limited question before this committee — the sufficiency of the site selection.” Reid said Nevada officials have been complaining about Yucca Mountain for 20 years, and they chose a panel of outside experts to testify to the Senate committee to highlight the dangers of transporting the waste to the whole nation. “For anyone to suggest that John Ensign, Harry Reid and especially Kenny Guinn, governor of Nevada, is not opposed to nuclear waste is a dream that someone had,” he said. Supporters of the Yucca Mountain site said the Nevada consultants used worst-case scenarios to scare Americans about the storage site. “It seems to me that fear is the element you’re trying to generate today” in order to stop construction of the waste site at Yucca Mountain, said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. But Victor Gilinisky — an energy consultant to Nevada and a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — replied that Energy Department officials have been scaring Americans by saying nuclear waste stored at commercial reactors is a potential threat to people who live nearby. “If there’s fear-mongering, I think they’ve been engaged in it,” he said. Robert Halstead, a transportation expert for Nevada, disputed Energy Department estimates that only 175 nuclear waste shipments would be moved to Yucca Mountain each year. He contended the number would be at least five times higher because the agency didn’t factor in barge and truck shipments that would be needed to connect some power plants to rail lines. More shipments translates into the potential for more accidents and terrorist attacks, he said. Perhaps some of the strongest testimony came from Dr. Stephen Prescott, executive director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. Utah is home to many “downwinders,” who were exposed to nuclear fallout during the atomic tests in Nevada in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as to workers in uranium mines and refineries. Many subsequently died from various types of cancer, he said. “They were assured that the mines and refineries were safe,” Prescott said. “Now the citizens of the same region are being asked to assume the risk of a third round of radiation exposure.” With Associated Press reports Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 15 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Senators told risks of shipping "Adequately protecting tens of thousands of highly lethal shipments of nuclear waste ... will be impossible." ROSS 'ROCKY' ANDERSON -- SALT LAKE CITY MAYOR Thursday, May 23, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Out-of-state experts testify at hearing; vote expected in Senate this summer By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- A half-dozen out-of-state experts assembled by Nevada leaders told senators Wednesday that shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain will pose risks that should cause them to think twice about moving ahead with the repository project. Robert Halstead, a Wisconsin consultant, said the Energy Department plans an ambitious schedule that will place almost as much nuclear waste on roads and railways each year as it has for the past 40 years. Even with extensive safeguards, "there will still be a residual risk of accidents," Halstead said, and a single accident that releases radiation will cause at least 300 additional cancer fatalities over time and cost billions of dollars to clean up. Halstead said, "The single most important thing we can do for safety is not to ship waste for 40 to 50 years," a period allowing highly radioactive waste to "cool" to less dangerous levels. James David Ballard, a criminal justice professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, said terrorists will salivate at the chance to target trucks and trains carrying nuclear waste. "Make no mistake about it, terrorism is a threat to these shipments," he said. "It's a large-scale campaign. It's a federalized project." The hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee presented Nevada leaders with perhaps a final chance to outline their opposition to the Yucca Mountain Project. The Senate is expected to vote this summer on overriding Gov. Kenny Guinn's nuclear waste veto and authorizing the Energy Department to seek a license to build the repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Published vote counts suggest the Senate will vote to keep the project alive, although Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., continue to press colleagues to vote against it. The selection of non-Nevadans to testify Wednesday reflects a strategy by Ensign and Reid to widen the issue beyond the state's borders. "This is a little different side than most senators have been exposed to," Ensign said. Besides Halstead and Ballard, witnesses included Salt Lake City Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson, whose city lies along a potential major shipping route to Yucca Mountain; former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Victor Gilinsky; Michael J. Ervin, a California police officer and former truck driver; and Dr. Stephen Prescott, executive director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. Halstead, Ballard and Gilinsky are paid Nevada consultants who have helped form the state's anti-Yucca message. Reid acknowledged the ties, adding "So what?" He maintained they gave the Senate valuable information. Anderson told senators he fears a major accident in Salt Lake City, which he said "is almost a certainty. Human error is inevitable." Anderson said providing security at this year's Winter Olympics required more than 15,000 law enforcement officers and cost more than $310 million. "Adequately protecting tens of thousands of highly lethal shipments of nuclear waste as they travel thousands of miles through dozens of major cities will be impossible," he said. To illustrate those points, Nevada officials placed a dozen maps around the room showing proposed nuclear waste routes through the home states of various Energy Committee senators. Only four of 23 members attended. The work of the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute also was in evidence during the two-hour meeting. Two industry officials watched the hearing on television elsewhere in the Senate building and prepared responses to each Nevada witness. The rapid rebuttals then were distributed to the media table as the session progressed. The Energy Department has cited its experience in transporting nuclear and hazardous materials, and has said it will have a transportation plan in place several years before a Yucca Mountain repository opens. At the hearing, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, criticized the witnesses for fear-mongering. Citing Anderson's reference to the Winter Olympics, Craig said the giant Utah event was described at one point as an attractive target for terrorists, but that did not stop the Games from taking place. "If this country doesn't have its act together by 2010 on terrorism, then maybe your arguments would be relevant," Craig said. Anderson responded, "You don't defeat terrorism by marching merrily along and ignoring the risks." Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 16 Editorial: Recycling an old idea on nuclear waste BYU NewsNet Daily Universe | KBYU TV/FM | CCN Cable | CommWorld | Ke Alaka'i | 5/14/2002 If the United States had recycled its spent nuclear fuel, the nuclear storage dilemma imposed on Nevada and western Utah would not be a problem. Nuclear waste must be stored somewhere. The Yucca Mountain facility is a necessary part in dealing with the nation's storage problem. Currently, 131 temporary storage sites manage the waste but will soon reach their capacity. With the way Americans consume energy, Yucca Mountain will not be the only permanent nuclear storage site in the future. Nuclear power is produced by uranium that splits in the environment of a nuclear reactor. This reaction produces steam that moves turbines, producing power. As the fission of uranium atoms decrease and less power is produced, it is time to replace the uranium pellets. Nuclear power is smart energy. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, one nuclear fuel pellet, about the size of a fingertip, produces the same amount of energy as 1,780 pounds of coal. Nuclear power can be frightening. The thought of nuclear waste in someone's backyard or deposited underground waiting to contaminate the water supply is terrifying. These are concerns for many Americans. Yet, the truly frightening thought is, of the uranium used in a nuclear reactor, only 4 percent of it is spent. The rest is discarded as waste, making this smart energy less than smart. Nuclear waste can be reprocessed but at a cost. During the Great Depression the saying, "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" became the philosophy of the American people. Resources were scarce and everything was used. However in the 21st century, this philosophy has been discarded. Prudence has been replaced with carelessness. Reprocessing costs money, more money than mining and processing new uranium; money that the United States does not want to invest in the future. The upcoming vote on the development of Yucca Mountain is a shortsighted decision to this ongoing problem. If the United States would explore recycling programs, like many European and Asian countries have already done, waste would be reduced and the uranium supply would last longer. Yucca Mountain's long-term storage facility is only a short-term solution for nuclear waste storage in the United States. Recycling nuclear waste must begin now in order to prevent future Yucca Mountain sites. Copyright ©2002 BYU NewsNet ***************************************************************** 17 Nevada enlists help to fight nuclear waste dump Duluth News Tribune | 05/23/2002 | [http://www.duluthsuperior.com] HEARST NEWSPAPERS WASHINGTON -- The state of Nevada rounded up out-of-state witnesses to tell the United States Senate on Wednesday why they think the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project should be canceled. The panel of scientists, a police officer, a terrorism expert and a local official -- all of whom hailed from outside Nevada -- charged that the $60 billion plan could be a scientific boondoggle and a transportation nightmare. "The project doesn't make sense in terms of expense, security or safety -- or even in terms of the future of nuclear power,'' Victor Gilinsky of Glen Echo, Md., a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told the Senate Energy Committee. At issue is a two-decades-old debate over where to store 77,000 tons of waste byproducts culled from 131 nuclear reactors across the country. In 1987, Congress identified Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the top potential nuclear waste repository. Since then, the Department of Energy has spent $4 billion studying Yucca's viability before deciding earlier this year to push ahead. ***************************************************************** 18 NRC chief backs safety of nuke waste shipments Las Vegas SUN: May 23, 2002 By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- The government can safely transport 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste across America to Yucca Mountain, top officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Energy Department assured the Senate today. But commission Chairman Richard Meserve sidestepped pointed questions from Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who asked if the agency would refuse to license Yucca Mountain as a waste site if further testing proves that metal waste shipping containers are vulnerable to terrorist attack. In front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this morning, Meserve said the commission was reviewing the strength of the steel containers and may conduct full-scale tests within the next few years. Ensign said Congress would be acting irresponsibly if it approved Yucca Mountain before a transportation plan was better defined, and before more container tests are conducted. "I think it's ridiculous that we are going forward with this before we know we can deal with these problems," Ensign said at a hearing. At issue is the proposal to bury the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department, President Bush and the House have approved the plan. If the Senate agrees in a July vote, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be responsible for licensing the site. The Senate committee held three hearings on Yucca, the final one today. Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., allowed Ensign and Nevada's Democrat Sen. Harry Reid to sit in on the hearings and question witnesses. The committee is expected to vote June 5, and the whole Senate is expected to take the issue up in July. The hearings mostly focused on whether transporting waste to Yucca from 131 sites nationwide is safe. Nevada officials say it cannot be done and that the Energy Department has not decided how waste would be shipped and on what routes. Energy Undersecretary Robert Card told the Senate panel otherwise: The nation has already safely hauled a limited number of high-level waste shipments and far more low-level waste shipments without catastrophic accidents. "We feel very comfortable about transportation," Card said. "I would reject the notion that we don't have a plan or that we haven't thought about this issue." Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., said it was backward to approve Yucca before determining whether large-scale shipping was safe. Card countered, "You determine where you want something to go, and then you decide how to get it there. We don't think this is out of step at all." A heated exchange between Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., and former National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall also centered on shipping the waste. Hall said the Senate should delay its vote until more studies and full-scale container tests are complete. Thomas brought up the point that Hall was now a paid consultant for Nevada. Thomas said he was offended that Hall would suggest Congress and the Energy Department would simply approve Yucca Mountain and then not focus on transportation safety. "I think that's wrong, sir," Thomas told Hall. "They will look at it. That will be the second phase: to determine whether that is safe." In other testimony, Gary Jones of the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, told senators that Yucca faced three critical uncertainties: the expected lifespan of the waste containers, the ability of Yucca's physical geology to isolate waste from the environment and mathematical formulas used to predict Yucca's performance. The GAO was critical of the project, and cast doubt on the Energy Department's ability to meet cost and schedule estimates. Jared Cohon of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board told senators the board's assessment of the scientific evidence supporting Yucca was "weak to moderate." The board was commissioned by Congress in 1987 to watch the Energy Department's studies of Yucca. But Cohon added that no single factor had yet eliminated Yucca as a potential waste dump. He said the massive, first-of-its-kind project would never be free from "uncertainties." "It is up to policymakers to determine how much uncertainty is acceptable at the time you make the decision," Cohon said. Campbell, the only other known Republican senator to join Ensign in opposing Yucca, said waste containers had not been drop-tested at heights of 800 to 1,000 feet, the distance vehicles sometimes fall in accidents in the Rocky Mountains. "We are dealing with so many unknowns," Campbell said. "We ought to know a lot more." Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., another Yucca advocate, said facts about Yucca were being lost in a haze of emotion that had delayed action. "All of this rhetoric that is flying around here gets in the way of making a solid, sound decision," he said. The Senate's leading Yucca advocate, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, urged the Senate to approve the project. "At some point you have to make a decision," Murkowski said. "You can't vacillate forever. Then you have to make a decision and you have to be held accountable for that decision." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 19 State to file sixth lawsuit against Yucca Las Vegas SUN May 23, 2002 By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- The state of Nevada on June 4 plans to file its sixth lawsuit designed to kill Yucca Mountain, Nevada sources said. The lawsuit will challenge the Department of Energy's final environmental impact statement, or EIS, for Yucca, said Joe Egan, the Washington-area lawyer hired by the state to mount legal challenges to the proposed nuclear waste repository. The suit will allege that the EIS does not meet federal law requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act. Developers and governmental agencies are required to complete an EIS when they propose a project in order to tell the public how it would affect the area. But the Energy Department's EIS for Yucca doesn't come close to doing that, Egan said. That's because so many important details about the project will not be finalized for years, leaving the DOE to submit an EIS based on a vague concept, Egan said. The lawsuit, which is not yet finalized, will focus on seven to 10 issues that the EIS could not address, Egan said. For instance, the DOE has not yet determined whether waste will be shipped mostly by truck or train, or how many barges might be used for possible waterway shipments. The EIS also does not address the impact of moving waste from research reactors operating at universities, Egan said. That information must be known to complete a legal EIS, Egan said. Among other unanswered questions: Will Yucca have a "hot" or "cold" design? -- an issue determined by how closely waste containers are placed to each other. How much waste will be stored on the surface near Yucca before it is placed underground? And will Yucca be expanded once a federally mandated 77,000-ton limit is reached? "This is a project that just hasn't been defined," Egan said. The lawsuit also likely will assert that the EIS should have included a detailed analysis of the effects of a sabotage attack on a nuclear waste shipment bound for Yucca, Egan said. The lawsuit will be filed in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Yucca legal challenges. The state of Nevada has five other Yucca lawsuits pending, including three against the DOE that center on DOE rules for Yucca and water permits. The state is also suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Environmental Protection Agency over Yucca rules. Officials are using an anti-Yucca fund that includes state and private money to pay for the lawsuits. Las Vegas and Clark County jointly filed yet another suit against the DOE project in January, alleging that the project will do the area "immediate and irreparable harm" by decreasing property values, the tax base and population. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 20 Actor Cromwell criticizes Yucca dump Las Vegas SUN May 23, 2002 By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- In an ongoing effort to draw Hollywood star power into the state's fight against Yucca Mountain, Nevada officials have drafted stars of the upcoming Tom Clancy thriller "Sum of All Fears" into speaking out against the controversial nuclear waste project. James Cromwell, who plays the U.S. president in the movie, appeared with Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., and anti-Yucca environmental leaders today just before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee began its third and final hearing on Yucca. The full Senate is likely to vote on the project in July. Morgan Freeman, who plays the CIA director, was scheduled to appear but could not, Cromwell said. Nevada officials have tried with limited success to recruit Hollywood actors to help draw national attention to the Yucca project, a federal plan to ship the nation's high-level nuclear waste across the nation from 131 sites to Nevada for permanent burial. Cromwell, citing the dangers of transporting highly radioactive spent fuel across the country to a Nevada dump, said the waste should be left at the nuclear power plants that produce it. "Since these facilities will have to be protected anyway, keep the waste where it is," Cromwell said at the press conference outside the U.S. Capitol. "The taxpayer will be burdened and at risk if an accident happens." Freeman, who had to catch a plane, shares his sentiment, Cromwell said. "When I told him about this, he said 'This stinks.' " The actors were in Washington to attend the movie's premiere Wednesday. Cromwell was nominated for an Oscar for his role in "Babe" and Freeman was nominated for roles in "Street Smart," "Driving Miss Daisy" and "The Shawshank Redemption." Reid noted the parallel of the new movie's plot with what he called the real danger of a nuclear accident while transporting waste to Nevada. In the movie, which opens May 31, terrorists get a nuclear bomb. "It's fiction, but is it really fiction?" he said. "There's a little bit of fiction, but it's mostly fact. We are concerned because if nuclear waste is hauled across America, there will be a lot of stray nuclear bombs." Joan Claybrook, president of the environmental group Public Citizen, said Hollywood stars help draw national attention to the issue. "The message is getting out there across Hollywood-land." Nevada officials and environmentalists lauded the hit NBC drama "The West Wing" for an April 3 episode that featured a nuclear waste transportation accident plotline. Environmentalists also enlisted actor and activist Ed Begley Jr. to narrate an anti-Yucca commercial that ran in Vermont last month, designed to pressure Vermont Sens. James Jeffords, an Independent, and Democrat Patrick Leahy to vote against Yucca Mountain. Both still intend to vote for the project, aides said. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 21 Herrera leads anti-Yucca speakers at public hearing Las Vegas SUN May 23, 2002 By Mary Manning Public hearing The public has another chance to comment to the NRC from 6:30 to 9 p.m. today at the Clark County Building Department, 4701 W. Russell Road. More than 25 residents Wednesday used a Nuclear Regulatory Commission public hearing designed to explain the process to license a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain to express their opposition to the plan. Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera, a Democrat running for the new 3rd Congressional District seat, led the parade of speakers, stating his "unequivocal opposition" to the proposed repository. County studies show that if a repository is approved 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, economic impacts from property losses and visitors refusing to come will be in the billions, yet local comments were not considered, Herrera said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not expect to begin examining a request from the Department of Energy to build and open a repository at Yucca Mountain until December 2004, but the staff has written a 500-page plan on how it would review the request to bury 77,000 tons of commercial and defense nuclear wastes. NRC officials scheduled the meetings to explain those plans, but they turned into a forum for opposition. "I am utterly opposed to using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear garbage dump," Las Vegas resident Andy Harris said. "This is a life and death issue for those of us in Nevada." Speakers said that the NRC and the courts were the last resort in the state's fight against a Yucca Mountain repository. "The NRC is the last line of defense," said Dennis Bechtel, who retired last year as director of the county's nuclear waste division. Janet Schlueter, NRC's chief of the high-level waste branch, tried to reassure the crowd that the commission is not biased toward a repository. "Our sole goal is to protect public health and safety," she said. The NRC can deny DOE's request, Schlueter said. In addition, it will require answers for all of the 293 scientific and technical issues mentioned in a December General Accounting Office report. However, the NRC staff also outlined the commission's limits. It does not have to consider worst-case scenarios, said Pat Mackin, a consulting scientist hired by the NRC. Instead, commissioners will decide the repository's fate on "reasonably conservative" risk estimates. "There is no effective way to look at what could go wrong," Mackin said, because the repository has to contain the wastes for 10,000 years. The NRC also won't consider cumulative or combined risks from radiation and chemical contamination at the repository, Mackin said. The Energy Department has already examined the issue, he said. When it comes to securing highly radioactive waste from terrorism or sabotage, the NRC is reviewing its current rules, said the NRC's Janet Kotra. "The stuff is very dangerous. The public and workers have to be protected," she said. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the NRC is examining its security plan for handling, storing and shipping nuclear materials. The NRC is considering full-scale tests of both transportation containers and those that would be buried inside Yucca Mountain, said Chet Posbusny, in charge of transportation risks. If the commission's current rules do not adequately protect the public, including those for a Yucca Mountain repository, the NRC will revise them, NRC Project Manager Jeff Ciocco said. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 22 Allow Goshute Gambling The Salt Lake Tribune -- Thursday, May 23, 2002 The state of Utah is currently fighting, by every means necessary, the proposed Private Fuel Storage "temporary" spent nuclear fuel storage facility to be located on Goshute tribal lands in Skull Valley. I for one believe that the state of Utah, as well as our western neighbors in Nevada, have shouldered a disproportionate burden when it comes to the United States' nuclear legacy. It is said that in Utah, "we are always downwind." One need look no further than the Army's nerve gas incinerator located within a stone's throw of the Wastach Front to be convinced. Now, the Goshute tribe wants to accept and store spent nuclear fuel on their lands west of Tooele. Can anyone blame them? It should be noted by all Utahns that the Goshutes' economic options are limited. Confronted by poverty, people will accept and do things they normally wouldn't, in more prosperous circumstances. Most Utahns would be hard-pressed to even point out Skull Valley as they speed by on Interstate 80 to gamble in Wendover. This leads me to the upshot. Why not dangle the carrot of legal gaming to the Skull Valley Goshutes? Instead of fighting them, why not give them a viable economic option to spent nuclear fuel storage? Utah dollars support gambling in Wendover, so why not keep that money in the state and use it for a good cause. Namely, keeping spent nuclear fuel out of Utah. A notable side benefit would be the sizable gaming tax that could be earmarked for education. So how about it? Anyone at the Capitol listening? Hello? Anybody? RICHARD PIEROS Salt Lake City © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 23 ALI LOVES SELLAFIELD CHALLENGE [The Whitehaven News] [PRESS OFFICER: Ali McKibbin] DEALING with local, national and international journalists is all part of a day's work for BNFL press officer Ali McKibbin. Based at Sellafield, Ali answers media enquiries and provides written responses, arranges interviews and hosts media visits to Sellafield as part of her daily work. She has been in this post for the past five years, although she has actually been employed by BNFL for 12 years, also working in business planning and employee communications. "This is my ideal job, I absolutely love it," said Ali. "It is not an easy job but I love the challenge and I certainly wouldn't get that working for a company manufacturing teddy bears!" Ali has a BSc (Hons) and she has done some formal public relations training but she believes that her experience plus on the job training is vital for this kind of role. "I think you probably need to be pretty resilient, have lots of stamina and be able to think on your feet in this job," she said. "No two press officers have the same qualifications or experience." But this wasn't the job Ali imagined she would do when she left school. "I didn't expect to end up at Sellafield. I probably thought I'd use my marketing and biotechnology background to sell Scottish whisky round the world but never mind I still do my bit and have a few wee drams," she joked. "It is one of those jobs in which you're always learning. I've got quite a good overview of all the plants, processes and issues surrounding Sellafield, but there's lots I don't know and lots of opportunity for further development. "There is probably very little I would change about the job. Like within all large organisations, there is probably a bit too much politics - I try and keep out of it and get on with my job." Ali has seen a lot of progress in her time at Sellafield and she was involved with both the Thorp and Sellafield MOX plant (SMP) and she rates the times when they got permission to operate as some of her best moments in the job. "It was wonderful to see them get permission because so many peoples' jobs depend upon them." The nuclear industry, and Sellafield especially, does take a lot of flak from many areas and Ali is in the front line, so what inspires her to keep going? "I work in an industry that I totally believe in. I really think that nuclear energy has got an important role to play in generating electricity without the production of greenhouse gases," she said. "I get very frustrated with some of the unfounded bad publicity we get and think there should be a debate based on the facts surrounding nuclear energy." The most important aspect of Ali's job is to protect BNFL's reputation but she is not alone, there are three full-time press officers based at Sellafield. But her job satisfaction comes when she gets balanced coverage in the media. "There is always more than one side to a story and all I really want is to get the facts about BNFL's operations published in order to inform the public and allay any fears," said Ali. "I love the variety of work involved in the job, with no two days being the same. We work in a really close team in the press office and I have a great deal of respect for my colleagues. "Things can get very busy but we all work hard and support one another in order to get the best outcome for the company." Despite being very happy in her job Ali does have long term ambitions. "I guess it would be nice to be the boss, however, managers have to spend time managing rather than doing more of the hands on media relations. "Of course everyone has a view on how they would do the job and I'm no different. I would like to manage Sellafield public relations my way and concentrate on the things I think are important." But, at the end of the day, if her six numbers came up on the lottery Ali would be off. "Sorry BNFL, but I do have a life and I would love to do so many other things and not have to worry about paying the bills." But what advice would she give to some one wanting to follow in her footsteps? "Although I really value experience and on the job training, it is important to gain qualifications. A degree in public relations or journalism would both be very valuable," she said. "Time spent working in the media or in public relations would be useful, therefore it is important to fill gap years or summer holidays with relevant jobs, even if it is unpaid!" http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk ***************************************************************** 24 UK: BNFL: RE-BUILDING BRIDGES TO JAPAN [The Whitehaven News] [BNFL officials and local dignitaries welcome governor Kiumra to Sellafield, at Sella Park, as part of his visit to West Cumbria and the Lake District. BNFL Chief Executive Norman Askew (third right, front) and Sellafield Director of operation] COPELAND's MP Dr Jack Cunningham and Sellafield have been playing host to a leading political figure from Japan, where BNFL needs to win vital new business for the West Cumbrian nuclear plant. Governor Morio Kimura, of Aomori Prefecture - a region which accommodates key parts of the Japanese nuclear industry - made a comprehensive tour of the Sellafield site which took in SMP. This is the £470 million plant which after so much controversy now has full consent to recycle Mox plutonium fuel from Thorp and is one of the keys to Sellafield's longer-term future. Governor Kimura remarked on how happy the Mox work force were going about their jobs. "They all had a sparkle in their eyes." Orders from Japan to top up existing European business is crucial to the success of SMP. BNFL's chief executive, Norman Askew, said he was confident of winning the contracts once a batch of falsified Mox fuel has been returned safely from Japan to Sellafield. Governor Kimura was updated on the situation by BNFL bosses when he visited Sellafield, accompanied by Dr Cunningham, who had already been involved in discussions with him on nuclear matters in Japan when the MP addressed the Japanese Atomic Industry Forum conference. After being shown around the Palace of Westminster by Dr Cunningham, meeting leading British politicians including the Lord Chancellor and The Speaker, Governor Kimura travelled to Sellafield for the site visit, followed by a meeting with community and trades union representatives. At a dinner at Sella Park, Norman Askew joined Sellafield's director of operations Brian Watson, who was involved in earlier presentations. along with head of Mox Jack Allen and Thorp chief, Neil Baldwin. Other dinner guests included Sellafield Local Liaison Committee chairman, David Moore and Coun Geoff Blackwell, who was representing Copeland Borough Council and Whitehaven News editor, Hilary Scott. "It is essential we build and develop good links between politicians and community leaders, given the importance of Japanese contracts to the future of Sellafield. Aomori Prefecture is an important location for the Japanese nuclear industry," said Jack Cunningham. ***************************************************************** 25 UK: SELLAFIELD SAFETY STARTS TO MEET NEW TARGETS [The Whitehaven News] [http://www.cumbria-online.co.uk] SELLAFIELD has made big strides towards cleaning up its act, especially on site safety, but it is still not mission accomplished. This is the clear message from BNFL following the biggest-ever investigation into safety on the nuclear site which is just recovering from the body blow of the Mox fuel scandal. Two years ago the site was lambasted by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, after a series of radiation incidents. Sellafield cannot operate without a licence from the NII which, as a result of the radiation leaks, launched the huge investigation covering all areas of the site. Yesterday, after Whitehaven News inquiries, BNFL disclosed it had successfully completed 10 of the 28 major tasks which the NII insisted had to be done "to ensure that Sellafield remains safe for the future". But although there are still 18 work recommendations to be achieved the company has made the major breakthrough on bringing Sellafield towards the highest possible standards of safety. BNFL has been able to satisfy its nuclear masters that Sellafield now has a safe management structure. The NII's most telling conclusion from the investigation was that "the site lacks a high quality safety management system". Sellafield spokesman Jamie Reed said yesterday: "We have completed the key parts of what we had to do regarding safety and inspection and the Inspectorate has signed it off. This is obviously a big step forward". Another criticism over control and supervision of operations being inadequate was quickly addressed by making former Thorp chief Brian Watson director of operations for the whole site. Mr Watson said yesterday: "I believe we have already shown the world that we can raise our game, but we haven't reached our goal yet. Even when we do there will be no room for complacency. All that it now needs is constant effort by everybody to make sure we don't let go what we have gained. "At Sellafield we are embedding real challenge and continuous improvement. We must use this as a launchpad for the challenge we face in the future. "There is no doubt in my mind we were set a real and completely valid challenge by the NII - one that we would have to meet with the eyes of the local community, our customers and all the other stakeholders firmly on us." Sellafield's boss said he was always convinced the site was capable of tackling all the NII work. "I believed we could do it. Thanks to a tremendous effort from everyone on site we are well on our way. The local community has also played a vital part." He stressed: "We have had to look at ourselves very closely and make real, lasting changes to the way we operate." Norman Askew, the BNFL chief executive, has predicted a rosier future for Sellafield once the rogue batch of fuel pellets has been returned from Japan when the company hopes to win vital new business. The man brought into shake up the company has also praised the West Cumbrian public. "We are dependent on the support of the local communities. It is very important we talk to them, listen to them and keep them in the picture." n BNFL has already satisfied the NII over work it was ordered to do in the Mox demonstration plant, where the data was faked. The NII's 28 recommendations following the major Sellafield site safety investigation was split into 41 key parts, of which evidence of 37 being completed was submitted. The NII have signed off 33, leaving eight still to go. ***************************************************************** 26 NEVADA LEADERS BRING YUCCA FIGHT TO UTAH NEWS RELEASE - For Immediate Release May 21, 2002 CONTACT: Steve Erickson, Director Citizens Education Project [http://www.citizensedproject.org] 961 East 600 South Salt Lake City, UT 84102 (801) 359-4929 E-mail: slceric@concentric.net [slceric@concentric.net]
[http://www.citizensedproject.org] NOTICE OF NEWS CONFERENCE WHO: U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, Las Vegas City Councilman Gary Reese, Congressman Jim Matheson, Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson WHAT: Opposition to the Yucca Mountain Project WHERE: At the corner of 600 West and South Temple Streets, Salt Lake City (Bad weather alternative: Salt Lake City Council Chambers, 3rd Floor) WHEN: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 at 9:45 A.M. Contacts: + Joshua Ewing (Mayor Anderson)- (801) 535-7739 + David Riggleman (Mayor Goodman) – (702) 229- 6138 or (702) 229-2826 + Tessa Hafen (Senator Reid) – (202) 224-3542 or (202) 369-9801 + Alene Bentley or Alyson Heyrend (Representative Matheson) - (801) 524-4394 NEVADA LEADERS BRING YUCCA FIGHT TO UTAH Nevada U.S. Senator Harry Reid, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, and Las Vegas City Councilman Gary Reese are bringing their fight against the Yucca Mountain high level nuclear waste repository to downtown Salt Lake City's backyard. Reid, the Senate Assistant Majority Leader, Goodman, mayor of the nation's fastest growing city, and Reese, Las Vegas Mayor Pro Tem, will highlight the risks and costs of transporting nuclear waste through Utah at a press conference on the railroad tracks just a fairway wood west of the Gateway development. "Transporting nuclear waste is an accident waiting to happen," Reid said. "The Department of Energy's own numbers indicate that accidents are just a matter of when and where – not if. If Yucca Mountain is approved, over 90% of the nuclear waste shipments will be transported through Utah." Reid argued that "if Utah's Senators vote for Yucca Mountain they will be putting Utahns in harms way. Not only will they be voting to transport nuclear waste through the backyards of Utah residents for years, but they will also be supporting temporarily storing nuclear waste in Tooele County." Mayor Goodman stated "my mission will be to educate the citizens of Salt Lake City and Utah about the potential dangers being thrust upon them. Why risk the unthinkable consequences of a radioactive spill if we don't have to? It is unreasonable for the federal government to expect us in the West to shoulder this potentially deadly burden. It takes just one spill and Salt Lake City becomes America's Chernobyl." Reid, Goodman, and Reese will be joined at the May 28 press conference by Utah Congressman Jim Matheson and Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson, who oppose the plan to bury the nation's spent nuclear fuel in Nevada as well as the Private Fuel Storage proposal to store the waste temporarily on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah prior to shipping it to Nevada. The press conference is timed to encourage Utah Senators Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett to vote against the Yucca Mt. Project. A Senate vote could occur this summer. "Utah and Nevada don't produce any of this waste," Representative Matheson said. "This is a case of the East dumping on the West. I question the rush to move the planet's most lethal waste through 44 states when there is room to store it safely right where it is." Mayor Rocky Anderson, who will testify against the Yucca Mountain project before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on May 22nd, continues to urge Salt Lake City residents and Utah's congressional delegation to oppose the project. "Some elected officials in Utah have opposed the PFS proposal while remaining quiet about Yucca Mountain," said Anderson. "Both projects put all Salt Lake Valley residents at risk. Salt Lake City will see more nuclear waste traveling to Yucca Mountain than any other city besides Las Vegas, exposing many of us to daily doses of radiation. Just one major accident or one terrorist attack could devastate our City." ***************************************************************** 27 Russia planning nuclear waste burial facility on Arctic archipelago Yahoo! News - Thu May 23, 9:40 AM ET MOSCOW - Russia is considering plans to build a burial facility for nuclear waste on an Arctic archipelago, officials said Thursday, denying that the site would become a dumping ground for spent nuclear fuel imported from abroad. Vitaly Nasonov, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Ministry, said the ministry had approved tentative plans for the facility at a meeting Wednesday. A "working design" for the project is now being developed, he said. The facility would be located at Russia's Novaya Zemlya testing area. Russia uses the site to conduct subcritical test blasts of nuclear weapons, in which plutonium is blasted with explosives too weak to set off an atomic explosion. Those tests are not prohibited by the international Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Moscow signed in May 2000. Russia has observed a moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing since its last test explosion in October 1990, but Moscow says the subcritical tests are necessary to ensure the safety of its nuclear arsenal. Nasonov said ecological studies have already been conducted on the site, and that visiting experts from the United States and Norway found it suitable for a waste dump. Officials moved quickly to allay fears that the planned burial facility would accept nuclear waste from outside Russia. Last summer, President Vladimir Putin (news [http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/*http://search.news.yahoo.c om/search/news?p=%22Vladimir%20Putin%22&c=&n=20&yn=c&c=news&cs=nw ] - web sites [http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/*http://search.yahoo.com/bi n/search?cs=nw&p=Vladimir%20Putin] ) signed a law allowing Russia to import spent nuclear fuel from other countries for storage and reprocessing. Proponents of the plan say it could earn Russia up to dlrs 20 billion over the next decade, but environmentalists fear it will turn the country into the world's nuclear dumping ground. "The transfer of radioactive wastes to Novaya Zemlya from outside the region, not to mention from abroad, is just out of the question," said Anatoly Yefremov, governor of the region, according to Interfax news agency. Last week, Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov strongly denied a U.S. report that the Kremlin was preparing to resume nuclear testing on the archipelago. The New York Times had reported that an analysis by the U.S. Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee indicated that Moscow was moving forward with test preparations. (mb/adc) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 28 Just say no to Yucca, Rocky says [deseretnews.com] Wednesday, May 22, 2002 By Diane Urbani Deseret News staff writer Keep out of Utah and Nevada and quit lying to us, Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson told the U.S. Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday morning. President Bush and some members of Congress want nuclear waste stored at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, which they say could divert the waste away from the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Tooele County. Reps. Jim Hansen and Chris Cannon, both Utah Republicans, voted to establish Yucca as a permanent site, saying it could save Utah from the dangers associated with radiation. The Salt Lake mayor, in his signature style mixing passion and documentation, warned otherwise. "If the Yucca Mountain proposal were approved, huge amounts of nuclear waste would be transported through Salt Lake City every day for many years," Anderson said in his Senate testimony. "Salt Lake City will, by all estimations, see more traffic of nuclear waste than any other U.S. city except Las Vegas." Yucca's supporters have said waste transport poses no danger to Utahns along the route, but Anderson refuses to accept such reassurances. "Human error is inevitable. Scientists predict 340 transportation accidents and 2,395 incidents involving the waste during the transportation period," he told the Senate committee. "These numbers do not include the risks of terrorism — a very real possibility." In an interview, the mayor forecast a sea change in the way the world views Utah if Yucca goes on-line. "Nothing could have been better than the world's perception (of the city during) the 2002 Olympic Games," Anderson said. "When people start reading about us not in the context of polygamy or weird liquor laws but as a major dumping ground, a major transportation center . . . it's difficult to quantify the negative economic impact" it would have on Salt Lake City and Utah. Huntsman Cancer Institute director Stephen Prescott went with the mayor to Washington, D.C., also to testify before the 23-member Senate committee. In a similarly fervent speech, the physician spoke of Utah's downwinders, who had been told that nuclear testing in Nevada was safe. They later became cancer patients, as did others in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona who were exposed to nuclear fallout. "Please do not create a situation in which my successor will be sitting in front of your successors reporting on an excess of cancer deaths because there were accidents during the transport of (waste) to Yucca Mountain or Skull Valley," Prescott said. "The people of Utah were lied to repeatedly when told that the government plans were safe," Anderson said in his testimony. "We will not be lied to again." The mayor told the Senate committee to reconsider the storage of waste at the nuclear plants where it's produced, until a safe, permanent solution is found. "Second, we must decommission nuclear power plants," he added. "Only 20 percent of electricity generated in the U.S. comes from nuclear power." Only about 17 percent of the Senate has gone on record opposing Yucca. Many other members, including Utah Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, are officially undecided. The House of Representatives voted 306-117 earlier this month in support of Yucca, with Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson the only Utah congressman against the storage site. The full Senate is expected to vote on Yucca sometime this summer. E-mail: durbani@desnews.com [durbani@desnews.com] © 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 29 FCNL: Legislative Action Message (5/23/02) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 14:06:14 -0500 (CDT) FCNL LEGISLATIVE ACTION MESSAGE - May 23, 2002 The following action items from the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) focus on federal policy issues currently before Congress or the Administration. TOPICS: CONGRESSIONAL RECESS and OPPOSE FUNDING FOR NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND MISSILE DEFENSE CONGRESSIONAL RECESS. Congress will be in recess May 24 through June 3. Please contact the local office of your members of Congress and see if there will be opportunities to meet with them while they are in the district. Organize a delegation to discuss common concerns about U.S. nuclear weapons policy, military spending, and the need for new U.S. budget and policy priorities for the peaceful prevention of deadly conflict as an alternative to the war on terrorism or an expanded war with Iraq. If their schedules are already full, plan now for the next recesses (roughly) June 28-July 8 and July 29-September 3. OPPOSE FUNDING FOR NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND MISSILE DEFENSE. The Senate Armed Services Committee completed its FY2003 Defense Authorization Bill on May 10. Timely intervention by constituents encouraged the committee to alter its nuclear policy. This bill strips all funding for the development of a new "useable" nuclear weapon, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetratror (RNEP), and spends $812 million less than the Bush administration requested for missile defense. The full U.S. Senate may consider the FY 2003 military authorization bill as soon as the week of June 4. At that time, senators may offer two amendments that should be OPPOSED. * A new nuclear weapons amendment would restore the $15.5 million which the Senate Armed Services Committee cut for research into a new earth-penetrating nuclear weapon designed to target deeply buried underground bunkers (also known as a "bunker buster"). * A missile shield amendment would restore some or all of the $812 million the committee cut from the missile shield budget. ACTION: Please contact your senators at their Washington office by phone, email, or fax. Urge them to OPPOSE amendments to fund new nuclear weapons and so-called missile defense. Senate offices can be reached through the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121, from 9 am-6pm EDT. During evenings and on weekends, most Senate offices leave their answering machine on for voice messages. USE FCNL'S WEB SITE TO MAKE LETTER-WRITING EASIER: Start with the sample letter posted in our Legislative Action Center, personalize the language, then send your message as an email or fax directly from our site. You can also print it out and mail it. To view a sample letter to your senators, click on the link below, then enter your zip code and click in the box. Here is the link: http://capwiz.com/fconl/issues/alert/?alertid=154551&type=CO BACKGROUND: The Senate Armed Services Committee completed its drafting of the military authorization bill during the week of May 9. Under the leadership of committee Chairman Levin (MI) and Strategic Subcommittee Chairman Reed (RI), the committee made several positive changes to the Administration's request of $393.4 billion for military spending. FCNL has posted extensive background material on its web site about nuclear weapons and so-called missile defense. For a list of documents, go to http://www.fcnl.org/issues/arm/cntrl_nuclear-weapons.htm. For a more detailed fuller report on the Senate Armed Services Committee's actions, read the analysis by the Council for a Livable World at http://www.clw.org/nmd/senmarkup03.html. To read the Senate Armed Services Committee press release, go to http://www.senate.gov/%7Earmed_services/press/03mark.pdf. The committee cut the Administration's request for $15.5 million to begin work on a new nuclear, earth-penetrating weapon (the so-called "bunker buster"). Sens. Bingaman (NM) and Reed took the lead eliminating this money. The committee blocked the funds because of growing uncertainty about the Administration's policy for the use of nuclear weapons. Members of Congress are, with increasing frequency, questioning the idea of developing "useable" nuclear weapons. The committee also cut the Administration's request for missile defense from $7.6 billion to $6.8 billion, a net reduction of $812 million. Most of the savings have been shifted to Navy shipbuilding programs. Some funding also went to improve security at U.S. nuclear facilities and other uses. Sen. Levin explained that the cuts were made because some missile defense programs were not adequately justified, others were duplicates, and some money could not be spent in FY 2003. CONTACTING LEGISLATORS Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121 Sen. ________ U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 Rep. ________ U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Information on your members is available on FCNL's web site: http://capwiz.com/fconl/dbq/officials/directory/directory.dbq?command=congdi r CONTACTING THE ADMINISTRATION White House Comment Desk: 202-456-1111 FAX: 202-456-2461 E-MAIL: president@whitehouse.gov WEB PAGE: http://www.whitehouse.gov President George W. Bush The White House Washington, DC 20500 ----------------------------------------------------------------- This message supplements other FCNL materials and does not reflect FCNL's complete policy position on any issue. For further information, please contact FCNL. Mail: 245 Second Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002-5795 Email: fcnl@fcnl.org Phone: (202) 547-6000 Toll Free: (800) 630-1330 Fax: (202) 547-6019 Web: http://www.fcnl.org Your contributions sustain our Quaker witness in Washington. We welcome your gifts to FCNL, or, if you need a tax deduction, to the FCNL Education Fund. You can use your credit card to donate money securely to FCNL through a special page on FCNL's web site http://www.fcnl.org/suprt/indx.htm FCNL also accepts credit card donations over the phone. For more information about donating, please contact the Development Team directly at development@fcnl.org. Thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------------- This message may be found regularly on FCNL's web site http://www.fcnl.org where a printer-friendly version is available and on PeaceNet in the fcnl.updates conference. This message is distributed regularly via the fcnl-news mailing list. 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The message should read "unsubscribe fcnl-news." ----------------------------------------------------------------- We seek a world free of war and the threat of war We seek a society with equity and justice for all We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled We seek an earth restored... ***************************************************************** 30 Why nuclear conflict is a real threat Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Two sides could wipe out each other's big cities Luke Harding in New Delhi and Rory McCarthy in Islamabad Thursday May 23, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] In July 1999 Pakistan's then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, flew to Washington for a tense meeting with President Bill Clinton. Several weeks earlier Pakistani troops had seized a chunk of Himalayan territory inside India near the town of Kargil. India had responded furiously and demanded that the Pakistanis withdraw. As Mr Sharif pleaded for American help, an angry Mr Clinton informed him that Pakistan had already started deploying its nuclear weapons. Mr Sharif appeared shocked and admitted he knew nothing about it. The man who almost certainly ordered the secret deployment - General Pervez Musharraf - is now the man with his finger on Pakistan's nuclear button. Four months later, Gen Musharraf, then the head of the army, overthrew Mr Sharif in a coup. He is now Pakistan's president. Three years on, the prospect of a nuclear conflict between the subcontinent's most deadly enemies is, most analysts believe, even greater. For many within India's increasingly war-like Hindu nationalist BJP party, Kargil is still unfinished business. Jane's Information Group estimates that India has between 200 and 250 nuclear weapons, compared to 150 for Pakistan. Others believe the figures are much lower and say Pakistan has 40-52 nuclear bombs compared with 60-80 Indian ones. Reports this week suggest Pakistan has already deployed its Shaheen I missiles - mobile 500-mile range solid-fuel rockets - which can be readied for use within minutes. Both sides have also "soft-wired" their bomber aircraft to allow them to drop nuclear weapons - Pakistan by F16 and India by MiGs and Mirages. For years Pakistan has been developing a comprehensive missile delivery system. According to a CIA report in January, China has been providing "significant assistance" to Pakistan's ballistic missile programme. Now Pakistan is moving towards serial production of the Shaheen I and the Haider I, another solid-fuel short-range ballistic missile, the report said. Two years ago the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) released photographs of Pakistan's nuclear reactors. The satellite pictures showed a plutonium reactor at Khushab, near Lahore, which the FAS said could produce five bombs a year. Another base at Sargodha showed a dozen garages for missile launchers. The FAS said Pakistan may have up to 84 short-range Shaheen missiles at the site, with 20 launchers. According to the official Pakistan Institute for Air Defence Studies, Pakistan has "one of the world's most sophisticated and formidable indigenous missile weapons systems programme". The institute admitted Pakistan received "specimen guidance and propulsion systems" from Chinese and North Korean missiles, quickly advancing its own programme. On the other side of the divide, India has been developing its own indigenous ballistic missiles over the past 18 years as part of what it calls an Integrated Missile Development Programme. The Agni I missile - named after the Hindi word for fire - has a range of 435 miles, which covers most of Pakistan, and uses solid fuel for a quick launch. It can also be transported by rail, making it less vulnerable to "pre-emptive strikes". In April 1999, India test-fired its first strategic missile, Agni II, which has a range of 1,550 miles and is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to anywhere in Pakistan and much of China. It has now gone into production. India also has a short-range Prithvi missile, with a 93-mile range, still capable of striking Lahore or Islamabad. So the technology is undoubtedly there. What is causing intense worry in the region and around the world is that the political will to use it seems increasingly to be there too. India has traditionally been reluctant to attack Pakistan. This can be explained by its uncertainty about how Pakistan would respond. But any doubt appears to have been swept aside, as senior Indian officials hint openly that it is time to "call Pakistan's nuclear bluff" as troops mass on the border. Under this scenario, India would "teach Pakistan a lesson" by attacking militant training camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Pakistan would refrain from deploying its nuclear weapons because of the presence of US troops on its soil. If it did, New Delhi could respond with massive force, wiping out all of Pakistan's cities and major population centres. "Use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan would be a very short recipe for national suicide," Prof Brahma Chellaney of New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research, said. The problem is that Pakistan does not share this view. Islamabad is acutely aware that India enjoys a vastly superior conventional army - with about 1.2 million troops compared to Pakistan's 700,000. Pakistan has already made it clear that, in the face of a superior enemy, it would be prepared to initiate a nuclear confrontation - unlike India, which has a strict "no first use" policy. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 31 Indian strategic nuclear command to be in place next month rediff.com: India's Strategic Nuclear Command is expected to be in place by next month, four years after the country conducted underground tests and declared itself a nuclear-state. The Strategic Nuclear Command, which will be commanded by the Indian Air Force and based in Thiruvananthapuram, currently the headquarters of the IAF Southern Air Command, will function under the aegis of the newly created Integrated Defence Staff, the Jane's Defence Weekly has said quoting official sources. A large proportion of the SNC's air and sea-based assets will eventually be based on the Andaman and Nicobar island in the Bay of Bengal, headquarters of India's first tri-service command established last October," the sources said. The IAF, convinced of its pre-eminent strike capability, had wanted sole control of India's nuclear assets and was clearly "disconcerted" when the government announced the raising of the army's second strategic rocket regiment last year to operate the indigenously produced Agni-II intermediate-range ballistic missile that entered series production June last year, the weekly claimed. PTI (c) Copyright 2002 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or ***************************************************************** 32 Army inducts nuclear attack resistant shelters rediff.com: Josy Joseph in New Delhi Indian Army has begun inducting an 'Integrated Field Shelter' that can withstand any nuclear, biological and chemical attack. The induction comes in the wake of Pakistan's repeated threats of nuclear attack against India. According to a ministry of defence spokesman, Research and Development Engineers, Pune -- a defence laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation -- developed the shelter. "The shelter can also be used as command post, observation post, regimental aid centre and communication centre," the spokesman added. "The shelter is in regular production and already been introduced into the services," the spokesman said. The shelter can accommodate thirty persons and is capable of giving protection for 96 hours at a stretch. The shelter is 28 meter long with an overall diameter of 2.5 meters. The shelter houses a three-ton vehicle, two 1000 litre water tanks, sewerage disposal pump and two 5 KVA generators for continuous power supply. "The shelter," the spokesman said, "is structurally strong enough to withstand 7.5 metric tonne circular pressure for the earth-covered portions and 15 metric tonne longitudinal pressure for the portions not covered by the earth." The indigenous structure has three ventilation/filtration systems and a blower filter of 200 cubic meter/hour capacity. There are no details available of how many of them have been inducted in which all localities. But senior army officials insist that the army is 'equipped and ready to stand a nuclear attack'. In fact, the army believes that a tactical nuclear attack would not have 'any crippling impact' on India's fighting abilities. ***************************************************************** 33 Junk Treaty Avoids Russia's Real Non-proliferation Problems OPINION MOSCOW - With the arrival of US President George W. Bush here today comes the declaration by the third American president in a little over a decade that the Cold War is over. The proclamation adds him to a list of five other former and present world leaders — Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Bill Clinton, and his own father, George H.W. Bush — who have also ended the Cold War since 1991. The word 'liquidation' may not be painted on nuclear missiles for another ten years. photo: Bellona archive Charles Digges, 2002-05-23 12:13 The strategic arms agreement Bush and Putin will sign also marks the fourth time Russia and America have declared their joint commitment to slash nuclear warheads to from America's 6,000 and Russia's 5,500 down to some 2,000 warheads each, meaning a nuclear apocalypse could only destroy the planet four or five times over. This is touted as progress in the name of world peace and a safer planet, just as it was when Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin and George H.W. Bush and Yeltsin and Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev each made the same warhead-slashing agreements. And in the wake of Sept. 11, it has been hailed in by Washington as victory in the war on terror. Washington's response to the treaty has been heady self-congratulation. US Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked last on the treaty and the ongoing talks that would offer Russia some limited role in NATO: "We hardly have a cliché that captures this yet." As it stands there are so many texts now in agreement on the summit themes to be discussed this week that one wonders why the diplomats cannot just take out the old texts, dust them off, and recycle them. In fact, on the verification part of the treaty du jour, that is exactly what they did, which is why this latest agreement is down to just three double-spaced pages, according to one high-ranking Russian official who had access to a draft of the document. The meat of the treaty itself is only half a page long, the official said — an indication that when Bush gave Washington reporters a sneak preview of the document at a news conference two weeks ago when he read out "Russia and the US will by 2012 have 2,200 to 1,700 warheads," he may have spoiled the ending. By contrast, treaties like START I, signed in 1991, or START II, signed in 1993 — which in any case was never implemented — ran hundreds of pages with appendices describing in detail verification of compliance procedures, timetables for decommissioning of specific weapons systems, and precise definitions of the methods for counting warheads. This treaty has no definitions of what warheads are or how to count them. As defence analysts Pavel Felgenhauer recently noted in his column in The Moscow Times, this treaty's vagueness on this point means an entire nuclear submarine with 20 ballistic missiles and the capability of carrying 200 nuclear devices could be counted as one "warhead" if most of its payload is temporarily stored on land. Stanford Database Tracks Lost Radwaste to Stem Nuclear Terrorism In the Baltic Sea republic of Lithuania, investigators recovered material from a decade-old uranium heist — but not all of it. On April 3, Zirconium cylinders that used to hold uranium were discovered buried in a forest near the Ignalina nuclear power plant. Weeks earlier, police said they recovered another highly radioactive cylinder from the same fuel assembly lying in a field, containing 20 kilograms of uranium. Verification procedures are equally foggy. Washington, for its part, has promised sweeping access to Russia to verify future cuts, but again, verification procedures are not stipulated in the treaty and rely on future goodwill. As for the decommissioning schedule, it commits neither side to anything for ten years, by which time both sides could have amassed total of some 30,000 strategic, as well as tactical nuclear weapons (about which the treaty mentions nothing) at their combined disposal, Washington Based Nation Institute Fellow Matt Bivens pointed out in a recent op-ed piece in The Moscow Times. "Legally speaking," said Felgenhauer, "in military arms control terms, the new treaty is nothing more than a worthless scrap of paper." Indeed, the treaty cost Washington almost exactly the worth of the paper it is printed on. It managed to offer Russia the cheapest agreement at a time when securing Russia's dilapidated nuclear infrastructure from terrorists at any cost is the most pressing security and environmental challenge Russia and the Western world face. What Washington managed to save with such a bargain-basement bill of goods was it cherished provision to store warheads rather than fully decommission them, meaning in 10 years' time the United States could still have some 4,600 warheads (partially deployed, partially stored for deployment), while Russia, who is committed to destroying them, will manage less than 1,200, Felgenhauer noted. The treaty also scraps any text that would have made cuts in US offensive weapons irreversible or offered any guarantees that America's planned missile defence shields will not threaten Russia, essentially giving Washington to do whatever it wants in the pursuit of this national security pink elephant. But as Bivens pointed out, the billions of dollars the Pentagon spends annually on that missile shield would cover the financial burden of dismantling or securing all Russian weapons of mass destruction for good. This proposed shield - which would surgically fire missiles at missiles — has been de facto declared unworkable in recent weeks by the Pentagon, which now suggests it might take nuclear weapons to shoot down hostile missiles — a suggestion nearly tantamount to America firing nukes on itself once the rain of fallout begins to settle on the cities the missile shield was meant to defend. However, committing money earmarked for one of America's most cherished defence fantasies to securing the world's most eminent threat to peace and the environment could be construed as waggish — but only in the context of Bush's disingenuous attempts to take credit, like his father before him, for the rust on the Iron Curtain. In fact, far from being waggish, it goes to the very heart of the matter that has marred the perpetual Cold War ending process for the last decade. Consider the following dangers to Russian-American security that this treaty makes absolutely no effort to address: + More than 600 tonnes of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium sit in poverty-stricken Russia — enough, according to the US General Accounting Office, to make 40,000 nuclear bombs. Some of that material is well secured. But the GAO told Bivens that there are still "hundreds of tons" of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium — i.e., enough for thousands of nuclear weapons — stored in about 100 buildings in Russia that lack such basic security as fences, surveillance cameras or reinforced doors. This despite years of weakly funded U.S. assistance programs to improve Russian nuclear security and buy up excess weapons-grade materials. + According to researchers at Stanford university, who run a database on nuclear theft and nuclear security problems say that security is also lax around more than 10,000 warheads Russia has in stockpile storage and in quasi-portable "tactical" status. + And then, according to Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry, there are research reactors — which use some of the best bomb-grade uranium and, according to Bellona and others, have some of the worst security. As an example the Stanford database team cited a 1993 incident where separatists in Abkhazia overran a research reactor in Sukhumi and made off with 2 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. When the separatists advanced on a sister reactor in the town of Mtskheta, scientists their defended it with rakes and sticks. The stolen uranium remains on the missing list at Stanford and for all anyone knows could still be in the hands of the Abkhazian separatists who have ties to Chechen rebel movements. These rebel movements, Bivens points out, have lately been widely assumed to have ties to Al Quaeda, which has announced its intentions of procuring a nuclear device. The list hardly stops here. All of this virtually confirms that any suggestion that this summit is an advance in the world's nuclear security is intended as nothing more than a ludicrous joke to be told between palm-pressing photo-ops of the bosom-buddy presidents. Indeed, in the face of all of this quite open secret about the state of Russia's nuclear security, it is a surprisingly arrogant assumption on the presidents' behalf to think that the future of nuclear weapons development and disposal rests in their hands. It represents the same kind of facile assumption about security that made Sept. 11 possible. But perhaps while "history is being made" and "the last nail in the coffin of the Cold War is being driven" in Moscow this week, it perhaps is impolite to intrude with such questions. But if one thing is certain — as Russia's non-proliferation problems and nuclear security issues continue to spiral out of control — it won't be long before another group of Moscow and Washington leaders meet to end the Cold War yet again. Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President: Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no [webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 34 Straw warns that dispute over Karachi could escalate into nuclear war Yahoo! News - Thu May 23, 4:51 AM ET LONDON - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw warned Thursday that the confrontation between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir could escalate into nuclear war. Straw, who plans to visit the region next week on a peace mission, said the two countries lack the highly developed control systems which helped prevent nuclear conflict in Europe for 40 years during the Cold War. "In contradistinction to the situation finally achieved in Europe between NATO and the Soviet bloc, there isn't a highly developed nuclear doctrine and well-developed back channels of communication between these two parties, then there is a risk of nuclear warfare," he told BBC radio. "It is another reason why we have to do everything we can to avert a crisis." Fears of war between India and Pakistan have been growing with cross-border shelling killing dozens in the past week in divided Kashmir. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the Himalayan region. With one million troops mobilized on both sides of the border, Straw said his visit to the two countries was unlikely on its own to resolve the long-running dispute. "I have no illusions about one trip to the region made by a British foreign secretary," he said. Straw said experience had shown that international intervention could help to lower tensions in conflict situations, but ultimately the problem could only be resolved by the rival sides. Britain recalled some of its diplomats from Pakistan on Wednesday and urged its citizens to avoid traveling there, citing terrorist threats made against two British consulates. (jw/ren) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 35 India/Pakistan: Looking into the nuclear abyss Asia Times: India/Pakistan [globe] [Asia Times Online] [http://www.asiatimes-chinese.com] By Sultan Shahin NEW DELHI - How should one interpret Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee telling a group of his soldiers in Kupwara, Kashmir from a million-strong battle-ready army amassed at the borders of Pakistan at a time when every possible logistical preparation has been made for war: “Get ready for making supreme sacrifices in a decisive war. We are going to achieve a historic victory”? The real strongman of his party, Home Minister Lal Krishan Advani, had said a day earlier, “We are going to win a decisive victory as in 1971.” Former premier Inder Kumar Gujral dismisses Vajpayee’s speech made on Wednesday just 25 kilometers from the Line of Control that separates the Indian and Pakistan-administered sections of Kashmir as political rhetoric. He thinks it should not be taken seriously. He is a politician; he should know. Vice-Admiral K K Nayar, a member of the national security advisory board says, "No prime minister uses rhetoric while talking to his soldiers. Vajpayee’s statement should be taken very seriously.” He is a soldier; he should know. The question is significant for the billion-plus frightened citizens of the South Asian sub-continent. The military rulers of Pakistan, too, will be trying to interpret this statement. Being soldiers, they would probably think like soldiers and opt for a soldier’s interpretation. And the Pakistani response did not take long. A senior minister and former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, Javed Asharaf Qazi, said on Wednesday that his country would exercise the nuclear option if its survival was put at stake. Echoing what his boss, President General Pervez Musharraf has said before, he commented, "If it ever comes to annihilation of Pakistan, then what is this nuclear option for? We will use it against the enemy." An Indian soldier, General V R Raghavan, a former director general of Indian military operations, argued in a recent paper that any conflict between India and Pakistan could easily spiral out of control. He writes, "India's aggressive plans for fighting conventional wars are now matched against Pakistan's aggressive doctrine for nuclear ones. An escalation from a conventional to a nuclear war, within one or two days of the outbreak of the war, is not implausible.” Consider this in the context of credible information that Pakistan does not have the capability to fight a conventional war against the far superior India for more than 72 hours. Would Pakistan wait for 72 hours to use its nuclear option? While all other nuclear powers regard their nuclear weapons as a deterrent, Pakistan considers them central to its defense agenda. A small and militarily as well as economically weak Pakistan is considered a stand-alone nuclear weapons power. It is the only nuclear-weapons country where it is the military and not a democratically elected politician who has his finger on the nuclear button. Amid the bellicose talk emanating from India at all levels, what is most frightening is the profession of an irrational belief in the rationality of the Pakistani generals. The hawks constituting India’s security advisers – we don’t know of any doves, but the possibility cannot be totally discounted – are all united on one score. They say with one voice, "Pakistan is evil, the fountainhead of all terrorism, and so on, but in nuclear terms they are completely sane, rational, reasonable." Let us call Pakistan’s nuclear bluff is the refrain. A realization has sunk in four years after the Vajpayee government virtually forced Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons in the wake of Indian nuclear explosions in May 1998 that India’s conventional military superiority has been compromised by the Hindu fundamentalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Previous Congress and United Front governments that had actually built the nuclear bombs did not go for an overt test, primarily because this would give Pakistan an excuse to go nuclear – something a country regarded then virtually as a failed state would have never dared to do. Also, it was unnecessary as India had tested its nuclear weapons capability by the first Pokhran tests way back in 1974. The only reason Vajpayee risked compromising India’s military superiority vis-a-vis Pakistan was that, unsure of lasting even a few months in power at the head of a shaky coalition which did lose power within a year, he wanted to be remembered for something, anything, and nothing more spectacular and satisfying to his jingoistic party cadres could have been performed within a few months. The bomb was already there; it just had to be exploded. It has been reported that even when Vajpayee became prime minister for the first time in 1997, for a mere 13 days, and was sure of losing power after the first vote of confidence, as he indeed did, he had considered the possibility of detonating nuclear bombs, but was told that organizing such an event would take at least two months. It is natural for Vajpayee now to wish not to go down in history as the person who compromised India’s superiority over arch-enemy Pakistan. His own party cadres have been telling the media in the past few years that India needs a strong leader like Indira Gandhi, who had dismembered Pakistan in 1971 and had helped the secession of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). This also explains Advani’s reference to 1971 and his desire to achieve an equally decisive victory over Pakistan. How else can the BJP demonstrate the superiority of Hindutva (the ideology of Hindu domination of the sub-continent) over the secularism of other parties? There is no question in the mind of Indian rulers that even when faced with massive defeat, including another dismemberment of the country and surrender of 10,000 soldiers – how else can an Indian victory equal 1971? – Pakistan will not dare use its nuclear bombs. The only nuclear-related question being discussed is whether or not Pakistan possesses tactical nuclear devices. Some analysts believe that Pakistan has acquired this capability with Chinese assistance, and that these devices can be fired even from a Bofors-type howitzer. Those holding this view reckon that Pakistan will fire a tactical nuclear device on Indian forces should India take the military initiative. This, they feel, would end a war. Others debunk this idea. They also want it publicly conveyed to Pakistan and the international community at large that even a tactical strike by Pakistan on Indian forces on its soil will invite massive nuclear retaliation from India, wiping out all major cities in Pakistan. In the face of such overwhelming Indian desire for a showdown with Pakistan, all that the scared citizenry of South Asia is left with is to speculate on the mental condition of our rulers. That the present Pakistani rulers are suspect doesn’t need much convincing. Overwhelming evidence was provided recently by former White House official Bruce Riedel. Riedel's account of the relevant Kargil episode was presented in a paper at the University of Pennsylvania's center for advanced studies of India. Quoting Riedel, a sensational report in the Sunday Times (London, May 12) said that the Pakistani army mobilized its nuclear arsenal against India during the 1999 Kargil war without the knowledge of premier Nawaz Sharif. US intelligence had gathered "disturbing information about Pakistan preparing its nuclear arsenal". Riedel and other officials feared that India and Pakistan "were heading for a deadly descent into full-scale conflict, with a danger of nuclear cataclysm". The Riedel revelation suggests that the architect of Pakistan's reckless adventurism at that time was none other than its current ruler, Musharraf, who comes across as a war-mongering general who brought the region to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe. India and Pakistan were also reported then to have exchanged nuclear threats no fewer than 13 times during the seven weeks-long war - which has been described as “the world's biggest-ever conventional conflict between two nuclear weapons-states”. These threats were not hollow. In the Pakistani case, they were backed by ground-level preparations. Sharif believed that India, too, would have made similar preparations for the deployment and use of nuclear weapons. This is why he agreed to withdraw his troops from Kargil unceremoniously, much to the annoyance of the army, and later he had to pay with his job for doing this. Indian army chief S Padmanabhan also said after taking over as chief of army staff what has now appeared as the Riedel revelation. In an interview to the newspaper Today, he revealed that India had information that Pakistan had “activated” its missile and launch areas. Though he would not admit it, Sharif’s guess was correct and India, too, had kept its missiles in an advance stage of readiness. Another chilling insight into the Pakistani military mind is provided by an article by author Peter Landesman. He relates a hair-raising conversation he had with a retired Pakistani brigadier who was serving as an aide to premier Benazir Bhutto. On a visit to Brigadier Amanullah’s house in Islamabad, Landesman sees a landscape painting showing the Bhuttos with what he (Landesman) thinks is a rocket heading to the moon. He asks the brigadier about it, and is told the painting is actually a nuclear warhead heading to India. Landesman’s continues, "I thought he was making a joke. Then I saw he wasn't. I thought of the shrines to Pakistan's nuclear weapons site, prominently displayed in every city. I told Aman that I was disturbed by the ease with which Pakistanis talk of nuclear war with India. Aman shook his head. 'No,' he said matter-of-factly. 'This should happen. We should use the bomb'. 'For what purpose?' He didn't seem to understand my question. 'In retaliation?' I asked. 'Why not? Or first strike? Why not?' "I looked for a sign of irony. None was visible. Rocking his head side to side, his expression becoming more and more withdrawn, Aman launched into a monologue that neither of us, I am sure, knew was coming: 'We should fire at them and take out a few of their cities - Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta,' he said. 'They should fire back and take Karachi and Lahore. Kill off a hundred or two hundred million people. They should fire at us and it would all be over. They have acted so badly toward us; they have been so mean. We should teach them a lesson. It would teach all of us a lesson. There is no future here, and we need to start over. So many people think this. Have you been to the villages of Pakistan, the interior? There is nothing but dire poverty and pain. The children have no education; there is nothing to look forward to. Go into the villages, see the poverty. There is no drinking water. Small children without shoes walk miles for a drink of water. I go to the villages and I want to cry. My children have no future. None of the children of Pakistan have a future. We are surrounded by nothing but war and suffering. Millions should die away'. " 'Pakistan should fire pre-emptively?' I asked. Aman nodded. 'And you are willing to see your children die?' 'Tens of thousands of people are dying in Kashmir, and the only superpower says nothing,' Aman said. 'America has sided with India because it has interests there.' He told me he was willing to see his children be killed. He repeated that they didn't have any future - his children or any other children. "I asked him if he thought he was alone in his thoughts, and Aman made it clear to me that he was not. 'Believe me,' he went on, 'If I were in charge, I would have already done it.' Aman stopped, as though he'd stunned even himself. Then he added, with quiet forcefulness, 'Before I die, I hope I should see it'." A similar psychological profile of the BJP leaders in Delhi is not available. But India’s foremost social-psychologist Ashish Nandy has recently provided a clue to their mental state and personality by profiling BJP leader Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, who has become an icon of Hindutva being defended by all the top leaders in Delhi for having successfully organized and run the genocide of Muslims for the past 78 days. In an article in the monthly Seminar magazine, Nandy writes about an encounter with Modi before he become famous. "Almost nothing reveals the decline and degeneration of Gujarati middle class culture more than its present chief minister, Narendra Modi. Not only has he shamelessly presided over the riots and acted as the chief patron of rioting gangs, the vulgarities of his utterances have been a slur on civilized public life. His justifications of the riots, too, sound uncannily like that of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president and mass murderer who is now facing trial for his crimes against humanity. I often wonder these days why those active in human rights groups in India and abroad have not yet tried to get an international summons issued against Modi for colluding with the murder of hundreds and for attempted ethnic cleansing. If Modi’s behavior till now is not a crime against humanity, what is? "More than a decade ago, when Narendra Modi was a nobody, a small-time RSS pracharak [propagandist] trying to make it as a small-time BJP functionary, I had the privilege of interviewing him. It was a long, rambling interview, but it left me in no doubt that here was a classic, clinical case of a fascist. I never use the term ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category comprising not only one’s ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualizing the ideology. “Modi, it gives me no pleasure to tell the readers, met virtually all the criteria that psychiatrists, psycho-analysts and psychologists had set up after years of empirical work on the authoritarian personality. He had the same mix of puritanical rigidity, narrowing of emotional life, massive use of the ego defense of projection, denial and fear of his own passions combined with fantasies of violence – all set within the matrix of clear paranoid and obsessive personality traits. I still remember the cool, measured tone in which he elaborated a theory of cosmic conspiracy against India that painted every Muslim as a suspected traitor and a potential terrorist. I came out of the interview shaken ... I had met a textbook case of a fascist and a prospective killer, perhaps even a future mass murderer ... I am afraid I cannot look at the future of the country with anything but great foreboding.” Anyone who thinks and writes and propagates and actually starts translating into reality the thought that 150 million Muslims and Christians of India can be killed has got to be certifiably insane. That is Modi for you. And it is Modi’s colleagues and admirers who run New Delhi. They have all spent a lifetime, a longer lifetime than Modi, in the same Hindutva school. Is it any wonder then that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has announced the withdrawal of more than 150 embassy officials from Islamabad? But of course the 1.25 billion inhabitants in South Asia do not enjoy the luxury of being taken away before it is too late. They can only hope that the civilized world will still be able to hold back the nuke-wielding hordes of South Asia from destroying each other and a good chunk of the world with them. Time perhaps for senior British diplomat and Tony Blair's foreign policy guru Robert Cooper’s "post-modern state" to practice its new internationalism and a new doctrine of humanitarian intervention which would place limits on state sovereignty. “In the ancient world”, says Cooper (The Observer, London, April 7) “order meant empire. Those within the empire had order, culture and civilization. Outside it lay barbarians, chaos and disorder.” How true. If we survive the impending nuclear holocaust, or those of us who do, should probably start thinking of facilitating the new imperialist order. In any case, if we do survive, it will be largely due to what academic Achin Vanaik calls India and Pakistan’s “competitive servility” to the US. (©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact ads@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.) [http://www.sulekha.com] ***************************************************************** 36 AU: Concerns over increased tension between nuclear neighbours theage.com.au, Breaking News CANBERRA, May 23 AAP|Published: Thursday May 23, 6:50 PM Australians were today warned to get out of Pakistan following threats that Indian troops could strike against their nuclear neighbour. The Department of Foreign Affairs also warned Australians in Pakistan that they could be the target of terrorist attacks. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he was gravely concerned about the escalating tension between the nuclear powers over the disputed territory of Kashmir. He ordered the high commissioners of both nations to be called in to the Department of Foreign Affairs to hear Australia's fears about rising tensions in their border region. Prime Minister John Howard and Chinese President Jiang Zemin discussed the escalating tension during talks in Chongquing, China, with Mr Howard urging mutual restraint. India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has told troops confronting Pakistan's forces on the border to prepare for action while sending additional troops to the area and extra warships to the Arabian Sea. Both Mr Howard and Mr Jiang urged restraint. "We would very strongly and vehemently urge restraint on both India and Pakistan," Mr Howard told reporters in Chongquing. "They will both be the losers if hostilities break out." Mr Howard spoke overnight to Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon about the deteriorating situation. But the scope for Commonwealth action is limited as Pakistan is suspended from the councils of the Commonwealth because of the military take-over there in 1999. Mr Downer urged the two nuclear neighbours to commit to dialogue and consider their international responsibilities to resolve their differences peacefully. "I remain gravely concerned about the escalation in tension between India and Pakistan," Mr Downer said in a statement. "On my instructions, the acting secretary of my Department has called in the Indian and Pakistani High Commissioners to express Australia's great fears about the possibility of hostilities." The two high commissioners were asked to avoid hostilities and to ensure that all possible measures to reduce the tensions between them would be taken. "As nuclear capable states, India and Pakistan bear a great responsibility to the region and the international community to resolve their differences peacefully," Mr Downer said. The Department of Foreign Affairs' travel advice for India was less strong than the warning for Pakistan, with Australians being urged to take account of the heightened tensions between India and Pakistan. Intending travellers to either country should check the Department of Foreign Affairs travel advice at www.dfat.gov.au./travel. By Karen Polglaze, Diplomatic Correspondent Copyright © 2002 John Fairfax Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 37 Mothballed warheads pose continuing threat | csmonitor.com Fred Weir Special to The Christian Science Monitor--> from the May 23, 2002 edition EMPTY: An SS-24 missile silo in Pervomaisk, Ukraine, shown after its destruction in 1998 as part of efforts to rid the former USSR of its cold-war nuclear-weapons arsenal. EFREM LUKATSKY/FILE Russian missiles decommissioned under the new nuclear treaty are likely to land in poorly guarded storage depots. By Fred Weir | Special to The Christian Science Monitor MOSCOW – To terrorists trying to lay their hands on the stuff of atomic weapons, Russia's nuclear nerve center is a daunting fortress. High, video-monitored concrete walls, bomb-proof steel gates, and hundreds of military guards protect the 247-acre site of Moscow's Kurchatov Institute, birthplace of the USSR's first atomic bomb and still a beehive of research on fusion and on methods for storing radioactive materials left over from the cold war. But experts say the institute is the Russian nuclear program's best face. Flung across Russia's vast hinterland are 52 military storage depots for the enriched uranium and plutonium from which nuclear warheads are made. At those sites, security is often lax and weapons-grade materials are not closely accounted for. "Active-duty nuclear weapons are well protected, but there are serious security problems with stored warheads and other highly dangerous materials," says Sergei Yushenkov, deputy head of the State Duma's Security Committee. "The key problem in Russia, which will not be resolved by the current Russia-US dialogue, is that we have no civilian oversight in the nuclear sphere. The glimpses we have are very worrisome, but even in the Duma [Russia's lower house of parliament] we cannot get a full picture." In addition, at the hundreds of civilian facilities around Russia, where thousands of tons of spent reactor fuel and other nuclear wastes are stored, security is often nonexistent. While these materials might not be easily fashioned into atomic weapons, they could provide the ingredients for a so-called "dirty bomb" – radioactive substances wrapped around a conventional explosive. "Control over low-level nuclear wastes in this country is very weak," says Dmitry Kovchegin, a nuclear-safety specialist at the independent PIR Center for policy studies in Moscow. "Terrorists could easily acquire the means to make a dirty bomb in this country." Last winter a group of Duma deputies, environmental activists and a TV crew dramatized the danger by climbing through a broken fence and walking into a medium-security nuclear- waste storage center in Siberia, where they spent six hours beside a building housing 3,000 tons of radioactive spent reactor fuel. "I was amazed at how easy it was," says Sergei Mitrokhin, one of the deputies. "No one challenged us. Guards walked past us, and never asked who we were or what we were doing." Since the collapse of the USSR, the United States has spent an average of $400 million a year to fund a range of measures known as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Among other things, the money has gone to upgrade storage, oversight, and security at storage sites, and to supplement the meager salaries of thousands of Russian physicists and nuclear engineers who might otherwise be tempted to peddle their skills to third-world countries or terrorist groups. Even at the Kurchatov Institute, where the average paycheck hovers around 2,000 rubles (about $65) monthly, the subsidies have made a difference. "We have some of the world's top nuclear specialists here, earning less than what Americans spend on their lunches in a month," says Andrei Gagarinsky, Kurchatov chief of research and development. "Without extra sources of income, like those from Nunn-Lugar, we just wouldn't be able to continue." Washington is pushing for an additional $20 billion, that would be funded by the US and fellow G7 nations, to help Russia neutralize the danger posed by its nuclear materials. So far, only about 40 percent of Russia's bomb-grade materials and less than a seventh of enriched uranium stocks have been secured, according to a report issued by Harvard University this week. One major area of concern is the Russian Navy's nuclear-submarine fleet, most of which was hastily decommissioned following the Soviet demise. At the Kurchatov Institute, specialists are trying to devise ways to quickly dismantle and store the reactors and fuel rods from more than 100 nuclear subs, many of which are rusting away in open harbors on Russian naval bases. About five years ago, Gagarinsky says, a group of sailors in the northern naval base of Severodvinsk actually hijacked an entire reactor unit – complete with fuel rods – from a disabled submarine, hoping to sell it on the black market. "Of course they failed," says Gagarinsky. "But there's no doubt this area needs a lot of attention." No one is offering a guess at how much nuclear material may already be missing. The former USSR had more than 20,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and as much as 650 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, experts say. Russia still deploys about 6,000 strategic and 8,000 smaller tactical warheads. Thousands of others have been safely dismantled over the past decade, and their materials stored, with major help from Nunn-Lugar funds. "The United States has paid for just about everything that has been done to dismantle Russian nuclear weapons," says Alexander Goltz, a military expert who writes for the weekly Ezhenedelni Dzhurnal newsmagazine. Meanwhile, some observers worry that Russia's Ministry of Atomic Power, which oversees both civilian and military nuclear programs and is a key recipient of outside funding, may be diverting the money to other purposes. Russia's State Accounting Chamber, a government watchdog that answers to parliament, charged in a report last year that $270 million given to MinAtom by Norway and Sweden between 1998 and 2000 to help process radioactive wastes simply disappeared. "That is the tip of the iceberg," says Maxim Shingarkin, a former major in the Russian Defense Ministry's department of nuclear forces who now advises environmental groups. "We know that US aid is sometimes being used by MinAtom to fund new nuclear research rather than retire old weapons ...," he says. "In the future there must be much tougher control over the disbursement of such funds." Mr. Yushenkov agrees. "Arms agreements are all very well," he says. "But the most urgent need is to enforce transparency and public accountability over Russia's nuclear establishment." * * * Ironically, the arms-control deal to be signed by Presidents Vladimir Putin and George Bush on Friday will greatly increase pressure on Russia's dilapidated and insecure storage facilities. Experts say Russia would probably scale back its strategic nuclear forces to about 1,500 warheads within a few years, with or without an agreement. "The delivery systems are old and must be retired," says Mr. Goltz. "Russia can't afford to replace them, so the warheads must be stored." Russia will need massive assistance if it is ever to process the disassembled warheads into forms that cannot be refashioned into weapons one day. "These materials must be immobilized by being mixed with concrete or glass, and then safely stored, or they must be burned in breeder reactors," says Gagarinsky. "At the present time, we lack the means to do either." Vladimir Chuprov, a nuclear expert with Greenpeace-Russia, warns: "Stocks of plutonium in storage will skyrocket in the next few years. No one should imagine that Putin and Bush have brought this under control. The dangers are not receding, they are multiplying every day." LILIAN AKWISOMBE - STAFF SOURCES: NATIONAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL, FOR 1945-1996 DATA; ARMS CONTROL ASSOCIATION, FOR 2001 DATA Copyright © 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights ***************************************************************** 38 Little fine print, and lots of loopholes | csmonitor.com Peter Grier Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor--> from the May 23, 2002 edition READY: A senior airman retrieves tools for maintenance work on a Minuteman III nuclear missile. The number of warheads will be reduced, but missiles will remain under plains-state silos. ERIC DRAPER/AP/FILE The treaty that Bush and Putin are signing tomorrow pioneers the new approach of 'fast-track arms control.' By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – The nuclear treaty signed Friday by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin appears to be limiting US and Russian arsenals for just one day, technically speaking. The pact holds that by Dec. 31, 2012, the number of operational warheads for long-range missiles and bombers should be no greater than 2,200 per side. But before that day, there are no deadlines to meet, and afterward, the treaty expires. Furthermore, the agreement has little in the way of fine print at all. Past arms pacts contained complicated sublimits meant to cap the most threatening kind of warheads. There's nothing like that here. For all the US cares, Moscow could mount all its permitted warheads on heavy SS-18s – a missile once so feared by the Pentagon that its NATO designation was "Satan." START III, it isn't. Call it fast-track arms control. In its unstructured nature, the Bush-Putin Pact of 2002 has, if nothing else, pioneered a new approach for a new age to the military relationship of old rivals. To critics, that is its primary defect. Its restraint is insubstantial, they say, a fragile thing that could be undone by the merest change in geopolitical winds. To the administration, it is an agreement that makes the deepest reductions of the nuclear age – and didn't require the sort of lengthy negotiations that enriched Geneva's hoteliers during the cold war. "This is not virtual arms control," said a senior administration official at a recent briefing for reporters. * * * Administration officials agree that the impending treaty, in its simplicity, will be legally binding for but a blink of time. But they claim that to focus on this is to miss the agreement's point. It's not about numbers, they say. It's about codifying the tone of a new, friendlier US-Russian relationship. The new treaty isn't as complicated as past ones because it doesn't have to be. "Instead of a negotiation which took multiple years and consumed multiple forests worth of paper, what we have is a negotiation that's ... produced a treaty which when fully prepared, will be about three pages long," said the senior official. In any case, the fact that the treaty mandates only a reduction endpoint does not mean each side won't be checking up on the other as they go along. The treaty does call for implementation of some consultation procedures similar to those used in past arms pacts. That means that in the years ahead, US delegations will be trooping to Russia to peer into silos and count warheads – and Russian delegations will be coming to the US to do the same. If either side appears to be falling behind dismantlement commitments, the other party will presumably get to register its displeasure. "A bilateral implementation committee will be created," said the senior official. "And that commission will pursue enhancing transparency and predictability." The bottom line, from the administration's point of view: The US nuclear arsenal is now delinked from its Russian counterpart. This means that the size, makeup, and deployment of American nuclear weapons should no longer reflect a computer-straining calculation of how many of them would survive a surprise Russian first strike. After all, friends don't target friends with hundreds of megatons of explosives. "So I hope this is the last arms-control agreement with Russia, and that we go from here to dealing with Russia the way we deal with the United Kingdom, or Brazil," said Richard Perle, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and adviser to the administration on defense issues, at a press briefing on the Bush-Putin summit. * * * However US-Russian relations develop in the future, there are aspects of the new Bush-Putin accord that critics find troubling. Primary among these is the flexibility it allows both sides to eventually build their forces right back up, if they so wish. Unlike past arms pacts, the new one does not call for the destruction of the bombers, missiles, and submarines that carry nuclear warheads. Those may be maintained, albeit shorn of their atomic striking power. Nor will the warheads themselves necessarily be dismantled. The US, for its part, plans to maintain up to 2,400 nondeployed warheads in what officials term a "responsive force," which does not count against the new treaty's limits. As a result, some critics say the pact's effect will be not so much a reduction in nuclear weapons as their rearrangement. The US could redeploy up to a total of 4,600 nuclear weapons within months of the new treaty's expiration date. "Clearly, it falls well short of the greater degree of stability and security that verifiable dismantlement of delivery systems and warheads would accomplish," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. And in some respects, the new treaty steps back from gains made by the US in the never-to-be-implemented START II treaty. Under the terms of that agreement, Russia would have dismantled its most powerful nuclear delivery system – the multiple-warhead SS-18 missile. Under the terms of the Bush-Putin pact, the SS-18 can stay, if the Russian military so wishes, as long as total warheads drop to the 1,700-to-2,200 range. Nor does this week's treaty say anything about smaller, tactical nuclear warheads – of which the US has some hundreds left, and the Russians upwards of 8,000. It is these weapons that many experts worry might end up in the hands of terrorists, with catastrophic results. * * * It's all well and good to develop a new political relationship with the Russians, say critics. But nuclear weapons have a geopolitical power that can transcend the ties between their owners. Arms-control advocates contend that both US and Russian leaders will have to continue to be wary of the other's nuclear intentions – and continue to work on further moves to reduce stockpile numbers, if they want to truly be friends. The new pact "will eliminate part of the legacy of the cold war, but many more steps will be necessary," says John Holum, a vice president of Atlas Air Inc. and former undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Superpower pacts 1963 The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union agree to the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all testing in the atmosphere, outer space, or underwater. 1969 The US and Soviet Union begin regular strategic arms limitation talks (SALT). 1970 The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) comes into effect, aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. 1972 President Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I agreement, which sets an interim ceiling on strategic offensive nuclear weapons. They also sign the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which forbids the deployment of a national missile-defense system. 1979 The US and Soviet Union sign SALT II in Vienna, limiting the proliferation of long-range bombers and missiles. But President Carter withdraws the treaty from Senate consideration because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Still, the two sides agree to observe the pact. 1982 The US and Soviet Union begin strategic arms reduction talks (START). 1987 Presidents Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev (above) sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which bans ground-launched, medium-range nuclear missiles. 1991 Presidents George H.W. Bush and Gorbachev sign START I. It slashes US and Soviet nuclear arsenals by about one-third. 1993 Presidents Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign START II, which spells the end of almost two-thirds of US and Russian nuclear missiles. The treaty, however, has not been implemented. 1996 The US, Britain, China, France, Russia, and 50 other nations sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, which prohibits all nuclear explosions. As of August 2001, 79 nations had approved the treaty, but 82, including the US, have signed but not ratified it. 2001 President George W. Bush gives Moscow notice that the US is withdrawing from the ABM Treaty. 2002 Bush announces the US and Russia have agreed to a pact that will cut their deployed strategic nuclear weapons by two-thirds by 2012. The treaty is to be signed in Moscow tomorrow by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sources: Reuters; Associated Press; Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies Copyright © 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights ***************************************************************** 39 The Moscow Relationship Newsday.com - The Moscow Relationship Broad partnership on the table for U.S.-Russian summit By Liam Pleven RUSSIA CORRESPONDENT; Ken Fireman of Newsday's Washington bureau contributed to this story. May 23, 2002 Moscow - When Russia and the United States reached a deal last week to slash their nuclear for- ces, President George W. Bush declared it would "liquidate the legacy of the Cold War" and "begin the new era of U.S.-Russian relationships." The words paralleled those of Bush's father 10 years ago, when the elder president proclaimed that a meeting with Russia's then-president, Boris Yeltsin, confirmed "the end of the Cold War and the dawn of a new era." As Bush the younger arrives in Russia today for a three-day-summit with President Vladimir Putin, that echo across a decade reflects what analysts say is their governments' main challenge, to build a broad partnership that goes beyond burying the past. Last week's agreement "is a classic agreement of détente," said Andrei Piontkovsky, head of Moscow's Center for Strategic Studies, an independent think tank. "What we need now is an entente agreement." In seeking a broader relationship, the United States and Russia often differ on their priorities. Putin has based his domestic program on rebuilding his country's economy, both to integrate it with the West and to rebuild Russia's influence abroad. His government hopes to join the World Trade Organization, in which Washington has a powerful voice. It seeks a declaration from the U.S. Commerce Department that it has a market economy - a key point for Russia's image - and wants the United States to lift trade restrictions dating from Soviet times that were intended to ensure free emigration, now an unquestioned right. Trade between Russia and the United States is less than $9 billion a year, roughly the same as U.S. trade with the Dominican Republic. While U.S. officials also speak of expanded economic ties and voice interest in Russian oil, the United States is primarily focused on threats of terrorism and nonproliferation. Bush is expected to raise with Putin Moscow's relationships with Iran and Iraq, two points on Bush's "axis of evil." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said this week that Bush wants to "consult" with Putin about Iraq, which owes Russia billions of dollars in Soviet-era debt. Russia's attitude will be important to the Bush administration as it weighs options for dealing with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In Iran, where Russia is helping build the Bushehr nuclear reactor, Washington is worried that Russian technology and expertise could contribute to Iran developing nuclear weapons. "The president intends to talk a lot about the Russian-Iranian relationship. It's been a problem for several years," Rice said. The tone the United States strikes will matter. Russia has muted its once-staunch objections to U.S. actions such as the expansion of NATO, the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the deployment of U.S. troops in former Soviet states in Central Asia, but they could flare if Russians perceive that Putin, currently quite popular, is not getting something in return. A poll this month suggested that 58 percent of Russians believe the United States is "not a friendly state," the Interfax news agency reported. More than half the respondents described NATO as "aggressive," Interfax reported, even as NATO is to enshrine its closest-ever relationship with Russia this month. Ken Fireman of Newsday's Washington bureau contributed to this story. Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc. ***************************************************************** 40 HAB to consider federal plan to speed cleanup at Hanford This story was published Wed, May 22, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer The Hanford Advisory Board is fishing for some details and some guarantees before it considers throwing its support behind a federal plan to speed up Hanford's cleanup. A major concern: If the Department of Energy's new plan calls for changing the Tri-Party Agreement, will that proposal be supported by solid information? "Any change you make needs to demonstrate sound, quality cleanup," said Todd Martin, the advisory board's chairman, referring to the legal pact between the state and federal agencies that governs Hanford cleanup. Several board members met Tuesday to prepare for the board's June 6-7 meeting in Hood River, Ore. There, the board expects to debate taking a formal position on the new proposal. DOE is making a nationwide push to accelerate its nuclear cleanup efforts. It has asked Congress to set aside $800 million to $1.1 billion in extra cleanup money for 2003 to divide among sites that produce acceleration plans agreeable to DOE and its regulators. DOE's Hanford and Oak Ridge sites are the furthest along in this process. Hanford officials have produced draft acceleration plans, which propose bringing an extra $433 million to the site in 2003. Oak Ridge has obtained a promise of $105 million in extra money and is working on its acceleration plan. The state and EPA are studying DOE's draft Hanford plan, mostly in the context of whether it's feasible. DOE's proposal calls for speeding up the following: glassifying the site's tank wastes; closing single-shell tanks; cleaning up the Columbia River corridor; disposing of transuranic and mixed wastes; removing plutonium; and other programs. Any adopted acceleration plan is supposed to come with guaranteed federal funding through 2008. HAB members like goals but also worry about whether those objectives are realistic. "I see a wish list more than anything," said HAB member Keith Smith, representing the site's union workers. Martin said: "We're not going to cut any corners to do this." Some of the issues the full advisory board expects to consider next month include the feasibility of the acceleration plan, a federal guarantee on the extra money needed and details on new technologies. Also, the board will discuss environmental laws and procedures that must be observed and the public's input on any changes in Hanford's timetables. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 41 DOE proposes uranium management program The Oak Ridger Online -- Feature: Business -- 05/23/02 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff The Department of Energy is proposing to implement a program to manage its inventory of reusable uranium. During World War II, the Manhattan Project established a system of nuclear weapons sites. The mission of many of these sites was the processing of uranium in different chemical forms, followed by the fabrication of weapons components. With the end of the Cold War, a number of DOE sites were left with large uranium inventories in various chemical forms that are now excess to national security needs. The mission of some of the former nuclear weapons complex sites is environmental remediation, and DOE is now dispositioning uranium from these sites in support of agreements with state and federal regulatory agencies. DOE's inventories of excess low enriched uranium, natural uranium and depleted uranium are stored at more than 150 sites across the nation, with only a few having long-term uranium missions. DOE's proposed program would cover excess uranium materials now in the form of oxides, metals and other stable forms. It will not include uranium waste, irradiated material, uranium hexafluoride, highly enriched uranium or uranium-233. In a just-released environmental assessment, DOE considers two storage alternatives for 14,200 metric tons of uranium or uranium materials thought to be reusable. The first alternative would consolidate at one location all potentially reusable uranium materials that are economically feasible to relocate. Although DOE's preferred location for this facility is its Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, five other spots, including the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge K-25 site, are listed as potential storage sites. Also both western and eastern commercial sites are expected to be considered. If Y-12 or K-25 is chosen, the storage facility would need to be physically separated from existing Oak Ridge uranium storage sites to lessen the "potential for cumulative impacts due to accidental releases," according to the environmental assessment. However, DOE points out that the Portsmouth plant has sufficient existing storage space. Upgrading existing buildings at the Ohio facility would not result in commitments of land or the destruction of wildlife habitat that would be necessary at all other DOE sites, according to the environmental assessment. A second uranium storage alternative being considered would involve consolidating the material at several sites -- DOE, commercial, or both. This would include potentially reusable uranium materials that can be economically relocated and may include consolidation by region or by chemical form. Copies of the environmental assessment on the uranium storage facility can be obtained on the Internet at www.oro.doe.gov/Foia/NEW.htm [http://www.oro.doe.gov/Foia/NEW.htm] or in the DOE Public Reading Room, located at 230 Warehouse Road, Building 1916-T2, Suite 300. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 42 PACRO approves $85,000 more for park The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Thursday, May 23, 2002 The executive committee approved money to obtain 450 more acres for a regional industrial park in Graves County. By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 The Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization has provided another $85,000 toward obtaining land options for a regional industrial park in the Folsomdale-Viola area of northern Graves County. On Wednesday, the PACRO executive committee approved $45,000 to obtain 450 more acres, and $40,000 for environmental and archaeological studies, appraisal and core drilling. The Purchase Area Regional Park Authority already has more than 1,900 acres under three-year options or committed from landowners, and is awaiting state and federal funding to buy the land. A $175,000 federal grant through PACRO is funding the option work. Wednesday's action extended the grant until September. The park is slated for construction off U.S. 45 in the area of Ky. 849. By comparison, the Paducah Information Age Park is on 650 acres. Beasley told the authority board earlier this month that appraisals were finished on another 100 to 120 highly desirable acres in smaller tracts. The authority wants $10 million each from state and federal government to develop the park. Because of a tight budget, the Kentucky General Assembly adjourned earlier this year without approving money for the project and has not yet approved a state budget. Federal funding from the Department of Energy through PACRO also is pending. Beasley said he expects to go to Washington, D.C., in early June to seek funding from the Rural Utility Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, met earlier with officials of the service and other agencies to discuss funding options for the park. In other action, the executive committee: Extended a $75,000 grant until Aug. 30 to help CenterPointe, a regional marketing group, with industrial recruitment. CenterPointe has spent $58,000 of the grant contacting prospects and developing a list of candidates for area industrial parks. Discussed uncertainty regarding which Energy Department official will oversee accelerated cleanup at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The department announced in February that a new job, filled by DOE headquarters’ William Murphie, was being created to manage cleanup at Paducah and its closed sister plant near Portsmouth, Ohio. He was among 27 of 70 senior environmental management executives who were reassigned from Washington to various sites nationwide to improve cleanup. However, there is confusion whether Murphie or Michael Holland, temporary manager of DOE's operations office in Oak Ridge, Tenn., will head the program as it affects Paducah, said Henry Hodges, chairman of PACRO's facilities reuse committee. He said the committee wants clarification because the uncertainty slows its efforts to find commercial uses for plant scrap metal and lease land around the plant for industrial purposes. "We're not meeting until we get to a point where we can deal with these issues," Hodges said. "I don't want to appear critical, because I think they (DOE officials) are dealing with very broad policy issues for cleanup that need to be addressed. It's just that what we're working on right now is kind of caught up in it." ***************************************************************** 43 Nuclear events, scientists, even spies inspire thousands of stamps 05/23/02 OPINIONS Dick Smyser:Nuclear events, scientists, even spies inspire thousands of stamps Since the dawn of the nuclear age at least 59 years ago no matter from which event one dates it, thousands of special postage stamps have been issued noting some related phase of this momentous scientific happening. (It will be 60 years on Dec. 2 since the first controlled sustained nuclear chain reaction was achieved at University of Chicago on Dec. 2, 1942, the accomplishment that many see as the beginning of it all.) Of those thousands of nuclear commemorative stamps, Stephen H. Stow has 1,250 of them meticulously preserved in an album that he shared with Friends of Oak Ridge National Laboratory at its monthly luncheon forum at the Oak Ridge Civic Center Wednesday of last week. Nuclear scientists, many of them Nobel Prize winners; government officials influential in setting nuclear policies, nuclear conferences, like the first International Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1955, in which Oak Ridge played a major role; nuclear tests, even nuclear spies are noted -- remembered -- in Stow's collection. The stamps range from modest portraits or photographs of individuals -- like Marie and Pierre Curie -- to large and colorful depictions of nuclear structure and reactions, many of the latter issued by unlikely countries like Zaire and Vietnam, obviously for revenue-producing as well as commemorative purposes. Collectors are eager to own them all and will pay the price. Special stamp sheets bring in millions of dollars needed by underdeveloped nations. Steve, who is the ombudsman (employee advocate) for ORNL, has 125 issues featuring one or the other or both of the Curies. Ironically, however, the most oft-depicted individual on a stamp with a nuclear connection is Albert Einstein, who was not a nuclear scientist. He did, however, play a key role in the initiation of the U.S. nuclear effort (the Manhattan Project and Oak Ridge) during the early months of World War II, writing the historic letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning of a likely Nazi effort to develop nuclear weapons. The oldest stamp within the 42 pages of Stow's album is a Norwegian stamp issued in the early 1930s hailing a cancer center in that country where X-rays were used in research. Nuclear testing, nuclear disarmament -- a mushroom cloud blanked out with a large X on a United Nations issue, "They Shall Beat Their Swords Into Ploughshares" on another by the UN, two hands breaking a nuclear bomb in two on a Russian stamp -- these and many others reflect hopes for a nuclear weapons moratorium. Radioactive elements are displayed, often in brilliant hues, on issues from Zimbabwe, Uganda, Zaire and Gabon. In Gabon is located the world's most celebrated natural reactor, an array of uranium rocks where billions of years ago, scientists have calculated, a natural nuclear chain reaction occurred. (In 1975, Alvin M. Weinberg, former director of ORNL, was one of a group of scientists who went there as part of a PBS documentary.) The "stamped" nuclear spies are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on an issue by Cuba and Rudolph Abel on an issue by Russia. Nuclear accidents, like those at Windscale in Great Britain and Chernobyl in Ukraine, have also been stamp subject matter. Stow's album has several pages of stamps depicting reactors that have been operating safely around the world and also stamps recognizing agencies that set nuclear standards. Nuclear medicine has been the focus of a number of stamps but ironically not by the United States, which has been the leader in using nuclear materials for diagnosis and treatment. Both Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, the Danish and German Nobel-Prize-winning scientists respectively whose friendship has been the subject of recent controversy, are pictured on multiple stamps: Bohr by Greenland, Republic of Maldives and Denmark; Heisenberg by Sweden, Micronesia and Uruguay, among others. (The controversy involves what motivated Heisenberg to visit Bohr in Copenhagen in 1941 -- how did their conversations relate to the respective nuclear weapons development efforts of the Allies and the Nazis?) E.O. Lawrence, Otto Hahn, Max Planck, Antoine Henri Becquerel, Wilhelm Roentgen and even Democritus, who dates back to the fourth century B.C., are among the many nuclear pioneers honored on stamps. Conspicuous by their absence, however, are Edward Teller and J. Robert Oppenheimer, Teller possibly because he is still alive. Many nations have rules restricting stamp honorees to the deceased. The most recent U.S. nuclear-related stamp was issued last fall marking the 100th birthday of Enrico Fermi, who directed that historic first nuclear reaction at Chicago in 1942. The stamp shows the esteemed Italian physicist in front of an equation that knowing scientists enjoy pointing out is flawed. Exciting collectors are the vivid colors of many of the nuclear stamps, but with one notable exception. When the Russians honored Pavel Cerenkov, who first explained the glow seen emanating from the water around a pool reactor, they printed the stamp in drab black and white, not shimmering blue. -- RDS Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger. He can be reached by e-mail at rdsandmps@aol.com [rdsandmps@aol.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 44 Canada tries to duplicate nuclear fusion experiment May 23, 2002 Canada tries to duplicate nuclear fusion experiment Scientists skeptical Tom Blackwell National Post Department of National Defence scientists are trying to duplicate a controversial U.S. experiment that may have achieved controlled nuclear fusion, a potentially revolutionary source of cheap, clean energy. The U.S. researchers claimed to have produced fusion with a relatively simple, table-top apparatus, although they admit there is still much to do to turn the discovery into a practical power source. Regardless, their headline-making breakthrough was cast into question by scientific skeptics almost immediately after it was reported in March. Now Canadian military researchers want to see if they can achieve the same results -- or not -- and help settle the international dispute. "It seems like something where we could make a significant contribution to science," said Tom Cousins, one of the Defence Research and Development Canada experts. "At the end of the day, this has applications in energy production, so if we prove that it works, then great, somebody else can run with it." Lorne Erhardt, a colleague, admits his group does not usually do such work; its speciality is technology to help soldiers detect radiation. But after hearing about the experiment, then reading the research paper, they realized they had the unique combination of equipment and expertise to not only replicate the experiment, but measure more precisely whether fusion actually took place. And they say they should be able to do it for a little over $40,000, plus their time. Nuclear fusion is the process by which the nuclei from two atoms collide and create a larger nucleus, releasing tremendous amounts of energy. It is what fuels the sun. The process can be produced on Earth most readily by combining two heavy forms of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium), meaning that the key ingredients can be extracted from water. "There's enough deuterium in the first few feet of water in Lake Michigan to power the whole world for a hundred to two hundred years," said Dr. Rusi Taleyarkhan, one of the scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee who performed the fusion experiment. Fusion requires extreme amounts of heat. It is triggered in hydrogen bombs by an initial fission nuclear explosion, with wildly destructive results. Researchers have managed to produce fusion in large, expensive experimental reactors, but not in a stable, sustained or affordable fashion. The experiment performed by the team at Oak Ridge, a U.S. Energy Department lab, and described in the journal Science, took place in a container the size of three coffee cups stacked on end. tblackwell@nationalpost.com [tblackwell@nationalpost.com] Copyright © 2002 National Post Online | Privacy Policy | ***************************************************************** 45 ADVANCED PROPULSION IDEAS COME OF AGE NASA is known worldwide for routinely putting people into Earth orbit. The agency is also revered as the only organization that has flung humans at escape velocity speeds to the Moon. However, NASA could also be known as an agency that's going nowhere fast. The Earth has a magnetosphere, produced by the terrestrial magnetic field and plasma from the ionization of the upper layers of the atmosphere. The M2P2 will parallel these naturally occurring systems by creating an electromagnetic bubble or mini-magnetosphere around the spacecraft. Credit: Robert Winglee. Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2) is an advanced plasma propulsion system that will enable spacecraft to attain unprecedented speeds, with minimal energy and mass requirements. This rendering depicts a mini-magnetosphere deployed around a spacecraft. Plasma or ionized gas is trapped on the magnetic field lines generated onboard, and this plasma inflates the magnetic field much like hot air in a balloon. Photo courtesy: R. M. Winglee, Univ. of Washington Making use of pressure from the Sun's photons, solar sails are expected to play a role in space exploration in the decades to come. Credit: NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center Spacecraft en route from Earth to Mars boosted by electric thrusters that are energized by photovoltaic cells embedded in fan-shaped sails. CREDIT: NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center The Space Elevator Comes Closer to Reality Forget the roar of rocketry and those bone jarring liftoffs, the elevator would be a smooth 62,000-mile (100,000-kilometer) ride up a long cable. Payloads can shimmy up the Earth-to-space cable, experiencing no large launch forces, slowly climbing from one atmosphere to a vacuum. Solar Windsurfing: The Fastest-Ever Propulsion A technology that uses a magnetic balloon to sail ionized particles shed by the Sun could speed humans to the Jovian moons in less than two years and push a probe past Voyager 1 to become the first spacecraft beyond our Solar System. Laser-Boosted Rocket Sets Altitude Record A private group has set the world's altitude record for a laser-boosted rocket. The milestone flight is seen as a stepping stone to radically lowering the cost of access to space. New Space Sail Concept Rides Stream of Laser Driven Bomblets ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO – What do you get if you cross a magnetic space sail with a rapid-fire machine gun? If you do your math right, you might end up with something like the SailBeam interstellar space ship. Plasma Rockets Could Propel Man to Mars Voyagers to Mars may get a quicker trip and a safety edge with plasma-powered engines being developed at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The VASIMR project aims to reduce travel time to the Red Planet to 90 days. Even NASA's new chief, Sean O'Keefe, is keen about the need for speed. The agency is stuck in slow gear, he gripes, scooting about in spacecraft today at velocities not much greater than when John Glenn first sped into Earth orbit over 40 years ago. To help put some "momentum" into NASA, the agency is pushing forward on a nuclear propulsion and power initiative. Welcome news in contrast to the past. Over the years, NASA's advanced propulsion agenda has done little but advance in age. Fits and starts of funding have dogged NASA's quest for advanced space propulsion. Hoped for high-tech concepts have come and gone. Nuclear thermal, ion, magnetic, and chemical systems to antimatter, solar sailing or laser propulsion - converting these concepts and others from paper studies to reality has proven elusive. But that may change given a spurt of money for several types of advanced space propulsion. Wish list To open up the solar system to vigorous robotic and future human exploration, new forms of space propulsion are being sought. Not only are faster trip times to select targets made possible. Advanced propulsion allows more exhaustive, long-term surveys of planets and their moons, as well as comets, asteroids, and other bodies. NASA has kick-started an In-Space Transportation Investment Area effort. This new endeavor embraces a wish-list of high, medium, and low priority technologies, evolved from a space agency-wide look last year that focused on advanced missions over the next 10 to 15 years. Better yet, there is money now targeted to boost wish-list technologies into being. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, is leading the In-Space Transportation investment work -- spread out through the NASA research network --. They are spearheading the endeavor for the space agency's Office of Space Science in Washington, D.C. "I think we've got a real chance here," said Les Johnson, the implementation manager for the advanced propulsion work. "We're trying to take the things people have talked about for years, but get sustained commitment to go make them happen," he told SPACE.com. Making them happen, Johnson added, means maturing propulsion ideas to a technology readiness level just short of actual flight. High-priority in-space propulsion technologies include: + Aerocapture: Using a planet's atmosphere to slow a spacecraft. A vehicle built for aerocapture can slip into orbit in one pass through an atmosphere. No need for on-board propulsion. This saves mass and permits use of a smaller, less-expensive launcher. These technique gets a vehicle to a destination quickly, hastening start-up of science operations; + Next Generation Electric Propulsion: Improve the performance of this technology, from ion engines to fission propulsion drives. High-throughput, lightweight, and more powerful ion engines, for example, enable a host of future space missions, including a Europa Lander, a Saturn Ring Observer, a Neptune Orbiter, and a Venus Surface Sample Return probe; and + Solar Sails: Strong, lightweight composite materials fashioned into a large sail. Requiring no fuel, a solar sail relies on the steady push of photons from the Sun. A major challenge is how best to unfurl a thin sail in space, then control its direction. Sail propulsion is seen as the way to launch an interstellar precursor mission in the next decade. Go fly status Johnson said by combing the work of NASA centers with industry and academia, these high priority technologies and others -- particularly, nuclear electric propulsion -- will be moved up in technological readiness for flight in space. "We want to get these technologies to the point that everything that can be done on the ground has been done…and they are ready to go fly," Johnson said. NASA calls this pre-flight status as Technological Readiness 6 or TR-6. No single propulsion scheme fits all needs. For instance, in some cases, rapid trip time is not as critical, contrasted to more payloads delivered to the target. "That's why we're investing in more than one technology…because there's no one answer for everything," he said. Plasma balloon Inside and outside NASA, a range of promising propulsion schemes being pursued. One intriguing prospect is a propellantless propulsion concept tagged by some as a plasma sail. The scheme is the brainchild of Robert Winglee, a scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle. His Mini-Magnetosphere Plasma Propulsion, or M2P2 for short, takes advantage of the natural environment of space. M2P2 technology creates a huge magnetic bubble around an interplanetary craft. In deploying the mini-magnetosphere, this plasma "balloon" interacts with high-speed ionized particles shed by the Sun that, in turn, push the vehicle through space. "The technology seeks to do what space does -- deploy a magnetized sail to travel with the winds," Winglee said. Plasma sail technologies could cut conventional trip times to the outer planets in half. The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) funded early work on Winglee's M2P2 notion. A new test chamber at the university, Winglee said, has proven helpful in exploring the intricacies of creating a plasma balloon. "We're very happy with the results to date that we are seeing…very similar to computer simulations. That's a great relief, actually," he said. If the flow of funding continues full-throttle, Winglee feels the plasma sail can be pushed to the NASA TR-6 level. Ultimately, the concept's enhanced thrust could be tested in some sort of geosynchronous orbit, he said. VASIMR mode Meanwhile, at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, lab work continues on the Variable Specific Impulse Magneto-plasma Rocket. Better known as the VASIMR, this technology could result in shorter trip times to the planets than now available, made possible by varying the rocket's specific impulse. It can be operated in a mode that maximizes propellant efficiency or a mode that maximizes thrust, reported Andrew Petro at an aerospace gathering this past January. Petro, a JSC spacecraft engineer, and astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz are part of a team of advanced space propulsion experts engaged in shaping a proposed test of the rocket on the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS experiment would show the prototype engine's ability to help negate electrical charging on the outpost and also counter drag forces that act on the orbiting facility. "This experiment will provide an opportunity to demonstrate the performance of the rocket in space and measure the induced environment," Petro reported. In for a fling? One advanced space transportation technology is tether-based propulsion. A NASA team, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, and Tethers Unlimited of Lynnwood, Washington are developing the Momentum Exchange, Electrodynamic Reboost (MXER) tether. This spinning, tether-based satellite in low Earth orbit would snare slower-moving objects and toss them at increased speed toward higher orbits. This idea is akin to two ice skaters that "crack the whip" - launching one another at high speed across the ice. By briefly linking a slow-moving object with a faster one the slower object's speed may be dramatically increased as some of its counterpart's momentum is transferred between the two. MXER follow-on work could pave the way for chucking payloads beyond low-Earth orbit, perhaps paving the way for a human return to the Moon or flinging cargo and crew outward toward the distant dunes of Mars. Glow, and still go The arena of laser propulsion continues to bloom, said Leik Myrabo, CEO of Lightcraft Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Bennington, Vermont. He predicts a revolution in low-cost access to space, and actively promotes the use of beamed energy propulsion to accelerate vehicles called Lightcraft into orbit for a fraction of the cost it currently takes to get any object into space. Recent experiments, Myrabo said, have centered what heat-thwarting materials can be applied to the ceramic engine of a Lightcraft. Engine coatings must take the ferocious high temperature environment that laser propulsion produce, permitting a Lightcraft to "glow, and still go," he said. The first national workshop on laser propulsion is slated for this November in Huntsville, Alabama, Myrabo said, organized to transform the embryonic work on laser propulsion technology into real space transportation systems of the future, he said. If you want an uplifting view of laser propulsion ask Tom Meyer of the Boulder Center for Science and Policy in Colorado. He has led a study team on the feasibility of building a laser elevator, reporting their findings recently in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, a publication of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). "The laser elevator works much like a lift in a garage, raised by a piston. But in this case, the piston is replaced by an intense beam of light that recycles between a spacecraft-mounted mirror and a mirror fixed to the laser source," Meyer said. This laser elevator requires technology that is not too distant from the current state-of-the-art, Meyer said. Once developed, such propulsion hardware could rapidly deploy a lightsail to scrutinize a threatening asteroid or comet. Also studied was using the recirculating beam system to launch a probe to Pluto, reaching that far-away world in about 6.5 years, he said. Space drive Leave no stone unturned is seemingly a propulsion ploy of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. This center is home for the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. All manner of "exotic" research is ongoing. That includes delving into transient inertia effects, quantum vacuum energy, zero-point electromagnetic energy and Casimir forces, or exploring anomalous superconductor gravity effects and superluminal quantum tunneling. In short, any near-term success in any of these areas might foster the space drives of tomorrow. "We're basically on a steady course, albeit running at the slow pace typical of such small projects. Our work is presently operating at a funding level of about a half-million dollars per year," said NASA's Marc Millis who manages the effort. Millis said that a significant step for the project took place in January of this year. A Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Research Consortium has been established via a cooperative agreement with the Ohio Aerospace Institute. "This research consortium will reach out to geographically dispersed researchers to find, support, and coordinate the best research to make credible progress toward the visionary goals we have, and to disseminate the results for the benefit of all," Millis said. Destination anywhere While there is no shortage of interesting advanced propulsion designs, many proposals could remain in the realm of visionary speculation. What is needed is commitment and doses of research dollars and lab time to bring them into being. "NASA has to do things differently in the future," explains NASA chief, Sean O'Keefe. "One of the major obstacles of deep space travel is finding fast and efficient ways to get around…to get to anywhere." "Conventional rockets and fuel simply aren't practical as we reach further out into the cosmos," O'Keefe notes. "If we're going to pioneer the future as only NASA can, we're going to need new ways to get us there," he concludes. space.com ***************************************************************** 46 Senate Panel Issues White House Subpoenas Over Enron Roll Call: Current News [http://www.rollcall.com May 23, 2002 By John Bresnahan [jjb@rollcall.com] In the latest chapter of the political struggle over Enron Corp.'s collapse, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines yesterday to issue two subpoenas to the White House seeking information on any contacts between Bush administration officials and executives with the Houston-based energy company. In a 9-8 vote, the panel agreed to subpoena the Executive Office of the President, as well as Vice President Cheney's office, seeking records on any Enron-related contacts with eight federal agencies that oversaw Enron or with the company itself during the period from Jan. 1, 1992 to Dec. 2, 2001. Cheney chaired the White House energy task force last year, and met personally with then-Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay on April 17, 2001. The move marked the first time that the Democratic-led Senate subpoenaed the Bush White House for records. The Governmental Affairs Committee set a deadline of June 3for the White House to turn over documents covered by the subpoena. At press time, White House sources said administration officials were still studying the subpoenas and that no decision had been made on whether the White House would claim executive privilege or comply with the requests. White House spokeswoman Anne Womack complained that Lieberman had acted prematurely in issuing the subpoenas since the White House was on the verge of turning over some of the information Lieberman was seeking. "They're unnecessary, and we're perplexed as to why he's beingthis confrontational rather than working in a constructive manner with the White House,"said Womack. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), the ranking member on Governmental Affairs, was also upset that Lieberman forced the panel into voting on the subpoenas, and suggested that Lieberman's real motive was to compel the White House into claiming executive privilege and thus appearing to be hiding something. Thompson said at the hearing that there "has been no indication that the Executive Office of the President has had any involvement in any of these matters. It did not regulate Enron's business in any way, and it was not responsible in any way, shape or form for monitoring Enron's financial condition." Thompson added:"It appears that this is nothing more than a desire to have a look-see to see if possibly something might turn up." Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.)echoed Thompson's complaints and implied the subpoenas were more of a publicity stunt than part of a legitimate investigation. "Are we doing this to attract the attention of the public?" Cochran asked during yesterday's hearing. "It makes me very suspicious about the motivation of asking for a subpoena." Lieberman, who is weighing a presidential bid in 2004, called Cochran's suggestion "unwarranted." "The clear message I've gotten from the White House is that they're not going to give us what we want,"Lieberman added. Lieberman has been attempting for months to get the White House to comply with his demands to turn over records on contacts with regulatory agencies overseeing Enron or directly with company executives. The 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate has been negotiating with White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales since late March about whether the Bush administration would comply with the committee's requests, and even held a face-to-face meeting with Gonzales two weeks ago in an attempt to iron out their differences. The two also met on April 11 and have exchanged a number of letters and phone calls since Lieberman began pressing the White House for information on March 27. Lieberman and his aides have repeatedly insisted that he's not seeking a showdown with the White House but is merely protecting Congress' right to have the executive branch respond to its requests for information. "The Senator is not looking for any kind of privileged, private information,"said Leslie Phillips, Lieberman's spokeswoman. On Tuesday, Gonzales had asked that Lieberman hold off on any subpoenas until the committee looked through the information the White House was going to provide. The administration has surveyed roughly 200 employees asking them about any Enron-related contacts, and Gonzales offered to expand that survey to include 2,000 executive-branch employees. "I respectfully suggest that you reconsider and withdraw the threat of a subpoena until, at a minimum, you can review the information we intend to provide soon to the committee," Gonzales wrote in his letter. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************