***************************************************************** 03/25/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.76 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Japan Nuclear Fuel short of cash - 2 Taiwan: Public says no to nukes 3 N Korea eyes Russia as nuclear partner 4 US: NRC Orders Honeywell to Enhance Security 5 US: Environmentalists Lose on Energy Bill 6 US: From Bush, Some Flexibility on Election Promises 7 US: Lawmaker Faults Nuclear Facility Security Policies 8 India: CCEA clears nuke power, road projects 9 Japan: Jospin faces Green ire after shift on nuclear power NUCLEAR REACTORS 10 US: Security at U.S. Reactors Criticized by Congressman 11 US: NRC Monitored Events at Waterford 3 12 US: NRC to Meet with Company to Discuss Seabrook Plant Performance 13 US: Congressman: Nuke Plants Vulnerable 14 US: Markey warns of nuke terror: Plant security faulted 15 US: NRC Finalizes Decision on Maine Yankee Case NUCLEAR SAFETY 16 US: What About the Global Body Count? 17 Afg: Dirty water, hazardous waste a cause for concern for peacekeepers in 18 Uranium found in blood of Serbians living in area bombed by NATO NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 19 US: Yucca: American Public Evenly Divided Over Yucca Mountain Waste 20 US: Congressional delegation needs to make goal-line stand 21 US: Residents differ over plan to truck nuclear fuel 22 US: Nevada's anti-Yucca fight gets boost in Congress 23 US: Public hearings scheduled 24 US: Radioactive waste control 25 US: Opinions:MOX best way to handle plutonium NUCLEAR WEAPONS 26 US: [toeslist] a Peace Offensive 27 US: A method to nuclear madness? 28 PM rules out nuclear conflict with Pak US DEPT. OF ENERGY 29 ORNL deputy a boring bust on British radio 30 Hanford cocoons reactors 31 Mobile medical unit is being designed at Y-12 32 ORNL to help check textbook facts 33 NNSA official to visit Y-12 project OTHER NUCLEAR 34 A very short introduction to the Earth 35 Offer of nuclear technology to manage water 36 Editorial: Guidelines needed for removing online info 37 Congressman backs dam bypass 38 Hoover Dam still locked down ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Japan Nuclear Fuel short of cash - Japan Today Japan News - Monday, March 25, 2002 at 18:00 JST TOKYO Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL) will need 1.76 trillion yen in additional funds to cover overhead costs on top of the previously stated 2.14 trillion yen to build a nuclear reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, electric power industry sources said Monday. JNFL, set up in 1980 by nine major electrical utilities, Japan Atomic Power Co and other firms, has so far made public only the estimate for the cost of building the plant, which will be Japan's first commercial nuclear reprocessing plant. (Kyodo News) ***************************************************************** 2 Tai: Public says no to nukes The Taipei Times Online: 2002-03-25Monday, March 25th, 2002 SURVEY: While 56 percent of Taiwanese oppose the use of nuclear weapons in a US-China conflict over Taiwan, 22 percent support the idea and 21 percent are unsure By Lin Miao-jung STAFF REPORTER A little more than half of all Taiwanese oppose the idea of the US using nuclear weapons in a military confrontation between China and the US over Taiwan, according to a survey released yesterday. According to the Public Opinion Research Foundation, roughly 56 percent of the survey's 1,083 respondents were against the idea, while 22 percent were supportive and 21 percent were unsure. The poll follows reports that the US is updating its nuclear doctrine from a Cold War policy of massive retaliation to a more flexible system that would allow a pre-emptive strike against hostile countries that threaten to use weapons of mass destruction."Although the DPP government has described itself as an anti-nuclear party, it has failed to comment on the issue since the report was made public. I think the president owes the nation an explanation on the government's stance." Tim Ting, chairman of Gallup in Taiwan The proposed policy, called "offensive deterrence," would give the US the option of conducting a pre-emptive strike with conventional bombs or nuclear weapons. Identified as potential targets in a future conflict were China and North Korea and the non-nuclear states Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria. "Although we welcome US support of Taiwan, we'd really hate to see the US use such an extreme measure to protect us," Tim Ting (¤B®x¦t), chairman of Gallup in Taiwan, said of the survey's results. The poll was conducted between March 13 and March 18 via telephone. The poll question did not mention that the US was adjusting its policy to deter its enemies from using weapons of mass destruction. Details of the US policy are contained in excerpts from the Pentagon's nuclear posture review, which was sent to the US Congress in January. The last nuclear posture review was completed in 1994. Ting said yesterday that President Chen Shui-bian (³¯¤ô«ó) should clarify his stance on the issue. "Although the DPP government has described itself as an anti-nuclear party, it has failed to comment on the issue since the report was made public," Ting said. "I think the president owes the nation an explanation on the government's stance." The poll covers other subjects in the news, including the issue of whether Taiwanese firms should be allowed to invest in eight-inch wafer plants in China. Of the poll's respondents, 39.8 percent said they agreed that chip firms should be allowed to invest in China, while 36.5 percent said they disagreed. Chou Yang-san (©P¶§¤s), a political analyst from National Taiwan University, said the polarization of public opinion wouldn't help the government reach a final consensus. The Cabinet is due to make a final decision by the end of this month. In addition, the poll found that roughly 41 percent of the respondents favored a proposal to rename the nation's representative offices abroad to include the name "Taiwan." The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been spearheading efforts to use "Taiwan" rather than "Taipei" for the offices in those places where the ROC -- Taiwan's official name -- is not allowed due to lack of diplomatic recognition. More than 39 percent of the respondents agreed with the view that Mongolia is a sovereign state and not a part of China. The Cabinet at the end of January signed off an amendment to exclude Mongolia as a part of ROC territory. Finally, roughly 35 percent of the people questioned favored the TSU's proposal to designate Hokkien as a national language alongside Mandarin. This story has been viewed 644 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/03/25/story/0000129097] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 3 N Korea eyes Russia as nuclear partner Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Ian Traynor in Moscow Monday March 25, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] North Korea, one of George Bush's "axis of evil" states, is looking to Russia to build a nuclear power plant, in an attempt to escape the curbs on its nuclear arms and energy programmes. Last week, while the White House was refusing to certify that North Korea was complying with the 1994 agreement which freezes its nuclear programmes in return for US aid, a senior North Korean was in Moscow for talks which included the subject of nuclear cooperation. Choe Thae Bok, head of the North Korean parliament, met Ilya Klebanov, the Russian industry minister, for talks on ambitious railway and energy projects linking the Russian far east and the Korean peninsula. "While discussing power engineering cooperation, the head of the Korean delegation raised the possibility of building a nuclear power plant," said Sergei Zhiltsov, a spokesman for the industry ministry. The talks show that North Korea is seeking to break out of its nuclear straitjacket and reinvigorate its nuclear ambitions. In the 1994 accord, drawn up after international alarm at its withdrawal from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, North Korea agreed to froze its nuclear weapons programme and mothballed two nuclear power plants. International experts believe that it has none the less produced, and may still be producing, enough weapons-grade plutonium for several nuclear bombs, and that it has a ballistic missile delivery systems capable of striking Alaska and the US west coast. Russia's atomic energy ministry said there had been "no official appeals" from the North Koreans, but sources confirmed that the issues was raised unofficially. Moscow is hedging its bets and says it is unlikely to proceed without the kind of international safeguards the North Koreans are eager to bypass. The regime of Kim Jong-Il, the North Korean leader, is seeking to cash in some of the credit he obtained in Russia during a rare foreign trip last year when he had talks with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Under the 1994 deal, a US-backed consortium is to build two nuclear power plants in North Korea, powered by light-water reactors, which are considered less "proliferative" in furnishing weapons-grade plutonium or uranium. The plants were originally due for completion by next year, but are not now expected to be finished for years. The US-North Korean agreement also requires access for nuclear inspectors of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But with Pyongyang furious at being described as part of the axis of evil, and then revealed to be a potential target for America's nuclear arsenal, the agreement may be breaking down. "If the delays go beyond the summer, the agreement can be called stalled," a senior source at the IAEA said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 4 NRC Orders Honeywell to Enhance Security NRC: Press Release - 2002 - 33 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] www.nrc.gov No. 02-033 March 25, 2002 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an immediately effective order to Honeywell International, Inc. to implement interim compensatory security measures for the current threat environment. Honeywell, a uranium conversion facility, is located in Metropolis, Illinois. As with NRC's February 25 orders issued to all commercial nuclear power plants (see press release dated February 26), this order formalizes a series of security measures that Honeywell has taken in response to Commission advisories, or on its own, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Additional security enhancements resulting from the Commission's on-going comprehensive security review are also spelled out in the order. Honeywell is required to provide NRC with a schedule within 20 days for achieving full compliance. Honeywell must also notify NRC within 20 days and justify in writing if it is unable to comply with any of the requirements of the order, if compliance with any requirement it considers is unnecessary in its specific circumstances, or if implementation of any of the requirements would cause the licensee to be in violation of the provisions of any Commission regulation or the facility license, or adversely impact safe operation of the facility. These security requirements will remain in effect until the Commission determines that the threat level has diminished, or that the current security programs need to be further augmented as a result of the Commission's comprehensive safeguards and security program re-evaluation. Although specific details are sensitive and not publicly available, a copy of the non-safeguards portion of the Order will be posted on the NRC web site today at: http://www.nrc.gov under "What's New At the Site." ***************************************************************** 5 Environmentalists Lose on Energy Bill Las Vegas SUN Today: March 25, 2002 at 0:25:10 PST WASHINGTON- The Senate was where environmentalists hoped to make their stand on energy policy. But after two weeks of votes and horse-trading, an emerging Democratic energy bill appears to be anything but green. Environmentalists lost in their bid to boost automobile fuel economy and on a string of lesser issues - from provisions helping the nuclear industry to one that would allow small trees in national forests to be processed as biomass for electricity generation. However, the big fight over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is yet to come, and environmentalists are likely to prevail on it. The Senate will take that up when lawmakers return after a two-week Easter recess and try to wrap up the bill. Whatever the Senate finally approves will have to be merged with an energy bill from the Republican-run House that is far friendlier to industry and anathema to environmentalists. It focuses heavily on increasing development of fossil fuels and would open to oil companies the Arctic refuge - a place environmentalists have vowed to protect. "The environmentalists are very unhappy to the point of despairing," said David Nemtzow, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, an advocacy group for the promotion of energy efficiency and conservation. "They see House and Senate bills with nothing on fuel economy ... nothing to save oil to speak of." Anna Aurilio, legislative director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said the Senate legislation "started as a promising bill. But it's getting hijacked ... by the polluters." On issues large and small, some of the most powerful business interest groups roaming the halls of Congress - automakers, the oil industry, electric utilities and farm groups - have scored significant victories, often turning back initiatives pushed by environmentalists. Farmers won a government mandate for tripling ethanol production. Large utilities headed off attempts at new federal regulation of power grids and won a scaled-back renewable-fuels requirement. The nuclear industry is getting government help to develop its next generation of power plants and continued limits on accident liability. And the oil industry no longer has to contend with a federal requirement for oxygen in gasoline, or whether an oil-exploration method known as "hydraulic fracturing" might run afoul of clean-water laws. All of those victories pale next to the coup by the auto industry, which now has the certainty it will not face tougher federal auto fuel economy requirements anytime soon. Ignoring pleas from environmentalists, the Senate rejected a proposal to boost the federal fleet requirement to 35 miles per gallon, an increase of 50 percent, and barred any increase in fuel economy requirements for pickup trucks, one-fifth of the vehicles sold. They "handed our nation's energy security over to the auto industry," fumed Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. Automakers and auto unions lobbied vigorously against the fuel economy increases and supported a measure that instead would require the Transportation Department to address the issue down the road. When the House passed its energy bill, environmental leaders denounced it as a sop to industry with too much emphasis on traditional energy sources - oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear - and far too little on promoting efficiency or renewables like solar and wind power. "We thought the Senate was a tremendous opportunity to focus more on demand, look more closely at conservation and efficiency ... instead of (industry) subsidies," said Sierra Club lobbyist Melinda Pierce. "In all counts we have failed to make gains; in fact, we have gone backwards." Among the other setbacks cited by environmentalists is what they view as the erosion of a once-ambitious attempt to make utilities generate more electricity from renewable fuels such as solar, wind and biomass from wood and agricultural scraps. A proposal by Sen. James Jeffords, a Vermont independent, to require that 20 percent of the nation's electricity come from these energy sources was rejected outright. To broaden support, Democrats pushed for a 10 percent renewable-fuels requirement but exempted municipal and federally owned utilities and electric cooperatives. The result, environmentalists maintain, is that only about 5 percent of the nation's electricity is likely to come from these renewable sources by 2020. Environmentalists also were surprised by the Senate's vote to add a provision to treat some salvage timber in federal forests, including trees as large as 12 inches in diameter, as a biomass energy source. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said it would help thin the forests of diseased and scrap wood and keep some Western biomass plants in business. U.S. PIRG's Aurilio countered that it amounts to "cutting down our national forests in the name of renewable energy." The bill is S.517. On the Net: Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov [http://thomas.loc.gov] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 6 From Bush, Some Flexibility on Election Promises (washingtonpost.com) Observers See Administration Changing Course on International Trade, Campaign Finance, Foreign Policy By Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 25, 2002; Page A08 President Bush and his aides came to office with an almost religious devotion to honoring his campaign promises. Lately, his approach appears to have become more flexible. In recent days, the White House has taken positions on international trade, foreign policy and campaign finance reform that seem to contradict the president's campaign stances, a number of political observers in both parties say. Partially because of the counterterrorism war and partially because of a natural transition into the second year of governing, GOP strategists say -- and a few White House officials agree -- that the campaign commitments are no longer as binding as they once were. On Wednesday, for example, President Bush said he would sign the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation into law. In early 2000, Bush was asked on ABC News whether he would veto the bill, and he replied, "Yes, I would." On Friday, the administration imposed duties averaging 29 percent on Canadian "softwood" lumber. During the campaign, Bush talked about establishing "free trade from northernmost Canada to the tip of Cape Horn." Earlier this month, the administration imposed tariffs of up to 30 percent on steel imports, prompting European Union officials last week to assemble retaliatory trade barriers. In his 1999 memoir, Bush wrote, "I do not support import fees." When he announced his candidacy in June 1999, he said, "I'll work to end tariffs and break down barriers everywhere, entirely, so the whole world trades in freedom." On Feb. 25, Bush appeared on the South Lawn to inspect hybrid-fuel cars and to tout a tax credit for buying such vehicles. During the campaign, he mocked Al Gore's "targeted" tax credits, including one for such vehicles. "How many of you own hybrid electric-gasoline engine vehicles?" Bush often asked to laughter. Bush has also altered his aversion to "nation building," as the United States helps to create a democracy and stable government in Afghanistan. "The vice president believes in nation building," Bush said in a presidential debate, to distinguish himself from Gore. "I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders." Officially, Bush aides say he remains as faithful to his campaign promises as ever, despite changes mandated by the Sept. 11 attacks and the recession. "The president has an extraordinary record of living up to his campaign commitments, and, as a result, he's built a relationship of trust with the American people because they know they can count on him to do the things he says," said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan. White House officials point out that Bush's top two campaign promises -- a tax cut and education reform -- have become law, and that others, including efforts to aid charities and adopt a national energy policy, are working their way through Congress. Even in areas where Bush has apparently shifted, some of his aides argue otherwise. They say his steel and wood tariffs are consistent with his pledge to enforce the nation's trade laws. They say he always supported some campaign finance reforms. They say the Afghan operation does not qualify as nation building. And they say he never opposed hybrid-vehicle tax credits -- only Gore's overall tax policy. But others say, and some Bush aides privately agree, that Bush's fealty to campaign promises has inevitably changed. The Sept. 11 attacks have rewritten the national agenda, while the Enron Corp. collapse has raised new doubts about money in politics, and the recession and shrinking federal revenue have reversed budget plans. "The only front-burner issue of moment is the war, and the other issues become a case of triage," said Bill Dal Col, a GOP strategist who ran Steve Forbes's primary challenge to Bush. "Because of the war, they have to look at everything through that lens. He's got to govern, and he's got to govern in a time of crisis." A senior White House aide concurred. "The circumstances have changed, and the president has adopted an agenda to meet those circumstances," the official said, arguing that Bush's second-year agenda has switched, by necessity, from campaign issues to the three issues from Bush's State of the Union address: war, recession and homeland security. Democratic partisans charge that Bush is guilty of the same trait for which he faulted Gore: "saying anything to get elected," or "saying one thing and doing another." Bush, by contrast, was billed as a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. "Once again, we see that George W. Bush is a man of his most recent word," Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe charged last month. "George Bush said a lot of things and made a lot of promises during the campaign, but he has no plans of keeping those promises." McAuliffe released that invective after Bush announced that Yucca Mountain in Nevada would become the main burying place for the nation's nuclear waste. During the campaign, Bush stated that "sound science, and not politics, must prevail" in Yucca. Nevada officials complain that Bush ignored a study by the congressional General Accounting Office from December that said scientific testing to determine the facility's viability would not be complete before 2006. Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Bush "broke his promise," and Gore called the decision a "flat-out broken promise." A Bush adviser said the president's action last month was not the last word on Yucca, pointing out that the science would be reviewed for years, during the debate in Congress and later during the regulatory application process. When staffers showed up for work at the White House last year, they were given a booklet of "campaign commitments" that would dominate the year. Now, with Bush enjoying lofty poll numbers and the nation on a war footing, GOP strategists believe the president can afford to violate a pledge or two as long as he stays true to his basic principles of strong defense, tax cuts, gun ownership and opposition to abortion. "The Bush people figured out a long time ago there are only a few cardinal points you can't change if you're a Republican," said GOP strategist Tom Cole, a former chief of staff at the Republican National Committee. Otherwise, he said, "you have tremendous leeway." The recession has made a mess of Bush's early projections about the size of the federal budget surplus and his vow to keep off-limits Social Security payroll taxes. "For years, politicians in both parties have dipped into the trust fund to pay for more spending," he said during the campaign. Bush made exceptions in the case of recession or war, both of which have occurred. On the other hand, Bush argued shortly after taking office that "we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens." The violence in the Middle East has made it impossible for Bush to honor his campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. "As soon as I take office, I will begin the process of moving the U.S. ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as its capital," Bush said. His campaign slammed President Bill Clinton and Gore for being too slow to honor their own promises to move the embassy. But last June, Bush delayed the move, approved by Congress in 1995, by six months. In December, he delayed it by another six months. An aide said he still intends to move the embassy. More debatable is Bush's vow to take a hard line with sanctions against Cuba. "I will keep the current sanctions in place," Bush promised in August 2000. Many Cuban Americans took that to mean Bush would end Clinton's blocking of lawsuits against foreign companies that use property in Cuba that was confiscated from Americans. Those sanctions are part of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, but Clinton used waivers to block them. Once in office, Bush, too, extended the waivers twice. Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), said the president "broke one of his campaign promises." Bush aides said he never meant to imply he would end the Clinton waivers. The only campaign promise Bush aides acknowledge that the president violated was his pledge to place restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions as part of a "four pollutant" environmental strategy. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman confirmed the "four pollutant" policy early last year, but the White House reversed her, saying the campaign commitment had been made in error. Bush sent a letter to GOP lawmakers in March opposing mandatory limits on carbon dioxide. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 7 Lawmaker Faults Nuclear Facility Security Policies (washingtonpost.com) Report: Background Checks Of Employees Are Inadequate By Cheryl W. Thompson Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 25, 2002; Page A17 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not know how many foreign nationals are employed at nuclear reactors and does not require adequate background checks of employees that would determine whether a worker was a member of a terrorist organization, according to a report released today. The report, "Security Gap: A Hard Look at the Soft Spots in Our Civilian Nuclear Reactor Security," by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, analyzed more than 100 pages of NRC correspondence Markey had requested from the agency. The report found that although the NRC requires criminal background checks of "prospective employees seeking unescorted access to protected and vital areas of a nuclear power plant," the search is limited to crimes committed in the United States. "It is unacceptable that the NRC [does not have] a policy on screening of foreign nationals," the report said. "Terrorists may now be employed at nuclear reactors in the U.S. just as terrorists enrolled at flight schools in the U.S." The report found that security exercises at nuclear reactor sites are inadequate and sites that conduct the exercises fail them half of the time. The report also found that the NRC waited six months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington before beefing up security at nuclear reactors and that the agency has "historically failed" to alter security regulations and has "yet to begin a permanent revision of security regulations." "Black hole after black hole is described and left unaddressed," Markey said. "Post 9-11, a nuclear safety agency that does not know -- and seems little interested in finding out -- the nationality of nuclear reactor workers or the level of resources being spent on security at these sensitive facilities, is not doing its job." Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the NRC, said yesterday that his agency has worked diligently to make sure the 103 operating nuclear reactors are safe. "We think we've been very proactive in trying to identify any threats against nuclear power plants," Sheehan said. The NRC has issued 30 advisories to the companies that operate the power plants, advising them of steps to take to better protect the plants, such as checking vehicles for bombs before they get too close to the plant, Sheehan said. The agency also has kept the companies abreast of alerts from law enforcement officials. And NRC Chairman Richard Meserve recently ordered a "top-to-bottom" review of all aspects of power plant security. "There are a number of things that have been done and will continue to be done," Sheehan said. "We're not taking any threats against nuclear power plants lightly." © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 8 CCEA clears nuke power, road projects - The Times of India PTI [ SUNDAY, MARCH 24, 2002 7:09:43 PM ] NEW DELHI: The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has cleared a host of nuclear and road projects including financial sanction to set up two units of Rajasthan Atomic Power Project at a cost of Rs 3,072 crore and approved a scheme for apparel parks for exports to promote textile trade. The committee at its meeting chaired by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee Saturday night approved the setting up of two units of 220 MWe pressurised heavy water reactors at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan, an official spokesperson told reporters here on Sunday. Commercial operation of Rajasthan Atomic Power Project of unit 5 would begin by August 2007 and unit 6 would begin in February 2008, she said adding that construction of the two units, to be set up by Nuclear Power Corporation, would take total capacity of RAPP to 1180 MWe. CCEA also revised lower cost estimates of units 3 and 4 of Kaiga Atomic Power proect from Rs 4,213 crore to Rs 3,282 crore due to reduction in gestation period and lower escalation rate, she said. The two units would now commence commercial operations from March 2007 and September 2007 respectively against the earlier dates of October 2008 and October 2009, she said adding that the equity funding of Rs 1,094 crore for the two units would be through budgetary support. The government has envisaged debt-equity ratio of 2:1 instead of 1:1 proposed earlier. Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. | ***************************************************************** 9 Jospin faces Green ire after shift on nuclear power NEWS.scotsman.com - Mon 25 Mar 2002 Susan Bell In Paris LIONEL Jospin, France’s Socialist prime minister, faces a dangerous split in left-wing ranks after his ecologist allies threatened not to back him in the presidential poll unless he agrees to end nuclear power. Noël Mamère, the Greens party candidate in the two-round vote, attacked Mr Jospin for what he described as his "declaration of war" by saying that his Socialist Party had never agreed to Greens demands to phase out nuclear energy. Mr Jospin already faces a delicate balancing act in winning back left-wing voters who say he has gone too far to the centre. He is currently neck-and-neck in the opinion polls with Jacques Chirac, the conservative incumbent. A dozen candidates will run in the first round on 21 April but only two will contest the run-off on 5 May. Opinion polls say Greens make up about 10 per cent of the left-wing vote and Mr Jospin would need their support in the second round to win. Mr Mamère said Mr Jospin’s refusal to consider ending nuclear power "will not encourage me to urge Greens to back him in the second round". "This declaration is a real knife in the back," he said at a rally. "It proves that, in pleasing the Communists and the nationalist Left, Mr Jospin gives way on the nuclear issue." Mr Jospin has been trying to polish up his left-wing credentials as polls reveal that 75 per cent of voters see little difference between his campaign and that of Mr Chirac. Addressing a rally in Marseilles last week, Mr Jospin said: "France is not just a France for the favoured classes. It is also a France for workers, a France for employees, a France for state-funded pensioners, a France for small and medium-sized farmers." He has pledged to eradicate homelessness by 2007 and to find jobs for the over-50s, a platform Mr Jospin points to as the key difference between him and his conservative rival. But Mr Mamère told France Inter radio that Mr Jospin was taking a major political risk. "There cannot be a [left-wing] coalition if there is not a strong signal from the Socialist candidate for a nuclear phase-out," he warned. France has one of the highest concentrations of nuclear power generation in the world, with more than 75 per cent of its electricity output coming from nuclear plants. It is the world’s top power exporter, sending abroad 18 per cent of the electricity it generates. The Communists in Mr Jospin’s coalition are staunchly pro-nuclear, seeing France’s large atomic energy sector as a key employer, while left-wing nationalists, led by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, see it as boosting the country’s economic independence. An IFOP poll published in the newspaper Journal du Dimanche showed Mr Chirac gaining a percentage point and a half to draw even with Mr Jospin in the crucial second round. The poll had Mr Chirac, who also supports continued nuclear power, ahead by two percentage points in the first round. Mr Mamère, who polls show has picked up 5 per cent of voters, said Mr Jospin’s comments on the nuclear issue had "changed the whole picture" of the race. ©2002 scotsman.com | contact ***************************************************************** 10 Security at U.S. Reactors Criticized by Congressman March 25, 2002 THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY By MATTHEW L. WALD WASHINGTON, March 24 — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not keep track of the number of foreign citizens working at nuclear power plants, or how many guards are employed at the plants or what the owners spend on security, the agency told Representative Edward J. Markey in response to his questions about security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Mr. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, on Monday will release more than 100 pages of correspondence with the agency since Sept. 11 and said the documents revealed "black hole after black hole" in security. But a spokesman for the nuclear industry said that even without government involvement and data-gathering in every area, reactor operators were taking strong steps to assure security. Mr. Markey, who has long been critical of the industry and the N.R.C., is sponsoring a bill under which the federal government would take over reactor security somewhat as airport security has been federalized. The bill, which is also sponsored by Democratic senators Harry Reid of Nevada, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, is opposed by the commission and the nuclear industry. In response to questions from Mr. Markey to Richard A. Meserve, the chairman of the commission, the N.R.C. said reactor operators were not required to avoid hiring foreigners or to limit their access to nuclear plants. The commission also said it required a certain level of security but did not keep track of how much the licensees spent to provide it, or how many extra guards they had. According to a summary of the N.R.C. responses prepared by Mr. Markey's staff, "it appears that Al Qaeda operatives such as Mohamed Atta or Marwan al-Shehhi could pass the narrow nature of the criminal screening still in use at U.S. nuclear power plants and gain unescorted access to the controlled area of a plant, just as they obtained student visas to attend flight school." Mr. Markey also said it was hard to determine whether foreigners had criminal records in other countries. Ralph E. Beedle, the chief nuclear officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's main trade association, said that the names of all reactor employees were checked with the F.B.I. and that he assumed criminal records would be discovered in the process. "The people we hire, for the most part, are folks who have come over here and gone through school," Mr. Beedle said. He added that when he was the chief of nuclear operations at the New York Power Authority, "I hired a lot of people out of Columbia University, C.C.N.Y., folks from India, China, that were over here for years as students." Mr. Markey has called for putting antiaircraft weapons at reactor sites, saying that only 4 of the nation's 103 nuclear reactors were designed with a plane crash in mind and that even then designers contemplated planes much smaller than those hijacked on Sept. 11. In addition, despite industry assertions that the containment buildings at reactors were "robust," Mr. Markey said that a plane that hit other areas of a reactor site could cause a meltdown. The commission said that it had consulted with the Defense Department, the Office of Homeland Security and the Federal Aviation Administration and concluded that "there would be enormous command and control problems and a large potential for unintended consequences and collateral damage if such weaponry were deployed." Mr. Markey and other critics say that even before Sept. 11 the commission had been slow to recognize the vulnerability to terrorists of the plants it licenses. The commission, for example, passed over the question when it issued a paper on the licensing of a proposed plant to make plutonium fuel, called MOx, for reactors in South Carolina. A local environmental group had asked that an environmental impact statement include an assessment of the risks of terrorism, but the day after planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the commission staff said that the group "does not establish that terrorist acts (involving the proposed MOx facility or related materials) fall within the realm of `reasonably forseeable' events." The commission told Mr. Markey that since Sept. 11 it has suspended exercises in which mock commandoes test defenses. It said that conducting such tests "in the current elevated threat environment would pose significant safety hazards to the licensees' employees and negatively impact security effectiveness." But Mr. Markey said that without such drills, the commission had no way to tell if the security improvements it had ordered were effective. Mr. Markey argued for more security at sites where reactors have been retired but the fuel, which is highly radioactive, is still present. He also called for tests on the casks in which some fuel is stored, which were built to be sturdy enough to withstand a varity of accidents but which, like the reactors, were not built with attack in mind. Mr. Markey said that on Monday he would put the agency correspondence on his Web page, www.house .gov/markey. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy ***************************************************************** 11 NRC Monitored Events at Waterford 3 NRC: Press Release Region IV - 2002 - 11 - 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-02-011 March 25, 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, Region IV, is monitoring events surrounding an Alert declared at the Waterford 3 nuclear power plant near Taft, La. The Region IV Incident Response Center in Arlington, Texas, was staffed today at 11:15 a.m. Entergy Operations Inc., which operates the Waterford 3 plant, was shutting down the reactor for a planned refueling outage when valves required to initiate the shutdown cooling system failed to operate properly. At 10:20 a.m. today plant operators declared an Alert condition in accordance with procedures. Alert is the second emergency action level in the four-level, NRC-required emergency response plan for nuclear reactors. The shutdown cooling system valves were successfully opened and the Alert condition was terminated at 11:50 a.m. Normal plant cooldown was resumed at about 1:30 p.m. and the NRC closed its Incident Response Center. ***************************************************************** 12 NRC to Meet with Company to Discuss Seabrook Plant Performance NRC: Press Release Region I - 2002 - 22 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 www.nrc.gov No. I-02-022 March 22, 2002 CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov [opa1@nrc.gov] Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with representatives of North Atlantic Energy Service Corporation on Friday, March 29, to discuss the results of the agency's annual assessment of safety performance at the Seabrook nuclear power plant. The facility is located in Seabrook, N.H., and operated by North Atlantic Energy. The meeting, which will be the open to the public for observation, is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. at the Seabrook Community Center, 311 Lafayette Road in Seabrook. Before the meeting is adjourned, NRC staff will be available to answer questions from the public on the plant's safety performance and the role of the NRC in ensuring safe plant operation. The performance period to be discussed is April 1, 2001, to December 31, 2001. In addition, NRC staff will provide an overview of the agency's Reactor Oversight Process. A letter sent from the NRC Region I office to North Atlantic Energy addresses plant performance during the period and will serve as the basis for the meeting discussion. It is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/seab_2001q4.pdf Current performance information for Seabrook is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/SEAB1/seab1_chart.html ***************************************************************** 13 Congressman: Nuke Plants Vulnerable Las Vegas SUN Today: March 25, 2002 at 7:45:12 PST BOSTON (AP) - Security at the nation's civilian nuclear power plants is so poor that terrorists could already be secretly working at reactors, a congressman alleges in a new report on homeland security. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said the nation's 86 most sensitive nuclear power plants fail to screen workers for terrorist ties and don't know how many foreign nationals they employ. "Terrorists may now be employed at nuclear reactors in the United States just as terrorists enrolled in flight schools in the U.S.," Markey said in his report, "Security Gap: A Hard Look at Soft Spots in Our Civilian Nuclear Reactor Security." Markey, a proponent of federalizing nuclear power plant safety, said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not sufficiently improved security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "The NRC is in the dark about what nuclear reactor licensees are doing to ensure the reactors are safe from attack," Markey told the Boston Herald. NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci declined to discuss the report's details, saying "we don't normally comment on press releases from members of Congress." She told The Boston Globe that security employees at nuclear plants are fingerprinted, and that minimum staffing levels are included in security plans filed with the NRC. Markey said the NRC doesn't check workers for possible terrorist ties. "As long as they have no criminal record in this country, al-Qaida operatives are not required to pass any security check intended to find and expose terrorist links," he said. Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said existing NRC-required background checks are "somewhat limited." "I've worked in over 20 plants in the 17 years I was in the industry. Had I wanted to sabotage the plant, it wouldn't have been that difficult to do so," he said. On the Net: Markey: http://www.house.gov/markey/ [http://www.house.gov/markey/] NRC: http://www.nrc.gov/ [http://www.nrc.gov/] Concerned Scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org/index.html [http://www.ucsusa.org/index.html] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 14 Markey warns of nuke terror: Plant security faulted bostonherald.com RECOMMENDATIONS by Andrew Miga Monday, March 25, 2002 WASHINGTON - The nation's nuclear plants fail to screen workers for terrorist ties, making the facilities vulnerable to deadly attacks, U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Malden) charged in a scathing report released today. Warning of ``troubling black holes in homeland security,'' Markey said al-Qaeda or other terrorist operatives could be secretly working in some of the country's 86 most sensitive nuke facilities, waiting to strike. ``Terrorists may now be employed at nuclear reactors in the United States just as terrorists enrolled in flight schools in the U.S.,'' Markey said in his report: ``Security Gap: A Hard Look at Soft Spots in Our Civilian Nuclear Reactor Security.'' More than six months after the Sept. 11 airliner suicide strikes, Markey warned that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has fallen far short in its security crackdown. NRC officials were not available for immediate comment last night. ``The NRC is in the dark about what nuclear reactor licensees are doing to ensure the reactors are safe from attack,'' said the congressman. Markey, who has led the fight in Congress for nuclear plant safety, queried the NRC about its response to terrorism in a series of letters since Sept. 11. ``There is little comfort to be found in the agency's response to my questions,'' wrote Markey. ``Black hole after black hole is described and left unaddressed.'' The NRC does not require adequate background checks for nuclear plant employees to check potential terrorist ties, Markey alleged. ``As long as they have no criminal record in this country, al-Qaeda operatives are not required to pass any security check intended to find and expose terrorist links,'' Markey said. But the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, says every person who applies for a job at any of the nation's nuclear power plants undergoes extensive criminal, psychological and employment history checks. Crimes committed overseas by foreign job applicants are not even looked for by plant officials, Markey said, citing NRC data. Further, the NRC does not monitor plant security spending and how many security guards are on duty at each plant, Markey charged. The NRC is currently doing a comprehensive review of nuclear plant security, agency officials have said. ``Post 9/11, a nuclear safety agency (that) does not know - and seems little interested in finding out - the nationality of nuclear reactor workers . . . is not doing its job.'' Markey compared the lax security screening at nuke plants to the ease with which al-Qaeda operatives obtained student visas for flight schools. ``Al-Qaeda operatives such as Mohammed Atta or Marwan al-shehi could pass the narrow nature of the criminal screening still in use at U.S. nuclear plants and gain unescorted access to the controlled area of the plant, just as they obtained student visas to attend flight school,'' said Markey. Markey has been a leading proponent of federalizing nuclear plant safety, warning that permitting a patchwork of differing plant security measures only invites disaster. ``The threat is no longer theoretical,'' the veteran congressman said. National Guard troops were deployed at many plants across the country in the wake of Sept. 11, including the Pilgrim facility in Plymouth. Some local officials are calling for anti-aircraft missile batteries to protect Pilgrim. The NRC has resisted placing anti-aircraft weapons at plants, despite the proximity of many reactors, including Pilgrim, to airports, Markey noted. France and Hungary have deployed anti-aircraft protection for some plants. Markey's report also found that 96 percent of all reactor plants ``were designed without regard for the potential impact from even a small aircraft.'' Concerns about the security of spent nuclear fuels stored at many plants, including Pilgrim, were also raised. The NRC acknowledged earlier this month that 18 facilities across the country store spent nuclear fuel rods in outside vertical rows. While the so-called casks pose little danger, they are easier targets than reactor buildings. Nuclear plants fail security exercises about half of the time, Markey noted, adding that President Bush has cited al-Qaeda documents found in Afghanistan that diagram civilian nuclear sites in America. © Copyright by the Boston Herald ***************************************************************** 15 NRC Finalizes Decision on Maine Yankee Case Lincoln County NewsMarch 26, 2002 By Greg Foster The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given closure to three Level Four violations that allegedly occurred at Maine Yankee in Wiscasset last year and in 2000, calling them “deliberate”. However, the company continues its firm stand that the violations were not willful. In reporting on the NRC’s final decision, NRC health physicist Randy Raglund, told the company’s Community Advisory Panel (CAP) last week that there were no monetary penalties for the violations of NRC inspection regulations reportedly occurring April 7, 2001, and Aug. 21 and 24, 2000. The NRC made the final decision March 18, the day of the CAP meeting. “We continue to disagree,” said Mike Meisner, Maine Yankee’s chief nuclear officer regarding the decision about the willful nature of the violations. “We are glad to put this behind us.” The areas where the inspections occurred are areas that are usually not areas where contamination has ever occurred, according to Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes. Meisner said that Level Four is the lowest level of violations and that there was no safety significance about them. Feb. 27 incident In his report to the CAP, Meisner gave the CAP information about an incident that reportedly occurred when a worker involved in the decommissioning was exposed to some radioactivity. The event involves negligence on the part of the radiological protection con-tractor to post the area where the demolition crew member was working. Apparently the worker tried to attach a filtering hose to one end of some piping, which contained some contamination, to remove debris from it. The hose is supposed to fit inside the piping. However, when the hose came unattached to the piping, the air pressure stirred up and released some contaminated particles from the piping. The company deter-mined that there should have been a protection barrier, Howes said. “It’s not uncommon for a worker to receive contamination, but it’s obviously something we’re con-cerned about,” he said. Meisner told the CAP that the company has given the contractor a Level A rating for the infraction, a Level C being the least serious. “This was an event that was quite avoidable. We have a real focus on radiological activities,” he said. “This one we’re really jumping on.” The company, which is doing the radiological protection, will remain on for another month until the end of April, after which another company will take over. Recently, Maine Yankee had notified the company of its decision to release the contractor from its services because of other related problems. In May, the new company will take over the work of radiological protection for workers involved in the ongoing demolition work for the decommissioning of the plant, according to Meisner. Technicians employed by the contractor have been notified that they are eligible to apply for employment under the new contractor. Town resolutions CAP member Dan Thompson expressed concern that the area town meeting resolutions this month requesting the federal government to take possession of the high level nuclear waste at Maine Yankee and to remove it might be misinterpreted. He cited another location at which the DOE took possession of such waste but did not remove it. “To avoid misunderstanding of these communities, I would like the NRC to know that they do not want the federal government to take custody now but that Maine Yankee would keep it until such time as it is moved,” Thompson said. Eaton Farm, LTP There are three competing proposals on the table now for Maine Yankee to consider as prospects for its gift of the 200-acre property. Meisner said that the Maine Yankee board would not be ready to go with one of the proposals until summer. Maine Yankee has requested early release of the Eaton Farm property, as well as property north of Ferry Rd., through an amendment to its License Termination Plan (LTP). The NRC heard testimony from the public last Monday at a public hearing and will be taking the comments under advisement. The NRC has indicated that it would be ready to make a decision in the fall on the third revision of the LTP, for which it received testimony last Monday along with public comment about consideration of partial release of Maine Yankee property, according to Howes. NRC security orders The NRC has issued orders to operating nuclear power plants beyond the current advisories on security measures and within the next three weeks will issues some for independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSI), including the Maine Yankee’s site. As for spent fuel pools for decommissioning plants as at Maine Yankee, orders from the NRC are a few months away, according to Raglund. Reactor waste water CAP member Ray Shadis, spokesman for the Friends of the Coast, expressed concern about the water discharge from the reactor vessel in the dismantling process. He said there are unexpected levels of concentrations of contamination in the fore-bay from previous discharges. “I think the NRC needs to come up with some kind of explanation of why there is so much concentration before they do another discharge,” Shadis said. The mechanism making that happen, needs to be known, in his estimation. Responding to his query, Raglund said that that occurrence is not unusual in clay, such as found in the fore-bay where the water is supposed to be released. “I would expect radiological contaminants to be present when they remediate the fore-bay,” he said. “We would have to take a look at the historical site assessment and determine what we could reasonably expect there.” Reactor vessel removal Maine Yankee gave a slide presentation of the procedure for removal of the reactor pressure vessel, which will go by barge later this year to Barnwell, S.C. at a burial facility there. It will travel on all but one-half mile of DOE owned roads once it reaches Barnwell by barge. The entire water transit is expected to take 12-14 days from the plant’s barge slip to the DOE’s Savannah River site at Barnwell. Lincoln County News © 2001 ***************************************************************** 16 What About the Global Body Count? http://www.moscowtimes.ru Monday, Mar. 25, 2002. Page 10 By Matt Bivens WASHINGTON -- I wonder how many thousands of Russians have been killed by nuclear testing? I have a ballpark figure for how many Americans have been killed: 11,000. And amid talk of a return to nuclear testing in Nevada and Novaya Zemlya -- and of "mini-nukes," to be used as conventional weapons -- I wonder why no one mentions the fact that detonating nuclear weapons causes cancer. A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates fallout has caused 33,000 cases of cancers -- from breast cancer to leukemia -- of which 11,000 were lethal. (www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/fallout/ [http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/fallout/] ) And it's not just Semipalatinsk anymore: The CDC study suggests the definition of "down winder" -- someone living uncomfortably close to a nuclear test site -- needs revision. "Hot spots due to testing in Nevada occurred as far away as New York and Maine," says Arjun Makhijani, president of the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. "Hot spots from U.S. Pacific area testing and also Soviet testing were scattered across the United States -- from California, Oregon and Washington in the west to New Hampshire, Vermont and North Carolina in the East." The CDC's study was completed in August but only published in dribs and drabs over the last few weeks. It was a long time in the making. Robert Alvarez, a Clinton-era Energy Department official, recalls hearing in 1997 of a "suppressed" study of fallout by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and asking for a briefing. "They were showing me these color-coded [fallout] maps of the United States. And I'm looking at this and it's really grotesque stuff, because I know what the numbers mean," Alvarez says. "And I look down at the bottom of the page and it's dated September 1992 -- and here I am it's 1997." That NCI study looked at one kind of cancer -- thyroid cancer -- and concluded nuclear-test fallout caused somewhere from 11,300 to 212,000 incidences among Americans. When the NCI's findings were finally published in 1997, Congress was shocked (shocked!) and demanded a follow-up. CDC complied. Its report to Congress emphasizes its study's conservative approach. But caveats aside, the estimate of 33,000 cases of cancer among Americans seems restrained -- if only because it covers just 11 years, between 1951 and 1962, and the 48 contiguous U.S. states. That omits: all Chinese atmospheric tests, which were conducted from 1964 to 1980; French atmospheric tests from 1963 to 1974; pre-1951 tests in the Marshall Islands and in the Soviet Union; the original three 1945 atomic blasts -- in New Mexico, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. CDC's study also ignores fallout on Hawaii from Pacific tests and on Alaska from Soviet tests on the Arctic Circle island of Novaya Zemlya. And since it is U.S.-specific, it says nothing of fallout's toll on the rest of the world. Alvarez says 19 atmospheric tests in that 11-year period released Chernobyl scale radiation levels. So 19 Chernobyls ... 33,000 American cancer cases ... and 11,000 American dead. Nuclear weapons powers "owe the world a real accounting of what they did to its health," says Makhijani. "It is high time for the United Nations to create a Global Truth Commission that would examine, in detail comparable to the U.S government studies, the harm inflicted upon the people of the world by nuclear weapons production and testing." Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute [www.thenation.com [http://www.thenation.com] ]. ***************************************************************** 17 Dirty water, hazardous waste a cause for concern for peacekeepers in Afghanistan [http://www.sfgate.com/news/] NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Monday, March 25, 2002 Breaking News Sections (03-25) 00:15 PST KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The sewage started seeping out of the ground more than two years ago after the pipeline clogged. Now there's a small, rancid pond of waste in Kabul where children play. For all its other problems, Afghanistan has some serious environmental issues -- sewage treatment among them -- that are only now getting attention after 23 years of war and neglect. A U.N. team arrived last week to start a countrywide assessment of the environmental threats, which include deforestation, water contamination, desertification, overuse of chemical pesticides and no waste disposal to speak of. Separately, experts in the international peacekeeping force have started work in Kabul, testing air, water and soil samples for chemical, biological and nuclear agents. They have come across some troubling findings: two canisters believed to contain Soviet-era chemical agents, gas mask filters found in an al-Qaida safehouse, and a missing Cobalt-60 source, a highly radioactive material, from a hospital's cancer-treating radiation machine. They're also keeping close tabs on Kabul's anthrax vaccine laboratory and decades-old hospital X-ray machines for fear of leakage. Capt. James Cameron, who heads the 35-member team of experts in the peacekeeping force, says the environmental threat in the capital is significant. "There is a terrorist threat to (international) troops, but there's also a clear and present danger for people stumbling into something that was left behind or purposefully abandoned," he said. The algae-filled pond in the Yakatout neighborhood of Kabul is one such danger. When the sewage first started oozing above ground more than two years ago, a nonprofit group cleaned it up but didn't fix the source of the problem, residents said. The sewage returned, and now has become a gunk-filled pond housing several rusted out pickup trucks that children use as a jungle gym. "We say to our children to not play here," said Abdul Wakil, as he watched swarms of children jump from truck to truck across the sewage and over a dead dog floating on the water's edge. "It's dangerous, and when the weather will get hot, the children will get diseases from it," he said. Beyond Kabul, environmental conditions are just as grave. About half of Afghanistan's natural forests -- cedars, pines and oaks that once covered about 3 percent of the country -- have been cut over the years for firewood and illegal timber exports, said Nassery, the director of environmental protection at Area, an Afghan nonprofit group. The clearing has led to increased desertification, while the conversion of grasslands to agricultural fields has aggravated soil erosion, said Nassery, who uses only one name. Chemical pesticides and fertilizers have contaminated soil and water supplies because of overuse and misuse, experts say. Perhaps the gravest threat to Afghanistan's environment is the four-year-old drought, which has decimated agriculture and helped reduce the use of arable farmland from 10 percent to 6 percent, said Nassery. What water still exists is often contaminated -- mostly as a result of waste washing into rivers or seeping into wells, said Dr. Sarwar Abbassi, director of environmental health in the Ministry of Health. Currently, 18 percent of patients in Afghan hospitals are treated for waterborne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea, which stem from improper water treatment, he said. Henrik Slotte, head of the assessment unit at U.N. Environment Program, said by telephone from Geneva that the Afghan authorities had identified "major, chronic environmental problems" for his teams to investigate. Despite Afghanistan's environmental woes, Slotte said they could be remedied -- as long as the world continues to focus it attention and money on Afghanistan. "We know from experience that this is exactly the moment when you can turn the page and start over again," he said. ©2002 Associated Press   ***************************************************************** 18 Uranium found in blood of Serbians living in area bombed by NATO BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 24, 2002 Bujanovac, 24 March: Tests conducted by the Belgrade Institute for Labour Medicine and Radiation Protection shows that traces of uranium had been discovered in the blood and urine samples taken from 30 residents of the villages of Borovac and Bratoselce near Bujanovac [southern Serbia], who live in the vicinity of the areas contaminated by depleted uranium during NATO bombing [of Yugoslavia]. The final results of the tests will be published by the federal [Yugoslav] government's commission in charge of monitoring the effects of radiation on 25 March. On several occasions in the spring of 1999, NATO's A10 aircraft fired depleted uranium projectiles in the Borovac and Bratoselce area. The Yugoslav Army data show that radiation measured in Borovac in 2000 stood at 495-17,490 Becquerel per kilogram, while NATO reports put this number at 0.8-13 Becquerel per kilogram. "This is why the residents - who, because of lack of information and inaccurate radiation readings often had direct contact with contaminated ammunition - need regular medical check-ups," the Bujanovac-based independent environmental protection expert, Snezana Milosevic, has told us. Although no official reports have been released yet, some deformities in plants have already been observed in Borovac. Six locations in the Pcinj region have been marked as contaminated by depleted uranium: two in Borovac, one in Svinjiste and Reljan each, one in the Presevo municipality, and one Pljackovica in the Vranje municipality. NATO's report for 1999 failed to mention the latter as well as Fort Azra, located on the Lustica peninsula in Montenegro. It is estimated that 10 tons of contaminated material were dropped during the 78-day-long bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia... Source: SRNA news agency, Bijeljina, in Serbo-Croat 1330 gmt 24 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 19 Yucca: American Public Evenly Divided Over Yucca Mountain Waste Repository Category: US Public Opinion Location: United States © Ipsos-Reid Public Release Date: March 20, 2002 In a survey of 1000 US adults conducted from March 14 to March 17, Ipsos Public Affairs found that the public is evenly divided over a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain Nevada with 47% in favor and 47% opposed. This survey has a margin of error of +/- 3.1%. WASHINGTON, DC (March 20, 2002) — Reflecting the fact that the issues surrounding a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain are under the radar screen for most Americans, initially over half of Americans (53%) say they do not know enough about the issue to give an opinion. Among those giving an opinion, 23% favor the repository and 24% oppose the repository at Yucca Mountain. After hearing three statements in favor of the proposal and three statements against, the public divides evenly with 47% in favor and 47% opposed. The opposition is somewhat stronger with 25% strongly opposed as compared to just 15% strongly in favor of the repository. The uninformed electorate splits nearly evenly after hearing the statements for and against the Yucca Mountain repository (listed below). Respondents who did not know enough to give an opinion before the statements for and against the repository split evenly, 42% in favor and 46% opposed. Among those who express an initial opinion, 92% of supporters and 84% of opponents maintain their original opinion after hearing the statements about the repository. The Yucca Mountain repository has the potential to become a highly divisive issue. There is an enormous gender gap on this issue with 58% of men supporting the Yucca Mountain repository and 56% of women opposing the Yucca Mountain repository. Race is also a major factor with 50% of whites compared to just 35% of minorities supporting the plan. Republicans (65% support, 29% oppose) are much more likely to support the Yucca Mountain repository than Democrats (36% support, 59% oppose) or Independents (29% support, 59% oppose). Ground water contamination is a major concern for most Americans, but the government’s assurances of safety balance this concern. In the end, both sides of the debate have strong arguments which appeal to their key constituencies. The survey was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, the Washington, D.C.-based division of Ipsos-Reid, which is part of the world’s fourth largest polling and market research organization, the Ipsos group, based in Paris. Ipsos Public Affairs conducts non partisan, objective strategic research initiatives for a diverse number of U.S. and international organizations. Ipsos Public Affairs has offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Minneapolis. To view the latest poll results and research from Ipsos Public Affairs please go to: http://www.ipsos-reid.com/media/index.cfm For more information on this release, please contact: Trent Ross Vice President Ipsos Public Affairs 415.274.8925 trent.ross@ipsos-reid.com © 2002 Ipsos-Reid Corporation. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 20 Congressional delegation needs to make goal-line stand March 25, 2002 Reno Gazette-Journal It’s hard to believe we’re talking about adults, much less some of the leaders and would-be leaders of the free world. But the behavior of some members of Nevada’s congressional delegation and candidates for federal office as the Yucca Mountain team pushes toward the goal line is like watching the defense squabbling on the field rather than stiffening for the last stand. Granted, this is a little like the Rams moving down the field against the University of Nevada. But if this is to be Nevada’s version of the 1969 Jets, this team better decide whether the goal is scoring political points or blocking the dump. The state’s Republicans, including Sen. John Ensign and Rep. Jim Gibbons and congressional hopefuls Lynette Boggs McDonald and Jon Porter, figure this is tit for tat. They suffered after George W. Bush quarterbacked the final Yucca Mountain drive and then had to hear the Democrats, especially Sen. Harry Reid, exploit the fact that the president had fooled the state as a candidate in 2000 when he revealed that phony game plan about letting the science decide. Bush lied, Reid and others said. And, worst of all, the Republicans who had played along in 2000, knew Reid was right. So now that the fate of the dump -at least politically, before all the legal challenges begin,- is in the hands of the U.S. Senate, the Republicans want to hold Majority Leader Tom Daschle to that foolish statement he made with Reid at his side last year: “As long as we’re in the majority, it’s dead.” Yes, Daschle may not have known about the expedited procedures in the original bill that potentially diminish his power as leader. But speaking in absolutes is always dangerous. And so it was hardly surprising to see an Ensign news release last week headlined: “Ensign says Daschle holds key to killing Yucca Mountain.” And then in the body of the release: “All Nevadans expect him to keep his word.” As Daschle spit back at Ensign for sitting on the bench, Gibbons, Porter and Boggs McDonald put out releases echoing Ensign’s. How pathetic is this? Daschle would not hold the key, as Ensign put it, if Bush hadn’t locked the door. And while Daschle should never have overplayed his hand, he is on the Nevada team, if only because of Reid. So the Republicans are pummeling someone on the Nevada side, as the president chuckles with delight as he and the GOP leaders in Congress try to move the ball closer to the end zone 90 miles from Las Vegas. Yes, folks, this is a Republican plan now -and the state’s Republicans know it, which is why they previously have muttered meekly that this is not a partisan issue. If dump advocate Trent Lott were majority leader, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. Yes, Democrats will vote for the dump, but the overwhelming majority will be Republicans. And it still takes 51 votes to win. As Al Davis might have put it: Just stop it, baby. Jon Ralston, who publishes The Ralston Report, works for Greenspun Media Group. He welcomes comments and questions. Write him at 2675Windmill, #3621 Henderson, NV 89074. Or call (702) 870-7997. © Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett ***************************************************************** 21 Residents differ over plan to truck nuclear fuel [http://www.thejournalnews.com] --> By KEN VALENTI THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: March 23, 2002) In her 30 years at Murray Frank's Cards and Gifts in Tarrytown, Jeannie Galgano has seen all kinds of trucks pass by the store, so news that spent nuclear fuel rods may join the traffic on Broadway someday didn't faze her much. "Military trucks come through here, houses come through here," the Sleepy Hollow resident said yesterday. "Whatever has to come through here comes through." As for spent radioactive fuel from the Indian Point nuclear power plants, she said: "If they do it properly and carefully, I'm not worried." Andrea Mangione, owner of Razzmatazz, is. An accident on the road could affect a lot of pedestrians, she said. "This is a walking town," she said. "People come out. All the shop owners know the kids. On Halloween, the kids come in for candy. That's the kind of town it is." From Buchanan to Tarrytown, some were bothered yesterday by a report that, starting in 2010, the spent fuel could be trucked through their communities, down Routes 9A and 9, and over the Tappan Zee Bridge on the way to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Others, used to living near the nuclear plants, were hardly more worried about having the trucks pass by. But for Croton-on-Hudson village trustee Georgianna Grant, there is no question that it is a bad idea. "It's so awful it's not possible," she said. "I do not want it to happen. Across the Tappan Zee Bridge? It's impossible." Briarcliff Manor Mayor Keith Austin said he could not outright oppose the idea of trucking nuclear material from Indian Point through his village until talks are held with the federal government to explain the plans. "I think getting those fuel rods out of there is good news, and we ought to figure out a way to make it happen," he said. However, the trucks that would haul the material would have a hard time moving through the area, he predicted. The 993 trucks that would begin taking the fuel would be 70 feet long and carry loads of up to 40 tons. In later years, nuclear waste may be taken by truck to the Conrail freight station in Croton or shipped by barge to Port Elizabeth, N.J. U.S. Department of Energy spokesman Joe Davis said the agency does plan to meet with local communities about five years before any shipping of nuclear waste begins. "It's got to go somewhere," Davis said. "You can either move it through these towns and move it to Nevada or you can leave it where it is." The route has not been published, but it was shared with The Journal News by the state of Nevada, after state officials were allowed to retrieve the restricted information from the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, where it was developed. Yesterday, Davis described it as one possible route for getting the spent fuel rods to Yucca Mountain, the site that President Bush has recommended as the nation's nuclear waste repository. Nevada is expected to reject the plan. Davis said spent fuel can also be shipped by barge or train. He said the Energy Department has a 30-year record of shipping the waste without a single accident that caused radiation to leak. The casks used are tested by flame of more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, by dropping them on a hard surface on their weakest corner from 40 feet, and by dropping them from three meters onto a spike. The fuel would not be moved through a crowded area during rush hours, he said. "We're not going to paint a cask green and make it part of the St. Patrick's Day Parade," he said. Ken Valenti [kvalenti@thejournalnews.com] Copyright 2002 The Journal News, a Gannett Co [http://www.gannett.com/] . ***************************************************************** 22 Nevada's anti-Yucca fight gets boost in Congress Las Vegas SUN Today: March 25, 2002 at 11:09:46 PST By Erin Neff and Benjamin Grove State leaders have long said a key to their anti-Yucca Mountain strategy is to publicize risks associated with transporting waste, especially after the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes. Now a powerful ally in Washington has given the state a forum to tell the rest of the nation of those dangers -- and possibly sway some senators -- with a congressional hearing on transportation concerns. U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said Friday he has scheduled a May 9 hearing before his 75-member Transportation Committee, based on concerns he has repeatedly heard from U.S. Reps. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. Young also said for the first time that "I'll probably vote with Jim Gibbons" when the House of Representatives is handed Gov. Kenny Guinn's expected veto of the president's Yucca decision -- about as close to a commitment from a pro-nuke Republican as Nevada's delegation can hope for. "They've convinced me that this is something we have to look at," Young said. "A lot of states aren't aware that this is happening." The daylong hearing will include testimony from Gibbons, Berkley and congressional candidate Jon Porter, a Republican state senator. "This changes the whole picture in terms of Nevada's fight," Gibbons said Friday. "No one else has ever offered to hold a hearing. This is something that I think really, truly is a positive step." Porter said transportation is the "dirty, little secret of Yucca Mountain," and he hoped the hearing provides a boost in the state fight's "final hours." After Guinn vetoes President Bush's recommendation -- expected in early April -- Congress has 90 legislative days to override the governor. The House of Representatives already has enough stated support to override Guinn, but Nevada could pick up enough votes to block the dump in the U.S. Senate. John Podesta, chief of staff for former President Bill Clinton and one of Nevada's Yucca lobbyists, said transportation will be a key part of the state's lobbying strategy. Berkley reiterated that point when she released a video last week showing a missile charge blowing a hole in a cast-iron nuclear waste container. The congresswoman said the video raises important questions about terrorist risks, although critics say the video is flawed in part because the container is not used in this country for shipping waste and is weaker than U.S.-certified steel containers. The video was produced by a private company to tout a concrete-compound, cask-protection product. Meanwhile, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has requested information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates waste containers. Reid wants to know more about how containers are tested and certified. "Congress has a responsibility to ensure the public is not put in danger," Reid said. "Hauling high-level nuclear waste across our country presents a very real threat to thousands of communities along the shipment routes." Nuclear industry experts say Nevada leaders are unnecessarily trying to scare people in order to drum up opposition to the proposed nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Even as Nevada lobbyists spin their message, industry lobbyists are assuring lawmakers that shipping waste is safe. A video produced by the Nuclear Energy Institute, "An American Success Story: The Safe Shipment of Used Nuclear Fuel," states that waste shipping is a careful, sophisticated process that employs "super-strong shipping containers," extensive government and industry planning and strict regulation. The video, targeted to media and community leaders nationwide, stresses that about 3,000 shipments of high-level waste have been made over 1.7 million miles in the United States since 1964 with no radiation releases. "This record of safety is unparalleled when compared to other hazardous materials transportation shipments, industry consultant Eileen Supko says in the video. During Young's Transportation Committee hearing, the industry will get to present arguments like those after Nevada's representatives testify. After the industry's presentation, lawmakers will get to ask questions before scientists testify. Nevada's presentation will include information about alternatives to Yucca Mountain, including reprocessing the waste either by transmutation or by a new method Gibbons is touting that uses thorium fuel. Young said he thinks Nevada could suggest the waste be shipped out of the country, perhaps to Russia which is testing several reprocessing approaches. Gibbons said the hearing will be "just another one of our educational opportunities." "You never know about the issue," Gibbons said. "Members who have never approached this issue will get our information." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 23 Public hearings scheduled Las Vegas SUN Today: March 25, 2002 at 9:27:24 PST LAS VEGAS SUN The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled three public hearings in Nevada during April to explain its oversight of a proposed high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. President Bush has recommended that Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, become the nation's repository for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste. Gov. Kenny Guinn is expected to veto the recommendation in the first two weeks of April. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is an independent agency that must approve building the repository, if Congress overrides Guinn's veto and approves the plan. NRC staff will be available to answer the public's questions about the commission's oversight role. The meetings are scheduled from 6:30 to 9 p.m. on April 8 in Beatty, April 9 in Tonopah and April 10 in Ely. If the DOE submits a satisfactory application, the NRC would conduct up to four years of formal hearings in Las Vegas. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 24 Radioactive waste control The Pueblo Chieftain Online - Saturday March 23rd, 2002 Spradley wants public hearings, state oversight By TOM McAVOY Chieftain Denver Bureau DENVER - House Majority Leader Lola Spradley on Friday introduced a bill to require public hearings and legislative approval before the state will accept shipments of radioactive waste of the type proposed for the Cotter Corp. Uranium Mill near Canon City. Spradley, a Beulah Republican, represents the area where shipments of up to 470,000 tons of New Jersey radioactive soil would go. She applauded Gov. Bill Owens for ordering a hold on the shipments until the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reviews the plan for safety and in conformance with Cotter's current permit. More than that, Spradley's House Bill 1408 would mandate specific approval by both the governor and Legislature for any shipment of "naturally occurring uranium-bearing and thorium-bearing soils, solids and liquids and their decay products" larger than one ton or a single railroad car load. The bill would apply to any site within five miles of an incorporated city or town. Spradley wrote it to be retroactive to Jan. 1. Co-sponsored by Rep. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Thiebaut, D-Pueblo, the bill allows for the Legislature to exempt one or more disposal sites in the future, if it wishes. Applicants would have to pay the county involved up to $20,000 for an independent environmental analysis to assist the county commissioners in preparing their response. Further, the applicants would bear the cost of two public hearings in the affected area, scheduled only after two weeks' notice, and the transcripts of the hearings to be accessible to the public. The environmental analysis must include the impacts on Colorado, any potential mitigation and alternatives to accepting the waste. "They have to show they've done this due process, basically," Spradley said. "Colorado currently doesn't make provision to assure adequate public input into the shipment of high-level radioactive waste." Spradley said she has added her own letter to Fremont County's request that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers delay the project for six months. The Corps of Engineers authorized the contract with a company to oversee the shipments from a Superfund site in New Jersey. Cotter is the subcontractor responsible for disposal of the radioactive soil left by Maywood Chemical Co., which extracted thorium to make lantern mantles from 1916 to 1959. ©1996-2002 Chieftain.com [http://www.chieftain.com] The Star-Journal Publishing Corp. Pueblo, Colorado U.S.A. ***************************************************************** 25 Opinions:MOX best way to handle plutonium Augusta Georgia: Web posted Sunday, March 24, 2002 Letter to the Editor Pam Harris' March 13 letter opposes burning plutonium via the MOX program. Please invite Ms. Harris to say what the world is to do with its plutonium if we don't burn it as a nuclear fuel. We have made some thousand tons of plutonium since the 1940s, enough for hundreds of thousands of nuclear explosives. It is spread all over this troubled world. We can bury it. Terrorists can dig it up. We can dilute it. Terrorists can refine it. If we do not burn it, it will be with us for the next 100,000 years for the damnation of our progeny. I had the technical responsibility for the C Reactor at the Savannah River Site when we burned pure bomb-grade plutonium for a year. Everything worked fine. Ms. Harris is incorrect when she predicts safety problems with plutonium fuel. I've been there, done that. I'm home without a scratch. Plutonium does not burn hotter than uranium, as Ms. Harris states. Temperatures and thermal problems are identical. Fred Christensen, Aiken, S.C. 1996 - 2002 The Augusta Chronicle. ***************************************************************** 26 [toeslist] a Peace Offensive Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 23:17:28 -0600 (CST) http://www.democrats.org/contactus.html BE: The Democrats have a space on their web page for comments. I urge that we all send a message urging them to separate themselves from the Bush Administration on the war. They need not go back on their support. But could hold hearnings on the relevance to oil and Bush's reaction. They could also call for a Peace Offensive that would reduce the reasons that Cheney got such a cold reception in Europe. They could also demand that as much money be put into creating the peace as in promoting the war. Feeding people, a fair hand in the Middle East, recompense for the war widows and orphans, and a long list of good thing Americans are for Send your comments on a PEACE OFFENSIVE on: Bill Ellis ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Stock for $4. No Minimums. FREE Money 2002. http://us.click.yahoo.com/BgmYkB/VovDAA/ySSFAA/NJYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: toeslist-unsubscribe@egroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 27 A method to nuclear madness? Monday, March 25, 2002 By RALPH A. COSSA and BRAD GLOSSERMAN Special to The Japan Times HONOLULU -- We were shocked and dismayed to learn that the Pentagon has allegedly been instructed to develop contingency plans calling for the use of nuclear weapons to deter or respond to a chemical or biological attack on the United States. We say "allegedly" because we are relying on (at best) secondhand accounts of the Defense Department's Nuclear Posture Review. We haven't had direct access to this classified report -- but, then again, neither have the overwhelming majority of those who have joined the chorus of protest against this congressionally mandated review. The shock and dismay comes from the revelation -- if true -- that more than 10 years after the United States and its allies issued a firm warning to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that the use of chemical or biological weapons against Desert Storm forces would result in retaliation "by all available means" (read nuclear weapons), the Pentagon is just now getting around to developing contingency plans for such an option against Iraq or others who are known or suspected to possess chemical or biological (or nuclear) weapons. What took them so long? Keep in mind that contingency plans do not lock you into a particular course of action; they merely entail the development of a range of possible responses to an anticipated crisis. Developing a plan does not mean that nuclear weapons automatically, or even inevitably, will be used. The primary reason for factoring them in is to remind potential adversaries -- as the 1991 announcement effectively reminded Hussein -- that use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could trigger an equally horrific response. This is called deterrence. It is also important to distinguish between the hyperbole surrounding the Nuclear Posture Review and what we know. First, the review is not a policy; it is a Department of Defense report, mandated by Congress, that "lays out the direction for American nuclear forces over the next five to 10 years." It is the latest in a series of reviews that began when nuclear weapons were first developed. The Department of Defense has cautioned that the review "does not provide operational guidance on nuclear targeting or planning." The key element of the new posture is the development of a "new triad" that consists of offensive forces (both nuclear and nonnuclear), defensive systems such as missile defense and a revitalized defense infrastructure that "will provide new capabilities" to meet new threats. Administration officials stress that the new posture is designed for a post-Cold War world, and it reduces U.S. reliance on offensive strike forces (such as bombers and missiles) and allows the U.S. to reduce its nuclear arsenal to 1,700-2,200 warheads. To defuse the criticism that erupted after the report was leaked to The New York Times, U.S. officials have emphasized that the document does not envisage the use of nuclear weapons. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz explained last weekend that the objective is "to deter other people from using weapons of mass destruction against us." The controversy that surrounds the NPR is the product of the argument that the U.S. could respond to nonnuclear attacks with nuclear weapons. The review notes that U.S. military forces themselves, including nuclear forces, will now be used to "dissuade adversaries from undertaking military programs or operations that could threaten U.S. interests or those of allies and friends." The document then reportedly explains some of the scenarios the authors had in mind, including "an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors, a North Korean attack on South Korea or a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan." Similarly, the NPR allegedly notes that "a sudden regime change by which an existing nuclear arsenal comes into the hands of a new hostile leadership, or an opponent's surprise unveiling of WMD capabilities" should be considered an "unexpected contingency." This sounds to us like prudent military planning. But, prudent or not, the thinking behind this policy does raise a serious question. There are unsubstantiated allegations that the NPR contemplates the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against states that possess WMD. This flies in the face of assurances by President George W. Bush and others that the review is all about deterrence, not attack. Moreover, it undermines one of the review's central conclusions -- that the new nuclear posture makes use of nuclear weapons less rather than more likely. Most important, it flies in the face of political reality. Absent an actual chemical or biological (or nuclear) attack against the United States or its allies, first use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. is politically and morally indefensible. It is also unnecessary, and perhaps even counterproductive militarily. One could argue during the Cold War that retaining the "first use" option made sense, given the Soviet/Warsaw Pact's staggering conventional weapons advantage. Today, there are no peer competitors. The only way an adversary could do significant harm to the U.S. would be to introduce WMD into the equation. For the U.S. itself to break the WMD taboo would be to put itself at a disadvantage. What is needed to redress the fallout from the NPR is serious consideration by Washington of a "no first use of WMD" policy. Such a declaration would rule out the pre-emptive first use of nuclear weapons (which Americans as well as the international community would condemn), but it would put terrorists and their state sponsors on notice that all bets are off if they employ WMD against the U.S. or its allies. This policy is both prudent and realistic -- the key components of any nuclear posture. Ralph Cossa and Brad Glosserman are president and director of research, respectively, of Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based think tank affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The Japan Times: March 25, 2002 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 28 PM rules out nuclear conflict with Pak Indo-Pak Face Off Expressindia.com > Shimla March 25: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Monday ruled out the possibility or threat of nuclear conflict with Pakistan and withdrawal of troops from the border. Addressing a press conference said that India had declared that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapon and Pakistan had also expressed similar views. “ I do not perceive any such threat” he said adding that India was prepared for any eventuality. When asked to comment on the statement of General Mallick that deployment of forces on the border for a longer period lowered the morale of the forces, Vajpayee said that his views were not shared by many. The decision to deploy the troops was taken by a high level committee of defence officers and there was no move at present to withdraw the troops, he added. Replying to another question about resumption of a dialogue with Pakistan Vajpayee said that the actions of Pakistan did not inspire confidence about its claims to fight terrorism and firing along the border and killings of innocent persons were pointer to this. He said that stopping cross border terrorism and handing over of 20 wanted terrorists were necessary for restarting the talks but the issues could only be resolved through talks on the basis of Shimla Agreement. Replying to a question on Ayodhya Vajpayee said that the government would support any initiative by Shankaracharya Nischalanand who was currently in Delhi with some formula to settle the Ayodhya issue. © 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 29 ORNL deputy a boring bust on British radio By Frank Munger News-Sentinel senior writer March 25, 2002 News and notes from around the government's Oak Ridge installations: Lee Riedinger, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's deputy director for science and technology, has been the designated point man for media inquiries regarding "bubble fusion." After Science magazine published results of Rusi Taleyarkhan's research early this month, ORNL was flooded with questions from reporters around the world. Besides the major news organization in the United States, the table-top fusion experiment drew interest from numerous foreign publications -- such as the Times of India, The Guardian (England) the Toronto Star, The Japan Times, Der Spiegel (in Germany) and Figyelo (in Hungary). Riedinger was a busy man, also doing broadcast interviews on the subject of sono-luminescence and the prospects of achieving a fusion reaction in a beaker of deuterated acetone. Perhaps his most interesting experience was on talk radio in Great Britain. Riedinger agreed to be part a late-night show on BBC Radio. He was supposed to hook up with the London station at 6 p.m., EST. With the five-hour time difference, that was 11 p.m. in England. The ORNL executive was connected about five minutes early, giving him a chance to get acclimated and listen to the show already in progress. He was a little surprised by what he heard. "The topic that the lady talk-show host was holding forth on was people who engage in sex during swingers parties," Riedinger said. Suddenly, bubble fusion didn't seem so controversial after all. When he came on the air, Riedinger said he could imagine radio listeners all across Great Britain scrambling to find something more intriguing than bubble fusion on their dial. "It didn't last long," Riedinger said. "One person who called said something like, 'Well, that's science, and I don't believe any of that stuff.' I talked for a few minutes, but nobody else called and they pulled the plug on me right away. ... I wasn't too controversial, I guess." * Bill Brumley, who heads the National Nuclear Security Administration's Oak Ridge office, acknowledged this week's ground-breaking for a new uranium storage complex is largely symbolic. After all, the super-duper vaults for bomb materials have not yet been designed, so it's obvious real construction is not taking place at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. The significance, according to Brumley, is that BWXT -- the managing contractor at Y-12 -- will be able to start spending capital money on the project. The uranium facility is the first of several major projects in an overall modernization effort that may ultimately cost $4 billion or more. Preliminary design for the storage complex is to be completed in September, with final design due in July 2003, the federal official said. "We will then go out and obtain a construction contractor and a major construction outfit should be on board by February '04," he said. Y-12's principal role is the production of warhead parts from uranium and other materials. The plant specializes in so-called secondaries -- the second stage of thermonuclear warheads The exact amount of uranium in storage at Y-12 is classified, but the Oak Ridge plant is the nation's chief repository for highly enriched uranium -- some of its nearly pure U-235. The new storage vaults will provide capacity for about 14,000 cans and 14,000 drums of enriched uranium, with a ``surge capacity" for another 4,000 drums, according to a recent report on the plans. Some observers have suggested Y-12 is holding a ground-breaking this spring simply to have something visible going on regarding modernization, hoping to satisfy the momentum-keepers in Washington. There is a huge swell of attention at the moment on all things defense-related, but there's no guarantee that kind of support can be sustained if actions fails to meet expectations. Although Y-12's modernization program has been mostly talk so far, Brumley said there are things taking place that are important to the long-term revitalization of the Oak Ridge warhead production facility. For instance, workers are tearing down a series of old facilities that are no longer needed, the NNSA chief said. That will save money on maintenance and pave the way for new facilities in their stead, he said. Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science and technology also is available on our Web site at http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/. Copyright 2002 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 30 Hanford cocoons reactors 3-24-02 Government buys time, protects the environment by locking contaminated reactors inside concrete By CARIE L. CALL of the East Oregonian RICHLAND — Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s 560 square miles of desolate high desert will never be restored to its natural state. Since the 1940s, the nuclear reactors that were integral in building the world’s first nuclear bombs also generated tons of radioactive sludge, acres of spoiled soil and miles of waterways contaminated by toxins such as carbon tetrachloride, strontium and chromium. The reservation won’t ever be cleansed of these and other poisons. The main goal of the federal government’s monumental and expensive task of cleaning up the earth and water that surround the nuclear reactors is to prevent further contamination of the imperiled Columbia River ecosystem. To accomplish this, there are five major cleanup projects taking place at Hanford at an annual cost of about $1.8 billion. The projects include efforts to stabilize and restructure 53 million gallons of nuclear waste sludge held in underground tanks. Some of the tanks are leaching into groundwater and need to be contained. Another project is monitoring the groundwater and a third is tearing down Hanford reactors and digging up the contaminated soil that surrounds them. This last project is called Reactor Interim Safe Storage, or cocooning, said Todd Nelson, of Bechtel Hanford, the company hired by the federal government to contain eight of the nine nuclear reactors on the Hanford reservation. Cocooning means that the buildings are encased in thick gray concrete and a metal roof, built to last 75 years, is placed over the top, Nelson said. The contaminated buildings will stand and wait for technology to be developed that will help scientists disassemble the reactors for good. Of the nine reactors on site, three already are cocooned, four are being worked on, one is being kept open as a museum and one will not be dismantled. With an American flag flying outside its doors, B Reactor, which manufactured the plutonium for a 1945 test bomb and helped make one of the bombs that was dropped on Japan that same year, is being preserved as a museum. Scott Baker, Don Eckert and Gary Hinkley work at the museum and are part of the demolition team at Hanford. They said B Reactor is occasionally subject to tours by family members who helped build Hanford and also by the Russians. Baker said his father worked at Hanford and he is carrying on the tradition. He said the people who visit are nostalgic about their time there and proud of serving their country in a time of war. Russians who have visited the site fit the stereotype, Baker said. The men are stolid, gruff and dressed in furs. They inspect the museum to make sure nothing is being placed in strategic locations. Once, a museum attendant placed an old fuel rod in a container to make it look more realistic. It turned out to be too realistic for the Russians, who had it immediately disassembled, Baker said. “We didn’t want to look like we were in the process of stepping up our nuclear productions,” he said. Interim Safe Storage As they were being built, each of the nine nuclear reactor sites sprawled out over Hanford Reservation’s terrain, creating self-sufficient towns that included cafeterias and sleep areas, smokestacks and water towers. Not only was the reactor taking up space, but so were the offices, warehouses, maintenance sheds and other support buildings. Thousands of men poured into Richland from around the nation to help build the sites. Engineers, construction workers, security experts and scientists worked at Hanford as part of their patriotic war duty. Tearing down their work has uncovered interesting and puzzling dilemmas, said Mike A. Mihalic, a project manager in charge of decontaminating and decommissioning the reactors. For instance, on one of the walls inside a reactor that has not yet been demolished is an intricate painting of a nude woman. “It is a beautiful piece of artwork,” Mihalic said. “Somebody took a lot of time with it. There are organizations who want to preserve it, but I just don’t know how we can.” The artistic wall will come down as the footprint of the reactors and outbuildings is reduced by more than 80 percent. All auxiliary buildings will be destroyed. Sometimes, workers have found unwanted surprises, Mihalic said. At the F Reactor site, during its decommission in 1965, about 17 feet of clean fill dirt was poured into the basin of the reactor. When the site was cocooned recently, all that fill had to be removed in order to get to three feet of radioactive sludge and debris. Mihalic said he was surprised to find 11 pieces of radioactive fuel elements and fragments — some as big as eight inches long — left in the soil. “It’s like the workers back then just tossed them out of the door,” Mihalic said. After the auxiliary buildings are demolished, the reactor is cocooned, which means all parts of the building are demolished except for the five-foot-thick concrete walls that surround the reactor core. “All doors are sealed and a new roof is designed and installed, ensuring that the facility is shut down and not deteriorating any further,” Nelson said. “Radioactive or hazardous materials cannot escape to harm the environment or people or workers walking around the site.” The buildings are sealed so tight as to discourage birds and mice from entering and a metal roof is placed on top. The theory is that in the next 75 years, the reactors will have time to decay. It also will allow the Department of Energy time to find the best available science to dispose of the highly toxic reactors. After they are sealed, the buildings are routinely inspected for leaks or animal entries, and maintenance is done if needed. Computer scanners are placed inside the sealed building, letting a mainframe computer know if moisture is leaking into the structure, indicating the roof needs repair. The air quality inside the reactors also is monitored. As each reactor is cocooned, Mihalic learns enough to make the next job easier. C Reactor was the first to be cocooned. It took 21 months and cost $27 million to complete, Mihalic said. DR Reactor cost less than $16 million and B Reactor cost $15 million. “They are all a little different, but we are learning to do this better, cheaper and faster,” Mihalic said. Where the waste goes Tearing down buildings and cleaning up the ground around the reactor sites means tearing up soiled pipes and concrete and digging up poisoned soils that once held contaminated water in retention or holding ponds. The contaminated waste is sorted into high-level waste for storage or destruction off the Hanford site, and low-level waste that is buried in a lined dump site at Hanford. So far, Hanford’s Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility has received almost 3 million tons of low-level contaminated dirt and waste that has been removed from the areas surrounding the reactors and the Columbia River. The dump site cells are first lined with a geotextile material that looks like a thick screen. On top of that are layers of clay, rocks and gravel and then another layer of geotextile material is placed over that. There are four burial cells here, said Paul Berthelot, a transplanted Louisiana native and subcontractor who manages the dump site. Berthelot said about 19 cells will be filled before Hanford is cleaned up. Each cell is 1,000 feet long, 70 feet deep and 500 feet wide. A cell is filled with 35 feet of contaminated soil. More screen, then two feet of clean soil is placed over the top of a full cell and then covered. The topsoil will then be landscaped. Berthelot said the effect is that it looks a little like a burrito. Each truck full of waste also is lined and covered, burrito style. Before the site was selected, the soils were tested for their ability to hold water. The dump site routinely is checked for moisture. “It would take a drop of water 100 years to get to the bottom,” Berthelot said. His fleet of 18 white trucks is carefully monitored by scales connected to computers. The computers track what and how much waste is brought onto the site. The advantage of using the trucks at the site, Berthelot said, is that people never walk down into the contaminated areas and the contaminated trucks never leave. The trucks are not used for anything except carrying the waste so there is no cross contamination. The tarps that cover the loads are inspected on each run. Even though the area is windy, no dumping takes place when the winds are high, and the site is sprayed with water to reduce dust moving from the site. “We have air monitors here that monitor the contaminated waste in the air, but there has never been a hit,” Berthelot said. In addition, a soil fixture is used that he likens to Elmer’s Glue. It’s sprayed over the top of the dirt to make it stay in place. “During a wind storm, the least dusty place to be is here.” Reporter Carie L. Call can be reached at 1-800-522-0255 (ext. 1-304 after hours) or e-mail: ccall@eastoregonian.com. [Photo] Staff photo by Jeff Mulfinger Hanford’s B Reactor is one of three reactors that already have been cocooned. The building, which also houses a museum, is encased in concrete with a solid metal roof that is expected to last 75 years. EONI [http://www.eoni.com/] | East Oregonian ***************************************************************** 31 Mobile medical unit is being designed at Y-12 Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:36 p.m. on Monday, March 25, 2002 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff A mobile surgical shelter being designed at the Y-12 National Security Complex is expected to be highly mobile and easy to set up so that physicians can begin attending to patients within a matter of minutes. What is being called the "Future Medical Shelter System" is actually a two-table surgical suite that officials anticipate will be capable of handling up to 30 patients in 72 hours. "This is lifesaving, recitative-type surgery," said Duane Bias, the project's manager. For example, he said, patients will be stabilized in the medical suite and then transported to other facilities for additional care. The medical unit prototype is being designed by the Oak Ridge Center for Manufacturing and Materials Science at Y-12. "We only prototype, we don't produce," said Mike Monnett, program manager for the Center for Manufacturing and Materials Science. There are not a lot of pieces to assemble when setting up the medical unit, which can be transported on ground or in the air. Officials said it folds out, equipment cabinets slide in and the unit plugs into its own portable power supply. Although the 8- by 8- by 20-foot medical unit won't be bulletproof, it will offer protection against small arms fire and will have equipment both to protect and detect against nuclear, chemical or biological contamination, according to information from Y-12. Y-12 is working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the National Transportation Research Center, located just off Pellissippi Parkway on Hardin Valley Road in Knox County, to provide the power supply and the equipment to detect possible contamination. The "Future Medical Shelter System" is a $12 million project of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command at Fort Detrick, Md. Y-12's portion of the project is around $8 million. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or [pparson@oakridger.com] . [http://www.oakridger.com/contact/index.html] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 32 ORNL to help check textbook facts Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:36 p.m. on Monday, March 25, 2002 by Duncan Mansfield Associated Press The chemical makeup of water. H2O, two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Check. Light moves at a faster speed than sound. Check. Some of the nation's top scientists will soon make sure scientific facts like these are right in Tennessee textbooks. Physicists, chemists and biologists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory volunteered for the fact-checking in response to a national concern over error-filled textbooks in public schools. "The intent is that we would provide some help in checking for accuracy of equations, mathematics and concepts," said Lee Riedinger, the lab's deputy director for science and technology. High school teachers still will review new textbooks for content, presentation and value in the classroom. "But sometimes it is better for another set of eyes to be reading the textbooks -- those who are not using the books every day -- in order to check for accuracy," said Riedinger, who taught physics for 29 years at the University of Tennessee. The national debate on textbook accuracy flared last year when North Carolina State University physics professor John Hubisz released a survey that said a dozen of the most popular middle school science texts were riddled with errors -- from factual mistakes to faulty experiments. Larry Gregory, director of textbook services at the Tennessee Department of Education, said the magnitude of the problem was overstated and publishers are "redoubling their efforts to be sure that the books are as error-free as they can make them." Still, he said, Tennessee found enough errors last year in middle school social studies texts to warrant a more extensive review this year as the state textbook commission considers a six-year contract for new high school science books. "They did not find a boxcar-load of errors, but they found enough that we felt that we may need to continue the process" of fact-checking, Gregory said. Haskell Greer, an assistant principal and longtime U.S. history teacher in McMinnville, headed the social studies textbook review. He found errors ranging from getting the president's salary wrong to crediting the Emancipation Proclamation, instead of the 13th Amendment, with freeing 4 million blacks after the Civil War. "The textbook publishers have been very receptive," said Candace Lett, chairwoman of the Tennessee Textbook Commission, which decides which books will be offered to the state's schools. "To my knowledge, every publisher corrected the errors we found." But Lett, who also directs the 1,400-student school system in Harriman, said the offer by Oak Ridge's scientists to check formulas and equations is needed and welcome. "We already have regular classroom teachers reviewing these texts. We have some higher education people reviewing these texts. And now we've got renowned scientists reviewing these texts," she said. "Now if that doesn't help us get quality textbooks for the kids in Tennessee. ... Well, I really think we have gone a long way." The lab's scientists may be more familiar with high school texts than one would think, Riedinger said. "It is the nature of Oak Ridge that parents are very involved in their children's education," he said. "If you are an Oak Ridge scientist and your child takes high school chemistry, it often is a family project. "So I think a lot of parents are familiar with at least the recent K-12 texts," he said. Riedinger said the 24 scientists who will join him in reviewing textbooks have no preconceptions about what they will find. "We see no problem that we can put our finger on in Tennessee," he said. "It is just a national issue where sometimes the accuracy of K-12 textbooks are questioned, and we just want to help Tennessee check that out." [http://www.oakridger.com/contact/index.html] [http://www.oakridger.com] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 33 NNSA official to visit Y-12 project Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:36 p.m. on Monday, March 25, 2002 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Ronald Haeckel, a senior official with the National Nuclear Security Administration, is expected to visit Oak Ridge this week in connection with some modernization-related work at the Y-12 National Security Complex. On Wednesday, Haeckel will be present as crews begin removing a portion of a Y-12 guard tower to make way for the new highly enriched uranium facility. U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, is also expected to be present. The new structure will serve as a storage area for assembled weapons secondaries and other forms of highly enriched uranium. Earlier this month, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham issued a "record of decision" that authorized the construction of the storage facility and a special materials complex at the aging Oak Ridge plant. Y-12 is responsible for the refurbishment of nuclear weapons components, the storage and protection of special nuclear materials, surveillance of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile and the dismantlement of nuclear weapons components. The NNSA is the quasi-independent agency within the Department of Energy that oversees the nuclear weapons complex. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 34 A very short introduction to the Earth [Guardian Unlimited] Excerpted from A Guide to the End of the World by Bill McGuire (Oxford). Copyright Bill McGuire. A Guide to the End of the World: Everything You Never Wanted to Know by Bill McGuire Guardian Unlimited Monday March 25, 2002 Danger: Nature at work We are so used to seeing on our television screens the battered remains of cities pounded by earthquakes or the thousands of terrified refugees escaping from yet another volcanic blast that they no longer hold any surprise or fear for us, insulated as we are by distance and a lack of true empathy. Although not entirely immune to disaster themselves, the great majority of citizens fortunate enough to live in prosperous Europe, North America, or Oceania view great natural catastrophes as ephemeral events that occur in strange lands far, far away. Mildly interesting but only rarely impinging upon a daily existence within which a murder in a popular soap opera or a win by the local football team holds far more interest than 50,000 dead in a Venezuelan mudslide. Remarkably, such an attitude even prevails in regions of developed countries that are also susceptible to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Talk to the citizens of Mammoth in California about the threat of their local volcano exploding into life, or to the inhabitants of Memphis, Tennessee, about prospects for their city being levelled by a major quake, and they are likely to shrug and point out that they have far more immediate things to worry about. The only explanation is that these people are in denial. They are quite aware that terrible disaster will strike at some point in the future - they just can't accept that it might happen to them or their descendants. When it comes to natural catastrophes on a global scale such an attitude is virtually omnipresent, pervading national governments, international agencies, multinational trading blocks, and much of the scientific community. There is some cause for optimism, however, and in one area, at least, this has begun to change. The threat to the Earth from asteroid and comet impacts is now common knowledge and the race is on to identify all those Earth-approaching asteroids that have the potential to stop the development of our race in its tracks. Thanks to recent widely publicised television documentaries shown in the UK and United States, the added threats of volcanic super-eruptions and giant tsunamis have now also begun to reach an audience wider than the tight groups of scientists that work on these rather esoteric phenomena. In fact, the Earth is an extraordinarily fragile place that is fraught with danger: a tiny rock hurtling through space, wracked by violent movements of its crust and subject to dramatic climatic changes as its geophysical and orbital circumstances vary. Barely 10,000 years after the end of the Ice Age, the planet is sweltering in some of the highest temperatures in recent Earth history. At the same time, over-population and exploitation are dramatically increasing the vulnerability of modern society to natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions. In this introductory chapter, current threats to the planet and its people are examined as a prelude to consideration of the bigger threats to come. The Earth is the most dynamic planet in our solar system, and it is this dynamism that has given us our protective magnetic field, our atmosphere, our oceans, and ultimately our lives. The very same geophysical features that make the Earth so life-giving and preserving also, however, make it dangerous. For example, the spectacular volcanoes that in the early history of our planet helped to generate the atmosphere and the oceans have in the last three centuries wiped out a quarter of a million people and injured countless others. At the same time, the rains that feed our rivers and provide us with the potable water that we need to survive have devastated huge tracts of the planet with floods that in recent years have been truly biblical in scale. In any single year since 1990 perhaps 20,000 were killed and tens of millions affected by raging floodwaters, and in 1998 major river floods in China and Bangladesh led to misery for literally hundreds of millions of their inhabitants. I could go on in the same vein, describing how lives made enjoyable by a fresh fall of snow are swiftly ended when it avalanches, or how a fresh breeze that sets sailing dinghies skimming across the wave tops can soon transform itself into a wailing banshee of terrible destruction - but I think you get the picture. Nature provides us with all our needs but we must be very wary of its rapidly changing moods. The Earth: a potted biography The major global geophysical catastrophes that await us down the line are in fact just run-of-the-mill natural phenomena writ large. In order to understand them, therefore, it is essential to know a little about the Earth and how it functions. Here, I will sashay through the 4.6 billion years of Earth history, elucidating along the way those features that make our world so hazardous and our future upon it so precarious. To begin, it is sometimes worth pondering upon just how incredibly old the Earth is, if only to appreciate the notion that just because we have not experienced a particular natural catastrophe before does not mean it has never happened, nor that it will not happen again. The Earth has been around just about long enough to ensure that anything nature can conjure up it already has. To give a true impression of the great age of our planet compared to that of our race, perhaps I can fall back on an analogy I have used before. Imagine the entirety of Earth's history represented by a team of runners tackling the three and a half laps of the 1,500 metres. For the first lap our planet would be a barren wasteland of impacting asteroids and exploding volcanoes. During the next the planet would begin to cool, allowing the oceans to develop and the simplest life forms to appear. The geological period known as the Cambrian, which marked the real explosion of diverse life forms, would not begin until well after the bell has rung and the athletes are hurtling down the final straight of the last lap. As they battle for the tape, dinosaurs appear and then disappear while the leaders are only 25 metres from the finish. Where are we? Well, our most distant ancestors only make an appearance in the last split-second of the race, just as the exhausted winner breasts the tape. Since the first single-celled organisms made their appearance billions of years ago, within sweltering chemical soups brooded over by a noxious atmosphere, life has struggled precariously to survive and evolve against a background of potentially lethal geophysical phenomena. Little has changed today, except perhaps the frequency of global catastrophes, and many on the planet still face a daily threat to life, limb, and livelihood from volcano, quake, flood, and storm. The natural perils that have battered our race in the past, and which constitute a growing future threat, have roots that extend back over 4 billion years to the creation of the solar system and the formation of the Earth from a disc of debris orbiting a primordial Sun. Like our sister planets, the Earth can be viewed as a lottery jackpot winner; one of only nine chunks of space debris out of original trillions that managed to grow and endure while the rest annihilated one another in spectacular collisions or were swept up by the larger lucky few with their stronger and more influential gravity fields. This sweeping-up process - known as accretion - involved the Earth and other planets adding to their masses through collisions with other smaller chunks of rock, an extremely violent process that was mostly completed - fortunately for us - almost 4 billion years ago. After this time, the solar system was a much less cluttered place, with considerably less debris hurtling about and impacts on the planets less ubiquitous events. Nevertheless, major collisions between the Earth and asteroids and comets - respectively rocky and icy bodies that survived the enthusiastic spring cleaning during the early history of the solar system - are recognized throughout our planet's geological record. As I will discuss in Chapter 5, such collisions have been held responsible for a number of mass extinctions over the past half a billion years, including that which saw off the dinosaurs. Furthermore, the threat of asteroid and comet impacts is still very much with us, and over 300 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (or PHAs) have already been identified that may come too close for comfort. The primordial Earth would have borne considerably more resemblance to our worst vision of hell than today's stunning blue planet. The enormous heat generated by collisions, together with that produced by high concentrations of radioactive elements within the Earth, would have ensured that the entire surface was covered with a churning magma ocean, perhaps 400 kilometres deep. Temperatures at this time would have been comparable with some of the cooler stars, perhaps approaching 5,000 degrees Celsius. Inevitably, where molten rock met the bitter cold of space, heat was lost rapidly, allowing the outermost levels of the magma ocean to solidify to a thin crust. Although the continuously churning currents in the molten region immediately below repeatedly caused this to break into fragments and slide once again into the maelstrom, by about 2.7 billion years ago more stable and long-lived crust managed to develop and to thicken grad- ually. Convection currents continued to stir in the hot and partially molten rock below, carrying out the essential busi- ness of transferring the heat from radioactive sources in the planet's deep interior into the growing rigid outer shell from where it was radiated into space. The disruptive action of these currents ensured that the Earth's rigid outer layer was never a single, unbroken carapace, but instead comprised separate rocky plates that moved relative to one another on the backs of the sluggish convection currents. As a crust was forming, major changes were also occurring deep within the Earth's interior. Here, heavier elements - mainly iron and nickel - were slowly sinking under gravity towards the centre to form the planet's metallic core. At its heart, a ball made up largely of solid iron and nickel formed, but pressure and temperature conditions in the outer core were such that this remained molten. Being a liquid, this also rotated in sympathy with the Earth's rotation, in the process generating a magnetic field that protects life on the surface by blocking damaging radiation from space and provides us with a reliable means of navigation without which our pioneering ancestors would have found exploration - and returning home again - a much trickier business. For the last couple of billion years or so, things have quietened down considerably on the planet, and its structure and the geophysical processes that operate both within and at the surface have not changed a great deal. Internally, the Earth has a threefold structure. A crust made up of low-density, mainly silicate, minerals incorporated into rocks formed by volcanic action, sedimentation, and burial; a partly molten mantle consisting of higher-density minerals, also silicates, and a composite core of iron and nickel with some impurities. Ultimately, the hazards that constantly impinge upon our society result from our planet's need to rid itself of the heat that is constantly generated in the interior by the decay of radioactive elements. As in the Earth's early history, this is carried towards the surface by convection currents within the mantle. These currents in turn constitute the engines that drive the great, rocky plates across the surface of the planet, and underpin the concept of plate tectonics, which geophysicists use to provide a framework for how the Earth operates geologically. The relative movements of the plates themselves, which comprise the crust and the uppermost rigid part of the mantle (together known as the lithosphere), are in turn directly related to the principal geological hazards - earthquakes and volcanoes, which are concentrated primarily along plate margins. Here a number of interactions are possible. Two plates may scrape jerkily past one another, accumulating strain and releasing it periodically through destructive earthquakes. Examples of such conservative plate margins include the quake-prone San Andreas Fault that separates western California from the rest of the United States and Turkey's North Anatolian Fault, whose latest movement triggered a major earthquake in 1999. Alternatively, two plates may collide head on. If they both carry continents built from low-density granite rock, as with the Indian Ocean and Eurasian plates, then the result of collision is the growth of a high mountain range - in this case the Himalayas - and at the same time the generation of major quakes such as that which obliterated the Indian city of Bhuj in January 2001. On the other hand, if an oceanic plate made of dense basalt hits a low-density continental plate then the former will plunge underneath, pushing back into the hot, convecting mantle. As one plate thrusts itself beneath the other (a process known as subduction) so large earthquakes are generated. Subduction is going on all around the Pacific Rim, ensuring high levels of seismic activity in Alaska, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Chile, and elsewhere in the circum-Pacific region. This type of destructive plate margin - so called because one of the two colliding plates is destroyed - also hosts large numbers of active volcanoes. Although the mechanics of magma formation in such regions is sometimes complex, it is ultimately a result of the subduction process and owes much to the partial melting of the subducting plate as it is pushed down into ever hotter levels in the mantle. Fresh magma formed in this way rises as a result of its low density relative to the surrounding rocks, and blasts its way through the surface at volcanoes that are typically explosive and particularly hazardous. Strings of literally hundreds of active and dormant volcanoes circle the Pacific, making up the legendary Ring of Fire, while others sit above subduction zones in the Caribbean and Indonesia. Virtually all large, lethal eruptions occur in these areas, and recent volcanic disasters have occurred at Pinatubo (Philippines) in 1991, Rabaul (Papua New Guinea) in 1994, and Montserrat (Lesser Antilles, Caribbean) from 1995 until the time of writing. To compensate for the consumption of some plate material, new rock must be created to take its place. This happens at so-called constructive plate margins, along which fresh magma rises from the mantle, solidifies, and pushes the plates on either side apart. This occurs beneath the oceans along a 40,000-kilometre long network of linear topographic highs known as the Mid-Ocean Ridge system, where newly created lithosphere exactly balances that which is lost back into the mantle at destructive margins. A major part of the Mid- Ocean Ridge system runs down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, bisecting Iceland, and separating the Eurasian and African plates in the east from the North and South American plates in the west. Here too there are both volcanoes and earthquakes, but the former tend to involve relatively mild eruptions and the latter are small. Driven by the mantle convection currents beneath, the plates waltz endlessly across the surface of the Earth, at about the same rate as fingernails grow, constantly modifying the appearance of our planet and ensuring that, given time, everywhere gets its fair share of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Hazardous Earth While earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are linked to how our planet functions geologically, other geophysical hazards are more dependent upon processes that operate in the Earth's atmosphere. Rather than the heat from the interior, our planet's weather machine is driven by energy from the Sun. Our nearest star is the ultimate instigator - aided by the Earth's rotation and the constant exchange of energy and water with the oceans - of the tropical cyclones and floods that exact an enormous toll on life and property, particularly in developing countries. Still other lethal natural phenomena have a composite origin and are less easy to pigeonhole. The giant sea waves known as tsunamis (or sometimes incorrectly as 'tidal waves'), for example, can be formed in a number of different ways; most commonly by submarine earthquakes, but also by landslides into the ocean and by eruptions of coastal and island volcanoes. Similarly, many landslides result from a collusion between geology and meteorology, with torrential rainfall destabilizing already weak slopes. Although there remains an enormous amount to learn about natural hazards, their causes and characteristics, our current level of knowledge is truly encyclopedic - and if so desired you can indeed consult weighty and authoritative tomes focused entirely on specific hazards. Here, as a taster, my intention is to gallop you through the principal features of the major natural hazards at a pace which I hope is not too great, before placing their current and future impact on our society in some perspective. At any single point and at any one time the Earth and its enclosing atmospheric envelope give the impression of being mundanely stable and benign. This is, however, an entirely misleading notion, with something like 1,400 earthquakes rocking the planet every day and a volcano erupting every week. Each year, the tropics are battered by up to 40 hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones, while floods and landslides occur everywhere in numbers too great to keep track of. In terms of the number of people affected - at least 100 million people a year - floods undoubtedly constitute the greatest of all natural hazards, a situation that is likely to continue given a future of rising sea levels and more extreme precipitation. River floods are respecters of neither wealth nor status, and both developed and developing countries have been severely afflicted in recent years, across every continent. Wherever rain is unusually torrential or persistent, it will not be long before river catchments fail to contain surface run-off and start to expand across their flood plains and beyond. In fact, the intensity of rainfall can be quite astonishing, with, in 1970, nearly 4 centimetres of rain falling in just 60 seconds on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe - a world record. On another French island, Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, a passing cyclone dropped close to 4 metres of rain during a single 24-hour period in March 1952. As flood plains all over the world become more crowded, the loss of life and damage to property caused by swollen rivers has increased dramatically. In the spring of 1993, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers burst their banks, inundating nine Midwest states, destroying 50,000 homes and leaving damage totalling 20 billion US$. Massive floods occurred in many parts of the UK in autumn 2000 as rain fell with a ferocity not seen for over 300 years. River flooding continues to pose a major threat in China, and has been responsible for over 5 million deaths over the last 150 years. Bangladesh has it even worse, with the country often finding two-thirds of its land area under water as a result either of floodwaters pouring down the great Ganges river system or of cyclone-related storm surges pouring inland from the Bay of Bengal. Coastal flooding due to storms probably takes more lives than any other natural hazard, with an estimated 300,000 losing their lives in Bangladesh in 1970 and 15,000 at Orissa, northeast India, in 1999. Partly through their effectiveness at spawning floods, but also through the enormous wind speeds achieved, storms constitute one of the most destructive of all natural hazards. Furthermore, because they are particularly common in some of the world's most affluent regions, they are responsible for some of the most costly natural disasters of all time. Every year, the Caribbean, the Gulf and southern states of the USA, and Japan are struck by tropical storms, while the UK and continental Europe suffer increasingly from severe and damaging winter storms. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew virtually obliterated southern Miami in one of the costliest natural disasters in US history, resulting in losses of 32 billion US$. This epic storm brought to bear on the city wind speeds of up to 300 kilometres per second, leaving 300,000 buildings damaged or destroyed and 150,000 homeless. Destructive windstorms are not only confined to the tropics, and hurricane-force winds also accompany low-pressure weather systems at mid-latitudes. Many residents of southern England will remember the Great Storm of October 1987 that felled millions of trees with winds whose average speeds were clocked at just below hurricane force. More recently, in 1999, France suffered a similar ordeal as winter storm Lothar blasted its way across the north of the country. Across the ocean, the US Midwest braces itself every year for a savage onslaught from tornadoes: rotating maelstroms of solid wind that form during thunderstorms in the contact zone between cold, dry air from the north and warm, moist air from the tropics. No man-made structures that suffer a direct hit can withstand the average wind speeds of up to 500 kilometres an hour, and damage along a tornado track is usually total. Although rarely as lethal as hurricanes, in just a few days in April 1974 almost 150 tornadoes claimed over 300 lives in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and adjacent states. Of the so-called geological hazards - earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides - there is no question that earthquakes are by far the most devastating. Every year about 3,000 quakes reach magnitude 6 on the well-known Richter Scale, which is large enough to cause significant damage and loss of life, particularly when they strike poorly constructed and ill-prepared population centres in developing countries. As previously mentioned, most large earthquakes are confined to distinct zones that coincide with the margins of plates. In recent years, sudden movements of California's San Andreas Fault have generated large earthquakes in San Francisco (1989) and southern California (1994), the latter causing damage totalling 35 billion US$ - the costliest natural disaster in US history. Just a year later, a magnitude 7.2 quake at the western margin of the Pacific plate devastated the Japanese city of Kobe, killing 6,000 and engendering economic losses totalling a staggering 200 billion US$ - the most expensive natural disaster of all time. Four years after Kobe, the North Anatolian Fault slipped just to the east of Istanbul, generating a severe quake that flattened the town of Izmit and neighbouring settlements and took over 17,000 lives. Large earthquakes can also occur, however, at locations remote from plate margins, and have been known in northern Europe and the eastern USA, which are not regions of high seismic risk. The last such intraplate quake devastated the Bhuj region of India's Gujarat state in January 2001, completely destroying 400,000 buildings and killing perhaps as many as 100,000 people. There is a truism uttered by earthquake engineers: it is buildings not earthquakes that kill people. Without question this is the case, and both damage to property and loss of life could be drastically reduced if appropriate building codes were both applied and enforced. Earthquakes, however, also prove lethal through the triggering of landslides as a result of ground shaking, and by the formation of tsunamis. The latter are generated when a quake instantaneously jerks upwards - perhaps by just a metre or so - a large area of the seabed, causing the displaced water above to hurtle outwards as a series of waves. When these enter shallow water they build in height - sometimes to 20 metres or more - and crash into coastal zones with extreme force. In 1998, Sissano and neighbouring villages on the north coast of Papua New Guinea were wiped out and 3,000 of their inhabitants drowned or battered to death by a 17-metre-high tsunamis that struck within minutes of an offshore earthquake. Estimates of the number of active volcanoes vary, but there are at least 1,500 and possibly over 3,000. Every year around 50 volcanoes erupt, some of which - like Kilauea on Hawaii or Stromboli in Italy - are almost constantly active. Others, however, may have been quiet for centuries or in some cases millennia and these tend to be the most destructive. The most violent volcanoes occur at destructive plate margins, where one plate is consuming another. Their outbursts rarely produce quiet flows of red lava and are more likely to blast enormous columns of ash and debris 20 kilometres or more into the atmosphere. Carried by the wind over huge areas, volcanic ash can be extremely disruptive, making travel difficult, damaging crops, poisoning livestock, and contaminating water supplies. Just 30 centimetres or so of wet ash is sufficient to cause roofs to collapse while the fine component of dry ash can cause respiratory problems and illnesses such as silicosis. Close to an erupting volcano the depth of accumulated ash can total several metres, sufficient to bury single-storey structures. This was the fate of much of the town of Rabaul on the island of New Britain (Papua New Guinea), during the 1994 eruptions of its twin volcanoes Vulcan and Tavurvur. For years following the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo in the Philippines, thick deposits of volcanic debris provided a source for mudflows whenever a tropical cyclone passed overhead and dumped its load of rain. Almost a decade later, mud pouring off the volcano was still clogging rivers, inundating towns and agricultural land, and damaging fisheries and coral reefs. Somewhat surprisingly, mudflows also constitute one of the biggest killers at active volcanoes. In 1985 a small eruption through the ice and snow fields of Columbia's Nevado del Ruiz volcano unleashed a torrent of mud out of all proportion to the size of the eruption, which poured down the valleys draining the volcano and buried the town of Armero and 23,000 of its inhabitants. Even scarier and more destructive than volcanic mudflows are pyroclastic flows or glowing avalanches. These hurricane-force blasts of incandescent gas, molten lava fragments, and blocks and boulders sometimes as large as houses have the power to obliterate everything in their paths. In 1902, in the worst volcanic disaster of the twentieth century, pyroclastic flows from the Mont Pelée volcano on the Caribbean island of Martinique annihilated the town of St Pierre as effectively as a nuclear bomb, within a few minutes leaving only two survivors out of a population of 29,000. The threat from volcanoes does not end there: chunks of rock collapsing from their flanks can trigger huge tsunamis, while noxious fumes can and have locally killed thousands and their livestock. Volcanic gases carried into the stratosphere, and from there around the planet, have modified the climate and led to miserable weather, crop failures, and health problems half a world away. On the grandest scale, volcanic super-eruptions have the potential to affect us all, through plunging the planet into a frigid volcanic winter and devastating harvests worldwide. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 35 Offer of nuclear technology to manage water The Star Online > News Monday, March 25, 2002 KUANTAN: The Malaysian Institute For Nuclear Technology (Mint) has offered its help to both the public and private sectors to use nuclear technology as a means to manage water effectively. Its director-general Datuk Dr Ahmad Sobri Hashim said Mint had a variety of technologies that could generate and translate data, which could be used to make sound decisions. “These technologies can help the parties concerned to draft a national water resource policy and outline a long-term water management strategy. “We are collaborating with many government departments as it is important to make sound decisions based on detailed technical findings,” he said yesterday. He was speaking to reporters after the opening of the World Water Day celebration here by Deputy Mentri Besar Datuk Tan Aminuddin Ishak on behalf of Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob. Also present was Drainage and Irrigation director-general Datuk Keizrul Abdullah. Ahmad Sobri added that Mint would use all possible techniques to solve water-related problems as well as look for new water resources. In his speech, Keizrul said the National Committee for International Hydrological Programmes and Mint had been appointed the lead agencies to carry out activities in conjunction with the celebration nationwide. “Water pollution is very much an evident development and there should be an integrated and holistic water planning and management programme. Without one, there will be a major crisis,” he added. Adnan, in his speech read by Tan Aminuddin, said Pahang had 2,059 rivers with a total length of 11,000km that contained huge volumes of water. He also said 58% of the state’s 3.5mil sq/km of land were covered with forests, which required the state government to ensure its water resources were efficiently protected and managed. “We are now in the process of gazetting all water catchments so as to limit development,” he added. Adnan also said it was high time the state government developed its water resources as a commodity that could be used to generate income and help other states facing water problems. A study had revealed that millions of cubic litres of river water flowed into the sea daily, he added. Copyright © 1995-2002 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd (Co No 10894-D) ***************************************************************** 36 Editorial: Guidelines needed for removing online info [http://www.news-press.com The White House has ordered federal agencies to remove information that may be of use to terrorists from their Web sites. That’s both understandable and dangerous. The focus is on information about weapons of mass destruction. Apparently, some of the information on the Web should have been classified in the first place, and never made public. So what was it doing on the Web or in any place with public access? It sounds like a review of such information was way overdue. Removing some of that kind of information is necessary, but the review goes way beyond that. It also involves “sensitive but unclassified” information, a vague notion. This is yet another of the dilemmas brought to the fore by Sept. 11. A balance is going to be needed between secrecy for security’s sake, and the openness vital to science, the economy and our democracy. The administration insists it is considering information carefully case-by-case and has warned agencies to consider the benefits of the free exchange of scientific information. But the examples given of information that might be removed from Web sites shows that the issue is complex. Documents on “dual use” nuclear materials, such as spent fuel rods, that could be helpful in making weapons might also be useful to legitimate scientists. Information on heating and air conditioning systems might be useful to spreaders of anthrax, but could also be used by emergency or health personnel, or people in the air conditioning industry. Computer maintenance data could be employed by all sorts of legitimate people, as well as terrorists hackers. On the other hand, why was a 1950s report on how to build a biotoxin factory ever declassified and put on the Web, so that now it had to be removed? There is clearly stuff in the public domain that shouldn’t be there, but if this review proceeds without careful guidelines, it could deny the public all sorts of legitimately useful material. Copyright 2002, The News-Press. ***************************************************************** 37 Congressman backs dam bypass Las Vegas SUN Today: March 25, 2002 at 9:48:32 PST By Erin Neff House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, supports expediting funding for a Hoover Dam bypass in light of terrorism concerns, he says. "If I were a terrorist the first thing I'd blow up is the Panama Canal," Young said Friday during a stop in Las Vegas for a convention. "The next thing I'd hit is Hoover Dam." Young said he supports allocating $115 million in federal funds to construct a new bridge across the Colorado River about a mile downriver from Hoover Dam. "If I had a say in it, I'd say no trucks ever on that dam again," Young said. After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, Hoover Dam was closed to truck traffic. Currently trucks with local permits are allowed to cross the dam, but other trucks are diverted to Laughlin to cross the river. The planned Hoover Dam bypass is scheduled to be completed in 2007, but state officials are hoping to get the bridge built by 2005 because of terrorist concerns, and to coincide with the dam's centennial celebration. "If you're really a good explosives man there's a key point in the dam where you could bring it down," Young said. "There is no recovery from that." Young said if anything happened to the dam, power and water sources for so many people would be immediately hurt, causing chaos. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 38 Hoover Dam still locked down sunspot.net - Post-Sept. 11 security tighter, tours altered to thwart terrorism By David L. Greene Sun National Staff Originally published March 25, 2002 BOULDER CITY, Nev. - Some of the most public reminders of Sept. 11 are beginning to disappear. The Air Force is scaling back its 24-hour patrols over New York. A full schedule of flights will resume next month at Reagan National Airport, not far from the Pentagon. The White House has been reopened to the public. But here at Hoover Dam, life may never return to normal. The new police checkpoints are expected to be permanent. So is the ban on trucks, issued for fear that terrorists could drive explosives onto the dam and blow it up. And the "hard-hat" tours - long a not-to-miss highlight of any visit to this American landmark - have been canceled. Hoover and other major dams, along with nuclear power plants, are among sites where, authorities say, a terrorist act could be so catastrophic that the new security steps should remain in place. Officials regard Hoover as an especially inviting target because a devastating attack on it could not only damage a symbol of American engineering ingenuity but also wreak havoc on parts of the Southwest. "Hoover Dam is an American icon, and for years we showed it to people," said Bob Walsh of the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dam. "This is a magnificent structure, but it just can't be as open anymore. People might be disappointed, but I'm sure they'll understand if we can't do it the way we used to." A major attack on the dam, officials warn, would threaten to unleash a torrent of water that could destroy cities for hundreds of miles, disrupt power to Las Vegas and other area cities and weaken the region's economy for years. Sept. 11 left its deepest scars, of course, in Manhattan, where thousands were killed, a skyline was altered forever and grief and anxiety remain enmeshed in the collective mood. But here, too, in a peaceful canyon far from Washington and New York, a visitor is reminded of how the nation was transformed. Generations of Americans have visited this manmade wonder along the Colorado River where Arizona meets Nevada. They have flocked to the tours, in which people explored the insides of the dam. At the river's edge, they could also take a stunning look up at the structure. Those tours have been scrapped out of concern that would-be terrorists could learn too much. Like the approximately 1 million people who have visited it each year, Edward Stanley of Reisterstown made the dam a stop on a Western vacation this month. He said he was disappointed that the tour his sister-in-law had raved about was no longer offered. "I guess I could see this being a top target," Stanley said. "I guess we were really spoiled, since there hadn't been restrictions like this on American citizens. We just took it all for granted." After Sept. 11, President Bush warned Americans to brace for possible further acts of terror. He created an Office of Homeland Security and allocated $37 billion to homeland defense in his budget this year. Combined, the states expect to spend up to $10 billion on homeland security in the first year after the attacks. But officials say they recognize that every conceivable target cannot be protected. So they have begun to set priorities, focusing on where they think an attack could have the direst consequences and where they believe they can make a terrorist act less likely. In few ways do the security steps seriously impede the lives of U.S. citizens, who for the most part have returned to routines - dining out, vacationing, attending sporting events in crowded arenas. Even the tighter security in airport terminals has become less of a hassle. But as the nation inches back to normality, Americans here and there will continue to face unexpected reminders of the terrorist attacks. A post-Sept. 11 visit to Hoover Dam - which opened to public tours in 1937 - is one such experience. Visitors are still offered a limited tour, taken to an outdoor overlook above the dam and into a room where power is generated. But with the broader tours canceled, tourists spend more time away from the dam itself - at an exhibit gallery in the visitor center, for example, or viewing a film about the dam's construction during the Depression. Apologetically, the Bureau of Reclamation says security requirements have forced changes, but "we think you will find this new, leisurely way of discovering the dam to be educational, informative and a pleasant way to enjoy this national landmark." Approaching the dam on a winding road, visitors must pass through the police checkpoints. The experience lends the sense that you are passing through customs into another country. Officers standing guard have not caught any suspected terrorists, dam officials say, though they have barred an escaping bank robber and a woman who had shoplifted from entering the road that crosses the dam. The 726-foot concrete structure, built to generate power for the West and control the Colorado River, is designated one of "America's Seven Modern Civil Engineering Wonders." Tours have been shut down only twice: during World War II and after Sept. 11. After the attacks, the dam went into a state of high alert that has not subsided. All tours were canceled for three months. Then the abridged tours began. But so few people came that the crew of tour guides, many of them former teachers or other retirees, was cut from 44 to 24. Six were fired; the others were reassigned. Police checkpoints were established. Information about the dam's construction, its employees and layout was removed from the Web site. Trucks were banned from nearby roads. Lawmakers began urging the Bush administration - so far, unsuccessfully - to provide funding to speed up a planned construction of a bypass that would keep more traffic away. "There is an enormous opportunity for someone to do a considerable amount of damage - say, by driving a vehicle over and detonating explosives on the dam," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, a Nevada Republican. "You blow up this dam, and there are communities all along the river that would be washed away." Hoover, a mammoth concrete structure wedged into a canyon on the Colorado River, is so heavily fortified, officials say, that serious damage is unlikely even in the event of a terrorist attack. But, they add, they never imagined that anything could destroy the twin towers in New York, either. Leonard Weinberg, a political science professor at the University of Nevada-Reno who studies terrorism, noted that Hoover could be highly appealing for terrorists. Beyond the potential for sheer destruction, he said, the dam is within a half-hour of - and provides some power for - "Sin City." "Las Vegas is a worldwide symbol of American entertainment, celebrity, materialism and vulgarity," Weinberg said. "You turn out the lights in Vegas, and you attract enormous publicity." Publicly, officials at the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages Hoover and about 300 other major dams, will not discuss what evidence they have that terrorists might target a dam. But a bureau official who specializes in security and requested anonymity said "credible threats" had been made. "A dam is like a gun, pointed downstream," the official said. "The total breach of a dam would cause severe consequences." Emergency management departments in communities downstream of major dams have also been studying the possible consequences of a dam attack. In Yuma, Ariz., along the Colorado River 300 miles south of Hoover, officials say they would need to evacuate nearly 100,000 people if the dam was destroyed. Within five days, they estimate, water released from the dam would submerge much of the city. Also, the economy of southern Arizona, highly dependent on agriculture, could be crippled. Fears like that have contributed to the new security at Hoover. Stanley, the Maryland tourist, said he had been looking forward most to strapping on a hard hat and seeing every nook of the famous dam. But, he said, "I guess I'd rather give it up - for security." Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun SunSpot.net is Copyright © 2002 by The Baltimore Sun. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************