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08/25/02 ****     RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL)       **** VOL 10.217
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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 C. Asia Nuke Pact May Be Ready Soon
2 12 Greepeace Protesters Arrested
3 US: Lapses will cost nuclear industry 
4 U.S. officials in Pyongyang to discuss nuclear inspections          
5 UK to 'bail out' British Energy
6 US: Blowing whistle triggers kinship
7 "Project Vinca" Moved Enriched Uranium from Serbia to Russia
8 US: Murtha lends hand to local activist for federal investigation 
9 UK: Government denies nuclear industry rescue package*
10 US: Ed Markey: US nuclear policies are highly unstable
11 Ministers in secret plan to bail out nuclear giant
12 Yugoslav flies deadly uranium to Russia under U.S.-aided program
13 Ministers in secret plan to bail out nuclear giant
14 US: NRC orders enhanced security at NFS, Virginia facility 
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
15 US: Leukemia ties Fallon with town in Arizona
16 UK: Doctors face charges after 12-year fight 
17 High-risk uranium spirited out of Belgrade 
18 US: Health officials: Nuclear pills aren't 'magic'
19 US: Hundreds of sources of radiation unaccounted for in US
20 US: Government agencies investigated missing uranium, NUMEC 
21 US: Pennsylvania ranks fourth with 26 nuclear legacy sites 
22 US: Radioactive materials sat undetected for almost four decades 
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
23 US: Nebraska: Waste trial costs state $21 million
24 US: 'Dirty Bomb' Fears Hang Over N-Waste Shipments
25 US: coming ASLB decision to dump HLW in Utah
26 US: Nuclear Route A Bit Too Close For Comfort? 
27 Alabama or Tennessee could become home to a high-tech nuclear 
28 Uranium plant not coming to Lynchburg
29 US: Contaminated dirt sat near Parks restaurant 
30 BE: Dump waste at Sellafield
31 US Uranium Enrichment Partnership Confirms Site Shortlist 
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
32 Guest editorial: Safeguards for nuclear fuel 
33 Kiski Valley's nuclear legacy outlives Cold War 
 
 
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 C. Asia Nuke Pact May Be Ready Soon
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
August 24, 2002 

 By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA ASSOCIATED PRESS 

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan- The top U.N. disarmament official signaled 
Saturday that a draft treaty declaring the five former Soviet 
republics in Central Asia a nuclear-free zone may be ready for 
signing this year. 

Jayantha Dhanapala, who is at the end of a tour to persuade 
Central Asian leaders to speed up talks, said he was encouraged 
by the talks and hoped the document would be signed this year. 

"We in the United Nations think that the present historical 
moment is an opportune one to conclude the treaty in order to 
signal the stability, the unity and prospects for the future in 
this Central Asian region," he told reporters in the Uzbek 
capital Tashkent. 

A nuclear-free zone treaty is expected to lead to international 
efforts to identify all radioactive sources in Central Asia and 
tighten control over such sources. 

Since the Soviet breakup in 1991, there have been widespread 
attempts to smuggle radioactive materials out of impoverished 
Central Asian countries, which have been unable to ensure proper 
security for the radioactive facilities they inherited from the 
Soviet Union. 

The treaty also envisages cleaning up environmental damage caused 
by radioactive materials. The Soviet military heavily used 
Kazakhstan for nuclear tests and part of the Soviet nuclear 
arsenal was stationed there. 

The Central Asian nations agreed to create a nuclear-free zone at 
a summit in Kazakhstan in 1997. 

Dhanapala, the U.N. Undersecretary-General for Disarmament 
Affairs, held talks in Tashkent after visits to Tajikistan, 
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The last leg of his two-week tour will 
take him to Turkmenistan. 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 2 12 Greepeace Protesters Arrested

Las Vegas SUN: 

August 24, 2002 
 
ASSOCIATED PRESS 

CAPE TOWN, South Africa- Police arrested 12 Greenpeace activists 
Saturday after some of them scaled a building near a nuclear 
power station to stage a peaceful protest days before the start 
of a large U.N. summit. 

The activists approached the west coast Koeberg power station, 
just north of Cape Town, in two inflatable boats just after first 
light, said Sarah Holden, a Greenpeace spokeswoman. Three men and 
three women disembarked on a jetty in the power plant harbor and 
used grappling hooks to scale a nearby building, where they 
unfurled a banner reading: "Nukes out of Africa." 

Police then arrived in their own inflatable boat and boarded the 
Greenpeace vessels. The six crew - two women and four men - were 
arrested and escorted in their boats back to the Koeberg harbor. 

The six climbers were arrested after descending the building. 

Police confirmed the arrest of the 12 activists, who came from 
the Netherlands, Britain, Argentina, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, 
Mexico, Lebanon and Australia. 

Eskom, the state electricity company that manages Koeberg, denied 
the plant's security had been breached or compromised. 

The activists had scaled a pump house building, which was located 
about 100 meters (yards) away from the well secured nuclear 
reactor, Eskom spokesman Tony Stott told the South African Press 
Association. 

The protest had not been violent, but the activists would be 
charged for breaching a restricted area, he said. 

The activists are expected to appear in court on Monday. 

The protest came two days ahead of the World Summit on 
Sustainable Development, the world's largest ever environmental 
conference, in Johannesburg. The United Nations expects about 
20,000 delegates to attend, and thousands more are to participate 
in several simultaneous conferences. 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 3 Lapses will cost nuclear industry 

The Plain Dealer
                                       
08/24/02
 Stephen Koff 
Plain Dealer Bureau Chief 
Washington

- The nuclear power industry is complaining that it will have to 
spend more money and time this fall than planned because of the 
lapses at the Davis-Besse power plant near Toledo. 

        Federal regulators want power plants to conduct more 
extensive inspections of the nozzles that act as channels for 
rods that control the nuclear reaction and of the reactor vessel 
heads that the nozzles pass through. An undetected leak in a 
nozzle at Davis-Besse allowed boric acid to escape over a number 
of years, eating a hole in the carbon steel head. 

        That left only a thin stainless steel liner to keep the 
high-pressure reactor from springing a major leak of radioactive 
coolant. 

        Hoping to avert another Davis-Besse-like fiasco, the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Aug. 9 asked - but stopped short 
of ordering - the nation's nuclear plants to augment their visual 
inspections with ultrasound or other technologies that could 
detect cracks unseen by the human eye. 

        The NRC wants plants that have operated the longest and 
at the highest temperatures to test more often than others. 
However, it is recommending that even the newest plants - or 
those with new heads and nozzles - do such inspections at least 
every five years. 

        "We don't want to get anywhere near close to another 
Davis-Besse," said Bill Bateman, chief of the NRC's materials and 
chemical engineering branch. 

        Nuclear industry groups had proposed 10-year intervals 
for plants deemed least susceptible to nozzle cracking. And the 
Nuclear Energy Institute, which lobbies for the industry, also 
had proposed a less conservative standard in defining which 
plants were most susceptible. 

        NRC officials say they ultimately want a federal 
regulation requiring utilities to conduct ultrasonic tests on a 
regular schedule. But federal regulations generally involve at 
least two years of proposals, lobbying and public hearings, so it 
is impossible to know what the final testing requirement will be. 

        NRC officials, who held a hearing to address the industry 
yesterday, say they expect full compliance with their voluntary 
request. Utilities may submit their own proposals, though. 

        Michael Marshall Jr., an NRC project manager on the 
testing program, said the voluntary program was faster than 
another NRC enforcement tool - an agency order, which would have 
required extensive internal reviews. 

        Seven plants that are deemed highly susceptible to nozzle 
cracking because of their age and high operating temperatures 
will be out of service for maintenance this fall. The NRC wants 
them to test their nozzles then. 

        Alex Marion, the Nuclear Energy Institute director of 
engineering, said each of those utilities will have to spend an 
extra $750,000 to $1 million for the inspections. He said the 
industry does not object to the testing program, but the short 
notice could create problems. 

        Roy Hall, a representative of Columbus-based American 
Electric Power, told the NRC that the "big issue with all of us 
is the availability of equipment and people. There are only two 
vendors in the U.S. right now that are doing this. There aren't 
enough people or equipment to go around right now." 

        Brian Sheron, an associate director in the NRC's Office 
of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, said that while he understands the 
concern, officials at plants he has talked with that will have 
fall outages "have told us they've got the equipment on site . . 
. So I'll be quite honest with you, I'm a little bit confused." 

        Privately, representatives of some utilities say they are 
angry at FirstEnergy for its inspection lapses and the consequent 
repercussions for the industry. But they and others also say they 
recognize that as nuclear plants age, their components need more 
attention. 

        "It's a real technical issue that needs to be monitored 
and dealt with," said Mike McDevitt, of Southern California 
Edison. "Davis-Besse was a real rude awakening for us, in that it 
did leap a little ahead of what we expected." 

        For complete coverage of Davis-Besse, go to 
www.cleveland.com/davisbesse/ 

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: 

skoff@plaind.com, 216-999-4212 

Š 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. 

 Š 2002 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 4 U.S. officials in Pyongyang to discuss nuclear inspections           

welcome to Korea Herald!!_National
 	
http://www.koreaherald.com
         	 
Five U.S. officials began a five-day visit to Pyongyang on 
Saturday to discuss issues related to inspection of the North's 
nuclear facilities, a Foreign Ministry official in Seoul said 
yesterday. 

The Americans' visit comes at a time when the United States has 
toughened demands on North Korea to comply with steps the 
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) must take to verify the 
communist country's past nuclear activities. 

"The technical experts from the U.S. State Department will 
inspect spent fuel rods in the North and discuss ways to take 
them out of the country with their North Korean counterparts," 
the official said. 

The official said, however, the working-level meeting between 
Washington and Pyongyang will not address the envisaged visit to 
the North by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and 
Pacific Affairs James Kelly, which would reopen talks between the 
two sides. 

"But the U.S. officials' visit may help create a favorable 
environment for the high-level American envoy's visit to the 
North," another official said. 

Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea froze its suspected 
nuclear weapons program in return for a U.S.-led international 
consortium's provision of two light water reactors, which produce 
less weapons-grade material than others. 

Suspecting that the North might have stockpiled enough plutonium 
to make atomic bombs before shutting down its facilities, the 
United States has urged the North to allow IAEA inspections at an 
early date, so the nuclear plant construction can proceed 
smoothly. 

But the North has insisted the inspection should begin in three 
years, claiming such inspection will take only three months. The 
United States believes it would take at least three years. 

John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary for arms control and 
international security, is scheduled to visit Seoul Aug. 28-30 to 
discuss the North Korean nuclear issues, Kelly's visit to the 
North and other regional security affairs. 

(shj@koreaherald.co.kr) 

By Seo Hyun-jin Staff reporter 
          					 					               					 					
2002.08.26 (C) Copyright 2000 Digital Korea Herald. All rights 
reserved. <font
*****************************************************************
 5 UK to 'bail out' British Energy

BBC NEWS | Business | 

Sunday, 25 August, 2002, 09:15 GMT 

[Nuclear power plant, Dungeness]                                        

British Energy runs eight power plants in the UK

Speculation is growing that the UK government may offer troubled 
nuclear energy company British Energy financial help. 

Newspaper reports on Sunday suggested that the Department of 
Trade and Industry (DTI) is set to unveil a plan to bail out the 
company as early as this week. 

The Department of Trade and Industry may renationalise the 
company, buy its eight British nuclear power stations or pay it 
to take over six aging reactors from BNFL, a report in the 
Independent on Sunday said. 

The DTI admitted that it was monitoring the electricity market 
closely but said "any decisions about the company's future are 
for the company." 

A spokeswoman said: "It would be irresponsible for us not to be 
taking an interest in how the electricity market has been 
progressing, but British Energy is a private company." 

A bail out of a privatised company could be embarrassing for the 
government, prompting questions as to why it should help a 
commercial company. 

Liberal Democrat trade and industry spokesman Dr Vincent Cable 
described the reports as a "very worrying development". 

"It would be wrong for the government to organise an expensive 
bail-out for the nuclear power industry. It's very clear that 
nuclear power isn't competitive in the short and medium term," he 
said. 

Cash crisis 

British Energy is thought to need to find as much as Ł450m this 
year to pay debts and cover losses and it is unclear where it 
will get the money from. The slump in power prices - blamed in 
part on warmer than usual weather - is expected to push the firm 
into the red. 

Last week, shares in the nuclear giant fell to an all time low of 
59 pence, a third of their value at privatisation in 1996. 

The sell-off was triggered by the company's decision to close a 
reactor at its power station in Torness, Scotland, which accounts 
for about 12% of its annual energy output. 

The firm operates a total of eight power plants in the UK, and 
runs other nuclear power operations in the US. 

It employs 5,200 staff in the UK and 3,000 in Canada. 

*****************************************************************
 6 Blowing whistle triggers kinship

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: ajc.com: 

August 25, 2002   
    
 Adam Geller - Associated Press
 
New York --- Rick Parks has been studying the faces that flicker 
across his television screen and noting the names in the 
headlines. 

That's as close as he's gotten to meeting Sherron Watkins, 
Cynthia Cooper or Colleen Rowley. 

But some evenings, after watching the news, Parks and his wife 
talk about the kinship he feels with the three women --- the bond 
that links whistle-blowers. ''Along with all the notoriety and 
protection they gained from [coming forward], they wake up every 
day and wonder if they did the right thing," guessed Parks. 

In 1984, his whistle-blowing at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island 
nuclear facility cost him his job. 

"Could have they [the women] done it a different way?" he asked. 
"Was it worth everything they're going through?'' 

Watkins, Cooper and Rowley --- insiders who blew the whistle on 
shady dealings inside Enron and WorldCom, and on the FBI's 
handling of the investigation of a suspected terrorist before 
Sept. 11 --- have been garlanded as heroes in recent months for 
daring to challenge the leaders of their organizations. 

But while the public applauds and moves on to the next 
distraction, Parks and other whistle-blowers watch intently. 

They embrace the women as comrades, quietly wishing them 
encouragement for what they caution will be very difficult days 
ahead, recognizing more than a bit of themselves in these 
reluctant celebrities. 

The attention shows that those who sound the alarm on abuse are 
finally getting their due, even as some yearn to share in the 
publicity that a relative few ever win for their crusades. 

''Whistle-blowers relate to each other,'' said Tom Devine, 
executive director of the Government Accountability Project, 
which counsels insiders trying to expose organizational 
misconduct. 

''Anybody who's been through hell and back or is stuck down there 
has a deep empathy with those who ... may be going through the 
same experience.'' 

The spotlight focused on whistle-blowers like Watkins has given 
them what most other whistle-blowers never get --- thanks. 

The average whistle-blower, friends have said, is a loner, 
someone just outside the power structure, who tries to call 
attention to fraud or misconduct on a relatively limited scale, 
and is often punished for doing so without ever winning much 
attention at all. 

''Every whistle-blower longs for visibility, because visibility 
is protection,'' said C. Fred Alford, a University of Maryland 
professor who has written a book on the subject. ''But for every 
one we read about, there are hundreds who'll never even make the 
back pages.'' 

Whistle-blowers, though, said they don't envy the women recently 
in the news, because they know the attention is eventually bound 
to fade and the payback for their actions could begin. 

That's quite clear to Parks, of Grass Valley, Calif., who was 
working as an engineer for Bechtel Corp. in the early 1980s, when 
the company was hired by plant owner General Public Utilities to 
clean up the damaged nuclear reactor. 

Parks was one of several workers to raise concerns inside Bechtel 
and GPU that the companies were ignoring safety procedures. 
  
Š 2002 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
*****************************************************************
 7 "Project Vinca" Moved Enriched Uranium from Serbia to Russia

News from the Washington File
 
  [International Information Programs]   
  
[Washington File]   
  23 August 2002 
 
(State Department fact sheet describes multilateral effort) (836) 
The State Department issued the following fact sheet August 23 
describing "Project Vinca" -- the cooperative anti-terrorism 
effort by the United States, Russia, Serbia, the International 
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the private Nuclear Threat 
Initiative (NTI) -- in which a load of highly enriched uranium 
was removed from a research reactor near Belgrade and transported 
safely to a facility in Dmitrovgrad, Russia, where it will be 
processed for use as commercial reactor fuel:

(begin fact sheet) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the 
Spokesman August 23, 2002 2002/735 FACT SHEET Project Vinca

- To remove a potential target for theft or terrorist attack, the 
governments of the United States and Russia reached an agreement 
with the government of Serbia, endorsed by the Yugoslav 
government, to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency 
(IAEA) and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Russian 
Federation to remove a quantity of highly enriched uranium, 
sufficient to produce 2-1/2 nuclear weapons from a research 
reactor near downtown Belgrade.

- The 48 kilograms (over 100 pounds) of unirradiated fuel was 
flown out of Belgrade on August 22 and has been safely secured in 
Dmitrovgrad, Russia, where it will be "blended down" into low 
enriched uranium for use as commercial reactor fuel.

- The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Energy 
cooperated in the conduct of this project. The cost to the U.S. 
Government will be between $2-3 million -- the State Department's 
Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund contributed about $2 
million and the Department of Energy provided technical expertise 
and costs associated with "blending down" the materials. Nuclear 
Threat Initiative is a private charitable foundation that helped 
catalyze the deal by providing $5 million in funding to address 
radioactive hazards at the Vinca Nuclear Institute. The U.S. 
Government lacks the authority to fund this critical element of 
the project.

- Implementation of the project began on August 14 with the 
arrival of Russian nuclear material transport containers aboard a 
Russian cargo aircraft. On August 15 and 16, the 5046 cylinders 
of fresh highly enriched uranium fuel were repackaged from their 
storage location at the Vinca Institute into their transport 
containers. U.S. and Russian technical specialists observed the 
repackaging operation.

- The material has been under International Atomic Energy Agency 
safeguards. Inspectors were present during the operation to 
verify the nuclear material and to apply seals to the containers 
to assure their integrity during interim storage and transport.

- Special units of the police and military in Yugoslavia provided 
physical protection during the repackaging operation and the 
subsequent storage of the material in its transport containers.

- Many details of the transfer of the material to Russia were 
kept secret by Belgrade authorities, to assure a successful and 
secure operation. Transfer activities began early in the morning 
of August 22. The 45-minute trip to the airport was secured by up 
to 1200 military and police officers, including special 
operations and anti-terrorist units. A special unit for dealing 
with hazardous materials was kept on standby in case of an 
emergency or accident. The material arrived at the Belgrade 
airport without incident and was loaded into the Russian 
transport plane, which departed Belgrade after 8:00 a.m. The 
material arrived in Dmitrovgrad four hours later and was 
transferred to a secure storage location.

- Project Vinca is a tangible result of the cooperation among the 
governments of the United States, Russia and Yugoslavia and 
demonstrates the kind of work that could be done under an 
international partnership to prevent terrorists from acquiring 
weapons of mass destruction.

- Yugoslavia is to be commended by the global community for its 
important contribution to international nonproliferation and 
counterterrorism objectives.

- The United States Government expresses its thanks to the 
Nuclear Threat Initiative, co-chaired by Ted Turner and Senator 
Sam Nunn for the funding provided by its foundation for an 
essential part of the project. The project is an excellent 
example of public-private cooperation and how the United States 
Government and the private sector can work together to find 
innovative and effective solutions for our world's greatest 
nonproliferation challenges.

(end fact sheet)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, 
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
 
*****************************************************************
 8 Murtha lends hand to local activist for federal investigation 

PittsburghLIVE.com - 

[Valley News Dispatch] 

 By Mary Ann Thomas and Ramesh Santanam
VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
 Sunday, August 25, 2002 

WASHINGTON: A U.S. Congressman is calling for a federal 
investigation of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for what 
he calls faulty oversight of a former plutonium processing plant 
and nuclear burial site in Parks Township. U.S. Rep. John Murtha, 
D-Johnstown, is seeking an investigation by the Senate 
Subcommittee on Public Works and the Environment on the NRC. 
Murtha is supporting calls for the investigation by a local 
environmental activist. Patty Ameno of Leechburg, a longtime 
critic of nuclear operations in Apollo and Parks, said the NRC 
didn't do a good job in protecting the public's health and the 
environment at a40-year old nuclear waste dump that still isn't 
cleaned up. 

"The senate should hold hearings about the conduct of the NRC at 
these sites," said Bill Allen, Murtha's top aide. "More oversight 
is needed." 

The site was owned by NUMEC, Atlantic Richfield and Babcock 
&Wilcox (now BWX Technologies) from 1960 to the present. 

The office of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, chairman of the senate 
subcommittee, is reviewing the package and its allegations 
submitted by Ameno, said Tessa Hafen, Reid's press secretary. 

Ameno says the NRC protects polluters. 

"The NRC is a renegade agency, and it aids the polluter," said 
Ameno, 50, who established Citizens Action for a Safe Environment 
in the early 1990s to fight pollution from the nuclear fuel 
processing plants and burial grounds. 

For example, Ameno points out that, from 1973 to 1974, Babcock 
&Wilcox was issued 333 violations, yet the NRC still renewed the 
company's license. 

"It would be unthinkable for us to renew the license of a drunk 
driver," she said. 

Ameno alleges the NRC broke at least 34 articles of federal law. 
"I stopped short on the 35th count," Ameno said, "obstruction of 
justice." 

The NRC refused to comment specifically on Ameno's allegations. 

In a letter to the Valley News Dispatch, the agency responded: 
"We believe that the NRC staff has addressed many of these 
concerns in the past, including responding to local resident's 
requests for information, participating and answering questions 
at public meetings, staff submissions to support licensing 
hearings, and, as warranted, referral of concerns to the NRC's 
Office of Inspector General." 

Local residents hope an investigation will assure identification 
of off-site contamination and a thorough cleanup of the site. 

The dump, opened in 1960, received shipments of radiological and 
other waste from the former uranium processing plant in Apollo 
until the early 1970s. Trace amounts of plutonium have been found 
at the site even though the owners were not licensed by the NRC 
to discard such waste there. 

After more than a decade of false starts, Murtha was so disgusted 
with the lack of progress for the cleanup of 23,500 cubic yards - 
about the size of a football field with a depth of 11 feet - of 
soil contaminated by uranium, thorium, and a variety of other 
toxic wastes that he added a mandated cleanup of the site by the 
Army Corps of Engineers in the 2002 Defense appropriations 
budget. 

"We want to make it a model of how to protect the public health 
while restoring the community's environment, pride and 
self-confidence, which is essential in order for the community to 
rebuild," Murtha said. "If the NRC won't step up and help these 
communities, then we need to find other agencies that will." 

He would like to see the Army Corps of Engineers and other 
agencies clean sites across the country contaminated by the 
production of weapons during the Cold War rather than the NRC. 

Some government watchdog groups like the idea of the NRC giving 
up some of its cleanup business but are apprehensive if the Army 
Corps is the solution. "It's true that the NRC does a terrible 
job in protecting the public from radiation," said Diane 
D'arrigo, director of the radioactive waste project of the 
Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, D.C., a 
citizen's watchdog group often critical of the nuclear power 
industry. 

"The NRC is making it easier for companies to be released from 
responsibility after cleanups," D'arrigo said. 

"We're talking about companies leaving contamination. And at 
that, the people in that community are paying the price, whether 
in health and suffering or economically. Better remediations are 
needed," she said. 

As for the Army Corps, D'arrigo questions that agency's 
integrity. For example, the Army Corps shipped a great deal of 
radioactive waste from a former Manhattan Project site in New 
York to a disposal site, the Button Willow site, near 
Bakersfield, Calif., which is not licensed for radioactive 
materials. 

A California appeal board ruled July 19 that there is substantial 
question about the safety of permitting such radioactive waste at 
the Button Willow site. 

The problem with the NRC is that it serves both as regulator and 
promoter of the nuclear industry, according to environmentalists. 

"As such, it's often been criticized for failing to respond to 
outside critics," said Bob Shaeffer, public education director of 
the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. "The agency moves too 
slowly to respond to problems and, as a result, fails to protect 
public health, safety and the environment." 

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, based in Washington, 
D.C, is a national network of groups around the country trying to 
hold the government accountable for the affect of nuclear weapons 
work. 

Murtha stressed that it is not a matter of taking the NRC out of 
the cleanup business, but rather using more federal government 
resources to help. 

"The NRC hasn't had the capacity to address all these issues, and 
that's why I believe we need a broader approach," Murtha said. 
"The NRC probably should be given the job of doing some of our 
backlog of cleanups, but they would be overwhelmed if we left the 
entire job just to them." 

  Alleged violations   

Patty Ameno of Leechburg submitted a 10-page request with about 
21 supporting documents and three videotapes to the U.S. Senate 
Subcommittee on Public Works and the Environment, asking for a 
Congressional investigation of the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission's oversight of the former Apollo and Parks Township 
nuclear fuels processing plants and waste dump. 

These are the highlights of Ameno's request that alleges numerous 
violations of federal law. 

+ The reported contents of waste in the nuclear waste dump in 
Parks have grown from 1 ton to more that 3 tons. 

+ The danger a mine fire and or collapse in the mines under the 
dump site has been underplayed by the NRC. 

+ Waste was just pitched in holes without liners. "Due to mine 
acid, erosion and probably chemical degradation, the majority of 
the metal containers have since disintegrated," according to 
scientists who studied the site. 

+ Former Atomic Energy Commission Official J.P. O'Reilly in 1972 
called NUMEC "the worst offender of AEC regulations over the 
years." The AEC is the predecessor of the NRC. 

+ Around 1992, the NRC had a "Finding of No Significant Impact" 
from the Parks Township site, even though the agency had 
knowledge of off-site contamination and the continuous threat of 
migrating contamination from the waste dump. 

+ NUMEC did not keep accurate and detailed burial records as 
required by federal law. 

+ "The companies have stated that they have not done or intend to 
do any core sampling to find out what is buried at this site and 
in what amounts," Ameno said. "They have been supported in their 
view by the NRC, and we vehemently object." 

+ "Our sewage company, the Kiski Valley Water Pollution Control 
Authority, is contaminated at dangerous levels because of the 
insistent persuasion by the NRC for the Authority to accept the 
waste water from the companies. The NRC told the Authority that 
the waste water would be at safe levels. What the NRC failed to 
tell the Authority was that radiation is cumulative. Nothing has 
been done with the contamination at the sewage authority, and it 
is situated on a 100-year flood plain." 

+ The NRC has ignored, disregarded and violated the National 
Environmental Policy Act. 

+ NRC has continuously violated worker safety standards as 
mandated by federal law under Occupational Safety and Health 
Administration. 

+ The NRC never cited nor charged any of the license holders of 
these sites for not keeping detailed burial records as mandated 
under federal law. 

+ The NRC violated federal law by issuing an option for waste 
removal based solely on cost, not taking into consideration 
health and safety factors. 

+ The NRC violated the open records laws and community right to 
know by refusing to furnish documents regarding excessive 
emissions and off-site contamination. The NRC had knowledge that 
the property in Parks Township and adjacent to the river was 
contaminated for years. They also had knowledge that contaminated 
soil was removed from the site to a privately owned landfill. 

+ The NRC has aided in the pollution of the Kiski River in 
violation of federal clean water laws. 

text copyright Š 2002 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
 9 UK: Government denies nuclear industry rescue package*

Ananova </>

The Government has denied claims it is planning a 
multi-million-pound rescue package for Britain's nuclear 
industry.

It was claimed a team in the Department of Trade and Industry has 
been devising a plan to take control of nuclear power giant 
British Energy to alleviate its financial difficulties.

The team was reporting to Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia 
Hewitt and Energy Minister Brian Wilson as part of a rescue plan 
similar to the bailing out of Railtrack, said The Independent on 
Sunday.

Options include re-nationalisation, a deal to buy the group's 
eight British nuclear power stations, or paying British Energy to 
take over six ageing Magnox reactors from the state-owned BNFL, 
the newspaper reported.

A DTI spokeswoman said the Government took a close interest in 
the industry but stressed that any decisions about the future of 
British energy were for the company.

"The Government monitors the electricity market closely, but 
British Energy is a private company operating in a competitive 
market," she said.

"Any decisions about the company's future are for the company. It 
would be irresponsible for us not to be taking an interest in how 
the electricity market has been progressing, but British Energy 
is a private company."

Story filed: 10:22 Sunday 25th August 2002

 Ananova

*****************************************************************
 10 Ed Markey: US nuclear policies are highly unstable

[The Boston Globe Online] [Boston.com] 

By Edward J. Markey, 8/25/2002

 [I]F IRAQ, IRAN, and North Korea are the ''axis of evil,'' why 
on earth is the United States treating them differently with 
respect to their access to nuclear weapons expertise and 
materials? 

President Bush has singled out these three regimes for good 
reasons: (1) They are ruled by despotic, antidemocratic leaders; 
(2) They are determined to develop nuclear weapons programs; and 
(3) They are determined to develop the long- or 
intermediate-range missiles to deliver the nuclear weapons. 

Moreover, each has long recognized that the best way to obtain 
nuclear weapons is to buy a nuclear power plant, ostensibly to 
produce electricity. Iraq is a good example. Here is a country 
awash in oil and with no apparent need for an alternative source 
of electricity. But when Iraq ordered a nuclear reactor in the 
late 1970s, France was ready to sell, and the French turned a 
blind eye to the transparent motive of this oil-rich regime. So 
it fell to Israel, acting alone, to halt Saddam Hussein's early 
efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. In 1981, the 
Israeli Air Force flew a bombing raid on the French-built Osirak 
nuclear power plant and destroyed it.
 
Now, 21 years later, Washington is contemplating a full-scale 
invasion of Iraq, not a mere raid, to remove Saddam Hussein 
before he develops nuclear weapons. 

But what about North Korea and Iran? 

The United States, along with Japan and South Korea, has a deal 
with North Korea to provide it with two light water reactors. 
Incredibly, the same Bush administration that pinned the label 
''axis of evil'' on North Korea refuses to cancel a Clinton 
administration deal to provide the tools of nuclear destruction 
to Kim Jong Il's erratic and despotic regime. This is of grave 
concern given that country's refusal to provide a full accounting 
of its clandestine nuclear weapons activities and allow 
international inspectors access to all its suspected nuclear 
sites. So while we plot to invade one end of the evil axis, we 
trade nuclear materials with another.
 
The hypocrisy of this policy has had its predictable consequence. 
The Russians are proceeding with the sale and construction of a 
light water nuclear reactor in Bushehr, Iran, and they have plans 
to build up to five more reactors. 

President Bush has tried to persuade the Russians to back out of 
this deal, but President Vladimir Putin responds with a question 
for which the Bush administration has no answer: As long as the 
United States is engaged in a deal that would hand over two 
nuclear reactors to North Korea, why isn't it appropriate for the 
Russians to engage in a similar deal with Iran? After all, both 
customers are signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and 
the Russians can point out that Iran, unlike North Korea, has not 
threatened to withdraw from that treaty or violated a nuclear 
weapon safeguards agreement. Each sees the other's nuclear blind 
spot.
 
Putin says Russia must honor its nuclear deal with Iran for 
Russia's economic health and the stability of the Middle East. 
Bush says he must honor the nuclear deal with North Korea for the 
stability of the Korean Peninsula. Thus a new catchphrase - ''the 
axis of evil'' - is trumped by an old one - ''a deal is a deal.''
 
This is the same weak justification France used to excuse its 
reactor sale to Iraq. Moreover, both the United States and 
Russia, just like France in 1981, say the International Atomic 
Energy Agency can be trusted to ensure that nuclear materials are 
not diverted to make nuclear bombs. How ironic that we now resort 
to the same reassurances that Saddam Hussein gave when Israel 
objected to the construction of the Osirak reactor. But Hussein 
is no fool. He knows better than anyone that a regime bent on 
obtaining nuclear weapons cannot be stopped with international 
safeguards. Hussein bombed the Bushehr reactor in Iran twice 
during the Iran-Iraq War to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear 
technologies. They both know the other country has so much cheap 
oil and gas for electricity generation that the arguments for 
needing nuclear power are laughable.
 
It is time we took off the blinders. The United States cannot 
persuade Russia to stop its sale to Iran unless we stop our deal 
with North Korea. The United States and Russia are in a position 
to help both these countries meet their legitimate need for 
electricity. This can and should be done using nonnuclear options 
such as oil, gas, or coal-fired plants. We must unite on a policy 
of denying to North Korea and Iran the materials and technology 
needed to make nuclear bombs. Only then will the United States 
and Russia be in a position to confront the threat from Iraq 
together to ensure that no dangerous regime acquires nuclear 
weapons.
 
Edward J. Markey, a Malden Democrat, represents the 7th 
Massachusetts District in Congress.
 
This story ran on page D7 of the Boston Globe on 8/25/2002. Š 
Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. [ 
*****************************************************************
 11 Ministers in secret plan to bail out nuclear giant

Independent.co.uk <http://www.independent.co.uk>

By Jason Nissé Business Editor and Clayton Hirst

25 August 2002

Why British Energy is running out of steam
<http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news_analysis/story.jsp?story=327226>

The Government is working on a secret plan to rescue British 
Energy, the nuclear power giant, whose financial difficulties are 
threatening to turn the UK's biggest power generator into the 
next Railtrack.

A team within the Department of Trade and Industry have been 
working on "Project Blue", a plan to step in and take control of 
British Energy before it faces financial ruin. They have been 
reporting to Energy minister Brian Wilson and the Secretary of 
State, Patricia Hewitt, who will shortly decide whether to step 
in to take control of the nuclear energy group.

Among the options are a straight renationalisation, possibly 
costing over Ł500m; a deal to buy the group's eight British 
nuclear power stations; or paying British Energy to take over six 
ageing Magnox reactors from the state-owned company BNFL.

The problem is particularly embarrassing for the Government after 
being forced to renationalise Railtrack in all but name after it 
ran out of money, and the growing cash crisis in Nats, the 
privatised air traffic control service. The service is struggling 
to cope with technical problems and a drop in air traffic in the 
wake of 11 September.

What the DTI and the Treasury are desperate to avoid is for 
British Energy to end up in administration, as Railtrack did last 
year, thus prompting a massive row with the City about 
compensation for losses by shareholders.

Currently British Energy faces having to come up with around 
Ł450m in the next year to pay off debts and cover losses. The 
group does not have the money and a collapse in its share price, 
which hit an all-time low last week, has meant that it cannot go 
to the City for cash.

Shares in the group stand at 59p, less than a third of the price 
they were when it was privatised in 1996 and just 8 per cent of 
their peak three years ago.

The crisis at British Energy is largely of the Government's 
making. A reform of the energy market ? known as Neta ? has led 
to a 25 per cent drop in wholesale electricity prices.

British Energy is now losing around Ł4 for every megawatt hour of 
electricity it sells.

Its problems have been added to because it has had to close 
Torness nuclear station in Scotland after an accident ? a move 
that could cost the group Ł80m. It may also have to close Heysham 
B station which is of a similar design.

British Energy's other problems include a likely sharp rise in 
its insurance costs because of a change in international 
regulations, an annual charge of Ł130m for the climate-change 
levy and a rates bill which British Energy claims is Ł25m too 
high.

The group also has to pay Ł300m to BNFL for reprocessing its 
nuclear waste. British Energy claims this is not needed, as the 
waste could be stored for about a quarter of the cost.

The problems at British Energy have added to the DTI's headaches 
over nuclear energy. Though Brian Wilson favours nuclear power 
and believes Britain needs it to meet targets on CO^2 emissions, 
the operational and financial problems first at the state-owned 
BNFL and now at British Energy are threatening to undermine the 
Government's policy.

<http://www.independent.co.uk

*****************************************************************
 12 Yugoslav flies deadly uranium to Russia under U.S.-aided program

Sunday, August 25, 2002

AFP - 8/25/2002

MOSCOW - A consignment of enriched uranium potent enough to make 
at least two nuclear bombs has been flown from Yugoslavia to 
Russia under a U.S.-aided program, Russian officials said 
Saturday, citing the initiative as a good example of Russian-U.S. 
cooperation against the threat of "international terrorism".

The 48 kilograms (105 pounds) of enriched uranium is to be 
reprocessed into less harmful materials at a plant at 
Dmimitrovgrad on the Volga, ITAR-TASS quoted the atomic energy 
ministry as saying.

"This is a fine example of Russian-American cooperation in 
fighting the threat of international terrorism and implementing a 
joint statement signed in Moscow in May by the Russian and U.S. 
presidents," it said.

It said the consignment -- sufficient to make two and a half 
nuclear bombs -- would be transformed into depleted uranium, 
which can be used in civilian nuclear power plants.

The fuel was supplied to Yugoslavia in the 1980s by the then 
Soviet Union. Its return was financed and organized with the aid 
of Washington and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Yugoslavia sent the fuel by air last Thursday from its out-of-use 
reactor at Vinca as part of a program to eliminate stocks of fuel 
and nuclear waste which could both pose a pollution hazard and 
potentially fall into the wrong hands, Beta news agency reported 
in Belgrade.

Science Minister Dragan Domazet said the shipment marked the 
start of a program aimed at eliminating completely used and 
unused nuclear fuel, as well as nuclear waste from Vinca under an 
accord reached between Belgrade and the United States.

"In accordance with the agreement, we have sent this transport of 
fresh and unused fuel from Vinca to Russia, where it should be 
processed," Domazet said.

Cleaning up at the Vinca nuclear reactor began almost a year ago, 
but the public has not been informed due to strict confidence 
measures, Domazet said.

"Now we can talk about the operation which has successfully 
ended, since the plane which carried the fuel has already landed 
in Russia," Domazet said.

Financing of the program -- estimated at more than 10 million 
dollars -- was provided by the U.S. government, U.S. 
non-government group NTI and the Vienna-based International 
Atomic Energy Agency.

The Belgrade press reported Saturday that Yugoslavia wanted to 
get rid of further nuclear waste still on the Vinca site.

Some 2,000 containers full of waste were already old and the site 
was becoming less and less safe, Vinca director Krunoslav Subotic 
was quoted by the newspaper Vecernje Novosti as saying.

"There is no longer any room for the containers in the sheds 
which have been used as depots for more than 40 years, and are in 
danger of collapsing," he was quoted as saying.

"If we don't start getting rid of the containers there could be 
radioactive pollution and even an explosion can not be ruled out 
in a worst case scenario," Subotic was quoted by the newspaper 
Glas Javnosti as saying.

He said a main priority of the U.S.-financed cleaning-up project, 
dubbed "Green Vinca," was to find a safe storage place for the 
containers.

Hundreds of Yugoslav special police with gas masks and automatic 
weapons accompanied the fuel transport to Belgrade airport along 
a specially closed off section of motorway.

Š Copyright 2002 AFP

*****************************************************************
 13 Ministers in secret plan to bail out nuclear giant

Independent.co.uk <http://www.independent.co.uk>

By Jason Nissé Business Editor and Clayton Hirst

25 August 2002

Why British Energy is running out of steam
<http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news_analysis/story.jsp?story=327226>

The Government is working on a secret plan to rescue British 
Energy, the nuclear power giant, whose financial difficulties are 
threatening to turn the UK's biggest power generator into the 
next Railtrack.

A team within the Department of Trade and Industry have been 
working on "Project Blue", a plan to step in and take control of 
British Energy before it faces financial ruin. They have been 
reporting to Energy minister Brian Wilson and the Secretary of 
State, Patricia Hewitt, who will shortly decide whether to step 
in to take control of the nuclear energy group.

Among the options are a straight renationalisation, possibly 
costing over Ł500m; a deal to buy the group's eight British 
nuclear power stations; or paying British Energy to take over six 
ageing Magnox reactors from the state-owned company BNFL.

The problem is particularly embarrassing for the Government after 
being forced to renationalise Railtrack in all but name after it 
ran out of money, and the growing cash crisis in Nats, the 
privatised air traffic control service. The service is struggling 
to cope with technical problems and a drop in air traffic in the 
wake of 11 September.

What the DTI and the Treasury are desperate to avoid is for 
British Energy to end up in administration, as Railtrack did last 
year, thus prompting a massive row with the City about 
compensation for losses by shareholders.

Currently British Energy faces having to come up with around 
Ł450m in the next year to pay off debts and cover losses. The 
group does not have the money and a collapse in its share price, 
which hit an all-time low last week, has meant that it cannot go 
to the City for cash.

Shares in the group stand at 59p, less than a third of the price 
they were when it was privatised in 1996 and just 8 per cent of 
their peak three years ago.

The crisis at British Energy is largely of the Government's 
making. A reform of the energy market ? known as Neta ? has led 
to a 25 per cent drop in wholesale electricity prices.

British Energy is now losing around Ł4 for every megawatt hour of 
electricity it sells.

Its problems have been added to because it has had to close 
Torness nuclear station in Scotland after an accident ? a move 
that could cost the group Ł80m. It may also have to close Heysham 
B station which is of a similar design.

British Energy's other problems include a likely sharp rise in 
its insurance costs because of a change in international 
regulations, an annual charge of Ł130m for the climate-change 
levy and a rates bill which British Energy claims is Ł25m too 
high.

The group also has to pay Ł300m to BNFL for reprocessing its 
nuclear waste. British Energy claims this is not needed, as the 
waste could be stored for about a quarter of the cost.

The problems at British Energy have added to the DTI's headaches 
over nuclear energy. Though Brian Wilson favours nuclear power 
and believes Britain needs it to meet targets on CO^2 emissions, 
the operational and financial problems first at the state-owned 
BNFL and now at British Energy are threatening to undermine the 
Government's policy.

<http://www.independent.co.uk
*****************************************************************
 14 NRC orders enhanced security at NFS, Virginia facility 

Elizabethton Star - Online Edition

By Kathy Helms-Hughes
 STAR STAFF
 khughes@starhq.com
 
   The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ordered Nuclear Fuel 
Services Inc. of Erwin and BWX Technologies, Inc. of Lynchburg, 
Va., to immediately implement "interim compensatory security 
measures for the current threat environment."

    Rosetta Virgilio, an NRC spokesman, said Thursday afternoon 
that the increased security requirements are not linked to 
specific new threats against either of the two nuclear 
facilities. However, "Looking at the threats that we do have 
around us today, we've gone ahead and issued orders," she said. 
"It's all part of our review of security issues."

    Virgilio also said the NRC had not heard anything new from 
the Office of Homeland Security that had prompted the agency to 
mandate the enhanced security. The NRC earlier issued orders 
directing increase security for nuclear power plants, gaseous 
diffusion plants and other nuclear facilities subject to NRC 
regulation.

    The new security requirements also are not linked directly to 
the upcoming anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks 
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Virgilio said.

    NFS implemented increased security measures last year in the 
wake of the attacks, including relocating a street outside the 
Erwin plant.

    The NRC orders include requirements for increased patrols, 
augmented security forces and capabilities, additional security 
posts, installation of additional physical barriers, vehicle 
checks at greater standoff distances, enhanced coordination with 
law enforcement and military authorities, and more restricted 
site access controls. Licensees are required to provide NRC with 
a schedule within 20 days for achieving full compliance and 
justify in writing if they are unable to comply with any of the 
requirements of the order.

    The requirements will remain in effect until the NRC 
determines that the threat level has diminished, or that other 
changes are needed.

    Tony Treadway, spokesperson for NFS, said that most of the 
additional security measures already have been completed. 
"They're upgrading all nuclear facilities and this is an order 
specifically to two unique facilities. There are a few things 
that they've added that we will be adding. There's no apparent 
threat other than what's been going on."

    NFS Safeguards and Security Director Jerry Stout said, 
"Although the details of our enhancements cannot be made public, 
new safeguards have been in place for some time and more are 
being added."

    Stout said NFS reacted quickly in response to Sept. 11 and 
has maintained a level of security significantly higher than ever 
before at the plant. "Today's order will require a few additional 
enhancements that we will implement as quickly as possible. We 
will reply to the NRC within the allotted 20 days with a schedule 
for achieving full compliance to the enhanced measures," he said.

    NFS's proactive safeguards and security response were cited 
as an area of strength during the NRC's annual review of the 
facility in April. The review also noted important enhancements 
in the training of the company's Emergency Response Organization. 
  
Copyright Š 1996 - 2002 Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc. 
*****************************************************************
 15 Leukemia ties Fallon with town in Arizona
 
August 25, 2002   
    
[fmullen@rgj.com]   

RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

[Leukemia patient Jessic Durkit, of Sierra Vista, Ariz., sits in 
her hospital room. She plays with a doll with tubes like hers 
attached to its body. - Photo provided by the Durkit family]                               

Photo provided by the Durkit family/ Leukemia patient Jessic 
Durkit, of Sierra Vista, Ariz., sits in her hospital room. She 
plays with a doll with tubes like hers attached to its body.                                                                   


Timeline for Fallon-Sierra Vista leukemia clusters

 1997: A Fallon child is diagnosed with acute lymphocytic 
leukemia (ALL) and is later considered the first child in the 
leukemia cluster.

 April 1999: Fallon resident Dustin Gross, 3, is diagnosed with 
ALL. Another Fallon child is diagnosed later in the year.

 March 30, 2000: Sareynah Rivers, 3, is diagnosed with ALL.

 June 17, 2000: Giselle Garcia, 4, is diagnosed with ALL in 
Fallon.

 July 2000: Annastacia Warneke, 6, is diagnosed with ALL.

 October 2000: A 2-year-old Fallon girl is diagnosed with ALL.

 Nov. 10, 2000: Zac Beardsley, 5, is diagnosed with ALL.

 December 2000: Another child  a 5-year-old boy  is diagnosed 
with ALL, bringing the total confirmed cases to nine since 1999.

 January 2001: 10th and 11th cases are confirmed.

 March 3, 2001: State officials confirm a 12th case of leukemia 
related to Fallon.

 April 26, 2001: Hailey Johnson, 3, whose parents left Fallon in 
August 2000, is diagnosed with ALL. She becomes case number 13.

 May 2001: A girl diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia 
(AML), brings the Fallon cluster total to 14 cases, including the 
1997 case.

 June 2001: A nine-month old baby from Sierra Vista dies of 
leukemia in Tucson. University of Arizona Professor Mark Witten 
learns of three cases of childhood leukemia in Sierra Vista and 
begins to investigate. 

Nov. 15, 2001: Jessica Durkit, 2, of Sierra Vista, is diagnosed 
with acute lymphocytic leukemia.

 November 2001: Arizona officials confirm six cases of leukemia 
in Sierra Vista, one short of a statistical cluster, but decline 
to include Anna Warneke in their totals. Warneke showed symptoms 
of the disease before leaving Sierra Vista for Fallon.

 Jan. 31, 2002: The Centers for Disease Control announced a 15th 
case, a 3-year-old boy, will be added to the Fallon cluster 
investigation.

 February 2002: Arizona officials confirm a seventh case of 
leukemia (not including Warneke) and say they will investigate.

 July 28, 2002: State health officials say a 2 1/2-year-old 
former resident of Churchill County is the 16th ALL case in the 
Fallon cluster.

 Three of the Fallon patients have died: Adam Jernee, 10, died 
June 3, 2001, after fighting the disease for a year.

 Stephanie Sands, 21, died Sept. 1, 2001, at a Pennsylvania 
hospital after battling the disease for two years.

 Timothy Wayne Schweble, 22, died Aug. 11 at the City of Hope 
National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif. 
			 
Related Media and Files [- ] Jessica Durkit, who is not yet 
finished with her chemotherapy, ... 
			 
 	
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz.  This small town in the Sonoran desert has a 
lot in common with Fallon, a tiny berg in the Nevada desert, but 
the most compelling similarity is that both communities have a 
childhood leukemia cluster.

Both are located in a wide, beautiful bowl of mountains.

Both host military aircraft whose contrails sometimes make 
checkerboards in a clear sky. The planes use the same JP-8 fuel.

Both have farms that make the desert bloom and are located in 
historic mining districts.

Each has a long main street that is also a major highway, 
bristling with signs for businesses and restaurants and motels.

And both have children suffering from leukemia at a rate that 
defies national averages.

For two years, Nevada and federal investigators have put Fallon 
under a microscope to find the serial killer that has infected 16 
children and left three dead.

But the similarities end there.

Arizona health authorities say they are concerned, but have no 
resources to probe the seven-member childhood cancer cluster in 
Sierra Vista.

In Fallon, the families of the leukemia patients have formed a 
group, Families In Search of the Truth or F.I.S.T., dedicated to 
uncovering the cause of the cluster. The case families are 
questioning state and federal authorities, who say they are doing 
everything they can to find the cause of the epidemic.

In Sierra Vista, the seven case families dont know each other, 
and some havent been contacted by health authorities. Only a few 
voices are demanding answers there.

A researcher at the University of Arizona is spending his own 
money to pin down the causes of the cancer clusters in both 
towns.

One Sierra Vista family stricken with leukemia is asking the 
government to do something. And the father of a 7-year-old girl, 
who has recovered from leukemia and lived in both Fallon and 
Sierra Vista, is pushing investigators to look at the 
similarities and the differences between both areas.

Independent researchers and government scientists are examining 
military jet fuel as a potential cause. Last week, federal 
scientists found high levels of a metal in Fallon residents, 
which Arizona researchers expect to study in Sierra Vista as 
well.

These are only a few of the potential suspects.

Meanwhile, the leukemia statistics grow.

The 16th Fallon leukemia case was diagnosed last month. Two weeks 
ago, Timothy Wayne Schwebel, 22, who grew up in Fallon, died 
while battling the disease.

In Sierra Vista, one child has died and six others are in 
remission from the disease.

In Fallon, theres an investigation but theres no sense of 
urgency, and I dont think the government has the will to really 
look for an environmental cause, said Matt Warneke, whose 
daughter, Annastacia, 7, has recovered from acute lymphocytic 
leukemia. Anna was showing symptoms in Sierra Vista and then 
moved to Fallon, where her leukemia was diagnosed.

In Sierra Vista, theres denial that anything may be wrong.

This is a story of a search for a killer who has left a trail of 
pain and death in two small desert towns. This is a story of 
survivors and victims; suspects and clues; science and 
bureaucracy.

It is a story about leukemia and clusters of fear.

I worry that Fallon and Sierra Vista are not alone, said Mark 
Witten, a University of Arizona toxicologist and pediatrics 
professor who is an expert in the toxic effects of JP-8 fuel.

If there is something that connects the leukemia in these two 
communities, then there may be other Fallons out there, other 
Sierra Vistas, other children who will get sick and some who will 
die.

Now is the time to find out why.

Clues everywhere, nowhere

Reto and Brenda Gross, whose son, Dustin, 6, has recovered from 
leukemia, allowed Witten and his research team to drill a tree 
core from a 25-year-old cottonwood in their front yard.

The Arizona scientists believe the tree rings will hold traces of 
metals, chemicals, fuels and other contaminants. In a laboratory, 
the rings may be read like the pages of a book, and tell the tale 
of rising and falling rates of pollution for the last three 
decades.

The cottonwood tree and the Gross familys home are next to one 
of Fallons many irrigation ditches. As a scientist took the core 
sample, Witten watched the Gross family dog leap into the ditch 
before bounding back through the yard, shaking off his fur next 
to Dustin, and then going back into the familys house.

Talk about pathways of possible contamination, Witten said. 
Whats in that ditch besides water? Fuel? Pesticides? Metals? 
Whats on that dog? What does Dustin have on him now?

Witten is full of questions, as are the government health and 
environmental investigators.

The scientists from the federal Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention and the other federal and state agencies are 
conducting a cross-sectional study in Fallon. They are throwing 
a wide loop, looking at everything that can be detected in the 
blood and urine of the case families and control-group families, 
and analyzing the air, dust and water from the homes of all the 
families.

Randall Todd, Nevada state epidemiologist, said the federal and 
state scientists are working hard to look at potential 
environmental causes, including jet fuel, pesticides, industrial 
chemicals, arsenic in the well water, and viruses.

Scientists spent a year writing the investigation protocols, a 
delay that drew criticism from the case families and others. 
Officials said they were being as careful as possible, and in the 
context of medical investigations, they were moving at light 
speed, not a snails pace.

We are trying to be as comprehensive as we can with this 
(investigation), Todd said. The CDC is bringing some rather 
remarkable technology to the effort. 

A year ago, the CDC took urine samples and blood from 205 members 
of 69 Fallon families, including 13 patient families.

Last week, the CDC announced that high levels of arsenic and 
tungsten were discovered in the urine of 80 percent of the people 
tested. The arsenic was expected, but the tungsten levels were 
surprise, officials said.

Investigators said they dont know if either metal has anything 
to do with the cancer cluster, or if tungsten is a health threat.

We get some data, but we dont have a context for it, said 
Assemblywoman Marcia deBraga, D-Fallon, who two years ago asked 
the state to investigate the high number of leukemia cases in 
Fallon. 

My worry is that the state and the CDC are treating this as an 
academic exercise, a nine-to-five job, she said. Weve got 
laboratory scientists, but what we need is a Colombo, a 
relentless detective with imagination. This isnt a statistical 
problem. There are flesh and blood children involved.

Along the fence line of the Fallon Naval Air Station, home of the 
Navys Top Gun fighter jet school, Witten and tree-ring expert 
Paul Sheppard took another core sample from another cottonwood 
tree.

Overhead, F-18 Hornet and F-14 Tomcat fighter jets were taking 
off at the rate of two every seven minutes and other jets were 
landing. Witten said theres no scientific evidence that the jet 
fuel used in those fighters is linked to human cancer. But animal 
experiments have shown the fuel  a blend of kerosene, benzene 
and other chemicals  depresses immune systems, reeks havoc on 
lung tissue, and scrambles the DNA of white mice.

I think jet fuel may play a role in Fallon, Sierra Vista and in 
other areas with military bases and cancer clusters, Witten 
said. Thats a theory, without proof.

As Witten and Sheppard drove through Fallon they looked at 
ditches and dry lake beds and alfalfa fields and melon farms. 
They watched the military planes overhead and wondered about the 
soil beneath the wheels of their rental car. They looked at the 
mine tailings on nearby mountains.

Their questions kept coming. The answers may be hidden in the 
tree rings, they said, the sediments of the dry lakes, and the 
DNA of the children with leukemia.

Arizona officials concerned

When Jessica Durkit got sick and stayed sick 20 months ago, 
doctors speculated that her condition was caused by anything from 
a recurring flu to child abuse.

When Jessica turned 2 in January 2001, she was real sick on her 
birthday, said her father, Dale Durkit. We took her to a doctor 
and he said it was virus. But they never did a blood test.

By September 2001, the little girl was still ill and her body was 
covered in bruises. She was always tired, listless, her parents 
said.

When I complained to a nurse about how she gave Jessica an 
injection, she told me she could turn me in for child abuse 
because of the bruises, said Kelly Durkit, Jessicas mom.

In October 2001, Jessica, still sick, was bitten by a brown 
recluse spider. It nearly killed her, her parents said, but it 
also probably saved her life.

Thats when a family friend recommended Dr. Lisa Cunningham, a 
pediatrician then at the University of Arizona Medical Center in 
Tucson. Cunningham diagnosed Jessicas leukemia.

She saved Jessicas life, said Kelly. 

Her parents said they did a lot of talking to God during the 
last ten months. In December, a local news station carried the 
story of leukemia cases in Sierra Vista. That was the first they 
heard of the cluster.

Today, Jessica has finished her course of chemotherapy and no 
leukemia cells have been found in her body. The family still 
hasnt heard from state officials.

As happened in Fallon, community members in Arizona noticed the 
unusually high number of childhood leukemia cases long before the 
health department saw any jump in statistics. The Sierra Vista 
cancer cluster only came to light because a pediatrics professor 
and a leukemia patients father pressed the Arizona Health 
Department to add up the cases.

Last year, after hearing about at least three childhood leukemia 
patients from Sierra Vista being treated in Tucson, pediatrics 
professor Witten began investigating. He located three of the 
childrens homes on a map and found they lined up with the 
runways at Libby Army Airfield, he said.

By November, the Arizona Department of Health confirmed six cases 
in the community since 1995, but said that number was one short 
of a statistical cluster.

Matt Warneke, whose daughter Annastacia, 7, has recovered from 
leukemia, began pressuring Arizona officials to add his daughter 
to their total. The father and daughter lived in Sierra Vista 
where Anna began showing symptoms of the disease, but then moved 
to Fallon, where her leukemia was diagnosed in March 2000.

Dr. Tim Flood of the Arizona Department of Health Services and 
director of the states cancer registry, told the Reno 
Gazette-Journal last year that cancer patients are counted in a 
cluster only if they are diagnosed in the area of the other 
cases. He admitted he was reluctant to tackle a leukemia 
investigation because the state tried that once and got nowhere.

Maryvale, a suburb of Phoenix, had 49 leukemia cases in 21 years. 
State health officials investigated that cluster for more than 
ten years and found few answers, he said.

In February, Arizona officials said they had seven cases, which 
was statistically significant. They said they would 
investigate. But other than looking at the testing records from 
the areas 25 water providers, little else has been done to probe 
the cluster, officials said.

What weve done is look at the data we have rather than going 
out and collecting soil samples and that sort of thing, said 
Will Humble, chief of environmental health for the state. He said 
his staff also looked at reports about toxic waste sites in the 
area.

The water is remarkably clean, he said, with arsenic at 3 parts 
per billion, well beneath the federal limit of 10 ppb and 
Fallons average of 100 ppb, 10 times the standard.

He said Cochise County toxic site reports indicate there couldnt 
be any toxic exposures from the Army base or anywhere else.

We have to figure out where this will go from here, if 
anywhere, Humble said.

He said the Cochise County Health Department is the front line 
of any investigation.

Susan Warren , spokeswoman for the county health department, 
laughed when told the state was looking to them for guidance.

There is a lack of resources in this county, and we look to the 
state to take a leading role, she said. We hear there are seven 
cases in Sierra Vista but we dont know who they are. Of course 
were concerned, but we have very little to go on.

Jessica healthy again

At the Durkits home in Sierra Vista, Jessica is spending the 
last days of summer playing on her new backyard gym, a gift from 
the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The local newspaper, the Sierra Vista 
Herald, did a story about Jessica last month, but the stories 
didnt mention the other six childhood leukemia cases in the 
town.

We asked the paper why the cluster was never mentioned as it was 
in previous stories, Kelly Durkit said. We were told it is a 
sensitive issue.

The Durkits agree the issue is sensitive. They said they want 
to put a spotlight on it. They said they want all parents to be 
aware of the symptoms of leukemia so that other children wont be 
misdiagnosed.

They said they want an investigation.

They need to test the air, the water, the soil, everything, 
Dale Durkit said. It doesnt make sense to ignore this.

As the Durkits were being interviewed, C-130 cargo planes made 
lazy doglegs over their house on their way to land at Libby Army 
Airfield.

Were a quarter mile from the flight path, and this is where 
they make their turn for approach, Dale Durkit said. The planes 
shake the house and leave big black smoke trails behind. 

The Durkits said money and bureaucracy shouldnt stand in the way 
of investigating the Sierra Vista cancer cluster.

How many kids have to die before Arizona will do something? 
Dale Durkit asked. 

Something is happening and the people who are supposed to guard 
our health arent doing anything. Its wrong. Its just wrong.
 		   		   				
Š Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a  [http://www.gannett.com] Newspaper.
*****************************************************************
 16 UK: Doctors face charges after 12-year fight 

Sunday Herald
 
 General Medical Council's failure to deal with serious 
misconduct criticised By Sarah-Kate Templeton 
[sarah-kate.templeton@sundayherald.com] , Health Editor 
 
 Royal Navy doctors accused of carrying out radiation trials on 
patients without permission are expected to appear before the 
General Medical Council this week, more than 12 years after the 
experiments took place. The doctors from the Institute of Naval 
Medicine in Gosport, Hampshire, are accused of injecting patients 
who had a neurological disease with a radioactive isotope without 
ethics approval and without permission from the government body 
that regulates the use of radiation treatment. 

Details of the trials were published in a medical journal 12 
years ago but it is only now that the charges have finally 
reached a preliminary hearing at the General Medical Council 
(GMC) -- the regulatory body that decides whether doctors are fit 
to practise. The injections contained a radioactive metal that 
can cause cancers. Because of the risks, doctors must get 
permission from the Admin istration of Radioactive Substances 
Advisory Committee if they wish to use radioactive isotopes in 
trials.

This weekend the doctor who blew the whistle on the tests he 
claims were highly unethical told the Sunday Herald it was only 
after years of fighting to make the health authorities take 
action against the doctors involved that the case is actually 
being heard.

Dr Peter Wilmshurst, a consultant cardiologist at the Royal 
Shrewsbury Hospital, claims he was even threatened with legal 
action when he first tried to bring the case to light. 

'I first raised this two months after the research was publish 
ed. I tried for a number of years to get the institution to 
answer but they said they would sue.'

Wilmshurst also alerted the journal that published the article 
but he said the editor at the time refused to do anything about 
it. It was only when a new editor was appointed that the medical 
journal agreed to join Wilmshurst in reporting the doctors to the 
GMC. 

'When I heard there was a new editor I went to him and he said 
'this is serious' and we went to the GMC six years ago.'

The GMC is expected to decide at a private meeting this week 
whether the allegations are serious enough to hold a full 
hearing. 

'Would you want to inject a radioactive isotope, an active 
isotope, into a patient without ethics approval or approval from 
the department of health?'

Wilmshurst asked. 'Radioactive isotopes are very sensitive and so 
there are very strict rules about their use. I do not see how 
they can throw this out.'

But Wilmshurst has become so frustrated at what he perceives as 
the GMC's failure to deal with serious misconduct by doctors that 
he says he is now going to refer the cases to the police.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, he stated: 'The only 
cases considered by the GMC are ones where there is a strong 
possibility that the doctor will be removed from the medical 
register if charges are proved. 

'As a result many allegations about doctors that the public 
considers serious are dismissed by the GMC at the screening 
stage. I believe that there is inappropriate rejection of serious 
allegations by lenient screeners.'

He added: 'I intend to ask the police to investigate other cases 
that the GMC has said were insufficiently serious to warrant 
disciplinary proceedings.'

Wilmshurst said he had complained to the GMC about a professor of 
cardiology who had lied for years about his qualifications when 
applying for posts as a senior registrar, an honorary consultant 
and a senior lecturer. Wilmshurst claims that, although this was 
brought to the attention of his university, they promoted him to 
professor.

The Ministry of Defence and the GMC declined to comment about the 
allegations against the Institute of Naval Medicine before the 
case has been heard. The GMC did, however, defend its record of 
dealing with complaints against doctors.

A spokeswoman for the GMC said: 'If allegations are of a criminal 
nature then they should be referred to the police. The GMC takes 
all the cases referred to it seriously. Some go forward but some 
do not because the evidence is not there or because the cases 
took place so long ago there is no way of proving them.'

www.gmc-uk.org www.patients-association. com       
    
Š2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 17 High-risk uranium spirited out of Belgrade 

Chicago Sun-Times - News

August 25, 2002
BY DAVID RENNIE 

WASHINGTON--In a joint American-Russian operation, nearly 100 
pounds of weapons-grade uranium was spirited out of a decaying 
Yugoslav research facility to prevent it from falling into the 
hands of terrorists, it was disclosed Friday.

 The highly enriched uranium, enough to make up to three nuclear 
bombs, was flown from Belgrade to Russia in the early hours of 
Thursday, after more than a year of secret negotiations with the 
Yugoslav government.

 The operation, paid for by the U.S. government and a private 
foundation supported by media mogul Ted Turner, saw the fuel 
flown to a Russian facility at Dimitrovgrad, where it will be 
turned into a less-dangerous form of uranium, suitable for use in 
nuclear power stations.

 Witnesses said the uranium was rushed through Belgrade in a 
convoy of three identical trucks, two of which were empty decoys. 
Nearly half of the capital was sealed off, as the nuclear fuel 
was carried to the international airport for its flight to 
Russia.

 The 22-mile route was guarded by 1,200 heavily armed troops and 
paramilitaries, and patrolled by army helicopters. Marksmen 
guarded rooftops. Special police wearing gas masks and carrying 
automatic weapons guarded city crossroads, and several highways 
were sealed. "We were vigilant and ready to cope with any 
potential assailant," a senior Serbian police officer said.

 The uranium, stored at the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences 
in Belgrade, has been near the top of U.S. danger lists for more 
than a decade. The cache has been protected by no more than 
lightly armed security guards since a reactor ceased operating in 
1984.

 During the 1999 NATO air strikes on Belgrade, Western officials 
made certain that bombers kept away from the Vinca facility while 
fretting that rogue elements in the Yugoslav military might help 
themselves to the uranium.

 Yugoslav media have reported that the last years of the Slobodan 
Milosevic regime saw a stream of foreign envoys--among them 
representatives of Saddam Hussein--visit Belgrade to express 
interest in the uranium.

 After the fall of Milosevic, the government decided to dispose 
of the fuel. A government statement said: "By disposing of the 
hazardous material, Vinca is no longer a potential target for 
possible terrorist attempts to get hold of this fuel."

 The operation also saw unprecedented cooperation with Russian 
nuclear officials, who previously have resisted Western 
suggestions that they should take back nuclear material scattered 
across the globe by the Soviet Union.

 State Department officials said Russia quickly agreed to help. 
Janet Bogue, a deputy assistant secretary of state, told the 
Washington Post: "There has been a sea change. The Russians were 
eager to get this done. They are just as acutely aware of the 
risks as we are."

 The foundation backed by Turner, the founder of CNN, pledged 
more than $5 million that was needed to seal the agreement with 
Yugoslav authorities.

 The money will be used to decontaminate the 44-year-old reactor 
site at Vinca and help pay the wages of some of its nuclear 
scientists, who have the knowledge to help build a nuclear bomb.

 The money had to be provided by private donors because of strict 
congressional curbs on how nonproliferation funds can be spent.

 About 350 research facilities in 58 countries store 
weapons-grade uranium fuel, according to U.S. studies that have 
given warning that many are highly vulnerable to theft.

 Daily Telegraph 

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk] 

Copyright 2002, Digital Chicago Inc.      
*****************************************************************
 18 Health officials: Nuclear pills aren't 'magic'
 
  [enquirer.com] 

  Aug. 25, 2002 
      
The Associated Press 

        TOLEDO, Ohio - This fall the state plans to provide two 
pills apiece to about 335,000 Ohioans living near nuclear power 
plants. 

        Health officials stress that the potassium iodide pills 
can give only limited protection from radiation in a nuclear 
accident. 

        Some people may wrongly assume it's a magic pill, said 
Jay Carey, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Health. 

        Since the terrorist attacks last September, interest in 
the potassium iodide pill has grown nationwide. President Bush 
signed a bioterrorism bill in June requiring the drug be 
available to residents living near nuclear plants. 

        The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is offering the 
pills to the 33 states with nuclear reactors. The federal agency 
is paying for Ohio's 640,000. 

        The pill works by filling the thyroid gland, which 
absorbs iodine, with harmless iodine before radioactive iodine 
can get in. 
        
[http://cincinnati.com/helpdesk/circulation/circulation.html] 

Copyright [http://cincinnati.com/copyright] 1995-2002. The 
Cincinnati Enquirer
*****************************************************************
 19 Hundreds of sources of radiation unaccounted for in US
 
  Saturday, 24-Aug-2002 8:20AM              
Story from AFP / Maxim Kniazkov 
Copyright 2002 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)  

WASHINGTON, Aug 24 (AFP) - Several hundred devices containing 
radioactive materials that could be used in manufacturing "an 
effective terrorism device" are unaccounted for and presumed lost 
in the United States, a panel of US scientists has warned.
 
In a voluminous report titled "Making the Nation Safer: The Role 
of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism" made public 
Friday, the National Research Council of the National Academies 
of Science, urged the government to tighten regulations for 
obtaining and possessing devices containing radioactive 
materials.
 
"Although radiological attacks would be unlikely to cause large 
numbers of casualties, the potential for inflicting economic loss 
and causing terror and panic warrants increased attention to the 
control and use of radiological sources by regulatory agencies 
and materials licensees," the panel warned.
 
According to the council, about two million sources of 
radioactivity are currently scattered around the United States, 
including Cesium-137, Cobalt-60, Iridium-192 and Strontium-90 
that are used in hospitals, research laboratories and some 
industrial equipment.
 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC), which the US 
government has tasked with monitoring nuclear facility around the 
nation, has licensed their use.
 
But the report warns that the system "is not foolproof," adding 
that, according to USNRC records, "several hundred US sources are 
unaccounted for and presumed lost."
 
"Although labeled 'low-level,' some of this waste has high levels 
of radioactivity and could potentially be used to make an 
effective terrorism device," the panel noted.
 
The revelation follows a steady drumbeat of congressional 
warnings about what is seen by some lawmakers as lax security at 
US nuclear research, weapons production facilities and other 
institutions that work with fissile materials.
 
According to Democratic Congressman Edward Markey of 
Massachusetts, in more than 50 percent of security tests at the 
Energy Department's nuclear facilities, those playing 
"terrorists" won.
 
"The vaults used to store weapons grade uranium and plutonium, 
some of which are reportedly constructed out of drywall, may not 
be adequately protected against impacts from large commercial 
aircraft or the detonation of large truck bombs nearby," the 
congressman warned earlier this year.
 
Last May, US Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested in 
Chicago suspected al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla, who, according 
to Attorney General John Ashcroft, was involved in a plot to 
build and detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United 
States.
 
The National Research Council also expressed concern about the 
safety of nuclear materials in Russia, which, according to the 
report has about 150 metric tonnes of separated plutonium and 
1,200 tonnes of highly enriched uranium.
 
The United States has spent hundred of millions of dollars since 
the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union on boosting security at 
Russia's nuclear research facilities and preventing Russian 
weapons scientists from selling their expertise to rogue nations 
such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
 
But the council remained unimpressed.
 
"These safeguards are effective against casual thefts but may not 
be effective against higher-level threats, especially 
sophisticated insider threats," said the report, which also 
stressed that the threat of diversion of highly-enriched uranium 
from Russia remained "significant."
 
The scientists pointed out that radioactive materials for a 
"dirty bomb" could also be produced clandestinely in Russia and 
other countries that have nuclear research reactors that could 
serve as sources of irradiated fuel.
 
"A small-scale program could potentially be hidden through 
careful facility design, however, and could, in principle, 
produce sufficient material for a weapon if operated for several 
years," the report said.
 
*****************************************************************
 20 Government agencies investigated missing uranium, NUMEC 

 PittsburghLIVE.com - 

 By Mary Ann Thomas and Ramesh Santanam
VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
 Sunday, August 25, 2002 

Editor's note: This the first of three parts on the history of 
the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. Part II will appear 
Monday and Part III will appear Tuesday. 

The colorful history of the former Nuclear Materials and 
Equipment Corp. is rich with intrigue and mystery and unwinds 
like the plot of a Tom Clancy novel. 

There are stories of missing uranium, allegations of illegal 
shipments to Israel, FBI sleuthing, meetings with possible 
Israeli spies, talk of special "encoded" telephones the FBI could 
not tap, concern by the CIA, congressional inquiries and interest 
from the White House. 

The reason for all the cloak-and-dagger actions was an innocuous 
acronym - MUF. 

MUF stands for "Materials Unaccounted For," and, in the case of 
NUMEC, referred to large quantities of weapons-grade uranium that 
went missing from the Apollo plant in the 1960s. 

The unaccounted for uranium piqued the curiosity of the FBI, the 
CIA, Congress, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its 
successor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the 
Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter presidential administrations. 

"Each White House took this and treated it like a hot potato," 
said Henry Myers, a former aide to the late U.S. Rep. Morris 
Udall, D-Ariz., who led a congressional probe into the affair in 
the late 1970s. 

"I suppose there were too many 'maybes' because it happened and 
maybe because it was too hard to prove," Myers said. 

NUMEC paid almost $930,000 in fines to the AEC for the lost 
uranium. What actually happened to the uranium still isn't known 
- at least not to the public. But it certainly caused much 
speculation. 

Diversion theory 

The most popular theory, at least among federal investigators: 
that then-NUMEC President Zalman M. Shapiro, a staunch supporter 
of Israel, secretly diverted special nuclear material (uranium) 
to Israel so that nation could have "the bomb." 

In a recent interview with the Valley News Dispatch, Shapiro, 82, 
refused to talk about the allegations or the numerous federal 
investigations of himself and his upstart nuclear fuels company. 

But in previous statements to federal officials, Shapiro 
adamantly denied he or anyone else at NUMEC gave Israel nuclear 
material. 

"Let me state emphatically that I have never participated in any 
theft or diversion of special nuclear material," Shapiro told 
Udall and Interior Committee aides in December 1978. "I have no 
knowledge or information concerning any such diversion. 
Furthermore, I am not aware of any factual basis for the repeated 
allegations that 'material unaccounted for' at NUMEC was caused 
by an illegal diversion." 

The FBI and its director at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, were 
suspicious nonetheless. 

The diversion theory held by federal investigators prompted: 

+ Repeated FBI investigations, including wiretaps of Shapiro's 
home and work telephones, and the shadowing of Shapiro by federal 
agents; 

+ A Hoover request to the AEC to revoke Shapiro's top-secret 
security clearance; 

+ A clash between the AEC and the Nixon administration over 
Shapiro's attempt to obtain an even higher security clearance; 

+ An inquiry by Udall's House Committee on Interior and Insular 
Affairs; 

+ Claims by Carl Duckett, then-CIA deputy director for science 
and technology, that President Lyndon Johnson ordered 
administration officials to keep the entire issue quiet. 

Investigations aplenty 

Many investigations were launched to find out whether Shapiro 
illegally diverted uranium to the Israelis. Although several 
federal officials had their suspicions, nothing could be proven. 

Recently declassified FBI documents reveal the extent to which 
the bureau went - meticulously tracking Shapiro's movements, 
seeking informants, interviewing NUMEC workers and checking the 
backgrounds of various people associated with Shapiro or NUMEC. 

As Hoover pointed out in a September 1969 memo to AEC Security 
Director William T. Riley, there was "substantial surveillance 
coverage" of Shapiro. The FBI documents show that not only did 
the bureau essentially shadow Shapiro's every move but agents 
were concerned when he did not show up at scheduled venues. 

Memos from special agents-in-charge, detailing their 
surveillance, showed agents staked out hotels where they expected 
Shapiro to show up and kept several FBI offices abreast of the 
case. 

One memo, dated Oct. 22, 1968, from a Pittsburgh-based FBI agent 
states: "The Pittsburgh Office ... presently plans to afford 
subject's residence discreet photographic coverage on 1.../68." 

Two days later, there was an urgent message sent to the New York 
office from Pittsburgh: "Subject departing Pittsburgh via United 
Airlines Flight 452, 3:35 p.m., scheduled to arrive Newark 4:36 
p.m., this date. No return reservation made and purpose of trip 
to New York City unknown. New York telephonically requested to 
afford subject discreet surveillance." 

Agents even kept an eye on Shapiro's movements at NUMEC. 

"According to reliable sources," a Jan. 30, 1969, FBI memo 
states, "subject, since the inception of this case, has 
maintained late hours in his office at NUMEC, Apollo, Pa." 

Suspect loyalties 

What fueled the FBI's suspicions were Shapiro's close ties with 
Israel, which continue to this day. He currently is president of 
the Zionist Organization of America in Pittsburgh. 

FBI documents listed NUMEC as a "sales agent" in the United 
States for Israel's defense ministry. NUMEC served as a technical 
consultant and training and procurement agency for Israel in the 
United States, according to documents in the Morris K. Udall 
Collection at the University of Arizona library in Tucson. 

Federal authorities also had other concerns: 

+ NUMEC and Shapiro, through a connection with the Israeli Atomic 
Energy Commission, were equal partners with the Israeli 
government on Isotopes and Radiation Enterprises (ISORAD), which 
did experimental and commercial work in food irradiation. 

+ NUMEC employed an Israeli citizen, Bernard Cinai (or, Baruch 
Cinai, according to FBI documents), as a metallurgist. 

+ NUMEC did business with at least a dozen nations, including 
Japan, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, England and Israel. 

+ Ephraim Lahav, then-counselor on scientific matters at the 
Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., took numerous visits to 
NUMEC in the early to mid-1960s. 

+ Four other Israelis visited NUMEC on Sept. 10, 1968, and met 
with Shapiro to "discuss thermoelectric devices (unclassified)," 
according to a Sept. 12, 1968, letter from Bruce D. Rice, NUMEC 
security manager, to Harry R. Walsh, director of AEC security and 
property management, seeking AEC approval for the visit. 

The AEC gave approval for the Israelis to visit NUMEC, according 
to a Sept. 20, 1968, memo from Walsh to Rice. 

The four visitors were: Avraham Hermoni, Ephraim Beigon, Abraham 
Bendor and Raphael (or, Rafael) Eitan. 

FBI and NUMEC documents listed Hermoni as a scientific counselor 
with the Israeli Embassy; Beigon, group leader of the electronics 
department in the Israeli defense ministry; Bendor, also in the 
electronics department; and Eitan, a chemist in the defense 
ministry. 

Hermoni, a Palestinian-born chemist and scientific counselor at 
the Israeli Embassy from 1968 to 1972, became a senior official 
at RAFAEL, Israel's armament development authority that, since 
1948, has "researched, developed, produced and marketed advanced 
weapon systems," according to its Web site. In a nationally 
syndicated column in September 1987, William Safire called Bendor 
and Eitan "legendary figures in the world of espionage." 

From 1981 to 1986, Bendor, also known as Avraham Shalom, headed 
Shin Bet, Israel's counter-intelligence and internal security 
service, according to "Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage," 
by Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen. He was removed from that 
post following controversy stemming from the beating deaths of 
two Palestinian suspects in custody for hijacking an Israeli bus 
in 1984. The Israeli president later pardoned Bendor. Eitan's 
exploits are legendary. 

+ He was a paratrooper in the Sinai Campaign in 1956 and the Six 
Days War 11 years later, and a commander in the Golan Heights 
during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. 

+ He directed operations at Mossad, the Israeli intelligence 
service. 

+ Along with Bendor, he took part in the 1960 operation that 
snatched from the streets of suburban Buenos Aires Nazi war 
criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of Hitler's Final 
Solution, and brought the German to stand trial in Israel. 

+ He was involved in the case of American Jonathan Pollard. 
Arrested in 1985, Pollard is serving a life prison sentence for 
selling classified material to Israel while he was a U.S. naval 
intelligence analyst. The Israelis said Pollard worked for 
neither Israeli military intelligence nor Mossad; he was 
recruited and run by a government outfit called the Scientific 
Liaison Unit, headed by Eitan, who was forced to resign when the 
scandal broke, "but was rewarded with a top state-owned industry 
job," Safire wrote. 

+ Eitan was elected to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and 
served as deputy prime minister and minister of agriculture and 
environment under then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from 
mid-1996 to mid-1999. He later lost his re-election bid. 

News reports stated that, at the time of Eitan's visit to Apollo, 
he was part of an intelligence unit associated with then-Israeli 
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who now is prime minister. 

In their 1991 book, "Dangerous Liaison," Andrew and Leslie 
Cockburn wrote, "At the time of his visit to Apollo in 1968, 
Eitan was acting as an agent for Mossad on special assignment to 
LAKAM ... a shadowy intelligence agency ... born in the 1950s 
with the express purpose of acquiring nuclear technology by any 
means." 

Soon after the men's visit, 587 pounds of weapons-grade uranium 
reportedly went missing from NUMEC, according to Udall's papers. 

The actual amount is a matter of some debate. Scholars have put 
the amount between Udall's high of 587 pounds to as little as 132 
pounds. 

2002 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.

*****************************************************************
 21 Pennsylvania ranks fourth with 26 nuclear legacy sites 

 PittsburghLIVE.com - 

[Valley News Dispatch] 

 By Mary Ann Thomas and Ramesh Santanam
VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
 Sunday, August 25, 2002 

Enough radioactive and chemically contaminated soil to fill a 
hole 11 feet deep and the size of football field sits in Parks - 
as it has for more than 40 years. 

It's the Shallow Land Disposal Area - a series of trenches cut 
into the hillside above what once was the Nuclear Materials and 
Equipment Corp.'s plutonium processing plant in the Kiskimere 
section of Parks Township. 

Think of it as an atomic-age garbage can. 

In the trenches and the soil surrounding them is a toxic mix of 
radioactive isotopes and cancer-causing chemicals. 

If America's victory in the Cold War is the front facade of a 
posh restaurant, this place is the alley out back - where the 
waste and filth the public isn't supposed to see is tossed. 

The federal government calls such places "legacy sites." 

They are the forgotten factories and laboratories that churned 
out nuclear material or fuel for weapons or power plants half a 
century ago. 

Out of site and out of mind, the sites still exist, contaminated 
for decades, in or near mostly small towns around the country. 
Even the federal government admits they are health and safety 
hazards, but it does little or nothing to clean them up unless 
forced to. 

Pennsylvania ranks fourth in the nation for the most nuclear 
legacy sites with about 26 former atomic weapons employers 
plants. 

Of 320 sites listed as former atomic weapons employers sites, 
only New York, with 40; Ohio with 35; and Illinois with 29, have 
more than Pennsylvania. 

Hundreds of sites originally listed as legacy sites have been 
eliminated either because they were found to have no radioactive 
contamination or didn't fall under the authority of the federal 
Department of Energy. 

"The country and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and 
the U.S. government are still in a state of denial of the harm 
done to this country during the production of nuclear weapons," 
said Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the Alliance for 
Nuclear Accountability, a network of groups around the country 
who try to hold the government accountable for the impact of 
nuclear weapons work. 

"It's because the federal agencies that have responsibilities are 
doing such a poor job," Schaeffer said. "Folks have to use a 
political process to intervene - such as the Army Corps of 
Engineers." 

And that's what's happening in Parks. 

After the NRC and the owners of the Parks sits - BWX Technologies 
(formerly Babcock &Wilcox) and the Atlantic Richfield Company - 
failed for more than a decade to come up with an approved cleanup 
plan, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, and environmental 
activist Patty Ameno fought for a change. 

Murtha added legislation to the federal 2001-2002 defense 
appropriations budget that pulled the NRC from its leadership 
role at the Parks site. Although the legislation put the Army 
Corps of Engineers at the helm for the cleanup, there's still no 
slam-dunk promise for removal of the contaminated material from 
the site. 
 
Essentially, it's up to Murtha and residents of the area to keep 
clamoring for removal of the waste instead of the less costly 
option: keeping the waste in Parks, where it will remain 
radioactive for millions of years. 

"The Army Corp doesn't fund local groups or local governments to 
oversee what's happening," said Marvin Resnikoff, senior 
associate at Radioactive Waste Management Associates in New York. 

"So people are essentially defenseless," he said. 

"Communities need the money and time for lawyers. The burden of 
proof of contamination falls on the communities," said Bob 
Alvarez, a former senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. 
Alvarez helped create the list of legacy sites for the 
government. 

Communities with sites contaminated by weapons work are at the 
mercy of the NRC and the Department of Energy. Both agencies have 
been criticized for showing more concern for the private 
companies that own the sites than the public they're charged with 
protecting. 

"There are a number of items on the NRC's plate," Schaeffer said. 

"People are frustrated around the country with the slow pace work 
on these sites. These are classic examples of squeaky wheels 
getting greased. It's unfortunate but true: Unless local 
residents can get their political leaders to go to bat for them, 
the DOE ignores them. It's not need-based." 

"The government has deeper pockets, they can draw out the 
process," Schaeffer said. 

The solution: An independent program that examines sites and 
cleanup plans. But there's neither federal law nor resources in 
place to help communities. "I'm besieged," said Arjun Makhijani, 
president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research 
in Takoma Park, Md. "There is a terrible dearth of independent 
expertise." 

Independent oversight of agencies involved in the nuclear 
business is hard to come by. And it's expensive. 

For example, residents near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, 
just north of Los Angeles, fought for the Department of Energy to 
pay for an oversight panel for the cleanup of the laboratory. 

The laboratory had a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959. 

"We had to fight tooth and nail to get the government to agree to 
permit independent oversight," according to Dan Hirsch, president 
of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, an environmental group that 
deals with nuclear issues. 

"Residents wanted oversight in the cleanup and health studies," 
Hirsch said.

"They did not trust the state and federal agencies." 

Residents got their wish in the early 1990s. The independent 
oversight panel is still at work as the site undergoes a cleanup. 

"People need science that they can trust," Makhijani said. 
"Science that is paid by the government, but not the agencies who 
support the nuclear industry." 

  Expensive tests   

"It's all in the testing," say environmental experts. 

In most cases, a town contaminated by any type of nuclear or 
chemical material must prove the damage. 

The government doesn't pay for the tests. It's up to the 
communities to come up with money or lure assistance. 

Many times, lawyers pay for the tests and studies in class action 
suits, according to Marvin Resnikoff, senior associate at 
Radioactive Waste Management Associates in New York. 

And proof is expensive, sometimes elusive. For example: 

+ Isotopic breakdown of plutonium: about $3,000 for analysis of 
one sample. 

+ Resnikoff's group conducted a health study in Wayne, N.J., and 
looked at about 1,000 people living near a contaminated site and 
1,000 people in a control group away from site. 

The cost: $35,000. "And that study only compared the present day 
health of one group to another group," Resnikoff said. 

"For a facility that operated a long time ago, it's much better 
to do a study of death certificates. That is more costly - 
$150,000 would not be unreasonable." 

copyright Š 2002 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
 22 Radioactive materials sat undetected for almost four decades 

PittsburghLIVE.com - 

 By Mary Ann Thomas and Ramesh Santanam
VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
 Sunday, August 25, 2002 

In the past year, nuclear contamination was discovered near Route 
66, running along the site of the former Nuclear Materials and 
Equipment Corp. plutonium processing plant in Parks Township. 

It's been there, undetected, for almost four decades without 
fences or warning signs. 

The recent episodes of contamination - more was found uphill of 
the nuclear waste dump there, near Kiskimere Road - add to a 
growing list of potential hazards at the Parks site. 

The nuclear burial grounds this year were expanded by about a 
third of their former size, while trichloroethylene (TCE) 
contamination from the Parks site seeps into the Kiski River. 

Last year, while surveying the boundaries of the burial area - 
about 14 acres - elevated levels of radiation were discovered 
along with a piece of contaminated scrap metal. All of the 
contamination was discovered on land outside the the burial area. 

"They need to test and find out pretty soon what's there," said 
Raymond Hunter, 61, of Kiskimere. He lives within 100 yards of 
the fence line from the burial grounds. 

"Sometimes kids go back there and play in those woods," Hunter 
said of the unfenced area that BWX Technologies (formerly B and 
the license holder for the burial grounds) recently asked to be 
added to the burial ground land that needs to be cleaned up. 
"I've got grandchildren who are growing up around the area." 

The recently discovered contamination dates back to 1965, when 
several burial pits were exhumed because the owner, NUMEC, was 
looking for hundreds of pounds of missing uranium. The lost 
material led to allegations that NUMEC had given the uranium to 
Israel to build its nuclear arsenal. 

The contents of the pits were dug by picks and shovels by company 
workers, who wore no protective clothing. Contaminated materials 
were spread over the burial grounds, and according to a former 
worker, the piles of radioactive material reached the tree line - 
well beyond the fenced boundaries of the burial grounds. 

During the exhumation, TCE-like liquid drained from the pits. 

"Lots of TCE was buried there - drums - and the old drums easily 
punctured," said Mike Zerby of Washington Township, a former 
NUMEC employee who participated in the dig. "We worked in that 
smell for months. 

"That dragline lifted gobs of mess. We tried with a Geiger 
counter. It was all hot," said Zerby, who worked on the 
exhumation for six months. 

"These hands had more bare, highly enriched uranium on them than 
other people's hands." 

After the 1965 exhumation, the contaminated materials lay in the 
open, above ground, for at least a year. Then the debris was 
either reburied or burned, according to company and government 
documents obtained by the Valley News Dispatch. 

BWXT received approval from the federal Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission to add the contaminated land to the burial site in 
June. 

Although BWXT holds the license for the site, the Atlantic 
Richfield Company (ARCO), former owner of the site, is 
financially responsible for the burial grounds under the 
agreement that transferred the license to BWXT. 

TCE contamination 

Officials from the state Department of Environmental Protection, 
which provides oversight for the chemical waste cleanup, want 
more tests on the extent and concentration of TCE contamination 
in the Kiski River. 

Although the river samples reveal TCE contamination at levels 
safe to the general public, DEP wants more extensive testing at 
the facility site. 

TCE is a toxic liquid commonly used as a solvent. According to 
the EPA, life-time exposure to elevated levels of TCE can cause 
cancer and liver damage. 

The first plume of TCE found in the river is coming from the 
former plutonium fuel processing site along Route 66. One of the 
sources for the TCE contamination at the facility site was a drum 
field with leaky TCE containers, up hill from the facility. 

Additionally, TCE may have been dumped directly into the ground 
at the drum field in the 1960s, according to a 1996 deposition by 
former B executive R.V. Carlson. 

Carlson said there was no proof that workers dumped the TCE, only 
stories. 

The origin of what could be a second plume of contamination into 
the river is unknown. BWXT officials say it's not coming from 
their site, while the DEP wants more tests on the BWXT land to 
find the source. 

BWXT must submit a site characterization plan - an assessment of 
contamination in the environment - to the state, said John 
Matviya, environmental cleanup manager for the DEP. 

After the company submits the plan, Matviya said, "then we'll 
know what type of remediation will be necessary." 

DEP testing found 1.98 parts per billion of TCE in the river 
adjacent to the BWXT site. The state standard for in-stream water 
is 2.76 parts per billion. But just downstream from the BWXT 
site, DEP found TCE contamination at 8.47 parts per billion - 
more than three times the allowable limit - in a gully that leads 
to the Kiski. The gully is a "dry run," meaning it only flows 
with water during the spring thaw or heavy rains. 

The water in the river at the mouth of the gully has 0.49 parts 
per billion of TCE, according to DEP tests. 

BWXT project manager Rich Bartosik said the gully contamination 
is not coming from the BWXT property. 

However, DEP officials disagree. 

Matviya said more testing is needed to determine the source of 
TCE going into the gully, and the BWXT property needs further 
examination. 

TCE was first documented in the Kiski River in 1995 in a Babcock 
&Wilcox report, Bartosik said. The TCE plume under the plant site 
was discovered in the early 1990s. 

Uranium in the mines 

The water in the underground mines is contaminated with man-made 
uranium, but the extent is unknown, according to officials from 
the state DEP. 

"If the contaminant from Parks facility can get into the mines at 
sufficient concentrations, it could pose a potential threat," 
Matviya said. 

"I don't see it as a huge significance at this point," Matviya 
said. "But it may be enough to be of concern. We have to look 
further and see what the potential is." 

Man-made uranium was found by tests conducted by the companies on 
a coal pillar beneath trench 10, the state officials said. 

"To determine the extent of the contamination would be like 
trying to find a needle in a hay stack" according to Fred 
Baldassare, a DEP hydrogeologist. The flow of the water in the 
underground mines is erratic and difficult to pinpoint from the 
surface, he said. 

Plutonium cleaned up 

Plutonium and another radioactive toxin, americium 241, were 
discovered last year at the Parks site and its neighbor, Cook 
Vascular, a medical supply company built on land formerly owned 
by ARCO and NUMEC. 

The contamination was identified and cleaned up by BWXT last 
year. 

The contamination stemmed from soil dug up in the mid-1960s from 
the plutonium processing plant land that was allowed to remain 
unprotected for more than 30 years. 

The contamination passed under the radar of the NRC. 

"In general, the focus of the sampling relative to a licensed 
facility is traditionally focused on the licensed area," said 
Amir Kouhestani, NRC project manager for the Parks site. 

"These are legacy sites," Kouhestani said. "Record keeping was 
not the ideal thing. You have 50 years of history, and people 
come and go." 

And the area contaminated on the Cook property was dormant, 
Kouhestani said. "Any private property concern has been properly 
addressed by the licensee regarding any potential of migration," 
he said. 

Underground hazard 

The catacomb of underground mines poses a threat to stability of 
the site, according to some experts. The mines also serve as a 
focal point in the argument to remove the contaminated materials 
instead of leaving them in place indefinitely - as has been 
suggested. 

Mine subsidence has occurred in the Parks area and methane gas 
lingers in the mines. 

In September 1997, two teenage boys were burned from a methane 
gas explosion from a mine entrance off of Airport Road in Parks 
Township. 

The boys were set to explore the coal mine when one of them lit a 
match, which ignited the methane gas. 

"It's an unprecedented situation to have a mine under a 
radioactive waste dump," said Arjun Makhijani, president of the 
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, 
Md. 

"A safety analysis would be warranted, especially since uranium 
was detected in the mine water, he said. 

DEP officials have been concerned about the mines and their 
proximity to the burial trenches. 

"It's impossible to say that there has been no mine subsidence at 
the Parks site," said Sam Harper, chief of environmental cleanup 
for DEP. "If there hasn't been subsidence, in time there will be 
subsidence." 

Subsidence at the Park site could cause contamination from the 
trenches to migrate off site, Matviya said. 

"Contaminants can and have found their way into the mine workings 
and flow out of mine," Matviya said. "There's dilution, but it 
needs to be addressed." 

The mine stability was questioned in a report from the United 
Steelworkers of America in 1987. The area of underground mines 
under and near the burial trenches is susceptible to high numbers 
of damaging mine-subsidence events.

The report was not specific to the mines directly underneath the 
burial grounds. 

Another concern is the possibility of a mine fire. 

"It's an issue when you have coal and have a fire," Harper said. 
"It can't be put out." Although, he said, mine fires can be 
quenched but it can take years. Mine fires can burn for decades 
and increase the possibility of subsidence by weakening the roof 
of the mine. 


copyright Š 2002 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
 23 Nebraska: Waste trial costs state $21 million

Omaha.com

August 25, 2002

*BY ROBYNN TYSVER*

WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN - For every dollar spent by opponents, the State of 
Nebraska will spend about $3 to defend itself in a low-level 
nuclear waste lawsuit.

About half of the state's $21 million tab - an estimated $11 
million - will pay fees charged by two Washington, D.C., law 
firms.

In contrast, the utility companies and the five-state compact 
that sued Nebraska are expected to spend about $6 million, 
according to information compiled by The World-Herald.

Of that, about $5 million will go to attorney fees, in large part 
to two Nebraska firms.

Gov. Mike Johanns said the state had no choice but to vigorously 
defend itself in court. He said he was pleased with the state's 
lawyers.

"It is a comparison that just doesn't really describe what we 
were up against," Johanns said.

He said the state had to mount an all-out defense in light of an 
earlier court ruling that appeared to put Nebraska in an underdog 
role going into the trial.

A 1999 ruling from U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf made it clear 
that he thought the state appeared to act in "bad faith" in 
denying a license for the low-level nuclear waste facility and 
that the decision was "politically preordained."

"The U.S. District Court in that judgment really hung this on the 
strong assumption that the previous administration had 
gerrymandered the results," said Johanns, who is an attorney.

"Consequently, our attorneys had no choice but to try to 
literally take this apart piece by piece and deal with the 
financial issues and environmental issues."

The trial ended July 31. Closing arguments are set for Sept. 10.

The case revolves around Nebraska's refusal to issue a license 
for a low-level waste facility in Boyd County in 1998.

A five-state compact that sought to build the regional facility 
alleged that then-Gov. Ben Nelson stacked the deck against the 
license and denied it on political grounds.

Nelson and others have denied that charge, saying the license was 
refused because there is a wetlands on the site and the company 
charged with building the facility was not financially fit.

The lawsuit was filed in 1998.

The Collier Shannon Scott law firm of Washington was hired to 
represent the state at Nelson's request, Attorney General Don 
Stenberg said.

His office did not have adequate resources to handle the massive 
case, Stenberg said, and the firm had been working with the state 
throughout the licensing process.

A lead litigator of the firm was Bradford Reynolds, a former 
assistant attorney general for civil rights in President Ronald 
Reagan's administration.

In 2000, Reynolds left to join another law firm, Howrey Simon. He 
and his new firm remained on the case, along with lawyers in the 
Collier Shannon firm.

During the trial, the Washington firms had six lawyers in the 
courtroom who were working on the case full-time, and at least 
five lawyers working on the case part-time. The commission and 
utilities had a total of five.

The state's two top attorneys - Reynolds and John Wittenborn - 
also were tops in fees, at $280 an hour.

The top lawyers for the compact - Alan Peterson of Lincoln and 
Tom Johnson of Omaha - received $250 and $205 an hour, 
respectively. (Before the trial, Peterson received about $200 an 
hour.)

A breakdown of the costs incurred by the compact and utilities:

Peterson represented the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive 
Waste Compact, which expects to spend about $2.4 million on the 
trial and in this year's expected appeals. Of that, about $1.8 
million will go to attorney fees.

Johnson represented the key utility companies involved in the 
suit: Entergy and Wolf Creek. His clients spent about $2.8 
million. Of that, $2.5 million is expected to go to attorney 
fees.

U S Ecology, the company hired to build the waste facility, spent 
$258,000 on the trial. Of that, $226,000 went to attorney fees. 
Its lead attorney was Steve Seglin of Lincoln.

Omaha Public Power District also spent money on the trial - about 
$435,000 - before pulling out last year. Of that, $402,000 was 
spent on attorney fees, said Jeff Hanson, the utility's 
spokesman.

By comparison, the state has budgeted about $21 million on the 
trial and expected appeals.

An exact breakdown of the costs is not yet available, partly 
because the state has not received all the bills from the trial, 
said Tom Lamberson, deputy director of the Department of 
Environmental Quality.

Wittenborn defended the money spent on the case, saying it is 
cheaper to make an allegation* *than to defend against it.

"They turn over the rocks and then we have to explain it," 
Wittenborn said.

For example, he noted that of the $21 million, the state has 
spent $2.1 million to gather, photocopy and record nearly 2 
million documents requested by attorneys.

The state also has spent $772,000 to pay for retrieval of e-mails 
lost at the end of the Nelson administration.

Lee Allen wrote: Tis a shame we can't make E. Benjamin Nelson 
pick up the tab for this mess.

Š2002 Omaha World-Herald. All rights reserved. Copyright 
*****************************************************************
 24 'Dirty Bomb' Fears Hang Over N-Waste Shipments
 
The Salt Lake Tribune -- 

Sunday, August 25, 2002   

    Last year's Sept. 11 attacks rekindled public fear about 
terrorists exploding containers of deadly nuclear waste in 
America's heartland. 

    Supporters of nuclear power call it unlikely -- or impossible 
-- that villains could commandeer a shipment of spent nuclear 
fuel and turn it into a so-called "dirty bomb." 

    First of all, said Beth Hayden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it would be tough to get the spent 
fuel out of its concrete-and-steel clad container. Then, a person 
trying to scatter high-level waste would have difficulty 
strapping the deadly stuff to dynamite or some other conventional 
explosive. 

    "It's very lethal if you get right next to it," she said. "I 
cannot foresee anyone doing that." 

    Federal nuclear regulators are expected to order updated 
anti-terrorism protections in the next few months. 

    Critics of federal spent-fuel transportation plans insist 
nuclear shipments are automatic targets for terrorists. 

    "Why couldn't it be pirated and turned into a weapon?" said 
Holladay activist Mary Draper. "It's out there, and it's a 
problem." 

    -- Judy Fahys 
    
  Š Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune
*****************************************************************
 25 coming ASLB decision to dump HLW in Utah

The Salt Lake Tribune -- Letter From the Editor
 
Sunday, August 25, 2002   

[PHOTO] Project team, from left, Brent Israelsen, John Keahey, 
editor Greg Burton, Judy Fahys, Bob Mims and Dan Harrie. 
  
BY JAMES E. SHELLEDY

    In three months, the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing 
Board will issue a bellwether decision on whether northern Utah 
is to become the burial ground for 44,000 tons of waste from the 
nation's nuclear power plants. 

    Utah leaders are using courts of public opinion and of law to 
dissuade a consortium of nuclear power firms, whose competitive 
tactics would shame veteran gang-bangers, from coming West with 
their hot litter. 

    Against Utah's power establishment and Wasatch Front feelings 
stands the defiant Goshute tribal chairman Leon Bear, whose 
mighty band numbers a mere 122 souls. 

    Charges and countercharges surrounding the proposed deal 
would fill three-quarters of a Clive Cussler novel. 

    Bear, resolute as ever, stands to make millions for his 
people, a tribe as impoverished as it is dysfunctional. The 
reservation, in the desolate and unfortunately named Skull Valley 
of Tooele County, would be a repository for what no one desires 
in his back yard. And the sovereign Goshute Nation would be paid 
handsomely for this accommodation. 

    But it is Bear, not nuclear waste, at the core of this story, 
notes Salt Lake Tribune News Editor Greg Burton, who is 
coordinating a five-person reporting team looking into the 
situation. 

    "It's about one man, the leader of an impoverished people who 
thumbed his nose at the state and federal government. This is a 
story about sovereignty. It's about greed and riches. It's about 
power." 

    Bear's original thought for economic development was a bingo 
casino, but Utah authorities deemed that too hazardous to our 
well-being. So off he went in search of something more realistic, 
less morally impermissible, and wandered into the outstretched 
arms of the nuclear industry. 

    Environmental writer Judy Fahys, lead reporter on this 
project, warns that Utahns need to be better informed about how 
this enterprise can affect their future. In planning, her team 
"looked for ways to help readers grasp that impact." 

    The weekly series opened last Sunday with a look at how the 
Goshutes have been rent asunder by the controversy. This week's 
installment, which begins on today's front page, reveals how the 
nuclear waste will reach Skull Valley, the riskiest part of the 
Goshute proposal and yet the one receiving the least 
scrutiny.Transportation reporter John Keahey joins Fahys in this 
second installment. Others on the team are Dan Harrie, Brent 
Israelsen and Bob Mims. 

    The series is open-ended at this point, but will contain at 
least seven parts. 
    

    D.C. Bureau: I don't wish to spoil the summer vacations of 
Utah's congressional delegation, but Mr. Smith is going to 
Washington upon their return. 

    Christopher Smith, among the most astute reporters in America 
when it comes to the West's public lands and geo-political 
issues, becomes The Tribune 's person in Washington, D.C., late 
next month. 

    We determined early this year it was time to re-establish a 
Washington presence. The nature and positioning of our 
delegation, the influence of federal government on Utah, and 
issues facing the state made a D.C. reporter imperative. 

    I closed the bureau in 1991 to divert the money to staff 
raises. At the time, I did not see it as a big loss. After 
noticing the number of untold Utah-related stories from the 
nation's capital, I reconsidered. 

    The newspaper's owner/publisher, Dean Singleton, is adamant 
about the move, as well. Smith will join a 10-person MediaNews 
Group bureau in the National Press Club Building. While sharing 
office space and support resources with the Denver Post, Los 
AngelesL.A. Daily News and three other newspapers in the group, 
he is directed by and answers to this newspaper solely. 

    A clear, bold writer, Smith has penned some of The Tribune 's 
most significant and explosive stories in the decade he has been 
here. He is a keen observer of what makes Utah and the West tick. 
    
    Sign of the Times: Starting this week, sharp-eyed readers may 
notice New York Times stories appearing on the pages of The 
Tribune. With the addition of that news service come a pair of 
superb Times columnists, Pulitzer Prize winning Thomas Friedman 
and Maureen Dowd, which debut on the front of this morning's 
editorial section. 

    In the early '90s, we discontinued The Times wire service 
because of problems that since have been rectified. 

    The Times joins The Tribune 's other supplemental news 
services, Knight-Ridder, Washington Post/Los Angeles Times, 
Gannett, Religious News Service and Scripps-McClatchy Western 
Wire. Our primary source of national and foreign news remains The 
Associated Press. Editor"It's about one man, the leader of an 
impoverished people who thumbed his nose at the state and federal 
government. This is a story about sovereignty. It's about greed 
and riches.

It's about power." -- News Editor Greg Burton 

   [Goshute chairman Leon] Bear's original thought for economic 
development was a bingo casino, but Utah authorities deemed that 
too hazardous to our well-being.] 
    
  Š Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune
*****************************************************************
 26 Nuclear Route A Bit Too Close For Comfort? 
 
The Salt Lake Tribune -- 

Sunday, August 25, 2002   

[PHOTO] Carol and Thane Heninger and their six children live 
within three miles of the proposed nuclear waste route, but say 
the prospect does not bother them. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake 
Tribune) 

BY JOHN KEAHEY and JUDY FAHYS

    WEST HAVEN -- Jenny Canter works across the street from a 
rail line that one day could be used to haul thousands of tons of 
high-level nuclear waste to the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes 
reservation in Utah's west desert. 

    Canter doesn't pretend to understand the science of rads 
(units of ionizing radiation) or rods (batches of nuclear fuel) 
or rems (measures of radiation's damaging effects in mammals). 

    And she doesn't care to know. 

    "I am more concerned," she says, "about driving home without 
using my seat belt." 

    Some Utahns shrug at the possibility a consortium of utility 
companies may soon be free to use the state's roads and railroad 
lines for shipping deadly nuclear waste to a storage site on the 
reservation. But a majority are against yoking the state to any 
risk of a radioactive future. 

    It may happen anyway. In a private deal, Private Fuel Storage 
(PFS) agreed to pay the Goshutes undisclosed millions to build a 
$3.1 billion storage site on a corner of the tribe's reservation 
about 45 miles from Salt Lake City. 

    Barring legal setbacks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
(NRC) could begin licensing the Skull Valley site in December. 
Utah rails and roads would be used to haul massive casks of 
worn-out nuclear fuel as early as 2004. 

    The shipping routes pass through Utah's densely populated 
Wasatch Front and hundreds of small communities like West Haven, 
a Weber County city of 4,000 near Ogden. 

    "We're not particularly fond of the idea that nuclear waste 
is traveling through our community," says West Haven Mayor Tim 
Wayment. "How can you not be worried about it? But it's 
inevitable. It has to go somewhere." 

    Other mayors doubt the project is inevitable and question 
whether the utilities, the tribe and regulators can safeguard 
Utah from nuclear disaster. 

    The risks of a major accident in a metropolitan area or in a 
major watershed like Salt Lake City's would result in 
catastrophic loss of life and $17 billion in damage, Salt Lake 
City Mayor Rocky Anderson recently told a U.S. Senate committee. 

    "Such a scenario is almost a certainty," he asserted. "Human 
error is inevitable." 

    As proposed, the spent fuel headed for Skull Valley would 
come from at least 33 reactors operated by PFS, the power company 
consortium. 

   The nuclear fuel from these power plants comes in pellets the 
size of the last joint of a pinky finger, which are packed into 
zirconium-alloy tubes, called rods. Spent fuel rods shed 95 
percent of their radioactivity in water-filled, concrete cooling 
pools at the reactor sites. 

    Once removed, the rods are repacked into storage sleeves. The 
sleeves can be kept in dry storage containers for months or 
years. For transportation to a waste site, the sleeves are 
transferred into 125-ton shipping casks. At Skull Valley, the 
sleeves would be transferred from shipping casks into storage 
casks, which weigh 175 tons. 

    According to NRC standards, the casks must be able to 
withstand a severe accident. They also must survive crushing 
pressure, puncture tests, a 30-foot drop, 1,475-degree fire and 
immersion in 50 feet of water. 

    The U.S. Energy Department ultimately plans to bury the casks 
in a national repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., but the 
underground burial will not be ready for years. 

    Until then, PFS wants to store the spent fuel in those casks 
above-ground. 

    For at least 20 years, trains and trucks have hauled 
low-grade radioactive material along Interstate 80 to Tooele 
County. 

    Between 1971 and 1999, according to the National Safety 
Council, there were 62 "incidents" involving transportation of 
low-level waste, four that "resulted in the release of 
radioactive materials." 

    But low-level waste poses dramatically lower risks: Exposure 
to mildly contaminated dirt from a nuclear power plant might 
increase a person's cancer risk. 

    Someone directly exposed to high-level spent fuel, however, 
is likely to die soon, perhaps instantly or in days. Anyone 
downwind also would be at risk of damage that might ultimately 
cause leukemia, lung cancer and other fatal illnesses. 

    Using federal maps and hazard analyses, the Environmental 
Working Group projected 12 people would die immediately, and 350 
more would develop fatal cancers within a year if a spent-fuel 
cask cracked on Interstate 15 at the Midvale-Sandy line. 

    Nuclear proponents discount the likelihood of such exposure. 

    DOE spokesman Joe Davis says that although there have been a 
few fender benders involving trucks, no cask has ever broken open 
during transport of high-level waste, which is stored temporarily 
at 139 reactor sites (including PFS's) in 39 states. 

    PFS views Skull Valley as an interim solution to the problem 
of storing waste at these smaller sites. While Yucca Mountain has 
undergone intense scientific and congressional review, critics 
say plans for Skull Valley are, at best, incomplete. 

    Consider: 

    * There is no statewide or nationwide transportation plan for 
Skull Valley's role in such an undertaking. 

    * No money has been allocated to the hundreds of communities 
along proposed Skull Valley routes to train and equip emergency 
personal for nuclear-transport accidents. 

    * Skull Valley proponents are not required to release a 
detailed security plan, despite the threat of terrorism. 
    
   Achilles Heel: To critics, the absence of transport plans is 
the Achilles heel of the industry-driven Skull Valley storage 
site, which would be the nation's first facility devoted 
exclusively to power-plant waste. 

    PFS's waste shipment plan is "irresponsible and 
undemocratic," Mayor Anderson says. 

    "Without adequate research as to the safety of transporting 
this waste, without details of where and how it will travel, the 
American public, our representatives in Congress, and our federal 
regulatory agencies are being asked to sign off on one of the 
most expensive projects -- and perhaps the most dangerous project 
-- in the history of the United States," he says. 

    The deadly waste often will pass just 25 feet from residents' 
back yards. 

    Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 
whose headquarters are about a mile from one proposed waste 
route, are aware of the implications and have several people 
working on the issue, said LDS spokesman Coke Newell. 

    Officially, though, Newell told The Salt Lake Tribune: "We 
appreciate you seeking our view, but the Church is not prepared 
to make comment on this issue at this time." 
    
   Heavy Radiation: Depleted fuel includes cesium-137, 
strontium-90, and plutonium-239, highly radioactive by-products 
of nuclear fission. Plutonium in this unnatural form can cause 
lung cancer if only a few particles, each smaller than a speck of 
dust, are inhaled. 

    A driver in a traffic jam behind a spent fuel shipment will 
be exposed to no more radiation than the background radiation 
(from such things as soil and air) he or she is typically exposed 
to in a day, according to the National Safety Council. 

    But, citing the Energy Department's own studies on Yucca 
Mountain, Anderson notes that moving waste to the Nevada site 
"incident-free" is expected to cause as many as 31 additional 
cancer fatalities. 

    One out of every three Utahns lives within a mile of routes 
authorized for hauling high-level nuclear waste, according to the 
Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C., organization 
opposed to the Skull Valley site. 

    In a recent report on waste shipping routes, the group used 
mapping data to identify 520 schools and 24 hospitals in Utah 
that are within five miles of shipping routes. 

    "The trains travel within 100 feet of playgrounds," Anderson 
testified in Washington, D.C. "Six schools are within half a mile 
of transportation routes, well in range to receive measurable 
daily doses of radiation from incident-free transporta- tion. . . 
. Trains stopped at crossings and trucks stopped in traffic will 
sit only a few feet away from our citizens on a daily basis." 

    And if something goes wrong, a half-ton of fuel contains as 
much long-lived radioactivity as 10 Hiroshima bombs, according to 
Gov. Mike Leavitt's nuclear opposition coalition. 

    PFS calls the Hiroshima comparison irresponsible, given the 
toughness of the casks, the shipment safety record and ceramic 
form of the spent fuel intended to prevent any radioactive 
releases from seeping into water or dispersing in air. 
    
   Shipping Concerns: Transportation safety is a driving force 
behind NO!, an opposition coalition of Utah businesses, citizens 
and political leaders. It's a big concern for workaday Utahns, 
too. 

    Steve Stepanek, an engineer from Salt Lake City, calls 
transportation of high-level waste a "double danger" to people 
along the route. 

    "An accidental disaster is not a possibility -- it is 
virtually a statistical certainty," he told the U.S. Atomic 
Safety and Licensing Board during a meeting in Tooele. "The very 
real possibility of a terrorist-related transportation accident 
adds to this danger in a way not imaginable even one year ago." 

    Jan Owens, a Utah mother of two, urged regulators to leave 
the waste where it is. "I just would like to think that I can 
raise my family and live my life in, I don't know, relative 
safety." 

    Because of Tooele County's concentration of hazardous 
facilities, local hazardous-materials response teams have been 
trained to deal with accidents involving toxic materials, 
including dangerously radioactive ones. 

    But no similar preparations have been made for an accident 
involving high-level nuclear waste, says Salt Lake City 
pediatrician Lou Borgenicht, a national board member of 
Physicians for Social Respon- sibility. 

    "The medical community is unprepared for this," Borgenicht 
said. 

    There have been just four accidents involving spent-fuel 
containers over more than four decades and hundreds of thousands 
of miles of shipping, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, 
a nuclear industry trade association, and radiation was not 
released in any of them. 

    In 1971, a tractor-trailer carrying a 25-ton container of 
spent fuel overturned. The trailer broke free "and skidded into a 
rain-filled ditch," according to an institute fact sheet. "The 
container suffered minor damage." 

    That record has not persuaded opponents of the Utah storage. 

    "Skull Valley is an entirely different scenario than the one 
Congress intended," says Dianne Nielson, director of Utah's 
Department of Environmental Quality. "We see no indication that 
Congress is inclined to give that [transportation oversight] 
responsibility to DOE, or that DOE is going to take it." 

    In fact, says Nielson, federal regulators appear unwilling to 
consider the consequences of transporting significant amounts of 
high-level nuclear waste long distances around the country -- 
when its destination is a private entity like the one proposed 
for Skull Valley. 

    "We raised this issue in the courts, only to be told we're 
premature." 
    
   Delivery Rate: A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories 
study conducted in 1995 estimated there is a potential for 154.2 
accidents involving Yucca Mountain-bound waste over three 
decades. 

    Yucca Mountain is supposed to receive 175 annual shipments 
from around the country -- 130 trains with two to three casks and 
45 trucks, Davis says. "Not even one a day." 

    Skull Valley, which would be a layover for most of that 
waste, would receive spent fuel at a similar rate, perhaps every 
other or every third day. 

    "Everything I've heard about the containers -- well, they are 
pretty well indestructible, if you can believe what they say," 
says Darrell Bishop, who lives in Farr West, another tiny Weber 
County community next door to West Haven. 

    "But you know," he says, "the government has been known to 
not tell you what they know. Hasn't it?" 

    john.keahey@sltrib.com fahys@sltrib.com 
    
  Š Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune
*****************************************************************
 27 Alabama or Tennessee could become home to a high-tech nuclear 
fuel plant.

Augusta Georgia: Metro:

08/25/02
 
WASHINGTON -

From Wire Reports 

Nuclear consortium wants plant in South

 WASHINGTON -Alabama or Tennessee could become home to a 
high-tech nuclear fuel plant.

 A consortium of U.S. and European companies announced Friday it 
had narrowed its search for a uranium enrichment plant location 
to a former Tennessee Valley Authority property in Hartsville, 
Tenn., and a site near Hollywood, Ala.

 The consortium, Louisiana Energy Services, hopes to secure a 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission license by 2004. The group expects 
to have the plant up and running by 2007.

 The only U.S. facility that currently enriches uranium for 
nuclear power is in Paducah, Ky. But industry experts say the 
50-year-old plant is outdated and uses inefficient technology.

 Moonshiner convicted after police bust
 					   					 					
[http://www.augustachronicle.com] 
 
1996 - 2002 The Augusta Chronicle. All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
 28 Uranium plant not coming to Lynchburg

NewsAdvance.com - 

By Chris Flores / The News &Advance
 Aug 24, 2002
 
  Central Virginia is not in the running for a new $1.1 billion 
uranium enrichment plant. 

The facility will be built by a consortium called Louisiana 
Energy Services (LES), which made a surprise announcement Friday 
of the two finalist sites. Speculation that Lynchburg and 
Wilmington, N.C., were in the running to land the facility were 
fueled by industry analysts and public officials in Erwin, Tenn., 
which had been previously confirmed by LES as a potential site. 

But the guesses on a site were wrong, and protestors in Erwin 
must have driven LES away, because the final two sites are in 
Hartsville, Tenn., and Bellefonte, Ala. 

The Tennessee Valley Authority canceled proposed nuclear plants 
in Hartsville and Bellefonte, but already has some buildings and 
environmental work done for the sites. 

Virginia state economic development officials attended a recent 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting regarding the uranium 
facility, but local economic officials have said they hadn't 
heard anything about the plant. 

The plant will still have a Lynchburg connection. Duke 
Engineering &Services is part of LES, and when Framatome ANP 
bought the Duke division this year, it inherited Duke's interest 
in the project. Framatome, the largest nuclear fuel and services 
company in the world, has U.S. headquarters in Lynchburg. 
  
*****************************************************************
 29 Contaminated dirt sat near Parks restaurant 

PittsburghLIVE.com - 

 Sunday, August 25, 2002 

Pasta and plutonium - for decades, both could be found in the 
vicinity of a popular Italian restaurant next to the former NUMEC 
nuclear fuels plant in Parks. 

"People would come in and make sly remarks like, 'I don't want to 
drink the water so I don't light up at night,' " said Teddy 
Majercik, 54, of East Vandergrift, who worked as a waitress at 
Veado's restaurant along Route 66 for 22 years. 

The plutonium processing plant began operations in the 1960s. It 
has been demolished, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is 
reviewing final surveys for the land to be released for 
unconditional use. 

"It made me angry at times. I felt safe within the restaurant. I 
drank the water there. I ate the food." 

She, like almost everyone, didn't know there was a pile of 
plutonium-contaminated dirt approximately 50 feet from the 
restaurant and its parking lot. By 1981, when the contaminated 
dirt finally was discovered, it had been there - uncovered and 
unfenced - for at least 12 years. 

Jerry Gorelli, whose family has operated Veado's in Parks since 
1965, said despite the restaurant's proximity to the radioactive 
waste, there never has been any contamination. He said the NRC 
and the state Department of Environmental Resources has 
investigated at Veado's and never detected anything. 

"I hired a guy with a geiger counter myself less than two years 
ago," Gorelli said. "We went over the entire property and the 
(geiger counter) never went off." 

Babcock &Wilcox cleaned up the site immediately after detection. 

But, instead of raising alarm, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
- the government agency charged with overseeing the use of 
nuclear materials and protecting the public and the environment 
from radioactive exposure - issued a news release that said there 
was no plutonium and the radioactivity was a little more than 
what would be considered normal background. 

The truth is, the original soil pile was highly contaminated not 
only with plutonium but also with americium 241, a radioactive 
isotope closely related to plutonium. 

After reviewing documents from the NRC and Babcock &Wilcox, an 
expert said: "It means there was quite a bit of plutonium and 
americium there." According to Arjun Makhijani, president of the 
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, 
Md., some of the levels were high and well beyond regulatory 
limits. 

When asked why the NRC issued a news release stating there was no 
plutonium and low levels of contamination of the property next to 
Veado's, an official said: "The NRC never deviated from stating 
the facts as they were available to us as at the time we received 
facts," said Amir Kouhestani, NRC project manager for the Parks 
site. 

Without going into detail about the matter, Kouhestani said of 
the burial grounds: "The agency is looking forward to the 
remediation in the area in the safest possible way." 

The NRC issued its news release on April 7, 1981, when there was 
only a preliminary analysis. At that point, no plutonium was 
found, but it was suspected, according to a Babcock &Wilcox 
internal memo, which predated the NRC release. 

Officials from BWX Technologies, formerly Babcock &Wilcox, said 
that there were elevated readings of contamination at the soil 
pile near Veado's. "When you find americium, you'll find 
plutonium because it's a daughter product," said Rich Bartosik, 
former site manager at the Parks facility. 

"The plutonium was not detected in preliminary analysis," he 
said. And he added that plutonium is difficult to detect, needing 
special analysis. Another researcher, Marvin Resnikoff, was 
concerned if children or anyone played in the pile of 
contaminated dirt. 

"Small particulates of plutonium could be resuspended in the 
air," said Resnikoff, a senior associate at Radioactive Waste 
Management Associates in New York. 

Micro curie amounts of plutonium could create health effects, 
according to Resnikoff, who has studied the Parks site before. 

"My greater concern was about plutonium in that area in 
resuspension in the air. Inhalation is the key pathway to 
contamination. I was most concerned about car and truck movement 
on the streets when the plant was operating." 

Internal memos from Babcock &Wilcox, obtained by the Valley News 
Dispatch, revealed that the levels of contamination in a portion 
of the soil were 500 times greater than allowed by proposed 
federal law. 

The newspaper's investigation found that the highly contaminated 
soil was left on land owned by the companies NUMEC and Atlantic 
Richfield Co. (ARCO) in the mid to late 1960s. But the land is 
next door to the public restaurant. 

The soil was highly contaminated, according to Roy Woods, a 
radiological inspector from the state Department of Environmental 
Protection and a former NUMEC worker. 

"ARCO used the soil to fill in holes where the farmhouses were," 
Woods said. The farmhouses were demolished in the late 1960s, 
with the foundation for a slaughterhouse making its way to the 
burial pits. 

"There was no place to ship (contaminated soil), so they kept it. 
It was plutonium," Woods said of the origins of the soil. 

The soil came from a drum field, where barrels of plutonium and 
chemical waste leaked into the ground for at least several years 
in the 1960s, according to Woods and company documents. In fact, 
internal memos from NUMEC acknowledged the contamination problems 
with the drum field. 

B stumbled upon the contamination while trying to sell a parcel 
of its land to the owners of Veado's for a car wash along Route 
66. 

Bordering Veado's property line with the NUMEC site are monitors 
that "sniff" for airborne radiation migrating from the NUMEC 
site. The monitors have never detected radiation over allowable 
limits, Gorelli said. His water supply is municipal, not from 
wells. 

And the dirt wasn't just near Veado's. 

Like muddy footprints, soil contaminated with plutonium and 
americium 241 was found and cleaned up at Cook Vascular, a nearby 
medical manufacturing company, in 2001. The soil is suspected to 
have come from the same contaminated dirt found behind Veado's 
restaurant in 1981, according to BWX Technologies' officials. 

"ARCO put a road through that soil," Woods said. "We knew the 
road area was affected." 

That's why, when contamination was discovered on Cook Vascular 
property, formerly Arco property, officials checked under the 
road leading to Cook. 

"Every time the soil pile moved, it was diluted more," Woods 
said. 

The contamination near Veado's sparked public concern about the 
Parks site. "It's a prime example, at minimum, of an uncontrolled 
industry and the NRC being derelict in its duties," said 
environmental activist Patty Ameno of Leechburg. 

"The NRC failed their main mission threefold: to protect the 
health and safety of the people; to protect the environment; and 
to maintain controls over the material," she said. 

Eatery patrons were aware 

Sure, the patrons knew Veado's was next door to a plutonium fuel 
processing plant and a nuclear waste dump. But good Italian 
cuisine was hard to come by in this rural township in the 1960s 
through the 1980s. 

"I always thought the government watched over the plant like 
hawks, so I ate at the restaurant," said Philomena Newhouse, 77, 
of Parks. 

Majercik, the former waitress, still doesn't know whether the 
plutonium plant and its operations affected her. 

She worked at Veado's while pregnant and eventually gave birth to 
a girl who was diagnosed with lymphoma at age 17. A mother of 
five, Majercik's two other daughters have been diagnosed with 
cervical cancer. 

"I really don't know," Majercik said of the cause of cancer for 
her children. 

"I questioned the stack effluents. I still do. 

"I can't say it was Veado's," Majercik said. "I have nothing 
against the restaurant. 

"I still go to Veado's. The family that owns it - there's never 
been any cancer diagnosed with them." 

Gorelli said his restaurant has been the subject of false rumors 
for years. No one has been sickened there. 

"We eat the food every day - me, my kids, my mother - and there's 
never been any problem," he said. 

Gorelli said none of his long-term employees has contracted 
cancer. He also said many female employees worked at Veado's 
while pregnant, and all gave birth to healthy babies. 

copyright Š 2002 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
 30 BE: Dump waste at Sellafield

Guardian Unlimited Observer | Business | 

[UP] 
Oliver Morgan, industrial editor
Sunday August 25, 2002
The Observer [http://www.observer.co.uk]  		
 		
A major row has broken out over the long-term disposal of nuclear 
waste after the head of Britain's biggest nuclear generator said 
Sellafield in Cumbria would be the best place to bury it. 

British Energy executive chairman Robin Jeffrey said that work 
done in the 1980s and 1990s by Nirex, the body set up to oversee 
the process of radioactive waste disposal, showed that 
Sellafield, home of British Nuclear Fuels' reprocessing 
activities, was the 'sensible solution'. 

However, Chris Murray, managing director of Nirex - which is 
funded by BE and other nuclear industry bodies - reacted angrily, 
calling the intervention 'very unhelpful'. 

Jeffrey's remarks are highly controversial because of the extreme 
sensitivity surround ing the issue. Hours before the general 
election in 1997, John Major's government refused Nirex planning 
permission to create a deep underground test site at Sellafield, 
halting in its tracks progress towards a solution. Such a 
solution is becoming more urgent - Britain currently has 10,000 
tonnes of solid waste with a long radioactive life in storage. 

This will rise to half a million tonnes over the next century as 
more nuclear fuel is used and facilities are dismantled. The 
Government is undertaking a consultation process which will last 
beyond 2007 - a period which Jeffrey says is too long. The 
process, in which Nirex and other industry stakeholders are 
involved, is intended to win public confidence by open debate on 
technical options and how the decision itself should be reached. 

Nirex says Jeffrey's intervention could undermine this process. 

Jeffrey told The Observer : 'A lot of work has been done at 
Sellafield. I believe on the basis of the work that has been done 
[by Nirex] that it would be a sensible solution. 'I do believe 
that the Government is right to have a period of consultation but 
it is too long.' Jeffrey points to Finland - where underground 
radioactive waste facilities have been constructed - as an 
example. Murray responded to Jeffrey's remarks, saying: 'We are 
involved in and strongly support the development of a legitimate 
process for the long-term management of this dangerous material. 

'Interventions of this kind are very unhelpful and could 
undermine the whole consultation process that the Government is 
trying to conduct.' 
	
[UP] 
        
Guardian Unlimited Š Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
 31 US Uranium Enrichment Partnership Confirms Site Shortlist 

U.S. Newswire 
23 Aug 10:05 

To: National Desk 
Contact: Dr. Pat Upson of Louisiana Energy Services, 
011 441 628 402234 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Louisiana Energy Services 
(LES) today confirmed that it has notified the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission today that it has a finalist list of two sites for 
location of a new uranium enrichment plant in the U.S. 

The two finalist sites are Hartsville, Trousdale County, Tenn., 
and Bellafonte, Montgomery County, Ala., both properties released 
to the local economic development authorities by the Tennessee 
Valley Authority. 

We are aggressively pursuing our project schedule to find the 
right site for the new facility, and expect completion of the 
process by Sept. 15, LES Chairman Dr. Pat Upson said. 

LES is a partnership of Urenco Ltd., Fluor-Daniel, Exelon, 
Entergy, and Duke. Discussions are underway for Westinghouse and 
Cameco to join the partnership. 

The $1.1 billion facility at the finalist site will use the 
world's lowest cost, most advanced centrifuge technology, which 
was developed by Urenco. If all project milestones are met, the 
three million SWU facility will come on line in 2007, Upson said. 

The site will employ more than 400 workers during construction, 
and up to 250 permanent employees. 
  
http://www.usnewswire.com -0- /U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ 08/23 
10:05 Copyright 2002, U.S. Newswire 
  
  
*****************************************************************
 32 Guest editorial: Safeguards for nuclear fuel 
                                       
[http://www.naplesnews.com/]       

Sunday, August 25, 2002
New York Times News Service 

For years, some 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium packed in 
shipping crates sat in a nuclear institute in Belgrade, 
Yugoslavia, tempting terrorists, criminal traffickers and rogue 
states. Just before dawn on Thursday that uranium was removed to 
a secure facility in Russia where it will be blended into 
civilian reactor fuel. American and Russian technical experts 
cooperated closely in taking it from the Vinca Institute, working 
with Yugoslav scientists and protected by heavily armed Serbian 
police and Yugoslav troops. Vitally important in itself, this 
extraction should become a prototype for future cooperative 
efforts to safeguard and dilute the tons of nuclear weapons fuel 
around the world still dangerously vulnerable to diversion or 
theft. 

For years, some 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium packed in 
shipping crates sat in a nuclear institute in Belgrade, 
Yugoslavia, tempting terrorists, criminal traffickers and rogue 
states. Just before dawn on Thursday that uranium was removed to 
a secure facility in Russia where it will be blended into 
civilian reactor fuel. American and Russian technical experts 
cooperated closely in taking it from the Vinca Institute, working 
with Yugoslav scientists and protected by heavily armed Serbian 
police and Yugoslav troops.

Vitally important in itself, this extraction should become a 
prototype for future cooperative efforts to safeguard and dilute 
the tons of nuclear weapons fuel around the world still 
dangerously vulnerable to diversion or theft. Vinca's was among 
the most poorly guarded of the nearly 350 research reactors in 58 
countries using highly enriched uranium. The bomb fuel removed 
from it on Thursday was enough to make two to three nuclear 
devices. Significant quantities of bomb uranium are present at 
other dangerous research reactors in the former Soviet republics, 
the Middle East and Eastern Europe. There are also some 600 tons 
of highly enriched uranium not yet scheduled for blending in 
Russia itself, along with more than 100 tons of weapons-grade 
plutonium, much of it inadequately protected. 

A heartening feature of the Belgrade project was the high level 
of Russian cooperation. Moscow did not take part in a 1994 
American removal of highly enriched uranium from Kazakhstan, and 
previously declined to take back and render harmless the uranium 
it has supplied to other countries. Continued Russian cooperation 
would not only speed the removal of more bomb fuel but would 
cement its new, more constructive relationship with the United 
States. 

Funds for cleaning up radioactivity at the Vinca site came from 
Ted Turner's private Nuclear Threat Initiative. Overly narrow 
Congressional restrictions prevented the use of American 
government funds for this purpose. Congress should allow 
increased flexibility. The Senate took an important step in that 
direction this summer by authorizing a broad new program to 
cooperate with other countries in cleaning out vulnerable caches 
of nuclear bomb ingredients. 

The Bush administration needs to build on the successful removal 
of the Vinca uranium. It should follow recommendations made early 
last year by former Sen. Howard Baker and former White House 
counsel Lloyd Cutler to greatly increase funding for cooperative 
programs aimed at reducing nuclear, biological and chemical 
dangers to $30 billion over the next decade. This year's spending 
level is around $1 billion. Of all the dollars spent on nuclear 
defense and homeland security, these are among the most 
cost-effective. 


NYT-08-24-02 0009EDT 
  
Copyright Š 2002 Naples Daily News. All rights reserved.
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 33 Kiski Valley's nuclear legacy outlives Cold War 

     PittsburghLIVE.com - 

[Valley News Dispatch] 

 By  [mathomas@tribweb.com] 
VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
 Sunday, August 25, 2002 

The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union disintegrated. Russia, 
once the arch enemy of the West, now is an associate member of 
NATO. 

And still the people of the Kiski Valley live their lives in the 
shadow of the Cold War. 

Guinea pigs or unwitting patriots - whatever label given them - 
residents of places such as Parks and Apollo want to discard 
their nuclear legacy. 

It's been decades since the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. 
- NUMEC - spearheaded America's push into the atomic age with 
weapons-grade plutonium and fuel for the reactors that power the 
U.S. Navy. 

Its plants operated for a time under NUMEC's successors, Atlantic 
Richfield Co. (ARCO) and Babcock and Wilcox (now BWX 
Technologies). But the plants are gone, along with their jobs. In 
Apollo, a grassy field is all that remains of the plants. Most of 
the site has been cleaned up. 

Down the Kiski River, in Parks, the plant that made plutonium is 
gone, too, now just a scar on the ground. The fences there, 
however, show that all is not well in Parks. 

Under a hillside, near the river and dozens of homes and 
businesses, lies the least understood and likely most dangerous 
portion of the area's nuclear legacy: the Shallow Land Disposal 
Area (SLDA). 

No one knows for sure what's in the 10 trenches on that hillside, 
but they're afraid of it. Residents are afraid for their health 
and their way of life. The government and the private companies 
involved clearly are afraid, too.

Afraid of what they'll find if and when they open the trenches. 
Concerned about what could happen if someone with a bulldozer 
makes a mistake up there.

Daunted by what could be astronomical cleanup costs. 

They're right to be afraid. 

A year-long Valley News Dispatch investigation of the site, 
involving thousands of documents - including many newly 
declassified ones - revealed some alarming facts: 

+ At least 400 residents and workers died or have illnesses 
caused by nuclear-fuel processing in Apollo and Parks, according 
to lawsuits and claims to the federal government. 

+ In addition to nuclear contaminants, the trenches contain 
chemical pollutants as dangerous as the plutonium and uranium 
there. Already, trichloroethylene (TCE) is leaking from the site 
and land next to the site into the Kiski River, and officials 
can't find the source of the chemical; 

+ The government and the companies involved never told the public 
about the extent of contamination on the site and on land near 
the site; 

+ Radioactive soil was piled for about 12 years undetected just 
feet from a public restaurant near the site; 

+ The government and companies used workers and the town of 
Apollo as guinea pigs to define the thresholds for nuclear 
contamination. After acute exposure to plutonium, one NUMEC 
worker was part of a study reported by the University of 
Pittsburgh. Other studies and tests were done; it's unclear 
whether workers were aware they were being exposed to high levels 
of radiation; 

+ The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expanded the burial 
grounds this year by about one-third its size because additional 
contamination was found. The contamination is believed to have 
come from the exhumation of a burial pit in 1965. Again, the 
contamination sat there for decades in an unfenced area, within 
1,000 feet of homes in the village of Kiskimere in Parks; 

+ Allegations of illegal dumping of contaminated material in the 
1960s and 1970s persist. And dumping of sewage sludge and other 
contaminated materials, which was legal in the 1960s, could pose 
health threats on private property throughout the Alle-Kiski 
Valley; 

+ The government allowed NUMEC and the plants' subsequent owners 
to disregard nuclear materials safety regulations because the 
government needed the nuclear fuel for national security during 
the Cold War; 

+ The burial site is located above abandoned underground coal 
mines, and officials believe the contamination already is leaking 
into the mines from which it could spread to the river or well 
water through mine drainage; 

+ Cleanup of the site could be just as dangerous as leaving it 
alone because mixing the contaminated soils could bring together 
enough radioactive material to release radioactive particles in 
the air, affecting workers and possibly the public; 

+ How, when and by whom the site will be cleaned up is at the 
mercy of a titanic power struggle within the federal government. 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers 
are trying to determine how long it will take for a cleanup at 
Parks. 

Mary Ann Thomas can be reached at  [mathomas@tribweb.com] or (724 
)226-4691.

copyright Š 2002 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
    
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