------------
Digest 13, originally sent Sat Jan 30 06:42:51 1999 :
There are 4 messages in this issue.
Topics in today's digest:
1. NucNews (2): 1/28/99 - Ukraine's Nuc Waste Dump; Dutch/Israeli Crash Probe (DU) From: Peace through Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx 2. NucNews (1):Action Alert 1/28/99 - UK Nuc Safety Editorial Needs Response; Rocky Flats Sale (today); India Challenge to US From: Peace through Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx 3. NucNews (Int'l) 1/29/99 - Russia/US Ultra-Heavy Element; Russia/China energy; Germ Warfare Isn't Easy From: Peace through Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx 4. NucNews (US): 1/29/99 - Missile Defense Forum by 2/4/99; Trident "conversion" (2); Hanford Report; N.M./WIPP From: Peace through Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx
Message: 1 Subject: NucNews (2): 1/28/99 - Ukraine's Nuc Waste Dump; Dutch/Israeli Crash Probe (DU)
5. Ukraine to Open Europe's Largest Nuclear Waste Dump http://www.russiatoday.com/rtoday/news/99012722.html
6. Dutch Open Israeli Jet Crash Probe http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Netherlands-Jet-Crash-Probe.html
7. Schroeder shelves N-free bid http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990128/news/news23.html
----------------------------------------- 5. Ukraine to Open Europe's Largest Nuclear Waste Dump
http://www.russiatoday.com/rtoday/news/99012722.html
Jan. 27, 1999 Russia Today (Special Section: CIS )
KIEV, Jan. 27, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Europe's largest radioactive waste dump will be opened next year in southern Ukraine, authorities said here Tuesday.
Currently most of the 120 to 200 tonnes of nuclear waste produced at the Zaporizhye plant in southern Ukraine is shipped off to the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, governed by hardliner Gen. Aleksander Lebed.
But authorities there declared last November that they would no longer accept the waste, saying the Ukrainians did not pay enough to make it worthwhile.
Work was started on the future Ukrainian dump in 1994, financed by an American loan. It will be able to stock almost 650 tonnes of nuclear waste for 50 years.
Ukraine has four other nuclear plants, including the infamous Chernobyl. ( (c) 1998 Agence France Presse)
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6. Dutch Open Israeli Jet Crash Probe
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Netherlands-Jet-Crash-Probe.html
By The Associated Press, January 27, 1999
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Sifting through rumor and accusations, the government opened an inquiry Wednesday into what an Israeli jet was carrying when it crashed in 1992 in the Netherlands' worst air disaster.
A parliamentary commission said it was intent on a full and final accounting of the circumstances of the El Al Boeing 747-200 crash, which killed 43 people. Hundreds of area residents have suffered chronic illnesses they blame on the plane's mysterious cargo.
Lawmakers said they hoped to look into several mysteries over the flight -- its cargo and its missing cockpit voice recorder, for example -- that have fueled accusations of a cover-up concerning the crash.
Dutch officials have said the cargo carried Israeli military equipment. Last year, Israeli authorities admitted it was also carrying a chemical that could be used to make the nerve gas sarin....
The inquiry, at which witnesses will testify under oath, has to cut through the wild theories that have accumulated over the years.
One witness, identified only as A. Bos, said he had learned in his own inquiries that the Israeli airline was transporting plutonium-tipped ammunition and heavy metal waste. He also said an unnamed ``collector'' has the stricken plane's cockpit voice recorder and refuses to hand it over.
Israel has denied any dangerous materials were on the flight, but it and the Dutch government have never made public a cargo list.
Many expressed doubts the panel would reveal the full truth.
``I don't trust it. They haven't told us the truth in six years. Who says that will happen now?'' said Maria Herts, whose cousin Morena died in the crash.
Hundreds of people living near the crash scene complain of chronic fatigue, aching muscles and headaches. Previous investigations have failed to conclusively link the complaints to the disaster.
Israel said the cargo included a shipment of dimethyl methylphosphonate from a U.S. company. Aside from its use in sarin, the chemical can also be used in flame retardants and plastics.
The U.S. company said the shipment was headed to Israel's Biological Institute in Nes Ziona, where reports have said Israel is producing chemical and biological weapons. The government has not commented on those claims. It said the chemical was to be used in testing filters.
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7. Schroeder shelves N-free bid
http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990128/news/news23.html
By GEOFF KITNEY, EUROPE CORRESPONDENT BERLIN
January 28, 1999 The Age (Australia)
Plans by the new centre-left government in Germany to realise the anti-nuclear industry's decades-long dream - of shutting down the nuclear power industry in a major European country - have been put on hold, in the face of threats of massive compensation bills and warnings of serious damage to relations with Britain and France.
The decision by the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroeder, to delay moves to begin phasing out the industry in Germany from next January, threatens to destabilise his ``red-green'' coalition government, following strong criticism from the junior partner in the government, the Greens.
It has also raised new questions about the way Mr Schroeder is leading the Government.
The German leader had left management of the Government's controversial nuclear power phase-out plan in the hands of his hardline Environment Minister and Greens deputy leader, Mr Juergen Trittin, who had drawn up an ambitious timetable for beginning the industry shutdown.
This included stopping the export of waste from Germany's 19 nuclear power plants to reprocessing plants in Britain and France from 1January. It would have been the first time a major nuclear power generating country had taken decisive steps towards shutting down its nuclear industry and it was looming as a huge victory for the anti-nuclear movement.
The plan aimed at a complete phasing out of nuclear power in Germany within 20 years. With more than a third of Germany's energy coming from nuclear power plants, this was the Government's most ambitious and controversial policy.
German industry bitterly opposed the policy, warning it would cost up to 40,000 jobs and force Germany to adopt more expensive alternative means of power generation, further reducing the competitiveness of a German industry already burdened by higher costs than its major competitors.
The nuclear industry warned that the plan was unworkable, because it could not develop plans in that time for safely disposing of the waste from its reactors.
The operators of nuclear fuel reprocessing plans in France and Britain, which have lucrative long-term waste reprocessing contracts with German nuclear companies, accused the new Government of a breach of faith.
The French and British Governments announced plans to sue the German Government for as much as $10billion if it refused to honor the supply contracts.
Despite the high stakes involved in the controversial policy, Mr Schroeder continued to allow Mr Trittin to defy the opposition and accepted his advice that his legislation would insulate Germany from massive compensation claims.
But after two days of briefings from officials and meetings with nuclear industry leaders, Mr Schroeder announced late on Tuesday that he had put the phasing out plan on hold because of legal doubts about supply contracts and practical doubts about dealing with the waste.
See also: German Greens press anti-nuclear power stand despite setback http://www.canoe.com/TopStories/nuclear_jan27.html
Alarms ring as Germany moves to unplug nuclear plants (Christian Science Monitor) http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/01/27/p7s1.htm
Europe: Germany Steps Back From Ban On Nuclear Processing (Radio Free Europe) http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/1999/01/F.RU.990127144316.html _____________________________________________________________
* NucNews - to subscribe: prop1@prop1.org - http://prop1.org * Say "Please Subscribe NucNews" NucNews Archive: HTTP://WWW.ONELIST.COM/arcindex.cgi?listname=NucNews since January 13, 1999; for earlier editions - write prop1@prop1.org ---------------------------------------
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> _____________________________________________________________
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Message: 2 Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 06:37:17 -0500 From: Peace through Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx Subject: NucNews (1):Action Alert 1/28/99 - UK Nuc Safety Editorial Needs Response; Rocky Flats Sale (today); India Challenge to US
1. 1. Nuclear Safer Than Coal? [This deserves a reply by experts -- any volunteers?] http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/im-nsc012799.html
2. Bargain day ... at Rocky Flats [Thursday, January 28] Feds auctioning equipment -- "none of it contaminated" http://insidedenver.com/news/0127flat8.shtml
3. India's nuclear challenge to U.S http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_262000/262992.stm
4. Homi Bhabha Chair in Swaminathan Foundation (Rural India Nuc Power) http://www.webpage.com/hindu/daily/990126/04/0426223a.htm
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[This deserves a reply by experts -- any volunteers?]
1. Nuclear Safer Than Coal? http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/im-nsc012799.html
27 JANUARY 1999, UK Institute Of Materials
Nuclear power plants are a much safer option in terms of the effect on peoples health than traditional coal burning power stations, according to Professor Bernard Cohen, writing in the journal Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. Cohen, from the University of Pittsburgh, USA, says, "If we compare the nuclear and coal wastes on the basis of cheap, simple and easy disposal techniques, the coal wastes are 40 times more harmful to human health than nuclear wastes."
Cohen argues that the huge volume of chemicals emitted from a coal power station makes the nuclear production of electricity a much safer option than coal in terms of the direct influence on people's health caused by the waste products from the two processes. Cohen points out that fifteen tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are produced every minute in a large, coal power station together with large quantities of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and organic compounds, many of which are known carcinogens.
In comparison, a nuclear power station producing the same amount of electricity as a large coal burning power station will produce an amount of waste that is five million times smaller in size than the waste produced by a coal burning power station. Cohen says, this waste, "can be handled with a care and sophistication that is completely out of the question for the millions of tons of waste spewed out annually from an analogous coal burning plant." Cohen calculates, from the current disposal techniques employed by the two industries, that air pollution from a coal burning power station results in the fatalities of 25 people while nuclear wastes from generating the same amount of electricity would kill 0.018 people.
Contact: Andrew McLaughlin Andrew_Mclaughlin@materials.org.uk 44-171-451-7395 Institute Of Materials
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2. Bargain day ... at Rocky Flats [Thursday, January 28]: Feds auctioning equipment -- "none of it contaminated"
http://insidedenver.com/news/0127flat8.shtml
By Michael Romano, Inside Denver, January 27, 19999
WASHINGTON -- Call it a garage sale for the atomic age.
Rocky Flats, the heavily contaminated former nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver, is auctioning more than 1 million items worth as much as $20 million [today, January 28,999].
Buyers can get everything from high-tech lathes to steel file cabinets, electric fork lifts to trash cans. What they won't find are the plutonium bomb triggers the plant once built or anything radioactive.....
The sale is at 9:30 a.m. in a building near the west entrance along Colorado 93. A preview of merchandise is scheduled from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. today [January 27, 1999].
"We've been getting pretty good crowds," said Etchart. "Some of these people are buying in bulk. There's a lot of individuals out there who just want a good deal."
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3. India's nuclear challenge to U.S
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_262000/262992.stm
BBC World Service, January 27, 1999
The Indian Defence Minister, George Fernandes, has challenged the world's nuclear powers each to make binding declarations that they will not be the first to use such weapons in any conflict.
He said India and China had already made such a pledge, adding that it was vital that all nuclear powers agreed a common policy to ensure peace and stability.
The United States has been leading efforts to persuade India and Pakistan to join the nuclear test ban treaty, but has itself refused to rule out the unilateral use of nuclear weapons.
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4. Homi Bhabha Chair in Swaminathan Foundation (Rural India Nuc Power)
http://www.webpage.com/hindu/daily/990126/04/0426223a.htm
Date: 26-01-1999 :: The Hindu
CHENNAI, Jan. 25.
The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has established a Homi Bhabha Chair for Nuclear Science and Rural Society at the M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) to extend the peaceful use of nuclear energy to communities living in regions adjoining nuclear plants.
The initial work of the Chair, which will be held by Dr.P.C.Kesavan, former Director, Biosciences Group of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) will be in the villages adjoining the nuclear plants at Kalpakkam and the site of the proposed plant at Kudankulam. Coastal villages near Chidambaram and Pondicherry would also benefit from this partnership.
Speaking on ``nuclear science for sustainable agriculture and rural development'' at the inaugural function, Dr.Kesavan said the ecotechnology approach with nuclear and biotechnological tools for coastal systems could help areas such as water management, soil conservation and reclamation, integrated pest management, amelioration of coastal salinity and genetic management of abiotic stress. Dr. Kesavan said the application of nuclear technology on agriculture had resulted in genetic improvement of crop plants and fertilizer efficiency and better pest management. Irradiation of food had become a major method for preservation and increasing shelf-life. For instance, irradiation of onion reduced sprouting and that of mushroom made it stay white longer. In both cases the shelf-life increased substantially. Fifteen food varieties had been permitted for irradiation.
The MSSRF had already initiated Integrated Intensive Farming System (IIFS) at Kalpakkam and Pichavaram which involved production and use of biofertilisers and evolution of BARC plant varieties.
Under the project, the pulse village programme would bring more dry land under cultivation. This would utilise some BARC mutants which were drought and disease resistant. Fishing and farming communities in the project areas would be receive concurrent attention.
Dr.Placid Rodriguez, Director, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), said Vikram Sarabhai had a vision of agroindustrial complexes around nuclear centres. These complexes, aimed at sustainable development, would provide enough opportunities for the rural population which otherwise was in migration to the cities for livelihood. Sustainable development did not mean ``zero growth,'' he added.
Of late there had been a sea change in the attitude of scientists towards traditional knowledge. There was immense useful knowledge preserved in the traditional systems and communities. For instance, 80 per cent of the all modern medicines were made from plants used by the people in the country. This knowledge could contribute to sustainable development.
In view of the large scale migration of rural population to urban centres which even led to the projection that by 2050, the country would have only 30 per cent of its population in rural areas, development should be equitable.
Prof.M.S.Swaminathan, Chairperson of the Foundation, said Dr.Bhabha was keen that agriculture should derive benefit from atomic energy. The steps he took promoted effective inter- disciplinary programmes on mutation breeding, hydrological studies, food irradiation and micropropagation.
The opportunities provided by modern science and technology would be useful only if those chosen for propagation were eco-friendly, pro-poor, gender-equal and capable of sustaining productivity. The mandate of the Chair was to realise this goal. Recalling the contribution of Dr.Bhabha, Prof.T.S.Sadasivan said the late scientist had the rare ability to go to the root of any problem. _____________________________________________________________
* NucNews - to subscribe: prop1@prop1.org - http://prop1.org * Say "Please Subscribe NucNews" NucNews Archive: HTTP://WWW.ONELIST.COM/arcindex.cgi?listname=NucNews since January 13, 1999; for earlier editions - write prop1@prop1.org ---------------------------------------
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> _____________________________________________________________
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Message: 3 Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 16:18:24 -0500 From: Peace through Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx Subject: NucNews (Int'l) 1/29/99 - Russia/US Ultra-Heavy Element; Russia/China energy; Germ Warfare Isn't Easy
1. U.S.-Russian Team May Have Created Ultra-Heavy Element http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/science/sci-new-element.html
2. China, Russia Step up Energy Cooperation http://www.russiatoday.com/rtoday/business/news/99012212.html
3. Germ Warfare Isn't Easy http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/lrap.html
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1. U.S.-Russian Team May Have Created Ultra-Heavy Element
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/science/sci-new-element.html
By MALCOLM W. BROWNE, January 29, 1999 New York Times
Collaborating Russian and American nuclear physicists believe they have created a new ultra-heavy element that may open the door to a host of new elements once considered impossible.
If confirmed, the achievement would mark the realization of efforts over a half century to reach a major goal of nuclear physics: to create an element far heavier than any in nature that would survive for long enough to permit scientific study.
Russian physicists announced the news over the last few weeks through e-mail to international physics laboratories, and the journal Science published a brief account of the work on Jan. 22.
The work to create the element, which has not been named, was conducted at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna, Russia, under the leadership of Dr. Yuri Oganessian, a nuclear physicist.
The American participants in the experiment, from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said in interviews Thursday that they would have preferred to withhold the news until they had completed some calculations, but that the evidence for the creation of the element was very strong.
It appears, they said, that during a four-month bombardment from a big Russian cyclotron of a rare isotope, or form, of plutonium by atoms of a rare isotope of calcium, a single atom of the new element was created. The nucleus of a calcium projectile atom fused with the nucleus of a target plutonium atom to form an element containing 114 protons and about 184 neutrons in its nucleus. The resulting atom of Element 114 survived for about 30 seconds, they said, a long period compared with the decay rates of most other heavy man-made elements.
The pattern of radiation and nuclear fragments from the decaying atom matched the pattern predicted by theory for the decay of Element 114, the scientists said.
The creation of Element 114, if confirmed, would place science at the edge of the long-sought "island of stability," theoretically a range of fairly stable ultra-heavy artificial elements that physicists say may offer scientists a new palette of chemical elements unknown in nature.
The achievement, if confirmed by laboratories in Russia, the United States and Germany, where similar research has been done, would be a landmark in the course of nuclear discoveries that began in World War II with the creation of plutonium, the element used to destroy Nagasaki, Japan.
Of the 92 elements in the basic periodic table from hydrogen, the lightest, with only one proton in its nucleus, to uranium, the heaviest, with 92 protons, all but two elements, technetium and promethium, are found in nature.
Tiny amounts of plutonium have also been found in nature. But with that exception, all elements with proton numbers greater than the 92 of uranium must be made in laboratories, and with Element 114, 21 artificial elements have been made. (Element 113 is missing from the sequence.)
Many of the elements created since plutonium have found important uses in medicine, chemistry and even smoke detectors, which use the radioactive man-made element americium.
The possibility of creating a stable super-heavy element was first predicted in the 1940s by theorists who hypothesized a shell structure of protons and neutrons in large atomic nuclei, analogous to the shells of electrons orbiting atomic nuclei. They believed that nuclei with filled proton and neutron shells would be less likely to disintegrate radioactively than nuclei with partly filled shells.
But despite intense efforts by scientists in the United States, Russia and Europe in the intervening half century, the goal of making a super-heavy element within the island of stability was not achieved. A major problem was that when two atomic nuclei collide, they often combine energies to such high levels that the new composite nucleus instantly shakes itself apart.
The 18-member Dubna team, assisted by five American physicists, created the putative atom of Element 114, using a large cyclotron to hurl projectile atoms of calcium-48 at targets of plutonium-244. Both of these radioactive isotopes were provided for the experiment by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
The scientists have not announced their results in any formal publication, but the Russian contingent unveiled its data in e-mail with foreign nuclear physicists, including Albert Ghiorso, a leading nuclear experimentalist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Calif.
Ghiorso is a longtime associate of Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, the Nobel laureate who created plutonium. Ghiorso is credited as a co-creator of 12 artificial elements beyond uranium.
"I can't tell you how much I wish we at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory had been the ones to get Element 114," he said. "It's one of the greatest achievements in physics. But I'm overjoyed that someone has done it."
The 88-inch Berkeley cyclotron will be used to try to repeat the Dubna experiment, he said.
Dr. Ronald Lougheed and Dr. John N. Wild, two members of the Livermore team, said they would continue to work on the Russian cyclotron to confirm the discovery, but meanwhile were preparing a formal paper reporting the results.
Bill Richardson, who as secretary of energy is in charge of Livermore and other national physics laboratories hailed the work. "If confirmed, the synthesis of Element 114 will create an important new opportunity to study the physics of extremely heavy elements," he said.
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2. China, Russia Step up Energy Cooperation
http://www.russiatoday.com/rtoday/business/news/99012212.html
Russia Today, January 26, 1999
MOSCOW, Jan. 22, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Russia plans major energy projects with China, including the supply of gas, oil, electricity and a nuclear power station, Itar-Tass news agency reported Friday.
The agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin as saying that a joint Chinese-Russian committee on energy meeting in Moscow had discussed the projects, which marked a growth in relations between the two countries.
In the coming decades Russia planned to deliver natural gas to China from eastern Siberia with the aid of foreign firms, the spokesman said. Other projects included an oil pipeline from Siberia and electricity from the city of Irkutsk.
The commission also approved the construction of a Russian nuclear power station near Lianyungang in eastern China's Jiangsu province. The $3 billion contract would prove Russia's ability to compete with other major world energy producers, Rakhmanin said.
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3. Germ Warfare Isn't Easy
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/lrap.html
Related Article Defense Against a Missile Attack (Jan. 22) http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/early/01229922fri3.html
To the Editor, New York Times, January 29, 1999:
You say that "lethal germs and deadly nerve gases are easily prepared in bathroom laboratories" (editorial, Jan. 22). As evidence, you cite the 1995 nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system. But the group responsible for this attack had 300 scientists and an estimated $1 billion in its budget -- hardly a "bathroom" laboratory.
Chemical and biological weapons are a real threat, but we must keep this danger in perspective.
Since 1970 there have been 12 attacks in the United States in which such weapons were used, causing 1 death and 772 injuries, almost all of which were minor.
DAVID C. RAPOPORT Los Angeles, Jan. 25, 1999 Professor of political science, University of California.
_____________________________________________________________
* NucNews - to subscribe: prop1@prop1.org - http://prop1.org * Say "Please Subscribe NucNews" NucNews Archive: HTTP://WWW.ONELIST.COM/arcindex.cgi?listname=NucNews since January 13, 1999; for earlier editions - write prop1@prop1.org ---------------------------------------
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> _____________________________________________________________
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Message: 4 Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 16:12:34 -0500 From: Peace through Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx Subject: NucNews (US): 1/29/99 - Missile Defense Forum by 2/4/99; Trident "conversion" (2); Hanford Report; N.M./WIPP
1. PBS Online has a significant special on National Missile Defense (way to go, John Pike!): http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june99/nmd_splash.html
2. Panel Urges Converting 4 Tridents To Conventional, Covert Weapon http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-01/29/161l-012999-idx.html
3. Navy awards Northrop Grumman $62.8 million to upgrade Trident 2 http://www.flatoday.com/space/explore/stories/1999/012499a.htm
4. Study: No Hanford Link to Disease http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Hanford-Study.html http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/hanford990128.html http://www2.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,12265-20778-152493-0,00.html
5. State To Seek Settlement With Feds Over WIPP http://www.abqjournal.com/news/1news01-23.htm
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1. PBS Online has a significant special on National Missile Defense (way to go, John Pike!): http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june99/nmd_splash.html
Missile Defense Debriefer: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june99/nmd_1-28a.html A Viable Defense? http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june99/nmd_1-28.html
Here's how you can write to PBS Forum on the subject: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/february99/nmd_forum.html
Our forum asks: Should the U.S. build a national missile defense system? How real is the threat of attack from "rogue" nations? Is the system worth the risk of upsetting relations with Russia? Would the proposed missile defense system increase or decrease national security?
Your questions are answered by John Pike, Director of the Space Policy Project at the Federation of American Scientists, and Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security and Policy. Please submit your answers by February 4, 1999. Answers will posted later that evening.
(background)
The Clinton administration has proposed spending $6.6 billion over the next six years to build a system capable of destroying ballistic missiles fired at the United States.
The system, which the Department of Defense hopes to have in place by 2005, would protect America from attacks from nations, such as North Korea and Iran, that are developing longer range missiles capable of reaching beyond their neighbors.
"We are committing additional billions of dollars and taking other steps to protect our troops and the American people from the growing threat posed by weapons of mass destruction delivered by ballistic missiles," Secretary of Defense William Cohen explained earlier thie month.
Secretary Cohen said a final go-ahead for the program could be given in the year 2000 if a review shows that the ballistic missile threat is a viable one to the nation and that the technology is fully developed.
Unlike the Reagan administration's space-based Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars", this new system would be built around ground-based "Interceptors" designed to eliminate a small number of missiles.
Nonetheless, deployment of the missile defense system may require the revision of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty signed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The ABM treaty banned national missile defense systems and has been called a cornerstone of Cold War arms reduction policy.
The Russian government has charged that the U.S. proposal is a flagrant violation of the ABM accord and has flatly rejected the suggestion by Secretary of State Madeline Albright that the treaty be modified. In addition, Moscow has warned that if the Clinton administration goes ahead with the plan, they will not ratify the 1993 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), an agreement that would significantly reduce the Russian and American nuclear stockpiles.
Those opposed to the plan argue missile defense technology is unproven and easily defeated by countermeasures that make them difficult to intercept and that a large number of missiles could overwhelm the system. Proponents counter that any system that can reduce the threat of a missile attack is better than none.
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2. Panel Urges Converting 4 Tridents To Conventional, Covert Weapon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-01/29/161l-012999-idx.html
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 29, 1999; Page A07
A Pentagon advisory group is proposing that four Trident submarines be converted into conventional missile platforms or covert troop ships if they are removed from active duty as nuclear missile submarines under a Navy plan awaiting approval from Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.
The four Tridents, part of a fleet of 18, were originally scheduled for decommissioning under plans established in the early 1990s, as part of the START II arms control reductions. Those plans are now on hold since a congressional amendment has prohibited reducing U.S. strategic forces below their START I levels until the Russian parliament, the Duma, ratifies START II.
Although there are questions whether the Duma will act this year, Chief of Naval Operations Jay L. Johnson recently told Congress he was prepared to begin decommissioning four Tridents even without Moscow ratification. Cohen, according to sources, will support that position and request repeal of the congressional language.
Converted Trident submarines, with their long underwater patrol abilities and superquiet nuclear propulsion systems, would provide a "covert precision strike and special forces platform that can be positioned in a nonprovocative manner," according to a report by the Defense Science Board (DBS), a Pentagon advisory group.
The Navy has been working on conventional warheads for the C-4 intercontinental-range missiles that will have their nuclear warheads removed when the Tridents are taken off active duty. Among the designs being considered is one for a deep earth penetrator, sources said. Another would carry anti-armor explosive, the sources said.
The Tridents could have some of their 24 launch tubes altered to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles, standoff missiles and in the future even air defense missiles and missile interceptors, according to the board report.
Once their nuclear engines have been refueled and the boats themselves converted, the Tridents could have 20 more years of service life, according to the DSB.
"Many people think this might make sense, especially given the expectation that the Persian Gulf will become a much more lethal environment for surface ships in the next decade," a senior congressional weapons expert said.
However, according to the expert, "there is heavy resistance from the surface Navy types because they see this relatively cheap missile platform as a direct competitor to their planned multibillion-dollar purchase of DD-21s," the next generation Aegis destroyer.
The Navy has plans to purchase 32 DD-21s, called "land attack destroyers," at a cost of some $800 million each. The defense board study estimates that converting the four Tridents would cost $1.86 billion, slightly more than two DD-21s.
"The autonomy and inherent stealth of Trident submarines would introduce a significant unknown into the calculus of any potential adversary," the board said. "Although no U.S. surface forces might be in a given area, an adversary could not discount the fact that there could be a Trident within striking range."
Armed with a conventional version of the C-4 missile, the Trident could hit targets from a distance of more than 1,000 miles, according to Donald C. Latham, a board member and former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.
The Tridents also could carry two midget submarines, now under design for the Navy SEALS, and use them to dispatch up to 100 special forces personnel to carry out covert missions ashore, Latham added.
A secret intelligence study by the Pentagon's net assessment office, completed last fall, found that countries such as China and Iran, with long coastlines, have been building up their defenses against surface ships and conventional submarines to counter U.S. capabilities.
"There is growing concern about the development of layered defense systems that create an in-depth anti-access barrier to naval operations in littoral seas," the DSB said in its report. In such situations, the report went on, "the Trident offers a high probability of surveillance penetration."
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3. Navy awards Northrop Grumman $62.8 million to upgrade Trident 2
http://www.flatoday.com/space/explore/stories/1999/012499a.htm
Northrop Grumman Corp. News Release, Florida Today Jan. 24, 1999
SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Northrop Grumman Corporation's (NYSE: NOC) Marine Systems business unit has been awarded $62.8 million by the U.S. Navy to upgrade the U.S.S. Nevada (SSBN-733), the second of four U.S. Trident 1 nuclear submarines to be backfitted with new launch tubes and subsystems to accommodate the larger D-5 Trident 2 ballistic missiles.
The company also will begin converting the Navy's strategic weapons facility in Bangor, Wash., to handle the newer, larger D-5 missile launchers.
In 1994, Northrop Grumman completed construction of the initial Trident 2 missile launching systems on 10 of the Navy's newer Trident submarines. Plans now call for four of the original Trident 1 submarines to be upgraded to fire the D-5 missile, which has extended range and greater accuracy. The Trident submarine force represents the sea-based leg of the nation's strategic triad.
In January 1998, Northrop Grumman began producing the first of 24 launchers for the U.S.S. Alaska (SSBN-732).
Marine Systems is a unit of Northrop Grumman's Electronic Sensors and Systems Sector (ES3), headquartered in Baltimore, Md. ES3 is a leading designer, systems integrator and manufacturer of defense electronics and systems, airspace management systems, marine systems, precision weapons, space systems, and automation and information systems.
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4. Study: No Hanford Link to Disease
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Hanford-Study.html
By The Associated Press, January 29, 1999
RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- Cold War-era radiation releases from the Hanford nuclear reservation are not linked to the incidence of thyroid disease among people who lived downwind from the plant, a 10-year federal study concluded.
Results of the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
``The study, to put it in a simple statement, found no increased risk for thyroid disease from exposure to radioactive iodine released from the Hanford facility,'' said Dr. Paul Garbe, a CDC adviser on the $18 million study.
``We also recognize there will be people who don't believe the results of this study,'' he said.
Hanford, built in 1943 as part of the secret World War II Manhattan Project, produced plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal into the 1980s. The 560-square-mile Department of Energy site is considered the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.
Many in the Northwest for years have blamed Hanford for a variety of illnesses, particularly cancer. Researchers have found that some downwinders were likely to have ingested radioactive iodine from Hanford releases.
The CDC study examined the thyroid health of 3,441 people born between 1940 and 1946 looking for a link between radioactive iodine releases from Hanford between 1944 and 1957 and the rate of thyroid disease among those living downwind.
Participants were randomly selected from the four counties closest to Hanford, in southeastern Washington, as well as from three counties in northeastern Washington where low exposure would be expected.
The thyroid -- a butterfly-shaped gland in the neck -- influences metabolism and aids the growth and development of nearly every tissue in the body.
Like others in the study, Sally Sanders was a child when Hanford released substantial amounts of radiation into the air in the '40s and '50s. All three of her siblings were diagnosed with thyroid cancer. One sister, Linda, died in 1993.
During a public meeting at which researchers explained their findings, she held up a handmade sign that said: ``I don't believe it.''
Scott Davis, the principal investigator from Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which conducted the study for the CDC, called the findings powerful.
``We have a high level of confidence in these results,'' he said.
Kay Sutherland, who suffers from an underactive thyroid, believes Hanford releases have caused or worsened health problems for many people in the region.
``If they found a link between Hanford and the thyroid disease, then they would have to find a link with all the other diseases in this area,'' said Sutherland, 58, of Walla Walla, about 50 miles southeast of here.
Garbe said studies like this one cannot tell whether every individual's thyroid disease is or isn't caused by Hanford radiation.
``It can only tell us that in this specific group of people we did not find a link between the thyroid disease and their estimated thyroid radiation dose from Hanford,'' he said.
SEE ALSO: Hanford Study Doubted; No Increased Cancer Risk for People Near Plant http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/hanford990128.html http://www2.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,12265-20778-152493-0,00.html _______________________
5. State To Seek Settlement With Feds Over WIPP Suit Foes Promise To Continue Fight Without New Mexico
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/1news01-23.htm
By Mike Taugher Albuquerque Journal - January 23, 1999
New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid is preparing to pull the state out of a lawsuit that for years has blocked the federal government from opening the world's first engineered underground nuclear waste dump.
Madrid, who has been in office less than a month, asked a federal judge Friday to delay a filing deadline to Feb. 1 so that her office and the U.S. Department of Energy could try to reach a settlement "involving all of the claims" in the 8-year-old lawsuit.
A court order in the case has prevented the Energy Department from shipping nuclear waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad in southern New Mexico.
Environmental groups, which had joined New Mexico's former attorney general in the lawsuit, plan to continue pursuing the case without the state's participation if a settlement is reached.
However, withdrawal of the state's top prosecutor could weaken the effort.
"We're very disappointed that more than eight years of New Mexico policy is being overturned by this attorney general," said Don Hancock, a leading WIPP critic who also is involved in the lawsuit.
Hancock said he believes the environmental groups will be able to keep the court order in place even without Madrid and the state of New Mexico being involved in the case.
"We think it has no effect," Hancock said, referring to Madrid's anticipated settlement move. "Would we prefer to be filing with the attorney general? Yes."
Work on the $2 billion waste dump was completed in 1989, but its opening has been delayed by regulatory issues and legal challenges. Despite all the obstacles, the Energy Department has hoped to open the long-stalled dump in February. Madrid's move possibly could help to accommodate that opening target.
Madrid succeeded two-term Attorney General Tom Udall earlier this month. Udall, a Democrat elected to Congress in November, fought WIPP for eight years while attorney general.
On the campaign trail last year, Madrid, who also is a Democrat, said she would not continue Udall's battle over opening WIPP. And she said she would look at trying to get more compensation from the federal government for WIPP and New Mexico.
Madrid, in a statement issued Friday, said, "I am committed to maximizing the benefit we may obtain from DOE and protecting New Mexico's authority over the activities conducted within our border." Madrid declined to elaborate, said a spokeswoman for the attorney general, Sam Thompson.
Madrid and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who is a former New Mexico congressman, discussed WIPP over lunch recently, Thompson confirmed.
A spokesman for Udall said the congressman declined to comment on Madrid's decision.
An Energy Department spokeswoman declined to comment, and referred a reporter only to the court motion filed by Madrid and the Energy Department.
"It speaks for itself," said Energy Department spokeswoman Anne Elliott.
Seven years ago, U.S. District Judge John Garrett Penn of Washington, D.C., stopped the Energy Department from opening WIPP without environmental controls beyond what the Energy Department proposed.
That court order remains in effect. And since WIPP was licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency last May, the central issue in the case has been whether the Energy Department can ship roughly 100 drums of nuclear waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory before it receives a hazardous waste permit from the state.
The state permit to allow waste disposals at WIPP, expected to be issued between July and September, is for material that is hazardous but not radioactive.
The Energy Department contends it does not need the permit because the Los Alamos drums do not contain state-regulated material. Eventually, the Energy Department plans to dispose of 850,000 drums of rags, tools and debris contaminated with radioactivity in the nation's defense complex.
The WIPP waste would be deposited in salt beds 2,150 feet beneath the surface, in excavated caverns 26 miles east of Carlsbad.
Environmental groups, which had been working with the Attorney General's Office until Friday, contend the state permit is required for a variety of reasons. They argue state-regulated material is, in fact, present in the drums; that the Energy Department made numerous promises to obtain the state permit before opening; and that the permit is needed to maintain state authority over the dump and ensure it is properly regulated.
The environmental groups in the case before Penn include the Southwest Research and Information Center of Albuquerque, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety of Santa Fe and two national groups -- the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund.
New Mexico Environment Department spokesman Nathan Wade said Friday that his agency would not try to stop limited shipments from Los Alamos, but that it might take action if the Energy Department tried to increase shipments before the state permit is issued.