------------
Digest 67, originally sent Sat Apr 3 02:47:25 1999 :
There are 7 messages in this issue.
Topics in today's digest:
1. NucNews-0 Brief 4/02/99
2. NucNews-0 Brief 4/02/99
3. NucNews-3-U.S. 4/02/99 - Los Alamos (2)
4. NucNews-1-Int'l 4/02/99 - Y2K; Canada/Plutonium;Sellafield; Australia; Russia
5. NucNews-2-U.S. 4/02/99 - Rocky Flats Jury Split; NATO's 50th-DC; Idaho INEEL Nuc Waste
6. NucNews-0 Brief 4/03/99
7. NucNews-1-Int'l 4/03/99 -
_______________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1 Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 08:15:41 -0500
Subject: NucNews-0 Brief 4/02/99
[Note: Please send letters to editors of original publications with a copy to NucNews Archives <prop1@prop1.org>. Thanks.]
NucNews-1-Int'l 4/02/99 - Y2K; Canada/Plutonium;Sellafield; Australia; Russia NucNews-2-U.S. 4/02/99 - Rocky Flats Jury Split; NATO's 50th-DC; Idaho INEEL Nuc Waste NucNews-3-U.S. 4/02/99 - Los Alamos (2)
---(1)
1. Y2K Nuke Accidents Called Unlikely Albuquerque Journal Millenium Project http://www.abqjournal.com/2000/2000.htm http://wire.ap.org/?PACKAGEID=millenniumbug Russia is behind many Western nations in confronting the Year 2000 computer glitch, but Soviet-era computers that control nuclear weapons and reactors are unlikely to cause any accidents, a Russian expert said. One story in a series by the Associated Press on the Y2K problem.
2. AECL to 'test-burn' plutonium from weapons in spring Tom Spears The Ottawa Citizen, April 2, 1999 http://www.ottawacitizen.com/city/990401/2435229.html Two small batches of plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons should be ready for "test-burning" at Chalk River this summer, Atomic Energy of Canada says. The plutonium, about 120 grams each of Russia and the United States, will be trucked in to Chalk River, in Northern Ontario. But AECL says people along the transport route should not worry....
3. 500 Sellafield job cuts a threat to Irish coast Irish Times, April 1, 1999, From Rachel Donnelly, in London http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/1999/0401/wor19.htm BRITAIN: Greenpeace has criticised yesterday's announcement by British Nuclear Fuels that it is shedding a further 500 jobs at the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, saying the plant poses "a significant threat" to the Irish coastline....
4. Police and anti-uranium protesters clash Tuesday 30 March, 1999 Australian Broadcasting http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-30mar1999-62.htm Police and members of an anti-uranium group have clashed outside the Melbourne office of North Limited on the second day of protests against the Jabiluka mining project in the Northern Territory.
[Note the last paragraph about Ukraine and Belarus nuclear weapons status discussion.Chilling.]
5. Russians protest air strikes By Dave Montgomery, PHILADELHIA INQUIRER, March 28, 1999 http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Mar/28/national/RUSS28.htm MOSCOW -- As many as 5,000 protesters chanted "Yankee go home," burned American flags, torched images of President Clinton, and pelted the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with eggs, ink and beer bottles yesterday in the ugliest anti-American demonstrations here since the Cold War.... On Wednesday, the Moscow Times reported, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to abolish Ukraine's nuclear-free status, and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko ordered his government to study the option of returning nuclear weapons to the Kansas-sized country, which borders Poland, one of NATO's three new members.
---(2)
6. Jury splits in Rockwell suit April 1, 1999 UPI http://www.webcrawler.com/news/u/990401/18/news-rockyflats DENVER, April 1 (UPI) A federal court jury returned a split verdict in a $164 million case against Rockwell International for shoddy work and coverups at Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.
7. NATO will take over streets of District By Leslie Koren April 2, 1999, WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/metro/metro1.html The federal and D.C. governments will cede the city's downtown streets to world leaders on April 23 to make way for the NATO 50th Anniversary Summit. ALSO: Downtown Holiday For NATO Summit 90,000 Federal Workers Can Stay Home April 23 By Peter Slevin, April 2, 1999, Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-04/02/179l-040299-idx.html
8. New INEEL site gets first N-waste load (Idaho) April 1, 1999 Spokane Spokesman-Review, Associated Press http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=040199&ID=s555405&cat= IDAHO FALLS, Idaho _ Federal officials successfully met their Wednesday deadline to begin moving radioactive remnants from the Three Mile Island nuclear accident to safer storage in eastern Idaho.
---(3)
9. Secrets, Science Are Volatile Mixture at Los Alamos Lab Security: Suspected efforts by China and others to obtain data put U.S. researchers under a microscope. April 1, 1999, By BOB DROGIN, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/excite/990401/t000029118.html LOS ALAMOS, N.M.--Security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, America's largest nuclear weapon facility, sometimes seems straight from a Hollywood thriller.
10. Trade of 'Blackest' Secrets Began in '45 -- in N.M. By John Fleck, April 1, 1999, Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer http://www.abqjournal.com/news/3news04-01.htm Nuclear espionage was born in New Mexico along with the atomic bomb. You can trace its history to two days in June 1945 -- to a bridge over the Santa Fe River and a nondescript Albuquerque apartment on High Street NE.
_____________________________
A fast way to keep up to date: Subscribe to NucNews !! To subscribe: prop1@prop1.org Say "Subscribe NucNews"
NucNews Archive: http://prop1.org/nucnews/nucnews.htm The Conversion Project at http://prop1.org "A-Z Antinuclear Weblinks" at http://prop1.org/prop1/azantink.htm
_______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2 Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 08:16:06 -0500
Subject: NucNews-0 Brief 4/02/99
[Note: Please send letters to editors of original publications with a copy to NucNews Archives <prop1@prop1.org>. Thanks.]
NucNews-1-Int'l 4/02/99 - Y2K; Canada/Plutonium;Sellafield; Australia; Russia NucNews-2-U.S. 4/02/99 - Rocky Flats Jury Split; NATO's 50th-DC; Idaho INEEL Nuc Waste NucNews-3-U.S. 4/02/99 - Los Alamos (2)
---(1)
1. Y2K Nuke Accidents Called Unlikely Albuquerque Journal Millenium Project http://www.abqjournal.com/2000/2000.htm http://wire.ap.org/?PACKAGEID=millenniumbug Russia is behind many Western nations in confronting the Year 2000 computer glitch, but Soviet-era computers that control nuclear weapons and reactors are unlikely to cause any accidents, a Russian expert said. One story in a series by the Associated Press on the Y2K problem.
2. AECL to 'test-burn' plutonium from weapons in spring Tom Spears The Ottawa Citizen, April 2, 1999 http://www.ottawacitizen.com/city/990401/2435229.html Two small batches of plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons should be ready for "test-burning" at Chalk River this summer, Atomic Energy of Canada says. The plutonium, about 120 grams each of Russia and the United States, will be trucked in to Chalk River, in Northern Ontario. But AECL says people along the transport route should not worry....
3. 500 Sellafield job cuts a threat to Irish coast Irish Times, April 1, 1999, From Rachel Donnelly, in London http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/1999/0401/wor19.htm BRITAIN: Greenpeace has criticised yesterday's announcement by British Nuclear Fuels that it is shedding a further 500 jobs at the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, saying the plant poses "a significant threat" to the Irish coastline....
4. Police and anti-uranium protesters clash Tuesday 30 March, 1999 Australian Broadcasting http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-30mar1999-62.htm Police and members of an anti-uranium group have clashed outside the Melbourne office of North Limited on the second day of protests against the Jabiluka mining project in the Northern Territory.
[Note the last paragraph about Ukraine and Belarus nuclear weapons status discussion.Chilling.]
5. Russians protest air strikes By Dave Montgomery, PHILADELHIA INQUIRER, March 28, 1999 http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Mar/28/national/RUSS28.htm MOSCOW -- As many as 5,000 protesters chanted "Yankee go home," burned American flags, torched images of President Clinton, and pelted the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with eggs, ink and beer bottles yesterday in the ugliest anti-American demonstrations here since the Cold War.... On Wednesday, the Moscow Times reported, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to abolish Ukraine's nuclear-free status, and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko ordered his government to study the option of returning nuclear weapons to the Kansas-sized country, which borders Poland, one of NATO's three new members.
---(2)
6. Jury splits in Rockwell suit April 1, 1999 UPI http://www.webcrawler.com/news/u/990401/18/news-rockyflats DENVER, April 1 (UPI) A federal court jury returned a split verdict in a $164 million case against Rockwell International for shoddy work and coverups at Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.
7. NATO will take over streets of District By Leslie Koren April 2, 1999, WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/metro/metro1.html The federal and D.C. governments will cede the city's downtown streets to world leaders on April 23 to make way for the NATO 50th Anniversary Summit. ALSO: Downtown Holiday For NATO Summit 90,000 Federal Workers Can Stay Home April 23 By Peter Slevin, April 2, 1999, Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-04/02/179l-040299-idx.html
8. New INEEL site gets first N-waste load (Idaho) April 1, 1999 Spokane Spokesman-Review, Associated Press http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=040199&ID=s555405&cat= IDAHO FALLS, Idaho _ Federal officials successfully met their Wednesday deadline to begin moving radioactive remnants from the Three Mile Island nuclear accident to safer storage in eastern Idaho.
---(3)
9. Secrets, Science Are Volatile Mixture at Los Alamos Lab Security: Suspected efforts by China and others to obtain data put U.S. researchers under a microscope. April 1, 1999, By BOB DROGIN, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/excite/990401/t000029118.html LOS ALAMOS, N.M.--Security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, America's largest nuclear weapon facility, sometimes seems straight from a Hollywood thriller.
10. Trade of 'Blackest' Secrets Began in '45 -- in N.M. By John Fleck, April 1, 1999, Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer http://www.abqjournal.com/news/3news04-01.htm Nuclear espionage was born in New Mexico along with the atomic bomb. You can trace its history to two days in June 1945 -- to a bridge over the Santa Fe River and a nondescript Albuquerque apartment on High Street NE.
_____________________________
A fast way to keep up to date: Subscribe to NucNews !! To subscribe: prop1@prop1.org Say "Subscribe NucNews"
NucNews Archive: http://prop1.org/nucnews/nucnews.htm The Conversion Project at http://prop1.org "A-Z Antinuclear Weblinks" at http://prop1.org/prop1/azantink.htm
_______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3 Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 08:15:06 -0500
Subject: NucNews-3-U.S. 4/02/99 - Los Alamos (2)
9. Secrets, Science Are Volatile Mixture at Los Alamos Lab
Security: Suspected efforts by China and others to obtain data put U.S. researchers under a microscope.
April 1, 1999, By BOB DROGIN, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/excite/990401/t000029118.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M.--Security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, America's largest nuclear weapon facility, sometimes seems straight from a Hollywood thriller.
Secure phones and special conference rooms are rigged to jam electronic eavesdropping. Heavily guarded walk-in vaults hold top-secret documents. Fingerprints are scanned outside restricted zones. In some areas, visitors are followed into restrooms.
"Secret Restricted Data" is marked on the 48 linked servers that comprise Blue Mountain, the world's most powerful computer. Hidden portals and sensors check people and cars for smuggled nuclear material. The lab proudly calls its prison-like plutonium storage site "the most heavily guarded four acres in the United States."
But for all the high-tech hardware used to protect 7 million classified documents from spies, Los Alamos increasingly is under attack by critics in Congress and elsewhere who fear security is left behind when some scientists meet their peers overseas, especially in China.
"The toughest problem is dealing with what's in someone's mind, not with protecting classified documents in a file in the lab," said John C. Brown, director of Los Alamos. "I don't know how you can have 100% guarantees."
That's the challenge the FBI, CIA and other U.S. agencies face as they investigate whether Los Alamos computer scientist Wen Ho Lee passed along nuclear weapon design data in the 1980s to help China build smaller, more powerful nuclear warheads--weapons suspiciously similar to W-88 warheads aboard U.S. Trident submarines. If true, the leak would be a major blow to U.S. security.
Failure to Report Contact 11 Years Ago
Lee, 59, was fired from Los Alamos on March 8, shortly after he admitted to the FBI that he was covertly approached by Chinese officials at a conference in Beijing in June 1988, when he gave a lab-approved lecture on his apparent specialty: "Material Void Opening Computation." The Taiwan-born Lee had failed to report the illicit contact 11 years ago.
That, plus failing a polygraph test, raised warning flags. Lee worked with about 300 other scientists in the top-secret "X Division," the chief nuclear weapon design group at Los Alamos. Among Lee's duties: developing computer codes for W-88 trigger mechanisms.
Lee has not been charged or arrested and has retained his full pension and other retirement benefits. No one answered the door at his home last week, although a television set blared inside, rose bushes were freshly pruned and an aging Oldsmobile with rust spots sat in the driveway. The doorbell and phone were disconnected. His lawyer declined to comment.
FBI and counterintelligence officials say they have no witnesses or hard evidence with which to prosecute Lee or anyone else for espionage. Indeed, despite a three-year investigation, authorities never even collected enough evidence to obtain a court order to tap Lee's phone or search his home.
"You have to tell the court you have knowledge, evidence, that he is involved in espionage. We don't have it," a senior law enforcement official involved with the case said.
The official added that data may have been passed inadvertently. "With a person of that knowledge, you're picking at his brain," he said. "That's the way the Chinese work. There's no money or threats involved. They would have their nuclear physicist work at him. He would say [to Lee], 'Gee, this is hard. What would you do about this?' "
To be sure, some approaches are far less subtle.
John Shaner, head of international security affairs at Los Alamos, recalled attending a Beijing conference in June 1995, when one of China's top physicists boldly asked for blueprints for a unique dual-axis X-ray system designed to find defects in nuclear warheads.
Shaner says he laughed. "I told him, 'It's not going to happen.' "
Overall, security debriefings last year of 200 Los Alamos employees after they returned from official trips overseas--including 21 who went to China--found four who said they were contacted by suspected foreign intelligence agents or were asked to reveal sensitive data, according to Kenneth Schiffer Jr., head of counterintelligence at Los Alamos.
Schiffer said he wants to build a better database of specific information or technology that potentially dangerous nations like China may need, from warhead design to rocket science. The goal is to better warn--and better watch--traveling U.S. scientists. But he admits his solution is late.
"The incident we're talking about [with Lee] happened more than 10 years ago," Schiffer said. "We're staffing up today. That's an enormous gap."
Los Alamos Site Looks Like Campus
Part of the problem is Los Alamos itself. Much of the 43-acre site looks more like a college campus than a fortress, and scientists and their guests gather in local restaurants and bars to banter about their work. One official calls the atmosphere "quasi-academic."
All told, 7,137 full-time scientists work at Los Alamos. But 9,243 people--all U.S. citizens, but including retirees, postgraduate students and others--hold "Q" clearances that grant them access to the lab's classified materials and restrict what they can say. Higher clearances are themselves classified.
A weapon expert who grew up in Los Alamos confided over dinner that, until he obtained top-secret clearance, he never knew what his father did at the lab. Now his own security clearance is on such a need-to-know level that he cannot discuss his work with his father.
Not everyone is so careful. Los Alamos security officials or the FBI investigated 40 cases last year in which lab workers sent suspicious e-mail, left classified papers out, forgot to lock office safes or violated other rules, said Stanley Busboom, head of Los Alamos security. He said the infractions all appeared to be negligence, not espionage.
Real spying, of course, isn't new here. The site, a rocky expanse of scrub brush and ponderosa pines high on the slopes of an extinct volcano, was chosen in 1942, during the dark days of World War II. The best minds of the Free World soon were gathered at Project Y, the lab's wartime code name, to design and build the first atomic bomb.
Secrecy was so tight that birth certificates of newborns then listed their place of birth only as P.O. Box 1663. Mail was censored and the three telephones were monitored. The lab and nearby town remained a secret, closed world, behind high barbed-wire fence and under Army guard, until 1957.
Yet a Soviet spy ring led by German-born scientist Klaus Fuchs secretly infiltrated Los Alamos in the mid-1940s and stole sketches, plans and other crucial information that helped Moscow test its first atomic bomb.
Today has another parallel with the past. The initial group of chemists, physicists and other scientists at Los Alamos included Poles, Canadians, Germans, Swiss, British and Austrians. These days, nearly 3,000 scientists, graduate students and officials visit from around the world each year.
About one-third are from Russia, China, India or 19 other so-called "sensitive" countries. About 275 came from China last year, including about 100 who stayed to do unclassified research at the lab.
That program now may be trimmed, thanks to the Lee case. The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), has urged President Clinton to halt all lab visits from sensitive countries, as well as all visits by lab scientists to those nations, until better counterespionage controls are in place.
Such sweeping curbs, scientists here argue, would be a mistake.
After highly enriched uranium from Russian stockpiles began showing up in Europe in 1994, for example, scores of Los Alamos scientists and technicians began to help secure, monitor and safely dispose of dangerous nuclear materials at about 50 locations in Russia and the former Soviet republics.
"This is a program that is beneficial to us, to the Russians, and to the world as a national security concern," said Richard C. Wallace, manager of the nuclear materials protection, control and accounting project at Los Alamos.
Los Alamos Experts Travel to China Lab-to-lab cooperation with China, which is far behind the United States and Russia in nuclear technology, is more limited--and less successful.
About 20 Los Alamos experts have gone to China every year since 1995 in an effort aimed both at bringing Beijing into international arms control and nonproliferation regimes, and at learning about China's nuclear programs.
The Americans have visited China's top nuclear labs and its nuclear test site at Lop Nur. They have sponsored workshops on nuclear export controls, verifying the nuclear test ban treaty and protecting sensitive materials.
Last July, for example, 10 U.S. scientists joined about 40 Chinese experts at the China Institute for Atomic Energy complex southwest of Beijing. For a week, they demonstrated special U.S. computer software, cameras, canisters and other gear used to monitor and secure nuclear material.
But Shaner, who led the team, concedes he has seen no evidence that China adopted any of the U.S. suggestions.
"This is not what the Chinese want," he said. "They're still after all the technology they can get."
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10. Trade of 'Blackest' Secrets Began in '45 -- in N.M.
By John Fleck, April 1, 1999, Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/3news04-01.htm
Nuclear espionage was born in New Mexico along with the atomic bomb.
You can trace its history to two days in June 1945 -- to a bridge over the Santa Fe River and a nondescript Albuquerque apartment on High Street NE.
June 2: German-born chemist Klaus Fuchs comes down from Los Alamos to Santa Fe for a meeting with a Soviet courier named Harry Gold.
June 3: Gold travels to Albuquerque, where a Manhattan Project machinist named David Greenglass passed him a crude drawing of an atomic bomb.
Nations have always tried to carefully guard their military secrets, to protect them from enemies real and imagined.
Among those secrets, though, the enigmas of awesomely powerful nuclear weapons have been in a category of their own.
"It's always been the most secret," said Pennsylvania State University historian Charles Ameringer. "It has almost been what you might call 'the blackest of the black.' '' But from the beginning, those secrets have leaked.
"It is unlikely," a panel of experts that included H-bomb advocate Edward Teller told the Pentagon in 1970, "that classified information will remain secure for periods as long as five years, and it is more reasonable to assume that it will become known to others in periods as short as one year."
It begins with three
When scientists and soldiers gathered behind barbed wire in Los Alamos for a World War II crash program to build the world's first nuclear weapon, at least three among them were also atomic spies.
Fuchs, Greenglass and a precocious young physicist named Ted Hall together passed on enough detailed information about the U.S. design for the first atomic weapons to cut years off the Soviets' efforts to get the bomb.
A scandal raging today over whether a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist passed nuclear secrets to the Chinese in 1988 raises echoes of that history.
But experts say it's important to understand how different the landscape was almost 54 years ago when Fuchs met Gold on the bridge.
Los Alamos was a closed city of 6,000, its researchers working on a top secret project the very existence of which had been kept from our enemies.
The Soviets -- the United States' ally in World War II -- may have penetrated its security, but the program's prime target at the time, Nazi Germany, never knew what was going on.
"The Germans never found out," noted Robert S. Norris, a nuclear weapons expert working on a biography of Gen. Leslie Groves, the military officer in charge of the Manhattan Project.
Today, not only is Los Alamos an open community, but many of the old secrets are open as well.
Ideas that used to be highly classified -- how to use nuclear fission to make a bomb like that detonated over Nagasaki, or fusion like the hydrogen bomb that held the world in terror through much of the Cold War -- are now widely known. "The principles of both fission and fusion weapons have long been in the public domain," said Steve Aftergood, a government secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists. "You can find them in your school encyclopedia."
Espionage evolves
That means atomic espionage today is of a very different nature, involving subtle details of how you make not just a bomb that will work, but a miniaturized warhead that packs the power of a thermonuclear weapon into a package small enough that a half dozen or more can be fitted inside a highly accurate missile.
It is that sort of information that may have been obtained by the Chinese, a piece of espionage that some in the intelligence community believe allowed them to leapfrog years of trial and error in optimizing their warheads.
A Taiwanese-born Los Alamos scientist, Wen Ho Lee, was fired March 8 for allegedly breaking security rules, though he has not been charged with passing secrets to the Chinese.
There have been other cases, most notably the reported theft by the Chinese in the 1980s of information from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that allowed them to build a neutron bomb, a type of nuclear weapon that kills with a burst of neutrons while causing only limited damage with its explosive blast.
No one was ever charged in that case.
Also in the 1980s, a Los Alamos scientist named Peter Lee gave the Chinese information about lasers used to simulate nuclear blasts. Lee pleaded guilty in 1995 to transmitting classified national defense information to China.
Ideology factor
The atomic spies of the 1940s were driven by a desire to help a U.S. ally and a belief in communism.
The Manhattan Project-era spies believed they were "advancing the interests of humanity," said Pennsylvania State University historian Charles Ameringer.
"Ideology was a powerful factor," he said. Belief in communist ideals was widespread in intellectual circles at the time, he said. For many, the hardships of the depression of the 1930s were evidence of the failures of capitalism, and they saw communism as an alternative.
Thus Hall, a bright young physicist from Chicago, Fuchs the chemist, and the machinist Greenglass all felt they were acting in the interests of humanity by preventing the United States from holding a monopoly on nuclear weapons.
It was a time, Ameringer said, when idealistic young communists didn't understand the dark side of the Soviet dream.
"They saw it in a more idealistic sense, without the full realization of the evils of Stalin," he said.
Working independently, the three spies passed the Soviets key details of not only the general principles of the U.S. program but details of the design of the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
It's still unclear exactly what Fuchs passed to Gold in that envelope on the bridge. But in a 1950 meeting with the FBI, Fuchs drew a sketch showing what he had passed -- a diagram of the bomb complete with plutonium core and the high explosive jacket used to set it off.
Greenglass gave Gold a similar drawing.
And Hall gave detailed plans for the bomb. Together, according to Harvard historian Priscilla McMillan, the scientists gave the Soviets a significant head start on building their first nuclear weapon, which they detonated in 1949, just four years after Gold made his trip to New Mexico.
Historians do not doubt that Soviet scientists could have developed a bomb on their own. But the weapon detonated in 1949 is believed to have been an exact copy of the bomb tested in New Mexico in the summer of 1945 and then dropped on Nagasaki. Following the war, FBI investigators arrested Greenglass. He spent 10 years in prison, and two couriers he testified against, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed for espionage.
Fuchs confessed and spent time in a British prison. In addition, there have been reports from Russia following the end of the Cold War of a fourth Los Alamos spy code-named "Perseus," but the mysterious character has never been identified.
Ameringer believes America is such a different place today that catching modern nuclear spies is a very different thing than it was in the days when the Rosenbergs were executed.
The notions of civil liberties that reportedly led the U.S. Justice Department to thwart requests for a wiretap of Los Alamos suspect Lee would not have been an issue during the anti-communist furor of the post-World War II world.
"What you need for counter-intelligence is a sense of paranoia," the Pennsylvania historian said, "and I don't think that sense of paranoia exists at this time."
Special Features:
Trinity: 50 Years Later
http://www.abqjournal.com/trinity/trinity.htm
RELATED SITES
Los Alamos National Labs http://www.lanl.gov
Trinity Atomic Test Site and HEWA (U.S.) http://www.envirolink.org/issues/nuketesting/
High Energy Weapons Archive (Finland) http://www.pal.xgw.fi/hew
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- Third of Three messages - __________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4 Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 08:15:30 -0500
Subject: NucNews-1-Int'l 4/02/99 - Y2K; Canada/Plutonium;Sellafield; Australia; Russia
1. Y2K Nuke Accidents Called Unlikely
Albuquerque Journal Millenium Project http://www.abqjournal.com/2000/2000.htm http://wire.ap.org/?PACKAGEID=millenniumbug
Russia is behind many Western nations in confronting the Year 2000 computer glitch, but Soviet-era computers that control nuclear weapons and reactors are unlikely to cause any accidents, a Russian expert said. One story in a series by the Associated Press on the Y2K problem....
----------------------------
2. AECL to 'test-burn' plutonium from weapons in spring
Tom Spears The Ottawa Citizen, April 2, 1999 http://www.ottawacitizen.com/city/990401/2435229.html
Two small batches of plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons should be ready for "test-burning" at Chalk River this summer, Atomic Energy of Canada says.
The plutonium, about 120 grams each of Russia and the United States, will be trucked in to Chalk River, in Northern Ontario. But AECL says people along the transport route should not worry.
The plutonium, mixed with uranium for use in the kind of reactor that makes most of Ontario's electricity, has a very low level of radioactivity, said project director Bob Gadsby.
The radiation is so easy to block that it would be safe to pick up the plutonium with no more protection than a pair of work gloves, he said.
If the truck carrying it crashes, he said, "it won't ignite, it won't explode."
AECL said it has not yet set a date for the "test burn," designed to help determine whether using American and Russian warheads as fuel is a viable method of destroying them.
There's still no truck route approved to bring the samples of plutonium -- each about the size of two AA batteries -- to Chalk River. AECL and Foreign Affairs officials said they will inform police and fire officials before the shipment comes through.
Even if the tests are successful (AECL says it's a sure thing they will be, since it has burned a plutonium-uranium mix before), there's no certainty Canada will ever take old warhead material on a commercial scale.
In the meantime, AECL says it wants to reassure people who are worried about the test.
"Plutonium 239 (the type in the warheads) emits low-level radiation which can be stopped with a piece of paper," Mr. Gadsby said.
In all, the fuel samples weigh about five kilograms each.
But only about two to three per cent of each sample will consist of plutonium. The rest is uranium, which is used in 22 power reactors in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.
The material will be shipped in steel containers the size of a 200-litre drum.
----------------------------
3. 500 Sellafield job cuts a threat to Irish coast
Irish Times, April 1, 1999, From Rachel Donnelly, in London http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/1999/0401/wor19.htm
BRITAIN: Greenpeace has criticised yesterday's announcement by British Nuclear Fuels that it is shedding a further 500 jobs at the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, saying the plant poses "a significant threat" to the Irish coastline.
The reduction in staffing levels at the plant, which is part of an on-going programme, were described by BNFL as a response to a reduction in costs by Sellafield's customers. However, Dr Helen Wallace, a scientist and anti-nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace, insisted reprocessing nuclear waste at Sellafield should end immediately. Yesterday's job cuts were "a clear sign that it [reprocessing] has no future.
"It is continuing in spite of the wishes of some of its customers, notably the German government, which does not want plutonium. Germany has not cancelled its contract with Sellafield but its policy is not to use nuclear power and it wants to get out of it," she said.
Dr Wallace continued: "There is a significant threat to Ireland from Sellafield. It is not directed at clearing up waste but making more, and new jobs should be created in clearing up the waste it creates."
The 500 job cuts - 220 staff have already volunteered to take early retirement or voluntary redundancy - will take place across a range of posts at Sellafield and BNFL has not ruled out the prospect that some jobs will be cut in the areas of safety and manning at the plant.
A spokesman for British Nuclear Fuels said the job cuts would not be made unless it was safe to do so and safety and operational levels could be maintained. "We won't be making job cuts that impact on safety and operating standards. They will be maintained. But we will undoubtedly look at all our systems and ask `do we need all these people in these jobs?' The bottom line here is can we do this safely or not? We believe we can," he said.
Since 1994, 1,500 jobs have been cut at Sellafield. British Nuclear Fuels currently employs 7,000 at the plant and is aiming to reduce that figure to around 6,000 by 2001 as part of a 25 per cent reduction across the entire company over the next two years.
Ms Patricia McKenna, the Green MEP for Dublin, who has campaigned for Sellafield's closure, was angry at the announcement of more job cuts. She insisted that in the light of Sellafield's poor record on safety, BNFL should be increasing the number of jobs in health and safety instead of contemplating a reduction in staff levels.
Responding to BNFL's insistence that the jobs cuts were part of a programme of cost savings, Ms McKenna said BNFL should cut its PR budget following recent criticism that it had produced misleading advertisements.
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4. Police and anti-uranium protesters clash
Tuesday 30 March, 1999 Australian Broadcasting http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-30mar1999-62.htm
Police and members of an anti-uranium group have clashed outside the Melbourne office of North Limited on the second day of protests against the Jabiluka mining project in the Northern Territory.
In sharp contrast to yesterday, police are clearing a path for motorists in Queens Lane behind the company's offices.
They have told the anti-uranium group that anyone demanding ID from motorists will be arrested.
Police horses are being used to clear the road.
Thara Krishna Vilo, from the anti-uranium group, agrees their tactics have changed.
"What we're doing today is allowing cars through so that the build up in the area doesn't become a problem," he said.
"We are targeting North, however, it's very difficult in an area like this to simply only target North and what we're doing today is trying to make that clearer so that North employees can't carry on business as usual."
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[Note the last paragraph about Ukraine and Belarus nuclear weapons status discussion.Chilling.]
5. Russians protest air strikes
In Moscow, as many as 5,000 people joined in the ugliest anti-U.S. demonstration since the Cold War.
By Dave Montgomery, PHILADELHIA INQUIRER, March 28, 1999 http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Mar/28/national/RUSS28.htm
MOSCOW -- As many as 5,000 protesters chanted "Yankee go home," burned American flags, torched images of President Clinton, and pelted the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with eggs, ink and beer bottles yesterday in the ugliest anti-American demonstrations here since the Cold War.
In the Communist-dominated lower house of parliament, lawmakers denounced the "aggression against Yugoslavia" by a vote of 366 to 4, and froze the ratification of the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty.
President Boris N. Yeltsin and his deputies, meanwhile, searched for ways to support Yugoslavia without being drawn deeper into a conflict with the West.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev joined lawmakers in demanding an end to the bombing, but said that Russia could not risk a military confrontation with NATO.
Russian newspapers, echoing the anger of the country's politicians, have hauled out old invectives from the Communist era, and assailed the United States for "immoral" and "provocative" behavior. Hundreds of young men have flocked to impromptu recruiting offices to volunteer to fight NATO alongside their Yugoslav brothers.
"We've lost all the might we used to have," lamented Gennady Klyuyev, who is 24 and out of a job. "In the old days, everybody took Russia very seriously, and NATO would never had dared to do such a thing."
The NATO attacks on Yugoslavia have embarrassed the Russian military, the source of much of Yugoslavia's weaponry; rubbed salt in Russia's wounded pride; and pushed U.S.-Russian relations to their lowest point since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
But while impassioned rhetoric spewed from the Kremlin, the corridors of parliament, and the streets of Moscow, Russian officials were working furiously to salvage negotiations for critical loans from the International Monetary Fund. And almost unnoticed in the furor was a new U.S.-Russia agreement for disposing of highly enriched uranium, which is used to make nuclear weapons. The odd juxtaposition of condemnation and cooperation underlines a new maturity in the awkward relationship between the two longtime enemies. After the Cold War gave way to a brief and overheated honeymoon, both sides have accepted the fact that their interests still conflict in the Balkans and a number of other areas, but that neither can afford a return to the Cold War.
The Clinton administration's Russia policy is guided by the assumption that it is wiser to keep Russia -- with its nuclear arsenal and immense natural resources -- as a friend rather than an enemy. One group of U.S. scholars said that allowing Russia to disintegrate would present the world with a "contagion of instability, starvation and armed struggle" stretching from NATO's new eastern borders to Asia. "If Russia destabilizes, the costs to the United States are going to be vastly greater than anything we can think of," Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin told a congressional subcommittee last week.
The limits of Russian anger, meanwhile, were clear in the Duma yesterday.
"March 24, 1999, will go down as one of the blackest days in the postwar history of Europe," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told lawmakers in the lower house of parliament. But he added: "If anyone thinks Russia is going to get sucked in [ to a war, ] they are deeply mistaken. "To drag us into a new arms race, to drag us into some armed conflicts, this is a choice leading to nowhere," he said. Battered by economic chaos and embarrassed by its loss of superpower status, Russia remains dependent on the United States, especially for the restoration of IMF loans that Moscow must get in order to avoid a humiliating default on its foreign debt.
In an illustration of that point, Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov was preparing for a weekend of negotiations with IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus in Moscow yesterday, just days after the Russian premier aborted a U.S. trip in midair to protest the NATO air strikes on a Slavic sovereign nation with deep historical and cultural ties to Russia.
Although Russian leaders lashed out at the United States in an outpouring of rhetoric not seen since the Cold War -- and underscored their anger by severing ties with NATO -- they made a point of ruling out "extreme measures" and military reprisals.
"We are above that," Yeltsin said the day after the bombings. The balancing act, which seemed to have an eye-wink understanding from U.S. officials, was designed to sound just tough enough to appease the nationalist mood whipped up by the attack on Russia's "Slav brethren" without seriously damaging relations with Washington.
Communist hard-liners and ultranationalists demanded that the government send arms to Yugoslavia in defiance of an international embargo. Others called for moving nuclear weapons back into Belarus and Ukraine, which voluntarily returned their nuclear weapons to Russia in 1992.
On Wednesday, the Moscow Times reported, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to abolish Ukraine's nuclear-free status, and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko ordered his government to study the option of returning nuclear weapons to the Kansas-sized country, which borders Poland, one of NATO's three new members.
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Message: 5 Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 08:15:21 -0500
Subject: NucNews-2-U.S. 4/02/99 - Rocky Flats Jury Split; NATO's 50th-DC; Idaho INEEL Nuc Waste
6. Jury splits in Rockwell suit
April 1, 1999 UPI http://www.webcrawler.com/news/u/990401/18/news-rockyflats
DENVER, April 1 (UPI) A federal court jury returned a split verdict in a $164 million case against Rockwell International for shoddy work and coverups at Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.
The jury today awarded nearly $1.4 million, a fraction of the amount sought by the a former Rockwell employee-turned-whistle-blower and the U.S. Justice Department.
Ex-Rockwell engineer James Stone and the government claimed that Rockwell did shoddy work and lied to conceal environmental crimes at the plant while under contract with the government from 1975 to 1989.
The jury of 12, in 2 1/2 days of deliberations, found in favor of Stone and the government in three of six claims seeking a return of performance awards won by Rockwell while the company operated Rocky Flats near Denver.
But jurors also found that Rockwell did not breach its government contract. The suit clamed that Rockwell did substandard work and failed to report that radioactive waste was seeping into the ground at the plant.
Rockwell lawyers said the Department of Energy should accept some of the blame, noting that dozens of DOE employees were also on the site daily, working side by side with Rockwell workers.
But attorneys for the government and Stone said the DOE was not informed of the radioactive waste leaks until May 1988, when the Rockwell operation was shut down.
And the plaintiffs pointed to Rockwell's guilty plea to 10 environmental violations as an admission of guilt. Rockwell paid a fine of $18 million, the same amount it received in performance awards.
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7. NATO will take over streets of District
By Leslie Koren April 2, 1999, WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/metro/metro1.html
The federal and D.C. governments will cede the city's downtown streets to world leaders on April 23 to make way for the NATO 50th Anniversary Summit.
Both governments will excuse most downtown workers that day, a Friday, to minimize the traffic fallout. The summit lasts through April 25, but Saturday and Sunday are not expected to be as congested because they're not work days.
More than 40 heads of state, 2,000 delegates and 3,000 members of the media are expected in the city for the summit.
"We realize bringing this many folks to D.C. poses prohibitive traffic congestion. We are trying to minimize the impact, to the extent that we can, on normal activities in the District," said Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Garrett III, the vice director of the U.S. Summit.
Organizers are strongly encouraging other employees in both private and government jobs to stay out of the city and Arlington that day, even if they're out of the immediately affected area. They suggested employees take a vacation or compensatory day or telecommute.
The policy is expected to reduce the number of federal employees in the city by almost 90,000 and D.C. employees by about 7,500.
About 250,000 federal employees work in the District. The city has about 30,000 employees.
"Make no mistake, even with the federal employees off, it will be far from a routine traffic day in D.C. April is a busy tourist month," said Gen. Garrett.
Several downtown streets will be closed to public vehicular and pedestrian traffic for security purposes. According to preliminary plans, roads will close at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 22 and reopen in the early morning hours of Monday, April 26. Those exact streets are yet to be determined.
Also, throughout the weekend motorcades from two dozen different hotels will cause road closures. Summit organizers will also have shuttle buses from the hotels.
"This is the largest gathering of world leaders ever hosted by the United States in the capital. We want to do everything to make it successful while ensuring the normal workings of the District remain uninterrupted," said Janice R. Lachance, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
D.C. police will be out in full force. The Secret Service will barricade streets with concrete barriers.
Military police will be used only to guard defense ministers.
Security plans haven't been tightened because of the conflict in Yugoslavia. Demonstrators will not be removed unless they are breaking laws, like those who remain stationary on the sidewalk in front of the White House.
"With security plans in an event of this magnitude, I would say it's pretty tight. They don't have to be tightened," said Peter Dowling, special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office for the U.S. Secret Service.
Commander Michael Radzilowski, of the Metropolitan Police Department Special Operations Division said he could not recall an event of this magnitude in the capital.
The only event of similar size in recent years was the Million Man March, when residents and employees were asked to leave their cars at home if they had to come into the city. He said that event was successful because people listened to warnings.
"It will be a nightmare if traffic comes downtown. If citizens do a good job like with the Million Man March, it's going be OK," he said. "Hey, take leave. Take your kids bowling, take your kids out to lunch, just take off Friday."
Those who do need to come into the city are urged to leave their automobiles at home and use public transportation. Metro will add extra trains and lengthen each train. The Federal Triangle Metro station will be closed for security reasons, but trains will continue to run through the station.
Among the federal agencies within the affected area are the departments of the Interior, Energy, Justice, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development, the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and several smaller federal offices.
Essential federal employees include those involved in national security and defense. Federal museums, including the Smithsonian, National Archives and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum will remain open during normal hours.
Essential employees in the city include those who work in public safety and health agencies. "It is an honor to host NATO, and we want to do everything we can to minimize disrupting the essential services to citizens as well as our visitors," said Reba Pittman Evans, chief of staff for Mayor Anthony A. Williams.
Officials have not determined whether parking regulations will be enforced or not.
Delegations will be arriving at Andrews Air Force Base and Washington Dulles International, Ronald Reagan Washington National and Baltimore-Washington International airports. Aside from motorcades to and from the airports, interstate highways, including the Southwest Freeway, should not be affected by the summit.
ALSO: Downtown Holiday For NATO Summit 90,000 Federal Workers Can Stay Home April 23 By Peter Slevin, April 2, 1999, Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-04/02/179l-040299-idx.html
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8. New INEEL site gets first N-waste load (Idaho)
April 1, 1999 Spokane Spokesman-Review, Associated Press http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=040199&ID=s555405&cat=
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho _ Federal officials successfully met their Wednesday deadline to begin moving radioactive remnants from the Three Mile Island nuclear accident to safer storage in eastern Idaho.
The first load was moved on scheduled from underwater storage to a new state-of-the-art dry storage facility on the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory site as required under the state's 1995 nuclear waste deal with the Department of Energy.
Over the next 27 months, the government expects to ship 344 containers of spent fuel and core debris from the INEEL's Test Area North to the new storage facility 25 miles away at the site's Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center.
The next major deadline is April 30, when the government must begin moving plutonium-contaminated fuel from temporary storage at INEEL to another site out of state. Energy Department officials have said the deadline will not be met.
As a result, no further shipments of high-level radioactive waste to the INEEL would be allowed until the requirement for moving plutonium-contaminated waste was complied with. But the first of five high-level shipments planned this year is not scheduled until sometime in May, officials said.
<367>Memo: The likely dump for the plutonium-contaminated material is New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which got its first shipment last week.
Memo: Transfer of the Three Mile Island material came just two weeks after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued the license to operate the dry storage system. Construction of the system was delayed about 18 months because of the bankruptcy of a major supplier. It was completed last December.