* Russia, U.S. make Y2K fail-safe for nuke arsenal
* NZ election good news for abolition
* Japanese Nuclear Victim Takes Turn for Worse
* Japanese uranium worker in grave condition after exposure
* Nuclear accident casts long shadows
* Last Working Chernobyl Reactor Is Restarted
* North Korea warns South Korea over missile program
* China to U.S.: Back off treaty changes
* Is Beijing aiming to seize Panama Canal?
* China blasts U.S. plans to build an anti-missile defense system
* U.S. wary after report of Chinese missile plans
* EU probe into missing plutonium shipment says human error to blame
* Three Nuclear Cities
* Russia Says U.S. Concerns May Be Met Without Amending ABM Pact
* With Talks on Iraq Stalled, U.S. May Seek Key U.N. Vote
* GEORGE W. REAGAN
* National Missile Defense - Related on the Web - The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
* DEBATING DEFENSE
* Why National Missile Defense Won't Work
* Cohen to Discuss U.S. Missile Shield on European Trip
* Lawrence Lab work key to atomic storage
* Nuclear tools of terror could destroy in silence
* Unnecessary risks
* Radioactive roulette
* Schoolyard yields troubling secrets
-------- y2k
Russia, U.S. make Y2K fail-safe for nuke arsenal
San Francisco Examiner Nov. 26, 1999, Eric Rosenberg EXAMINER WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/11/26/NEWS14370.dtl
b WASHINGTON - A small group of U.S. and Russian military officers won't be doing much New Year's Eve cork-popping as the millennium arrives at midnight on Dec. 31. Instead, they will be guarding against the end of the world.
Their concern is the ultimate Y2K catastrophe: Computer glitches causing the launch of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
The U.S. and Russian governments have been working to fix the potential Y2K glitches in their missile systems and early warning defense equipment. And officials from both countries stress that the likelihood of a mistaken Y2K missile launch is extremely remote.
But to reassure a jittery world and further cut the risk of a nuclear exchange, the governments of the two nuclear superpowers have set up a joint command center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs to make sure a computer glitch won't trigger Armageddon.
The Y2K problem is the worry among some scientists that with the arrival of the new year, computers designed to read only the last two digits of the year will mistake 2000 for 1900 and malfunction or break down.
While most essential civilian and military computers in the United States have been deemed "Y2K compliant," other countries, including Russia, are having difficulties. In fact, the State Department is so worried about computer troubles there and in three former Soviet republics that it is withdrawing hundreds of employees through the New Year period.
Ultimate mishap
But the ultimate Y2K mishap would be nuclear war.
In an assessment last year of Russia's potential Y2K problems, the Pentagon singled out for particular concern the Russian early warning system designed to detect incoming missiles.
The Pentagon has since downplayed the risk of the "millennium bug." But even before Y2K worries took hold, U.S. officials were concerned about the capability of Russia's missile defense system.
In 1995, Russia initially interpreted the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket as the onset of a U.S. nuclear attack. President Boris Yeltsin activated his "nuclear briefcase" in the first stages of preparation to launch a retaliatory strike before the mistake was discovered.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., a leading foreign policy expert, said the incident underscored that "Russian early-warning capabilities continue to deteriorate, and this deterioration will be compounded by the transition to the year 2000."
Should a glitch occur during the New Year period, said Luger, "we want them to understand that their problems are Y2K related and not a result of U.S. hostile action for which they need to respond."
Round-the-clock vigils
That's why, for three weeks starting Dec. 22, Russian and U.S. military officers at the joint Y2K command post will stand around-the-clock vigils over consoles and computer screens that would alert them to missile launches around most of the world.
The mission of the Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability, as the early warning operation is being called, isn't to detect a missile attack against the United States. Instead, it is designed to reassure Moscow that U.S. missiles aren't attacking Russia - if that's what aging Soviet-era military computers incorrectly indicate.
The Russians and Americans will be in close enough proximity so the two sides can immediately confer and rule out an attack as the cause for any unusual computer activity. The two sides could then soothe a jittery Russian missile force, averting an order for a counter strike.
"We will prevent that from occurring," said Air Force Lt. Col. Jon Wicklund, the head of the Y2K center. "We will be sitting side-by-side with our Russian counterparts and they'll be viewing the U.S. missile information. They will have that view that says a launch is not occurring."
The Y2K center also is designed to make up for problems in the "hot line" communication links between Moscow and Washington. The hot lines give military and political leaders immediate communication if needed, particularly in time of nuclear crisis.
Links have failed
As recently as October, six of seven such links failed Y2K tests, according to Edward Warner, assistant secretary of Defense for strategy and threat reduction, who said the problems are believed to be on the Russian side.
"Assured communications between U.S. and Russian leaders is a priority at all times, and of particular concern over the millennium date change," Warner said.
Because computer scientists warn that Y2K problems might take several weeks to materialize, the Y2K center and the U.S.-Russian cooperation will extend through mid-January.
"Not all of the data corruption that may be engendered by Y2K is going to manifest itself on New Year's Day," said John Pike, a military expert with the Federation of American Scientists here. "Some of this stuff may take several weeks to propagate through the system."
Russian officials maintain that any Y2K concerns are dramatically overstated. Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Bulgak said the Y2K problem would not threaten Russia's nuclear missiles or its nuclear power stations.
As far as the U.S. nuclear arsenal is concerned, Pentagon officials say the chances are "extremely remote" that a Y2K computer malfunction could cause an accidental launch.
The White House, in its final report on the readiness of U.S. computers, debunked worries about a misfired nuclear missile. "Y2K problems will not cause nuclear weapons to launch themselves," the report said. "Nuclear weapons launch requires human intervention."
-------- new zealand
NZ election good news for abolition
From: "Alyn Ware" <alynw@ibm.net>
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 02:27:16 +1300
Elections today in New Zealand have resulted in the formation of a new government led by Labour which has a policy to "take a lead in negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention." This is significant progress from the previous National government, which was forced to accept the Labour initiated policy (now law) of keeping nuclear weapons out of our New Zealand's territory including territorial waters, and which joined the New Agenda Coalition, but which has not been very supportive of a nuclear weapons convention. The new Prime Minister, Helen Clark, is known personally by many peace activists in the country, and has played an active role in nuclear disarmament campaigns. Her leadership in this issue could help not only the nuclear weapons convention, but also in ensuring the New Agenda Coalition receives a higher international profile.
The government will most likely be formed by the Labour and Alliance parties. Because of extremely close voting in the electorate of the Greens leader, it is not known yet whether the Greens will have any seats in parliament. If so they will support the government but will probably not become part of it.
---
From: Kate Dewes < kate@chch.planet.org.nz >
November 28, 1999 (November 27th in US)
We are thrilled with the news tonight that Helen Clark has been elected the first woman Prime Minister of Aotearoa/New Zealand, leading a Labour/Alliance Coalition government after 9 years in Opposition. She has been a long-time proponent of nuclear abolition and is committed to the Labour Party policy of promoting a Nuclear Weapons Convention, the New Agenda Coalition and the goals of Abolition 2000. She is keen to take an active part in the NPT in April and last year she launched Rob Green's book 'Fast Track to Zero Nuclear Weapons' in Parliament. Watch this space!
Kate Dewes and Rob Green
Disarmament and Security Centre
P O Box 8390, Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand
Ph/Fax +64 3 348 1353 kate@chch.planet.org.nz
(The DSC is a specialist branch of the NZ Peace Foundation. (Kate Dewes is IPB Vice-President)
-------- japan
Japanese Nuclear Victim Takes Turn for Worse By Reuters
New York Times November 27, 1999 Filed at 12:18 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - A worker heavily exposed to radiation this year in Japan's worst nuclear accident suffered temporary heart failure on Saturday and was in a very critical condition, his doctors said.
Hisashi Ouchi, 35, had received the highest level of radiation exposure from the September accident at a nuclear processing plant northeast of Tokyo and was recently given revolutionary blood treatment, they said.
Ouchi received 17 sieverts of radiation and experts said seven sieverts was considered a lethal dose. The exposure caused severe organ and tissue damage.
Doctors at Tokyo University Hospital conducted stem cell transfusions on Ouchi. The procedure is similar to treatment given in some leukemia cases. Masato Shinohara, 39, another worker poisoned by radiation, has also received the treatment.
---
Japanese uranium worker in grave condition after exposure
ABC News Online This Bulletin: Sat, 27 Nov 1999 20:55 AEDT
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-27nov1999-67.htm
A Japanese uranium worker exposed to extreme radiation two months ago is in a critical condition in the Tokyo hospital he was admitted to after the accident.
Doctors says Hisashi Ouchi's heart stopped beating, possibly as a result of the treatment he has been receiving.
They say he was revived, but remains in a very grave condition.
Mr Ouchi, 35, has been under around-the-clock watch since he received 17,000 times the average yearly dose of radiation in the September accident, the worst nuclear incident since Chernobyl in 1986.
---
Nuclear accident casts long shadows
Japanese town considers name change to cape dark radioactive shame
By Valerie Reitman / Los Angeles Times Detroit News 11/22/99
http://detnews.com/1999/nation/9911/26/11260055.htm
TOKYO -- The signs at the city limits that once proudly proclaimed "Town of Nuclear Energy" have been replaced with bland placards that say simply, "Welcome to Tokaimura."
It is one tangible sign of the shame that the town -- previously viewed as an elite center of nuclear power research -- now feels in the wake of Japan's worst nuclear disaster.
The Sept. 30 accident at the privately owned JCO Co. nuclear fuel processing plant occurred when workers set off a fission reaction while loading excessive amounts of highly enriched uranium into a tank. The accident is known to have irradiated at least 83 people, three seriously.
The townspeople once "took pride that they were helping develop Japan's nuclear energy program," with 14 nuclear-related facilities in and around the town. Now, outsiders "see Tokaimura as an area polluted or dangerous, even equated with Chernobyl, Hiroshima or Nagasaki," Mayor Tatsuya Murakami said.
Japan has embraced the peaceful use of nuclear power to supplant its dependence on imported fuel. The United States and most Western European nations, in contrast, halted nuclear-energy expansion programs over the past two decades amid high costs and fears after nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union.
The mayor spoke of his pain after receiving origami cranes -- which are sent to the sick or injured or placed on graves -- from students in Australia and Britain. "On the one hand, I was happy they were sending messages of encouragement," Murakami said. "On the other hand, I had mixed feelings that the image of Tokaimura had been bombarded with nuclear material."
The town's reputation has been so tarnished that there has been talk of changing its name, the mayor said. Farmers can't sell their produce because of consumer fears that it is tainted -- even though the government has declared it safe and Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi recently ate a sample in a show of support.
Murakami criticized the government's handling of the disaster and called for tougher regulations. Nevertheless, the majority of Tokaimura residents remain "quite calm" despite their proximity to nuclear-related facilities that generate two-thirds of the town's revenues, he said.
Reflecting the widespread view in Japan that nuclear power is necessary, Murakami stopped short of calling for the phaseout of the country's nuclear energy program. Japan plans to add as many as 20 nuclear reactors in the next decade.
"Personally, I feel nuclear power shouldn't be the only choice," he said. "In Europe, there are other options being explored and Japan should do likewise, not just say nuclear energy is everything."
Bills pending
Japan's parliament is considering legislation that would give the central government more authority in future nuclear accidents and strengthen safety measures at nuclear facilities.
-- One bill would empower the prime minister to declare a state of emergency and set up emergency headquarters near accident sites, a role now carried out by local authorities.
-- Another bill would require nuclear-related facilities to conduct the same safety checks as nuclear power plants. It also would require employees to report any illegal procedures to chiefs of related agencies or ministries.
-------- ukraine
Last Working Chernobyl Reactor Is Restarted
New York Times November 27, 1999 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/99/11/27/news/world/ukraine-chernobyl.html
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian authorities restarted the last working reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant Friday, ignoring international pressure to shut it down.
The reactor, No. 3, was restarted at 5:30 a.m. after almost five months of repairs. It is running at about 5 percent of capacity and will gradually increase its output, said a spokeswoman for the plant who declined to give her name. She would not say when the reactor was expected to reach full power.
Officials at Chernobyl say the restarting is temporary and insist that Reactor No. 3 is safe and free of Year 2000 computer problems.
But environmental groups vehemently oppose even the temporary use of the plant. "Chernobyl is probably the most dangerous reactor in the world," Ben Pearson, an Amsterdam-based official of Greenpeace, said this week.
Ukraine and the leading industrial countries reached agreement in 1995 that the plant should close by 2000. But Ukraine now says it needs $1.2 billion from the West to finish construction of two reactors to replace Chernobyl's output. The government says it hopes to shut Chernobyl definitively sometime next year.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which has played a leading role in discussions on financing the new reactors, was supposed to have made a loan decision in September. Other potential lenders are awaiting the bank's decision.
The Chernobyl plant had four working reactors. No. 4 exploded in 1986, spewing radiation over much of Europe. Ukrainian authorities have attributed 8,000 deaths to the accident, the worst of its kind anywhere.
The reactor is now encased in a steel-and-concrete sarcophagus, and two more reactors have been permanently shut since then.
Meanwhile workers have begun repairs on the sarcophagus, which was hastily built in 1986 prevent new radiation leaks.
Ukraine operates 14 reactors at 5 plants, which supply about 40 percent of its energy.
Local news media gave little attention to the restart, and most Ukrainians' reactions ranged from neutral to fatalistic.
"Anything may happen," said Halyna Yanovska, a street vendor. "I rely only on God."
-------- korea
North Korea warns South Korea over missile program
Miami Herald Posted at 11:12 a.m. EST Wednesday, November 24, 1999
http://www.herald.com/content/wed/digdocs/071299.htm
SEOUL, South Korea -- (AP) -- North Korea on Wednesday accused South Korea of developing longer-range missiles and threatened to take a ``stronger countermeasure'' against its rival.
The North said it is upset by reports that South Korea is trying to develop a missile that can reach all parts of the communist country.
``If the South Korean rulers persist in their desperate moves to develop ballistic missiles despite our warnings, we will take a stronger countermeasure against it,'' said the North's ruling party paper, Rodong Sinmun.
The paper's report, carried by the North's foreign news outlet, KCNA, did not specify what measure the reclusive country would take. North Korean statements are often belligerent.
North Korea is believed to have far more advanced missile programs than South Korea. Last year, it rattled the region by firing a missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean.
The North shelved its plan to test-fire a more powerful missile after talks with the United States in October. Experts say the new missile could reach Hawaii and Alaska.
Under a 1979 agreement with the United States, South Korea cannot develop a missile with a range longer than 112 miles. Washington has agreed in principle to lift the ban, allowing Seoul to develop a missile capable of traveling up to 187 miles.
South Korea wants U.S. permission to research and develop a missile with a range of up to 312 miles, a distance that would cover all of North Korea.
Three days of U.S.-South Korea missile talks in Seoul last week failed to reach agreement on the issue.
The United States is concerned that South Korea's efforts to lengthen missile ranges may trigger a regional arms race.
The two Koreas fought a war a half-century ago and tensions have been high ever since.
-------- china
China to U.S.: Back off treaty changes
By ERIK ECKHOLM THE NEW YORK TIMES Seattle Post-Intelligencer Thursday, November 25, 1999
http://www.seattlep-i.com/national/miss251.shtml
BEIJING -- China's chief of arms control issued a new warning yesterday that U.S. plans for a national missile defense system, even if intended to stop attacks from countries like North Korea and Iraq, would set off a global arms race and cause more countries to develop nuclear weapons.
The existing Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, which the United States proposes altering to allow limited defenses, has long been a cornerstone of nuclear stability, Sha Zukang, director of arms control and disarmament in China's foreign ministry, said yesterday in an article in the official newspaper China Daily.
"Amending it in search of national missile defense will tip the global balance, trigger a new arms race and jeopardize world and regional stability," Sha wrote.
Russia, the main nuclear rival of the United States, has also been vociferous in opposing missile defenses.
China has objected to proposed theater missile defenses, local systems intended to protect American allies in Asia from missile attacks.
China worries that such high-technology defenses would be offered to Taiwan, cementing military ties between Taiwan and the United States.
Though the debate is already heated, theater defenses that could stop a blitz of short-range missiles are still in the unproved research stage.
But in yesterday's article and recent speeches, Chinese officials have also vehemently challenged the progressing American plans for a national defense system, perhaps designed to stop a handful of incoming missiles.
A prime reason for Chinese concern, weapons experts say, is that even a limited system would undercut China's own nuclear strategy, forcing it to spend far more than it wants to build extra rockets and bombs.
Unlike the United States and Russia, China has deployed small numbers of weapons intended simply to give adversaries second thoughts about attacking it.
---
Is Beijing aiming to seize Panama Canal?
Chinese tycoon says he won't control waterway
Deseret News Wednesday, November 24, 1999Associated Press
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,135007218,00.html?
WASHINGTON - Retired Adm. Thomas Moorer, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says China is preparing to take over the Panama Canal once the United States relinquishes control.
And he warned Tuesday of possible Chinese use of the area to launch a nuclear attack on America.
Moorer said China plans to seize control through a Hong Kong company, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., which has won the right to operate ports on both sides of the canal. He contended that the firm has close links to the Chinese military.
Moorer commented at a news conference sponsored by the John Birch Society, a rightist group opposed to the treaties.
The treaties require the United States to surrender control of the canal and to remove all troops by Dec. 31.
Administration officials have previously dismissed allegations of an eventual Chinese takeover of the canal as baseless.
Li Ka-shing, who runs the company at the center of the allegations and is one of Hong Kong's richest tycoons, has rejected the criticisms as a "joke."
"I have no intention to control the Panama Canal," Li told reporters recently.
Hutchison operates ports worldwide and says it competes with several other companies that offer cargo handling services at the Panama Canal and would be in no position to control the canal.
Li maintains close ties with the Beijing leadership, but Hutchison points out it is not a Chinese company and that there are no mainland entities holding a significant stake in the conglomerate.
Moorer spoke as U.S. and Panamanian officials met to discuss canal security and other issues once the transfer to Panamanian control takes place.
Moorer, who served as Joint Chiefs chairman during the Nixon administration, said China's missiles can carry "a nuclear payload or an explosive payload, and they can also be mounted on a truck and moved around - and, therefore, very difficult to keep track of.
"And consequently, we have a situation where the Chinese are in a position today to secrete these kinds of missiles into Panama and use Panama as a launching point for missiles to attack the United States," he said. "And no one seems to get exercised over that, and the media doesn't ever mention that."
He said the Chinese threat "is more difficult to handle" than the Cuban missile crisis was.
---
China blasts U.S. plans to build an anti-missile defense system
By Benjamin Kang Lim Reuters News Service Deseret News Thursday, November 25, 1999
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,135007546,00.html?
BEIJING - China's top disarmament official said Wednesday U.S. plans to build an anti-missile defense system could trigger an arms race and threaten global and regional stability.
Sha Zukang, director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Arms Control and Disarmament, said U.S. efforts to develop anti-missile missiles, known as the National Missile Defense system, would have a formidable, adverse impact and tip the global balance.
"If such a balance and stability were shattered, the nuclear disarmament process would come to a grind or even be reversed," Sha wrote in the official China Daily.
"It will only poison the atmosphere, undermine the conditions necessary for nuclear disarmament and breed a potential danger of an arms race," Sha said.
He added: "Who can guarantee that other non-nuclear states will not go nuclear?"
Beijing had no immediate comment on a U.S. report that China appeared to be constructing a missile-related facility at a base about 300 miles from Nationalist-ruled Taiwan.
The Washington Times said on Tuesday construction at the People's Liberation Army missile base was photographed by U.S. spy satellites in mid-October. A U.S. official later confirmed that there appeared to be missile-related construction at the site.
The United States closely monitors China's military buildup because of the potential threat to Taiwan and the region. China has threatened to invade if Taiwan declares independence.
The China Daily published a cartoon of an American building a NMD wall with missiles and barbed wire. Two men watch on the other side of the wall, with one saying: "It seems he wants to build a new Berlin Wall."
Sha urged United States to "embrace" the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with the then-Soviet Union.
The treaty limits defense systems designed to shoot down enemy missiles, on the theory that such shields would only tempt the other side to build more missiles to overwhelm the defenses.
Washington wants to amend the treaty to permit it to build a limited defense against any attack on the United States or U.S. troops stationed abroad by what it regards as "rogue states," such as North Korea and Iran, with a growing capacity to launch weapons of mass destruction.
Russia, which has rejected U.S. offers to amend the ABM treaty, flexed its military muscles this month. It test-fired one of its short-range anti-missile rockets and for the first time in six years an old nuclear-capable tactical missile.
China is worried the anti-missile defense umbrella would cover Taiwan, a fledgling democracy with many friends in the U.S. Congress.
Taiwan has already bought technology for an air defense system with limited anti-aircraft and anti-missile capabilities, U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin said.
The United States has also sold surface-to-air missiles as well as vehicle-mounted "stinger avenger" systems to Taiwan.
Rubin said no decisions on theater missile defense systems had been made, but added: "We do not preclude the possible sale of such systems to Taiwan in the future."
China has taken a more belligerent attitude toward the island since Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui called for bilateral ties to be conducted on a "special state-to-state" basis in July.
Sha said the United States has "far too frequently used or threatened to use force in international affairs in a bid to seek its own absolute security and military superiority."
"We hold the view that countries that are the loudest advocates for missile non-proliferation are exactly the ones that have actually aggravated missile proliferation," Sha said
---
U.S. wary after report of Chinese missile plans
Spokesman Review November 24, 1999 Associated Press
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=112499&ID=s711094&cat=
WASHINGTON -- Amid reports of a planned expansion of Chinese short-range missile systems across from Taiwan, the State Department said Tuesday it has made clear to China its concerns regarding missile deployments and their influence on the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
Spokesman James Rubin refused to confirm or deny a report in The Washington Times that China is deploying nearly 100 of its newest short-range missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, at a base about 275 miles from Taiwan.
Rubin said he could not comment because the report was based on intelligence information.
"We will continue to monitor the military balance in the Taiwan Strait closely and meet our obligation to provide Taiwan the arms it needs for an adequate defense," Rubin said.
"We have made very clear that no decisions on theater missile defense systems have been made, other than for the protection of American forces."
While not precluding the possible sale of such systems to Taiwan, Rubin said the U.S. goal is to preserve peace and stability in the area.
"Any final decision will be made on that basis," Rubin said.
The Times said construction in China is being carried out for the planned deployment of a brigade of advanced CSS-7 missiles -- also known as advanced M-11s. It said a Chinese missile brigade is estimated to have 16 launchers and up to 96 missiles.
-------- eu
EU probe into missing plutonium shipment says human error to blame
Miami Herald Posted at 9:57 a.m. EST Thursday, November 25, 1999
http://www.herald.com/content/thu/digdocs/046929.htm
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- (AP) -- The European Union blamed human error and organizational problems for the temporary disappearance of a plutonium shipment, and said Thursday it would tighten rules for handling dangerous substances.
``Human error, internal communication and organizational problems (were) at the origin of the incident,'' an EU Commission statement said.
In September, a 0.24-ounce sample of plutonium from an EU research lab in Geel, Belgium, went missing and ended up in the English town of Abingdon.
The plutonium was in a container that should have been shipped to a nuclear facility in the French city of La Hague. Instead workers with the EU's atomic energy agency, Euratom, sent what they thought was an empty container to England.
Commission officials said the error occurred when a document giving details of the amount of plutonium inside the container was misplaced.
The audit also outlined recommendations to be adopted by Euratom in the handling of dangerous substances like plutonium. It called for more training and improved procedures, organization and control mechanisms.
The Commission said it intended to implement the changes immediately.
-------- russia
Three Nuclear Cities
Washington Post Saturday, November 27, 1999; Page A24
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/27/014l-112799-idx.html
Despite the congressional cuts imposed on our important Nuclear Cities Initiative, we will do our best to maintain projects in three Russian nuclear cities, not just one described in The Post [news story, Nov. 12].
Our program is designed to keep the former nuclear weapons scientists from selling their knowledge to unfriendly countries.
While we will place considerable emphasis on the nuclear city of Sarov, we also will continue to encourage the development of peaceful commercial jobs for former weapons scientists in Snezhinsk and Zheleznogorsk.
Although we have a limited budget, we will continue to work with the Russians to place resources, including Russian budget resources, in our three focus cities. We believe it is neither in the Russian nor the U.S. interest that nuclear scientists find their next jobs in North Korea or Iraq.
ROSE GOTTEMOELLER
Assistant Secretary
Nonproliferation and National Security
U.S. Department of Energy
Washington
---
Russia Says U.S. Concerns May Be Met Without Amending ABM Pact
Russia Today Sunday, Nov 28 at Prague 11:05 pm, N.Y. 05:05 pm
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=112183
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 23, 1999 -- (Reuters) Russia's U.N. ambassador suggested that U.S. misgivings about the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty could be addressed within the existing pact and without the amendments sought by Washington.
Russia has been alarmed by U.S. plans to set up a national anti-missile shield against potential attacks by "rogue states" and has so far rejected American offers to amend the ABM treaty, which bans the creation of such systems.
Ambassador Sergei Lavrov told a news conference on Monday that American concerns could be addressed in the context of adjustments to the ABM treaty signed in New York in September 1997. These included deployment of low-speed theatre missile defense systems.
"We are ready to address their concerns about the increased threats of missile proliferation," he said. "But this could be perfectly done at this stage in the context of 1997 New York agreement about so-called non-strategic ABM defenses."
But Lavrov, in rejecting the amendments proposed by Washington, said: "I want to make very clear that amendments to the ABM treaty, which would allow limited national anti-missile defense, would be against the core of the treaty, which prohibits such a defense and which also prohibits the creation of a basis for such defense."
His comments followed those of Russian Col.-Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, commander of Moscow's Strategic Missile Forces, who said on Friday a joint commission could examine the threat from rogue states.
In response, U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin said "the idea that they would want to work closely with us on defining the threat and then dealing with the threat would be welcome."
Lavrov again appealed to the United States and its allies to keep the ABM treaty intact or other strategic nuclear pacts would crumble, including the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or the nuclear test ban treaty.
"Those (U.S.) amendments would ruin the treaty, and if the treaty is ruined, you can safely forget about not only continuation of strategic arms reduction negotiations, but you can well witness the burial of the existing strategic arms limitation agreements," he said.
At the United Nations, Lavrov, along with the ambassadors of China and Belarus sponsored a resolution that calls for continued efforts to strengthen and preserve the 1972 treaty. It was adopted by a General Assembly committee on November 5, which assures its passage by full Assembly on December 1.
Lavrov said he was gratified that NATO nations did not join the United States in voting against the resolution, which he said indicated disapproval of American actions on the ABM.
The Nov. 5 vote was 54 to 4 with 73 abstentions. Voting against the resolutions, together with the United States, were Israel, Latvia and Micronesia. Thirteen of the 15 members of the European Union abstained while France and Ireland, voted for the resolution.
-------- iraq
With Talks on Iraq Stalled, U.S. May Seek Key U.N. Vote
Terms for Resumption of Weapons Inspections in Dispute
By Colum Lynch Special to The Washington Post Saturday, November 27, 1999; Page A02
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/27/082l-112799-idx.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 26-Intensive U.N. talks over Iraq policy broke off today, setting the stage for an American effort to break the impasse by forcing the Security Council to vote next week on whether to send U.N. weapons inspectors back to Iraq for the first time in a year.
Calling a vote would bring to a head months of negotiations and force Russia, China and France to either accept British and American terms for the resumption of weapons inspections or lose an opportunity to ease the economic sanctions on Baghdad, Western diplomats said.
"The United States would like to have a vote by the end of next week," said Peter Burleigh, the deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations. But he said a final decision on whether to bring the proposal before the Security Council would be made in the next few days, after high-level contacts between leaders in Moscow, Washington, London, Beijing and Paris.
The American and British effort to move the negotiations into an endgame comes as Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Sergei Lavrov, is set to travel to Moscow next week to meet with Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz. So far, Iraq has rejected all entreaties to allow the inspectors to return.
The United States and Britain, which will assume the council's rotating presidency in December, want the negotiations to wrap up by Dec. 4, when the council meets to decide whether to renew the "oil-for-food" program that permits Iraq to sell $5.2 billion worth of oil every six months to enable it to buy food and medicine for its people.
The five permanent members of the 15-nation Security Council--the United States, China, Russia, France and Britain--all favor a resumption of weapons inspections but have been at loggerheads on the terms for sending inspectors back to Iraq.
"We have come a long way over the past few months, and have reached agreement on most of the points of difference," British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Wednesday.
Lavrov, however, told his counterparts in New York this week that Russia is prepared to veto the resolution as it stands, according to a diplomat involved in the talks. Although France has moved closer to the American and British position in recent weeks, it has said it will not endorse a resolution that lacks Russia's approval.
"We are finishing the chess game and beginning the poker game," said a diplomat involved in the talks. "And everybody thinks everybody else is bluffing."
U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering held bilateral talks with Lavrov in New York on Tuesday, and Moscow has signaled that it might be willing to show flexibility on Iraq in exchange for less criticism from Washington of its Chechnya policy. But fundamental differences remain.
Russia, France and China want the sanctions on Iraq, which were imposed after it invaded Kuwait in 1990, to be eased quickly if Saddam Hussein's government agrees to cooperate with the weapons inspectors. The United States and Britain insist that the sanctions must remain in place for a "test period" to determine whether Iraq really is cooperating with the inspections and has abandoned all of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
Effectively, the U.S.-backed proposal would put off the politically difficult decision of suspending the sanctions on Iraq until after the presidential election in November 2000. "Russia, France and China say the test period is currently too long," said one diplomat involved in the negotiations. "The Russians want a specific date for action."
The United States has, however, made at least one concession in the negotiations: Instead of insisting on complete disarmament, the United States will settle for assurances that the "key" disarmament tasks have been resolved before sanctions are eased, diplomats said.
-------- us nuc weapons
GEORGE W. REAGAN
New York Post 11/23/99
http://www.nypostonline.com/112399/editorial/18522.htm
George W. Bush called for a "a distinctly American internationalism" in his important foreign-policy address on Friday. The very idea indicates the seriousness and originality of the speech, which powerfully evoked Ronald Reagan's muscular and expansive view of America's place in the world.
Bush distanced himself from the "isolationism" and protectionism embraced by Pat Buchanan while simultaneously rejecting Clintonite "drift" -- the tendency of the "nation to move from crisis to crisis like a cork in a current."
He demonstrated his understanding of Reagan's "peace through strength" philosophy with a full-throated advocacy of missile-defense systems. At the same time, Bush echoed his father's hands-on diplomatic style of leadership: "Alliances are not just for crises -- summoned into action when the fire bell sounds. They are sustained by contact and trust."
The candidate has no illusions about either Russia or China. He said a Russia that acts with savagery in Chechnya should expect no foreign aid, and termed China not a "strategic partner" but a "competitor." And in identifying the growing importance of India -- and not merely because of its nascent nuclear arsenal -- Bush demonstrates a heretofore-unseen nuance in his understanding of foreign policy. The fact that software entrepreneurship is becoming a major source of wealth in India has implications for America in terms of trade, immigration and this nation's longstanding relationship with India's neighbor and rival, Pakistan.
The "gotcha" pop quiz Bush stumbled through a couple of weeks ago should be quickly forgotten: George W. Bush knows what America is all about and what its role in the world must be.
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National Missile Defense
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 24, 1999, at 4:30 p.m. PT
By David C. Morrison, a free-lance writer based in Washington, David C. Morrison covered national security for National Journal from 1985 to 1995.
http://www.slate.com/Gist/99-11-24/Gist.asp#Bio
The Clinton administration is bound by law to decide by mid-2000 whether or not to begin deployment of a limited defense against long-range missiles. What is the history of missile defense? Could a missile system protect the United States? Which nations pose the greatest threat to this country? And what are the diplomatic repercussions of building such a system?
In 1967, the Johnson administration proposed the "Sentinel" missile defense network to defend against Chinese missile attack. Two years later, President Richard Nixon touted an even more limited "Safeguard" system to defend the United States' missile silos. As permitted by the ABM Treaty inked with Moscow in 1972, the Ford administration unveiled an $8 billion, 100-missile site in North Dakota in 1975. That site was closed only a few months later as a waste of money. China, meanwhile, did not produce a missile that could hit North America until 1979.
President Ronald Reagan's 1983 "Star Wars" speech resurrected the missile defense debate. Ten years and $27 billion later nothing had been built. Instead, President George Bush started plumping for a $72 billion space-based "Brilliant Pebbles" defense system. Its mission was to knock out 200 missiles carrying Russian warheads fired by accident or Chinese weapons fired by hubris.
The technology wasn't there for Brilliant Pebbles, and in 1993 the Clinton administration announced the "end of the Star Wars era." Missile defense spending puttered along in research mode until July 1998 when a U.S. study warned of the potential for missile mayhem by such "rogue nations" as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. A month later, North Korea fired a three-stage rocket over Japan. The rocket failed to orbit its satellite but demonstrated Pyongyang's unsuspected ballistic prowess. Then, last July, the GOP Congress maneuvered Clinton into signing a law pledging action as soon as possible--which means building a running missile defense system by 2005.
Current plans envision spending $10.5 billion through 2005 to deploy perhaps 20 high-speed interceptor missiles in Alaska that could deal only with a handful of incoming warheads. U.S. radars around the world would be upgraded to service this site, which could eventually be bolstered by other ground-, ship-, and aircraft-based anti-missile weapons.
Strategically, few dispute the merits of perfecting "theater" defenses, such as the upgraded Patriot missile to swat down low-flying shorter-range missiles on overseas battlefields, but the genuine operational need for a missile defense system for the U.S. homeland remains a much-gnawed bone of contention.
Over $100 billion in current dollars has been spent on missile defense since the early '60s, but the task of hitting a hypersonic bullet with a bullet remains a ticklish one. Even if the feat could be pulled off under laboratory conditions, real-world attackers would load their missiles with decoy warheads to foil or complicate interdiction. Critics insist that relatively cheap countermeasures will always trump costly missile defenses.
After numerous highly publicized failures, the Pentagon this year successfully tested both its medium-range Theater High-Altitude Area Defense anti-missile and a prototype of the long-range, high-speed Ground-Based Interceptor slated for the Alaska site. But only four of 19 planned interceptor tests will be completed by the time Clinton must make his go or no-go decision to deploy next year. An independent study funded by the Pentagon warned in mid-November that hasty deployment of the system could undermine its eventual success.
In a recently declassified estimate, the CIA projected that over the next 15 years the United States will face missile threats from "Russia, China and North Korea, probably from Iran, and possibly from Iraq." Russia today is struggling to maintain some 4,500 warheads mounted on about 1,000 missiles. Washington has long abandoned thoughts of defending against a full Russian onslaught--even a launch unauthorized by Moscow would easily swamp the proposed U.S. defenses. In any event, the CIA terms an accidental Russian firing "highly unlikely so long as current technical and procedural safeguards are in place."
China today boasts some 20 missiles that could hit the United States and is working to supplement that force with more survivable, mobile launchers. China could never trump the warhead blizzard Washington would send in retaliation against any atomic attack, though the country would be loath to cede to U.S. missile defenses the deterrence afforded by its handfuls of warheads. Beijing's opposition seems to be driven more by apprehension that Washington might provide theater missile defenses to Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province. Also the recently declassified CIA assessment assumes that the "rogue states" are likely to view their few ICBMs more as weapons of deterrence and coercive diplomacy than as weapons of war.
The crux of the strategic controversy is whether an imperfect homeland defense could eliminate the deterrent and coercive impact of small rogue missile forces. Any nation determined to explode a nuclear bomb in Uncle Sam's front yard would have to be insane to deliver the insult by missile--it might as well affix a return address to the weapon before firing. Detonating a smuggled warhead in the hold of a ship docked in, say, New York harbor would make much more sense, while avoiding the huge expense and trouble of building complex intercontinental rockets. If this logic holds, missile defense is a job for U.S. Customs, not the Pentagon.
Yet the prospect of an atomic apocalypse is so terrible that few can argue against spending tens of billions of dollars for insurance against remote possibilities. Here's where the debate enters the diplomatic arena. Could this anti-missile insurance policy reawaken a Cold War confrontation thought dead, lo, these past 10 years?
The 1972 ABM Treaty permits the United States and Russia to deploy 100 interceptors to defend either a missile field or the national capital. (The Russians chose to guard Moscow with their 100 anti-missiles.) Even the initial 20 anti-missiles slated for Alaska would violate this pact due to their nationwide coverage. If Clinton blinks the green light next summer, Washington would be in breach of the treaty by mid-2001, if it hopes to meet the 2005 deadline.
The State Department has asked Moscow to amend the ABM Treaty--which most missile defense proponents view as an outdated Cold War dinosaur anyway. Against the backdrop of the U.S. bombing campaign against Serbia, tension over the civil war in Chechnya, and Congress' failure to ratify a treaty banning nuclear tests, a Russian political establishment drifting toward intransigence seems unlikely to give the United States a free pass on missile defenses. The Russians might respond to a breached ABM Treaty by abandoning other treaties designed to further reduce the current stock of U.S. and Russian warheads. Thus, the construction of a limited shield against North Korea might spark a renewed nuclear arms race with Russia and ultimately reduce U.S. security.
The missile defense debate has been as much about faith and ideological fervor as about logic and rational calculation. If the past is any guide, Clinton's National Missile Defense will probably be stymied by the same technical, diplomatic, and financial factors that doomed Johnson's Sentinel, Nixon's Safeguard, Reagan's Star Wars, and Bush's Brilliant Pebbles.
Related on the Web
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has collected its recent articles regarding missile defense, with a particular focus on proposed amendments to the 1972 ABM Treaty, on this page. Like the Bulletin, the Center for Defense Information stridently opposes missile defense systems. Its site provides links to white papers, policy analyses, and other arms control organizations. However, missile defense proponents are not voiceless on the Web: On his home page, House Majority Leader Dick Armey contends that the ABM Treaty is no longer valid and applauds President Clinton's policy reversal on a national missile defense system.
http://www.bullatomsci.org/research/collections/armscntrlabm.html
http://www.cdi.org/issues/bmd/index.html
http://www.freedom.gov/
http://www.freedom.gov/library/defense/s990317.asp
http://www.freedom.gov/library/defense/abmletter.asp
---
DEBATING DEFENSE
Letters to the editor
Scientific American 12/99
http://www.sciam.com/1999/1299issue/1299letters.html
I cannot agree more with the conclusions drawn by George N. Lewis, Theodore A. Postol and John A. Pike in "Why National Missile Defense Won't Work." A missile defense system against nuclear or other mass-destruction warheads has to be 100 percent reliable to be successful, whereas the offense can be "successful" even if only one warhead reaches its target. I don't know of any other machine or system in the civilian or military world that has to perform to this extreme degree. The billions of dollars that would be spent on a system that won't work would be much better spent on taking missiles out of dangerous hands.
JAMES WATTENGEL São Paulo, Brazil
"Why National Missile Defense Won't Work" is really more of a political argument than a technical argument. This has no place in Scientific American. For the past 25 years or so the magazine has been running articles on arms control that have taken a political viewpoint and presented it as a scientific one, and I have always felt very uncomfortable with that. How can Pike, whose organization is dedicated to defeating any type of national ballistic-missile defense system, provide an honest, objective and scientific assessment?
ROBERT L. VIRKUS via e-mail
Editors' note:
Articles on national defense and nuclear arms have always appeared in Scientific American because political decisions rest in part on whether these goals are technically feasible.
Scientists and defense experts of diverse political views criticize the current antimissile defense proposals on the grounds listed in the article; Pike and his co-authors did a particularly good job of presenting them.
We'd like to hear from you.
Send us a letter.
http://www.sciam.com/forms/editorletterform.html
--
Why National Missile Defense Won't Work
Scientific American, George N. Lewis, Theodore A. Postol and John Pike 08/99
http://www.sciam.com/1999/0899issue/0899quicksummary.html
Worries about rogue states with nuclear weapons have renewed enthusiasm for an antiballistic-missile defense system that could protect the U.S. Unfortunately, such a system is infeasible and unwise today for the same reasons that it was three decades ago: countermeasures are too easy to build
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Cohen to Discuss U.S. Missile Shield on European Trip
Reuters Updated 3:20 PM ET November 24, 1999
http://news.excite.com/news/r/991124/15/politics-arms-cohen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary William Cohen will try to ease concerns in NATO about U.S. plans to build a missile defense shield and discuss the gap between American and European military abilities at a meeting in Brussels next week.
A senior Pentagon official also said Cohen will visit Romania on Tuesday and Germany on Wednesday in advance of the NATO defense ministers meeting next Thursday and Friday.
The official played down European concerns over U.S. moves to revive the "Star Wars" concept of a national missile defense system proposed by President Ronald Reagan, which Russia says threatens to unravel a complex web of arms control agreements.
French, German and other European defense officials have said they fear the proposed shield would lead to different defense levels between Europe and the United States and could undermine the existing defense structure based on nuclear deterrence.
"The secretary is completely willing to discuss with his colleagues ... their concerns. And I'm not going to anticipate that discussion," said the Pentagon official, who asked not to be identified.
The official declined to say whether he expected European countries to raise the possibility of a missile shield being erected to protect them as well.
"I can't anticipate what other people will want to talk about. The system that has been talked about right now, is a U.S.-type system," he said.
He rejected any suggestion that the concept of a defense shield, which would involve defense missiles hitting incoming missiles out of the sky, was inconsistent with the principles of international arms control.
But the United States has acknowledged that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, negotiated with the Soviet Union as a core element of arms control agreements, would have to be modified to allow a proposed national missile shield.
Cohen and other U.S. officials have made a number of offers to Russia, including sharing radar technology, if it will accept changes to the ABM treaty and a senior Russian general said a commission should be established to consider the issue.
The official said at the NATO meeting one key issue would be efforts by European countries to close the wide technology gap with the United States which was clearly shown during the alliance's air campaign against Yugoslavia earlier this year.
"What we see is that we have a lot of political momentum behind enhancing capabilities in Europe and we want to encourage that," he said. He mentioned in particular European states' commitment to build up their precision-guided weapons.
Cohen leaves on Monday for Munich and will visit Bucharest for the day on Tuesday.
He will attend a meeting there with defense ministers from NATO members Italy, Greece and Turkey as well as ministers from Slovenia, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania to establish ways to work together on security matters.
On Wednesday Cohen is to be in Hamburg. He will attend NATO meetings in Brussels on Thursday and Friday before returning to the United States on Friday evening.
-------- us nuc waste
Lawrence Lab work key to atomic storage
San Francisco Examiner Nov. 27, 1999
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/11/27/NEWS7215.dtl
Berkeley The Energy Department has plans to use technology developed at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to store nearly 19 tons of surplus plutonium in huge ceramic bricks.
An additional 36 tons of plutonium would be converted to a mixed-oxide fuel for use at nuclear power plans.
The department says the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., would be the likely home for three specialized facilities that would modify the surplus.
The Livermore Lab in 1997 entered an agreement with SRS to study the feasibility of mixing the plutonium with ceramic in order to immobilize and store it.
-------- us nuc other
Nuclear tools of terror could destroy in silence
by JEFF PILLETS and THOMAS J. FITZGERALD Bergen Record Sunday, November 21, 1999
http://www.bergen.com/news/terrjp199911212.htm
Just before Christmas 1995, dissidents from the break away republic of Chechnya sought to strike terror into Mother Russia.
They took a single canister of cesium -- a radioactive element that remains potent for 30 years -- and planted it in Moscow's Izmailovsky Park, a popular marketplace. Their plan was foiled when Russian authorities were tipped off and recovered the canister. But security experts said thousands of people strolling close to the cesium could have been killed or injured.
"The scary thing is that we are entering an era where this kind of terror could become commonplace," said Klaus Duftschmid, an official with the International Atomic Energy Association, which offers a handbook to combat what the intelligence community refers to as RWs, or radiologic weapons.
For years, officials have worried that uranium and plutonium from nuclear power plants and military installations could fall into the wrong hands and lead to the ultimate nightmare -- terrorists armed with homemade atomic bombs.
But even more accessible are other potent radioactive elements that power medical and industrial machines in the United States and around the world. Officials fear that terrorists will harvest cesium, cobalt, or strontium from discarded or abandoned machines, or steal it from research laboratories.
Weapons made from these elements don't explode. Instead, they silently assault victims with radiation that can damage cells, potentially causing severe burns and immune system shutdowns in the short run and cancer and other diseases over the long haul.
"I regret that I have come to the conclusion that there is going to be tremendous growth in [nuclear] terrorism over the next decade or so," John Deutch, then the director of the CIA, told the House Intelligence Committee three years ago.
FBI and CIA representatives declined this month to discuss efforts to combat this type of terrorism. But there are other signs of government concern. Kathleen McIntyre, a member of a Long Island-based Department of Energy team that responds to nuclear materials accidents, said her group has trained to deal with attacks by terrorist groups and troubled individuals.
In 1996, she said, a Long Island man was arrested after threatening to kill local politicians by planting radioactive materials in their homes. "This guy had accumulated a truckload of old sources," McIntyre said. "If he wanted to, he may have been able to do some real damage."
In 1995, someone contaminated a water cooler at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., exposing 26 employees to radioactive phosphorous. The FBI and other investigating agencies never were able to identify the culprit.
William Belanger, chief radiation safety specialist in the Environmental Protection Agency's Philadelphia office, said the U.S. government "is quite concerned" about radiation being turned into a weapon. "Just be thankful we're not in Russia," where thousands of nuclear devices litter old Soviet factories and closed military bases, he said.
The International Atomic Energy Association has held two conferences on the threat posed by uncontrolled nuclear sources. The Vienna-based group is calling for an international agreement that would set worldwide standards to help countries regain control.
"There's so much stuff out there, there can be no guarantee that some of it won't be used for bad purposes," said IAEA President Abel Gonzalez.
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Unnecessary risks
Everyday atomic-powered items pose dangers
Bergen Record Sunday, November 21, 1999
http://www.bergen.com/editorials/rad22199911221.htm
THE PHRASE "nuclear power" usually conjures up images of huge electricity plants or atomic bombs. But American industry has found hundreds of other applications for radioactive material.
It is used in the glowing emergency exit lights at movie theaters, schools, and hospitals. It's found in smoke detectors in homes and businesses. And it powers an array of sophisticated tools such as moisture density gauges used in construction projects.
Government and industry have mastered the use of nuclear power, but an investigation by The Record found that both have failed miserably in keeping track of this very dangerous material.
"Radioactive Roulette" -- The Record's series that starts today -- found that atomic-powered devices and the deadly isotopes they contain are routinely lost, stolen, mishandled, or abandoned. Their improper disposal has created environmental hazards nationwide, costing businesses and taxpayers millionsof dollars and exposing people to potentially harmful levels of radiation.
Nuclear regulators say most exposures to nuclear materials are too small to cause any immediate health problems. And it's impossible to link an instance of cancer to a specific exposure to radioactive material. But genetic damage can occur over time. The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that the human body has no safe threshold for radiation.
How should the state and federal government -- as Governor Whitman termed it in a 1998 letter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- "put the nuclear genie back in the bottle"? The federal government needs a better registration system for nuclear-powered devices, and both federal and state officials should monitor more strictly the companies that use these devices.
In recent years, the devices have been found on streets, in classrooms, down wells, in scrap yards, and in demolition sites. Last year, an abandoned industrial meter was found near a new shopping mall in Elizabeth. Had the device not been found by workers, New Jersey officials say, it could have eventually exposed thousands of shoppers to harmful levels of radiation.
Other times, the devices are inadvertently smelted as scrap metal and recycled into other products.
The military has been as big a culprit as private industry. The U.S. Army, for example, recently reported the loss of 400 depleted uranium bullets from the Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County.
How widespread is the problem?
Between 1993 and 1997, 1,088 nuclear devices were reported to the federal government as lost, stolen, or abandoned. In more than 80 percent of the cases, the devices were never found.
During that time, nuclear material was involved in 288 accidents on U.S. roadsand railways, and in air transit. In 95 of those crashes, radiation was released at levels higher than federal health standards allow.
From 1988 through 1997, at least 339 Americans received potentially harmful doses of radiation during mishaps. Even small doses of radiation can cause genetic damage and lead to cancer and other chronic illnesses.
Federal, state, and local governments have spent millions of dollars cleaning up nuclear-material accidents. In 1997, two incidents involving exit signs lighted by radioactive tritium gas cost New Jersey taxpayers $360,000.
The accidents are taking a toll on the environment. In the past five years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recorded 352 incidents in which radiation was released from abandoned or misused nuclear devices. New Jersey officials are monitoring 30 military, industrial, and residential sites contaminated by radiation spills.
The NRC has already embraced some of the needed reforms. Working with scientists, it is cataloging lost and stolen nuclear devices. The agency is also improving the licensing procedure for 20,000 of the most potent radioactive devices, such as thickness gauges used in factories. Businesses that hold the so-called general licenses for the devices will be required to pay a $420 annual fee and register them yearly. While welcomed by critics, this step leaves unchanged rules governing roughly 1.5 million less powerful devices -- such as exit signs -- that have proved troublesome.
Those are good first steps. However, federal regulators must also strengthen inspection and enforcement. When violations are found, the fines levied against companies must be large enough to give manufacturers and distributors enough incentive to provide adequate control over nuclear-powered devices.
On the state level, New Jersey must also regulate these devices more vigilantly. The first step should be increasing the number of state Bureau of Environmental Radiation inspectors who monitor more than 500 corporations and individuals licensed by the state to use radioactive materials.
The state has four inspectors. That's the same number of inspectors employed by Maine, which has only about a third as many licensees to monitor. To meet the minimum recommendations of the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors, an independent association of safety experts, New Jersey would need to double its inspection staff.
New Jersey should also follow the lead of the 35 states that already have or will soon sign agreements with the federal government allowing them to regulate virtually all nuclear materials within their borders.
Experts say states can monitor these devices more efficiently than the NRC, which has mishandled the regulation of these small devices while concentrating on nuclear power plants.
---
Radioactive roulette
Bergen Record Sunday, November 21, 1999
By THOMAS J. FITZGERALD and JEFF PILLETS Staff Writers
http://www.bergen.com/news/newatomic199911211.htm
In Union County, a teenager scoops an emergency exit sign from the rubble of a demolished building. He takes it home, pries it apart, and gets hit with a burst of radioactive gas.
Beside a Texas highway, a cop finds an odd-looking purple object that dropped from a passing truck. He picks it up, not realizing it is part of a tool with an atomic-powered core.
In living rooms across the country, people settle into easy chairs only to get a dose of radiation. They later learn a part in their recliners was made with contaminated steel.
For decades, Americans have known that the mighty atom can do harm as well as good. That's why diplomats have tried to trim atomic weapon stockpiles and regulators have taken pains to prevent the release of radiation at nuclear power plants.
But as the government has focused on such high-profile issues, it has left a rip in its nuclear safety net. Officials concede that they have lost track of tens of thousands of little-known radioactive devices, some of which have contaminated homes and work sites and exposed Americans to harmful radiation levels.
The result, some experts say, is an emerging threat to public health.
In the United States, there are roughly 2 million atomic-powered tools, machines, and lights. They mark emergency exits in theaters and malls, they check the toughness of welds in factories, they measure moisture in concrete and soil at construction sites. Used by themselves, pure forms -- or isotopes -- of radioactive elements fight cancers and aid in research.
Handled properly, such materials are safe and useful. But weak government oversight and sloppy handling by businesses and individuals have sparked what some now consider a crisis. A review of federal and state data by The Record shows that atomic machines and containers of isotopes are lost, stolen, abandoned, mishandled, and improperly tossed out hundreds of times a year.
"I think we've come to a point where we realize that the threat to the public may be far greater from these kinds of materials than we thought possible," said Greta Dicus, a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The hazards of exposure even to low levels of radiation are cumulative over a lifetime. Though few deaths in the United States have been directly linked to such radioactive sources, experts attribute that more to sheer luck than to any precautions that have been taken. Some of those who have studied the problem compare the potential threat from mishandled radioactive materials to a game of Russian roulette.
"The potential for physical harm is tremendous," said Michael Mattia, risk management director for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. "How long do we play such a deadly game before our luck runs out?"
The Record has found:
The NRC received 248 reports of instances in which nuclear tools or materials were lost, stolen, or abandoned in 1997, the last year for which complete data are available. Because many owners don't realize they have lost a device, or don't know they are required to report the loss, the official statistics "represent only the tip of the iceberg," Dicus said.
Radioactive materials are jeopardizing people's health. At least 339 Americans received radiation doses higher than federal standards allow from such tools and materials between 1988 and 1997, NRC records show. Regulators believe many more episodes went unreported. Medical researchers say that even small radiation doses can cause genetic damage, and can lead to cancer and other illnesses.
Authorities say stray radioactive materials are responsible for hundreds of deaths in Brazil, Estonia, Mexico, and other parts of the world. And sloppy handling of atomic-powered devices in foreign countries has led to products made from radioactive imported steel reaching the United States. In 1997, La-Z-Boy tried to chase down thousands of its signature recliners that had a part made from such radioactive foreign steel.
Government agencies and private businesses have spent an estimated $12 million to $14 million a year tracking down lost tools and isotope containers and cleaning up after accidents. Two 1997 incidents involving exit signs powered by tritium gas cost New Jersey taxpayers $360,000.
The U.S. steel industry has been hammered by radioactive materials accidents. Nuclear tools have been inadvertently smelted with regular scrap metal more than 30 times at steel plants since 1983, costing the industry an estimated $300 million to decontaminate mills. Experts say there have been fewer emergencies in recent years because of better detection efforts, but the amount of radioactive scrap brought to the gates has not slowed.
There are so many lost radioactive tools and materials floating around that federal officials worry they are falling into the wrong hands. They fear the materials could be used in the United States and elsewhere to mount cheap, limited attacks in which targets are exposed to radiation. The Central Intelligence Agency warns that western nations should prepare for "radiologic terrorism."
Inconsistent rules weaken oversight
So who is to blame for the mess?
Some point fingers at manufacturers of atomic-powered tools for doing a poor job of informing customers about potential hazards and disposal rules. Some criticize customers who abandon old tools or toss them in with regular trash to avoid the high costs of sending them to radioactive waste dumps.
But the most frequently cited culprit is a weak, disjointed oversight system that allows New Jersey to regulate tools one way and New York to regulate them another, and that mandates inspections of some devices and not of others.
New York and 34 other states have won -- or are seeking -- permission from the NRC to use their own officials to enforce federal guidelines. The pacts allow states to beef up inspections and take other steps to enhance safety.
But New Jersey and 14 other states continue to share oversight duties with the NRC. Although the 45-year-old system allows states to hire fewer inspectors, critics call it inefficient and confusing to users of atomic devices.
Also criticized is an NRC policy that has allowed about 75 percent of radioactive tools to go virtually unregulated after they are sold. With no annual registration of such devices, no inspections, and a long history of small fines, experts say users are prone to disregard disposal rules or lose track of devices.
"A device might have been installed 20 or 30 years ago. Who even remembers it's there when a business is sold or closes down?" said Raymond Turner, a Cincinnati-based engineer who specializes in tracking stray atomic devices. "It's no wonder these things are turning up in [building] demolition sites and public places everywhere. It all adds up to a nightmare."
It's a nightmare that federal officials have, until now, all but ignored. Over the years, the NRC has downplayed the potential hazards of tools and isotopes that give off relatively low levels of radiation.
But increasingly, their actions belie their words.
Last month, the NRC enacted stricter licensing rules for a small percentage of nuclear tools -- primarily those used in factories.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- which estimates that the nation is littered with as many as 30,000 stray devices, known as orphans -- is trying to compile the first registry of tools, machines, and isotope samples.
Further, the Department of Energy's fiscal year 2000 budget contains seven times more money than the previous year's budget for hunting down stray radioactive materials.
"This is a domestic nuclear danger that is not in Russia; it's here and it's now, right at our back door," said Lee Leonard, a Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist directing the effort to recover 18,000 nuclear devices lurking in shuttered factories, research labs, and public works garages.
"Our mission is to get to them before we literally have people dropping in the streets."
How seriously do others on the front lines view the threat? Consider the response to the March 1998 theft of 19 radioactive cancer-fighting "needles" from Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, N.C.
One team of state investigators searched the hospital for the inch-long pieces of a cesium isotope, while another team combed landfills and a waste water treatment plant. An Energy Department helicopter with equipment sensitive enough to detect radiation on shards of a shredded penny flew over a 100-square-mile area, focusing on schools, parks, suspects' homes, and Greensboro Coliseum, where the NCAA basketball tournament was being played.
As a local FBI agent monitored events, the NRC sent two public relations specialists to keep calm in the community.
"Our immediate concern was that [the needles were] just laying out -- at a playground, day care [center], something like that," said Richard Fry, director of North Carolina's Division of Radiation Protection. "If you just found them and put them in your pocket for a couple of days, that's life-threatening."
One theory is that a disgruntled former employee stole the cesium to embarrass the hospital. But authorities have made no arrests and have not found the slow-decaying radioactive element.
"These sources represent a threat to someone [30] years from now," Aaron Padgett, a North Carolina radiation protection official, told a national meeting of regulators last year. "So there's no good ending to this story."
Useful tools spread, and fall into disuse
The beginning of the nuclear era is often traced to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945. In fact, the atom's power was harnessed half a century earlier. In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays. Within months, doctors were using the new tool to diagnose broken bones. Within a year, doctors had also found that it could cause serious burns on patients.
And so a vital lesson was quickly learned: Radiation -- which, put simply, is the movement of certain types of energy or tiny particles from one place or one atom to another -- could be both immensely helpful and very harmful.
That's especially true of the radiation from nuclear tools, which are powered by the decay of unstable forms of uranium, cobalt, cesium, hydrogen, and other elements. Radiation from these elements can penetrate and damage cells of humans, animals, and plants, causing cancer and other diseases.
In normal use, people who use tools and products that contain radioactive elements are protected from exposure by a hard, sealed capsule that holds the element. It's when the capsule is ruptured -- by a bulldozer at a construction site, a worker taking apart an old factory, a pulverizing machine at a scrap yard -- that the problems begin.
Radioactivity from some elements dissipates within minutes when it hits the air. Radioactivity from other materials poses a danger for thousands of years.
Still, the use of atomic-powered tools and machines has multiplied over time. And, even though some types of nuclear devices are gradually giving way to versions that run on other fuels, no one sees them disappearing any time soon.
To be sure, tools powered by radioactive materials have had enormous benefits in a variety of settings. Some even save lives -- exit signs point the way out of burning buildings and teletherapy needles shrink malignant tumors.
These days, radioactive elements power everything from huge electric generating plants to measuring tools barely bigger than a car battery. One machine lets engineers check for hidden cracks in highway bridges. Another bulky piece of equipment helps airlines inspect baggage for explosives. Radioactive materials power the meter that tells brewers how full a can of beer is.
"Radiation is safe, clean, and very effective -- that's why there are literally thousands and thousands of these devices in use," said Larry Jacobsen, sales manager for Amstat Industries Inc., a leading supplier of nuclear static eliminators used in the film, printing, and microprocessing industries. "Are some of these machines getting lost? Yes. But don't blame the machines for that."
Other nuclear tool makers also downplay the problem.
"There are reported instances of people losing devices, but when you take into consideration that there are millions of devices in use, it's just not an issue," said Guy Hawking, president of AEA Technology in Burlington, Mass.
"By the time these devices are disposed of, they're junk -- just a hunk of metal," said Hawking, who added that many radioactive elements decay so quickly that they have little ability to do harm.
But a growing number of scientists and government regulators have come to believe otherwise. One watershed event that started to raise awareness came in 1983. That December, thousands of tiny cobalt pellets spilled from an aging cancer-fighting machine that had been sold to a scrap yard in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from Texas.
Within weeks, about 200 junkyard workers and residents of a nearby neighborhood were exposed to radiation and many developed stomach ailments, immune system problems, and other maladies. Some still receive treatment.
Meanwhile, hundreds of tons of steel products made with contaminated scrap were shipped into the United States. Regulators in both countries spent millions of dollars to track it all down and dispose of it.
Juarez was to nuclear material accidents what the Chernobyl disaster was to nuclear power plant accidents: an illustration that one event can spawn all sorts of troubling repercussions.
"Any time you go out and respond to one of these things, you immediately think Juarez," said Bill Belanger, an expert in nuclear materials in the EPA's regional office in Philadelphia.
This continuing threat of catastrophe led Belanger two years ago to organize the nation's first emergency drill for a nuclear material incident. He said it was long overdue, noting that such exercises have long been held at nuclear power plants.
"In all honesty, the safety systems built into reactors in this country make a serious accident impossible," Belanger said. "Yet, at the same time, we have seen a steady stream of accidents, mishaps, and exposures from the other [radioactive materials] side. . . .
"People expect their government to protect them from radioactivity," he said. "There's radiation phobia. You can't get away from it."
Dangerous pieces in public places
In recent years, regulators have had to deal with nuclear devices on streets, in classrooms, down wells, in scrap yards, and at demolition sites.
Hikers at a New Mexico wildlife refuge found an abandoned nuclear gauge just off a trail. High school officials in Ohio found old disks of radioactive radium buried in the schoolyard. An NRC staffer found a gauge on a street corner while walking to work in King of Prussia, Pa.
In the five years ending in 1998, New Jersey officials reported 273 instances in which nuclear devices or materials were lost or turned up in places frequented by the public. The majority, 161, came in the past two years. In 1998, the number of incidents was three times what it had been in 1991. Regulators attribute the trend to increased use of atomic-powered tools, coupled with a wider use of radiation detectors.
In one case, a man in Camden stole an industrial gauge, only to turn himself in after seeing television reports about how hazardous the device could be. In another case, a teenage patient in a psychiatric hospital yanked down a tritium-powered exit sign, contaminating much of his ward.
In 1997, 300 anti-tank bullets with uranium cores taken from the Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County by a New Jersey National Guardsman turned up at a nearby police firing range.
In 1998, a construction supervisor spotted an abandoned gauge attached to a piece of pipe sticking out of the ground at the building site for the Jersey Gardens mall in Elizabeth. Without his keen eye, officials said, shoppers could have received harmful radiation doses if the gauge -- which already had been bumped around by a bulldozer -- had broken apart.
"It could have been a disaster," said John Feeney, New Jersey's chief radiation safety inspector. "We've simply lost control of a whole range of radioactive sources. Getting it back will not be easy."
Most New Jersey incidents do not put anyone in immediate peril. For example, waste containing radioactive materials regularly sets off radiation detectors at landfills and trash incinerators. When that happens, the truck carrying the materials often is sent back to whomever shipped the waste.
But the problem with radioactive roulette, as Louis Elhalim knows, is that it takes only one piece of bad luck to cause a lot of trouble. "It's like carrying a gun," he said of radioactive material. "It hurts people."
On the day before Mother's Day 1997, Louis, then 16, and two friends pedaled their bikes to a construction site near his home in Union.
A muscular teenager with penetrating eyes, Louis loved all things glowing -- his basement bedroom was decorated with fluorescent stars -- and his eyes were drawn to three illuminated exit signs on the ground. He grabbed them and rode home,planning to use the luminous guts to create another wall decoration.
As they snacked on sunflower seeds, Louis and a friend dissected the first sign. In doing so, officials say, they accidentally broke two 3-inch-long tubes, releasing the tritium gas that makes the signs glow. Louis and his friend ingested additional gas with each sunflower seed.
Thirty minutes later, Louis noticed the distinctive symbol for radioactivity on a tube. He called police and poison control. They told him to strip and shower. Within minutes, police sealed off his home.
Louis, his mother, and his brother provided urine samples for days so they could be tested for radiation exposure. For 2 1/2 weeks, the government housed the family in a local hotel. Back at their house, workers scrubbed or removed anything radioactive. When Louis returned home, his room was bare, his clothes and glowing stars gone. "Nothing left but four walls," he said.
In 30 minutes, Louis had received the same amount of radiation the human body normally absorbs from natural sources in three months. NRC health experts say it is unlikely he will suffer any long-term illness. But a specialist consulted by Louis' mother could not rule out the possibility. One evening, teary-eyed at the kitchen table, she broke the news to her son.
"It hurts, man. It's on my mind quite a bit," said Louis, now 18 and attending Union County Community College. "There's a slightly higher chance of me getting cancer, and my kids have a chance of birth defects."
So unsure of his future was Louis that he went into therapy. Sometimes, he just sits and stares. "What's wrong?" his mother will ask.
"I'm wondering what will happen to me," Louis will say. "What will happen if I get cancer?"
His mother wonders, too, what his future holds. "All I know," she said, "is he ate something that was poison."
Exposure cases rise, and may go unseen
Many people who are exposed to radiation are paid to work with atomic-powered tools or materials. Unlucky hospital technicians get dosed by faulty X-ray machines, and careless radiographers are exposed while working with instruments that check the strength of steel pipes or welds.
But increasingly, both in the United States and around the world, police officers, steel mill workers, scrap yard employees, and ordinary citizens are being exposed to radioactive materials that turn up in public places.
From the 1950s to 1980, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a Vienna, Austria-based watchdog group, recorded, on average, fewer than five exposure cases annually. Now the agency tracks 70 to 80 every year, and estimates that hundreds are never reported.
Many of the recent cases come from the former Soviet Union, which is booby-trapped with tons of nuclear scrap and machines left behind by the military. More than 300 former bases in the republic of Georgia are contaminated, and soldiers and civilians have been killed after exposure to abandoned devices, according to the international agency. Last year, two old electrical generators were found in a stream where many Georgian children swam. Had the vessels been broken open, the results might have been devastating: The strontium-powered machines each contain more radioactivity than was emitted in Chernobyl.
In the United States, baggage handlers at Newark and John F. Kennedy airports have received radiation doses from poorly packed shipments of isotopes. In Tennessee, an elderly couple got a dose of radioactivity from radium they found in a box of old medical supplies at a yard sale.
One afternoon in Huntsville, Texas, Sgt. Jim Ward, a 21-year veteran of the local police force, picked up a strange purple object lying in the grass beside a highway. "It felt like a little piece of metal. It didn't tingle, didn't burn, didn't do anything to my skin," he said.
The object was a radioactive source from a well-exploration tool that had fallen from a passing truck. On that day in 1991, Ward got hit by about 50 times the radiation the government deems safe for people to absorb in a year.
Time has passed. Ward has been tested and teased by colleagues about glowing in the dark. Though he has never become ill from the radiation, he has lived with that prospect. "It's something I really want to forget," he said.
Scientists know large doses of radiation can blister the skin and cause stomach disorders. Over the long haul, even smaller doses can lead to leukemia, almost every other type of cancer, cataracts, and a weakened immune system. What's less clear is how much exposure is too much.
NRC news releases frequently state that people accidentally exposed to radiation from nuclear tools and materials get such a small dose that it causes no immediate harm.
But the releases never mention something most radiation experts agree on: Damage from radiation accumulates over time. Ten small exposures over 10 years can cause as much damage as one large dose.
The impact of that kind of exposure can be compounded by the fact that, in everyday life, Americans absorb all types of radiation: from natural sources in the air and soil, from X-rays, from foods irradiated to kill bacteria, for example.
It's in combination with all those sources that radioactivity from a nuclear machine or isotope could be dangerous. More than a decade ago, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that there is no safe threshold of radiation for the human body.
"One exposure may be small, but the slate is never wiped clean -- it builds up over a lifetime," said Judith Johnsrud, chairwoman of the Sierra Club National Nuclear Waste Task Force.
And so it's difficult to link a specific case of cancer to a specific radiation exposure; most experts think it can take a decade or more for genetic damage to turn into leukemia or a detectable tumor.
"The cancer you have today is probably not [exclusively] the result of some big event that happened yesterday, but of hundreds of smaller insults that happened to your body through the years," said Richard Clapp, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health who has done extensive research on cancer rates among Massachusetts residents exposed to low-level radiation.
"That's what low-level radiation is -- a small insult," Clapp said. "And that's why we should all be very concerned that the government can't tell you where all the lost nuclear sources are."
Jesse Santana and Earl Moore are very concerned. Both were involved in a 1996 episode that began when crack addicts backed up a truck to a bankrupt steel products factory in Houston, forced their way in with a crowbar, and used a dolly to wheel out some odd-looking cameras they sold for scrap.
By the time the cameras were shipped back and forth between a couple of scrap yards, the cobalt source from one of the industrial devices -- used to check the strength of steel -- had broken off. It got kicked beneath an outdoor sink at the Lockwood Scrap Metal Co., where it sat for a week until authorities investigating the factory break-in tracked the cameras to the scrap yard.
"All of a sudden," says Santana, one of the yard's managers, "we're standing there one afternoon and you get some [Department of] Energy guys coming in and yelling, 'Radiation, radiation. Everyone evacuate, evacuate.' "
In the end, the police caught the thieves and arrested Santana and his wife, who also works at the scrap yard, for initially lying about buying the stolen cameras. About 20 people, including Lockwood employees and the Santanas' two toddlers, were exposed to radiation. One man who picked up the cobalt got a severely blistered hand and five police officers felt ill for days.
In a 1994 letter to a judge handling the steel factory bankruptcy, Texas health officials had said the cobalt sources in the cameras were "potentially extremely hazardous and could cause fatal exposures to individuals."
But after the scrap yard incident, officials downplayed the health threat, saying that someone would have to be close to the cobalt for 50 hours to suffer serious radiation sickness. Not everyone was convinced.
"We went and got tested and all that, and the physicians said there were no immediate dangers," said Earl Moore, 46, one of the officers who poked around the scrap yard trailer. "But nobody could give a guarantee that 10 to 15 years down the road, problems won't crop up."
Discarded parts taint products, lives
It should have come as no surprise that radioactive material showed up in the Houston scrap yard.
No industry has been hit harder by atomic orphans than the steel industry, which gets 70 percent of its raw material from recycled scrap. Hundreds of lost nuclear devices have been found lurking in piles of scrap; those that slip through can cause disaster.
In one 1987 incident in Goiania, Brazil, four people died and 244 people were found to have received dangerous levels of radiation after a scrap dealer broke open a machine with cesium inside.
The canister held a sample of blue, glowing cesium. The dealer was fascinated and put the substance in his pocket. Later, he showed it off to his friends. Some of the friends broke off parts and took it to their acquaintances and families. Less than seven days later, the first victims began to appear in local clinics.
In the United States, the impact on steel mills has been more economic and environmental. Cleanup costs have averaged $8 million to $10 million each for the more than 30 incidents in which radioactive materials have been smelted, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute.
"All our members have installed highly sophisticated radiation detection systems to monitor incoming scrap," said James Collins, vice chairman of the Steel Manufacturers Association. "They believe . . . they are innocent victims of insufficient control of radioactive sources in the economy."
Despite increased safeguards at scrap yards and mills, nuclear material has slipped into products made of domestic and imported metal. Manufacturers of everything from recliners to garden spades to rebar rods used to reinforce concrete have had to chase down and recall contaminated products.
In 1997, radiation wound up in living rooms all over America.
La-Z-Boy, makers of the famous recliner with the retractable footrest, made about 6,000 chairs with radioactive parts from contaminated Brazilian steel. Company officials were so alarmed that they dispatched waves of employees across the country to alert dealers. Several truckloads of hot chairs were literally flagged down on the highway and turned back.
But about 1,000 of the recliners with contaminated plates in the rocking mechanism found their way into customers' houses.
"We manufacture chairs. We're concerned with things like patterns, fabric, comfort," said Gary Bell, La-Z-Boy's manager of product safety. "Radiation is normally not something that enters the equation. How were we ever to expect that metal we were using was radioactive?"
Even though the amount of contamination was small -- someone sitting in a chair for an entire year would have received the equivalent of a single chest X-ray -- the company was aghast.
The incident cost La-Z-Boy several hundred thousand dollars as it shut down production while employees knocked on doors across the country to explain the problem and offer to replace either the part or the entire chair.
"A lot opted for the new chair," said Bell.
Accidents, neglect, bring contamination
Radiation from tools and isotope containers has also contaminated oil and gas wells, highways, and airports -- not to mention sizable portions of small towns.
For 100 days in 1994, the government tracked the fallout from the breaking of a gauge containing cesium at Kay-Ray/Sensall Inc., a factory in Mount Prospect, Ill., that makes industrial measuring instruments. Workers unknowingly dragged radioactive material through town, and the chase was on.
With Geiger counters in tow, Illinois Department of Health officials knocked on the doors of 18 homes and more than a dozen businesses -- diners, hardware stores, the local YMCA. Many citizens were afraid to go outdoors.
Many people had to replace entire carpets after the state cut out contaminated chunks. Others sacrificed their shoes, socks, and car mats.
Even though the state said the contamination was too slight to cause serious injury, the company and the state spent $250,000 on the investigation and cleanup. And fear and confusion spread.
"We heard rumors about meltdowns and coverups; you didn't know what to believe," said Mount Prospect resident Jaime Valesquez. "For something that wasn't supposed to be that harmful, they sure spent a lot of time looking for it."
Radioactive residue is more often spread in shipping mishaps than by workers' feet. Between 1993 and 1997, nuclear material was involved in 288 accidents on U.S. roads, railways, and in air transit. On 95 occasions, radiation was released into the environment at levels higher than federal health standards allow, according to NRC records.
Accidents involving well drillers also can cause environmental problems when cesium-powered tools used to chart the variety and density of underground rocks break or fall off below the surface.
In 1988, a bungled attempt to fish out a tool stuck in a methane gas well near Helena, Ala., contaminated plants and a 50,000-gallon pit of water. Afraid for their drinking water, residents balked at a plan to treat the radioactive water in the local sewer system.
The case went to a state court, which ordered a $1 million cleanup. Ultimately the well was capped with cement and marked by a tombstone of sorts -- a steel plaque engraved with the trefoil symbol for radiation.
"It's going to be quite a while before the source, and the area near there, is not radioactive anymore," James McNees, director of Alabama's Office of Radiation Control, said in a recent interview. "We don't anticipate anybody drilling a well there for a long time."
The first sign that radioactivity is present -- even in tiny amounts -- sets off a chain reaction that usually ends up costing someone a lot of money. Officials bring complicated machinery and make painstaking surveys of people and places that might possibly be affected.
During the Mount Prospect, Ill., incident, for example, investigators had to test more than 100 people for possible contamination. Each test -- usually a urine test called a bioassay -- costs between $50 and $200.
And legal disposal of soil and other contaminated materials can cost up to $400 a cubic foot. Dumping fees for one incident can top $100,000.
" 'Messy' is a nice word for it," Turner, the Cincinnati engineer, said of nuclear materials accidents. "When you're dealing with radioactivity, it would be better to say 'messy and dangerous.' Or 'messy, dangerous, and expensive.' "
Careless times past threaten the future
Experts looking down the road envision additional threats from loosely controlled nuclear material.
The stray devices from the old Soviet bloc are already appearing in scrap yards and in smelting accidents throughout Eastern Europe. To try to keep them from being exported, the United States is paying to install radiation detectors at airports in the former Soviet Union.
"[The scrap] will start showing up everywhere in the world because the market for scrap steel is international," said Abel Gonzalez, director of radiation protection at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Some see new threats from the changing nature of the domestic economy. As factories close in the United States and move overseas, scavengers search the abandoned husks for scrap. Radioactive devices often are encased in valuable metals like silver, titanium, platinum, copper, and even gold. People who take the metal may not know what's underneath.
In fact, federal regulators worry that even their best attempts to control nuclear devices will be undermined by the thousands of devices and isotope samples that have been misplaced and forgotten over the past four decades.
"Every radioactive source which gets lost may not pose a hazard, but how can we ever determine if something is a threat if we can't even find it?" said Jill Lipoti, assistant director of the New Jersey Bureau of Environmental Radiation. "It's a huge problem."
In 1996, officials found radioactive leftovers in a South Orange home whose owners had been licensed by the U.S. government to conduct radiation-shielding experiments from 1951 to 1963. The researchers sold the property in the mid-1960s, leaving a basement laboratory drenched in radium, which remains potent for several thousand years. A number of families had lived in the house before the state spent about $50,000 to decontaminate it.
In 1997, teachers cleaning science labs at Shelton High School in Shelton, Conn., found, in a back workroom, a small box marked "radioactive material." "Inside were at least a dozen of these things that looked like large capsules or pills," science department chairman Ken Bobwick recalled.
The NRC identified the capsules as containers of radioactive isotopes used by a nearby Sikorsky Aircraft plant in the 1950s and 1960s to mark escape hatches in helicopters and airplanes. "But we never figured how they got into the school and we have no idea how long they sat there," Bobwick said.
Then last year in South Jersey, regulators found another reminder that a half-century of neglect has left the nation littered with nuclear tools and materials that will make unwelcome appearances for decades to come.
In October, a load of junked office furniture from a Philadelphia government building was impounded at Graebel Eastern Movers in Moorestown after a company truck set off a scrap yard's radiation detector.
The load was so hot that New Jersey officials quickly called in federal regulators to help deal with it. They finally tracked the radioactivity to a file cabinet. Inside a drawer, they found an old radium needle that was once used for cancer therapy.
That prompted more questions than it answered. Where did the needle come from? Who had been exposed to the radiation coming from it? And, most worrisome, were there more like it in Philadelphia?
During the next week, investigators scoured about 150 Philadelphia city offices and police and fire stations looking for radiation. No needles or other radioactive materials were found.
The cabinet was eventually traced to a social worker's office on the 11th floor of a city building. The worker had bought it from a used furniture store in 1995. Insurance papers found inside a drawer indicated that the cabinet -- and the needle -- had probably belonged to a well-known cancer specialist who practiced at Philadelphia General Hospital from the 1920s to the 1950s.
Tests showed that the Graebel truck driver and the social worker had been exposed to low radiation doses. Perhaps others were, as well. But investigators never did figure out where the cabinet was in the decades that passed between the doctor's death and the social worker's purchase.
"These are the types of emergencies that just keep coming back and coming back to haunt us," said Feeney, the New Jersey radiation inspector. "It's not like things are getting any easier."
Staff Writers David Glovin, Chani Katzen, and Deena Yellin contributed to this article.
*Anyone who finds a radioactive-powered tool, loses one, or needs information on how to dispose of one properly, can call:
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Hot Line: (609) 292-7172
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Operations Center: (301) 816-5100
NRC Regional Office, King of Prussia, Pa.: (610) 337-5000
Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors, Orphan Source Initiative: (800) 395-3375
U.S. Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory, source recovery program: (505) 665-8292
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Schoolyard yields troubling secrets
Bergen Record Sunday, November 21, 1999 By THOMAS J. FITZGERALD and JEFF PILLETS
http://www.bergen.com/news/realohio199911213.htm
MARION, Ohio -- One day, a yellow plastic flag sprouted in the schoolyard. The next afternoon, nine yellow flags were fluttering in the breeze. Soon, 13 speckled the campus of the River Valley High School and Middle School.
They looked like a cluster of dandelions. But to Kent and Roxanna Krumanaker, whose daughter is among an alarming number of graduates diagnosed with leukemia, the flags were malevolent: They looked like cancer.
Each of the flags was placed by the Army Corps of Engineers to mark a spot on the 80-acre campus with a high radiation reading, worthy of further study. Roxanna Krumanaker and many others believe they might be important clues to the cause of so much suffering.
"It scares the hell out of me," she said. "I believe if you look long and hard enough you will find the answer. It's a puzzle."
No one in town may ever find out for sure what has caused the sickness. Early tests showed that radiation has mixed with other toxic chemicals, all possibly left behind by the Army, creating a stew of poisons that even the best government scientists are not likely to unravel.
But even if the mystery never is solved, the case illustrates the massive government effort that goes along with the very existence of stray radioactive materials. And it shows the fear that the discovery of anything radioactive can strike in a community.
"I have always believed radiation was there and it's a problem," Roxanna Krumanaker said. "I've talked to too many old-timers from the depot, and I suspect the Army scattered the stuff all over the area playing their war games. If they say there's no radiation there, it's a lie."
Radiation was the first culprit investigators looked for in August 1997, when their search for answers to heightened leukemia rates began; it was logical to suspect radiation because it is a known cause of the disease. Moreover, the school campus sits on land used for nearly 20 years by the Marion Engineering Depot, a U.S. Army storage facility that held thousands of radioactive devices.
Soon, technicians got high nuclear readings in the front yard of the high school and dug up a radium disk the size of a dime.
For more than two years, that search has continued, with two state agencies and the Army digging trenches on the school property, taking more than 600 samples, and sweeping athletic fields with Geiger counters. In addition to the radioactive disk, they've found high levels of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which also are known to cause leukemia, and arsenic on some athletic fields.
Last month, community anxiety intensified yet again when the investigation turned to a top-secret laboratory at the defunct Scioto Ordnance Plant, five miles north of the River Valley campus. The lab was built to make triggers for atomic bombs in the early days of the Cold War, and local residents have bombarded government investigators with decades-old stories of spills and mishaps involving radioactive material.
Now, at the prodding of Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, the U.S. Department of Energy is preparing a full-scale survey to see if any of the radioactive polonium used for the bomb triggers might have escaped into the environment.
The hunt for answers has sparked fear and loathing as a small Midwestern city comes to grips with its past. At public meetings and in chance encounters at the mall, some townspeople accuse concerned neighbors of threatening Marion's economic recovery by drawing publicity to what people call the "cancer cluster." There have been nine confirmed cases of leukemia among the 4,000 graduates since 1967, a period during which only 1.7 cases would be expected, the state Health Department has found. Citywide, the leukemia mortality rate rose 122 percent between 1966 and 1995, the state says.
It is possible there is a statistical anomaly, officials say, but leukemia is one of the few forms of cancer that science knows can be caused by environmental radiation.
"If it's coincidence, it's got to be the most bizarre thing that could have ever happened," said Linnea Cummings, whose daughter, Jami, a 1990 graduate, was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia two years ago. "What you have is young people getting old people's diseases. They need to find it and get rid of it. . . . I can't believe it's nothing."
And there's a scary lesson in Marion's plight for the rest of a nation facing up to the fact that it has lost control over some of its nuclear material: Science does not have a precise understanding of health risks from low levels of radiation, or how it might interact with other dangerous pollutants.
As she slipped on her bridal gown for a fitting, Jami Cummings noticed that it was tighter than before. She felt bloated.
"I thought it was time to break out the exercise tapes," she said.
It was the spring of 1996, and she was 23 years old and getting ready to marry her high school boyfriend. She figured the dull ache in her abdomen was an ulcer, maybe from the stress of organizing the wedding.
Cummings' doctor found her spleen, usually the size of a fist, had swollen as big as a football -- and was alarmed because that often means white blood cells are dying and collecting in the organ, a symptom of leukemia. The eventual diagnosis: chronic myeloid leukemia. Even with a bone marrow transplant, she would have a 40 percent chance of dying a slow death.
"I'd never heard of leukemia," Cummings said.
That summer, she was blasted with nine doses of chemotherapy in six days, then spent six weeks in the hospital, losing 20 pounds. Well enough to go back to work at a bank in Delaware, Ohio, Cummings bought fake bangs and attached them with velcro to floppy hats in hopes people wouldn't notice she was bald.
In January 1997, she got a bone marrow transplant at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she stayed for five months before returning home. When her body started rejecting the transplanted marrow, she had to fly back in an air ambulance for treatment.
Now she's back at work with a full head of hair, doing well but living with the fear of a relapse.
The wedding never happened. "I asked him, 'If I get sick again, can you take care of me?' " she said. "He said 'no.' I told him I couldn't marry him."
Her first inkling that school might have something to do with her disease came in a Columbus, Ohio, hospital before she went east for the transplant.
"My volleyball coach came to visit and said, 'Did you know about Kim Krumanaker?' Another teacher said did you know so-and-so had it? They just brought in lists of people."
Cummings played basketball, volleyball, and softball at River Valley, and she remembers that even on dry days the ground was wet in spots. She wonders now if that was because dangerous chemicals or radiation were even then bubbling to the surface. "I was always up there at the school; I lived there," she said.
Kim Krumanaker Tolnar was a track star at River Valley High School, a fan of the Vikings football team, and treasurer of the Class of 1983.
She was 27 and newly married when she went to a doctor to complain of chronic fatigue, pounds melting off her body, and migraines. A routine diagnostic blood test confirmed she had leukemia.
Several months later, Tolnar matched with a Pennsylvania schoolteacher for a bone marrow transplant that could save her life. In January 1994, accompanied by her family, Tolnar went to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle for the procedure.
Her body rejected the new bone marrow, and it shut down. By June, she'd lost all the donated marrow and was near death. The teacher agreed to donate a second time, and this time it took. She went home in October 1994, albeit given only a 50 percent chance to live.
Now the leukemia is in remission, but the cost has been high. Kim walks with a limp, the joints in her knees are crumbling, she has arthritis, high blood pressure, and flaccid muscles. She can't hear out of her right ear and will never realize a lifelong dream: bearing a child.
"I have no hormones," she said. "I'm post-menopausal."
It began with whispers. "The phone never stopped ringing," Linnea Cummings said. "People were saying, 'He's got cancer. I've got cancer.' The saleslady in J. C. Penney's told me about her grandson's leukemia." Too many of the victims, it seemed, had gone through the River Valley schools. She picked up a letter of support that Roxanna Krumanaker had written when she heard Jami got sick; the two women got together.
They bombarded political leaders with letters demanding an investigation: the president, the vice president, the governor, senators, Congress members, state legislators. A group of concerned families joined them, and before long, the Ohio Department of Health, the Army corps, and the Ohio EPA began investigations.
In August 1997, the state found elevated radiation readings on the front lawn of the high school, and benzo(a)pyrene, a petroleum compound in the benzene family, in the practice football field. The next month, the Army dug up the radioactive disk, buried five inches below ground. Officials said the disk was coated with radium and probably had been used to illuminate portable bridges in World War II. Nobody knows how it got there.
After these discoveries, the state announced it had found a high leukemia rate in Marion. The effect was explosive. Alarmed parents grilled environmental officials at public meetings, and statewide media coverage shone a spotlight on Marion.
Later, the state roped off five athletic fields and warned students to stay away from the drainage ditches that edge the property. In addition to possible radiation, further testing had found high levels of arsenic in the ditches and concentrations of polyaromatic hydrocarbons that were 10 times higher than expected on the fields.
The examination of the schoolyard mushroomed. Stakes were set out dividing the property into 174 grids, each 100 feet by 100 feet, so that contractors working for the Army corps can pinpoint every reading they find.
Last summer, the grounds were repeatedly swept with Geiger counters in a search for radiation. Then, the crews drove 100 tubes 10 feet into the earth to capture any gases that might be coming from substances in the soil. And in the fall, 25 wells were sunk on the property to monitor the ground water.
Recently, the investigation took another turn as the Army corps began drilling underneath the school buildings themselves to take soil samples.
A full risk-assessment combining the results from all these tests, along with a cleanup plan, won't be completed until February, the Army corps has said.
"Then I'll have a pretty good chemical picture of this whole area and we'll be able to see if there's a pathway from here to humans," said Wes Watson, a project scientist for the corps. "If there's any needle in this haystack, I'll find it."
While investigations continue, a spokeswoman for the corps said her agency is confident there is no radiation to be found on the school grounds. The government does not believe the bomb-trigger plant was ever operational, but investigators still need to get classified records opened up and study the ground there, said the spokeswoman, Barbara Kehoe.
Her claims echo a preliminary report released by the corps last fall that said there are no elevated radiation readings on the campus.
But those findings have been called into doubt. A whistle-blower who was in Marion for the corps' testing contractor claimed that workers were ordered to fudge results to make sure they found no worrisome radiation reading. The Army's criminal investigation command is looking into the allegations.
At the same time, the Ohio Department of Health is preparing to have new tests performed by separate contractors.
And the school district, because of the uncertainty, hired its own company to do a radiological survey of the grounds in September. While the surface scan found no "extraordinary" sources of radioactivity, the company told the district that the study could not rule out "buried radioactivity."
Army records show that more than 80,000 radium disks were stored in its former depot. Also stored there: an undetermined number of early night-vision devices that were powered by radium and strontium. Watson says it is possible that some of the radioactive material was lost on the land.
Even though the school complex lies on a relatively small patch of ground, it's not easy to profile. For instance, some of the 13 yellow flags symbolizing elevated radiation readings may reflect the decay of isotopes from radium-flecked rocks used to build a water line, Watson said.
"All of that makes this a complex thing," Watson said. "Is it a fake scare or a real scare? Who knows?"
Fixing blame for the cancer rate in Marion will be even more difficult. Leukemia is a slippery adversary and there's plenty of ambiguity about Marion's cluster of cases, scientists say. Do the victims have genetic predispositions to the disease? Were they exposed to other pathogens in their lives? Were they attacked by viruses? How strong were their immune systems? Also, the sharp jump in Marion's overall leukemia rate was due primarily to a bump from 1986 to 1995, a small sample that can throw off the statistics.
Moreover, there's an environmental wrinkle specific to Marion. The area's soil contains uranium-rich deposits, which generate radon as they decay. And high radon levels may cause myelogenic leukemias, according to a study from Britain. The theory is that radium ingested in drinking water attacks bone marrow.
"It is doubtful that any causal explanation for the recent increase in leukemia mortality can be found," concluded Robert Indian, the author of the study and chief of chronic and environmental disease surveillance for the Ohio Department of Health.
That is the norm, according to experts on epidemiology. Citizens report an estimated 1,200 suspected cancer clusters to state health departments each year, and an average of 10 percent of them warrant a cursory investigation. As few as 1 percent to 2 percent of the clusters are deemed suspicious enough to trigger a full-blown epidemiological investigation.
And over the past 20 years, when the field of studying geographical cancer clusters became widespread, not one study has been conclusive, scientists say. That's because the number of variables involved in each case of cancer is almost infinite. An epidemiologist has to get a fix on what risks a victim incurred years before, when the cancer started.
"People move away, they move in from elsewhere, people die for other reasons . . . there are a huge number of confounding factors when you're looking at something with a long latency period like cancer, especially at low levels of exposure," said Michael Greenberg, a professor of urban studies and community health at Rutgers University.
The Marion mystery plays out in odd, contradictory ways. Some students at the school joke about going to "Death Valley." A few members of the Class of '98 printed T-shirts that read, "I survived the cancer scare." On the other hand, the visiting Whetstone High football team brought bottled water to a game at River Valley last fall.
"Almost no one talks about it," said Jeremy Jones, a junior who was practicing the discus and shot put on a late summer evening. "I feel that it's not all they say it is, or more people would be affected. Kids are not very worried about it."
Nearby, preteen girls were playing softball on one of the fields that had been marked off as part of the environmental probe. Several parents said they were not worried, and some were more than a little frustrated.
"I couldn't sell my house now," said Angie Force, 31, a mother of three. "Who wants to move into the River Valley school district?"
She said she wouldn't hesitate to enroll her children, now 11, 9, and 4, in the schools. "There may be a risk but, I'll tell you what, so is eating a hamburger at Rally's or Burger King," she said. "E. coli -- that's killed kids."
Thomas Woodard wrestled with his dog while his daughter's team was warming up. "I played ball in that field they have roped off when I was a little kid," said Woodard, pointing to the back of the school property. "You've got coaches that have been out here for 20 years and none of them has got sick."
But among those who have been touched by illness, and many who have not but are afraid, it's hard to avoid wondering what is wrong in Marion.
"It's like a sleeping dragon. You tiptoe around it and hope it never wakes up," said Sherrie Dunn, whose daughter Abby, now 5, is in remission from leukemia diagnosed two years ago. It struck her as odd that two other children in a Columbus hematology ward also had Marion ties.
"The experience of holding her down for bone marrow tests and spinal taps and chemo, watching her lose her hair and having people stare at her, and other kids laugh at her. . . . We don't want other people to experience that pain."