------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
*India, Russia seek to rekindle ties
*Raytheon Strikers Cancel Weekend Rally
*Japan Nuclear Village Still Uneasy
*Bush Energy Policy Focuses on Domestic Sources
*Double Standard on Defense
*Los Alamos Lab Proposes Discipline
*Containers Seen Contamination Source
*first atomic-powered vessel

MILITARY
*Ground forces in Japan, S. Korea under review
*Pentagon Approves Arms Sales to Taiwan
*Fujimori rushes to U.S. amid coup fear
*Russian plans to cut military affirmed
*Americans evenly split on U.N. aid
*U.S. NAVY JET CRASHES IN GULF
*Sailor Found Dead in Elevator Shaft
*North Korea deal

OTHER
*Libyan spy denies lying on Lockerbie
*An Engagement In 10 Time Zones

ACTIVISTS
*Raging street protests leave mark on summit
*SUHARTO TOO SICK FOR TRIAL
*Protests planned as Milosevic defies calls



-------- NUCLEAR (by country)

India, Russia seek to rekindle ties

Washington Times
September 29, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000929211358.htm

NEW DELHI - India and Russia are expected to forge a strategic partnership and sign defense and trade deals next week during a visit by President Vladimir Putin that both sides hope will rekindle the warmth of their Soviet-era ties.

Now basking in the glow of a new friendship with Washington, nuclear-capable India believes a closer relationship with Moscow will reinforce its international standing.

-------- business

Raytheon Strikers Cancel Weekend Rally

By REUTERS Filed at 3:53 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-raytheon-str.html

BOSTON (Reuters) - Striking workers at No. 3 U.S. defense contractor Raytheon Co. (RTNa.N) (RTNb.N) on Friday called off a rally planned for Saturday amid optimism that the two sides may be able to settle the month-long work stoppage.

The 3,000 workers struck Lexington, Mass.-based Raytheon, the maker of the Patriot missile, on Aug. 27 over job security, pension and health insurance demands.

``We're making some progress at the table so we canceled the big rally we had planned up in Andover,'' Stan Lichwala, president of Local 1505 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said.

``We need to concentrate on resolving the remaining issues and getting back to work.''

Lichwala declined to specify what issues remained to be resolved, saying talks were at a delicate stage, but he said he was hopeful that a settlement was within reach.

``We're at the table and I'm cautiously optimistic,'' he said, adding that union negotiators were prepared to meet through the weekend.

A Raytheon spokesman confirmed that negotiations had resumed, but declined further comment.

-------- japan

Japan Nuclear Village Still Uneasy

Associated Press
September 29, 2000 Filed at 4:49 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Japan-Nuclear-Accident.html

TOKAIMURA, Japan (AP) -- Hideko Araki remembers Japan's worst nuclear accident as if it were yesterday.

When word came of trouble last Sept. 30, she called her 5-year-old twins inside, pulled down the laundry hanging outside her home and shut the doors and windows.

``I was home, playing with the kids,'' Araki, 41, said this week as she walked her children home from school. ``I was surprised, and I just didn't know what else to do.''

The accident at a fuel reprocessing plant 70 miles northeast of Tokyo killed two workers, exposed hundreds and sent shockwaves through Japan's entire nuclear energy industry.

The effects of that shock remain clear a year later.

Utilities are scaling down nuclear plant construction plans. The government is struggling to balance its aggressive plans for expansion of nuclear energy with new safety measures. And public skepticism is still strong.

``Rebuilding the damage to confidence in Japan's nuclear energy safety caused by the ... accident is still under way,'' said Shojiro Matsuura, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission.

The staying power of the Tokaimura accident is no surprise -- it dramatically confirmed critics' worst fears about the nuclear industry, from systematic disregard for safety rules to poor employee training.

On that morning, two workers trying to save time mixed excessive amounts of uranium in buckets and beakers instead of special mechanized tanks. The mix set off an uncontrolled nuclear reaction, hitting the two workers with fatal doses of radiation.

Authorities ordered 161 people evacuated from their homes. Another 310,000, like Araki's family, were advised to stay indoors for 18 hours as a precaution. In all, 439 people were exposed to radiation, although officials have played down the possibility of long-term health problems.

The accident -- which followed several smaller accidents -- was a powerful blow to Japan's ambitious plans to expand its reliance on nuclear energy, which provides about a third of the country's electricity.

While the government has stood by its conclusion that nuclear energy is the answer to Japan's dependence on foreign oil, utilities are slowly retreating on their reactor building plans.

The government said in 1998 that companies had plans to build 21 reactors by 2010. A current official estimate shows those plans being scaled down to 13 plants. No new reactors have started operation since July 1997.

Rising local opposition is playing a bigger role in construction plans. In February, a local governor -- citing concerns over safety stemming from the Tokaimura accident -- forced a utility company in western Japan to drop plans to build a nuclear plant.

Authorities have gone on a blitz of new safety measures aimed at rebuilding public confidence.

Measures including laws enhancing the prime minister's emergency powers and requiring periodic inspection of nuclear-fuel processing facilities -- instead of just reactors -- have taken effect in recent months.

``I believe we have come a fairly long way,'' said Matsuura, the nuclear safety chief. ``These measures are the best we can think of at this point in time.''

Gaia Hoerner, with the anti-nuclear Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, said the changes so far have not been very effective.

``A lot of the improvements that were made were post-accident improvements,'' she said. ``So, with the prevention of an accident ... nothing has really been changed yet.''

Critics want the government to back away from its full commitment to expanding nuclear power and devote more money to alternative sources of energy, such as solar.

At the center of the storm -- the one-story building where the accident occurred -- all is quiet. Weeds grow tall around the empty building and the barred windows are sealed shut. A protective steel barrier covers the delivery entrance.

``It's all safe,'' assured Shuji Noguchi, spokesman for JCO Co., the operator of the reprocessing plant.

Trouble, however, still surrounds JCO. The company was stripped of its license to operate the processing plant in March, and the last of the remaining uranium was being removed from the facility this week.

The company has also agreed to pay out $117.2 million in compensation to settle 6,875 cases from the accident. Another 150 claims are pending, and victims still accuse the company of failing to properly monitor their health.

Tokaimura -- home to a dozen nuclear facilities and one operating reactor -- also has yet to recover.

Toru Sato, like many farmers in the area, saw sales of his peanuts and Chinese cabbage plummet 30 percent after the accident because of nationwide fears that area produce could be contaminated.

But like many in a town where the nuclear industry employs a third of the work force, he's not against atomic power -- only human blunders like the ones that led to last year's accident.

``If they do a perfect job, with today's technology it'll be OK,'' Sato said. ``But in that accident, they were just slacking off. It's a matter of how they do things.''

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

Bush Energy Policy Focuses on Domestic Sources

Washington Post
Friday, September 29, 2000
By Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A42082-2000Sep29&language=printer

SAGINAW, Mich., Sept. 29 – Texas Gov. George W. Bush proposed opening 8 percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling, but said he would use the royalties and bidding fees for conservation programs and to provide heat for the poor.

"I believe that we can develop our natural resources and protect our environment," Bush said today. "America must have an energy policy that plans for the future, but meets the needs of today."

Bush's proposals are part of a detailed energy policy he released as his answer to rising gas and heating oil prices, which have provoked an aggressive – although, Bush says, tardy – response from Vice President Gore.

"Despite presiding over a period of unprecedented economic growth and increasing energy demand, it is clear that the Clinton-Gore administration has done little to plan for America's future energy needs," Bush said. "Let me put this plainly: Oil consumption is increasing. Our production is dropping. Our imports of foreign oil are skyrocketing. And this administration has failed to act. As a result, America, more than ever, is at the mercy of foreign governments and cartels – at the mercy of big foreign oil."

Among 23 initiatives Bush announced today, the most attention seems sure to go to his proposal to open 1.5 million acres of the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to "environmentally responsible, regulated exploration," which the Clinton administration has opposed. Bush had talked about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before but had not given details of his intentions.

"The vice president says he would rather protect this refuge than gain the energy," Bush said. "But this is a false choice. We can do both – taking out energy, and leaving only footprints. Critics of increased exploration and production ignore the remarkable technological advances in the last 10 years that have dramatically decreased the environmental impact of oil and gas exploration."

Gore quickly criticized Bush's proposal. "Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - one of our greatest national treasures - is bad environmental policy, and bad energy policy," the Reuters news agency quoted Gore as saying during a visit to the headquarters of the Audubon Naturalist Society, a 40 acre enclave outside Washington.

Bush cited Energy Department figures to contend that the area he proposes opened "could hold over 35 percent of current total proven U.S. oil reserves" and "could replace the oil that the U.S. now imports from Iraq."

The federal government gets royalties from oil drilling, and Bush said he would direct part of this windfall from the refuge to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Bush said he would seek the release of $155 million more for this fund, and could add $1 billion over 10 years from oil and gas revenues.

Bush said that in order to "protect the environment and develop alternative energy sources," he would earmark an estimated $1.2 billion of bid bonuses "from opening up" the refuge to fund research into alternative energy resources. He said that "potentially billions of dollars in royalties" from production from the refuge would be used for a new Royalties for Conservation Fund, to be used "for conservation efforts, including the elimination of the maintenance and improvements backlog on federal lands."

Daniel J. Weiss, political director of the Sierra Club, said that even limited exploration would "harm natural wonders" with toxic spills, interrupt caribou migration patterns and damage tundra because of heavy equipment. "You can't drill for oil without spilling oil," Weiss said. "Environmentally friendly oil drilling is like a tree-friendly chainsaw: There's no such thing."

Chris Lehane, a Gore spokesman, said Bush's proposal "will help the oil companies at the expense of our environment."

Bush announced his plans this morning on the factory floor of Wright-K Technology Inc., an equipment manufacturer in Saginaw. He released a 19-page "Comprehensive Energy Policy" that he said "helps low-income households with their energy bills, encourages the development of renewable and alternative fuels and, recognizing that alternative sources supply less than 4 percent of U.S. energy needs, promotes access to foreign oil and the development of U.S. oil, coal and natural gas resources."

Bush's proposals total $7.1 billion over 10 years, $3.1 billion of which would come from revenues from royalties and bid fees.

"The country has a great and urgent need for a comprehensive energy policy, with leadership from the president himself," Bush said. He blamed the Clinton administration for failing to address the implications of increasing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, and of declining domestic production.

"We think of our new economy as quiet and far removed from the Industrial Age," Bush continued. "In some ways, it is. Yet today, the equipment needed to power the Internet consumes 8 percent of all the electricity produced in the United States. . . . My opponent says he is for natural gas. He just doesn't like people to find it over move it."

Bush said he would "improve the regulatory process to encourage more refining capacity." He said he would support federal legislation restructuring the electric utility industry and invest $2 billion over 10 years to fund research in "clean coal" technologies. He said he would spend $1 billion over 10 years to "establish clear rules to help efficient utilities purchase nuclear plants, streamline the re-licensing process for hydroelectric projects and oppose the breaching of dams."

In addition, Bush said he would "propose legislation requiring electric utilities to reduce harmful emissions." Bush's position paper adds, "In contrast, Vice President Gore has advocated only a voluntary program."

Bush said he would support tax credits for electricity produced from renewable and alternative fuels, which he said would cost $1.4 billion over 10 years. Bush said his tax credits "will include extensions of the wind power credit and closed loop biomass credit, and also include an open loop biomass credit and a 15 percent credit for residential solar power facilities, capped at $2,000."

Bush's proposal for the Arctic refuge seems consistent with his earlier call for "a new era of environmental protection." His Web site says: "The 30-year-old federal model of 'mandate, regulate and litigate' needs to be modernized: It has yielded benefits in the past, but it encourages Americans to do the bare minimum to protect the environment and fails to reward innovation or results. Therefore, as President, Governor Bush will maintain a strong federal environmental role but will return significant authority to states and local communities. Under Governor Bush, the federal government will set high environmental standards and provide market-based incentives to develop new technologies."

After his speech today, Bush flew to Waco, Texas, so he could prepare at his ranch for the first presidential debate, to be held Tuesday in Boston.

Staff writer Glenn Kessler contributed to this report.

--------

Double Standard on Defense

Washington Post
Friday , September 29, 2000 ; Page A32
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A40852-2000Sep28&language=printer

EARLER THIS week, House conferees succeeded at least temporarily in knocking out of the defense authorization bill a Senate proposal to compensate nuclear weapons plant workers poisoned years ago by exposure to radiation and other hazardous materials. A spokesperson for Speaker Dennis Hastert said their objection was to an "entitlement program" whose eventual cost could be "multiple billions."

Elsewhere in the same bill, however, is another entitlement program that would cost many more billions, to which they have not voiced a comparable objection. So far as is known, they've voiced none. It would greatly enrich existing health care benefits for military retirees. Their principles as to costly entitlements apparently extend only so far.

Depending on which of several plans is adopted, the additional benefits for retirees could end up adding as much as $5 billion a year to a defense budget that most policymakers, including most members of the conference committee, argue in other contexts is already overburdened. Retirees 65 and over, who now get Medicare, would in addition get the equivalent of free full Medigap insurance so that virtually all their health care expenses would remain covered without charge. The retirees are said to deserve that by virtue of their past service to the country.

One can seriously argue--we would--whether that is the best expenditure of incremental dollars in a defense budget that the uniformed service chiefs told Congress again this week is already too tight. But what one cannot do is argue that the nuclear weapons workers are somehow less deserving, no matter that in an election year they may be the weaker constituency. The government itself now acknowledges that these workers were sickened and killed by conditions at the plants. They were falsely told at the time by people who often knew better that the conditions were safe. They were put in harm's way for the country's sake no less than any man or woman in uniform, and then lied to about it. Their compensation would cost a fraction of the health care benefits the conferees appear prepared so readily to confer. If ever people were entitled, they are. The House conferees should abandon their objection.

-------- new mexico

Los Alamos Lab Proposes Discipline

Associated Press
September 29, 2000 Filed at 8:29 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missing-Secrets.html

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Three review panels have recommended punishment for several Los Alamos National Laboratory employees following the disappearance and reappearance of hard drives containing nuclear secrets, officials said Friday.

``The type of severity or magnitude (of the punishment) has not been determined yet,'' laboratory spokesman James Rickman said after the panels of lab officials and nuclear experts made the recommendation.

Lab workers in May noticed that two hard drives containing information on terrorist and nuclear emergencies had disappeared. Supervisors were not told about it for weeks, and the drives mysteriously reappeared behind a photocopier in June.

FBI investigators have been unable to find the culprit.

A spokesman for the University of California, which manages the laboratory, said several lab managers and supervisors faced punishment, but declined to identify them.

Los Alamos director John Browne said federal law prevented the laboratory from revealing the identity of the culprits or the nature of the possible punishment.

``I am satisfied this review is thorough, fair and objective and I support its findings,'' Browne said in a news release. ``These actions will help us strengthen our security practices and allow us to refocus on our important work for the nation.''

But The New York Times, in a report on Friday citing unidentified lab officials, named three employees who could be disciplined: Browne, scientist Bradley A. Clark and nuclear weapons program director Stephen M. Younger.

The officials said Clark could be fired and other scientists reprimanded for the security breach.

Messages left by the Associated Press seeking comment from Younger and Clark were not immediately returned. University of California spokesman Jeff Garberson would neither confirm nor deny the Times report.

The announcement was the latest in a string of troubles involving security breaches at the lab.

Last year, Los Alamos fired scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was later indicted on 59 federal felonies for improperly transferring nuclear secrets to portable computer tapes.

Lee pleaded guilty to one count earlier this month and was set free; the judge in the case apologized to Lee and blamed ``top decision-makers in the executive branch'' for his detention.

The case against Lee stemmed from an investigation of possible Chinese espionage at Los Alamos, but the Taiwan-born Lee denied spying and was never charged with espionage.

A recent report commissioned by the Energy Department found that security crackdowns at the lab in the wake of the Lee case and the missing hard drives was actually hurting security by alienating and demoralizing top scientists.

-------- washington

Containers Seen Contamination Source

Associated Press
September 29, 2000 Filed at 7:14 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hanford-Tritium.html

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) -- High-level nuclear waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation was buried decades ago in bottomless containers less than four miles from the Columbia River, the Energy Department said Friday.

The agency said that may be why the level of radioactive tritium in area groundwater is 400 times higher than the federal safety standard.

Wade Ballard, assistant manager for planning and integration, couldn't say why the agency used the containers. He said it might have been to prevent water from accumulating in them and then leaching radioactive material into the ground.

``It was 40 years ago,'' he said. ``Obviously, if we were designing it today, we would do it differently.''

Five bottomless caissons, or large corrugated metal pipes, and 50 bottomless drums are buried 3 1/2 miles from the Columbia River in south-central Washington. It was unclear how much waste is stored there, but it includes 11 to 22 pounds of plutonium, which was manufactured at Hanford for nuclear weapons.

Low-level radioactive waste also was dumped into trenches for burial at the 8.6-acre site from 1962 to 1967. Hanford does not expect to begin cleaning up the site until at least 2010.

Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that poses a cancer risk when ingested. It was produced at Hanford for use in nuclear warheads to boost their explosive yield.

Last January, the high level of tritium was detected in a Hanford monitoring well near the waste site. The well is also in the path of a huge tritium plume stretching from the central part of the 560-square-mile reservation to the river.

It is unclear whether the tritium levels in the area are from the waste site or groundwater 60 feet below the surface, Ballard said. But experts say the tritium will likely reach the river.

``The issue is how much is there,'' said Mike Thompson, the site's groundwater manager. ``At this point in time, we don't believe there's a very large tritium plume.''

If tests show the tritium is moving fast enough to be a threat to the river, action will be taken to stop its progress, Ballard said.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Associated Press
September 29, 2000 Filed at 8:00 p.m. ET
Today In History
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-History.html

Today is Saturday, Sept. 30, the 274th day of 2000. There are 92 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History:

In 1954, the first atomic-powered vessel, the submarine Nautilus, was commissioned by the Navy.

-------- MILITARY (by country)

Ground forces in Japan, S. Korea under review

Washington Times
September 29, 2000
By Richard Halloran
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000929223639.htm

HONOLULU - Senior military officials say they are reviewing strategy to determine whether U.S. ground forces could be reduced or removed from Japan and South Korea without a loss of military power in the region.

Under such a plan, the United States would rely on warships, air power and rapidly deployable ground forces to maintain the American military presence in Asia.

Senior U.S. officials emphasized that no decisions have been made, as the examination is still under discussion among military leaders in the Pentagon, Pacific Command in Hawaii and U.S. Forces Korea in Seoul. They stressed the review was not intended to lessen U.S. security commitments in Asia.

Even so, a fundamental shift in the composition of U.S. forces in Asia is being contemplated over the next five or so years, officials said.

In statements released in recent months, U.S. officials have emphasized that there is no intention to remove U.S. forces from South Korea, and a Pentagon spokesman in Washington denied this week that any such re-evaluation was being conducted.

"There is no [Department of Defense] study or report that is reviewing the strategy of stationing U.S. ground forces in South Korea and Japan," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Terry Southerland, spokesman for Asia Pacific affairs.

However, a senior military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a review was being conducted in anticipation that the next president will want to consider U.S. military commitments overseas.

"We are going through this review to get ready for the new administration and for the QDR," the military official said.

He was referring to the Quadrennial Defense Review, a comprehensive examination of strategy, arms and readiness of U.S. armed forces that is mandated by Congress every four years.

The most recent review in 1997 committed the United States to maintain about 100,000 U.S. sailors and soldiers in Asia and the Pacific. The figure quickly became a political benchmark, especially in the region, to gauge the level of the nation's commitment.

Any public discussion by U.S. officials of reconsidering the 100,000 figure became taboo.

More recently, however, the U.S. Pacific Command has quietly stopped using that figure and instead has adopted the number 300,000 in reference to all forces under its control, not only in Asia but also on the U.S. West Coast, in Hawaii, Alaska and at sea throughout the region.

Recent talks between North and South Korea, including a first-ever summit, have prompted discussion of the long-term need for the 37,000 American forces now stationed in the South.

U.S. officials have consistently asserted that the troops would remain in the South to help ensure regional stability, even if the two Koreas were to reunite.

"Even if you had a reconciliation and eventually . . . a reunification, there still is the issue of America's forward presence and the peace and stability that we bring to the region," said Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"Certainly, it could be reviewed, but I think it would be premature to say that I can foresee the day right now when we would necessarily want to reduce those forces," Gen. Shelton told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

The review described by senior military officials applies to forces in both South Korea and Japan, notably Okinawa, because Northeast Asia is considered an integrated operational area, even though U.S. troops are stationed in the two nations under separate security treaties.

The review is being undertaken in response to several converging events. U.S. military leaders have begun to realize that they must respond to protests in Korea and Japan against the presence of American forces.

"I don't think this is anti-Americanism so much as anti-base-ism," said a senior officer. "The Japanese and Koreans want their alliances with us, but they don't want our troops on their sovereign soil."

That warning was included in a study published this month by the National Intelligence Council in Washington, which concluded: "An unmoving U.S. stance on military bases and related issues would risk nationalistic backlash in Japan and perhaps South Korea."

In Seoul, Koreans have repeatedly protested around the headquarters of the U.S. forces, the site of a former Japanese military base around which the city has grown.

In Okinawa, memories are still fresh about the rape of a schoolgirl by two American servicemen five years ago. Surveys in both nations show public support for the stationing of U.S. forces has been dropping.

Whatever the outcome of the review, changes would be made only after consultation with the South Korean and Japanese governments.

Officials appeared to be mindful of the turmoil caused by President Carter, who declared in the election campaign of 1976 that he would remove U.S. ground forces from South Korea.

Seoul and Tokyo were alarmed that such a change would be made without first consulting them. Confronted with such resistance, plus that of the U.S. armed forces, Mr. Carter backed down.

The officials also said no changes would be made until China and North Korea, and perhaps other potential adversaries, understood that the American security commitment to Korea and Japan remained in place.

In particular, said one official, "We've got to get something from North Korea first."

That something would be a significant reduction in the threat to the South, including moving forces back from the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). About 70 percent of North Korea's army, including long-range artillery and rocket launchers, is stationed within a short distance of the DMZ.

North Korea also would be required to eliminate missiles that can reach U.S. forces as far away as Okinawa.

This is the first suggestion that U.S. ground forces in South Korea could become a bargaining chip in negotiations with North Korea. If the strategy were adopted, they could be reduced or withdrawn from South Korea in return for visible, verifiable reductions in the North Korean threat to South Korea and Japan.

Military officials said it would not be difficult to find new stations for the troops.

"We have plenty of places where we could put them," said one official. Alaska, Guam and other Pacific islands, Hawaii, and the U.S. West Coast might be home base for the Second Infantry Division in Korea.

Tanks, heavy equipment and artillery could be stored on ships or ashore in Korea in case the troops were required to return.

The Third Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa already has looked at a new base in northern Australia, where it would be close to Indonesia, the Philippines and the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

Another possibility would be northern Okinawa, which is relatively uninhabited and away from existing U.S. bases in densely populated southern Okinawa.

Under this scenario, joint mission forces of Army and Marine ground troops could be transported by air and sea and backed up with naval and air power comprising aircraft carriers, Air Force fighters and long-range bombers.

The troops could be drawn from bases anywhere, trained and dispatched on a mission. When it was over, they would go home again.

--------

-------- arms sales

Pentagon Approves Arms Sales to Taiwan

Washington Post
Friday, September 29, 2000 ; Page A06
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A40921-2000Sep28&language=printer

The Pentagon said yesterday it plans a series of arms sales to Taiwan valued at $1.3 billion, including 200 supersonic air-to-air missiles and advanced military communications systems.

China, which regards Taiwan as part of the motherland, strongly opposes U.S. arms sales to the island. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States is committed to providing Taiwan with defensive arms.

Like most nations, the United States has diplomatic relations with China and has promised Beijing that it will not have formal ties with Taiwan, which split with the mainland after the communist revolution in 1949.

The Pentagon said it plans to sell Taiwan 200 AIM-120C medium-range air-to-air missiles to enhance the defensive capabilities of Taiwan's F-16 fighters. Although Taiwan had previously asked to buy this type of missile, this is the first time the Pentagon has approved the sale. That portion of the deal is valued at $150 million.

Congress has the authority to block any Pentagon arms sale, although such action is rare.

In written statements announcing each part of yesterday's arms sale, the Pentagon said the additional weaponry in Taiwan would "not affect the basic military balance in the region." China argues that U.S. arms sales amount to interference in internal Chinese affairs and could embolden Taiwan to seek independence.

The Pentagon said it also would sell Taiwan a military communications system known as the Improved Mobile Subscriber Equipment system, for $513 million. The system will provide secure voice and data communications to all levels of Taiwan's field military forces.

-------- peru

Fujimori rushes to U.S. amid coup fear

Washington Times
September 29, 2000
By Ben Barber
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200092923353.htm

Peru's embattled president, Alberto Fujimori, flew to Washington yesterday to seek help from the United States and other countries as fears of a military coup mounted in his homeland.

Mr. Fujimori met with the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Cesar Gaviria, after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base in the presidential jet. He declined to speak with reporters, an OAS official said.

Mr. Fujimori, who has ruled Peru for a decade, also sought meetings with senior U.S. officials, but a State Department official said no decision has been made who would meet with the visiting leader.

The Peruvian leader left for Washington hours after a member of Peru's congress said he and other legislators were being pressured by the military to step down and pave the way for a military coup.

According to a senior Latin American diplomat in Washington, the military is furious over the treatment given to the former intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos.

Mr. Montesinos was fired last week after the release of a videotape showing him bribing a legislator to back Mr. Fujimori's party. He fled to Panama on Sunday.

"The situation in Peru is very critical," said the diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

"The military establishment -the military chiefs - are very angry because of the reluctance of Panama in granting political asylum to Mr. Montesinos," said the diplomat, citing information provided by Mr. Gaviria to the OAS diplomatic corps in Washington.

The diplomat said Peru's military remains fiercely loyal to Mr. Montesinos for his successful battle to defeat the bloody guerrilla insurgency of the Shining Path as well as his success in fighting drug traffickers.

While staying out of the public eye, the former intelligence chief to Mr. Fujimori was an eminence grise who in effect dominated military and political life in Peru for a decade.

Mr. Fujimori had only recently won a third term in office in an election that was branded by opposition leaders and international observers as being unfair.

He stunned the nation with a Sept. 16 announcement that he would call new elections in which he would not be a candidate. Within days, however, he appeared to be hedging his bets, announcing that he would not relinquish power until July 28, 2001.

Since last week's bribery scandal and firing of Mr. Montesinos, nine legislators have quit Mr. Fujimori's Peru 2000 alliance, leaving him without a majority in Congress for the first time since 1992.

The crisis is deeply troubling to the neighbors of Peru because each faces grave security problems that would be affected by a possible military takeover in Peru.

Ecuador has just ended a long border conflict with Peru in a remote jungle region. The regular flare-ups in fighting were often seen as a way for the militaries of both sides to whip up nationalist sentiment.

Bolivia is struggling to end cocoa cultivation and fears destabilization.

Colombia, which is fighting the worst insurgency in Latin America, fears that weapons, drugs and insurgents are being allowed to cross the border from Peru.

The crisis in the Peruvian capital of Lima intensified yesterday when legislator Juan Carlos Miguel Mendoza told of military pressure on Congress members to quit and set off a coup.

"A group of congressmen from [Mr. Fujimori's] Peru 2000 [party] has been pressured to sign a pre-written resignation drafted at army headquarters to set up a parliamentary bloc backing Vladimiro Montesinos," said Mr. Mendoza, who defected from the opposition to join Mr. Fujimori's Peru 2000 party.

The aim was to "destabilize dialogue within Congress and spread disorder in the country, that would later unleash generalized chaos and a coup d'etat in 20 days allowing Montesinos to return," said Mr. Mendoza.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement issued by the army information office, that the charges were "absolutely false."

"The Peruvian army . . . does not take part in political activities," the statement said.

Mr. Fujimori's flight to Washington to seek OAS help came one day after prosecutors said they had closed an investigation of Mr. Montesinos for corruption.

The opposition leader Alejandro Toledo, who many believe really won the recent election, said that the failure to prosecute Mr. Montesinos - who was highly feared during his long reign in power - could threaten political talks held by the OAS in Peru.

"It is not possible that one person can blackmail 25 million Peruvians," he told a news conference in Lima.

-------- russia

Russian plans to cut military affirmed

Washington Times
September 29, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000929211358.htm

MOSCOW - Vladislav Putilin, a top Russian general, yesterday reaffirmed plans to make deep cuts in Russia's military, saying the country no longer has the money for such a large force.

The reductions, to be made over 2001-2003, would cut 350,000 troops from the estimated 1.2 million people serving under the Defense Ministry.

-------- u.n.

Americans evenly split on U.N. aid

Washington Times
September 29, 2000
By Tom Carter THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200092922187.htm

A survey funded by Ted Turner's Better World Campaign, which promotes the United Nations, was released yesterday showing that Americans are evenly divided on whether the United States should fund U.N. peacekeeping missions abroad. =

Former Sen. Tim Wirth, who heads the Turner operation, put the numbers in the best light. "There is no political price to be paid for doing the right thing," he said at a downtown luncheon.

Congress is considering the Clinton administration's request for $739 million to fund 25 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping missions in Asia, Europe and Africa this year. The United Nations sets the U.S. share of peacekeeping at 33 percent, but the United States has unilaterally lowered its payment to 25 percent.

On June 26, the House agreed to pay less than that, appropriating $498 million for U.N. peacekeeping missions in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, while providing no funds at all for peacekeeping missions in Africa.

On July 18, the Senate appropriated $500 million, of which $161 million is slated for African peacekeeping.

The Better World Campaign lobbies Congress to support the United Nations. Its television and newspaper advertisements, some of which have appeared in this newspaper, helped persuade Congress to conditionally approve the payment of nearly $1 billion in U.N. arrears.

The current campaign is intended to "give Congress cover to do the right thing," namely to pay the American share of U.N. peacekeeping.

Most of those surveyed, 74 percent, said they were favorably disposed toward the United Nations in general, but 54 percent considered it just "somewhat effective."

Most of those questioned said they considered themselves politically active and "well informed" on current affairs. But only 33 percent had heard of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and only 14 percent had a favorable impression of him.

The survey of 800 registered voters, conducted Aug. 7-9 by Talmey-Drake Research Strategy, asked questions about the United Nations and U.S. funding responsibility for U.N. peacekeeping.

Respondents were evenly split on whether the United States should pay or not pay the money "it owes" to the United Nations, with 48 percent approving of payment and 47 percent siding against U.S. payment.

But Better World Campaign officials said the numbers changed when pollster Bill McInturff "injected information into the questions" to determine what might persuade respondents to approve U.S. payments.

Some 37 percent still disapproved of payment, but 57 percent then voted to approve payment.

The pollsters found that the most "convincing" arguments against funding of U.N. peacekeeping were the "failed U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia" that cost American lives, and the statement: "The U.S. should not be the world's policeman."

But 43 percent were persuaded to pay for peacekeeping when that argument was turned around. When told that the United States would not have to bear all the risks of dealing with world trouble spots alone if it contributed to U.N. peacekeeping, a number of people were won over to that position.

The amount of money finally appropriated for U.N. peacekeeping is likely to be worked out in the final days of budget negotiations between the White House and Congress late next month.

-------- u.s.

Morrock News
WEEKEND
September 29 - October 1, 2000
Issue No. 1363
http://morrock.com/

U.S. NAVY JET CRASHES IN GULF: A U.S. Navy jet, patrolling the Persian Gulf off Iraq, lost radio contact with its base on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on Friday and was presumed to have crashed. Iraq claimed that its forces shot down the F/A-18C, which was part of the fleet of jets that patrol the "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq.

---

Sailor Found Dead in Elevator Shaft

Associated Press
September 29, 2000 Filed at 6:25 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sailor-Fall.html

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) -- A sailor who had been missing at least two and a half days has been found dead in an elevator shaft on the USS Camden off Singapore, Navy officials said.

The death of William C. Parkhill, 19, of Bremerton, was the second serious fall involving sailors in the USS Abraham Lincoln battle group since the ships left for the Persian Gulf last month.

Parkhill was reported missing Sept. 16 after the ship left Singapore, and his body was found Sept. 18, Navy officials said Thursday. He died of massive head trauma, said Jon Yoshishige, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii.

The elevator shaft covers five to six floors, but officials aren't sure from what height Parkhill fell.

``It's still under investigation, but it looks like the sailor's death was likely an accident,'' Yoshishige said. ``The head trauma was consistent with a fall.''

Parkhill, a firefighter apprentice studying to become a machinist's mate, had been in the Navy a little more than a year.

The Camden is among seven ships accompanying the Lincoln, a nuclear aircraft carrier based in Everett, on a six-month deployment to enforce sanctions against Iraq.

On Sept. 8, Christopher Michaelson, 21, of Everett, fell 65 feet from the Lincoln's flight deck while the carrier was south of the Philippines. He is recovering from severe internal injuries in a Singapore hospital.

---

North Korea deal

Washington Times
September 29, 2000
Inside the Ring Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring-2000929212327.htm

*A week after the Pentagon issued a report warning that North Korea is building up its military forces and remains a major danger, the Clinton administration is set to make concessions to the communist regime.

Talks between U.S. and North Korean officials kicked off this week in New York. The main topics, we are told, include problems with adherence to the 1994 Agreed Framework that was supposed to halt North Korea's nuclear arms program, and North Korea's continued development of long-range missiles.

*The U.S. side also is planning to remove North Korea from the State Department's list of state sponsors of international terrorism, even though Pyongyang continues to harbor terrorists and has been linked to a past terror bombing in Southeast Asia.

*Diplomatic sources said they hope to coax the North Koreans into inviting State's new coordinator for North Korean policy, Wendy Sherman, to visit Pyongyang early next month. In exchange, North Korea will be taken off the terrorism list. There's a problem, however. Japanese officials are not on board. Tokyo is demanding Pyongyang resolve cases of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents and taken to the peninsula.

Senate, the Corps

*We've obtained a letter from Senate leaders delivering Defense Secretary William S. Cohen a final "no" to proposed changes that would make the Army Corps of Engineers more beholden to Army political appointees.

*Army Secretary Louis Caldera first proposed the reordering earlier this year, only to suspend the plan after senators intervened with Mr. Cohen. Mr. Caldera tried to rekindle his ideas in a thick packet of justifications sent to senators on Aug. 31. But they were not swayed.

*"We do not find that justification exists to warrant implementation of these proposed reforms at this time," said the Sept. 13 letter from three Republican senators: Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska; Armed Services Chairman John W. Warner of Virginia; and Environmental and Public Works Chairman Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire.

*The three had assembled a team of staffers to investigate the need for management reforms and whether the corps was the victim of undue political pressure from Army civilians and the White House.

*The letter said the probe is complete. The staffers found no compelling reason for Mr. Caldera's shake-up and insufficient evidence to prove Army civilians interfered in the corps' environmental assessments.

*As a backdrop, liberal environmental groups have opened an all-out assault on the corps and are pressuring the White House to diminish its power to approve waterway projects.

*The corps is beloved, however, by many Democratic and Republican lawmakers. They view the institution as a friend of local communities who need flood-control, navigation and dredging projects.

*Internal Army documents obtained by The Washington Times show that Army civilians ordered the corps not to release its recommendation to leave in place four dams on Washington's Snake River. The normal procedure was for the corps to release its findings for public comment. Environmental groups, most of whom back the presidential candidacy of Democrat Al Gore, want the dams removed.

*The three senators wrote that retired Lt. Gen. Joe Ballard, the former corps commander, supplied testimony and documents at investigators' request.

*"We have concluded," the senators wrote Mr. Cohen, "that while some of the events described in the documents reflect poor judgment by a number of officials at the Corps, in the assistant [Army] secretary's office, and elsewhere in the executive branch, there is not sufficient evidence of inappropriate or illegal conduct to warrant further investigation by the committee at this time. However, based on our evaluation of the documents, we also believe that it is unnecessary to implement any significant management reforms at this time.

*"This letter confirms that the committees' inquiry into the basis and need for Secretary Caldera's proposed management reforms is closed. The committee will not need any further information from the secretary of the Army."

China wars (continued)

*Retired Rear Adm. Eric McVadon is upset with our characterization of him as a pro-China "panda hugger." We noted earlier that the admiral, according to a Navy source, had "dumbed down" Chinese forces in several secret Navy war games to make sure U.S. forces always win.

*He also was mentioned as the kind of analyst Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican, had in mind when the senator recently criticized U.S. intelligence analysis on China as excessively benign.

*A CIA source tells us Adm. McVadon, a consultant to the CIA and the Navy, insisted to colleagues at the CIA that quotes attributed to him in this column about China's weapons technology development were made up.

*Here are the full quotes from Adm. McVadon from the 1999 Rand Corp. study, "The People's Liberation Army in the Information Age":

*• "Chinese research and development is immature, isolated, fragmented and unfocused, all of which have stymied the gathering of needed momentum for the development of advanced military technologies and integrated weapons systems.

*• ". . . [T]he PLA is anywhere from 10 years to two generations behind the modern armed forces in technological acquisition, assimilation, and systems integration.

*• "In a broader context, China is not likely to catch up with the U.S. or advanced countries in the region, like Japan and Australia. *• "Put colorfully, the PLA may rely on its dream of leapfrogging through technology exploitation and yet awaken 10 years into the next century to find itself still somewhere between 10 years and two generations behind."

*Critics in government - who are dismissed as "alarmists" by the panda huggers - tell us the admiral's views have stifled debate on Chinese military developments, hindered intelligence collection on China, and minimized the growing threat posed by Beijing.

*In reality, China is building up its forces and weapons know-how fast and furious. In January, Beijing launched its first in a series of command-and-control communications satellites that will help integrate its forces. On Sept. 1, it orbited a remote-sensing satellite that will increase its military targeting capabilities.

*"You distort everything," Adm. McVadon told us.

Intercepts

*• Add mattresses to the list of accouterments the Navy is adding to ships to make life easier for sailors, the service reports.

*The Navy is trying out "gender-neutral" commodes in some surface ships to replace male-only urinals. The switch would make each ship's "heads" male-female interchangeable, and, the Navy says, rid vessels of stinky, hard-to-clean urinals.

*Now, the Navy is putting new spring mattresses aboard ships to replace worn-out lumpy bedding. Price tag: $36 million. The attack sub USS Norfolk received the sleep aids recently before commencing a long, underwater cruise.

*The toilets and mattresses are part of a broader program started by Navy Secretary Richard Danzig to improve the lot of average sailors.

*• Rep. Floyd D. Spence, the outgoing chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the Pentagon will need between $60 billion and $100 billion a year more than current funding levels to fix combat-readiness problems.

*The South Carolina Republican spoke at the Center for Security Policy dinner Wednesday night where he was honored with the Keeper of the Flame Award. "We have got to do more," he said in an appeal for helping the depleted U.S. military.

*• Bill Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at gertz@twtmail.com. Rowan Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at scarbo@twtmail.com.

-------- OTHER

-------- spying

Libyan spy denies lying on Lockerbie

Washington Times
September 29, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000929211358.htm

CAMP ZEIST, Netherlands -A former Libyan spy denied yesterday that he fabricated lies about two former associates to claim a $4 million U.S. government reward for evidence in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

The spy, who became a CIA mole four months before the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing that killed 270 persons - including 189 Americans - is considered a key witness in the mass-murder trial.

He has provided the strongest evidence so far against Libyan intelligence agents Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, who are being charged in the terrorist bombing over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

-------- terrorism

An Engagement In 10 Time Zones

Washington Post
Friday, September 29, 2000 ; Page A01
By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38658-2000Sep28?language=printer

Second of three articles.

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan -- "Did you know millions of people will die between now and next week in Africa and no one cares?" Gen. Anthony C. Zinni asks abruptly during one of his final tours of his "CINCdom," the vast swath of Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa known as the U.S. Central Command. "When you go out there and see these people, you're their only hope sometimes. You feel bad 'cause you're delivering peanuts."

"Millions" of weekly African deaths may be an exaggeration, but Zinni's sense of sometimes being the "only hope" for countries in his military realm reflects both the expanse of his mission and the skepticism he and other CINCs sometimes feel about the foreign policy they increasingly help to shape.

U.S. efforts to train regional African peacekeepers are so small and "half-baked" that "they don't prepare anyone to be a peacekeeper."

As for his attempts to nudge Washington to address Africa's problems, his voice becomes cynical. "You assume there's someone back there who cares," Zinni says.

Diplomats in Foggy Bottom for years have wrestled with popular and political indifference to their priorities. Now, as congressional funding for overseas missions increasingly favors the Pentagon's regional commanders-in-chief, or CINCs, Zinni and other semiautonomous generals and admirals abroad find themselves taking on tasks previously handled by civilians. They too are confronting the limits of American engagement and attention spans overseas.

Until he retired last month, Zinni was a leader in redefining the U.S. military's role in the post-Cold War era and understanding the global context in which it must operate. For 32 years, Zinni's combat skills propelled him to the military's top ranks. In his last three, he became one of America's most important diplomats.

"War is the easy part," says the bulldog-shouldered Marine who endured vodka-drenched toasts in Turkmenistan, tribal dancing in Kenya and hand-holding with princes in Saudi Arabia who called him "our commander."

The Washington Post joined Zinni on one of his last tours of his theater, a two-week trip across 10 time zones that took 44 hours in the air to reach a conference in Bahrain, with stops in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and England.

Often unglamorous, the endless meetings Zinni held with military and civilian leaders were the farthest thing imaginable from the tempo of combat or the predictable rote of military drills. Yet as the 20 American ambassadors interviewed along the trip confirmed, no other U.S. official in the region spent more time trying to build relationships with nations where virtually none existed.

It was a testament "to the time Zinni has to think about these issues," said one ambassador in Central Asia. "Not us, we're firefighters."

The 'Godfather'

Out of context, it is hard to picture Zinni as statesman. Still bench-pressing 300 pounds, he more resembles his nickname, "The Godfather," recalling a time when he collected debts in Philadelphia's Italian section with a stick-carrying goon as sidekick.

Just about everything is a competition with his staff: Spades, exercise, eating. "Did you try the horse meat?" he prods. "Did you eat the camels-milk yogurt?" His stories, marinated with cigars and cognac, teem with heroic violence, naked women and soldiering humor.

Zinni advised Vietnamese marines during the war, and ate monkeys, snakes and even his German shepherd scout, served to him one day by the Vietnamese. Shot in the back during an ambush in South Vietnam's Queson mountains, Zinni was awarded a Purple Heart.

In the 1990s, Zinni, like the U.S. military at large, found himself thrust into muddy-boots diplomacy. He ran relief centers for Iraqi Kurds, led the pullout of U.S. troops from Somalia and was the first to use nonlethal weapons--sticky foam and sponge shooting guns. Somali warlords still write him, hoping, correctly, that he still cares about their country.

In 1997, he took over a "CINCdom," as his military theater of 25 countries is known. A converted Boeing 707 stood at his beck and call with three pilots, six mechanics, two navigators, a "boom operator" for refueling and a ton of spare parts.

On the April trip, Col. Manny Shaves, the trip coordinator, tracked expenses and monitored a computer printer spitting out schedule changes. Two-week trip for 40: $98,700, plus $1,500 an hour flying time. Conference in Bahrain: $450,000.

In flight, Zinni occupied himself with a thick book of poetry, foreign policy magazines and arguments with a senior civilian defense official that dragged into the night. He held briefings, talked about his career and reflected on the world.

"As the sole remaining superpower, everybody is turning to us," he said one afternoon. "Everybody thinks we're going to help in the reordering of the world. But it's all self-ordering now, and when you self-order, it's like the roll of the dice. We are not doing enough to direct or structure a new order.

"We don't have a way to say, 'Okay, Central Asia is a problem, let's all get together, each agency, then build a program.' The geography of the agencies [doesn't] even match up. If I go over to the State Department, I have four bureaus to visit."

"For me, it was a discovery over time," he said, heading to Uzbekistan. "We need to revamp the entire engagement program."

The 'Klingons'

Walking down the ramp of his converted 707 in Bahrain, Zinni's size 46 jacket sparkled with medals and stars. Security men with wireless earphones rushed before him, and a line of foreign uniforms snapped to attention.

A dozen aides fanned out, encasing him in an invisible bubble. Zinni's political adviser, Ambassador Lawrence Pope, jokingly calls them the "Klingons," majors and colonels obsessed with seating charts and punctuality. For the entire trip, they protected Zinni's stride, walking within earshot of his quietest request. Three "communicators" with cell phones and a 90-pound encrypted satellite phone in a backpack stood ready to dial anywhere at anytime, as they did once when Zinni, riding atop a camel in the Saudi desert, had to return an emergency call to Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The only time Zinni was ever incommunicado was for several hours when he and an United Arab Emirates prince motored out on a yacht to an oil platform in Iranian territorial waters to go fishing, a daring, if short, escape from his handlers.

Zinni's aide-de-camp, Marine Maj. Jeff Haynes, was charged with anticipating his needs: messages from the answering machine, gifts for dignitaries, his must-have peppermint Lifesavers. Haynes also scripted Zinni's uniforms, which one day called for five complete changes. Zinni grumbled loudly the next day, "We're not changing again today!"

When Zinni arrived in Bahrain, the officer in charge of directing major wars was ushered onto a pink satin settee in the airport's VIP room.

His entourage moved about the city in a motorcade of a dozen black armored BMWs, its appearance creating a local sensation. On one shopping trip to nearby Dubai--where Zinni added to his collection of 120 Oriental rugs--even the local souk closed. "Who is it? Who is it?" merchants speculated. "It's Madonna! Madonna!"

At the Bahrain conference, 70 U.S. military and civilian officials and hundreds of Persian Gulf officers gathered to discuss sharing a computerized early warning system for biological and chemical weapons attacks. On the surface, it was a slow-burn event. "It's like paint drying, isn't it?" Zinni whispered.

Zinni was officially outranked by six U.S. ambassadors at the event. But the CINC was the one who sat in the procession's lead car and the only one who slept in a luxurious hotel suite patrolled by two dozen security agents.

The subtext for the conference was Zinni's effort to forge the Gulf countries into a NATO-like organization. Now, if the United States wants to move against Iraq, officials must seek take-off and overflight permission for each type of aircraft from each Gulf country. "There's no coherent strategy among them," he said. "It's a lot of work to get them to regionalize."

U.S. troop rotations in the Gulf are at "historic levels," according to one classified report, with 25,000 service personnel there at any time. Zinni has used his entree with Gulf countries to ease the way for Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, who made several tough trips here to win support for missile strikes against Iraq.

Relationships here are easy because the United States supports some of the world's most undemocratic regimes: inherited monarchies. "Democracy" is even excised as a goal on standard military briefing charts.

Wherever he roamed, Zinni had access to the highest levels of government.

In Africa he met with kings and presidents. In Saudi Arabia, Zinni's ties with the royal family helped mend relations after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in which 19 U.S. Air Force personnel died. In contrast to his predecessor, a traditional Army general, Zinni falcon-hunted with the royals, attended religious ceremonies, sat by the aged Prince Sultan's side on occasion, holding his hand.

"Sometimes they lead you around by the hand, almost like a little boy," said Zinni. "It's a sign of warmth and friendship, so you do it."

The Backwater

Big issues brought Zinni to Central Asia four times in two years: Oil. Natural gas. Terrorism. Russia.

Kazakhstan's oil reserves rival the North Sea's. Turkmenistan holds the world's fifth-largest natural gas deposits. Export routes are not yet set but the U.S. military may someday be asked to ensure it flows to market, just like it does in the Gulf.

As for terrorism, Islamic militants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya have set up camps in Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley. Russia has helped with anti-terrorism efforts and is trying to increase its involvement. Zinni's goal was to get the countries to look west for guidance.

His efforts were significant because "face time" matters at this stage, said a senior western diplomat in Kazakhstan. "He's been out here four times," sighed another. "I can't get high-level State Department visitors to come out here that often."

The motorcade in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Zinni's first stop in Central Asia, was a dozen used sedans and vans bouncing atop the potholed roads at 80 miles per hour, past green mountain ranges, grazing goats and barefooted shepherds. They arrived in a dust-covered city of a million that looks untouched since the 1950s.

In this, the region's poorest country, ties to Russia are strong and some former Soviet factories are still producing missiles. Zinni listened patiently as Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Esen Topoyez asked for U.S. equipment and joint exercises, and then expressed his view that the relationship with the United States "has acquired a continual and steady nature." Zinni worked hard to establish that steadiness, sending his mid-level officers on more than 20 annual visits there to work on programs.

A U.S. team will train 300 Kyrgyzstanis in counterterrorism by next year. Kyrgyzstan wants more. Last year 1,000 armed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) members, the region's main radical Islamic organization, swept into Kyrgyzstan on their way to mounting attacks in Uzbekistan. The Kyrgyzstani military was unable to stop and capture them as Uzbekistan and other countries in the region demanded.

Corruption and autocracy are rampant in Central Asia, and many experts say citizens enjoy fewer freedoms and less economic security now than they did under Soviet domination.

Human rights groups argue that the U.S. military should not help armies in authoritarian countries such as Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan because troops are used often to repress political dissent and commit human rights abuses. Uzbekistani President Islam Karimov, for one, uses "anti-terrorism" as an excuse to imprison virtually all religious activists.

"Rubbing shoulders with people in Turkmenistan, for instance, is an absurd excuse to maintain military contact," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "We should increase the cost to Turkmenistan's [authoritarian ruler] for not adhering to a basic rule of law. We should not reward them with military contact."

Zinni responds that the "nonproliferationists" and the "human rights folks" who want to set conditions for military ties are like people who "want to deliver health care only to people who are completely healthy."

The Challenges

Building trust in a remote corner of the world is often achieved in subtle ways, as Zinni saw during a stop in Kazakhstan. At one point, during a day of tours and formal meetings, the four-star general found himself in a school auditorium, uncomfortably watching a 15-minute videotape of a bikini-clad singer bellowing a tribute to Kazakh officers. The music brought the ranking Kazakh officer to his feet, followed by the U.S. defense attache. They grabbed a microphone. Karaoke happened.

They offered it to Zinni, but laughing, he politely declined.

In Uzbekistan, the mood turned serious again. A police loudspeaker blared "Get your asses off the road" trying to clear a four-lane thoroughfare as Zinni's motorcade zoomed through Tashkent. Zinni was whisked to his hotel suite to consult with the embassy staff, including the CIA station chief. The topic was the IMU, the Islamic extremists seeking to install an Islamic state in Uzbekistan.

The briefer painted a dire picture. The president's strong-arm tactics against all suspected religious activists are backfiring, Zinni was told. Disenfranchised youth are being pulled to the IMU because of the poor economy. The Russians are helping with anti-terrorism. "They are trying to sell them stuff, to exploit the low interest--or the interruption of interest--brought on by the U.S. presidential elections."

"If you're a guy looking for a jihad, the IMU is the best jihad going," someone else said. "This thing will wash to the Caucasus, the Balkans, Eastern Europe and will come home to roost."

Later that day, Zinni and Uzbekistan's foreign minister shared assessments of Pakistan's anti-terrorism efforts and events in Iran and Afghanistan. Zinni saw the president briefly and gave a sleeping bag to the defense minister, a symbolic place-holder for more U.S. cold weather gear for the mountain passes where the alleged terrorists enter the country.

"Thank you for paying attention to our country," the defense minister said and invited him to a dinner laden with vodka, horse meat and endless toasts to the growing U.S.-Uzbekistani friendship. By evening's end, the minister and his aides were teary-eyed as they reminisced about their trips to Tampa Bay to visit their Central Command counterparts.

Zinni's last stop was Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, a surreal place with skyscraping monuments to president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov. Giant portraits of him hang from dozens of white marble office buildings. The long streets and walkways leading up to the Oz-like presidential palace are empty because guards ring the perimeter to keep pedestrians away. There's no legal system, no unhindered press, no political parties.

Rich from its huge natural gas and oil reserves, Niyazov is erecting dozens of gigantic stone museums and starkly modern hotels that spring up amid the plains and mountains.

The president of Russia and Pakistan's military head of state were here around the same time as Zinni, both seeking good relations and a part of the pipeline that will carry billions of dollars of oil and gas to market. Niyazov, whose foreign relations he calls "positive neutrality," is playing hard to get, looking for the best deal. His foreign and defense ministers take the same tack.

Zinni tried to warm them up, but his hosts were dour and uncommitted.

"Are there any other areas you'd like to discuss?" he asked the defense minister five minutes into their meeting.

"We hope you will come back after you retire," the minister responded, dodging the question.

"What about pipeline security?" Zinni tried.

"Well, this will be addressed as soon as the pipeline is arranged," the defense minister answered dismissively.

Flying home, Zinni conceded that relationships in this part of the world require patience. "I've been trying to get [Defense Secretary] Cohen out here but his minders say he's too busy." But following Zinni's lead, the directors of the CIA and the FBI, and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, visited Central Asia this year.

The Return

As the plane cruised toward London, Zinni's aides, communicators, security guards and extra aircrew nodded off. Not the general. He returned to unsolved diplomatic problems.

There's Pakistan, nearly a failed state, going the way of Afghanistan and still hosting terrorist groups. Apply the same isolation to Pakistan and you'll get the same result, he insisted.

"If Pakistan fails, we have major problems. If [military strongman Pervez] Musharraf fails, hardliners could take over, or fundamentalists, or chaos. We can't let Musharraf fail."

There's Iran, still supporting terrorism, still building threatening missiles, yet showing signs of moderation. These days the administration is more interested in the strides political moderates have made so "I got told to cool my jets on speaking out against Iran. . . . But we endanger [Iran's moderate president Mohammed] Khatemi if we do it too soon. Besides, their intelligence service is targeting us, they continue to produce weapons of mass destruction, there's too much to be done still."

His thoughts returned to Central Asia, and the problems he has had convincing civilians of the region's strategic importance: "I now realize I should have done more to pull together a program on Central Asia . . . I've been thinking about asking Cohen for a meeting."

Still later, he looked down at his forearms, balled up his fists, tightened his arm muscles. ". . .I should have pushed harder."

Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

-------- activists

Raging street protests leave mark on summit

Washington Times
September 29, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000929211358.htm

PRAGUE - Raging street riots strained the new spirit of cooperation, but the world's top capitalists insisted yesterday their annual money summit built commitment to boosting the livelihoods of the world's poor.

"We are trying to do a job that makes things better," said World Bank President James Wolfensohn.

The World Bank and its sister lending agency, the International Monetary Fund, wrapped up official business Wednesday, one day ahead of schedule, amid victory cheers from protesters who claimed they derailed the meetings.

---

Morrock News

WEEKEND : : September 29 - October 1, 2000 : : Issue No. 1363

. . . . WORLDWIDE NEWS . . . .

http://morrock.com/

SUHARTO TOO SICK FOR TRIAL: Indonesia's former dictator Suharto is too ill to stand trial, a court ruled, after Suharto was examined by an independent medical team. News that the trial was off sparked street protests in Jakarta, with at least one killed and dozens injured. Television showed a videotape of a policeman firing a tear-gas grenade launcher directly into a student protester's face -- his condition wasn't immediately known.

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Protests planned as Milosevic defies calls

Washington Times
September 29, 2000
By David Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000929221647.htm

Yugoslavia's opposition parties today planned to issue a call for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience as President Slobodan Milosevic continues to defy growing demands at home and abroad that he step down.

Emerging for the first time in public since being bested by opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica in Sunday's presidential elections, Mr. Milosevic appeared on Serb state-owned television yesterday with members of his Socialist Party faction.

A Milosevic aide said the president was preparing for an Oct. 8 runoff election after official returns released yesterday found that Mr. Kostunica received 48.96 percent of the vote Sunday - 11 percentage points better than Mr. Milosevic but just short of the absolute majority needed to win outright.

"The election process is going on in accordance with the law," said Nikola Sainovic, a leading member of Mr. Milosevic's party. "The Socialists respect the decisions of legal bodies."

Contending their own tallies gave Mr. Kostunica at least 52 percent of the vote, the umbrella Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) movement said yesterday it would not participate in a runoff and that Mr. Milosevic should step down immediately.

"We in Serbia must show that we can peacefully replace an usurper from a position that no longer belongs to him," DOS spokesman Zoran Djindjic said yesterday.

Mr. Djindjic said Kostunica supporters planned five days of protest followed by a general strike in a bid to force Mr. Milosevic to quit.

While Mr. Milosevic has survived opposition protests in the past, this time the calls issuing from Washington and other Western capitals for his resignation are being echoed by some of the president's own allies inside Serbia.

Just yesterday, the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Serbia's ultranationalist deputy prime minister, a popular Serb children's television performer, and the leaders of Serbia's sister republic of Montenegro all said Mr. Kostunica had won a first-round victory.

The church's Holy Synod, headed by Patriarch Pavle, called Mr. Kostunica, a little-known constitutional lawyer and longtime opposition politician, Serbia's "elected president" in a statement released to the press.

"The Holy Synod calls on Kostunica and all those elected with him to take control of the state, its parliament, and its municipalities in a peaceful and dignified way," the influential church said in a statement released in Belgrade.

Bernard Kouchner, who heads the U.N. mission administering the Serbian province of Kosovo, said in Washington yesterday that "things seem to be going in a very good direction in Yugoslavia."

Mr. Kouchner said he did not discount the possibility that Mr. Milosevic, who faces international war crimes charges over his campaign in Kosovo last year, might lash out rather than surrender power peacefully.

Meanwhile, President Clinton and leaders of the European Union tried to keep up the pressure. Mr. Clinton repeated yesterday that the United States was essentially prepared to lift economic and diplomatic sanctions on Yugoslavia after Mr. Milosevic is gone.

"From my point of view they had an election, and it's clear that the people prefer the opposition," Mr. Clinton said.

Virtually the only break in the international condemnation came from Russia, a traditional ally of Yugoslavia.

"Russia will not exert pressure on anyone in Yugoslavia," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said after a meeting in the Kremlin with visiting French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine.

Mr. Milosevic's determination to proceed to a second round presents a dilemma for the opposition. DOS leaders and their Western supporters so far have insisted that a second round would legitimize a fraudulent vote and shouldn't even be conducted.

"There is no basis for a runoff," State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said.

But several analysts said it might be better for Mr. Kostunica to participate in the second round, one that, based on Sunday's elections, he would win handily.

"Milosevic has a lot more rabbits and a lot more hats than many people now give him credit for," said Janusz Bugajski, director of East European studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

• This article was based in part on wires service reports.

-------


NucNews - Please circulate -- help educate! - http://prop1.org

1. Celebrate DOE Lawbreaking Days in Amelia Island, FL., Oct 2-5, 2000
From: easlavin@aol.com

2. UK's Cambridge U. To Co-Ordinate International Chernobyl Childhood Cancer Inquiry
From: "Bill Smirnow"

4. IMPORTANT! NRC Deadline Set For Oct. 16 For Comments On 20 Year Extension Of Reactor Life For 85% Of USA's Reactors
From: "Bill Smirnow"

--------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: easlavin@aol.com

Come on DOWN
Celebrate DOE Lawbreaking Days in Amelia Island, FL., Oct 2-5, 2000

Dear Pam and all: I heartily agree with you, Pam, that these additional FACA violations reveal that the lawbreaking at DOE is habitual. The Revolving Door and the Iron Triangle are the primary features of the DOE -- not reform, not environmental protection and not compassion or humanitarianism for DOE's victims. Despite PR meisters, the fact is that DOE is still a cruel overlord over its employees, more arrogant than a Robber Baron of the Gilded Age. DOE is still proposing lump sum bribes in exchange for indemnity and immmunity, without fair procedures in lieu of full workers compensation benefits provided by Black Lung and Longshore. While Congress is fiddling with sick workers' fate, DOE managers will burn the midnight oil cavorting with DOE's contractors, looking for jobs in the 2000 version of "Beach Blanket Bingo." DOE and contractor managers are some of the world's worst managers at the world's most contaminated sites, with nuclear weapons and world class arrays of toxicants -- what a dangerously deadly combination!

As DOE and contractor officials party at their ritzy Florida seaside resort October 2-5, 2000, DOE's victims are waiting for justice from a Congress and a President who think slogans are a substitute for wise legislation with full remedies and fair procedures. DOE should cancel its annual Amelia Island FACA "Lawbreaking Days" and give the obviouslysurplus funds to sick workers like Ms. Ann Orrick. Monies wasted on FACA-violating conferences should be spent on health care.

The President and Vice President should finally deign to meet with some of the workers and residents that DOE made sick, to listen to them discuss how to write fair legislation instead of imposing unfair legislation by fiat. Public officials don't learn when they are talking (or turning their back, as Rep. Zach Wamp once did with sick Oak Ridge workers).

Perhaps if there were Presidential debate questions on October 3, they would take the time to understand what their staffers have done. You might wish to write Jim Lehrer at PBS (Presidential debate moderator for all three debates) and suggest questions about DOE and how it made the workers and residents sick and why it seeks to control compensation and health policies and decisions, e.g., picking and choosing whom among those it made sick should receive benefits -- that's rather like putting Dracula in charge of the Blood Bank.

Sick workers and residents with spare time and funds should consider a visit to DOE's Lawbreaking Days at Amelia Island, Florida October 2-5, 2000. As the promotional literature says, DOE managers are there to hear their views (assuming they are corpulent DOE contractors with $$$). As long as 350 top DOE and contractor managers are going to be at the beach October 2-5, I reckon we can tell them to go pound sand.

If you can't come, click, call or fax.

http://www.aipfl.com/ Amelia Island Plantation - Florida's Premier island resort -- you can view their beach 360 degrees and zoom in and zoom out using your A & Z key. You can also call DOE and contractor managers at the toll free number 888-261-6161 or 261-6165 (and hit zero for Operation).

Or, during the October 2-5 conference, you may send those First Amendment faxes to DOE and contractor managers to 904-277-5159 or 904-277-5945.

IT IS OFF SEASON IN NORTH FLORIDA. I understand that budget accomodations may be found at a Comfort Inn or Holidary Traveller n the town of Yulee/Fernandina Beach, which are 10-15 miles away from the DOE-contractor fraternity party. Mike Tulloh, a sick Portsmouth worker, lives only four miles away from the site: he can give anyone advice about other options, including biker motels. :) (904) 261-2752.

DOE -- Denier of Everything. What a vulgar agency. What crass managers. What wasteful spending. We need to get DOE out of the COnpensation business. We need to put Department of Labor Administrative Law Judges and Benefits Review Board in charge.

With kindest regards, Edward A. Slavin, Jr. P.O. Box 3084 St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084 (904) 471-7023 (904) 471-9918 (fax)

More DOE FACA violations?
9/29/00

In regard to the joint CHE-Downwinders letter about the DOE and contractor conference at Amelia Island, Florida, here is some information about two other potential DOE violations of FACA:

Exchange/Monitor Publications is holding its annual Low-Level Radioactive Waste Decisionmakers Forum October 30 - November 2 at the Radisson Executive Conference Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, where according to the brochure (at http://www.exchangemonitor.com/radioact.pdf):

"you will get the latest on what the Federal government, utilities, industry and the medical community are planning to do with their radwaste, the future use of Barnwell and Envirocare, recycling and a lot more..."

One of the two keynote speakers is Dave Huizenga, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Program Integration, DOE Environmental Management Program.

The registration fee is $695, and accommodations at the Radisson are $155 per night. Exhibit fees are $1000 (small business) or $1200 (medium to large business), which includes a complimentary registration.

Exchange/Monitor Publications says it "has provided thousands of decisionmakers with timely alerts, reliable information and expert analysis of key developments on radioactive waste, hazardous waste management and environmental remediation, the Department of Energy's NUCLEAR WEAPONS & MATERIALS & environmental clean up program." Sounds like a federal advisory committee to me.

Locally (in the Oak Ridge area), the East Tennessee Environmental Business Association (ETEBA) held a conference at the Knoxville Airport Hilton recently to present 2001 environmental business opportunities in the southeast. The attendees list reads like a "who's who" of local DOE environmental management contractors and subcontractors. Among the presenters were Chuck Williams of DOE-ORO, five people from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Steve Johnson from the General Services Administration, and Steve Jones from TVA. You can see lists of sponsors, presenters, and attendees at the following URL:

http://www.eteba.org/conference/

The cost of attendance was $345 for a non-member of ETEBA. The agenda included items such as the disclosure of procurement schedules and other information that would give anyone attending an advantage in participating in the government's environmental business opportunities. In fact, information I received was that material promoting the conference essentially conveyed that information would be disclosed that was not otherwise (and presumably publicly) available.

But maybe instead of--or in addition to--being in violation of FACA, the ETEBA conference was in violation of Federal Acquisition Regulations. Would any of you care to share an opinion on that?

Sincerely, Pamela Gillis Watson

-------------

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow"

UK's Cambridge U. To Co-Ordinate International Chernobyl Childhood Cancer Inquiry

NPU Bulletin 29 Sep
DAILY INFORMATION BULLETIN - NUCLEAR POLICY
Fri 29 Sep 2000

00-8744 Britain's Cambridge University is to co-ordinate an international effort into discovering how the Chernobyl disaster managed to cause a huge increase in child cancer. The project could lead to gvt guidelines such as advice to parents on giving children iodine in the event of a nuclear emergency. G 29 Sep

Geoff Adams, Information Officer, Greater Manchester Research, 4th Floor, Metropolitan House, Hobson Street, OLDHAM, Lancs, UK, OL1 1QD Tel: 0161 911 4179 / Fax: 0161 627 1736 UK newspaper URLs: Letters Editors (UK newspapers):

Nuclear Free Local Authorities Secretariat Environment and Development Manchester City Council PO Box 463 Town Hall Manchester M60 3NY UK Tel: + 44 161 234 3244 Fax: + 44 161 234 3379 Web Site: http://www.gn.apc.org/nfznsc/

-----------

Message: 4
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow"

IMPORTANT! NRC Deadline Set For Oct. 16 For Comments On 20 Year Extension Of Reactor Life For 85% Of USA's Reactors

Call, write, fax the NRC see http://www.nrc.gov and tell them this is wrong, this is dangerous, this is stupid and we won't let them experiemnt with us, our genetic pool and the environment for an additional 20 years. Also tell them that by their own testimony before Congress that there's a 45% chance of a core meltdown over exactly this period- 20 years http://www.geocities.com/mothersalert/probability.html . Are they INSANE????

And that by their own commissioned report, while grossly an underestimate, this is how many dead, cancers, injuries & economic damage we can expect: http://www.geocities.com/mothersalert/crac.html

How Democratic of them to try and sneak this by everyone in the entire United States and Northern Hemisphere with most of the world's population[India,China, all of Asia & most of Africa are in the Northern Hemisphere]. If you live outside the USA please contact NRC and tell them that fallout from a meltdown will probably affect you as Chernobyl fallout affected the entire Northern Hemisphere and pass this along to friends/contacts of yours within the USA.

Remember- please give NRC a piece of your mind- NOW, before it's too late. Please share/spread this to anyone that will do anything about it. http://www.nrc.gov

-Bill Smirnow
from AlterNet.org http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9836

Patching Nuclear Power
J.A. Savage,
Albion Monitor
September 25, 2000

In a hushed quest to allow an expected 85 percent of the nation's nuclear reactors to live beyond mandatory retirement, the nuclear industry talked the federal government into allowing a generic 20-year extension on the life of reactors. The public only has until October 16 to let the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) know what it thinks of the government's plan to allow license renewal instead of decommissioning.

According to the NRC, the only public meeting on the re-licensing plan has been held at its Maryland headquarters. The government's process effectively shuts out any public input on extending plant licenses, said Public Citizen senior policy analyst Jim Riccio. "Most of the public is not aware of the issues until they land in their laps, by way of their local nuclear plant."

Here's where the "generic" part of re-licensing comes in. Instead of having an "in my backyard" approach for concerned citizens, the generic license extension puts the onus in a generic somewhere-else land. "By making something generic, they don't have to deal with the public," Riccio added.

What few nuclear critics are hip to the industry/government move, are focusing on safety issues. "During the early stage of life and the late stage, the failure rate for both man and machines is generally higher than during middle age; the reliability of both man and machines is generally lower during the early and late stages. The prudent and proper course of action is to retire aging nuclear plants before they reach the point where reliability drops off markedly," notes Dave Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists' nuclear safety engineer. The nuclear industry claims it deserves generic safety rules for re-licensing because its safety track record has only gotten better over the years, now that its reactors are in middle age.

In a fortunate acronym for nuclear critics, the generic re-licensing program is called "GALL"- -for Nuclear Power Plant Generic Aging Lessons Learned. The "generic" part appears most important to both industry and government.

"Aging is the same no matter if the [reactor] maker is GE, Westinghouse or Combustion Engineering," said Electric Power Research Institute manager of life-cycle management, John Carey, who added that the weather surrounding a particular reactor is the only difference.

Long known as an aging problem is the brittleness of the metal enclosing the reactor core. The reactor gets bombarded with electrons for years and the metal becomes brittle. EPRI, for one, believes that brittleness is not a problem. "Many plants even at 60 years won't reach that [threshold] level of embrittlement. There's probably none that will at 40," said Carey.

While most of the government's and critics' attention is focused on reactor safety during aging, the industry's impetus admittedly has to do with short-term financial gains that come with a second license and the value added to a plant for resale.

In a deregulated, competitive business, a fully depreciated nuclear plant (beyond its original 40-year license) is a tremendous asset. It can sell its power at marginal cost, which is very competitive. Such a plant would have significant profit potential," notes the industry group Nuclear Energy Institute. In other words, once ratepayers have paid off the construction investment, the primary expense of nuclear plants disappears and the only ongoing costs to owners are fuel, safety expenditures and staffing. Less tangible opportunity costs like guaranteed ecological preservation are not a part of the calculations.

The NRC's attempt at generic guidelines for license renewal had been sitting around in various stages since the early 1990s. It was goosed into action, though, when Baltimore Gas & Electric's (Constellation) Calvert Cliffs became the first facility to ask for a 20-year extension. Calvert Cliffs (in the NRC's back yard) was approved this March. Duke's Oconee plant in North Carolina followed suit in May.

License renewal does not come without a price, however, as keeping that license means an owner has to invest in anti-aging technology - a.k.a. capital investments.

Like plastic surgery fixes the fissures and sags in an aging body, keeping a past-prime nuke in shape "depends on how much money you have," Carey.

For instance, replacing a steam generator, a typical aging problem, costs about $150 million. Shareholders might be loath to invest that kind of capital in an old plant. But, the beauty of re-licensing is that any such investment can be amortized over an extra 20 years, even if the plant owners do not plan to run the plant that long. Thus, license renewal tucks in the short-term operating costs of nuclear plants.

Public Citizen's Riccio, says that the 20 year extension "shifts the risk of future operation from the stockholder to the ratepayer." Riccio believes that the specter of early shutdowns with their attendant stranded asset risk is driving re-licensing. Fitch ICBA analyst Ellen Lapson explained the early shutdown scenario, "Towards the end of the life of a plant, if there's no re-licensing then there's less reason to invest capital."

Using the medical metaphor again, that means there's a choice between euthanasia (decommissioning) because the patient is too expensive to keep up and take the risk of having to pay all those exorbitant hospital bills, or pump more money into the patient--say an aging pop singer, a la Diana Ross--in the expectation the survival will allow payback when the star makes a comeback tour.

A 20-year extension also "enhances the value of the plant if [owners] decide to get out of the business," said Bob Wood, NRC senior licensing financial policy advisor. He added that no owner had confessed that intent directly.

But the industry's unstated intent appears known to the NRC. "GenCos are snatching up economically uncompetitive facilities," noted Christopher Grimes, NRC chief of license renewal and standardization.

But economics can also kill a re-license. Yankee Rowe, a poster-child nuclear facility, scrapped its plans to live beyond middle age because it would have cost too much money just to prove to the NRC that it could do the repairs needed for re-licensing. EPRI's Carey blamed it on the small size of the plant and the economics of energy in New England.

The other economic benefit to plant owners is that when a plant gets a 20-year life extension, payments into its decommissioning fund also gets drawn out another 20 years, allowing another decrease in short-term operating expenses, noted Fitch's Lapson.

Like a boomer turning 40, the limit for what constitutes old-age in a nuke was "arbitrary," said the NRC's Grimes.

"In the Atomic Energy Act of 1956, everybody said 40 years ought to be enough," said Grimes, adding that the arbitrary number was based on financing available to owners. "We looked into what might be life-limiting aging effects. In 1991 the first rule was issued on aging effects. It concluded Mother Nature doesn't care how long the NRC's license term is."

Citizen's Awareness Network - Central New York (315) 475-1203 162 Cambridge St., Syracuse, NY 13210 nonukes@rootmedia.org www.nukebusters.org

-----------------------------------------------------------


DOEWatch List ----A Magnum-Opus Project
Subscribe online: http://www.onelist.com
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1. House, Senate to vote on $1.61 billion cleanup budget
From: magnu96196@aol.com

2. The Cure for the Common Cold Warrior By Eileen Welsome
From: magnu96196@aol.com

3. More than gratitude Compensation package for sick nuclear workers
From: magnu96196@aol.com

4. U.S. nuclear compensation bill may flounder - DOE
From: magnu96196@aol.com

5. Plan to help sick nuclear workers hits snag
From: magnu96196@aol.com

6. 1 hurdle left on DOE, dam aid
From: magnu96196@aol.com

7. House passes energy bill to help Paducah cleanup
From: magnu96196@aol.com

9. Sundquist joins push for sick workers
From: magnu96196@aol.com

10. Our Views: Congress gives sick worker issue needed added look
From: magnu96196@aol.com

11. Governors press Congress to act now on compensation measure
From: magnu96196@aol.com

12. Governors lobby for bill to aid sick plant workers
From: magnu96196@aol.com

13. NRC Deadline Set For Comments On Extension Of Reactor Life For 85% Of USA's Reactors
From: "Bill Smirnow"

14. Book Says U.S. Scientists Killed Amazon Indians
From: magnu96196@aol.com

15. Nuclear couriers cleared of wrongdoing
From: magnu96196@aol.com

----------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

House, Senate to vote on $1.61 billion cleanup budget

Tri-City Herald
Sept. 27, 2000
By John Stang Herald staff writer
Source: http://www.hanfordnews.com/2000/sept26.html

A roughly $1.61 billion Hanford cleanup budget for fiscal 2001 is on its way to a vote before the full House and Senate this week.

That budget emerged late Tuesday from a congressional conference committee, which hashed out differences between water and energy appropriations bills passed by the two chambers, according to congressional staff.

The House had sent a bill containing $1.58 billion for Hanford's cleanup into the committee talks -- a bill that mirrored the Department of Energy's request. The Senate version included an extra $29 million to increase Hanford's 2001 cleanup budget to $1.61 billion.

The Senate wanted the extra money to help with a few key cleanup projects -- demolishing and sealing Hanford's old reactors, removing spent nuclear fuel from the K Basins and converting plutonium into safer forms at the Plutonium Finishing Plant.

All 14 U.S. House members from Oregon and Washington pushed for the bigger Senate version.

Staffers for several members of the Northwest delegation cautioned there still could be full-floor fights over parts of the water and water appropriations legislation unrelated to Hanford -- such as a dredging project on the Missouri River.

In broad strokes, the cleanup budget for fiscal 2001, which begins Sunday, looks likes this:

-- $755 million for DOE's Richland office, which manages all Hanford operations outside of the tank farms.

-- $759 million for DOE's Office of River Protection, which manages Hanford's tank farms and supervises the design, construction and eventual operation of the site's waste glassification plants. This money includes $97 million set aside in previous years from Hanford's now-defunct privatization program to build the glassification plants.

-- $96 million for Hanford programs controlled by DOE's Washington, D.C., headquarters. Much of this allocation would cover the salaries of the more than 500 DOE employees working at Hanford.

Even if Congress approves the budget and President Clinton approves it, the numbers are still tentative. DOE's Washington, D.C., headquarters reviews allocations to all of its projects after the president signs DOE's overall budget, and usually does some last-minute juggling.

Also, it is difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison between the fiscal 2001 figures and Hanford's current $1.15 billion budget.

Another $106 million was added on top of this year's spending package for the so-called "set-aside" fund for glassification.

The major difference between the 2000 and 2001 budgets are that the set-aside concept is gone. Also, fiscal 2001 will be the first year that actual glassification plant construction will take place, which drastically increases the Office of River Protection's spending.

----------

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

The Cure for the Common Cold Warrior

By Eileen Welsome
http://www.westword.com/issues/2000-09-28/feature2.html/page1.html

Past and present Rocky Flats workers say their jobs made them sick---and it's the government's job to make them better.

Janet Brown was on her way home from work one evening when she suddenly lost control of her car. It crashed through a fence and finally came to a stop in a field. The next thing she remembers is lying flat on her back in an ambulance, a female police officer towering over her. "She thought I was drunk," recalls Brown.

But Brown had had nothing to drink that evening. Nor could she give the police officer any coherent reason for the accident. In fact, she had no memory of what had occurred in the seconds before the car went out of control.

Brown was transported to a nearby hospital, where she underwent a series of diagnostic tests. The doctors thought she had suffered a severe epileptic seizure and asked how long she had been afflicted with the disease. Brown, who was then 28, replied that she didn't even know what epilepsy was. Then they asked her how long she had been having seizures. "I said, 'What are you talking about, seizures?'" she remembers. "And they said, 'You just don't get epilepsy out of the blue.'" A few days later, Brown was discharged from the hospital with a prescription for a powerful anti-seizure medication. None of the doctors had been able to figure out how she suddenly developed epilepsy, but they were sure of the diagnosis.

Brown was eager to return to her job at the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant. The year was 1986, and life was good at the nation's nuclear-weapons facilities. Ronald Reagan was in the White House and, determined to end the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union, had ordered a huge buildup in the nuclear-weapons program. As a result, Rocky Flats, which manufactured the plutonium pits and other components that went into nuclear bombs, was operating around the clock, hurrying to fill the orders.

Brown, who had transferred from the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory three years earlier, was a gifted machinist whose skills were quickly recognized at Rocky Flats. She was promoted to first foreman and then product engineer for the W-88, the lightweight, sophisticated warhead that is currently deployed on Trident submarines. She flew back and forth to Los Alamos, New Mexico, the nation's premier nuclear-weapons design laboratory, occasionally carrying top-secret documents that had been enclosed in two sealed envelopes.

Meanwhile, the seizures continued, growing in intensity and frequency. Brown had grand mal seizures while she was sleeping and temporal lobe seizures during the day. The grand mal seizures made her arch her back, stiffen her neck and bite the soft tissues of her inner mouth. The temporal lobe seizures were far milder and occurred dozens of times during the day. Similar to blackouts, they lasted only a second or two but had a devastating impact on her short-term memory. Brown grew exhausted, unable to concentrate; she found it difficult to even read a newspaper article. Finally, in 1994, she took a leave of absence from her job. Two years later she submitted to a radical surgical procedure that she hoped would put an end to the seizures: a lobectomy, in which an egg-sized lump of tissue where the seizures were believed to have originated would be excised from her brain.

At the hospital, the doctors doped her up with pain medication, drilled two holes in her forehead and inserted depth electrodes. Then they watched her brain activity for a week, charting the electrical storms that swept through her head. When they had enough information to pinpoint exactly where the seizures were occurring, they wheeled her into a brightly lit surgical suite. "When I awoke, the doctor said he had good news and bad news for me," Brown remembers. "The good news was that the operation had gone well. The bad news was that they had detected another seizure area on the other side of my brain. I said, 'Well, as long as I'm in the hospital, are you going to remove that one, too?' And he said, 'Not if you want to still be a walking, talking human being.'"

-------------

Although she was heavily drugged and her head was swaddled in bandages, Brown didn't miss a word the doctor said, and a gray fog of hopelessness swept over her. But Brown, who married at sixteen, gave birth to a son at seventeen and was separated at eighteen, soon recovered her natural optimism. She eventually returned to her home in Westminster with its splendid view of the Rocky Mountains. Her hair grew back, thick and curly, and her face showed no trace of the relentless disease.

But as she continued going from doctor to doctor, taking one medication after another, a radical, almost heretical idea was beginning to take shape in her consciousness: What if the seizures were caused by something she had been exposed to at Rocky Flats?

In both Idaho and Colorado, she had worked not only with plutonium and bomb-grade uranium, but also with a veritable witches' brew of chemicals that included chromium, nickel, trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene. Through various newspapers articles, Brown learned of other workers in the nuclear-weapons complex who suffered from neurological problems. The ailments defied ready diagnosis but bore an uncanny resemblance to such diseases as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis.

Today, fourteen years after the accident, Brown is more convinced than ever that her epilepsy was caused by chemical exposure. But proving that link will be an uphill battle. While scientists agree that many of the chemicals used in the weapons complex are capable of causing a wide variety of ailments, including cancer, nerve disorders and organ damage, the connections between exposure and disease are not well understood. To make matters worse, the Department of Energy, for the most part, maintained no records at all -- or notoriously incomplete records -- about worker exposures. "They haven't a clue," says Brown.

In a startling about-face, the DOE last year acknowledged for the first time in its history that exposure to radioactive materials or beryllium, a lightweight but durable metal, caused death and disease among its workers. At a public hearing held in Arvada last December, Brown urged DOE officials not to forget workers such as herself who suffered from strange diseases that were not so readily identified. "We are the Cold War warriors," she said softly. "And the legacy of the Cold War will haunt us for the rest of our days."

--

When U.S. Army general Leslie Groves agreed to take over the Manhattan Project in 1942, he was determined to accomplish two things: one, build an atomic bomb that would actually work; and two, make sure the wartime project was not stopped by any lawsuits. Groves and other members of the top-secret project, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, were concerned about potential claims coming not only from people who lived near the weapons sites, but also from injured workers. They feared that the publicity arising from such lawsuits might alert enemies in Nazi Germany or Japan that the United States was attempting to build an atomic bomb.

But in the decades following World War II, the concern over such lawsuits hardened into a campaign to silence any workers or neighbors who either questioned the safety conditions within the nuclear-weapons complex or claimed that they, or a loved one, had been injured by exposure to a radioactive substance.

The Atomic Energy Commission, the civilian agency that inherited the functions of the Manhattan Project, dealt ruthlessly with any critics. Injured workers were considered malingerers; neighbors who raised questions about contamination were branded as hysterics or communists. Records that were not declassified until the '90s revealed that scientific papers were routinely screened not only by the AEC's classification officials, but also by employees in the medical and insurance divisions intent on seeing that no information escaped that might tarnish the commission's prestige, cause embarrassment or promote lawsuits. Wrote one such official in 1947:

"There are a large number of papers which do not violate security, but do cause considerable concern to the Atomic Energy Commission Insurance Branch and may well compromise the public prestige and best interests of the Commission. Papers referring to levels of soil and water contamination surrounding Atomic Energy Commission installations, idle speculation on the future genetic effects of radiation and papers dealing with potential process hazards to employees are definitely prejudicial to the interests of the government. Every such release is reflected in an increase in insurance claims, increased difficulty in labor relations and adverse public sentiment. Following consultation with the Atomic Energy Commission Insurance Branch, the following declassification criteria appears desirable. If specific locations or activities of the Atomic Energy Commission and/or its contractors are closely associated with statements and information which would invite or tend to encourage claims against the Atomic Energy Commission or its contractors, such portions of articles to be published should be reworded or deleted."

At Rocky Flats and other sites around the country, the United States government spent millions and millions of dollars defeating lawsuits brought by injured workers or neighbors. The Department of Energy -- the successor to the Manhattan Project and the AEC -- hired expensive lawyers from New York and Chicago, gathered a phalanx of expert witnesses, and filed numerous legal motions in an attempt to exhaust opponents. In case after case, remembers Denver lawyer Bruce DeBoskey, one of the first in the country to actually prevail against the DOE, the money spent to defeat a claim far outstripped the costs of settling a legitimate dispute. "People's lives were ruined ­ and they're still being ruined," he says.

By the end of the '90s, though, the DOE was no longer able to stamp out the opposition with such ease. Newspapers such as Nashville's Tennessean, the Toledo Blade and the Washington Post wrote story after story about the working conditions within nuclear-weapons plants, the illnesses among workers, the deliberate coverup of potential dangers by contractors and vendors. For its efforts on behalf of beryllium workers, the Toledo Blade was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting.

In 1998, newly appointed Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who'd replaced former Denver mayor Federico Peña, took a trip to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There he heard from workers who had developed debilitating illnesses while working in the vast uranium factories. According to aides, Richardson was deeply disturbed by what he heard and subsequently dispatched David Michaels, his new assistant secretary for environment, safety and health, to gather more information.

Michaels, an epidemiology professor on leave from City University of New York Medical School, was well versed in science, health issues and worker's compensation laws. One of the first things that struck him was the difference between state and federal benefits, as well as disparities between the states themselves. In Colorado, for example, a disabled worker can receive a maximum of $519 a week under the state system and up to about $1,400 under the federal plan. "The state worker's compensation plans often did not do justice to the workers," he says. "They either did not receive enough money, or [the plans] were structured in ways that the workers were not eligible to get any money whatsoever."

On the wintry evening of December 15, 1999, Michaels attended a meeting at an Arvada community center where Janet Brown and several hundred other former and current Rocky Flats workers were waiting to talk with him. Rocky Flats had been one of the most important -- and dangerous -- production sites during the Cold War. Outside, a group of steelworkers marched up and down the sidewalk. The audience was restive; the DOE was known for holding public meetings full of sound and fury that resulted in nothing.

George Barrie, a former machinist at Rocky Flats, was one of the first to speak. Slowly he walked to the speaker's table and lowered himself into a chair.

In 1982, when the local economy was beginning its freefall, Barrie had seen an ad for a machinist at Rocky Flats. He filled out an application, underwent a rigorous security review and, eight months later, flashed his new badge at the armed guards. Barrie was eager to make money and advance through the ranks. So when a job opened up in the plutonium-production complex, he applied, knowing that he would get an extra 25 cents in "hot pay."

Barrie was assigned to the team that chopped up and recycled the aging radioactive cores, or "site returns," that had been removed from warheads and returned to Rocky Flats. "It was very scary work," he said in an interview. "I saw alloys that I had never seen or heard about before." Some of the equipment seemed ancient -- vintage World War II -- but it worked okay. "I was very happy about my surroundings and comfortable with all the people who were working with me," he remembered.

Then one morning, while Barrie was on his coffee break, a group of radiation monitors appeared and ordered him to strip. To Barrie's surprise, he learned that he'd been inadvertently contaminated when radioactive materials oozed out of a glove box. None of the alarms had gone off, though, and he'd walked right into the cafeteria with the hot stuff all over his coveralls. Some weeks after the accident, he received a health physics report indicating that he had absorbed plutonium and americium, a radioactive isotope usually found in the presence of plutonium.

-----------

Nothing more was said about the incident.

Five years later, Barrie began to get sick with one thing, then another. He underwent surgery for gallstones, then doctors found a benign tumor in his left foot. Soon he developed gastritis, diverticulitis, proctitis, arthritis and, finally, osteoporosis. Eventually he was forced to have several vertebrae fused in his neck. "As the surgeons removed the bone, it fell apart in their hands," he said.

Barrie seemed to be aging prematurely -- a condition that can be a symptom of radiation exposure. But when he tried to obtain worker's compensation benefits, Rocky Flats officials mounted a scorched-earth defense that included putting an expert witness on the stand who said you could drink a cup of plutonium and live a perfectly healthy life.

But today Barrie spends most of his days in bed, with a bottle of morphine tablets at his side. "Sometimes I take the dog out and mow the lawn. Afterwards, I have to spend three days in bed," he said. "I feel bitter, scoffed at and undermined. We built this nation's warheads. We gave up our health. And now we will have to pay for the rest of our lives."

As Barrie spoke, other workers shifted restlessly in their chairs, memories colliding with aches and pains. The room was stuffy and hot, and some people began filing out the door. But others were determined to tell the man from Washington exactly what they thought about being misused by their own government. "I wish everybody who was fighting our cases could take my body into their body for 24 hours and see and feel what I go through every day," said Alphonso Cardenas, who worked at Rocky Flats from 1957 until 1978 and now receives $121 a month in retirement pay.

Roughly a third of those in the audience that evening either had beryllium disease or had developed a sensitivity to beryllium, a condition that may or may not lead to the full-blown disease but nonetheless requires lifetime medical monitoring. Some of the beryllium workers were still relatively young and strong, but they sounded like old men, their breathing labored and harsh and their voices husky, as if they were getting over a bad case of bronchitis.

Beryllium, a lightweight metal that is wrapped around the radioactive cores of a nuclear weapon, had been in use since the early '50s at Rocky Flats. Beryllium was in the air they breathed, on the food they ate, on the clothing they wore home each evening, workers said. Even before Rocky Flats was built, vast medical evidence existed to suggest that microscopic amounts of beryllium were toxic -- but for decades, plant managers reassured workers that beryllium was relatively safe. "We were told we could eat it in 1982," remembered Ted Ziegler, a retired machinist and former safety official with the Steelworkers' union.

--

Because cancer is so common and can be caused by so many different things, it's always been difficult to prove that a worker's malignancy has been caused by radiation. But that's not the case with beryllium disease. It's caused by one thing and one thing only: exposure to beryllium.

When beryllium dust is breathed in, some of it is deposited in the tiny air sacs in the lungs where fresh oxygen is absorbed into the bloodstream and carbon dioxide is released. In some individuals, the immune system's T-cells will see the metal as a foreign invader and attack. Eventually, fibrous scar tissue can develop and restrict oxygen flow, producing shortness of breath, fatigue, coughing, even death.

According to Lee Newman, a lung specialist at National Jewish Medical and Research Center and one of the country's foremost experts on the disease, it's impossible to predict who will develop a sensitivity to the metal or come down with the disease. "Some of us are just more genetically susceptible," he says. Nearly half the population, he adds, carries the gene that predisposes one to the disease.

Beryllium disease is strange and unpredictable, and it can affect people in radically different ways. Some diagnosed with the disease can live relatively normal lives, requiring little medical intervention. But for others, such as Michael Jackson, a former speed swimmer, cross-country skier and alpine runner who was diagnosed at the age of 41, the disease has been devastating. In the last year, he has developed pneumonia and gone to the emergency room several times. He takes several different steroid medications daily and carries emergency medications in a pack. Jackson knows that the steroids can lead to further medical complications, such as diabetes and blindness; he also knows he has no choice but to continue taking them. "No one can predict what's going to happen," he says.

Soon after he was diagnosed with the disease, Jackson, a computer whiz who is currently a design and systems engineer at Rocky Flats, went straight to his computer and began hunting for information. He stumbled upon a DOE database developed by Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago that contained more than 250,000 historic documents relating to human radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War. It just so happened that the database (http://hrex.dis.anl.gov) also contained dozens and dozens of documents on beryllium disease -- what scientists knew about it, when they knew about it, and what they did about it. "The more I read, the madder I got," says Jackson, who subsequently built his own Web site (www.dimensional.com/~mhj/) where others could read the historic documents or find additional information on beryllium disease.

By the late '40s, those declassified records show, Atomic Energy Commission scientists were acutely aware that beryllium, even in microscopic amounts, was extremely toxic and could cause debilitating lung disease and death. What's more, they also soon recognized that beryllium was causing fatalities among neighbors who lived downwind of the production plants.

But one of the documents' most startling revelations is the AEC's almost obsessive concern with how the beryllium poisoning cases would affect public opinion if they should become known. In a paper titled "Public Relations Problems in Connection With Occupational Diseases in Beryllium Industry," one AEC official wrote, "Aside from the obvious moral responsibility, the AEC public relations problem in connection with beryllium poisoning has two aspects: 1. The effect of widespread publicity concerning beryllium hazard on production; and 2. The effect on the general public toward the AEC. The second aspect is easier to judge. There is no doubt at all that the amount of publicity and indignation about beryllium poisoning could reach proportions met with in the cases of silicosis or radium poisoning. Coupled with the AEC, the story might be headlined, particularly in non-friendly papers, for weeks and months -- each new case bringing an opportunity for a rehash of the story. This might seriously embarrass the AEC and reduce public confidence in the organization..."

This report also broached the delicate issue of how much it would cost to adequately protect workers from beryllium dust. The Manhattan Project and the AEC had recommended that numerous protective measures be implemented, including the use of ventilation systems, respirators, protective clothing, restricted eating areas, mandatory showers and regular physical exams. But many of the contractors had already informed the commission that they weren't in a "financial position" to implement such measures, the report noted, concluding that "a policy decision will be required in which the cost of dust and fume control must be balanced against the potential risk of beryllium fatalities, adverse publicity and possible effect on production."

In 1949, the AEC decreed that no worker could be exposed to more than two micrograms of beryllium per cubic meter of air. But James Heckbert, an attorney who today represents about 25 former beryllium workers at Rocky Flats and numerous others around the country, says that standard was pulled out of thin air by two officials riding in a taxicab. The AEC and the beryllium manufacturers knew full well that the so-called "taxicab standard" would not protect workers, he adds: "They lied to these people. They knew that there were cases developing of chronic beryllium disease where workers were exposed to substantially below two micrograms, yet they manufactured false medical articles, they manufactured false industrial-hygiene practices. They concealed it, they were deceitful, and they covered it up."

Heckbert, who has spent the last five years working on these cases, argues that the AEC and its private-sector counterparts could have implemented safe industrial practices but were unwilling to spend the money. "They wanted to make more bombs, more missiles and more rockets, and in the process, they were going to sacrifice these people if it meant saving money and if it meant keeping their secret," he says. "Because if these people knew the real facts, they wouldn't go to work for the AEC, or they would have demanded more money."

Bob Bistline, a health physicist who's a program manager at Rocky Flats, defends the safety measures that the plant put in place in the old days to protect workers. "We now know that they were not as good as they could have been," he says, "but they were state of the art at the time."

---------

It was National Jewish's Lee Newman who, using a blood test, confirmed in 1984 the first case of chronic beryllium disease at Rocky Flats. Workers undoubtedly had developed the disease prior to that time, Newman now says, but probably were diagnosed with other ailments.

Newman's findings sent a shock wave throughout the nation's weapons complex and prompted an investigation at Rocky Flats. "The medical and safety people were quick to respond," he remembers, "but the lawyers weren't too happy about it."

Of the thousands of people who worked at Rocky Flats between 1952 and today, some 113 people have been diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, including a secretary who worked in one of the plant buildings. Another 175 workers have developed a sensitivity to beryllium.

Despite the increasing number of cases, in the early '90s, Rocky Flats officials actually reduced the amount of cleanup in the beryllium shop, going from a monthly to a quarterly schedule. Ted Ziegler, the former union representative, says the plant often took the smear samples on a "tidy Friday" level -- that is, after an area had already been cleaned. "There's a big coverup going on at Rocky Flats," he says.

--

A few months after the Arvada meeting, the White House's National Economic Council issued a carefully worded report that concluded that many workers in the country's nuclear-weapons complex had developed serious diseases and cancer as a result of their workplace exposures: "There is evidence from health studies of DOE workers that suggests that some current and former contractor workers at DOE nuclear weapons production facilities may be at increased risk of illness from occupational exposures to ionizing radiation and other chemical and physical hazards associated with the production of nuclear weapons." Specifically, the report had identified a statistically significant increase in leukemia, breast, bladder, colon, liver, lung, esophagus, ovary, multiplemyeloma, stomach, thyroid and skin cancers.

The report also noted that 40,000 different chemicals had been used throughout the complex. "While chemical hazards have not been either well documented or studied at DOE, a number of reports suggest, either directly or indirectly, that chemical hazards pose a significant health risk to both current and former DOE workers," it stated. "These risks may exceed those posed by radionuclides."

After the White House report was made public, many Rocky Flats workers thought their legal battles were over. Energy Secretary Richardson even admitted during a press conference that some workers had been made sick as a result of their workplace exposures. "The national security mission of the Department of Energy sent into harm's way some of the men and women who helped the United States win the Cold War," he'd told reporters. "They should be honored for their work. The department is finally going to stop fighting these workers and instead help them get the treatment they need."

But Richardson's promise to end the stonewalling has yet to trickle down to regional offices. According to Joe Goldhammer, a Denver lawyer who represents numerous Rocky Flats workers, the government is still sending a fleet of high-powered attorneys and expert witnesses into court to fight worker's compensation claims, even going so far as to appeal certain cases five and six times. "They push everything to the limit," he says.

But Assistant Energy Secretary Michaels insists the DOE is trying to change that mindset. "We're working with our contractors and area offices," he says. "If an injury is work-related, we don't think we should be fighting it. If it reaches the point of saying that we no longer will reimburse attorney's fees, then we are prepared to do that."

In Congress, a bipartisan effort has been under way to develop compensation packages for sick workers or their surviving spouses. One piece of legislation calls for a lump-sum payment of up to $200,000 or a package consisting of lost wages, medical benefits and job retraining for workers who have developed silicosis, beryllium-related disorders or cancer that can be connected to workplace exposure. But on Monday, talks within a House-Senate conference committee discussing the measure broke down, making it unlikely that this legislation will pass before the session ends.

Under the proposal, workers who opt for the package and are not already engaged in lawsuits will waive their right to sue contractors, vendors or the DOE for their maladies. "We think we can offer a generous enough offer that they won't sue," says Michaels. But neither will the program bust the federal government. Of the 600,000 people who toiled in the nuclear-weapons complex over the last fifty years, only a "few thousand people at most" will be eligible for compensation, he adds.

Michael Jackson and others who are already plaintiffs in such lawsuits think this provision lets industry and government officials off too easily. "They should be held accountable," Jackson says. But Michaels points out that contractors and vendors are indemnified anyway, which means the federal government is picking up the legal expenses.

The proposed legislation has other problems, however. For example, some kind of medical board will have to "reconstruct" radiation doses received by workers and then decide whether those doses were likely to have caused an individual's cancer. But dose reconstructions, as well as the connection between low levels of radiation and cancer, are extremely controversial. Furthermore, not only are film badges and other exposure records incomplete or missing altogether, but some facilities intentionally underestimated workers' doses.

At Rocky Flats, says former union leader Jim Kelly, plant officials used a fudge factor when they were calculating doses until they got figures down to where they were acceptable. "Record-keeping was lousy, nonexistent and sloppy," he says. "They ignored their own scruples and ignored their ethics. In doing so, they sentenced a lot of people to sickness and death."

If disputes arise, Michaels responds, they will be decided in the worker's favor. "Workers will be given the benefit of the doubt," he says.

But radiation wasn't the only health hazard at these plants. Many past and present workers in the country's nuclear complex believe their illnesses can be linked to massive overexposures to chemicals. At Rocky Flats, machinists and chemical operators used solvents such as perchloroethylene, trichloroethylene and carbon tetrachloride as though they were soap and water. Pipefitters worked with asbestos-covered pipes; painters used lead-based paint; welders were exposed to nickel and chromium; researchers breathed in formaldehyde fumes.

Even though the White House's National Economic Council concedes that chemical exposures may have contributed to workers' illnesses, individuals such as Janet Brown apparently won't be eligible for the compensatory package. Instead, Michaels says, they'll get help filing for worker's compensation and other benefits through a new workers' advocacy office that will be established as part of the legislation. "This won't make everybody happy," he adds, "but it's a very fair first attempt."

Count Janet Brown among the unhappy ones. She thinks the bill doesn't go far enough and intends to keep amassing information, networking with other workers, and talking to the media until the government comes around. "The United States was the victor in the Cold War," she concludes. "We shouldn't be the victims."

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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

More than gratitude Compensation package for sick nuclear workers is the right thing to do

September 29, 2000
http://www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/15746.shtml


Workers who were employed in nuclear weapons plants in Oak Ridge and other cities deserve compensation from the government for injuries or illnesses they received during their years of employment. A House-Senate conference committee is trying to work out the details of a compensation package. The idea has bipartisan suport and gained momentum Wednesday after talks broke down on Monday.

Last spring, the U.S. Department of Energy reversed 50 years of federal denial and declared that the workers injured, killed or made ill by radiation at the weapons plants should be compensated. Approving a specific plan has been the sticking point.

There is no question the workers deserve compensation. It is the right thing to do. As noted by U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, a Chattanooga Republican whose district includes Oak Ridge, the workers "were there when our nation needed them."

Failure to provide compensation would be unconscionable.

Wamp and Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican, deserve credit for not letting the issue die when talks sputtered earlier in the week. Thompson understood the needs of "people who are sick as a result of their service to our country."

The Senate bill would give the sick workers lifetime medical benefits and at least $200,000 per person to compensate for their shortened work lives and lost wages. The Energy Department recommended a minimum lump sum payment of $100,000.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the Senate measure would cost $1.7 billion over a 10-year period for about 4,000 workers -- a small price in the larger scheme of government spending.

As we have said before, this is a federal government problem, and the government needs to take responsibility for it. That responsibility includes compensation for the victims.

It was these patriotic men and women who helped America triumph in the Cold War. They deserve more than gratitude for their suffering. We urge Congress to do the right thing and compensate them.

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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

U.S. nuclear compensation bill may flounder - DOE

Story by Margarita Martin-Hidalgo
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
USA: September 28, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8367&newsdate=28-Sep-2000

WASHINGTON - A bill to compensate thousands of government nuclear workers who suffer from radiation-related diseases may fail to pass Congress this year because of disagreements over the $938 million cost, a top Department of Energy (DOE) official said.

Assistant Energy Secretary David Michaels said the bill was floundering in the House of Representatives because lawmakers view the five-year proposal for ailing former nuclear workers as too costly. Michaels also criticised a House proposal to further examine the issue before making any payments.

"The offer proposed by the House of Representatives will require additional studies and legislation before a single dollar will be paid to a single worker," Michaels said.

"We do not think additional studies or legislation are needed," he added.

The Clinton administration and congressional Democrats are urging Republicans to pass the legislation before Congress ends its session in October.

"That is a callous disregard for the innocent victims who suffer from radiation-related illnesses," Sen. Richard Bryan, a Democrat from Nevada, told Reuters, referring to the House proposal.

A House official said lawmakers want a "common sense" compromise.

"We want to have a programme that helps these people without busting the budget," said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican.

The Senate version of the legislation provided compensation of $200,000 per person or a surviving member, but the House version lacks any compensation provision, Bryan said.

About 600,000 employees worked at 16 major nuclear facilities and dozens of smaller sites around the country during World War II and the Cold War. Thousands were exposed to high levels of radiation and beryllium, and later developed diseases such as cancer and silicosis, Michaels said.

Nearly 6,000 cases of sick workers are known, and between 50 and 100 are expected to be reported every year, Michaels said.

Bryan said the Senate bill would give surviving former employees, including clerical workers, who have diseases caused by their exposure to the toxic substances about $200,000 each in compensation.

In cases where workers have since died, the family would be entitled to a lump sum payment in the same amount, he said.

In an unprecedented move, the U.S. government acknowledged in January that employees who participated in building the nation's nuclear arsenal had unusually higher cancer rates.

The Energy Department has released a list of government nuclear sites and private sub-contractors that produced nuclear weapons. Some of the workers in the 1940's and 1950s were exposed to radiation levels higher than the standard, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a private environmental watchdog group, said earlier this month.

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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Plan to help sick nuclear workers hits snag

Sep 28, 2000
By The New York Times News Service and the Herald staff
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2000/sept27.html

WASHINGTON -- A proposal to compensate Hanford and other nuclear weapons workers who were sickened or killed by exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals has run into trouble.

House and Senate negotiators Monday dropped a provision in the military authorization bill that would have provided compensation, making prospects for its enactment this year very uncertain.

However, the issue was revived Tuesday by negotiators and talks were continuing Wednesday behind closed doors, said Burson Taylor, a spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.

"It's one provision in a much larger bill, and they're still working on it," said Jennifer Scott, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.

"It would be nice if they would do something," said Craig E. Hall, a Hanford electrician who contracted an incurable lung disease from exposure to the metal beryllium at the site. "Half the people (with cancer and other illnesses) have passed away, and it also would help others with medical bills."

The Clinton administration had been pushing for a plan, which was approved by the Senate, that would set up a program similar to workers compensation and would provide reimbursement of lost wages or $200,000, whichever is greater, plus medical expenses. But the administration did not say where the money would come from. The House Judiciary Committee favored a plan that offered $100,000 plus health care costs.

John P. Feehery, a spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said the House's last position had been to provide $250 million to start the compensation process, but that the Senate wanted more. "They were pushing for an entitlement program, and who knows what the final cost would have been, the multiple billions, probably," Feehery said.

David Michaels, the assistant secretary for environment and health of the Energy Department, said such estimates were "outrageous exaggerations." The Congressional Budget Office projects a cost of just under $1 billion in the first five years, and cases are emerging at a rate of 50 to 100 a year, Michaels said.

He said the payments would have to be made under an entitlement program, just as workers compensation payments are made. "You can't start paying in one year and stop the next year because you run out of money," he said. The administration is still trying to get a compensation provision into the bill.

U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, whose district includes a uranium processing plant, said, "it is almost incomprehensible that people could be so hard-hearted and heartless."

The Clinton administration said early this year, for the first time, that nuclear weapons manufacturing had caused illness and premature death in some of the 600,000 people employed by it.

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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

1 hurdle left on DOE, dam aid
The energy secretary also was told to determine how to prop up the sagging U.S. uranium enrichment program.

By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
The Paducah Sun
September 29, 2000
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2000/nn10796.htm

Paducah, Kentucky - Congress is on the final leg of approving more than $100 million for environmental and worker health programs at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and $86 million to continue the Kentucky Dam and Olmsted lock and dam projects.

Congress also has directed Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to determine by Dec. 31 how to prop up the sagging U.S. uranium enrichment industry, which threatens to close the Paducah plant and its raw producer, the Honeywell plant at Metropolis, Ill.

The language is part of the massive 2001 Energy and Water Development Appropriation Act that the House of Representatives approved Thursday by a 301-118 vote. Previously approved by the Senate, the bill had been sent to the House-Senate Conference Committee for compromise work. It now returns to the Senate for final action before going to President Clinton.

Supported by Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, and Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning, the legislation includes this funding for the plant:

--$78 million for environmental cleanup work.

--$33 million shared by Paducah and its sister plant near Portsmouth, Ohio, to maintain nearly 60,000 cylinders of spent uranium hexafluoride and build facilities at each plant to convert the hazardous material into something safer.

--$4.3 million for worker health and safety programs, including testing and monitoring of past and present workers at the plant.

--$1.75 million for an epidemiological study of workers by research specialists from medical schools at the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville.

--$3 million for programs to help displaced plant workers.

"This is a clean sweep. We got all of the funding requested by the president and more," Whitfield said. "We were able to put Paducah on the appropriators' radar screen on both sides of the Capitol. I think this bodes well for our continuing efforts to get a workers' compensation package and, in fact, we have seen positive movement toward that goal in the last 24 hours."

The conference report says Congress is worried about "severe market pressures" that could soon cause the loss of initial parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, including the Honeywell plant, which converts natural uranium into uranium hexafluoride. It directs Richardson to evaluate and make specific proposals on sustaining the domestic enrichment industry. His report is due to Congress by Dec. 31.

Richardson must recommend how to deal with the Portsmouth plant, which will be closed next summer, "and its role in maintaining a secure and sufficient domestic supply of enriched uranium."

The evaluation should also include the prospects for gas centrifuge and laser-based technologies to replace gaseous diffusion, Congress said, and the government's role in that effort.

"The (conference) committee expects to be notified by the department of its need for additional funding or decision to reprogram funding in order to carry out its priorities with regard to domestic enrichment industry," the report said.

DOE and plant operator USEC have begun a one-year, $4 million project to hasten gas centrifuge research. A proprietary report recently done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said USEC won't be profitable beyond 2005 without drastic measures, yet it doesn't plan to deploy centrifuge until 2009.

Thursday's action also approved these funds for waterways projects in the region:

--$30 million to continue construction of a Kentucky lock replacement that will make barge traffic faster and safer. Whitfield said the action doubles Clinton's request and keeps the project on track for completion by 2010.

--$56 million toward ongoing construction of Olmsted Lock and Dam, which will replace locks 52 and 53 on the Ohio River. The facility will be the largest of its type in Kentucky in terms of tonnage, McConnell said.

--$3 million for bank restoration and erosion control along the lower portion of the river below Barkley Dam and stretching 30 miles through Lyon, Crittenden and Livingston counties to the Ohio River. Whitfield said water fluctuations below the dam have consumed valuable farmland and residential property.

--$400,000 for preliminary engineering and design for rehabilitation of the existing local protection facilities, including the Paducah floodwall. Last year, Whitfield said, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers affirmed his contention that most of the flood protection along the shoreline in the Purchase area is near or beyond its design life.

The conference report also contained language prohibiting use of funds for construction of the Reelfoot Lake Spillway Project. Whitfield claims it will cause additional flooding problems over approximately 20,000 acres of farmland in Fulton County.

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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

House passes energy bill to help Paducah cleanup

Sept. 29, 2000
By JAMES R. CARROLL The Courier-Journal
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0009/29/000929uranium.html

WASHINGTON -- While lawmakers continued to wrestle over a revived plan to compensate nuclear workers with job-related illnesses, the House yesterday approved legislation containing more than $100 million for more cleanup and worker health testing at the Paducah uranium plant.

But even that cleanup and testing spending is in question, because it is in a $23.6 billion energy and water appropriations bill that the Senate appears certain to approve but that President Clinton has threatened to veto because of provisions unrelated to the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

The proposed Paducah spending represents what the White House and the Kentucky congressional delegation asked Congress for early this year after ongoing revelations about widespread health, safety and environmental problems at the uranium facility.

Clinton may reject the measure because it blocks an administration plan to allow a springtime surge in the Missouri River to protect endangered wildlife.

If vetoed, lawmakers in both houses will have to come up with an alternative proposal -- and quickly. Congress is supposed to adjourn for the year a week from today, but with only two of the 13 annual federal budget spending bills completed, that is not a realistic deadline. Even so, with the elections fast approaching, pressure is building on Capitol Hill to wrap up work on the spending bills.

As passed by the House, the energy and water measure includes $78 million for cleanup operations at Paducah; $33 million to maintain cylinders and uranium hexafluoride stored at the site and at its sister plant in Piketon, Ohio, and to begin work on conversion facilities that will stabilize the material; $12 million for additional cleanup at sites not covered in earlier plans; $4.3 million for health screenings of current and former workers at Paducah; and $1.75 million for an epidemiological study of Paducah workers by the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville.

Kentucky Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning, and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-1st District, which includes Paducah, have been critical of the Department of Energy's cleanup efforts.

"This funding should enable DOE to get back on track and accelerate cleanup at the Paducah site," McConnell said in a statement.

"I think this bodes well for our continuing efforts to get a workers' compensation package," Whitfield said in a separate statement, "and, in fact, we have seen positive movement toward that goal in the last 24 hours."

The Senate had agreed to a plan providing Paducah workers and employees at similar facilities with the option of either a one-time, tax-free payment of $200,000 and health benefits, or a package of benefits, including payments for lost wages, plus benefits, that could end up being worth more than the lump-sum payment. About 3,000 workers are believed to be eligible, with average benefits packages worth about $400,000, according to the Energy Department.

The House Republican leadership balked at the compensation plan, which was part of the defense authorization bill, and the program appeared dead only days ago.

Now, Senate negotiators have suggested as a compromise to their House colleagues that the authorization bill set up a compensation program without any money. Then, the administration will propose a separate plan in legislation next week, to be included in a separate spending bill.

Late yesterday afternoon, negotiators were still meeting on the issue.

Meanwhile, Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton and the governors of four other states with DOE facilities wrote a joint letter to House and Senate leaders urging the approval of a compensation program.

Besides Patton, the governors signing the letter were George Ryan of Illinois, Bob Taft of Ohio, Don Sundquist of Tennessee and Jim Hodges of South Carolina.

---

Bill provides millions for projects in Kentucky Associated Press WASHINGTON -- A spending bill approved by the House yesterday includes millions of dollars for energy and water projects in Kentucky.

Included in the $23.6 billion measure is more than $100 million for projects associated with the Paducah uranium enrichment plant. Most of that money will go toward cleaning up contaminated areas.

The bill also includes:

$56 million for construction of the Olmstead lock and dam.

$30 million for the Kentucky Lock addition project, and $18 million for the McAlpine locks and dam replacement project.

$20 million for flood control, and $4 million for PRIDE cleanup projects in Southern and Eastern Kentucky.

Rep. Hal Rogers, R-5th District, is on the House Appropriations Committee and secured $2 million for an Energy Department program to upgrade high-tech security locks used by the agency and its contractors. Appalachian Regional Manufacturing in Jackson and Tri-County Assembly in Williamsburg make the locks and are in Rogers' district.

Rep. Anne Northup, R-3rd District, also is on the House Appropriations Committee. Sen. Mitch McConnell is on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The Senate is expected to approve the spending bill soon, and it will then go to the president. The White House has indicated it may veto the bill because it would block the administration from moving toward allowing a seasonal surge in the Missouri River to protect endangered birds and fish.

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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Sundquist joins push for sick workers

September 29, 2000
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/">http://www.oakridger.com/

Governors from five states including Tennessee are pressing for a compensation package for sick workers at federal nuclear facilities.

In a letter dated Sept. 27, the five governors are urging that the worker compensation package be included in the conference report for the Fiscal Year 2001 Defense Authorization bill, or some other legislative vehicle before adjournment. A sick worker provision is contained in the Senate version of the Defense Authorization bill, which is currently before the House-Senate conference committee.

Governors Don Sundquist of Tennessee, George Ryan of Illinois, Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, Bob Taft of Ohio, and Jim Hodges of South Carolina signed the letter. It was sent to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt.

"As governors with federal nuclear facilities, beryllium facilities, nuclear material vendors in our state, we find that this Senate provision is fair, equitable, has a solid scientific basis, and provides an important step forward to securing a needed remedy for (Department of Energy) nuclear workers in our states," the letter states.

"This amendment, which was adopted unanimously by the Senate in June, would create a program administered by the Department of Labor to provide compensation for illness, deaths and disabilities due to exposure from beryllium, ionizing radiation and silica. We understand the Department of Energy supports the approach taken in the Senate."

The letter arrived in Washington as congressional negotiators were trying to salvage the latest in a series of proposals intended to compensate at least some workers whose jobs at nuclear facilities robbed them of their health.

The governors' letter states that there are unique and complex circumstances present for nuclear workers which merit the use of a federal -- as opposed to a state -- worker compensation remedy. Those include the following:

There is a long latency period between workplace exposures at federal nuclear sites and the onset of occupational illnesses such as chronic beryllium disease, silicosis, or radiogenic cancers.

Radiation dose measurements are, in many cases, incomplete, inaccurate, or non-existent, making eligibility determinations difficult and raising nearly insurmountable hurdles for deserving workers.

Nuclear workers, by virtue of their security clearances, were placed in federal nuclear installations in various states, making this a multi-state issue.

A Senate measure approved earlier called for $200,000 in compensation from the federal government, plus health benefits, to workers who had been exposed to radiation, silica and beryllium. The Congressional Budget Office had estimated that a Senate-passed compensation proposal would cost $1.7 billion over 10 years.

The House approved only a resolution supporting the idea of compensating the ailing workers, forcing the issue into a conference committee for resolution.

The governors' letter states, "During the Cold War, the production imperative often took precedence over worker health and safety protection. The last 20 years of congressional oversight has provided an abundant record which underscores the fact that workers were put at risk from radioactive and toxic exposures, without their knowledge and without adequate protection. These loyal, hardworking Americans provided a critical service to the nation and helped to win the Cold War.

"The Senate compensation provision now before the Conference Committee recognizes the sacrifices made by these workers and establishes a responsible program to compensate them. Four hearings in the Senate, coupled with a recent Judiciary Subcommittee hearing and an oversight hearing in the House Commerce Committee, established a foundation for passing legislation this year.

"We believe that the moral imperative is clear. The nation should not turn its back on the very people who protected our freedoms."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Our Views: Congress gives sick worker issue needed added look

September 29, 2000
Source: http://www.oakridger.com/

Members of Congress are wisely setting aside political ideology in favor of taking a second, hard look at the question of compensation for workers made sick by Cold War-era jobs in federal nuclear facilities.

The understandable reluctance by Congress to establish a new, open-ended and no doubt very costly entitlement program on par with, say, black lung compensation to coal miners, is being balanced again a need to be fair, which means in part being expeditious.

Five governors in states where sick workers reside, including Tennessee's Don Sundquist, have petitioned Congress to settle this issue fairly on the workers' behalf. Both incumbent Rep. Zach Wamp (R-3rd District) and his Democratic challenger, Will Calloway, have urged a just and speedy resolution to the issue. We question the wisdom of any incumbent or hopeful seeking political gain on an issue where sentiment appears to be running unanimous.

Protecting the interests of both taxpayers and workers made ill by exposures in nuclear facilities should be achievable, and soon.

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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Governors press Congress to act now on compensation measure

September 28, 2000
BY KATHERINE RIZZO
Associated Press Writer
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/022242.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Five governors on Thursday urged creation of a compensation plan for sick nuclear weapons plant workers, adding to the pressure on congressional leaders to reach a compromise on the proposal.

In a letter drafted by Gov. George Ryan, R-Ill., the governors -- all from weapons-plant states -- said Congress has amply documented that ``workers were put at risk from radioactive and toxic exposures without their knowledge and without adequate protection.''

``These loyal, hardworking Americans provided a critical service to the nation and helped to win the Cold War,'' said the letter signed by Ryan and govenors Bob Taft, R-Ohio; Paul Patton, D-Ky.; Don Sundquist, R-Tenn. and Jim Hodges, D-S.C.

``We believe the moral imperative is clear,'' they wrote. ``The nation should not turn its back on the very people who protected our freedoms.''

The letter arrived on Capitol Hill as congressional negotiators were trying to salvage the latest in a series of proposals intended to compensate at least some workers whose weapons plant jobs robbed them of their health.

Among the issues being discussed is whether to decide now or later the minimum amount of compensation each sickened worker could receive; whether the program would have guaranteed funding or be subject to the yearly appropriations process; and how a compensation program would be administered.

Last spring, the Energy Department reversed 50 years of federal policy by declaring that workers injured or killed by radiation at weapons plants should be compensated. The agency proposed minimum lump sum payments of $100,000.

The Senate later approved a measure granting $200,000 in compensation from the federal government, plus health benefits, to workers who had been exposed to radiation, silica and beryllium.

The House approved only a resolution supporting the idea of compensating the ailing workers, forcing the issue into a conference committee for resolution.

For most of the history of nuclear weapons-making, the government was much more concerned with production than with safety. Workers have told of breathing clouds of dangerous dust or being issued no protective clothing at sites handling radioactive materials.

The measure under discussion would offer financial help to those whose work lives were cut short by radiation-caused cancer, beryllium disease or silicosis.

The Congressional Budget Office had estimated that a Senate-passed compensation proposal would cost $1.7 billion over 10 years.

That figure was based on Energy Department estimates. They showed that about 4,000 of the 600,000 people who have worked in the nuclear weapons complex either are fighting illnesses caused by radiation, beryllium or silica exposure or have died from those diseases.

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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Governors lobby for bill to aid sick plant workers Bob Taft is among five who urged Congress to avoid delay in helping victims of radiation

September 29, 2000
Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/sep00/438730.html

Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and four other governors said yesterday that Congress has a "moral imperative'' to approve legislation compensating sick nuclear-plant workers before adjourning for the year.

The governors said in a letter to House and Senate leaders that there is ample evidence of the need for a Senate proposal granting up to $200,000 and lifetime health benefits to workers sickened by exposures to radiation and other hazardous materials.

"The nation should not turn its back on the very people who protected our freedoms,'' read the letter by the governors, all of whom hail from states with current or former nuclear weapons facilities.

"During the Cold War, the production imperative often took precedence over worker health and safety protection.''

The lobbying effort by Taft and Govs. George H. Ryan of Illinois, Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, Jim Hodges of South Carolina and Don Sunquist of Tennessee came as negotiations over the compensation bill ended last night without an agreement.

House Republican leaders have rejected the Senate proposal as an over-expensive entitlement, one they tagged as costing as much as $50 billion.

The House GOP has offered to pass legislation acknowledging that nuclear-plant workers deserve compensation, but it would leave open to a future measure how much compensation, whether benefits would be guaranteed or subject to annual approval by Congress and how the program would be run.

Proponents say that about 4,000-6,000 workers or their survivors nationwide would be affected. They cite Congressional Budget Office estimates of $1 billion in five years and $1.7 billion in 10 years as evidence it would be a limited program.

Sen. George V. Voinovich, R- Ohio, and other proponents say there is no need for further study to make the case for why workers at such facilities as the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, deserve federal compensation. The evidence clearly indicates that for decades workers were exposed to dangerous conditions by a government more interested in manufacturing weapons than safeguarding employees, they say.

The compensation proposal was declared dead this week and deleted from an unrelated military spending bill being finalized by a House-Senate conference committee. But House Republicans came back to the bargaining table after Voinovich and other Senate Republicans denounced their stand.

A Voinovich spokesman said the fact that negotiations will continue today among House and Senate staffers is a promising sign.

"I think it's great (that) people are still talking,'' said Scott Milburn, Voinovich's spokesman. "That's a good sign because it indicates people want to get something done.''

However, Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, said he doesn't think House GOP leaders are sincere.

"I think it's an effort to keep from doing it and pretend like we're doing it when we're not,'' Strickland said.

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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow"

IMPORTANT! NRC Deadline Set For Oct. 16 For Comments On 20 Year Extension Of Reactor Life For 85% Of USA's Reactors

Call, write, fax the NRC see http://www.nrc.gov and tell them this is wrong, this is dangerous, this is stupid and we won't let them experiemnt with us, our genetic pool and the environment for an additional 20 years. Also tell them that by their own testimony before Congress that there's a 45% chance of a core meltdown over exactly this period- 20 years http://www.geocities.com/mothersalert/probability.html . Are they INSANE????

And that by their own commissioned report, while grossly an underestimate, this is how many dead, cancers, injuries & economic damage we can expect: http://www.geocities.com/mothersalert/crac.html

How Democratic of them to try and sneak this by everyone in the entire United States and Northern Hemisphere with most of the world's population[India,China, all of Asia & most of Africa are in the Northern Hemisphere]. If you live outside the USA please contact NRC and tell them that fallout from a meltdown will probably affect you as Chernobyl fallout affected the entire Northern Hemisphere and pass this along to friends/contacts of yours within the USA.

Remember- please give NRC a piece of your mind- NOW, before it's too late. Please share/spread this to anyone that will do anything about it. http://www.nrc.gov

-Bill Smirnow

from AlterNet.org http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9836

Patching Nuclear Power J.A. Savage, Albion Monitor September 25, 2000

In a hushed quest to allow an expected 85 percent of the nation's nuclear reactors to live beyond mandatory retirement, the nuclear industry talked the federal government into allowing a generic 20-year extension on the life of reactors. The public only has until October 16 to let the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) know what it thinks of the government's plan to allow license renewal instead of decommissioning.

According to the NRC, the only public meeting on the re-licensing plan has been held at its Maryland headquarters. The government's process effectively shuts out any public input on extending plant licenses, said Public Citizen senior policy analyst Jim Riccio. "Most of the public is not aware of the issues until they land in their laps, by way of their local nuclear plant."

Here's where the "generic" part of re-licensing comes in. Instead of having an "in my backyard" approach for concerned citizens, the generic license extension puts the onus in a generic somewhere-else land. "By making something generic, they don't have to deal with the public," Riccio added.

What few nuclear critics are hip to the industry/government move, are focusing on safety issues. "During the early stage of life and the late stage, the failure rate for both man and machines is generally higher than during middle age; the reliability of both man and machines is generally lower during the early and late stages. The prudent and proper course of action is to retire aging nuclear plants before they reach the point where reliability drops off markedly," notes Dave Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists' nuclear safety engineer. The nuclear industry claims it deserves generic safety rules for re-licensing because its safety track record has only gotten better over the years, now that its reactors are in middle age.

In a fortunate acronym for nuclear critics, the generic re-licensing program is called "GALL"- -for Nuclear Power Plant Generic Aging Lessons Learned. The "generic" part appears most important to both industry and government.

"Aging is the same no matter if the [reactor] maker is GE, Westinghouse or Combustion Engineering," said Electric Power Research Institute manager of life-cycle management, John Carey, who added that the weather surrounding a particular reactor is the only difference.

Long known as an aging problem is the brittleness of the metal enclosing the reactor core. The reactor gets bombarded with electrons for years and the metal becomes brittle. EPRI, for one, believes that brittleness is not a problem. "Many plants even at 60 years won't reach that [threshold] level of embrittlement. There's probably none that will at 40," said Carey.

While most of the government's and critics' attention is focused on reactor safety during aging, the industry's impetus admittedly has to do with short-term financial gains that come with a second license and the value added to a plant for resale.

"In a deregulated, competitive business, a fully depreciated nuclear plant (beyond its original 40-year license) is a tremendous asset. It can sell its power at marginal cost, which is very competitive. Such a plant would have significant profit potential," notes the industry group Nuclear Energy Institute. In other words, once ratepayers have paid off the construction investment, the primary expense of nuclear plants disappears and the only ongoing costs to owners are fuel, safety expenditures and staffing. Less tangible opportunity costs like guaranteed ecological preservation are not a part of the calculations.

The NRC's attempt at generic guidelines for license renewal had been sitting around in various stages since the early 1990s. It was goosed into action, though, when Baltimore Gas & Electric's (Constellation) Calvert Cliffs became the first facility to ask for a 20-year extension. Calvert Cliffs (in the NRC's back yard) was approved this March. Duke's Oconee plant in North Carolina followed suit in May.

License renewal does not come without a price, however, as keeping that license means an owner has to invest in anti-aging technology - a.k.a. capital investments.

Like plastic surgery fixes the fissures and sags in an aging body, keeping a past-prime nuke in shape "depends on how much money you have," Carey.

For instance, replacing a steam generator, a typical aging problem, costs about $150 million. Shareholders might be loath to invest that kind of capital in an old plant. But, the beauty of re-licensing is that any such investment can be amortized over an extra 20 years, even if the plant owners do not plan to run the plant that long. Thus, license renewal tucks in the short-term operating costs of nuclear plants.

Public Citizen's Riccio, says that the 20 year extension "shifts the risk of future operation from the stockholder to the ratepayer." Riccio believes that the specter of early shutdowns with their attendant stranded asset risk is driving re-licensing. Fitch ICBA analyst Ellen Lapson explained the early shutdown scenario, "Towards the end of the life of a plant, if there's no re-licensing then there's less reason to invest capital."

Using the medical metaphor again, that means there's a choice between euthanasia (decommissioning) because the patient is too expensive to keep up and take the risk of having to pay all those exorbitant hospital bills, or pump more money into the patient--say an aging pop singer, a la Diana Ross--in the expectation the survival will allow payback when the star makes a comeback tour.

A 20-year extension also "enhances the value of the plant if [owners] decide to get out of the business," said Bob Wood, NRC senior licensing financial policy advisor. He added that no owner had confessed that intent directly.

But the industry's unstated intent appears known to the NRC. "GenCos are snatching up economically uncompetitive facilities," noted Christopher Grimes, NRC chief of license renewal and standardization.

But economics can also kill a re-license. Yankee Rowe, a poster-child nuclear facility, scrapped its plans to live beyond middle age because it would have cost too much money just to prove to the NRC that it could do the repairs needed for re-licensing. EPRI's Carey blamed it on the small size of the plant and the economics of energy in New England.

The other economic benefit to plant owners is that when a plant gets a 20-year life extension, payments into its decommissioning fund also gets drawn out another 20 years, allowing another decrease in short-term operating expenses, noted Fitch's Lapson.

Like a boomer turning 40, the limit for what constitutes old-age in a nuke was "arbitrary," said the NRC's Grimes.

"In the Atomic Energy Act of 1956, everybody said 40 years ought to be enough," said Grimes, adding that the arbitrary number was based on financing available to owners. "We looked into what might be life-limiting aging effects. In 1991 the first rule was issued on aging effects. It concluded Mother Nature doesn't care how long the NRC's license term is."

Citizen's Awareness Network - Central New York (315) 475-1203 162 Cambridge St., Syracuse, NY 13210 nonukes@rootmedia.org www.nukebusters.org

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Message: 14
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Book Says U.S. Scientists Killed Amazon Indians

September 29, 2000
By Leslie Gevirtz
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000929/sc/yanomami_dc_2.html

BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. scientists sparked a measles epidemic that killed ``perhaps thousands'' of Amazon Indians, according to a not-yet published book that has already sparked a firestorm of controversy on the Internet.

Patrick Tierney's ``Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon,'' presents evidence that scientists during a 1968 expedition inoculated Yanomami Indians against measles and possibly contributed to an epidemic of the disease that killed ``hundreds, perhaps thousands'' of the isolated tribe in a remote region of Venezuela.

The expedition was funded by the former Atomic Energy Commission and lead by the late geneticist James Neel of the University of Michigan and then-University of California at Santa Barbara anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon.

At the time the expedition arrived in the Amazon Basin to study the relatively isolated Yanomami, the tribe's population numbered around 20,000. It is now estimated closer to 10,000.

Tierney suggests that Neel's inoculating the Yanomami actually gave some of them measles and they infected others. But medical scientists said such a thing has never been shown before.

The Edmonston B measles vaccine did have side-effects and eventually was withdrawn from the market in the early 1970s, but was a standard treatment in 1968.

The epidemic charge is the most explosive in the book, which also accuses the now-retired Chagnon of debauched behavior.

Sparks Academic Firestorm

The sedate world of anthropology has been turned upside down by reports of the book's scandalous accusations, which have sparked a rash of e-mails, accusations and papers that are whipping around the World Wide Web.

One of Chagnon's critics and one of the few people to have actually read the book, Professor Thomas Headland of the Summer Institute of Sociology in Dallas, has his doubts about Tierney's book.

``There is no love lost between Chagnon and me. He has criticized me in print, and I him,'' Headland said in an e-mail to Reuters. ``But I don't believe, after reading Tierney's book, that Chagnon is guilty of genocide, or that he purposely helped introduce and spread measles into the Yanomami population.... I don't believe that Chagnon 'demanded that villagers bring him girls for sex...'''

Chagnon declined comment, but posted a statement on the Web (http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/chagnon.html), blaming the turmoil on ''the extremely offensive document focusing on allegations made in the book ... by cultural anthropologists Terence Turner and Leslie Sponsel is full of accusations that have no factual foundation.''

Turner, a Cornell University professor, and University of Hawaii professor Sponsel's electronic memo repeated Tierney's allegations, warned of a scandal and was sent around the Web.

``It was a confidential memo sent to three people -- the president of the American Anthropological Association, the president-elect and the chairman of the association's human rights committee,'' Turner told Reuters, adding ``it was very unprofessional for someone to pirate that memo and send it to a million people around the world.''

Scholars Pick Sides Academics quickly lined up on both sides.

University of Pennsylvania historian Susan Lindee, who wrote a book about Neel and his efforts to study radiation's effect on the Japanese after the Second World War, actually looked at the geneticist's field notes from the 1968 expedition.

``He actually brought with him 2,000 doses of vaccine. He brought gammaglobulin and penicillin,'' she said, adding Neel had Venezuelan government permission and had consulted with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) to learn how to give the drugs before the January 1968 trip.

``Tierney is right in the sense that the Yanomami have been treated in a grotesque manner by many different groups, scientists, journalists, miners, government and military officials ... who have grievously damaged their health, their environment and their way of life,'' Lindee said.

The book's publication date has been moved from Oct. 1 to Nov. 16, which coincides with the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting in San Francisco. The AAA has already posted on its Web site, (www.aaanet.org/press/eldorado.htm), a statement about the book which is to be excerpted in next week's New Yorker magazine.

And Amazon.com (news - web sites) says the 499-page W.W. Norton book, with 1,599 footnotes, is already ranked 279 in sales.

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Message: 15
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Nuclear couriers cleared of wrongdoing
DOE admits injustice, will pay for lost overtime and legal expenses

September 29, 2000
By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel Oak Ridge bureau
http://www.knoxnews.com/business/15754.shtml

OAK RIDGE -- More than two years after 18 nuclear weapons couriers were suspended for suspicion of security breaches, they have been cleared of any wrongdoing and awarded compensation by the U.S. Department of Energy. The Oak Ridge-based special agents also will have the chance to return to their former jobs, transporting warhead parts and special nuclear materials around the United States.

"The couriers are obviously quite pleased with this agreement," Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University and chief counsel for the suspended couriers, said Thursday.

DOE admitted there was never any evidence of criminal conduct by any of the couriers, Turley said.

"This agreement not only restores the damages they have suffered during this period but restores their reputation, which was needlessly sullied by the investigation," the lawyer said.

The 18 couriers, who were suspended with pay, will split $609,000 for overtime lost during the time they were on administrative leave, and DOE also will pay for legal costs they incurred, totaling several hundred thousand dollars.

The controversy grew out a early-1998 situation in which an ABC-TV news crew reportedly surprised a nuclear convoy during a highway stop.

DOE said the encounter raised concerns that the TV crew may have had advance knowledge of the travel plans, which are supposed to be secret, and agency officials asked the FBI to investigate the matter.

The Oak Ridge-based courier unit was beset with morale problems at the time incident because of safety concerns and management issues. An independent panel reported there was a "destructive lack of trust" between the couriers and their managers.

Some of the nuclear truckers suggested the investigation was a forceful way to intimidate them and keep them from talking to the news media about the problems.

Turley accused the FBI of being abusive in its interrogation of the couriers, at one point calling the tactics "virtually medieval."

For a while the entire Oak Ridge transportation unit was shut down, but in May 1998 the FBI cleared about 50 of the couriers to return to work, leaving about 20 under investigation.

Negotiations have been ongoing since that time, with 18 of the nuclear couriers remaining on administrative leave with pay. A couple took other jobs in the interim.

The legal agreements signed earlier this week stipulate that the couriers may talk to the news media, Congress and their legal counsel.

"While couriers are encouraged to work out problems in the line of command, management is not permitted to demand that any courier disclose the fact or nature of any contacts protected by the Constitution and federal regulations," notes one agreement signed by top officials at DOE and lawyers for the suspended couriers.

Agency officials now admit that reports of the news media being "pre-positioned" in advance of the encounter with the nuclear convoy were mistaken. The agreement also stipulates there are no lingering security concerns related to the 1998 incident.

Madelyn Creedon, DOE's deputy administrator for defense programs, apologized to the couriers in a memo to be distributed to the entire nuclear transportation section.

"The DOE regrets that the February 1998 incident and its aftermath have caused personal hardships to the couriers," she wrote. "The DOE further regrets the difficulties experienced by all of the couriers working in the (Oak Ridge section) during this period and the disruption to the Transportation Safeguards Division. We know there is a need to restore the trust and positive working relationships that are essential to the successful functioning of the section."

Turley said some of the suspended couriers are now eligible for retirement, but most of the 18 have indicated a desire to return to their jobs. DOE has promised to police any attempts of retaliation against the returning couriers.

The couriers will have to undergo retraining, polygraph exams and other security procedures before hitting the road again on high-security missions.

A general meeting of the Oak Ridge transportation section is to be held in the near future so that the agreements can be discussed and lingering issues can be put to rest, Turley said.

Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.

-----------------------------------------------------------------



NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS

1 YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROJECT: Budget cuts may delay license
2 Press Release: International Nix MOX Day 2000
3 Japan Nuclear Village Still Uneasy
4 Protests Mark Anniversary of Japan Nuke Accident
5 Lin Chuan reiterates doubts over halting nuclear plant project
6 Putin To Talk With India On Nuclear Power, Terrorism
7 China Hands Over Chasma Nuclear Plant to Pakistan
8 Bill targets ads for Yucca Mountain tours
9 Spent Nuclear Fuel Project Nears 'Hot Testing' Phase
10 Citizen Groups Denounce Proposal for Nuclear Waste
11 Goshutes in middle of tribal battle
12 NCI Comments on FFTF Draft EIS

-------------

NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES

1 YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROJECT: Budget cuts may delay license
BATT DONREY
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON--The Department of Energy still hopes to begin storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain by 2010, though budget cuts could delay a license application, a department official said Thursday. "We could provide a site recommendation next year, but would probably slip on our license application (to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) by months, possibly a year," said Ivan Itkin, the department's director of the civilian nuclear waste program. Even if the department does not submit a license application by 2002, Itkin said there would be enough time to meet the 2010 storage date.

"We've been working very closely with the NRC in terms of preliminary activities, and I think we could minimize any delay," he said. In July 2001, the department is scheduled to make a recommendation to the president on whether Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is a suitable site for the storage of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants. Itkin said the site recommendation will be the most difficult challenge for the department in its effort to open a nuclear waste repository.

"It will involve the secretary of energy, the president of the United States, the state of Nevada and Congress," he said. "If the state of Nevada vetoes the site recommendation, then a majority in the House and Senate can override the veto." An energy spending bill moving to final passage in Congress contains $391 million for continued nuclear waste studies in Nevada, according to figures announced Thursday by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. The Clinton administration had requested $437.5 million. An additional $10 million could be added if the energy secretary certifies to Congress in writing that the funds are needed to complete studies. An Energy Department spokesman said there is possibly another $6.9 million available through related accounts. The energy bill also allocated $2.5 million to the state of Nevada to oversee Yucca Mountain studies, and $6 million to counties that are being affected by the ongoing program. Itkin appeared before the Senate Energy and Resources Committee on Thursday to answer questions about the government's potential liability for missing a Jan. 31, 1998, deadline for removing highly radioactive waste from reactor sites. A federal appellate court ruled in August that four nuclear utilities could proceed with their lawsuits.

The committee's chairman, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, estimated the potential liability ranges from $38 billion to $61 billion. Murkowski also charged it is a misuse of the nuclear waste fund to negotiate settlements with utilities that have sued the department for missing the 1998 deadline. Only one settlement has been announced--with PECO Energy Company, a Philadelphia utility--but Itkin said negotiations with other utilities are ongoing. Murkowski noted PECO pays about $35 million into the nuclear waste fund each year, and the settlement will lower that sum to $5 million. He complained the department is creating a shortfall in the fund, which is fed by nuclear power ratepayers. "This hardly does what the fund is intended to do, which is complete the (Yucca Mountain) project," Murkowski said.

If all utilities opt to settle instead of pursuing lawsuits, the estimated cost to the department over the next 10 years would be $1.6 billion, said Marc Johnston, the department's deputy general counsel for litigation. Murkowski asked a group of nuclear power executives at Thursday's hearing why they want to sue the government if it means possibly delaying the opening of the Yucca Mountain repository. John Rowe, chairman of Unicom Corp. of Chicago, said the government owes the utilities action and money. If the opening of the repository is delayed by the lawsuits, Rowe said, "it is a sad but essential conclusion."

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2 Press Release: International Nix MOX Day 2000
DC NIX MOX WORKING GROUP

September 28, 2000
Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Nuclear Control Institute
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Women's Action for New Directions

PRESS RELEASE

161 ORGANIZATIONS AROUND THE WORLD SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE USE OF PLUTONIUM AS A NUCLEAR FUEL ON INTERNATIONAL "NIX MOX" DAY

WASHINGTON, DC, More than 160 organizations from around the world have joined together to oppose the use of plutonium in mixed-oxide (MOX) nuclear reactor fuel as part of the third annual International "NIX MOX" Day on September 28. The groups issued a joint statement warning of environmental and nuclear proliferation risks from proposals to reuse plutonium instead of disposing of it as a deadly waste.

Earlier this month, the U.S. and Russia signed an agreement to use plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons in MOX fuel at commercial power plants in both countries and, possibly, Canada. Weapons-grade plutonium has never previously been used to fabricate MOX fuel on a commercial scale anywhere in the world.

Community actions protesting the MOX fuel plans are taking place Thursday in the southeastern United States, Russia, and Canada. " Plutonium is one of the most dangerous substances on earth," explained Kimberly Roberts, program associate at Physicians for Social Responsibility, whose group is participating in many of the protest events. "It should be safely isolated and monitored, not turned into a commodity on the world market."

"MOX fuel will undermine global nuclear nonproliferation efforts because the plutonium in fresh MOX fuel can be easily separated and used for weapons purposes," added Michele Boyd, global outreach coordinator for the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. "MOX fuel will also complicate safe reactor operations and increase the consequences of a severe nuclear reactor accident."

"Use of MOX fuel in nuclear plants will significantly increase the number of cancer fatalities projected to result from a severe accident, because quantities of plutonium and other highly radiotoxic materials are several times greater in MOX fuel than in conventional uranium fuel," Dr. Edwin Lyman, scientific director at the Nuclear Control Institute, continued.

Despite the criticisms, the U.S. Department of Energy has selected its Savannah River Site in South Carolina for MOX fabrication. Duke Power has requested Nuclear Regulatory Commissions licenses to use the fuel at plants in North and South Carolina.

"A plutonium fuel cycle will require defense measures to be taken at reactor sites and along transport routes. This militarization of the fuel cycle is unprecedented," noted Lou Zeller, community organizer at the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.

Russian groups are also protesting their nation's MOX involvement with events in Kaliningrad, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Voronezh, and Dimitrovgrad. "Our Ministry of Atomic Energy proclaims plutonium to be a national energy treasure which it intends to separate from used MOX fuel, a process which will generate vast amounts of radioactive waste and increase stockpiles of weapons usable material," said Vladimir Sliviak, co-director of the group Ecodefense!

There is growing opposition in Canada to the Canadian government's offer to use MOX fuel in CANDU reactors. "Through the plutonium fuel project, the Canadian government is propping up its declining nuclear industry and fostering global traffic in plutonium, which will increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism, and accidents," said Kristen Ostling, national coordinator of the Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout.

All the groups support immobilization, a process that involves mixing plutonium with other materials to create a theft-resistant waste form, as an alternative to MOX. The U.S. plans to pursue immobilization for a small quantity of surplus plutonium that has been deemed unsuitable for MOX.

Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Takoma Park, Maryland,
USA SEPTEMBER 28, 2000

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3 Japan Nuclear Village Still Uneasy
LAS VEGAS SUN
September 29, 2000
ASSOCIATED PRESS

TOKAIMURA, Japan (AP)--Hideko Araki remembers Japan's worst nuclear accident as if it were yesterday.

When word came of trouble last Sept. 30, she called her 5-year-old twins inside, pulled down the laundry hanging outside her home and shut the doors and windows.

"I was home, playing with the kids," Araki, 41, said this week as she walked her children home from school. "I was surprised, and I just didn't know what else to do."

The accident at a fuel reprocessing plant 70 miles northeast of Tokyo killed two workers, exposed hundreds and sent shockwaves through Japan's entire nuclear energy industry.

The effects of that shock remain clear a year later.

Utilities are scaling down nuclear plant construction plans. The government is struggling to balance its aggressive plans for expansion of nuclear energy with new safety measures. And public skepticism is still strong.

"Rebuilding the damage to confidence in Japan's nuclear energy safety caused by the ... accident is still under way," said Shojiro Matsuura, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission.

The staying power of the Tokaimura accident is no surprise--it dramatically confirmed critics' worst fears about the nuclear industry, from systematic disregard for safety rules to poor employee training.

On that morning, two workers trying to save time mixed excessive amounts of uranium in buckets and beakers instead of special mechanized tanks. The mix set off an uncontrolled nuclear reaction, hitting the two workers with fatal doses of radiation.

Authorities ordered 161 people evacuated from their homes. Another 310,000, like Araki's family, were advised to stay indoors for 18 hours as a precaution. In all, 439 people were exposed to radiation, although officials have played down the possibility of long-term health problems.

The accident--which followed several smaller accidents--was a powerful blow to Japan's ambitious plans to expand its reliance on nuclear energy, which provides about a third of the country's electricity.

While the government has stood by its conclusion that nuclear energy is the answer to Japan's dependence on foreign oil, utilities are slowly retreating on their reactor building plans.

The government said in 1998 that companies had plans to build 21 reactors by 2010. A current official estimate shows those plans being scaled down to 13 plants. No new reactors have started operation since July 1997.

Rising local opposition is playing a bigger role in construction plans. In February, a local governor--citing concerns over safety stemming from the Tokaimura accident--forced a utility company in western Japan to drop plans to build a nuclear plant.

Authorities have gone on a blitz of new safety measures aimed at rebuilding public confidence.

Measures including laws enhancing the prime minister's emergency powers and requiring periodic inspection of nuclear-fuel processing facilities--instead of just reactors--have taken effect in recent months.

"I believe we have come a fairly long way," said Matsuura, the nuclear safety chief. "These measures are the best we can think of at this point in time."

Gaia Hoerner, with the anti-nuclear Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, said the changes so far have not been very effective.

"A lot of the improvements that were made were post-accident improvements, " she said. "So, with the prevention of an accident ... nothing has really been changed yet."

Critics want the government to back away from its full commitment to expanding nuclear power and devote more money to alternative sources of energy, such as solar.

At the center of the storm--the one-story building where the accident occurred--all is quiet. Weeds grow tall around the empty building and the barred windows are sealed shut. A protective steel barrier covers the delivery entrance.

"It's all safe," assured Shuji Noguchi, spokesman for JCO Co., the operator of the reprocessing plant.

Trouble, however, still surrounds JCO. The company was stripped of its license to operate the processing plant in March, and the last of the remaining uranium was being removed from the facility this week.

The company has also agreed to pay out $117.2 million in compensation to settle 6,875 cases from the accident. Another 150 claims are pending, and victims still accuse the company of failing to properly monitor their health.

Tokaimura--home to a dozen nuclear facilities and one operating reactor--also has yet to recover.

Toru Sato, like many farmers in the area, saw sales of his peanuts and Chinese cabbage plummet 30 percent after the accident because of nationwide fears that area produce could be contaminated.

But like many in a town where the nuclear industry employs a third of the work force, he's not against atomic power--only human blunders like the ones that led to last year's accident.

"If they do a perfect job, with today's technology it'll be OK," Sato said. "But in that accident, they were just slacking off. It's a matter of how they do things."

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4 Protests Mark Anniversary of Japan Nuke Accident
azcentral.com -
Reuters Sep. 30, 2000

TOKYO - Protesters gathered in the heart of Tokyo on Saturday to mark the anniversary of Japan's worst nuclear accident with prayers and anger, charging that a year later too little has been done to prevent future disasters.

The accident at Tokaimura on September 30 last year killed two workers and exposed at least 439 people in the area northeast of Tokyo to radiation.

``We don't need nuclear power,'' shouted a gathering of 100 people dressed in mourning black in front of the Science and Technology Agency, which oversees Japan's nuclear policies.

Following chants by Buddhist priests beating drums, the protesters bowed their heads for a moment of silence at 10.35 a.m. (0135 GMT), the time at which the accident took place.

Activists fear more accidents could lie ahead as Japan's 51 reactors, which provide a third of the country's power, age. Their average age is 30 years--their originally planned lifespan--but there is talk of expanding this to 50 years.

Tokaimura, the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, occurred because workers at a uranium processing plant violated a number of safety rules.

Protesters on Saturday said the blame really belonged with the bureaucrats who make and oversee Japan's nuclear policies, rather than the workers, two of whom died.

``They've tried to put the blame on the workers,'' said activist Hisataka Yamazaki. ``But who managed the plant? Who gave permission for it to operate and set the policies?''

``The people who bear the greatest responsibility are the people who make the policy. And where are they?''

A candlelight protest march is set to be held on Saturday evening.

GOVERNMENT EFFORTS NOT ENOUGH

In Tokaimura, 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo, some 800 residents took part in an early morning disaster drill, filing into community centers as sirens wailed.

``Even now, I am still afraid,'' one 70-year-old woman told the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

Japanese media barely touched on the anniversary, devoting themselves instead to coverage of the Olympics.

The government drew fire for its slow response to the accident, despite a smaller incident at a different plant in the same town two years earlier. One official publicly admitted it was ``shameful.''

Plant owner JCO Co had its license suspended for illegally revising operation manuals.

Government officials said on Friday they are taking steps to prevent more accidents, including an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to cooperate in preparing for possible nuclear accidents by training nuclear industry scientists.

But activists said the government's new measures and assurances did not go far enough, particularly in a country that suffered two atomic bomb attacks in World War Two.

``As the controlling facility, the Science and Technology Agency should take more responsibility,'' said Gaia Hoerner, from the Citizens Nuclear Information Center (CNIC).

``We are here because we feel not enough measures have been taken to prevent another accident.''

The accident happened when three employees at the plant mistakenly put 16 kg (35 lb) or uranium into a container, nearly eight times the normal amount.

A BLUE FLASH, THEN FEAR

This caused a blue flash and ``nuclear criticality'' --similar to what happens in a reactor--that was not halted until early on October 1.

Tokaimura, a largely rural town near with a population of 34,000, turned into an eerie ghost town within hours, its streets roamed only by police in white protective gear.

Eventually, more than 10,000 people were tested for radiation exposure at community centers.

The accident was later declared a ``level four'' emergency on the International Atomic Energy Agency's zero-to-seven scale for measuring the severity of nuclear events. Chernobyl rated seven--the worst nuclear power accident on record.

Greenpeace has said that in 1999 alone Japan suffered five primary coolant leaks that forced nuclear reactors to shut down, calling this ``an unusually high number.''

Japan's privately-run power utilities, which operate all of its nuclear reactors, are trying to cut costs amid a wave of industry deregulation which is expected to stir competition.

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5 Lin Chuan reiterates doubts over halting nuclear plant project
The Taipei Times Online: 2000-09-28
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH, 2000
BY STEPHANIE LOW STAFF REPORTER

Despite strong disapproval from anti-nuclear DPP lawmakers, Lin Chuan (ªL¥þ), director-general of the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, continued to insist yesterday that the government lacked the legal basis to scrap the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant project.

Lin said he was responsible for his words and would not hesitate about resigning to take the responsibility for their consequences.

"As a government official, I must be responsible for my policies, " Lin told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature's Budget Committee.

"As I'm also responsible to the premier, I will resign any time to take political responsibility if the premier thinks I'm unsuitable [for the position]," Lin said.

Based on its long-standing anti-nuclear stance, the DPP administration is currently re-evaluating the project and looking at the possibility of reversing the former KMT government's plan to build a fourth nuclear power plant on the island.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs is expected to submit its recommendation on the matter to Premier Tang Fei (­ð­¸) on Saturday, based on the results of its re-evaluation. It is widely believed that the ministry will come out in favor of stopping the project.

But the Cabinet's final decision will not be based solely on the ministry's recommendation. Tang yesterday said the decision would be announced by November at the latest.

Lin, however, said on Monday that the government might have problems finding a legal basis to discontinue the project's budget even if its final decision was to have the project scrapped.

Lin had argued that the Budget Law allows only the government to stop the use of a budget in the case of a national emergency, and not merely in the case of a change of policy.

Lin's statement, which threw a wet blanket on the DPP's hopes of halting the nuclear power plant project, has since drawn criticism from ruling lawmakers.

"Why isn't there a mechanism to unify the Cabinet's stance before words are spoken to the public? The opinions of different ministries are now at odds," DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (1/2²··ã) said at yesterday's meeting.

The ruling legislators said the Cabinet might as well be disbanded since it is not operating as a team.

"If each Cabinet member sticks to his own professional sphere, the Cabinet won't be a team any more," said Wang Lie-ping (¤ýÄRµÓ), another DPP legislator.

Opposition legislators, ironically, were supportive of Lin and praised him as a truly responsible official.

"It is disappointing that the DPP legislators won't let you [Lin] speak the truth and do your job according to the law. A ruling party like this is hopeless," the KMT's Liu Shen-liang (1/4B²±¨}) said. This story has been viewed 203 times.

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6 Putin To Talk With India On Nuclear Power, Terrorism
Dow Jones & Company
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28

NEW DELHI (AP)--After next week's visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin, India hopes to buy diamonds from Russia, sell more tea and tobacco, and cooperate on nuclear power development, the New Delhi government said Thursday.

India had long-standing, close relations with the Soviet Union that continued when the Russian Federation was formed, but no Russian leader has visited the South Asian nation since Boris Yeltsin did so more than seven years ago, said Indian Foreign Secretary Lalit Mansingh.

Mansingh, in briefing reporters on Putin's Oct. 2-5 visit, said he hoped the establishment of democracy in Russia, and its market economy, would add a new dimension to relations between the two countries.

India and Russia have $1.6 billion in bilateral trade, Mansingh said, but 85% of that covers India's rupee repayments from Soviet times. The two countries now deal in convertible currency.

During Putin's visit, India, the world's largest importer and cutter of diamonds, will sign an agreement to start buying from Russia, the biggest producer.

Southern India's tea industry has languished since the Soviet Union, a prime customer, dissolved, and barter arrangements ended. Mansingh said India is "urging Russia to buy more Indian tea, especially in package form, and also tobacco."

Mansingh quoted Putin as having proclaimed himself "the greatest friend of India" and said that as a student, the Russian leader had hoped to save enough money to drive around India.

"Now he will have his wish," said Mansingh. Putin will address India's Parliament and view the Taj Mahal on Oct. 4, and end his visit Oct. 5 after meeting business leaders in Bombay.

Putin will hold talks Oct. 3 with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who delayed knee replacement surgery until after the two discuss what Mansingh described as a historic "Declaration on Strategic Partnership."

Mansingh gave no details on what the strategic partnership would entail, but he said Russia and India share the common problem of international terrorism and agree on its source.

"We share a perception on the threat of international terrorism," Putin said. "Russia's threat is in Chechnya as we are victims in Jammu and Kashmir. We consider the source the same."

India has said the source of its terrorism problems in Jammu and Kashmir is Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the military leader of Pakistan, who supports Islamic militant groups based in his country that are fighting to separate Kashmir from India.

India refuses to talk with Musharraf, but Russia has started approaching Pakistan, whose military governments were aligned with the U.S. during the Cold War.

"The Russians are doing it their way and we are doing it our way, " Mansingh said.

Mansingh refused to answer any questions about the two countries' defense arrangements or weapons purchases. Most of India's air force fleet is aging Soviet MiGs. More Russian submarines were purchased this year.

Other agreements to be signed during the visit involve military technology cooperation, development of peaceful uses of nuclear power, extension of a science and technology agreement to 2010, and a cultural exchange agreement to 2002.

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7 China Hands Over Chasma Nuclear Plant to Pakistan
Asia Pulse Pte
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

ISLAMABAD, Sept 29 Asia Pulse - The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) handed over the Chashma Nuclear Power Plant (CHASNUPP) to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission by the in a simple but historic ceremony this week.

The agreement outling provisional acceptance of the plant was signed by Mr Zhao Hong, Senior Advisor, CNNC and Mr Parvez Butt, Member (Power) PAEC.

Dr Ishfaq said that CHASNUPP was a symbol of successful South-South cooperation in high technology and another landmark of everlasting Pakistan-China friendship.

He hoped that in future Pakistan and China would have much greater cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Member (Power) also praised the efforts of the Chinese and Pakistani engineers who made it possible to complete the project.

He further said that PAEC engineers have gained valuable expertise by participating in various stages of plant construction and commissioning and are ready to take the responsibility of operation and maintenance of the plant.

PAEC undertook a significant part of the construction work beside manufacturing some mechanical equipment for the plant.

A number of Pakistani companies were also involved in this project.

The construction of the plant has significantly contributed towards improvement of infrastructure in the area and acquiring of technical know-how by the Pakistani engineers and technical staff.

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8 Bill targets ads for Yucca Mountain tours

By STEVE TETREAULT
DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON--An energy budget bill heading to final passage in Congress directs the Energy Department in Nevada to stop advertising popular bus tours of the proposed nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain. The House passed the legislation Thursday; the Senate is expected to follow suit next week. A sentence tucked away in the bill report directs that no funds be spent "to promote or advertise any public tour of the Yucca Mountain facility." An exception was made for public notices required by law or regulation. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., authored the restriction after spotting a quarter-page ad in the Aug. 30 Review-Journal announcing the fall schedule of public bus tours to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Reid, who along with other Nevada leaders is trying to derail nuclear waste storage in the state, charged the Energy Department was using public funds to propagandize in favor of the program. The bill does not stop the tours themselves, only advertisements discussing them.

Allen Benson, an Energy Department spokesman on Yucca Mountain, said the department will comply with the law. "We would not be allowed to advertise, so we won't advertise, " he said. Benson said Energy Department officials likely will seek a legal opinion on whether they are prohibited from printing bus tour posters and fliers as well. A small amount of money is involved -- the ad budget for the tours is $2,800, Benson said. The department buys a single-run quarter-page ad in the Las Vegas newspaper twice a year to announce public tours set for three Saturdays in the spring and another three in the fall. Another ad is bought in the Pahrump newspaper. Benson said the ads usually are enough to attract 200 people into four buses that are run up to the site for each tour. About 1,200 people signed up for public tours of Yucca Mountain in the past year. Another 3,300 people--scientists, journalists, politicians, industry leaders--were escorted on private tours. Groups interested in visiting Yucca Mountain can call 1-800-225-6972 or go to the program's Web site at www.ymp.gov.

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9 Spent Nuclear Fuel Project Nears 'Hot Testing' Phase
September 28, 2000

RICHLAND, WA, - With the successful completion of Hanford's Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Project readiness assessment, "hot testing" of spent fuel removal equipment in the K-West Basin using radioactive spent fuel assemblies can now begin. The readiness assessment and hot testing follow several months of "cold testing, " which involved using pieces of pipe to simulate the highly radioactive spent N Reactor fuel assemblies currently stored underwater in the K-West Basin.

Hanford says the K-West Basin is one of two indoor water pools near the Columbia River storing 2,100 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, in addition to sludge and debris. Hanford will begin moving the spent fuel away from the Columbia River to a state-of-the-art storage facility in November 2000.

The readiness assessment was conducted to determine and confirm operator proficiency and knowledge about the underwater systems, equipment operability, procedural guidelines and the emergency preparedness before actually doing work with the radioactive components.

The cold and hot testing are part of a Phased Start-Up Initiative, which allows SNF workers to find and fix any "bugs" in the complex equipment systems early and to make sure the site meets a November 30th deadline for beginning spent fuel removal from K-West Basin.

"The processes we're using to move, dry, and store spent fuel at the K-Basins are unique," said Joe Escamillo, Acting Director of the SNF Project for the US Department of Energy (DOE). "We have to understand these systems perfectly. Cold testing has given us some good data, but now it's time to test the system with actual spent fuel."

In the hot testing phase, up to 35 canisters containing spent fuel assemblies in the K-West Basin will be opened. The fuel inside will be washed, sorted, and placed into large metal baskets on an underwater table.

The 35 canisters contain nearly 500 spent fuel assemblies. Ten fuel baskets, holding between 48 and 54 assemblies each, can be filled during hot testing. The loaded fuel baskets will not be placed inside what are called the "Multi-Canister Overpacks" - large stainless steel containers - for drying and storage until spent fuel removal operations begin.

According to Dave Van Leuven, Executive Vice President of Fluor Hanford, Inc. (FHI), handling the actual spent fuel will yield important knowledge about optimal equipment speeds and rates, sludge collection, and many other aspects crucial to operations in November. FHI is the primary management contractor for Project Hanford.

"The fact that we passed the Readiness Assessment with just a handful of open issues is a major success for the project," said Van Leuven. "We feel that we've taken a significant step forward and proved that we can do this work."

DOE and its contractors are restoring the Columbia River corridor by moving spent nuclear fuel, "cocooning" reactors, addressing waste sites and groundwater contamination, and disposing of aging and unneeded buildings.

The Hanford site was established during World War II as part of the top secret Manhattan Project to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Although weapons material production was halted in the late 1980s, operations left behind what is now the world's largest cleanup effort. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington Department of Ecology regulate Hanford's cleanup program under a long-term compliance contract called the Tri-Party Agreement.

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10 Citizen Groups Denounce Proposal for Nuclear Waste Transport Through California Radioactive Roads and Rails Campaign Arrives in San Bernardino

SEPT. 28, 2000

San bernardino, cA.--If nuclear waste is transported through California to Nevada for permanent storage as proposed, San Bernardino could experience serious threats to public health, the environment and the economy in the event of a crash or a radiation leak, public interest groups said today.

Environmental and public interest groups, concerned citizens and elected officials held a news conference outside the County Government Center today to call attention to the dangers associated with transporting high-level radioactive waste through California. Public workshops on the topic of high-level waste transportation will be held from 7-9:30 p.m. tonight at the Public Enterprise Building in San Bernardino, and from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday in Barstow at Dana Park.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is preparing to recommend Yucca Mountain, located near Las Vegas, Nev., as a "permanent disposal site" for high-level radioactive waste generated by atomic weapons facilities and commercial nuclear reactors across the country. A new analysis prepared by the Clark County Comprehensive Planning Division in Nevada found that the waste would have to travel through 734 counties with a total population of 138 million people.

"If Congress gives in to the pressures of the nuclear power industry for a dump at Yucca Mountain, it will initiate the largest nuclear transportation plan in history," said Lisa Gue, policy analyst for Public Citizen.

Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, said, "Members of Congress are under intense pressure from the nuclear power industry to force a dump at Yucca Mountain. If the nuclear industry prevails, over 50 million Americans in 43 states will have the risks of nuclear waste transportation imposed on them and their communities for at least 25 years while the waste is being shipped to Nevada."

DOE has refused to specify which routes would be used to ship waste. However, potential routes evaluated in the draft Environmental Impact Statement include I-5, I-10, I-15 and I-40 through southern California, as well as rail lines. San Bernardino County would be disproportionately affected. Evidence suggests that property values are likely to drop along nuclear waste transportation routes due to a public perception of danger.

Participants at today's news conference, which took place against the backdrop of a full-sized inflatable model of a nuclear waste transport cask, raised concerns about the safety of radioactive waste transportation schemes.

"The 'rad trans' issue is the most likely nuclear threat to the American public concerning radiation exposure and its consequences in terms of health, welfare and safety," said Jeff Wright, San Bernardino resident and spokesperson for the Environmentality Project.

Gue, of Public Citizen, explained that the transport casks have never been subjected to full-scale physical testing. A 1987 study sponsored by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission relied on computer modeling to predict how the casks would perform in the event of an accident.

DOE risk analysis data indicate that between 70 and 310 accidents could be expected involving waste shipments to Nevada.

"No adequate safety training is being provided to our police and fire personnel, who will be the first line of defense in the event of accidents," said Margery Mikels, of Women's Action for New Directions.

Transportation hazards are not the only risks associated with the proposal to build a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Geologist Steve Frishman, an expert on Yucca Mountain, pointed to the danger of groundwater contamination and the potentially severe consequences of an earthquake in the area. Nevada ranks third in the country for seismic activity.

"The proposal to build a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain does not address the nuclear waste problem," said Gue. "It merely transfers the risk to the state of Nevada and to communities like San Bernardino, which are unlucky enough to be located along transportation routes targeted for the large-scale shipment of nuclear waste."

Mikels concluded, "This waste should not be shipped all over the country, exposing millions of people to ionizing radiation. It should be stored at or as close as possible to the place it is generated in monitored, retrievable storage facilities until long-term neutralizing technologies can be developed."

Other speakers at today's press conference included Terry Wold, of the San Gorgonio Chapter Sierra Club, and Ruth Lopez, executive director of People Against Radioactive Dumping. The event was held as part of the Radioactive Roads and Rails Campaign, sponsored nationally by Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), and in San Bernardino County by People Against Radioactive Dumping (PARD), San Gorgonio Chapter Sierra Club, Environmentality, and Women's Action for New Directions (WAND).

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11 Goshutes in middle of tribal battle
Friday, September 29, 2000
Deseret News feature writer

When Martin Luther had objections, he posted them on the church door. Members of the Goshute Tribe prefer the newspaper.

In a stinging press release, a band of Goshutes not associated with the Skull Valley "nuclear" Indians have demanded answers to 10 pointed questions. Among their questions for tribal leaders: Why are there no public meetings to vote on how money is spent? Why are tribal checks bouncing? And where are the educational funds?

The questions will be posed at a special meeting on Saturday, Sept. 30, 9 a.m. at the Ibapah Elementary School in Ibapah. And organizers say the temperament at the meeting may be a bit warm.

"It could get loud," said Genevieve Fields, member of the Housing Authority. "Many tribal members are not being treated fairly."

Tensions in the community began to surface about three years ago when plans for a charter school became a divisive issue, tribal member Lorraine Pete said. Since then, other conflicts have arisen.

"The tribal council has been talking about getting 1,000 to 1,200 head of cattle," Pete said. "But many of us don't think we have the land space for that kind of operation. They are also planning to get a loan of $1 million for the project. We're such a small reservation, and that is such a big loan. We don't want the younger kids to have to pay it back."

Pete and others are also planning to present a recall motion and ask Tribal Chairman Milton Hooper to step down. There are about 450 members of the tribe, 261 of them voting members. Some 25 percent must vote for the recall motion for it to carry.

"We're having a tribal council meeting at 10 a.m., so the 9 a.m. meeting is really more of a rally," Hooper said. "They aren't planning to ask any questions; they want to make complaints. Our attorney will be here at 10 a.m. My own feeling is a lot of people

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12 NCI Comments on FFTF Draft EIS
September 18, 2000

Ms. Colette E. Brown, Document Manager
Office of Space and Defense Power Systems (NE-50)
Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology
U.S. Department of Energy
19901 Germantown Road Germantown, MD 20874

Comments on Draft PEIS for Isotope Production and FFTF

Dear Ms. Brown,

Following are comments on the DOE's Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Accomplishing Expanded Civilian Nuclear Energy Research and Development and Isotope Production Missions in the United States, Including the Role of the Fast Flux Test Facility.

1. The Final NI PEIS must fully present and clarify U.S. policy concerning supply of medical isotopes.

While recommendations have been made by certain committees that the Department of Energy (DOE) assess national needs for isotope production for medical and research needs, the Draft PEIS fails to address exactly what the current U.S. policy is concerning medical isotope supply.

While the Draft PEIS implies that development of an indigenous supply of isotopes is the goal, the current U.S. policy appears to place reliance on foreign sources of certain isotopes and to actively work with producers of such isotopes to meet U.S. needs.

As foreign supply of medical isotopes to the U.S. will continue and as new foreign sources could be realized, the Final NI PEIS must accurately spell out how U.S. policy relates to both foreign and domestic supplies.

Recent ambiguity by DOE in implementing a decision concerning medical isotope production highlights the lack of clarity in U.S. policy concerning foreign isotope production for U.S. consumption.

In 1996, the DOE issued a Record of Decision announcing that the Annular Core Research Reactor (ACRR) located at Sandia National Laboratory would be the sole producer of molybdenum- 99 and might be called on to produce iodine-125, iodine-131, and xenon-133.

This decision was made after completion of an EIS and, according to a 1996 news release from Sandia, after "Congress requested that DOE develop a reliable domestic source of moly-99."

This project has never been carried out and it appears that a program "to make Sandia the sole U.S. producer of molybdenum- 99" has been postponed.

Thus, DOE appears to have made a decision at this time not to foster domestic competition with reliable foreign moly-99 producers.

Given DOE's earlier interest in the ACRR for medical isotope production a discussion of the status of use of this reactor for the isotope mission must be included in the Final PEIS.

2. The Draft NI PEIS ignores foreign supply of medical isotopes for U.S. needs.

The Draft PEIS fails to examine what quantity of foreign isotopes currently meet U.S. demand and what the foreign supply is anticipated to be in the future.

Supply of isotopes from Canada is of special note.

As DOE is well aware, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently issued an export license to Canadian entities for U.S.-supplied highly enriched uranium (HEU) to produce molybdenum- 99 for the U.S. market.

MDS Nordion, a Canadian company, and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) received an export license on July 27, 2000, and in the NRC's Staff Requirements Memorandum issued on that day, the NRC reflected the importance of the Canadian source of moly-99 by stating that "the Commission was sensitive to the importance of maintaining an uninterruptible supply of medical isotopes."

In oral testimony before the NRC on at least two occasions in the past 2 years and in various written submissions, officials from the U.S. State Department expressed strong support for such export in order to ensure isotope production for U.S. needs.

At no time in the license review process has either the NRC or the State Department questioned the reliance on a foreign source for this critical isotope supply as being contrary to U.S. policy.

DOE's own Argonne National Laboratory is integral in helping Nordion and AECL to meet the requirements of the Schumer Amendment in converting two medical isotope production reactors at AECL's Chalk River Laboratory from HEU targets to LEU targets, an effort strongly supported by the Nuclear Control Institute (NCI).

Other foreign producers of medical isotopes exist and other sources might be developed yet the Draft PEIS has failed to review the potential of any of these sources to fill U.S. isotope demand.

In order to fully address the need for DOE to guarantee that the necessary supply of isotopes is achieved will require an assessment of foreign supply as well as domestic supply.

As the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee has addressed the need for " dependable" sources of isotopes, it is incumbent on DOE to assess foreign supply as foreign sources could well prove to be dependable and cheaper than U.S. sources.

For more information on the NCI's involvement in the issue of medical isotope production and intervention with the NRC concerning the export HEU to Canada for isotope production, go to our web site at http://www.nci.org/ heu.htm.

3. The Draft PEIS fails to review current production of each medical isotopes and projected need of each isotope.

The Draft PEIS assumes that needs for medical isotopes will grow in the future but has not quantified the specific demand nor provided any details about such growth in demand.

Statements in the Draft PEIS are speculative and not backed up by any actual data.

Without quantifying actual demand of each isotope and projected future demand, the Draft PEIS presents a weak case for isotope production needs.

Along with presenting a much clearer picture of present and future isotope demand, the Final PEIS should clarify exactly which isotopes are being considered for production and in which specific facility they would be produced.

In the Draft PEIS, a list of possible isotopes is presented and the reader is left with no way to determine which isotopes on the list will be actually produced.

4. The Final NI PEIS must fully explain how closed test loops and assemblies in FFTF will be cooled and how production of specific isotopes is compatible with either open or closed loops in FFTF.

Appendix C of the PEIS briefly discusses open- and closed-loop in-reactor irradiation assemblies but does not specify the coolant used with the closed loops.

As contact with liquid sodium by some targets must be avoided, closed loops with non-sodium coolant must be used.

As irradiation of targets to produce isotopes has health and safety implications, the PEIS must discuss which isotopes which can be produced by which type of loop, what type of coolant is used in the closed loops, and which isotopes are capable of being produced by which production method and in which facility.

Likewise, the Draft PEIS does not specify in any detail the different production characteristics in the core versus the reflector of the reactor.

As some isotopes, such as molybdenum-99, are produced by fission, and other isotopes are produced by neutron absorption, the PEIS must specify how each isotope is produced and whether such production is feasible in FFTF.

If the reactor must be modified in order to produce certain isotopes a full discussion of such modification must be included in the PEIS.

Also, if the FFTF must be modified to allow for certain research testing, such as the addition of a lead-bismuth loop for testing associated with Accelerator Transmutation of Waste (ATW), there must be a full discussion of such modifications and associated health, safety and nonproliferation implications.

5. The Final PEIS must discuss production of plutonium- 238 for any defense uses.

The Draft PEIS avoids any discussion whatsoever of the use of plutonium-238 by defense and intelligence agencies.

As plutonium-238 is apparently used in communication and detection devices used by the U.S. Navy, any possible production in FFTF and the other reactors for defense use must be discussed in the PEIS.

As no such discussion has taken place in the Draft PEIS one must assume that DOE has ruled out further plutonum-238 production for defense purposes.

It is believed that plutonium- 238 is used in the Navy's Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), which consists of hundreds of sea bed monitors

It is also known that the Navy has placed terrestrial devices containing Radioisotopic Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs), which contain plutonium- 238, at remote locations for powering instrumentation.

6. Import of the SNR-300 (Kalkar) MOX fuel for use in FFTF has negative non-proliferation implications which must be considered in the Final PEIS.

In addition to security issues raised with trans-oceanic shipment of the SNR-300 fuel, which will require a armed escort due to the fact that such fuel contains weapons-usable plutonium, use in a fast reactor in the U.S. will rule out disposal with fewer proliferation implications.

Immobilization of the SNR-300 fuel into high- level nuclear waste in Germany presents fewer proliferation risks than shipment to the U.S., but it appears that DOE has ruled out this option with no discussion.

The SNR-300 MOX presents a perfect opportunity for demonstration in Europe of immobilization of MOX pellets using the can-in-canister approach.

Demonstration of such immobilization will have far-reaching implication in Europe for the massive plutonium stockpiles which continue to build up-- contrary to the Clinton Administration's 1993 non-proliferation policy--at French and British reprocessing factories and for which no credible plan for use exists.

7. The Final PEIS must look at waste stream for remanufacturing any Kalkar MOX which might be used in FFTF.

The Draft PEIS does not discuss the waste stream which would arise from disassembly of the Kalkar MOX and reassembly in FFTF assemblies.

Likewise, the document is not specific as to where such handling would taking place.

8. The Final PEIS must examine all health and safety issues associated with using old FFTF and Kalkar MOX.

As the FFTF and Kalkar MOX are more than ten years old, such things as build up of radioactive decay products such as americium and development of helium pockets due to alpha decay must be discussed in the Final PEIS.

The physical condition of the fuel after so many years of storage, due both to radiation influences and fabrication methods, must be included in the PEIS.

While the Nuclear Control Institute made scoping comments concerning quality control issues related to fabrication of the FFTF and Kalkar MOX, there was no discussion of this important matter in the Draft PEIS.

The Final PEIS must discuss this matter and present evidence that the fuel will indeed meet current DOE fabrication and safety standards and will not present any health or safety risks outside current standards when used in the reactor.

9. The Final PEIS must clearly state plans for final disposition of any imported MOX fuel.

The Draft PEIS neglects to clarify if the irradiated Kalkar MOX will remain in the United States or be returned to Germany for disposition.

Acceptance of such foreign fuel into a U.S. spent fuel repository has health, safety and policy implications not addressed in the Draft PEIS.

10. The PEIS must consider the impact of oversight of FFTF by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

While DOE facilities have operated apart from regulation by the NRC, the Final PEIS should consider such regulation by the NRC as the trend to NRC regulation of DOE facilities is currently operative. As the FFTF would be operated as a commercial facility it should fall under commercial regulation.

If DOE has already made the determination that such oversight has been ruled out then the Final PEIS should clearly state this fact and if the reactor could not meet the rigors of NRC regulation.

11. Cost and non-proliferation issues should be made part of the PEIS record.

DOE has made a decision to exclude cost and non-proliferation considerations from the PEIS but we view this decision is an inappropriately narrow interpretation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

Previous DOE EISs, such as DOE's foreign spent fuel take-back EIS, have included detailed non-proliferation analyses.

Cost analyses have also been included in some EISs as well and should be included in the Final PEIS.

Thank you for considering these comments in preparation of the Final PEIS.

Tom Clements
Nuclear Control Institute
1000 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 410 Washington, DC 20036 tel.
202-822-8444 fax 202-452-0892 clemenst@nci.org

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NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS

1 OR cleanup work will get $691 million
2 Nuke workers compensation talks break down
3 1 hurdle left on DOE, dam aid -
4 Governors lobby for bill to aid sick plant workers
5 More than gratitude
6 Sundquist joins push for sick workers
7 Nuclear couriers cleared
8 Pantex gets extra $38 million
9 Lab gets funding for laser project
10 Lab turns off the big lights, leaves fusion in the cold
11 Army gearing to tackle nuclear threat: Gen Padmanabhan
12 Governors press Congress to act now on compensation measure
13 A Cure for the Common Cold Warrior
14 U.S. NUCLEAR COMPENSATION BILL MAY FLOUNDER - DOE
15 Benton officials find little humor in state's 'Got vit?' campaign
16 Plan to help sick nuclear workers hits snag
17 House passes energy bill to help Paducah cleanup

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NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES

1 OR cleanup work will get $691 million
Oak Ridger Online
Friday, September 29, 2000
BY PAUL PARSON Oak Ridger staff

Environmental cleanup projects in Oak Ridge and other sites are on course to receive $691 million in funding.

The money, which is $49 million more than the current fiscal year funding, is included in the FY 2001 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, said the approval of the cleanup funding shows that Congress supports efforts to repair environmental damage left over from the Cold War.

"It extremely encouraging to see this funding," Wamp said. He said Congress expects the money to be managed wisely.

In Oak Ridge, the Department of Energy has a wide variety of cleanup projects planned. Those include continued decommissioning and decontamination and removal and cleaning of equipment at the K-25 site, the cleanup of groundwater and excavation of contaminated soil at the Y-12 Plant and cleaning out radioactive underground storage tanks at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The $691 million appropriated for environmental management flows through DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office. Part of the money will be spent in Oak Ridge while other portions will go to DOE complexes in Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky., where substantial health and environmental problems left over from Cold War nuclear weapons work have received increased attention in the last year.

In the past couple of days, several other Oak Ridge DOE projects have received significant funding through the Energy and Water Appropriations bill including $627 million for modernization of the Y-12 Plant and $278.5 million for construction on the Spallation Neutron Source at ORNL.

The action by the conference committee means that DOE's Oak Ridge Operations could receive close to $2.3 billion for the 2001 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

With work completed on the conference committee's report, Wamp said the Energy and Water Appropriations bill should be headed to President Bill Clinton for his signature.

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2 Nuke workers compensation talks break down
September 29, 2000
BY MARY MANNING
LAS VEGAS SUN

Negotiations by a congressional panel broke down Thursday night, likely killing a plan to compensate nuclear weapons workers for their illnesses.

The stalemate means that workers from the Nevada Test Site and at other government and nongovernment locations across the nation are not likely to receive financial relief this year.

Republican House leaders on Tuesday revived hopes for a compensation package to pass this year after critics said GOP leaders were blocking the legislation that would have cost about $1.9 billion and covered roughly 4,000 workers who helped build the nuclear arsenal.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said he was willing to make a deal on Tuesday if the compensation package delivered benefits to the workers and was fiscally responsible. Hastert aide John Feehery said more congressional hearings might be necessary.

The Nevada delegation has been pushing for a compensation package to be passed this year.

"I think this is all for show," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said today. "I don't think that Congress is going to pass this bill this year."

Reid this morning urged Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to continue fighting for benefits covering workers exposed to beryllium, radiation and silica.

But Reid and Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., denounced the latest proposal, including a call for more studies of the nuclear workers.

No joint congressional talks on the defense authorization bill were scheduled for today or Monday. Congress is trying to adjourn for the year in a week or two.

The Department of Energy, after conducting hearings around the nation, admitted in April that some of the thousands of laborers who built and tested the nuclear weapons during the Cold War got sick because of their exposures to toxic and radioactive materials. DOE Secretary Bill Richardson urged Congress to compensate the workers.

At issue after the latest round of talks is the amount of money.

Workers would have received $200,000 under the original version of the plan. A second draft of the bill offered $100,000 per worker or family, Republican aides said.

The appropriations bill that emerged Thursday night enhanced medical benefits for military retirees by $39 billion, but left out nuclear workers. Those additional benefits could add as much as $5 billion a year to the defense budget by paying the equivalent of free full Medigap insurance to veterans who are receiving Medicare.

Former DOE workers such as Ray Slaughter made a last-minute plea to Congress recently. Slaughter hauled blasted rock out of tunnels carved under the Test Site after nuclear bombs exploded during experiments. He now has silicosis, which affects his lungs. He testified that he got the disease from breathing silica dust in the tunnels.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., refused to give up on the compensation, vowing to battle to the end of the session.

Nevada's lone Republican in Congress, Rep. Jim Gibbons, said he would continue pressuring the House leadership to compensate the nuclear workers.

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3 1 hurdle left on DOE, dam aid -
By Joe Walker
The Paducah Sun
Friday, September 29, 2000

Paducah, Kentucky - The energy secretary also was told to determine how to prop up the sagging U.S. uranium enrichment program.

Congress is on the final leg of approving more than $100 million for environmental and worker health programs at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and $86 million to continue the Kentucky Dam and Olmsted lock and dam projects.

Congress also has directed Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to determine by Dec. 31 how to prop up the sagging U.S. uranium enrichment industry, which threatens to close the Paducah plant and its raw producer, the Honeywell plant at Metropolis, Ill.

The language is part of the massive 2001 Energy and Water Development Appropriation Act that the House of Representatives approved Thursday by a 301-118 vote. Previously approved by the Senate, the bill had been sent to the House-Senate Conference Committee for compromise work. It now returns to the Senate for final action before going to President Clinton.

Supported by Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, and Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning, the legislation includes this funding for the plant:

--$78 million for environmental cleanup work.

--$33 million shared by Paducah and its sister plant near Portsmouth, Ohio, to maintain nearly 60,000 cylinders of spent uranium hexafluoride and build facilities at each plant to convert the hazardous material into something safer.

--$4.3 million for worker health and safety programs, including testing and monitoring of past and present workers at the plant.

--$1.75 million for an epidemiological study of workers by research specialists from medical schools at the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville.

--$3 million for programs to help displaced plant workers.

"This is a clean sweep. We got all of the funding requested by the president and more," Whitfield said. "We were able to put Paducah on the appropriators' radar screen on both sides of the Capitol. I think this bodes well for our continuing efforts to get a workers' compensation package and, in fact, we have seen positive movement toward that goal in the last 24 hours."

The conference report says Congress is worried about "severe market pressures" that could soon cause the loss of initial parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, including the Honeywell plant, which converts natural uranium into uranium hexafluoride. It directs Richardson to evaluate and make specific proposals on sustaining the domestic enrichment industry. His report is due to Congress by Dec. 31.

Richardson must recommend how to deal with the Portsmouth plant, which will be closed next summer, "and its role in maintaining a secure and sufficient domestic supply of enriched uranium."

The evaluation should also include the prospects for gas centrifuge and laser-based technologies to replace gaseous diffusion, Congress said, and the government's role in that effort.

"The (conference) committee expects to be notified by the department of its need for additional funding or decision to reprogram funding in order to carry out its priorities with regard to domestic enrichment industry," the report said.

DOE and plant operator USEC have begun a one-year, $4 million project to hasten gas centrifuge research. A proprietary report recently done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said USEC won't be profitable beyond 2005 without drastic measures, yet it doesn't plan to deploy centrifuge until 2009.

Thursday's action also approved these funds for waterways projects in the region:

--$30 million to continue construction of a Kentucky lock replacement that will make barge traffic faster and safer. Whitfield said the action doubles Clinton's request and keeps the project on track for completion by 2010.

--$56 million toward ongoing construction of Olmsted Lock and Dam, which will replace locks 52 and 53 on the Ohio River. The facility will be the largest of its type in Kentucky in terms of tonnage, McConnell said.

--$3 million for bank restoration and erosion control along the lower portion of the river below Barkley Dam and stretching 30 miles through Lyon, Crittenden and Livingston counties to the Ohio River. Whitfield said water fluctuations below the dam have consumed valuable farmland and residential property.

--$400,000 for preliminary engineering and design for rehabilitation of the existing local protection facilities, including the Paducah floodwall. Last year, Whitfield said, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers affirmed his contention that most of the flood protection along the shoreline in the Purchase area is near or beyond its design life.

The conference report also contained language prohibiting use of funds for construction of the Reelfoot Lake Spillway Project. Whitfield claims it will cause additional flooding problems over approximately 20,000 acres of farmland in Fulton County.

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4 Governors lobby for bill to aid sick plant workers
Bob Taft is among five who urged Congress to avoid delay in helping victims of radiation
Friday, September 29, 2000
JONATHAN RISKIND Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and four other governors said yesterday that Congress has a "moral imperative'' to approve legislation compensating sick nuclear-plant workers before adjourning for the year.

The governors said in a letter to House and Senate leaders that there is ample evidence of the need for a Senate proposal granting up to $200,000 and lifetime health benefits to workers sickened by exposures to radiation and other hazardous materials.

"The nation should not turn its back on the very people who protected our freedoms,'' read the letter by the governors, all of whom hail from states with current or former nuclear weapons facilities.

"During the Cold War, the production imperative often took precedence over worker health and safety protection.''

The lobbying effort by Taft and Govs. George H. Ryan of Illinois, Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, Jim Hodges of South Carolina and Don Sunquist of Tennessee came as negotiations over the compensation bill ended last night without an agreement.

House Republican leaders have rejected the Senate proposal as an over-expensive entitlement, one they tagged as costing as much as $50 billion.

The House GOP has offered to pass legislation acknowledging that nuclear-plant workers deserve compensation, but it would leave open to a future measure how much compensation, whether benefits would be guaranteed or subject to annual approval by Congress and how the program would be run.

Proponents say that about 4,000-6,000 workers or their survivors nationwide would be affected. They cite Congressional Budget Office estimates of $1 billion in five years and $1.7 billion in 10 years as evidence it would be a limited program.

Sen. George V. Voinovich, R- Ohio, and other proponents say there is no need for further study to make the case for why workers at such facilities as the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, deserve federal compensation. The evidence clearly indicates that for decades workers were exposed to dangerous conditions by a government more interested in manufacturing weapons than safeguarding employees, they say.

The compensation proposal was declared dead this week and deleted from an unrelated military spending bill being finalized by a House- Senate conference committee. But House Republicans came back to the bargaining table after Voinovich and other Senate Republicans denounced their stand.

A Voinovich spokesman said the fact that negotiations will continue today among House and Senate staffers is a promising sign.

"I think it's great (that) people are still talking,'' said Scott Milburn, Voinovich's spokesman. "That's a good sign because it indicates people want to get something done.''

However, Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, said he doesn't think House GOP leaders are sincere.

"I think it's an effort to keep from doing it and pretend like we're doing it when we're not,'' Strickland said.

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5 More than gratitude
The Knoxville News-Sentinel

Workers who were employed in nuclear weapons plants in Oak Ridge and other cities deserve compensation from the government for injuries or illnesses they received during their years of employment.

A House-Senate conference committee is trying to work out the details of a compensation package. The idea has bipartisan suport and gained momentum Wednesday after talks broke down on Monday.

Last spring, the U.S. Department of Energy reversed 50 years of federal denial and declared that the workers injured, killed or made ill by radiation at the weapons plants should be compensated. Approving a specific plan has been the sticking point.

There is no question the workers deserve compensation. It is the right thing to do. As noted by U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, a Chattanooga Republican whose district includes Oak Ridge, the workers "were there when our nation needed them."

Failure to provide compensation would be unconscionable.

Wamp and Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican, deserve credit for not letting the issue die when talks sputtered earlier in the week. Thompson understood the needs of "people who are sick as a result of their service to our country."

The Senate bill would give the sick workers lifetime medical benefits and at least $200,000 per person to compensate for their shortened work lives and lost wages. The Energy Department recommended a minimum lump sum payment of $100,000.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the Senate measure would cost $1.7 billion over a 10-year period for about 4,000 workers - - a small price in the larger scheme of government spending.

As we have said before, this is a federal government problem, and the government needs to take responsibility for it. That responsibility includes compensation for the victims.

It was these patriotic men and women who helped America triumph in the Cold War. They deserve more than gratitude for their suffering. We urge Congress to do the right thing and compensate them.

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6 Sundquist joins push for sick workers
Oak Ridger Online
Friday, September 29, 2000
BY PAUL PARSON Oak Ridger staff

Governors from five states including Tennessee are pressing for a compensation package for sick workers at federal nuclear facilities.

In a letter dated Sept. 27, the five governors are urging that the worker compensation package be included in the conference report for the Fiscal Year 2001 Defense Authorization bill, or some other legislative vehicle before adjournment. A sick worker provision is contained in the Senate version of the Defense Authorization bill, which is currently before the House-Senate conference committee.

Governors Don Sundquist of Tennessee, George Ryan of Illinois, Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, Bob Taft of Ohio, and Jim Hodges of South Carolina signed the letter. It was sent to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt.

"As governors with federal nuclear facilities, beryllium facilities, nuclear material vendors in our state, we find that this Senate provision is fair, equitable, has a solid scientific basis, and provides an important step forward to securing a needed remedy for (Department of Energy) nuclear workers in our states," the letter states.

"This amendment, which was adopted unanimously by the Senate in June, would create a program administered by the Department of Labor to provide compensation for illness, deaths and disabilities due to exposure from beryllium, ionizing radiation and silica. We understand the Department of Energy supports the approach taken in the Senate."

The letter arrived in Washington as congressional negotiators were trying to salvage the latest in a series of proposals intended to compensate at least some workers whose jobs at nuclear facilities robbed them of their health.

The governors' letter states that there are unique and complex circumstances present for nuclear workers which merit the use of a federal--as opposed to a state--worker compensation remedy. Those include the following:

*There is a long latency period between workplace exposures at federal nuclear sites and the onset of occupational illnesses such as chronic beryllium disease, silicosis, or radiogenic cancers.

*Radiation dose measurements are, in many cases, incomplete, inaccurate, or non-existent, making eligibility determinations difficult and raising nearly insurmountable hurdles for deserving workers.

*Nuclear workers, by virtue of their security clearances, were placed in federal nuclear installations in various states, making this a multi-state issue.

A Senate measure approved earlier called for $200,000 in compensation from the federal government, plus health benefits, to workers who had been exposed to radiation, silica and beryllium. The Congressional Budget Office had estimated that a Senate-passed compensation proposal would cost $1.7 billion over 10 years.

The House approved only a resolution supporting the idea of compensating the ailing workers, forcing the issue into a conference committee for resolution.

The governors' letter states, "During the Cold War, the production imperative often took precedence over worker health and safety protection. The last 20 years of congressional oversight has provided an abundant record which underscores the fact that workers were put at risk from radioactive and toxic exposures, without their knowledge and without adequate protection. These loyal, hardworking Americans provided a critical service to the nation and helped to win the Cold War.

"The Senate compensation provision now before the Conference Committee recognizes the sacrifices made by these workers and establishes a responsible program to compensate them. Four hearings in the Senate, coupled with a recent Judiciary Subcommittee hearing and an oversight hearing in the House Commerce Committee, established a foundation for passing legislation this year.

"We believe that the moral imperative is clear. The nation should not turn its back on the very people who protected our freedoms."

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7 Nuclear couriers cleared
Oak Ridger Online
Friday, September 29, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Oak Ridge couriers suspended from their Department of Energy jobs transporting warhead parts and other nuclear material have been cleared of any wrongdoing and can go back to work.

More than two years after the 18 nuclear weapons couriers were suspended for suspicion of security breaches, DOE has admitted the workers did nothing wrong.

Madelyn Creedon, DOE's deputy administrator for defense programs, apologized to the couriers in a memo to be distributed to the entire nuclear transportation section.

"The DOE regrets that the February 1998 incident and its aftermath have caused personal hardships to the couriers," she wrote. "The DOE further regrets the difficulties experienced by all of the couriers working in the (Oak Ridge section) during this period and the disruption to the Transportation Safeguards Division."

The 18 couriers, who were suspended with pay, will split $609,000 for overtime lost during the time they were on administrative leave, and DOE will pay several hundred thousand dollars for their legal expenses.

About 70 couriers were suspended in early 1998 after an ABC-TV news crew reportedly surprised a nuclear convoy during a highway stop.

The travel plans are supposed to be secret and DOE asked the FBI to investigate whether the television crew might have had advance knowledge of the travel plans through security leaks.

For a while the entire Oak Ridge transportation unit was shut down, but in May 1998 the FBI cleared about 50 of the couriers to return to work, leaving about 20 under investigation.

Negotiations have continued since then, with 18 of the nuclear couriers remaining on administrative leave with pay. A couple took other jobs in the interim.

"The couriers are obviously quite pleased with this agreement," Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University and chief counsel for the suspended couriers, said Thursday.

"This agreement not only restores the damages they have suffered during this period but restores their reputation, which was needlessly sullied by the investigation," Turley said.

Some of the truckers suggested the investigation was a way to intimidate them and keep them from talking to the news media about morale problems at the unit due to safety concerns and other issues.

Agency officials now admit reports of the news media being "pre-positioned" in advance of the encounter with the nuclear convoy were mistaken.

Turley said some of the suspended couriers are now eligible for retirement, but most of the 18 want to return to their jobs. DOE has promised to police any attempts of retaliation against the returning couriers.

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8 Pantex gets extra $38 million
Amarillo Globe-News: Local News:
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2000

The U.S. House passed legislation Thursday that includes an extra $38 million for the Pantex Plant.

The bill contains the largest amount of additional funding Pantex has received in the last five years. The bill, approved 301-118 as part of the Fiscal Year 2001 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, now goes to the Senate for a vote.

The funds are in addition to $287.5 million included for Pantex's general operating budget.

The bill includes money for the possible transition to a new Pantex contractor and funds to speed up Pantex plutonium repackaging.

U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, said the extra funds will help Pantex tackle some of the additional missions that the nuclear warhead assembly and disassembly plant has taken on in recent years.

Thornberry said in a statement that Pantex remains a vital part of America's nuclear weapons complex and has much work to do.

"It's also very unique, in that no one else does the work we do in terms of making sure our weapons are kept safe, secure and reliable, " Thornberry said. "Since we no longer test weapons, this mission and this work is only going to increase."

Thornberry said the funds help provide Pantex workers with the resources they need to get the job done.

According to Thornberry's office: the money will be spent as follows:

$4 million for stockpile maintenance.
$8 million for stockpile evaluation.
$7 million for enhanced surveillance.
$12 million for facility operations.
$3.1 million for transition to a new contractor.
$4 million for plutonium pit repackaging.

Thornberry serves as chairman of the Special Oversight Panel on Department of Energy Reorganization and is a member of the Armed Services Committee.

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9 Lab gets funding for laser project
NIF's critics fail to cut $199 million in budget
September 28, 2000
By Lisa Friedman WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON--A few months ago, Washington politicians were seething -- loudly--about problems with the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada called the world's largest laser "a bill of goods" and "a shining example of how not to build large national facilities."

Various House members called the mounting costs--somewhere between $1.3 billion and $1.8 billion depending on who is doing the math -- "alarming," disquieting" and "disturbing."

But on Wednesday Livermore was promised practically everything it wants for NIF out of the 2001 federal budget.

The facility will receive $199 million from the federal government next year, under an agreement hammered out by House and Senate members late Wednesday. The money is part of a $23.6 billion energy and water funding package.

It's not quite the $209 million Livermore was hoping for in order to get the project on track after technical and management problems threw it over budget and behind schedule.

Still, it's not far off.

Said lab spokeswoman Susan Houghton, "We're very pleased that Congress has recommended additional funding for the National Ignition Facility and that the project should move forward. This action validates the extensive peer reviews of NIF that the Department of Energy has spearheaded over this past year, all of which have been quite positive."

The NIF will focus 192 laser beams on a tiny capsule of nuclear fuel, compressing it by pressure. Scientists hope the compressed fuel will "ignite," producing tiny thermonuclear explosions that can later be harnessed and studied. That information can be used to make sure nuclear weapons are reliable without having to explode them.

Congress didn't let NIF entirely off the hook. About $69 million of next year's funding will be restricted until lab managers can certify a new cost and schedule estimate.

"Quite frankly, NIF is mired in problems," Senator Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, said.

Houghton said it isn't clear yet how receiving less money than Livermore had hoped for will affect the final outcome.

"We know this will impact the schedule at some level. We know this will impact the overall cost at some level. We just don't know what it is."

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10 Lab turns off the big lights, leaves fusion in the cold
Livermore's big laser behind schedule
September 28, 2000
By Glenn Roberts Jr. STAFF WRITER

LIVERMORE--Out with the old, late with the new.

Two major research laser projects at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory were terminated in the past two years in anticipation of the monumental laser, the National Ignition Facility, though that project is an estimated six years behind schedule.

NIF's first laser beams aren't expected to fire up until 2004. The long lag time has left the lab dangling with a shrunken in-house capability for researching fusion with lasers, a field in which the lab has excelled since 1972.

While the lab has some small lasers, there are no longer any high- power, large-scale facilities for laser fusion research at the nuclear weapons lab.

Stephen Dean, president of Fusion Power Associates, an organization that promotes fusion energy research, said NIF has taken precedence over other lab laser projects.

"In my view, Livermore Lab went overboard in putting the squeeze on the operating programs to support the NIF, but could be forgiven if the NIF had maintained its original schedule," Dean said.

Lab officials even renamed the Laser Programs Directorate in the past year--now it is called the NIF Programs Directorate to reflect a change in focus for lab laser research.

NIF, a nuclear weapons tool intended to simulate thermonuclear explosions on a tiny scale, is expected to blast BB-size radioactive fuel pellets with 192 powerful ultra-violet laser beams.

Beamlet, a one-beam laser prototype for the NIF project that began operating in 1993, was terminated in 1998 and has since been shipped to Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

An Energy Department task force that reviewed the NIF project criticized lab officials for dismantling the Beamlet so soon after it was built and charged that the one-beam laser was not a representative sample of an actual NIF laser beam.

John McTague, chairman of the task force, said in January, "It would have been much better to have continued on (with Beamlet), and to have a much more robust program."

The Nova, a 10-beam fusion research laser that began operation in 1984 and once was the world's largest laser, was terminated in May 1999, along with a companion short-pulse laser, called Petawatt, that was incorporated in Nova's design.

Nova's target chamber--the place where the lasers converge--has been shipped to France to support an eight-beam laser under construction by the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

Two other nuclear weapons labs, five universities, NASA, and the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense will also receive Nova parts and pieces.

Lab workers are in the process of dismantling Nova. Lab officials recently denied access to the Nova building, claiming the remaining hulk of Nova was cluttered and was not suitable for public viewing.

While lab researchers await the completion of NIF, they will continue to conduct experiments on large-scale laser facilities at other research centers and the smaller lasers that remain at the lab.

Joe Kilkenny, deputy associate director of inertial confinement fusion research at Livermore Lab, said that NIF researchers are using the Omega laser at the University of Rochester, N.Y., in the absence of Nova and Beamlet.

Lab researchers also are using lasers in France, England and at Los Alamos Lab for fusion research, he said.

Kilkenny said the shutdown of Nova and Beamlet freed up money and workers for NIF. The closures were intended "to make people here concentrate on the NIF, to free them up for NIF," Kilkenny said.

The decision to turn off Beamlet in 1998 was made in 1997, he said, and the decision to turn off Nova in 1999 was made in 1998, though it was known even earlier that both projects would close before NIF became operational.

But the closure dates were agreed upon before the extent of NIF's troubles--including a six-year delay and a more than $1 billion cost increase--were known to lab managers.

There was a "lab-wide decision" to shut down Nova, Kilkenny said, and there was "general agreement" but some dissent on the closure date.

Bruce Warner, NIF deputy project manager, said researchers at Livermore Lab have always sought after fusion ignition, a massive energy yield that powers the sun and hydrogen weapons blasts. And all fusion research lasers at the lab have been leading to NIF, he added. "Our goal has always been to get fusion in a laboratory," he said, and NIF is the best bet yet for achieving fusion ignition.

If NIF is canceled for lack of congressional support, the lab would be left without a major laser for fusion research.

The lab has not even considered that scenario, said Warner.

Paul Springer, a lab laser researcher, said in June, "Livermore has basically put most of the eggs in the NIF basket."

But even if the project is built, lab officials cannot guarantee that it will succeed in reaching fusion ignition. There are several doubters, even among the community of nuclear lab physicists.

Dean, who leads the fusion power association, said NIF is an important tool, though fusion research at the lab is lagging now that NIF is delayed and the big lasers are gone.

"If the original NIF schedule had been maintained, the loss of (other lab lasers) would not be so unfortunate as it has turned out to be in retrospect," Dean said.

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11 Army gearing to tackle nuclear threat: Gen Padmanabhan
SEPTEMBER 28, 2000
A K DHAR in New Delhi

Army Chief-designate General S Padmanabhan Thursday said his thrust will be to increase operational efficiency and bring about organisational changes to ensure that the army was fully prepared to face both conventional and nuclear threats.

Cautioning about "calls for Jehad" emanating from the country's neighbourhood, Gen Padmanabhan, who takes over as the new Army Chief on Saturday, said that the contours of insurgency were dynamic and demanded a dynamic riposte.

"My thrust areas will also be to restore the IZZAT (prestige) of the soldier, improve the quality of life and service conditions of our officers and men," he said.

On the preparedness to face nuclear and biological warfare threats, Gen Padmanabhan, who will be the 20th Chief of the Army Staff since Independence, said in an interview that these threats had manifested at the end of the last decade "when our adversary covertly acquired nuclear capability."

"The army is being equipped within the budgetary constraints to meet this threat. It is an ongoing process. But I would not like to go into details about it", he said.

Gen Padmanabhan said that he would strive to see that state of art weapons, equipment and latest technology were introduced and absorbed as early as possible.

On reports of fatigue syndrome creeping into the army due to prolonged deployment in combating insurgency, he said, "We are aware about the effects of continued deployment of the army in combating insurgency and fighting the proxy war. We are however ensuring that it has minimal effect on our ability to meet the conventional threat."

He cautioned that the lines between the proxy war and conventional threats at the moment were blurred, adding that there were inextricable linkages between the two.

He said he would begin his tenure with a visit to forward areas in Jammu and Kashmir emphasised that the country could not ignore these realities.

He said the army was making efforts to keep pace with the changes in the shape and contours of warfare by appropriate restructuring and equipping of the forces.

"Towards this end, the increase in this year's defence budget is a welcome step," he said, adding that the armed forces should get an annual funding of three per cent of GDP in real terms.

"Such a step will ensure that while combating insurgency, our operational readiness to meet conventional threat is in no way affected", the army-chief designate said.

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12 Governors press Congress to act now on compensation measure
Thursday, September 28, 2000
BY KATHERINE RIZZO Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP)--Five governors on Thursday urged creation of a compensation plan for sick nuclear weapons plant workers, adding to the pressure on congressional leaders to reach a compromise on the proposal.

In a letter drafted by Gov. George Ryan, R-Ill., the governors -- all from weapons-plant states--said Congress has amply documented that ``workers were put at risk from radioactive and toxic exposures without their knowledge and without adequate protection.''

``These loyal, hardworking Americans provided a critical service to the nation and helped to win the Cold War,'' said the letter signed by Ryan and govenors Bob Taft, R-Ohio; Paul Patton, D-Ky.; Don Sundquist, R-Tenn. and Jim Hodges, D-S.C.

``We believe the moral imperative is clear,'' they wrote. ``The nation should not turn its back on the very people who protected our freedoms.''

The letter arrived on Capitol Hill as congressional negotiators were trying to salvage the latest in a series of proposals intended to compensate at least some workers whose weapons plant jobs robbed them of their health.

Among the issues being discussed is whether to decide now or later the minimum amount of compensation each sickened worker could receive; whether the program would have guaranteed funding or be subject to the yearly appropriations process; and how a compensation program would be administered.

Last spring, the Energy Department reversed 50 years of federal policy by declaring that workers injured or killed by radiation at weapons plants should be compensated. The agency proposed minimum lump sum payments of $100,000.

The Senate later approved a measure granting $200,000 in compensation from the federal government, plus health benefits, to workers who had been exposed to radiation, silica and beryllium.

The House approved only a resolution supporting the idea of compensating the ailing workers, forcing the issue into a conference committee for resolution.

For most of the history of nuclear weapons-making, the government was much more concerned with production than with safety. Workers have told of breathing clouds of dangerous dust or being issued no protective clothing at sites handling radioactive materials.

The measure under discussion would offer financial help to those whose work lives were cut short by radiation-caused cancer, beryllium disease or silicosis.

The Congressional Budget Office had estimated that a Senate-passed compensation proposal would cost $1.7 billion over 10 years.

That figure was based on Energy Department estimates. They showed that about 4,000 of the 600,000 people who have worked in the nuclear weapons complex either are fighting illnesses caused by radiation, beryllium or silica exposure or have died from those diseases.

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The bill numbers are HR 675, HR 3418, HR 3478, HR 3495, HR 4263, HR 4398, HR 5189 and SB 2519

National Economic Council report on compensation issues: http://

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13 A Cure for the Common Cold Warrior
Westword Online--westword.com

Janet Brown was on her way home from work one evening when she suddenly lost control of her car. It crashed through a fence and finally came to a stop in a field. The next thing she remembers is lying flat on her back in an ambulance, a female police officer towering over her. "She thought I was drunk," recalls Brown.

But Brown had had nothing to drink that evening. Nor could she give the police officer any coherent reason for the accident. In fact, she had no memory of what had occurred in the seconds before the car went out of control.

Brown was transported to a nearby hospital, where she underwent a series of diagnostic tests. The doctors thought she had suffered a severe epileptic seizure and asked how long she had been afflicted with the disease. Brown, who was then 28, replied that she didn't even know what epilepsy was. Then they asked her how long she had been having seizures. "I said, 'What are you talking about, seizures?'" she remembers. "And they said, 'You just don't get epilepsy out of the blue.'" A few days later, Brown was discharged from the hospital with a prescription for a powerful anti-seizure medication. None of the doctors had been able to figure out how she suddenly developed epilepsy, but they were sure of the diagnosis.

Brown was eager to return to her job at the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant. The year was 1986, and life was good at the nation's nuclear- weapons facilities. Ronald Reagan was in the White House and, determined to end the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union, had ordered a huge buildup in the nuclear-weapons program. As a result, Rocky Flats, which manufactured the plutonium pits and other components that went into nuclear bombs, was operating around the clock, hurrying to fill the orders.

Brown, who had transferred from the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory three years earlier, was a gifted machinist whose skills were quickly recognized at Rocky Flats. She was promoted to first foreman and then product engineer for the W-88, the lightweight, sophisticated warhead that is currently deployed on Trident submarines. She flew back and forth to Los Alamos, New Mexico, the nation's premier nuclear- weapons design laboratory, occasionally carrying top-secret documents that had been enclosed in two sealed envelopes.

Meanwhile, the seizures continued, growing in intensity and frequency. Brown had grand mal seizures while she was sleeping and temporal lobe seizures during the day. The grand mal seizures made her arch her back, stiffen her neck and bite the soft tissues of her inner mouth. The temporal lobe seizures were far milder and occurred dozens of times during the day. Similar to blackouts, they lasted only a second or two but had a devastating impact on her short-term memory. Brown grew exhausted, unable to concentrate; she found it difficult to even read a newspaper article. Finally, in 1994, she took a leave of absence from her job. Two years later she submitted to a radical surgical procedure that she hoped would put an end to the seizures: a lobectomy, in which an egg-sized lump of tissue where the seizures were believed to have originated would be excised from her brain.

At the hospital, the doctors doped her up with pain medication, drilled two holes in her forehead and inserted depth electrodes. Then they watched her brain activity for a week, charting the electrical storms that swept through her head. When they had enough information to pinpoint exactly where the seizures were occurring, they wheeled her into a brightly lit surgical suite. "When I awoke, the doctor said he had good news and bad news for me," Brown remembers. "The good news was that the operation had gone well. The bad news was that they had detected another seizure area on the other side of my brain. I said, 'Well, as long as I'm in the hospital, are you going to remove that one, too?' And he said, 'Not if you want to still be a walking, talking human being.'"

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14 U.S. NUCLEAR COMPENSATION BILL MAY FLOUNDER - DOE
Story by Margarita Martin-Hidalgo
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
USA: September 28, 2000

WASHINGTON - A BILL TO COMPENSATE THOUSANDS OF GOVERNMENT NUCLEAR WORKERS WHO SUFFER FROM RADIATION-RELATED DISEASES MAY FAIL TO PASS CONGRESS THIS YEAR BECAUSE OF DISAGREEMENTS OVER THE $938 MILLION COST, A TOP DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE) OFFICIAL SAID.

Assistant Energy Secretary David Michaels said the bill was floundering in the House of Representatives because lawmakers view the five-year proposal for ailing former nuclear workers as too costly.

Michaels also criticised a House proposal to further examine the issue before making any payments.

"The offer proposed by the House of Representatives will require additional studies and legislation before a single dollar will be paid to a single worker," Michaels said.

"We do not think additional studies or legislation are needed," he added.

The Clinton administration and congressional Democrats are urging Republicans to pass the legislation before Congress ends its session in October.

"That is a callous disregard for the innocent victims who suffer from radiation-related illnesses," Sen. Richard Bryan, a Democrat from Nevada, told Reuters, referring to the House proposal.

A House official said lawmakers want a "common sense" compromise.

"We want to have a programme that helps these people without busting the budget," said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican.

The Senate version of the legislation provided compensation of $200, 000 per person or a surviving member, but the House version lacks any compensation provision, Bryan said.

About 600,000 employees worked at 16 major nuclear facilities and dozens of smaller sites around the country during World War II and the Cold War. Thousands were exposed to high levels of radiation and beryllium, and later developed diseases such as cancer and silicosis, Michaels said.

Nearly 6,000 cases of sick workers are known, and between 50 and 100 are expected to be reported every year, Michaels said.

Bryan said the Senate bill would give surviving former employees, including clerical workers, who have diseases caused by their exposure to the toxic substances about $200,000 each in compensation.

In cases where workers have since died, the family would be entitled to a lump sum payment in the same amount, he said.

In an unprecedented move, the U.S. government acknowledged in January that employees who participated in building the nation's nuclear arsenal had unusually higher cancer rates.

The Energy Department has released a list of government nuclear sites and private sub-contractors that produced nuclear weapons. Some of the workers in the 1940's and 1950s were exposed to radiation levels higher than the standard, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a private environmental watchdog group, said earlier this month.

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15 Benton officials find little humor in state's 'Got vit?' campaign
9/29/2000
BY JOHN STANG HERALD STAFF WRITER

"Got vit?"

Well, it put the Benton County commissioners into a snit.

And they got the state to say "we quit."

This torrid tale of whether a cutesy parody is really state-sanctioned slander revolves around a small publicity sticker that the Washington Department of Ecology came up with.

But first, here's some much-needed background for those who aren't Hanford junkies.

Hanford's biggest and most troublesome project is to build plants to convert radioactive wastes into glass, a process called vitrification.

Everyone in the greater Hanford universe is for this--including the Benton County commissioners. The Ecology Department enforces the federal government's obligations to build these plants.

Around Hanford, most people call this the "vit" project.

A couple of weeks ago, the state Ecology Department passed out some new stickers that parodied the national "Got Milk" advertisements.

The sticker shows a cow with a pale green mustache across its white snout. "Got vit?" is written next to the cow. These stickers are the type of things that get passed out as cute memory-joggers at public meetings.

However, the county commissioners called the stickers "reckless, " and the pale green mustache "apparently a radioactive 'moo-stache' " in two letters the commissioners recently sent to Gov. Gary Locke and to the three state legislators--Shirley Hankins, Jerome Delvin and Pat Hale--who represent the 8th District, the most populated part of Benton County.

"What we find very disturbing and very offensive is that this sticker also ties the agricultural products of our region to the radioactive wastes at Hanford," the letter said. "As you are well aware, our agricultural products must compete regionally, nationally and internationally, and this advertising, no matter how tongue-in-cheek, could be used by our competitors to devastate our primary sustainable economy."

The letter calls for an apology from Tom Fitzsimmons, the state Ecology Department director, and for the state to immediately recall the stickers.

"We think the stickers are cute, but they contain inappropriate information that's detrimental to the agricultural industry," said Max Benitz Jr., county commission chairman.

The stickers were first passed out at a Hanford Advisory Board meeting about two weeks ago, with some showing up at a later Hanford Communities meeting Benitz attended. The Hanford Communities is a coalition of most Tri-City-area city and county governments.

Benitz said some Hanford Communities officials and "less than 10" farmers told him they are concerned about the stickers.

Benton County Commissioner Claude Oliver said: "It was a well- meaning attempt ... that came off as levity overkill." Oliver acknowledged the sticker matter should not become a major issue. "I'll be the first to agree we have a lot more pressing priorities than this," he said.

The state agrees with the commissioners, said Sheryl Hutchison, a spokeswoman for the Department of Ecology. "They're right to be concerned," she said.

She said the stickers came from good intentions that should have been double-checked and said her department apologizes. The stickers are being retrieved.

"We've been sensitive for a long time not to stigmatize the region. ... Where profit margins are tight (as in farming), there's not always room for a sense of humor," she said.

Mid-Columbia leaders traditionally have been humorless about Hanford's radioactive reputation.

Take central Hanford's slightly radioactive ants. Nationally syndicated columnist Dave Barry publicly snickered at the fact that some of Hanford's ants are radioactive--a phenomena rarely seen outside of 1950s horror movies.

Tri-City leaders were offended that a humor columnist--whose job description calls for him to poke fun at things--could ridicule Hanford for having radioactive ants while not being impressed by the Tri-Cities' eight golf courses.

And in the early 1990s, when the Tri-City Posse was only a baseball dream, the original owners called for the area's residents to think of a name for the team--but specifically ruled out any nuclear nicknames.

Actually, nuclear critters have been a Hanford tradition that many have forgotten.

In 1946, Hanford soldiers and technicians secretly roped cattle and sheep grazing near the site to check out their thyroid glands for radioactive iodine 131. Then there were the 470 beagles that briefly sniffed plutonium particles mostly in the 1950s and 1960s at what was then Pacific Northwest Laboratory , and then were studied for the rest of their lives, which averaged 13 years.

There's the radioactive mouse that escaped Hanford to be caught and killed in north Richland in 1996. And who can forget 1998's great radioactive fruit flies hunt. And there's always central Hanford's radioactive tumbling tumbleweeds.

Now take a look at the picture of the cow sticker next to this article. Those of you who saw the movie THE X-MEN this summer may remember that the eyes of the mutant named Storm became white banks whenever she unleashed her super powers.

This cow's eyes are also all-white blanks.

Coincidence?.

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16 Plan to help sick nuclear workers hits snag
TRI-CITY HERALD
Thu, Sep 28, 2000
BY THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE AND THE HERALD STAFF

WASHINGTON--A proposal to compensate Hanford and other nuclear weapons workers who were sickened or killed by exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals has run into trouble.

House and Senate negotiators Monday dropped a provision in the military authorization bill that would have provided compensation, making prospects for its enactment this year very uncertain.

However, the issue was revived Tuesday by negotiators and talks were continuing Wednesday behind closed doors, said Burson Taylor, a spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.

"It's one provision in a much larger bill, and they're still working on it," said Jennifer Scott, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.

"It would be nice if they would do something," said Craig E. Hall, a Hanford electrician who contracted an incurable lung disease from exposure to the metal beryllium at the site. "Half the people (with cancer and other illnesses) have passed away, and it also would help others with medical bills."

The Clinton administration had been pushing for a plan, which was approved by the Senate, that would set up a program similar to workers compensation and would provide reimbursement of lost wages or $200, 000, whichever is greater, plus medical expenses. But the administration did not say where the money would come from. The House Judiciary Committee favored a plan that offered $100,000 plus health care costs.

John P. Feehery, a spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said the House's last position had been to provide $250 million to start the compensation process, but that the Senate wanted more. "They were pushing for an entitlement program, and who knows what the final cost would have been, the multiple billions, probably, " Feehery said.

David Michaels, the assistant secretary for environment and health of the Energy Department, said such estimates were "outrageous exaggerations." The Congressional Budget Office projects a cost of just under $1 billion in the first five years, and cases are emerging at a rate of 50 to 100 a year, Michaels said.

He said the payments would have to be made under an entitlement program, just as workers compensation payments are made. "You can't start paying in one year and stop the next year because you run out of money," he said. The administration is still trying to get a compensation provision into the bill.

U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, whose district includes a uranium processing plant, said, "it is almost incomprehensible that people could be so hard-hearted and heartless."

The Clinton administration said early this year, for the first time, that nuclear weapons manufacturing had caused illness and premature death in some of the 600,000 people employed by it.

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17 House passes energy bill to help Paducah cleanup
Courier-Journal Local News
FRIDAY, SEPT. 29, 2000
By JAMES R. CARROLL

WASHINGTON--While lawmakers continued to wrestle over a revived plan to compensate nuclear workers with job-related illnesses, the House yesterday approved legislation containing more than $100 million for more cleanup and worker health testing at the Paducah uranium plant.

But even that cleanup and testing spending is in question, because it is in a $23.6 billion energy and water appropriations bill that the Senate appears certain to approve but that President Clinton has threatened to veto because of provisions unrelated to the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

--

BILL PROVIDES MILLIONS FOR PROJECTS IN KENTUCKY
Associated Press

WASHINGTON--A spending bill approved by the House yesterday includes millions of dollars for energy and water projects in Kentucky.

Included in the $23.6 billion measure is more than $100 million for projects associated with the Paducah uranium enrichment plant. Most of that money will go toward cleaning up contaminated areas.

The bill also includes:

$56 million for construction of the Olmstead lock and dam.

$30 million for the Kentucky Lock addition project, and $18 million for the McAlpine locks and dam replacement project.

$20 million for flood control, and $4 million for PRIDE cleanup projects in Southern and Eastern Kentucky.

Rep. Hal Rogers, R-5th District, is on the House Appropriations Committee and secured $2 million for an Energy Department program to upgrade high-tech security locks used by the agency and its contractors. Appalachian Regional Manufacturing in Jackson and Tri-County Assembly in Williamsburg make the locks and are in Rogers' district.

Rep. Anne Northup, R-3rd District, also is on the House Appropriations Committee. Sen. Mitch McConnell is on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The Senate is expected to approve the spending bill soon, and it will then go to the president. The White House has indicated it may veto the bill because it would block the administration from moving toward allowing a seasonal surge in the Missouri River to protect endangered birds and fish.

The proposed Paducah spending represents what the White House and the Kentucky congressional delegation asked Congress for early this year after ongoing revelations about widespread health, safety and environmental problems at the uranium facility.

Clinton may reject the measure because it blocks an administration plan to allow a springtime surge in the Missouri River to protect endangered wildlife.

If vetoed, lawmakers in both houses will have to come up with an alternative proposal--and quickly. Congress is supposed to adjourn for the year a week from today, but with only two of the 13 annual federal budget spending bills completed, that is not a realistic deadline. Even so, with the elections fast approaching, pressure is building on Capitol Hill to wrap up work on the spending bills.

As passed by the House, the energy and water measure includes $78 million for cleanup operations at Paducah; $33 million to maintain cylinders and uranium hexafluoride stored at the site and at its sister plant in Piketon, Ohio, and to begin work on conversion facilities that will stabilize the material; $12 million for additional cleanup at sites not covered in earlier plans; $4.3 million for health screenings of current and former workers at Paducah; and $1.75 million for an epidemiological study of Paducah workers by the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville.

Kentucky Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning, and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-1st District, which includes Paducah, have been critical of the Department of Energy's cleanup efforts.

"This funding should enable DOE to get back on track and accelerate cleanup at the Paducah site," McConnell said in a statement.

"I think this bodes well for our continuing efforts to get a workers' compensation package," Whitfield said in a separate statement, "and, in fact, we have seen positive movement toward that goal in the last 24 hours."

"THIS FUNDING SHOULD ENABLE DOE TO GET BACK ON TRACK AND ACCELERATE CLEANUP AT THE PADUCAH SITE."

statement

The Senate had agreed to a plan providing Paducah workers and employees at similar facilities with the option of either a one-time, tax-free payment of $200,000 and health benefits, or a package of benefits, including payments for lost wages, plus benefits, that could end up being worth more than the lump-sum payment. About 3,000 workers are believed to be eligible, with average benefits packages worth about $400,000, according to the Energy Department.

The House Republican leadership balked at the compensation plan, which was part of the defense authorization bill, and the program appeared dead only days ago.

Now, Senate negotiators have suggested as a compromise to their House colleagues that the authorization bill set up a compensation program without any money. Then, the administration will propose a separate plan in legislation next week, to be included in a separate spending bill.

Late yesterday afternoon, negotiators were still meeting on the issue.

Meanwhile, Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton and the governors of four other states with DOE facilities wrote a joint letter to House and Senate leaders urging the approval of a compensation program.

Besides Patton, the governors signing the letter were George Ryan of Illinois, Bob Taft of Ohio, Don Sundquist of Tennessee and Jim Hodges of South Carolina.