------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nuclear sub in Gibraltar set for departure
Sub Commander's Fate Soon Decided
Despite China, Okinawans Tire of U.S. Military
Fleet commander expected to decide Waddle's fate
Nuclear power is not the answer
Depleted uranium: WHO responds
Germany approves nuclear waste shipments to UK
Sure, the US has a rainy-day fund. But is it enough?
Norway's nuclear sewage used as fertiliser
Where Will Bush Set the Nuclear Trigger?
Learning What Fuel to Burn
Need for nuclear is passé
Nuclear power earns fresh look, despite past woes
Is nuclear power making a comeback in America?
'Atomic tourism', can Oak Ridge be less than conscious?
NRC to meet Dominion on missing fuel rods at Millstone
Plutonium fuel scoping meeting
Both sides see gains in DOE site ruling
Uranium plant workers can't sue their employer
Coolling towers at Xcel
UT-Battelle seeks safeguard against nuclear liability
Amendment would add DOE waste proposed West Texas dump
Changes Studied After WIPP Mixup

MILITARY
Colombia plunging into 'barbarity' - ombudsman
Colombia Rebels in Attack
Busloads of oil workers feared kidnapped
Panel requests longer jail terms
Russia to press ahead with Iran nuclear plant
Poland unveils plan to modernize aircraft to meet NATO standards
Study confirms damages by Navy in Vieques
Annan says Angola rebels still a problem
U.N. searches for possible slave ship amid mystery
Foes fight war by plundering gems, metals

OTHER
Fuel cells promise clean power for cars, tomorrow
PCB Worries Are Spreading From Hudson to Its Shores
Cattle Disease Poses Threat to Run Wild
Whitman Says She and Bush Agree on Environment
E.P.A. Backs Wetlands Rule Set by Clinton
Lead-Reporting Rules Are Upheld
PROTECTION SOUGHT FOR SAWFISH
Mexico's Water Problem
Bush upholds EPA lead-reporting rules
Foot-and-mouth 'probable' in U.S.
Interior rebuffs Jeb Bush on energy
Bush Discusses Trade Vision
Bumps in the road for Bush's trade agenda
Bush says he'll fight for trade deal
Brassieres, billboard await delegates
Calls for Verniero's Impeachment Are Unfounded
Memories of Cincinnati
15 Dead in Ohio: Cincinnati's Black and Blue
Audit shows police hit by false repairs
Revealing radar-trap location is OK
Chiefs Recommend Spy Plane Plan
China Under a Magnifying Glass
U.S. team arrives in China for spy plane talks
Bush to Tackle Delicate Issue of Resuming China Spy Flights
U.S. Weighs Surveillance Flight Options
Federal Web sites can track visitors
The Spy Who Lost Me
Fear Stifled Defense Case, Lawyer Says in Terror Trial
U.S. vows hard line on China
Malaysia 'safe´

ACTIVISTS
Peltier Statement: FTAA
Protests Stall Planned Chicago Gas Shut-Offs
MANHATTAN: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST IN MIDTOWN
'Brutal' attack against students in Ethiopia
Sovereign corporations & FTAA!!
Protesters storm US Air Force base
Delegates held up at border
The voice of an "anticapitalist manifesto"


-------- NUCLEAR

Nuclear sub in Gibraltar set for departure

SPAIN: April 17, 2001
Story by Chris Brown
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10517

MADRID - A British nuclear submarine controversially moored in Gibraltar for nearly a year has been repaired and is set to leave in early May, officials said yesterday.

The presence of HMS Tireless in the British colony has angered environmentalists, politicians and Spaniards living nearby.

It has been docked in Gibraltar since last May after developing a leak in the cooling system of its nuclear reactor.

The British Forces in Gibraltar said a test carried out on the cooling system yesterday had been successful.

"This test has confirmed the success of the repair work conducted...and the way is now clear for the final preparations for departure from Gibraltar," it said in a statement, adding that the submarine was expected to leave in early May.

Gibraltar, a tiny rocky peninsular off Spain's southern coast, has been a British colony for almost 300 years, but Spain claims the territory and refuses to recognise the locally elected government.

-------

Sub Commander's Fate Soon Decided

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Submarine-Collision.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Navy Cmdr. Scott Waddle is likely to receive punishment short of a court martial for his submarine's deadly collision with a Japanese fishery training vessel off Honolulu, defense officials said Tuesday.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, is expected to decide Waddle's punishment shortly, the officials said. Last Friday Fargo received a report from a three-admiral Court of Inquiry which recommended against court martialing Waddle, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officials said they believe Fargo is likely to punish Waddle under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in a private proceeding known as an ``admiral's mast.'' That would be a non-judicial administrative proceeding that would exclude the possibility of a prison sentence, although Fargo could force Waddle to retire at a lesser rank, dock his pay or give him a letter of reprimand, the officials said.

Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr., who conducted a preliminary investigation into the Feb. 9 collision, told the Court of Inquiry last month that although Waddle made errors, he did not act with criminal negligence.

Waddle, who was relieved of command of the USS Greeneville immediately after the collision pending the outcome of the Navy's investigation, has said he is prepared to submit his retirement papers.

Fargo's decision is especially sensitive given strong feelings in Japan that Waddle was to blame for failing to detect the Ehime Maru before his submarine surfaced rapidly in a demonstration of emergency procedures. Navy officials have acknowledged that the demonstration was done only for the benefit of 16 civilians aboard, three of whom were seated at the sub's controls at the time of the collision.

The bodies of four students, two teachers and three crewmen from the Ehime Maru are believed to be entombed in the 190-foot ship, which lies some 2,000 feet below the surface in waters off Honolulu.

---

Despite China, Okinawans Tire of U.S. Military

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/world/17OKIN.html

NAHA, Japan, April 12 - For 56 years, Okinawa, 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo, has been a home away from home for the United States Marines, and the linchpin of American defense strategy in the Far East.

But even in a week of high-stakes military drama between the United States and China, Japan's traditional rival, few Okinawans saw any need for the overwhelming American presence here - 18,000 marines and other military personnel occupying about a fifth of the island.

In fact, the collision of a Chinese fighter jet and a Navy spy plane that began its mission at the Kadena Air Base here provided yet another in a string of incidents - from a fatal accident involving an American nuclear submarine to the felonious behavior of soldiers - that has fueled a strong sense that the Americans are a nuisance, and simply unwanted.

"Every time there is a problem with the U.S. military, whether it actually happens here or not, we feel it," said Hideharu Oyodomori, who owns a beauty salon near here.

Washington considers Okinawa well situated to provide an essential base of operations in a region where security concerns - underscored by the standoff with China - are gaining importance. It is a base that the United States shows no intention of relinquishing.

But even before the spy plane incident, other troubles had already generated mounting political pressures on the Japanese government to scale back the Marine Corps presence here and to apply stricter rules governing marine behavior.

On Jan. 9, a 21-year-old marine was arrested after he was reported to have lifted the skirt of a high- school girl and trying to take her picture. The incident occurred in the same town, Kin, where three marines raped a 12-year-old girl in 1995, an event that galvanized Okinawan opinion against the Americans.

One week after the Jan. 9 arrest, there were two arson incidents in Chatan, and a marine was later arrested in connection with those attacks.

Less than a month after that came the sinking of a Japanese fisheries research boat off Hawaii after it was hit by an American nuclear submarine, killing nine Japanese civilians.

The submarine accident had no direct link to Okinawa, but fanned the anger of politicians here. In the space of a few weeks, the Okinawan prefectural assembly and the municipal assemblies of both Kin and Chatan denounced the Americans' behavior. The regional assembly even demanded, for the first time, a reduction in the marine presence.

In the midst of all this bad news, the Marine commander for Japan, Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston, inadvertently stoked local anger when an e-mail message to his officers was leaked and published in a local newspaper. It denounced Okinawan political leaders who "falsely claim to be our friends," calling them nuts, "and a bunch of wimps."

For Gov. Keiichi Inamine, a conservative politician who has long been considered a supporter of the United States presence in Okinawa, General Hailston's remark was the last straw.

"In a way, we had been reserved about demanding a reduction of the marines and other U.S. military forces," he said in a recent meeting with Japan's foreign minister. "But we can no longer bear it."

Alternately gruff and impassioned, General Hailston, a former F- 18 pilot, said in a telephone interview that he had made a mistake, but argued that his men were being unfairly branded.

"Our incident rate and overall behavior, if ever matched, is never exceeded within the D.O.D., and certainly not in the Marine Corps," he said. "I have 17,000 active duty marines on this island. I have 20-plus thousand throughout the region. If you come into contact with them you will discover that I have 17,000 of the best ambassadors possible, and I am very proud of them."

Invoking the threat of war in Korea and alluding to everything from China's rising power to the need to protect vital sea lanes, General Hailston repeatedly pleaded the strategic importance to both Japan and the United States of the American presence here.

"The U.S. arrived in Okinawa 56 years and 14 days ago," he said. "That's an awfully long association, and with that association you come to feel part of your surroundings.

"What brought us here is the strategic location of the island. Uniquely, it offers a place where we can react to any kind of situation from humanitarian emergencies to major theater warfare."

But in numerous interviews, Okinawans often questioned the need for the marine presence, even though few people said they were in a hurry to see them leave, or even expected that they would live to see the day.

"We live in peace and are secure enough without needing the American military here," said Masatoshi Uehara, a 41-year-old butcher at Naha's sprawling central market. "We don't want to relive the mistakes of the past by becoming involved in another war."

Mr. Uehara's opinion reflects the pacifism of many native Okinawans, who remain deeply scarred by the stories of brutal fighting between American and Japanese forces in the closing days of World War II. Approximately 107,000 Okinawans died in the combat, including one-quarter of the civilian population.

Still, for many Okinawans, reservations about the American bases come down to their seeming domination of the landscape and the nuisances that creates: the thudding clatter of helicopter blades, the roar of jets taking off and landing, and the lumbering trucks that aggravate the traffic congestion here.

"I have friends in Tokyo and Yokohama, and they have bases near them too, but not the same overwhelming presence that we live with here," said Mr. Oyodomori, 37, whose beauty salon is in the small town of Chatan, a favorite shopping and drinking hangout of American troops where one can barely make out the ocean for the military surplus stores, raunchy bars, fast food joints and storefront churches.

Syoko Tomoyose, a 37-year-old homemaker, lives in a house just a few yards from the fenced-in confines of Futenma Air Base. "We moved here six years ago from Urasoe City, but with all the noise here our younger son has been having constant problems," she said. "He reacts with fright to the least little noise, and has trouble sleeping."

As if on cue, a huge green American helicopter wheeled overhead, momentarily drowning out the conversation.

American military officials say they are doing everything possible to limit such inconveniences, halting flights between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., for example, moving artillery training off the island, and conducting small-arms firing drills only in the daytime.

Despite these efforts, there is a feeling of powerlessness among residents. "This is a small place, and Okinawans are very weak," Kinuko Tanaka, Ms. Tomoyose's neighbor, said wearily.

But if Okinawans feel powerless, they are also deeply ambivalent. Their mixed feelings about both Japan and the Americans here result from a number of factors, from the island's takeover by Tokyo, in 1879, from the relatively long relationship with the United States, which controlled the island outright from 1956 to 1972.

In a rarity for nearly monoethnic Japan, Okinawans still speak their own language, and cherish their own culture, one rendered even more distinctive by the admixture of American influences, from Spam and Blue Seal ice cream to rock 'n' roll and Americanisms in speech.

"People living near the bases feel the most opposition," said Seizaburo Miyagi, a 65-year-old survivor of the war who spoke in his small tatami factory. "Of course you will hear some people speak out against the Americans, but everyone doesn't feel that way."

---

Fleet commander expected to decide Waddle's fate

USA Today
04/17/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-16-waddle.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Navy Cmdr. Scott Waddle is likely to receive punishment short of a court martial for his submarine's deadly collision with a Japanese fishery training vessel off Honolulu, defense officials said Tuesday.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, is expected to decide Waddle's punishment shortly, the officials said. Last Friday Fargo received a report from a three-admiral Court of Inquiry which recommended against court martialing Waddle, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officials said they believe Fargo is likely to punish Waddle under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in a private proceeding known as an "admiral's mast." That would be a non-judicial administrative proceeding that would exclude the possibility of a prison sentence, although Fargo could force Waddle to retire at a lesser rank, dock his pay or give him a letter of reprimand, the officials said.

Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr., who conducted a preliminary investigation into the Feb. 9 collision, told the Court of Inquiry last month that although Waddle made errors, he did not act with criminal negligence.

Waddle, who was relieved of command of the USS Greeneville immediately after the collision pending the outcome of the Navy's investigation, has said he is prepared to submit his retirement papers.

Fargo's decision is especially sensitive given strong feelings in Japan that Waddle was to blame for failing to detect the Ehime Maru before his submarine surfaced rapidly in a demonstration of emergency procedures. Navy officials have acknowledged that the demonstration was done only for the benefit of 16 civilians aboard, three of whom were seated at the sub's controls at the time of the collision.

The bodies of four students, two teachers and three crewmen from the Ehime Maru are believed to be entombed in the 190-foot ship, which lies some 2,000 feet below the surface in waters off Honolulu.

-------- canada

Nuclear power is not the answer

Montreal Gazette
Tuesday 17 April 2001
Letter to the Editor
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010417/5022800.html

Canadians are right to recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from Kyoto has provided a golden opportunity to take the lead on climate change (Gazette, April 3, "Opportunity for Canada") and wrong to suggest the answer, as Fred Nagy argues (Letters, April 11), is "building thousands of atomic power plants."

Aside from the impracticality and expense of such a massive nuclear construction program, the proliferation dangers this would present would be unacceptable.

In order for nuclear power to make an impact on climate change, approximately two new reactors would have to be built every day for 60 years worldwide. The waste from these reactors would easily provide enough commercial plutonium to make many hundreds of crude nuclear weapons.

Thousands of uranium-enrichment plants would also be needed to provide reactor fuel, each such facility also gaining the tangential capacity to manufacture atomic bombs.

Support for a wide-scale nuclear- power program would nullify Canada's role as a leader in global peacekeeping.

New energy technologies such as solar and wind power are ready and waiting, lacking only the financial and political commitment to ensure success.

Even more simply, every Canadian (and American) can help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions today by adopting affordable energy-efficiency measures that will not only wean us from our wasteful energy habits but save us money while cleaning up our air and water.

Linda Gunter Communications Director, Safe Energy Communication Council Washington


-------- depleted uranium

Depleted uranium: WHO responds

From: "Daniel Fahey" <duweapons@hotmail.com>
Tue, 17 Apr 2001

Le Monde diplomatique
April 2001

Letter

Depleted uranium: a reply by the World Health Organisation

The article headlined "Deafening Silence on Depleted Uranium" by Robert James Parsons is misleading and often inaccurate. WHO has certainly not "cast a veil of silence over the chemical and radiological hazards of depleted uranium." On the contrary, WHO is concerned to know whether diseases in potentially exposed populations have increased. In search of answers, WHO has undertaken a number of activities-publications, meetings and missions to affected countries-the results of which are reported to the press and public regularly and transparently.

The WHO Fact Sheet on Depleted Uranium (www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact257.html) is consistent with all major reviews recently conducted on possible health effects of exposure to depleted uranium (DU). From the beginning, the scientific review process undertaken to produce the forthcoming WHO monograph on DU addressed both the chemical and radiological toxicities of DU.

In April WHO held a joint meeting with Iraqi experts to discuss how to proceed with a field investigation. A WHO fact-finding mission on DU and health in Kosovo took place in January; its report is available at www.who.it/docs/durptmar01.pdf

The radiation protection norms used by WHO are solidly rooted in science, i.e. about fifty years of epidemiological and biological studies of the effects of ionizing radiation published by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (2000), the United States National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VI Committee (1999) and by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (2000).

The 1959 Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a standard United Nations inter-agency agreement and does not affect the impartial and independent exercise by WHO of its statutory responsibilities, nor does it place WHO in a situation of subordination to IAEA. More information on the WHO-IAEA Agreement is available at: http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2001/en/state2001-05.html

Sincerely yours,
Gregory Hartl

Spokesperson, World Health Organization.

-------- europe

Germany approves nuclear waste shipments to UK

GERMANY: April 17, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10514

HANOVER, Germany - German authorities said last week they had approved the shipment of six cargoes of nuclear waste from a power plant in the western state of Hesse to a reprocessing plant at Sellafield in northwest England.

The announcement came days after German anti-nuclear activists clashed with police as they tried to hold up the first transport in three years of nuclear waste from Germany to a French reprocessing centre at La Hague.

Thousands of demonstrators also protested two weeks ago when Germany took back the first cargo of reprocessed waste from France since the German government banned the shipments in 1998 over concerns about radioactive leaks.

Although several of Germany's 19 nuclear power plants said their temporary storage facilities were nearly exhausted, France had refused to take in any more German waste until the country started accepting back what had already been reprocessed.

The Federal Office for Radiation Protection in the northern town of Salzgitter said its permission for the six cargoes from the Biblis plant in Hesse was valid until July 31.

The office said it had so far granted permission for 49 cargoes this year of nuclear waste to both Sellafield and La Hague.

The office said it had not yet been determined when exactly the shipments from Biblis would take place, saying that was up to the plant's managers and the transport firm.

-------- missile defense

Sure, the US has a rainy-day fund. But is it enough?
Bush's budget sets aside $1 trillion for unspecified needs - like a national missile defense - over 10 years.
Critics say it won't cover looming expenses.

Christian Science Monitor
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2001
By Francine Kiefer (kieferf@csps.com)
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/17/fp2s2-csm.shtml

WASHINGTON - When President Bush goes on the road to sell his tax cut, he likes to tell his "grandmother" story.

It's one he heard from a woman in Council Bluffs, Iowa, when he was touring there earlier this year. The grandmother stood up and told him that she had baked a lot of cookies in her day, and that every time she set a plate of them on the table, they quickly disappeared.

Her point - as well as his - is that money left lying around in Washington will be spent. Which is why it's not surprising that when the president hands Congress a plate with $1 trillion on it, and no particular instructions on how to spend it, lawmakers are ready to finish the portion and demand seconds.

In this case, the plate of cookies is what's known as the contingency reserve - money set aside to cover unspecified needs and emergencies over the next 10 years. It's a highly novel approach to a budgeting process that usually allocates every penny to a specific program, and it's possible only because the United States is enjoying an unusual period of budget surpluses.

The reserve, a sort of rainy-day fund, clearly serves a political purpose: helping to sell the Bush tax cut as affordable. As the president likes to point out, his budget covers the country's everyday expenses, as well as puts money aside for unanticipated ones. Even after that, he says, "there's still money left over." Tax-cut money.

But critics of the president's budget say his rainy-day reserve is more like a bailing bucket with a hole - inadequate to handle the torrent of anticipated expenses ahead.

"If you look at the claims against this reserve, they are actually much larger than the reserve itself," says Richard Kogan, a budget specialist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington.

As outside experts go over the fine print of the budget, one week after its release, they point to a number of looming costs not covered by the contingency fund:

• A prescription-drug benefit. The White House designates $153 billion in its reserve for a limited drug benefit, called an "immediate helping hand." But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that a full drug benefit will cost at least $400 billion over 10 years. Neither Democrats nor Republicans on the Hill believe the Bush proposal is anywhere near adequate.

• Social Security. As Bush's own budget document points out, the nation's pension system is "unsustainable in the long run." To deal with that challenge, the president's budget adopts the now-conventional wisdom that money collected from Social Security payroll taxes should be spent exclusively on the retirement program - the so-called "lock box" principle. He also provides about $600 billion over 10 years for changes in the system.

But that's overshadowed by cost estimates of another Bush proposal. He advocates allowing workers to divert 2 percent of their 12.4 percent payroll tax to private retirement accounts - a move that would cost the government $1 trillion, according to some estimates.

• Defense spending. Because the president has ordered a sweeping review of the nation's military needs, the defense budget is hardly concrete. One item not budgeted for at all - neither in the reserve fund nor in the discretionary part of the budget - is a national missile-defense system, a big-ticket item high on the president's agenda. No one really knows how much it will cost, though "hundreds of billions" is the phrase most commonly used.

• Everything else - including the emergencies for which the contingency reserve was partly conceived: funds to help drought- or storm-plagued farmers, funds to help with natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes. It's impossible to predict exactly what such disasters could cost, but in the agricultural community alone, the federal government spent $25 billion in special assistance over the past three years.

So, can the reserve fund handle all these pressures?

"It isn't big enough," says Washington budget specialist Stan Collender flatly. "Next question?"

Not surprisingly, the White House disagrees. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell Daniels acknowledges that looming problems like Social Security and Medicare could easily swamp projected surpluses - the very surpluses that feed the contingency fund. But he says these costs can be tamed by reforming the programs.

The reserve fund can accommodate social spending, defense, and agriculture, "if you don't let discretionary spending run wild in the meantime," says Mr. Daniels.

And that, of course, is the challenge when you hand Congress a plate of cookies labeled "contingency fund."

• Staff writer Dante Chinni contributed to this report.

-------- norway

Norway's nuclear sewage used as fertiliser

BBC NEWS
Tuesday, 17 April, 2001,
From: aiindex@mnet.fr

Radioactive waste from a nuclear reactor in Norway has been wrongly fed into a town's sewage system for nine years, some of it ending up as farm fertiliser, officials revealed on Tuesday.

The nuclear waste from the research plant was pumped into the sewers in Halden, south-east Norway, after what amounted to a plumbing mistake.

The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) said the waste water was wrongly linked to the sewage system when it should have been pumped straight into the sea.

But officials insist there has been no risk to human health - even though some of the sewage sludge was turned into fertiliser - as the nuclear material had only very low levels of radioactivity.

Ecologists are demanding radiation tests for local farmers.

"It is frightening that IFE has so little control over its emissions," said nuclear physicist Nils Boehmer of campaign group Bellona.

The mistake was made in 1991 and was not rectified until 1999.

NRPA scientist Sverre Hornkjoel said the contaminated water had been used to cool the 42-year-old reactor, operated by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE).

He blamed the mistake on council officials, but said the nuclear industry took final responsibility.

"The municipality made the howler, but it is still IFE which is responsible," Mr Hornkjoel said. "In principle, this is a serious incident, but the emissions were very small."

The plant at Halden is part of an international project to test fuel rods, run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

IFE spokesman Viktor Wikstroem said the cooling water had undergone tests before leaving the reactor, and was below the safety limit.

"Our annual emissions are 4,000 times lower than what you and I and everyone are exposed to each year," Mr Wikstroem said.

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

Press Luncheon: Where Will Bush Set the Nuclear Trigger?
Experts Evaluate Options for President's Nuclear Policy

US Newswire
17 Apr 10:14
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0417-111.html

To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor
Contact: Paul Fain or
Rich Hayes, 202-223-6133,
both of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

News Advisory: Current U.S. nuclear weapons policy is both obsolete and dangerous. Thousands of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stand ready to launch at a moment's notice. Yet a preemptive Russian "bolt from the blue" is no longer a realistic threat. A mistaken Russian launch due to a false warning of attack is a far greater threat to U.S. security.

Congress and the Bush administration both see the need for change. Congress required the new administration to conduct a full review of U.S. nuclear policy, which the White House expects to complete this summer. The review, which will determine U.S. nuclear policy, posture, and arsenal size, will have serious implications for global security. Come hear experts in the field discuss the major issues at stake, including:

-- At whom does the United States target its nuclear weapons, and why? -- What country is the biggest threat: the faltering Russian Bear, North Korea, China? -- How does national missile defense fit into future U.S. policy? -- How many nuclear weapons does the United States need and must they be on alert? -- Should future U.S.-Russian arms reductions be binding or carried out informally? -- Should U.S. nuclear weapons be used to deter chemical and biological weapon threats?

WHAT: Press briefing on U.S. nuclear policy (sandwiches and drinks will be served)

WHO: Bruce Blair, president, Center for Defense Information and former Air Force missile launch officer

Tom Collina, global security director, Union of Concerned Scientists

Steve Fetter, professor of public affairs, University of Maryland, and participant in 1994 Clinton administration nuclear posture review

WHEN: 12:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 18, 2001

WHERE: Union of Concerned Scientists 1707 H Street, N.W. -- Sixth Floor (across from the Metropolitan Club) Washington, D.C.

NOTE: This briefing is for journalists only.

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

Learning What Fuel to Burn

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By BURTON RICHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/opinion/17RICH.html

STANFORD, Calif. - Like nearly all scientists, I believe that global warming is the most serious environmental threat on the horizon for our grandchildren, and that carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning is a major contributor to it. Yet I agree with President Bush that we must go slow on regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. That is why we have to fall back on research on alternative energy sources and on energy conservation - the two approaches that will help us achieve some reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in the near term. But Mr. Bush's proposed budget cuts for research and conservation move in precisely the wrong direction.

It is clear that the earth's temperatures are rising, and world energy use is projected to double in the next 50 years, making the problem much worse. But something else is also evident: We are simply not ready to regulate carbon dioxide from power plants - the leading source of industrial carbon dioxide emissions. There is no technology to do it with our present mix of fuels, despite the fervent wish of many environmentalists. What we need instead is a long-term strategy to reduce the use of carbon-based fuels.

Only nuclear power generation, which does not emit carbon dioxide, is available now as a large-scale alternative. Hydropower and wind and geothermal energy are clean but naturally limited. Biomass energy from growing and burning plants emits no net carbon dioxide (carbon in the plant comes from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), but will be limited by the availability of water for growing crops. Solar energy is useful at the moment only for small- scale applications because no practical system yet exists for storing it for use at night or in bad weather. Natural gas, more efficient at producing energy than coal, is currently in short supply.

Given these existing constraints, government should support research and development of new ways of producing and using energy - more efficient power sources for transportation, like fuel cells, for example; carbon-free energy sources, like more advanced nuclear power plants and effective solar power systems; underground gasification of coal. We should also be promoting efficiency regulations on things that use energy - for example, air conditioners. The Bush administration's decision to reduce air conditioner efficiency goals last week was a senseless reversal.

The president has also promised a long-term energy strategy, and it is in the long term that the government can make a greater difference. The fundamental, harder job is to tilt the economic playing field in our market economy to make carbon-free energy more attractive to both producers and consumers. The genius of the market system lies in its ability to mobilize the best of our industrial capacity to pursue new approaches in the hope of economic gain.

A sensible way to tilt the field is with a carbon tax that would decrease the profits of users of carbon- based fuels and increase them for users of alternatives. An added excise tax on vehicles based on their fuel efficiency would also help achieve this goal. In fact, expanded economic incentives, like tax breaks, for the deployment of more efficient systems of all types would help us move faster toward curbing our dependence on carbon- based fuels.

Some say such policies would damage our economy. I doubt it. Some businesses would be hurt, but when the automobile replaced the horse, livery stables, blacksmiths and buggy manufacturers were hurt while the economy boomed. But in a democracy like ours, it is hard to do anything that goes against vested interests until a crisis is upon us.

The scientific community knows the global warming crisis is here, and the longer we wait the harder it becomes to fix the problem. The effects will be felt more strongly by our grandchildren than by us, and they are too young to do anything about it. It will require effective political leadership to get us moving in the right direction. Mr. Bush's cuts for both conservation and research on carbon-free energy are not a good sign. The government needs to reverse course before more crucial time is lost.

Burton Richter, director emeritus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1976.

---

Need for nuclear is passé

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 03:09 AM ET
By Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-04-17-ncoppf.htm

The nuclear industry wants to resuscitate its product. Sorry - it already died of an incurable attack of market forces.

Overwhelmed by huge construction and repair costs, the industry achieved less than 1/10th the capacity and 1/100th the new orders that proponents predicted, the greatest disappointment in industrial history. Only centrally planned energy systems (Russia, Taiwan, the Koreas, Japan) still propose nuclear plants.

"If a thing is not worth doing," said economist John Maynard Keynes, "it is not worth doing well." Even ignoring risks - proliferation, waste storage and disposal, and uninsurable accidents - nuclear power is uncompetitive and unnecessary.

After a trillion-dollar taxpayer investment, the energy delivered to consumers by nuclear power is little more than that delivered by wood and waste. Globally, nuclear power produces less energy than renewables. In the 1990s, its capacity rose by 1% a year vs. 17% for solar cells and 24% for wind power.

Enthusiasts claim hypothetical new reactors might deliver a kilowatt-hour of electricity for 6 cents vs. 10-plus cents for post-1980 plants. (Nearly 3 cents pays for delivery to customers.) But super-efficient gas plants or wind farms cost 5 cents to 6 cents; co-generation of heat and power often 1 cent to 5 cents. The cost of saving a kilowatt-hour through efficient lights, motors and other electricity-saving devices is under 2 cents. They're all getting cheaper. So are the next winners: fuel cells and solar cells - where a pound of silicon can produce more electricity than a pound of nuclear fuel.

Efficient use is the nation's largest and fastest-growing energy source: bigger than oil, growing 3.1% a year. Just electricity efficiency can save four times' nuclear power's output, at one-sixth its operating cost.

Those faster, cheaper, safer options emit little or no pollution, and most are climate-safe. But replacing power from coal-fired plants with nuclear power, as usually proposed, is the least-effective solution to global warming. Why? Suppose delivering a new nuclear kilowatt-hour cost 6 cents, while saving a kilowatt-hour through efficient use cost 3 cents (both assumptions favorable to the nuclear power industry). Then the 6 cents spent on the nuclear kilowatt-hour could instead have saved two kilowatt-hours through efficiency investments. That's a two-for-one savings.

Nuclear salesmen scour the world for a single order; makers of alternatives enjoy brisk business. Let's profit from their experience. Taking markets seriously, not propping up failed technologies at public expense, offers a stable climate, a prosperous economy and a cleaner and more peaceful world.

Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins are co-CEOs of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

---

Nuclear power earns fresh look, despite past woes

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 03:08 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-04-17-nceditf.htm

On the surface, nuclear power has had a bad couple of decades. The last permit for a new power plant was issued in 1979. The last new plant went online in 1996. Because of attrition, the number of reactors in service has fallen almost 10% in the past decade.

Yet despite that, the amount of energy generated by those plants has been increasing quietly to almost 20% of the nation's total supply today, from 11% in 1979, with hardly a peep about health or safety problems. So despite some raised eyebrows, the Bush administration is on the right track in reviving nuclear as a potential energy source.

Vice President Cheney, who is fashioning an energy policy due next month, is already championing a return to nuclear power. While several questions would need answers first, the current energy crunch proves the nation needs more power. Why not give nuclear a new hearing?

The debate has been largely foreclosed since 1979, when a reactor at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island leaked radioactive steam into the atmosphere. And it was hammered shut after the 1986 meltdown at the Soviet Union's crude Chernobyl reactor, an event that killed 40 and exposed hundreds of thousands more to harmful radiation levels.

For all of that, with shortages causing energy prices to spike, the United States cannot afford to reject any potential source of safe, clean, affordable power. And although the nuclear industry still has much to prove and much to live down, it also has made considerable progress toward resolving at least a few of its worst first-generation problems.

Among them was the lack of uniformity among power-plant designs. Unlike France, Canada and other nations, the United States imposed few limits on reactor design. This allowed American utilities to custom-build their plants, with calamitous results.

Because each plant was different, operators were unable to share the cost of training personnel or of developing expensive modifications. Federal regulators meanwhile were swamped by the variety. Costs skyrocketed, and amid constant stories about construction flaws, unreliable federal oversight and inadequate safety design, public confidence plummeted.

The learning curve has been steep and punishing: 22 plants closed since 1971; plans for 124 others canceled. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the industry rarely ran above 60% of capacity, and investors, taxpayers and ratepayers shelled out billions for partially built plants that were abandoned, and finished plants that never went online.

Today, though, remaining plants are running at almost 90% capacity and producing energy at just over half the cost of natural gas, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby. And they do so while producing virtually none of the gases that cause climate change. This makes them, like alternative energy sources such as the sun and wind, an attractive alternative to plants that burn dirty, costly fossil fuels.

The industry has had less success with its other major millstone: waste disposal. Nuclear plants have generated about 35,000 tons of radioactive waste, most of it stored at the plants in special pools or canisters. But the plants are running out of room, and even if approval is granted this year, a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada won't open for a decade or more while construction and permitting are completed. Still to be resolved are questions about the transportation of waste, Yucca's capacity and what to do in the interim.

Anxiety over storing spent fuel (which can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years), combined with lingering fears of a catastrophic accident, continues to inspire strong resistance to nuclear plants. Even in California, where energy prices are jumping 50%, a recent Los Angeles Times poll found opposition to more nuclear power plants running almost 2 to 1.

In response, the industry points out that other industries are even more dangerous. No one has ever died as a result of an accident at an American nuclear power plant. But 54,000 have died in civil-aviation plane crashes. Whether such comparisons are fair or not, the fact remains that since 1979, the industry has had an admirable, even enviable, safety record.

Ultimately, of course, the marketplace will decide when nuclear energy returns to favor. And it doesn't seem that will be any time soon. Construction costs are still far too high; it's cheaper and faster to build natural-gas plants. Any Bush plan will also need to fully address the waste issue. That's essential to any expansion of capacity. Still, the nation's energy demands invariably require a mix of energy sources, and there's no compelling reason nuclear shouldn't be a candidate.

------

Is nuclear power making a comeback in America?

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 07:23 PM ET
By John Omicinski, Gannett News Service
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-17-nukepower.htm

WASHINGTON - Condemned by greens and badly burned by the near-meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant in 1979, nuclear power has been politically incorrect - a no-no for decades, although it continues to provide 20% of the nation's electricity.

But nuclear power's status as orphan child in the U.S. power family may be about to change.

As Californians prepare to swelter in the dark this summer because they lack power plants that should have been built years ago, other regions worry the ailment may be catching.

With national power demand likely to grow by 25% in the next decade, even groups as liberal as the Council on Foreign Relations suggest new nuclear power plants may be necessary to beef up the U.S. power grid.

"The impact of reactor accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (Ukraine 1986) may well be fading," says the CFR's Strategic Energy Policy, done in conjunction with the James A. Baker III Public Policy Institute at Rice University.

Total U.S. energy independence is unrealistic, says the report, and nuclear power would have the salutary side effect of countering OPEC's oil tyranny and reducing greenhouse gases.

Former Secretary of State Baker's connection with the study lends credence to widespread reports that Vice President Dick Cheney's energy panel will call for building many new nuclear plants. Cheney's energy policy study is likely to be released within a month.

Though he has made millions on oil, Cheney is an unabashed fan of nuclear power.

"I think it's one of the ways to deal with the whole question of global warming," Cheney said this month on NBC's "Meet the Press." About 65 power plants a year will have to built to match demand for power, Cheney said, "and some of those ought to be nuclear."

But Americans are split on using nuclear energy for power generation.

In a poll done March 5-7 by Gallup, 46% favored nuclear energy, 48% opposed. The same poll seven years ago saw 57% back nuclear power.

There are anomalies in the picture, however.

Vermont, considered a warren of rabid environmentalists, gets 86% of its electricity from nuclear plants, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. The next biggest nuclear users are South Carolina, at 56.7%; and New Hampshire, 52.2%.

The fiery Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents still have a strong hold on public perceptions, said Kathleen B. deBettencourt, director of the Environmental Literacy Council, so nuclear power still faces high hurdles.

"But with every rolling blackout, whether in California or New York, nuclear power will look more attractive," she said. High natural gas prices also will improve nuclear power's profile.

Enthusiasm for a revival of nuclear power is far from unanimous, however.

"Expanding nuclear capacity and exploiting domestic sources' oil and gas will not succeed in the long run," said former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, president of Citizens Energy Corp., in a dissent from the panel's report.

Politically, the question now may be "Who leads the 'Al Gore Greens?' "

Will the anti-utility movie "Erin Brockovich" spill over into real life the way Jane Fonda's "The China Syndrome" did? The latter, a story of an out-of-control meltdown, had a powerful effect on the nuclear debate, even though the core-seal worked well and no radioactivity was released in the Three Mile Island accident. As a result of anti-nuclear publicity and politicians' fear of discussing it, no nuclear power plant has been ordered since 1978.

That's a long time, and clear evidence of the psychological and financial damage that Three Mile Island and Chernobyl did to an energy movement that after World War II promised Americans clean, cheap energy in abundance - forever.

Engineering classes overflowed with students ready to get in on the ground floor of the Atomic Age.

But now, said the council's report, a "precipitous drop" in nuclear engineering students and program curtailments and shutdowns at some colleges and universities may retard any nuclear power comeback.

Some 103 nuclear power plants operate in the United States. And while energy analysts paid little attention - worrying more about the rising price of oil and natural gas - nuclear power has become more efficient, replacing about 11% of oil's place in the power spectrum.

The nuclear industry reports that, in 1999, it reached a milestone in power pricing when its costs dropped to 1.83 cents per kilowatt-hour, lower than coal's 2.07 cents and oil's 3.18 cents.

-------

'Atomic tourism' After New York Times report, can Oak Ridge be less than conscious?

Oak Ridger
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Richard D. Smyser
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/041701/opE_0417010034.html

Proud "muddy boot" veterans of Oak Ridge's earliest years who have resented and protested suggestions that our town should consciously soft-pedal its nuclear history;

The still relatively new Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association which in recent months has been raising local consciousness to the value of saving what remain of some of the more significant original community structures, like what once was the Wildcat Den at the Turnpike and Robertsville Road and the Alexander Motor Inn (originally Guest House);

Officials of the American Museum of Science and Energy who, despite the excising of "Atomic Energy" from the museum's name years ago, have continued to emphasize local nuclear history in museum exhibits-- both nuclear plants and the town;

Selma Shapiro who has also been a stalwart for saving our past at her unique Children's Museum in its own historic building -- the former Highland View Elementary School -- up off West Outer Drive;

Joe Valentino, who though relatively new as director of the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau has enthusiastically sensed the tourism possibilities in Oak Ridge's rightful designation as one of the prime locations of what has now been hailed as the greatest event of the 20th century -- the coming of the nuclear age;

And The Oak Ridger in numerous news articles and editorials (and, modestly, columns) too:

All of the above take a bow. You have been ahead of your time, if that can properly be said of those who have been prescient in recognizing the contemporary value in what happened here now getting close to 60 years ago.

Timely and prestigious Exhibit A of this foresight: The front page of the Saturday, April 7, New York Times which features an article headlined "Preserving the Birthplaces of the Atom Bomb" and written by Patricia Leigh Brown.

Times writer Brown details the growing efforts, led significantly by federal government officials themselves, to assure that the sites where the World War II urgent Manhattan Project happened are not just saved but as nearly as possible made available for public visits, granted that some are still dangerously contaminated. She quotes Dr. F.G. Gosling, the Department of Energy's chief historian: "The department realized that if no one stepped in, we would essentially eliminate the physical property of the Manhattan Project."

The Times article also quotes Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb": "Many people think that the Manhattan Project was 30 people building a bomb at Los Alamos, but it was 150,000 -- an effort comparable at the time to the race to the moon. It's our past. Not to preserve it is to censor it."

At very least half of Rhodes' "150,000" were here in Oak Ridge, the community's population peaking at 75,000 at the height of plant and community construction here in 1944 and 1945.

Much emphasis in the Times article is on preserving the B reactor at the Hanford site in Washington. This is the reactor that produced the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb, the second to be dropped on Japan (Aug. 9, 1945), the double blow just three days apart ending World War II. The Times also mentions the proposal to designate "a fragment of the building in Oak Ridge that provided uranium isotopes for the Hiroshima bomb (Aug. 6, 1945)."

This would be near the East Portal to the Y-12 Plant area where, through the electromagnetic process, E.O. Lawrence's powerful calutrons produced that crucial U-235 in the early months of 1945.

The B reactor at Hanford would never have existed, of course, but for what likely is the pioneer nuclear historic preservation site -- the Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory which, talk about being ahead of its time, has been open to visitors as a National Historic Landmark for 30-plus years.

This was the pilot project which, after completion in less than a year, went critical in November 1943 and signaled the feasibility of proceeding with the reactors at Hanford.

The Times article says Keith A. Klein, manager of DOE's Richland office, estimates $10 million beyond the current cleanup costs at Hanford to make the B reactor "museum ready."

And while U.S Sen. Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, is a proponent ("I don't want the country to forget what it took to win a war and what this community gave up to win it"), U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat of neighboring Oregon, told the Times, "I don't see how you can justify spending federal funds to preserve a facility at Hanford and elsewhere where close communities are still at risk."

As discussed at a meeting of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee just last week, also proposed by DOE for preservation is the so-called "Roosevelt Platform" at K-25 (Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant) from which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was to view K-25 on a visit never made because FDR died in April 1945, just four months before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Here also opposition has arisen. The Times quotes Ralph Hutchinson of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. Because of hazardous wastes there, Hutchinson says, a wiser commemoration "would be a green field and a marker."

Hutchinson's negative view to the contrary, the most currently locally significant aspect of Brown's Times report is her reference to the "growing interest in atomic tourism." On the Web, she writes, is atomictourist.com which "directs atom age buffs" to historic nuclear sites. And this summer, she reports, "the Smithsonian Institution is offering a tour of Manhattan Project landmarks in New Mexico."

Further, Brown writes, "The most compelling landmarks may be the Manhattan Project towns themselves. Like Richland (Wash.) and Los Alamos, Oak Ridge was once a top secret creation of the government omitted from maps until 1949. Today visitors can take 'atomic train' trips that start at the old guard station and offer scenic views of the K-25 Gaseous Diffu sion Building, an engineering marvel that spans over 44 acres."

The effort to save the B reactor at Hanford, Brown notes, has been spearheaded by the B Reactor Museum Association, many of whose members worked at Hanford.

Numerous former K-25, Y-12 and ORNL workers, of course, volunteer at Valentino's Oak Ridge Convention and Visitors Bureau's Visitors Center and at the American Museum of Science and Energy too. Friends of Oak Ridge National Laboratory has for several years now been providing guides for the museum's bus tours of the Y-12, ORNL and K-25 areas.

But in the name of "atomic tourism," might these volunteer numbers swell?

And sometime in the not too distant future -- and thanks significantly to earlier efforts and urgings of the local "atomic tourism" pioneers mentioned above -- might the Smithsonian Institution also be sponsoring tours of "Manhattan Project Landmarks in Tennessee"? -- RDS

Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger. You can reach him by e-mail at rdsandmps@aol.com

-------- connecticut

NRC to meet Dominion on missing fuel rods at Millstone

Excite News
April 17, 2001
Reuters
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010417/09/utilities-nrc-millstone

NEW YORK, April 17 - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said it will meet with Dominion (D) on April 23 to discuss the search for two spent nuclear fuel rods apparently missing at the Millstone 1 nuclear power plant in Waterford, Conn.

Dominion of Richmond, Va., recently took over ownership of the Millstone facility from Northeast Utilities (NU) of Berlin, Conn.

Late last year, Northeast Utilities reported that a review of records revealed two spent fuel rods, previously believed to have been stored in the spent fuel pool at the permanently shutdown Millstone 1 plant, could not be located.

Nuclear power plants use slender metal rods filled with enriched uranium pellets in the reactor to generate heat, which creates steam used to produce power. There are thousands of these rods in use in the reactor when it is in operation.

Upon its use in the reactor, the fuel is considered highly radioactive. Once removed from the reactor, it is placed in the spent fuel pool for storage.

In the case of Millstone 1, the apparently missing rods are about a half-inch in diameter and 158 inches long.

Northeast Utilities launched a search for the fuel rods, including visual inspections of storage racks in the circulating-water spent fuel pool using remote-controled cameras, personnel interviews and a further review of records. The company also formed an independent review team to augment its investigation.

But so far the company has not been able to find the rods, NRC said in a statement issued late Monday.

When Northeast Utilities announced the rods were missing, several environmental and community groups, which have opposed nuclear power and Millstone in particular, used the loss as another example of why the station should be permanently shut.

Northeast Utilities has a long history of nuclear problems that began in the mid-1990s when Millstone 1 was shut in 1995.

By 1996, regulators had closed all of Northeast Utilities nuclear reactors (Maine Yankee and Millstone units 2 and 3) except Seabrook in New Hampshire because of safety concerns.

Finally, after absorbing about $1 billion in power replacement costs associated with the Millstone shutdown and a record-setting $2.1 million fine, Northeast Utilities was allowed to restart Millstone units 2 and 3 in 1998 and 1999.

In an effort to spur competition, Northeast Utilities was required to sell its stake in all of its generating facilities, including the nuclear reactors, as part of the deregulation of the electricity industry in New England.

Dominion, which helped Northeast Utilities restart Millstone units 2 and 3, bought the entire complex for $1.28 billion earlier this month.

In addition to Millstone, Dominion also operates the North Anna and Surry nuclear stations in Virginia.

Scott DiSavino, New York Power Desk, +212-859-1622, fax +212-859-1758, e-mail scott.disavino+reuters.com

-------- georgia

Plutonium fuel scoping meeting

Savannah Morning News
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Community calendar
http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/smn/stories/041701/LOCcalendar.shtml

April 18

Will be held from 7-10 p.m. at the Coastal Georgia Center, 305 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Meeting is required by law to gather input on the scope of what should be considered in an environmental impact statement on transporting and using plutonium as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors and making this fuel at a facility on the Savannah River. Call: (912) 201-0354.

-------- kentucky
Both sides see gains in DOE site ruling
A federal judge said workers' compensation laws usually immunize employers from negligence claims. But there are other aspects.

The Paducah Sun
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11150.htm

Paducah, Kentucky - Lawyers disagree on the significance of a federal judge's ruling barring current and former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers from suing their employers for job exposure to radiation and toxins.

Lead defense lawyer Bob Tait of Columbus, Ohio, called the decision a big victory for former plant contractors Union Carbide and Martin Marietta (later Lockheed Martin), while plaintiffs' attorney Bill McMurry of Louisville described it as a setback that shouldn't change the ultimate outcome of the case.

On March 30, U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley Jr. threw out the claims because state workers' compensation laws generally immunize primary employers from negligence arising from regular business. Although one notable exception is a deliberate intent to hurt workers, there was no basis for that claim in the Paducah case, the judge wrote.

"The allegations ... even if true, are insufficient to invoke the exception," the ruling said.

Tait, who represents the contractors in several similar suits in Paducah, said defense attorneys will seek to apply McKinley's ruling in those cases.

"It's a very significant development to the extent that it establishes, as a matter of law, that these former employees can't sue their employers," Tait said. "In a nutshell, what that means is that anyone who worked for both Union Carbide and Martin Marietta is essentially no longer a plaintiff in the case as it deals with that particular defendant."

Tait said the decision does not apply to a whistle-blower lawsuit because it claims an entirely different premise. That suit, which touched off a Washington Post expose and Justice Department investigation, alleges plant contractors conspired to defraud the federal government by obtaining huge performance fees while covering up worker and public exposure.

In his ruling, McKinley denied other defense motions to dismiss claims, including one that time had run out. Those victories give the plaintiffs confidence to still win the case, McMurry said.

"The most significant result, in our opinion, is the court's refusal to grant the defendants' motion to dismiss based on the statute of limitations ...," he said. "Obviously, that (workers' compensation law ruling) is disappointing, but at the same time, we firmly believe that Union Carbide (and other contractors) will ultimately be held accountable for their misconduct, whether or not it's their own employees who are compensated."

The negligence suit, filed in Paducah in 1999 a few months after the whistle-blower action, seeks $10 billion on behalf of current and former workers at the plant, which enriches uranium for use in nuclear fuel. McMurry said the recent ruling does not bar claims against Union Carbide by Martin Marietta employees who never worked for Union Carbide. Carbide was the contractor at the plant from its opening in 1952 until 1984, when Martin Marietta took over.

Tait agreed, but said there is only one defendant left in the action who worked for Martin Marietta and not Carbide.

The ruling also does not hinder claims against General Electric, DuPont and other firms for allegedly supplying highly radioactive feed material to the plant, or claims by workers' families against any of the defendants for "having been exposed to their material in their homes," McMurry said.

Workers' compensation laws generally immunize employers because injured or sick workers are entitled to benefits from employers or their insurance companies, Tait said.

Some cases, such as the late Joe Harding, who claimed he was poisoned by the plant, have resulted in paltry workers' compensation benefits. Plaintiffs' attorneys in similar suits have said that protecting employers against negligence claims is unfair because workers' compensation is generally inadequate.

---

Uranium plant workers can't sue their employer, judge says But ruling allows claims against other companies

Courier & Journal
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
By James Malone, The Courier-Journal
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2001/04/17/ke041701s13097.htm

PADUCAH, Ky. -- A federal judge has ruled that Kentucky's workers' compensation law bars uranium plant workers from suing their own employer under a $10 billion lawsuit against two former plant operators.

But U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley, in a 38-page ruling on the suit, denied motions to dismiss it, clearing the way for some present and former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers and their families to proceed against companies other than their employer that were involved in the plant's nuclear fuel work.

''It is a big step,'' William McMurry, a Louisville lawyer who helped file the class-action case in 1999, said yesterday. ''We're delighted.''

Workers have brought claims against the Paducah plant's two former operators, Union Carbide and Martin Marietta -- later Lockheed Martin -- and against a number of outside contractors, including General Electric and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., that shipped material to the Paducah plant.

The lawsuit alleged that workers were unknowingly exposed to radiation and ''assaulted'' by radioactive material brought to the plant as part of an ill-fated program to revitalize spent fuel taken from nuclear weapons reactors.

Under McKinley's ruling earlier this month, employees of Lockheed Martin, which operated the Paducah plant from 1984 to 1999, can pursue claims against Union Carbide, which operated the plant from 1952 to 1984, for dangerous or hazardous substances that were Union Carbide's responsibility. The plant now is operated by U.S. Enrichment Corp.

But the ruling appears to close the door on the claims of workers who were employed by both companies, or those who worked for Union Carbide and left before Lockheed Martin took over. However, McMurry said they may still have claims against outside firms that manufactured, processed or shipped reprocessed radioactive fuel to Paducah.

Lockheed Martin spokesman Hugh Burns said he had not seen the ruling and did not have a comment on it. A Union Carbide spokesman could not be reached.

Government reports have acknowledged the spent fuel sent to Paducah contained highly radioactive traces of plutonium and neptunium that escaped or leaked into the environment during the process to clean and replenish the fuel.

The plutonium and neptunium collected in workplace dust and debris and possibly was tracked home on workers' clothing, exposing family members.

Plant contractors knew about the dangers and concealed it from workers, the suit alleged. But McKinley ruled that absent evidence such concealment was deliberate, the workers' argument was insufficient to allow their claims to proceed.

McMurry said it's unclear how many workers might be affected by the ruling, but he conceded the number of claims would be reduced.

In another part of his ruling, McKinley overruled defense arguments that a one-year statute of limitations barred claims. The defendants said they told workers about the radiation dangers in the early 1990s, but the workers disputed that.

McKinley said the primary issue in the case ''is the extent of the parties' respective knowledge of the exposure -- and those facts are very much in dispute here.''

-------- minnesota

Coolling towers at Xcel Energy's Prairie Island Nuclear Plant in Red Wing, Minn., are surrounded by the flood waters of the Mississippi River
The river expected to crest Wednesday.

Tuesday, April 17, 2001.
(AP Photo/Jim Mone)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20010417/us/midwest_floods_mp103.html
-------- tennessee

UT-Battelle seeks safeguard against nuclear liability

Oak Ridger
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/041701/new_0417010015.html

CHATTANOOGA -- The University of Tennessee and its partner in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory want some help from Congress in protecting their assets if fined for violating nuclear safety regulations.

The university and Battelle Memorial Institute, both nonprofit institutions, have run the laboratory in a partnership since last April and would be liable for any fines levied by the Department of Energy.

Currently, seven nonprofit groups are exempted from such fines by law. A UT-Battelle spokesman earlier this year had indicated that the nonprofit company was included in that exemption. However, the spokesman said today that is not the case, and extension of the exemption status to include UT-Battelle is being sought. Battelle and UT are lobbying to be included in that legislation.

Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, is trying to remove those exemptions, but his proposed amendment would cap their liability for fines.

Alan Parker, UT's deputy general counsel, said the argument for a cap is simple. Not-for-profits make less money than for-profits, he said.

"Primarily, I think the argument is you don't want to subject the assets of Battelle and the University of Tennessee to potentially very large civil penalties," Battelle associate general counsel Guy Cunningham said.

Lawmakers have talked about limiting the size of fines for nonprofits to the incentive fees they are paid above the costs of running the laboratories. The General Accounting Office argues that nonprofit groups should not be exempt because they get incentive fees.

UT-Battelle receives $7 million for running ORNL.

-------- us nuc waste

Amendment would add DOE waste to that allowed in proposed West Texas dump

Apr. 17, 2001 at 22:51 CDT
By The Associated Press
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:STATE34/1:STATE340417101.html

AUSTIN -- An amendment approved Tuesday in the Senate Natural Resources Committee would allow the U.S. Department of Energy to ship low-level radioactive waste to a proposed dump in West Texas.

Sen. Teel Bivins, R-Amarillo, pushed through the amendment to a proposal by Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, that would set up a dump in agreement with a compact involving Texas, Maine and Vermont.

"The reality of this issue is that a compact waste site is not economically viable on its own," Bivins said, explaining why his amendment added the federal agency. "You've got to have a greater waste stream."

Bivins' amendment calls for the federal site to be separate, at least a quarter-mile, from the compact site.

"The responsible thing to do is have a compact site," Duncan said. "Members will have to make a decision whether we actually need this federal waste to make the compact work. I believe we don't. There are those who believe we do."

"We entered the compact many years ago for the purpose of limiting" the amount of waste, Duncan said. He said the amendment "opens the door to not limiting it."

Bivins said his proposal allows the importation of low-level radioactive waste. Duncan said the amendment would allow hazardous waste and low-level radioactive waste.

Bivins' amendment specifies that the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission would decide on limits for the federal waste, taking into consideration such factors as risk to humans and the environment.

Bivins said the risk from the federal waste could be no greater than the risk from the compact waste.

"The problem is that compact waste in many cases is very compact and pretty highly radioactive," Bivins said. He said "a great majority of the DOE waste is dirt that is very low in radioactivity."

"My goal has been simply to provide a compact waste site because that takes care of all of our problems in Texas and it honors our commitment to Maine and Vermont," Duncan said.

Duncan said he had made it clear to Bivins' office that he was concerned the amendment could interfere with getting the compact approved this year.

Bivins said the issue isn't new. "This has been around for two sessions."

The comittee passed Duncan's bill 4-0 and Bivins' amendment 3-1, with Duncan casting the only no vote.

The bill's next move would be to the full Senate.

--------

Changes Studied After WIPP Mixup

Albuquerque Journal
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
The Associated Press
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/307523news04-17-01.htm

CARLSBAD - The U.S. Department of Energy is looking at how shipments to a federal nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad are inspected after a misidentified waste container arrived at the dump.

The container was one of 14 inside three large shipping casks sent from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory on March 24 to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

The container held graphite debris, which is allowed to be stored at WIPP. Repository officials, however, expected it to carry materials from a light-metals waste stream.

Kerry Watson, assistant manager of the DOE's Carlsbad field office, said Friday that the container would remain at WIPP because its contents already had been identified and the proper information on it could be obtained.

Watson said the current state permit that covers such hazardous waste might have to be changed but that no request for modification would be done until further evaluation.

The error occurred in Idaho, where workers did not catch a one-number difference in container identification numbers, Watson said.

"The checks that are required to be done (at WIPP) were done," he said. Regulatory authorities were notified and the Idaho lab filed paperwork necessary to begin assessing the mixup, he said.

WIPP, which opened in March 1999, stores materials contaminated from contact with plutonium during defense research, such as laboratory gloves, protective clothing, residues and equipment from nuclear labs. The waste is stored 2,150 feet underground in rooms excavated in ancient salt formations east of Carlsbad.


-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Colombia plunging into 'barbarity' - ombudsman

04/17/2001
By Amira Abultaif
Reuters
http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20010417_3874.html

BOGOTA, Colombia, April 17 (Reuters) - Colombia's government-appointed ombudsman accused far-right militias on Tuesday of plunging the country into "barbarism" after gunmen slaughtered 40 peasants during an Easter raid, torturing some and slicing one woman open with a chain saw.

In one of the worst massacres of civilians this year in Colombia's long-running war, gunmen of the outlawed Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known here as the AUC, stormed the remote town of Naya in southern Cauca Province and killed the civilians because they suspected them of aiding leftist rebels.

Ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes, speaking to reporters after visiting the town some 240 miles (400 km) southwest of Bogota, described a horrifying scene of mutilated bodies. He told of a 17-year-old girl whose arms had been chopped off.

"One woman had her abdomen ripped open with a chain saw," said Cifuentes, whose role is to monitor human rights issues. "We have returned to the most barbaric era. ... Some of the bodies showed signs of torture and some had their throats sliced."

"These signs show us the absolute degradation of the conflict and the depth of tragedy suffered by part of the Colombian people,"

Families who fled the village on foot and on mule spoke of neighbors who had been tortured and killed.

TWO MILLION DISPLACED PEOPLE

Colombia is locked in a 37-year-old war pitting Marxist guerrillas against the army and the AUC. About 40,000 people -- mostly civilians -- have been killed in fighting in the past 10 years alone. Two million others have been forced to flee their homes.

The Naya massacre also drew condemnation from the state security forces, which human rights groups charge have links to the 8,000-member AUC. The groups charge the military has allowed the AUC to wage a dirty war against the rebels.

"I think, and pardon my language, that these people have orgasms when they kill," Army Gen. Francisco Rene Pedraza told El Espectador daily.

In a separate massacre, hundreds of FARC rebels on Easter Sunday stormed the village of La Caucana in northwestern Antioquia province and killed 28 people after accusing them of collaborating with the AUC, local authorities.

The 17,000-member Marxist-inspired FARC, which stands for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is the hemisphere's largest rebel force.

In Geneva, United Nations human rights chief Mary Robinson on Tuesday condemned the rising number of massacres by both rebels and the AUC against civilians and called on the government to tackle "alarming" links between paramilitary groups and members of the state security forces.

----

Colombia Rebels in Attack

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/world/17COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, April 16 - Hundreds of leftist guerrillas stormed a village controlled by far-right militias on Sunday in an attack that left nine people dead and four others wounded, the authorities said today.

Houses and cars were burned in the raid at the village, La Caucana, in Antioquia Province. The government attributed the raid to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Col. Jairo Ovalle of the army said 400 rebels were in the attack. The rebels said villagers had collaborated with the militias, who had fled to the mountains, Colonel Ovalle said.

Colombia is locked in a 37-year war that has killed nearly 40,000 people in the last decade. The conflict pits leftist rebels against the army and outlawed right-wing militias.

Peace talks between the government and the 17,000-member rebel force have failed to end the conflict.

---

Busloads of oil workers feared kidnapped

USA Today
04/17/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-17-oil-workers.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Suspected leftist rebels intercepted buses carrying about 100 oil employees of a U.S.-owned oil company in Colombia and appear to have abducted the workers, officials said Monday.

The workers are Colombian employees of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, said Jose Munoz, chief of the DAS state security agency in eastern Arauca state.

The rebel National Liberation Army, or ELN, was suspected of stopping the buses carrying workers home from the Cano Limon oil field, Colombia's second-largest field, Munoz told The Associated Press.

Company officials in Bogota were not available for comment. The ELN had not claimed responsibility.

In a radio interview, the army commander in the region near Colombia's eastern border with Venezuela, Gen. Carlos Lemos, said the convoy of eight vehicles were intercepted about 10 miles outside the state capital, also called Arauca.

Troops and warplanes were trying to track down the buses, the general added.

The ELN, active in the area, has carried out mass abductions before to raise ransoms and to pressure the government for concessions in peace talks.

Guerrillas frequently bomb pipelines as part of an extortion scheme and to protest what they call foreign exploitation of Colombia's natural resources.

The Cano Limon field, operated jointly by Occidental and Colombia's Ecopetrol state oil company, has been dormant since February as a result of more than 60 pipeline bombings since January.

When fully operating, the field produces about 120,000 barrels of crude oil daily.

-------- drug war

Panel requests longer jail terms

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/17/01
Jerry Seper THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010417-39767400.htm

The U.S. Sentencing Commission has called for increased penalties for high-dollar fraud offenders, sexual predators and drug smugglers who deal in Ecstasy and methamphetamine as sanctions that will go into effect in November absent action by Congress.

The commission also voted for stiffer penalties for those convicted of money laundering, agreeing to link underlying criminal conduct to the sentencing process.

The new guidelines were made public yesterday.

Commissioners said they placed a priority on economic crimes, with the commission passing new amendments to consolidate existing guidelines on theft, fraud, tax offenses and property destruction to increase the penalties for high-dollar frauds or thefts and to reduce unwarranted sentencing disparity.

"The economic crime amendments result from several years of extensive research conducted by the Sentencing Commission in which the experience of countless professionals was consulted," said commission Chairman Judge Diana E. Murphy. "Because approximately 20 percent of all federal defendants are subject to these economic guidelines, it was especially important that we address this area."

In approving the new package of amendments involving economic crimes, the commission conducted numerous interviews with public officials, and gathered testimony from expert witnesses.

Under the new guidelines, a person convicted in a $500,000 investment fraud would be subject to a sentence as high as 63 months compared to a sentence as low as 27 months under the old guidelines.

The commission, in taking action to stiffen the penalties for money laundering, agreed to link the underlying criminal misconduct that generated the laundered funds. Commission officials noted, for example, that a money launderer convicted of laundering $94,000 from the sale of 5 kilograms of cocaine would now received a sentence of 151 to 188 months compared to the old guideline numbers of 63 to 78 months.

The commission also adopted guidelines related to the Protection of Children from Sexual Predators Act of 1998, voting to increase the penalties in any case in which the defendant engaged in a "pattern of activity involving the sexual abuse or exploitation of a minor."

The new guidelines, according to the commission, target high-risk sex offenders who are convicted of sexual abuses and have a prior felony conviction for sexual abuse.

In response to the Ecstasy Anti-proliferation Act of 2000, the commission voted for a permanent amendment that would increase the guideline sentence for trafficking Ecstasy a party drug that has become very popular among young users. The new amendment increases the sentence for trafficking 800 pills by 300 percent from 15 months to five years. It increases the penalty for selling 8,000 pills from 41 months to 10 years.

"The commission shares Congress´ concern about the serious threat posed by the illegal importation, trafficking and use of Ecstasy and the danger this drug poses to the youth of America," said Judge Murphy. "For this reason, the commission has made responding to the directives contained in the Ecstasy Anti-Proliferation Act one of its highest priorities."

The commission also adopted an amendment that "more appropriately targets" felons who unlawfully enter the country, amended the sentencing guidelines for counterfeiting and enhanced the penalties involving acts of domestic terrorism.

An independent agency, the commission was organized in 1985 to develop a national sentencing policy for federal courts. Its sentencing guidelines structure the courts´ sentencing discretion to ensure that similar offenders who commit similar offenses receive similar sentences.

The commission must send its amendments to Congress by May 1. They take effect Nov. 1 unless Congress passes legislation disapproving them.

-------- iran

Russia to press ahead with Iran nuclear plant

Planet Ark
RUSSIA: April 17, 2001
Story by Karl Emerick Hanuska
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10518

MOSCOW - New Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev committed Russia yesterday to completing work on Iran's Bushehr nuclear power station, but was non-committal on plans to build a second reactor there.

The United States, which opposes the sale of nuclear technology to what it considers a "rogue state", had expressed alarm at suggestions that Moscow could build more reactors for the Islamic republic.

"If we are lagging behind schedule on the construction of the first Bushehr nuclear power plant, then we will catch up," Rumyantsev, who replaced Yevgeny Adamov late last month, told a press conference.

"We must fulfil our contractual obligations," he said. The minister repeated Russia's view that the 1995 Bushehr contract did not violate Moscow's international treaty undertakings as the nuclear cooperation was of a strictly civilian nature.

Russian specialists were in talks on constructing a second reactor at Bushehr, he said. But Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying that "no documents have yet been signed".

Moscow analysts said Adamov had been sacked for his "excessive enthusiasm" in reaching deals with Iran, which only aggravated Russia's already fraught ties with the United States.

Washington has slammed Russian sales of nuclear technology to Iran and has cited potential nuclear proliferation to justify its desire build a $60 billion national missile defence shield that has been strongly denounced by Russia.

Russia insists it is only providing technology with civil uses, but the United States fears it will help Iran develop nuclear weapons. Rumyantsev said he expected both sides to find a compromise on the issue.

Washington has also sharply criticised Moscow's decision to ship nuclear fuel to India's Tarapur reactor, but Rumyantsev said Russia intended to build a nuclear power station on the sub-continent, despite international concerns.

"India is our strategic partner. We want to ensure that there are no reproaches (from the international community) in this regard," he said.

Rumyantsev, previously the head of one of Russia's top nuclear laboratories, also backed a plan to earn billions of dollars by importing nuclear waste for treatment.

He dismissed the fears of environmentalists by saying Russia had the technology to handle the waste safely and would earn substantial income from the work.

-------- poland

Poland unveils plan to modernize aircraft to meet NATO standards

Tuesday April 17, 11:34 PM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010417/1/n2og.html

Poland on Tuesday unveiled a multi-billion-dollar plan to replace its obsolete Soviet aircraft over the next five years with new fighter jets, cargo planes and helicopters that will meet NATO standards.

Defense Minister Bronislaw Komorowski confirmed that Poland has launched a tender for multi-role combat fighters to replace its aging MiG-21s in a contract worth up to 3.5 billion dollars (4.0 billion euros).

New transport aircraft and helicopters are also slated for purchase.

Poland will also have to modernize its air command management system in order to "fully integrate" it into NATO by 2006, said Komorowski.

Warsaw, which joined the defense alliance in 1999, also wants a NATO air command base to be located on its territory, he said.

The defense minister said the government needs to adopt a special law to finance the purchase of the combat aircraft, which will cost about 0.05 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) per year and should be fully paid for by 2015.

"The appeal for offers is for the purchase, lease or transfer of 16 aircraft by 2003 and purchase of another 44 aircraft in the following years," said Komorowski.

Poland should acquire 16 modern fighters before 2003 and 60 before 2006 to meet its commitments to NATO.

Information on the tender was sent to the US, French, British and Swedish governments.

Poland has received offers to lease or buy the US F-16, the British-Swedish Gripen and French Mirage 2000-5.

Poland's fleet of combat aircraft includes 114 obsolete MiG-21 and 99 Sukhoi SU 22 planes, and 22 MiG 29s that would require modernization to meet NATO standards.

Business and investment offsets offered by the aircraft manufacturers "will have an important impact on the choice" Poland makes, said the minister.

Bids are due by the end of May and the government hopes to make a selection by the end of July.

Poland also intends to negotiate with Spain's CASA on the purchase by 2006 of 6-10 of its C295M midsize transportation aircraft, said Komorowski.

A contract could be signed within two months if CASA agrees to privatise Poland's PZL-Okecie aviation company and make at least 200 million dollars of business offsets, he added.

Several Polish-built versions of the Russian AN28 small transport plane will also be purchased.

Military officials also said they hope to acquire large transport aircraft and Polish-built transport helicopters.

Poland will also modernize its air defense system, including deploying new anti-aircraft missiles, said officials.

-------- puerto rico

Study confirms damages by Navy in Vieques

From: "Cumpiano, Flavio" <cumpiano@hugheshubbard.com>

Press statement
April 17, 2001 from James W. Porter, Ph.D., Professor of Ecology, University of Georgia:

"Our ecological investigations on Vieques show destruction to coral reefs from bombing activity there. In addition, we have discovered the existence of thousands of barrels and compressed gas cylinders sunk onto the coral reefs of Vieques. We have now demonstrated that toxic substances are leaking from the underwater bombs, and that this toxic material is now found in living marine organisms on the reef. The containers are rusting and are fragile, but some are still intact. This sensitive environmental area lies within the bombing impact area, with the consequence that even so called "green" munitions can break them open. The risks posed to human and environmental health by any further disruption of this site are unacceptable".

For information on Dr. Porter's report, you may contact Paul Weiss (Office of Resident Commissioner Acevedo Vila) at (202) 321-4326 and (202) 225-5038.

San Juan, Puerto Rico - Revelan informe oculto sobre daños causados por la Armada miércoles, 18 de abril de 2001

Por Mildred Rivera El Nuevo Día

EL COMISIONADO residente en Washington, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, divulgóa yer los hallazgos de un estudio que evidencia daños a la vida marina de Vieques causados por los bombardeos, y denunció que el gobierno anterior sabía la información antes de aceptar la directriz presidencial y no la divulgó.

Además de los daños y la contaminación a los arrecifes de coral, fuente de alimento de los peces, el estudio constató la permanencia de bombas sin explotar y cilindros con contenido desconocido en el fondo del mar. Esto último podría provocar una explosión si son impactados mientras la Marina hace sus prácticas con balas vivas o inertes, aseguraron Acevedo Vilá y el profesor James Porter, quien hizo el estudio.

Acevedo Vilá le envió una carta al secretario de la Defensa, Donald Rumsfeld, alertándole sobre los hallazgos del estudio y reiterando la petición de que las prácticas militares se detengan hasta que finalicen los estudios de salud que hacen el Gobierno de Puerto Rico y el de Estados Unidos. Copia de la carta se le envió a la directora de la Agencia Federal de Protección Ambiental (EPA por sus siglas en inglés), Christine Todd Whittman; al secretario de Salud, Tommy Thompson; y al secretario del gabinete presidencial, Andrew Card. Las prácticas están pautadas para iniciar el 27 de abril.

La investigación, que costó $28,000, fue parte de los preparativos que hizo la pasada administración para demandar al Gobierno federal para detener los bombardeos. La misma le fue encomendada a Porter, profesor de la Universidad de Georgia, por el ex secretario de Justicia, José Fuentes Agostini.

PORTER, QUE acompañó a Acevedo Vilá en la conferencia de prensa ofrecida ayer, confirmó la información y aseguró que después de entregar los resultados de su estudio al Gobierno de Puerto Rico, Fuentes Agostini le dijo que no podía hablar sobre el mismo con nadie.

Acevedo Vilá señaló que en el Departamento de Justicia no hay evidencia alguna del contrato para hacer el estudio ni de los resultados. Explicó que mediante su oficina se enteró del estudio cuando buscaban más información sobre Vieques y que su ayudante Paul Weiss contactó al investigador.

Porter, profesor de Ecología y Ciencias Marinas en la Universidad de Georgia, indicó que fue contratado por Fuentes Agostini entre marzo y abril de 1999 y entregó el primer informe preliminar el 6 de diciembre de ese año. El 16 de febrero, Porter informó de sus hallazgos mediante carta al ex gobernador Pedro Rosselló. La directriz presidencial se emitió el 31 de enero de 2000.

El estudioso explicó que visitó Vieques dos veces durante su análisisy que encontró daños a los arrecifes de coral, que eran más serios mientras más cerca del área de tiro de la Marina se encontraban.

Porter dijo que en un lado de las barcazas había 100 barriles y en el otro había más de 1,000. Aunque no estudió el contenido de esos barriles, Porter dijo que algunos estaban abiertos y otros estaban filtrando, y que eso podía ser material tóxico.

EL PORTAVOZ de la Marina, Jeff Gordon, dijo que el informe sobre los daños ambientales que causan los bombardeos en Vieques "es interesante" y afirmó que hace un año le solicitó a Porter copia dele studio.

"El profesor no ha compartido los estudios con la Marina. Nadie quiere compartir los estudios con la Marina", se quejó.

Gordon agregó que "el área de tiro (de la Marina) es sólo el 3% de (el terreno de) Vieques y ha sido blanco de tiro por 60 años". Asimismo aseguró que la Marina está trabajando con la EPA para cumplir con los estándares federales.

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

Annan says Angola rebels still a problem

USA Today
04/17/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-17-angola.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Rebels in Angola are still receiving supplies from abroad and raising cash through illegal diamond sales, despite U.N. sanctions imposed to help end the country's protracted civil war, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report Monday.

Sanctions "seem to have contributed to efforts aimed at eroding the military capability of UNITA," a rebel group that has been fighting the government for more than two decades, Annan said.

However, he said, there were "worrying signs" that unidentified planes have been ferrying supplies to the rebels "and that representatives of UNITA continue to raise funds through the illicit sale of diamonds," even though their access to diamond-producing areas has been curtailed.

Annan asked the Security Council to extend the mandate of the U.N. mission in Angola by another six months, saying fighting is still raging despite reported rebel losses and some tentative steps toward peace by the government.

"The armed conflict in Angola has continued unabated, leaving much of the country insecure," Annan said. He said more than 2.8 million people have been driven from their homes since a 1994 U.N.-brokered peace accord collapsed in 1998.

The government and UNITA, a Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, began fighting after Angola gained independence from Portugal in 1975. A 1993 arms and fuel embargo on UNITA was expanded to include diamonds exports after the peace deal fell apart.

Annan praised the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos for measures he said would enhance peace efforts. Still, the fighting continued, he said, urging UNITA to abandon its insurgency.

The armed conflict has taken a disastrous toll on civilians, often victims of "serious and recurring human rights abuses" by UNITA as well as government forces, the report said.

U.N. peacekeepers left Angola when the fighting resumed in 1998, and a small U.N. office was set up the next year.

---

U.N. searches for possible slave ship amid mystery

USA Today
04/17/2001 - Updated 02:22 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-17-boat.htm

COTONOU, Benin (AP) - Puzzled authorities tried to determine whether a ferry that pulled into port Tuesday was a ship suspected of smuggling child slaves that was believed wandering for days in Africa's Gulf of Guinea. The arriving ship carried women and children - but apparently not the dozens of captives officials had expected.

The U.N. children's fund kept up an alert for the possibility that there was a second ship actually carrying the slaves that might try to dock somewhere along the western African coast.

"We have asked our offices in Malabo and elsewhere in the region to remain vigilant and not to demobilize," said Zachary Adams, UNICEF official in Cotonou, Benin's commercial capital. Malabo is the capital of nearby Equatorial Guinea.

"A boat has arrived here in Cotonou and we have no details of another, but we have to be prepared for the possibility."

The 200-foot-long ferry that arrived in Cotonou bore the name of the vessel that officials had been hunting - the Etireno - but it appeared freshly painted white, with the signs of another name, "NORDBY," still visible underneath.

A number of unaccompanied children found on board were taken to a shelter where they were fed and allowed to rest before being interviewed by police, Adams said.

An anxious search had begun Thursday, when it was reported that the Nigerian-registered MV Etireno had clandestinely slipped out of Cotonou with 100-250 children on board being smuggled into slavery. It was reportedly wandering in the Gulf of Guinea for days after being turned away from ports in Gabon and Cameroon.

The ferry pulled into Cotonou shortly after 1 a.m. with a crowd of Cabinet ministers, soldiers, police, journalists waiting. It was found to be carrying women and children and a few men.

The passengers, nervous and exhausted, said no child slaves had been aboard, as did the vessel's 40-year-old Nigerian captain, Lawrence Onome. "I have not committed any offense that will warrant my arrest," Onome said. "I am not into child slavery, they can't prove it. It is one thing to say, and one thing to prove."

He said the name of the ship had been changed from Nordby to Etireno in 1999, though he admitted he didn't have documents to prove it.

"I don't know what to think," said Nicolas Pron, a senior UNICEF official in Benin.

Passengers and crew on the arriving ferry told journalists that the vessel left Benin on March 27 and arrived in Gabon's capital, Libreville, April 2. But authorities in Gabon detained the boat and its passengers, who were taken onshore by canoes for four days, apparently because they did not have proper documents. The boat left Gabon April 6 for Douala in Cameroon, where it arrived April 12, passengers and crew said.

The mystery - or one of several - Tuesday was whether the ferry that arrived overnight was indeed the suspected slave ship, or whether another might still be at sea.

Social Protection Minister Ramatou Baba Moussa said the Etireno may have been confused with a possible second ship, whose name and current location remained a mystery.

Benin and U.N. officials said port authorities in both Gabon and Cameroon had reported turning away a ship with anything from 100 to 250 suspected child slaves aboard. It was believed that the smugglers had been planning to sell the children as unpaid domestic or plantation workers in Gabon, a relatively prosperous country southeast of Benin.

Benin initially issued arrest warrants for the Etireno's Nigerian owner, captain and crew as well as for three Benin businessmen. U.N. officials in Cotonou earlier speculated that the Etireno's captain, a Nigerian with a criminal past, could have thrown his human cargo overboard.

Benin, a small country of 6 million people, has a history of slave trading. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was known as the Slave Coast for its role as a center of the trans-Atlantic trade.

Despite efforts to stamp out child-trafficking, it remains a serious problem in West and Central Africa, where desperately poor parents are sometimes willing to give up their children for as little as $14 to smuggling rings that promise to educate them and find them jobs.

Boys are then typically resold to cotton and cocoa plantations for as much as $340 in countries like Gabon and Ivory Coast. Girls often end up as domestic workers or prostitutes.

---

Foes fight war by plundering gems, metals

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/17/01
Betsy Pisik THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010417-94478470.htm

NEW YORK -- The nations fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo are busy plundering its mineral riches in a "self-financing war," according to a new report issued yesterday by a U.N. panel.

The group recommends that the Security Council slap an arms embargo on Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi and attempt to stop the sale of diamonds and precious metals likely looted from Congo.

The report also expressed concern about the activities of Angolan, Namibian and Zimbabwean soldiers but noted that those governments declined to cooperate with the experts.

The panel, whose visit was authorized by the Security Council in June 2000, found "mass-scale looting" of stockpiled minerals, coffee, timber, livestock and money by the armies of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.

Military and government officials then export the diamonds, gold, and a composite mineral called coltan to line their own pockets and enrich a network of shell companies owned by well-connected associates.

"Key individual actors including top army commanders and businessmen on the one hand, and government structures on the other, have been the engines of this systematic and systemic exploitation," said the report.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame of Rwanda are, at the very least, politically involved, according to the panel of experts, which spent close to seven months in the region.

"They received this information, they were aware, and they decided not to act," said Safiatou Ba-N´Daw of Ivory Coast, who headed the expert panel.

The report, written by five experts, goes so far as to say the two leaders "are on the verge of becoming godfathers of the illegal exploitation of natural resources and the continuation of the conflict."

Mr. Museveni´s son and sister-in-law are heavily involved in trading and transportation, the report says. The Security Council, which authorized the panel´s investigation, will take up the matter on Friday.

Meanwhile, the U.N. efforts to get a Congo peacekeeping mission up to strength faltered over the weekend, when Rwandan-backed rebels refused to allow a contingent of 120 Moroccan U.N. peacekeepers to land in the northern part of the country. It was the first major obstacle since the United Nations began deploying there in recent weeks.

Also yesterday, Congo closed its western border with the Republic of Congo, citing unspecified security concerns. Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the respective capitals, face each other across the Congo River, and rebels have been known to slip easily back and forth.

But the expert panel´s report makes clear that the fighting, particularly among rebel factions, is concentrated in mineral-rich areas, rather than along geographic boundaries that would support Rwanda´s claim that it is trying to prevent insurgents from entering its territory.

Fighting has been heavy in copper and cobalt-producing Katanga province, as well as diamond-rich Mbuji Mayi. Both areas are far removed from the eastern border.

The 56-page report outlines how soldiers would, and presumably still do, order local farmers and even children into the mines to extract diamonds or other minerals, loot manufacturing plans and private property, and carry the booty home in military convoys that are not taxed or even examined.

The raw materials were often shipped to industrialized countries for processing, including Belgium, China, Denmark, Japan and the United States.

"Almost all the belligerents are in one way or another benefiting from the conflict," said Miss Ba-N´Daw at a press conference yesterday. "The only losers are the Congolese people."

Even the wildlife is not safe. The report notes that the numbers of elephants, okapis and gorillas have dwindled in areas controlled by Rwandan and Sudanese rebels.

The report does not spare the Congo government, which has created beneficial monopolies on diamonds and awarded lucrative mineral concessions to sympathetic governments, such as Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

The expert panel chastises the World Bank for failing to notice Uganda´s increased exports were likely a result of its incursions into Congo. It says that bank officials had been notified of increased exports of diamond and gold in a country not known for producing much of either.

Miss Ba-N´Daw was joined on the panel by one American, former Treasury official Mel Holt, as well as representatives from Cameroon, Switzerland and Senegal.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Fuel cells promise clean power for cars, tomorrow

Planet Ark UK:
April 17, 2001
Story by Neil Winton, European Auto Correspondent
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10512

LONDON - While politicians try to save the world from car pollution, the fuel cell promises to do the job for them.

But not just yet.

The internal combustion engine, which has reigned supreme for more than 100 years, still has room for improvement. Diesels now deliver economy, sophistication and power that could only be dreamed of 10 years ago.

And while the big car manufacturers invest huge sums to perfect the fuel cell, hybrid power - a conventional internal combustion engine boosted by an electric motor - looks likely to be the interim technology which will boost fuel economy and keep environmentalists and politicians off the industry's back.

Promising pollution-free power that doesn't consume scarce resources, the hydrogen powered fuel cell car should, in theory, have the range and performance of an internal combustion engine, and the only by-product, water vapour, shouldn't trouble environmentalists.

The first fuel cell-powered buses should be appearing in Europe next year, and the first car in 2004.

Both vehicles will be from German automotive powerhouse DaimlerChrysler as a result of its collaboration with Ballard Power Systems of Canada.

MASS PRODUCTION NOT IMMINENT

According to automobile industry analyst Neal McAtee of Morgan Keegan in Memphis, Tennessee, although the first fuel cell-powered cars may be on the road within three years, mass production is not imminent.

"It will probably be eight to 10 years before manufacturers offer cars that you can go and buy in the store," said McAtee.

He said the huge cost of a hydrogen dispensing infrastructure is a bar to progress. Until that is solved, gasoline or methanol will have to be used to produce hydrogen on board the fuel cell cars.

Fuel cells work by combining hydrogen and oxygen via a catalyst which converts chemical energy into electrical power to feed an electric motor.

Until hydrogen is available on tap, it has to be produced in the car using fossil fuels like petrol, methanol or diesel, which will still emit carbon dioxide, but only at about half the rate of conventional engines. The process eliminates dangerous pollutants like oxides of nitrogen, sulphur and diesel particulates.

DaimlerChrysler expects the first fuel cell-powered car in 2004 and chief executive Juergen Schrempp has said about 10 percent of all cars could be fuel cell powered by 2020.

FUEL CELL CAR IN 2004

"Our first car should be ready in 2004 and it will be a compact to be offered in some markets," said Johannes Ebner from DaimlerChrysler's fuel cell project.

DaimlerChrysler has not revealed exactly which of its cars will take the fuel cell, although industry experts expect this will be the little A class.

DaimlerChrysler buses will lead off with fuel cell versions subsidised by the European Union in 2002.

Fuel cell technology still has many technical and operational problems to overcome.

"There are major technical problems and we are working hard to fulfil targets but I think we can manage this," Ebner said.

"Don't forget that the internal combustion engine has had 100 years of development and there's still room for further improvement. We will start with a version that is acceptable and then work hard to improve it."

DaimlerChrysler has yet to decide whether methanol or gasoline will be used to make hydrogen.

Jim Hossack, consultant with AutoPacific in Santa Ana, California, believes that fuel cell cars won't be available to mass market buyers until close to 2020.

"There's no certainty; there is the age old problem of scheduling inventions. This can be treacherous," said Hossack.

He said hybrids are viable in many markets but not in the United States, where fuel taxes are lower and gasoline cheaper than in Europe.

Japan's Toyota Prius and Honda Motor's Insight are hybrids already on sale in the United States and Europe.

OIL SHOCK NEEDED TO INTEREST UNITED STATES

The low price of petrol in the United States means there is little enthusiasm for fuel-efficient vehicles using diesel, gasoline direct-injection engines, or batteries.

"If the price of fuel doubles or availability becomes an issue, that would change the whole environment. But at today's prices hybrids do work but they are not commercially competitive," Hossack said.

Despite a lack of enthusiasm for fuel-efficient cars in the United States, the world's manufacturers are scrambling to build frugal cars, albeit in different ways.

According to Automotive News Europe, Volkswagen and BMW of Germany are developing turbocharged diesels, while Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen of France, Fiat of Italy, General Motors Europe and Ford Europe are developing hybrids which should start appearing in 2003.

All car makers are looking to fuel cells for long-term solutions.

But don't write off the internal combustion engine yet.

A report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said cars in 2020 will use one third less fuel than now.

Morgan Keegan's McAtee said the automobile industry's move to 42 volt electrical systems from 12 volts in the next couple of years promises big cuts in fuel use and emissions.

AutoPacific's Hossack agrees.

"The internal combustion engine can't reign supreme for ever, but it will be supreme for the next 10 years. Probably not for the next 100 though."

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PCB Worries Are Spreading From Hudson to Its Shores

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By ROBERT WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/nyregion/17DRED.html

For 25 years, environmental groups and state officials have concentrated on the problems posed by toxic PCB's in the Hudson River, but now they are starting to focus on dozens of contaminated spots in landfills and backyards in the upper Hudson Valley.

More than six times as many PCB's were dumped on land as in the river, according to two separate investigations conducted by environmental groups and based on state records. Although the chemicals are not as dangerous on land as they are in the river, where they become concentrated in fish and river sediment, they are seeping into groundwater in a number of places, and may be leaking into the Hudson in a few, according to state officials.

Thirteen of the approximately 40 sites have been designated as a "significant threat to the public health or environment" by the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, and many others contain PCB's and other toxic materials in concentrations above the level the federal government classifies as hazardous. The sites are scattered on either side of the river along a 40-mile stretch between Albany and Glens Falls.

These areas and others around the country could become a huge liability for the General Electric Corporation, which dumped the chemicals into the river over the course of three decades from two electric capacitor plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls. That, environmentalists say, is why the company has spent an estimated $60 million fighting the federal Environmental Protection Agency's $460 million proposal to dredge PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls, from the Hudson River bottom. The public comment period on that proposal is to end today.

"G.E. realizes that the Hudson River cleanup will be a precedent-setting case that could ultimately require them to spend billions cleaning up toxic sites throughout the Hudson River basin, as well as elsewhere throughout the country," said Walter Hang, the president of Toxics Targeting, an Ithaca, N.Y., environmental research and advocacy group that is expected to release a report today on PCB contamination in the Hudson Valley.

In addition to its Hudson Valley PCB sites, where G.E. has already spent an estimated $160 million on studies and shore cleanup, the company signed an agreement in 1999 to clean up PCB spills in Pittsfield, Mass., at a possible cost estimated by the government of $300 million to $700 million. Last fall, the company filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Superfund law under which the federal environmental agency would order its dredging action.

Mark Behan, a spokesman for G.E., said, "We reach cleanup decisions based on what we consider best for the community and the environment at each location."

Mr. Behan added that the company reached an agreement with New York State to clean up seven of the land-based PCB dump sites in 1980, and said that in the other cases, G.E. was not liable because it did not do the actual dumping, though the chemicals may have come from its plants.

Donald Morrison, a dairy farmer whose land is a few hundred feet from the Hudson River in Moreau, N.Y., has long believed that G.E. should be forced to dredge the PCB's from the river. But like many people in this area, Mr. Morrison is also worried about the PCB's that were dumped on land. He has a 1999 letter from the state saying that tests have confirmed PCB contamination on his land, and he has been unable to sell it or get insurance or even a bank loan as a result, he said.

The unfenced 25-acre field next to Mr. Morrison's farm contains 40,000 to 90,000 pounds of PCB's dredged from the river that are seeping into the groundwater and possibly into the Hudson, according to the state. Mr. Morrison's cows graze nearby, and his corn grows next to a sign that warns of buried PCB-contaminated material in another adjacent field that is fenced.

In addition, Mr. Morrison's land is regularly flooded by the Hudson. The state has found high levels of PCB contamination in some flood plain areas along the river, and has asked the federal environmental agency for help in assessing the problem, said Michael O'Toole, the director of the agency's Division of Environmental Remediation.

Although the state has taken some steps to contain pollution at the sites, it delayed a full cleanup on most of them for more than a decade in hopes that the E.P.A. would address them in its proposal for the river, said Jennifer Meicht, a spokeswoman for the D.E.C. Now that it is clear that will not happen, the state must finish cleaning up the sites or force G.E. or other responsible parties to do so. But it cannot clean the sites until the legislature appropriates new money for the Superfund program, which is now broke.

It is hard to say what kind of health risks PCB's pose on land. The federal environmental agency has focused on the river because it has determined that eating fish or drinking water contaminated with the chemical poses a cancer risk, said Douglas Tomchuk, a project manager for the agency's Hudson River PCB site.

Some people in the Hudson Valley believe that they have been poisoned by exposure to the chemical, though there have been no studies to determine health effects in the area. One of Mr. Morrison's daughters, Mary Beth, 33, has deformed fingernails, which are one of the symptoms of PCB poisoning, said Dr. David Carpenter, a professor at the SUNY School of Public Health in Albany who has done research on the chemical's health effects.

The levels of land-based PCB contamination have declined since the mid-1970's, when some roads and parking lots that had been sprayed with PCB oil decades earlier still stank of the chemical on hot days.

"One day I was driving with the car window open, and the smell of PCB's came through the window," said Ward B. Stone, the state wildlife pathologist who was one of the first to discover the chemical in fish in the early 1970's.

Mr. Stone followed the smell to a South Glens Falls motel, where PCB's had been sprayed on the parking lot years earlier.

The town supervisor had paved over the parking lot, but more than a decade later, tests by state inspectors found PCB's along the edge of the pavement at 13,000 parts per million. (Federal law considers anything above 50 parts per million to be toxic waste.)

The motel was cleaned up two years ago by state officials

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Cattle Disease Poses Threat to Run Wild, U.S. Finds

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By ELIZABETH BECKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/national/17FOOT.html

WASHINGTON, April 16 - The first comprehensive exercise about how the nation would contain foot- and-mouth disease showed that an outbreak could be stopped only with the combined strength of all federal disaster agencies, including the military, Agriculture Department officials have said.

After decades of relying largely on state and local governments to help contain animal diseases, the Department of Agriculture asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a plan to combat this one as forcefully as if it threatened human lives, said Clifford Oliver, director of the Agriculture Department's office of crisis planning.

"We were coming to the realization that state and local government would be overwhelmed and the U.S.D.A. would be overwhelmed if foot-and-mouth broke out," Mr. Oliver said.

With Britain, one of the most advanced agricultural nations, enduring an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease and British troops belatedly called in for mass burials of hundreds of thousands of slaughtered animals, American farmers and ranchers began lobbying their state agriculture chiefs for better planning. Those officials recently urged Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman to find out what the rest of the government could do to contain an outbreak.

The federal Catastrophic Disaster Response Group, which normally worries about bioterrorism or industrial disasters, organized the tabletop exercise for the Agriculture Department on Wednesday, bringing together representatives of 26 agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Interior, Energy and Health and Human Services, Mr. Oliver said.

The exercise confirmed fears that without the entire government working to contain it, the disease would spread like wildfire if it ever reached this country.

"They made it very very clear in the first 15 minutes of the exercise that the possibility of the spread of foot-and-mouth disease is very real and we need to be better prepared," said a participant who would not allow his name to be used.

Mr. Oliver said, "For the first time we asked this group to look at a biological event that doesn't affect humans, only animals."

The situation was played out like a military war game, with agency representatives acting out how they would react if foot-and-mouth broke out in Iowa. Participants said that the computer-generated model could not be controlled and that the disease spread to three states within 60 days, requiring 50,000 people to contain it.

The virus that causes the disease could pass through the intestines of birds feeding on the carcasses of dead animals. When those birds fly to adjoining farms, they could spread the disease through their feces, far ahead of containment efforts, the exercise showed.

With the explosion of world trade making the spread of the disease to this country more likely and with the routine movement of animals around the nation making the containment more difficult, several participants said the exercise showed how an outbreak here could quickly become a national emergency.

"You would see the National Guard called out to kill thousands of animals in the first days and deployed to control traffic and keep thousands of people out of the area," another participant said.

A representative from the United States Geological Survey was especially troubled by questions about how wildlife like deer, bison and wild pigs would be treated if they roamed near the infected areas.

"If the disease infected a herd of white tail deer in the state of Virginia, would they be slaughtered, too?" the representative asked.

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Despite Appearances, Whitman Says She and Bush Agree on Environment

New York Times
April 17, 2001
By MELINDA HENNEBERGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/politics/17WHIT.html

WASHINGTON, April 16 - The Environmental Protection Agency's new administrator, Christie Whitman, had no trouble connecting with her audience at a recent meeting of the Business Roundtable, a group of corporate executives, as she promised that the agency's history of "banging heads" was a thing of the past.

And her bluntly antiregulatory message undercut the notion that Mrs. Whitman was at least a moderately gung-ho green who had been hung out to dry by her president.

That impression had taken hold after President Bush, responding to pressures from the energy industry, broke a campaign pledge to put a cap on power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, right after she had talked up his intention to control that greenhouse gas. Then, after she urged him "to appear engaged" on controlling global warming, the administration decided instead to write the obituary of the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty on climate change.

Even some environmental advocates were starting to pity Mrs. Whitman's supposed isolation.

"It's been a pretty rough ride," said Greg Wetstone of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "She's probably suffered one of the most immediate and embarrassing eviscerations of a new cabinet secretary ever.&quo