NucNews - November 11, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Pieces of Nuclear Fuel Rods Missing at Georgia Plant November 11, 2005 10:03 AM (AP) http://www.wagt.com/news/state/1961527.html http://www.news4jax.com/news4georgia/5302195/detail.html Georgia Power Company says it might never find pieces of highly radioactive fuel rods missing from its Hatch generating plant in southeast Georgia. The utility says more than five feet of spent fuel rods, removed in the 1980s from a reactor at the plant near Baxley, could not be found during an inventory last month. The pencil-thin rods, kept in containment pools at the plant, emit lethal doses of radiation. Georgia Power spokesman Tal Wright says the pieces likely remain unfound in the pools or were shipped to a waste disposal facility. Georgia Power, which operates the plant, notified the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission of the missing pieces Monday. NRC spokesman Roger Hannah says the deadly radioactivity of the pieces makes them virtually impossible to steal. He said they would not have left the plant without setting off its radiation monitors. At the Baxley plant, about 90 miles southwest of Savannah, workers have been searching 40-feet-deep containment pools with robotic cameras. Wright says that's like hunting for a needle in a haystack. The plant's two reactors and two spent-fuel pools hold four and three-quarters of a million feet of fuel rods. -------- africa S. Africa shuts Koeberg nuclear station Fri Nov 11, 2005 5:28 PM GMT (Reuters) http://za.today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-11-11T152834Z_01_BAN153272_RTRIDST_0_OZATP-NUCLEAR-SAFRICA-KOEBERG-20051111.XML CAPE TOWN - South Africa's Koeberg nuclear station, the only nuclear power facility on the African continent, was shut on Friday due to technical problems, a spokeswoman said. Large parts of the Western Cape province including many districts of Cape Town were plunged into chaos after one of Koeberg's two French-built reactors was shut for repairs. The second tripped, spokeswoman Carin de Villiers said. "Because the unit tripped the reactor shut down which it is designed to do. We need to do an investigation before we put it back on. There is no safety concern. The situation is absolutely safe. It has gone into safe mode," de Villiers added. Koeberg, near Cape Town, started power generation in the mid-1980s and is operated by Eskom, South Africa's state power utility. It has installed capacity of 1,800 MW from the two units of the pressurised water reactor (PWR) design. It boasts the largest turbine generators in the Southern Hemisphere and is the most southerly situated nuclear power station in the world. Koeberg ranks among the safest of the world's top-ranking PWR's of its vintage and is the most reliable Eskom power station. In 2001 it generated 10.7 billion kilowatthours of electricity, accounting for 5.7 percent of Eskom's electricity generation. The station is also vital for grid stability in the Cape. Eskom has been investing heavily to bring the reactors up to new safety standards. Eskom spokeswoman Trish Da Silva said since the blackout at around 1200 GMT power had been restored to most affected areas. "We've been able to restore supply to many of the areas because there's enough capacity in the network to supply all the areas," she said. Officials were still waiting for confirmation of the exact scope of the outage, which she said had affected a large part of the Cape peninsula. Koeberg's de Villiers said the station would stay shut until investigation were completed. "It definitely won't be on tonight and when we restart it we can't bring back 100 percent power immediately. It's the first time we've had reactor scram (shutdown) in more than two years," she added. -------- depleted uranium Current trends in cannon ammunition By Anthony G Williams, 11 November 2005 Joint Editor of Jane’s Ammunition Handbook http://www.janes.com/defence/land_forces/news/jah/jah051111_1_n.shtml Ammunition for aircraft cannon Armour-piercing ammunition remains in use for special purposes, mainly for ground attack. The most notable examples are the US types with cores of Depleted Uranium (DU): the 30 × 173 mm PGU-14/B for the GAU-8/A gun in the A-10/A aircraft, and the 25 × 137 mm PGU-20/U for the GAU-12/U in the AV-8B. Fixed-wing aircraft cannot use the more effective subcalibre Armour-Piercing Discarding-Sabot (APDS) and Armour-Piercing Fin-Stabilised Discarding-Sabot (APFSDS) ammunition used in ground guns because of the risk of pieces of discarded sabot hitting the aircraft or being sucked into the engines; there was one experiment with firing APFSDS rounds from the side-firing 40 mm Bofors guns in the AC-130, as these are sited behind the engines, but this was not successful. Helicopters are not subject to such restrictions, and the 20 × 102 mm M197 gun on the US Marine Corps AH-1 Cobra has been qualified to fire the MK 149 APDS rounds from the naval Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS). Ammunition for ground-based guns When armour penetration is the top priority, the supreme projectile type is the APFSDS, particularly in DU form, as used in the US Army's 25 × 137 mm M919 round for the M242 Bushmaster chain gun. As with HEDP, there were initially technical difficulties in getting APFSDS projectiles to perform in a rifled-barrel gun, in this case because their flight is destabilised by being spun, but these have been overcome, and this type of round (albeit with projectiles of tungsten alloy rather than DU) is now available for most 25 to 40 mm guns used in MICVs. Significant exceptions to this are the British Army, which has been trying for some years to acquire an APFSDS loading for the 30 × 170 mm Rarden (it still relies on the less effective APDS), and the Russian Federation, whose 30 × 165 mm 2A42 and 2A72 guns also rely on APDS. However, Arsenal Company of Bulgaria has recently announced an APFSDS loading in this calibre, as has RWM Schweiz, which incidentally also offers FAPDS for the old Russian 23 × 152 B mm ZU AA round. Ammunition for naval guns Ammunition for the manually controlled 20 to 40 mm guns has largely followed the same path as that for army AA guns (indeed, it is usually the same ammunition). The old Second World War Oerlikon Type S, in 20 × 110 RB mm calibre, still lingers on for 'policing' duties, although it has largely been replaced by more modern rounds such as the 20 × 128 mm in the Oerlikon KAA. The 25 × 137 mm (Oerlikon KBA, Bushmaster), 30 × 170 mm (Oerlikon KCB) and 30 × 173 mm (Mauser MK 30, Bushmaster II) also feature, with the last of these becoming the main focus of recent development. 467 of 3,760 words [End of non-subscriber extract.] See our products section for more information and pricing on Ammunition Handbook. http://catalog.janes.com/catalog/public/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.productinfobrief&product_id=90 -------- iran EU3 draft nuclear proposal for Iran By Louis Charbonneau Fri Nov 11, 3:36 PM ET (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051111/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_proposal_dc_2 BERLIN - The EU's three biggest powers have drafted a proposal offering Iran the chance to transfer sensitive nuclear activities to Russia to ensure Tehran does not produce fuel for atomic weapons, an EU diplomat said on Friday. Under the proposal, supported by France, Britain and Germany, known as the EU3, and Washington, Iran would be able to keep part of its atomic fuel production programme provided the most sensitive part, uranium enrichment, was scrapped and moved to Russia, diplomats familiar with the proposal told Reuters. "The document is called 'elements of a long-term solution' and outlines the proposal as has been reported by the press," said a diplomat from one of the European Union trio. He said if Iran did not accept the proposal by the time the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors discusses the issue on November 24, the EU and United States would push to refer Tehran to the U.N. Security Council, which could chose to impose economic sanctions. Iranian officials said they were willing to study any proposal but indicated Tehran would not give up plans to pursue its own atomic fuel cycle. "For Iran it is important to have (uranium) enrichment on its own soil," Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was less forthright, telling reporters after a meeting with the deputy foreign ministers of Cuba, Malaysia and South Africa: "We have obtained this technology and we are trying to implement this technology through constructive talks with all parties." The EU3 have been negotiating with Iran for more than two years but suspended talks in August after Tehran began processing uranium at a nuclear plant near Isfahan that had been mothballed under a November 2004 deal. "There are no surprises in this text. It names Russia and outlines the plan for a uranium enrichment joint venture between Russia and Iran," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "It (the document) has been handed over in Washington and Moscow," said the diplomat. RUSSIAN VISIT Igor Ivanov, Secretary of Russia's Security Council, arrived in Tehran late on Friday for talks over the weekend with senior Iranian officials where the proposal is likely to be discussed. Under the draft proposal, the Iranians could continue to run Isfahan to produce uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas, but would have to transport the gas to Russia for enrichment at a joint venture owned by Russia and Iran. Enrichment purifies uranium for use as fuel in power plants or, if it is enriched further, for use in bombs. Tehran denies Western accusations that it is trying to build nuclear weapons under cover of an atomic power programme and says it only wants to generate electricity. The diplomat said EU3 officials were playing down the proposal because the chances Tehran would reject it were very high. The EU3 diplomat said if Iran turned the proposal down, this would be treated as an admission that it wants nuclear weapons and not a peaceful nuclear energy programme. "It makes no economic sense for Iran to enrich uranium in Iran. Doing it in Russia would be cheaper and would assure the world that no enriched uranium would be diverted to a weapons programme," the diplomat said. (Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran) ---- First results from Iran site show no nuclear activity: diplomats Fri Nov 11, 1:35 PM ET Agence France Presse http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051111/wl_mideast_afp/irannucleariaea_051111183233&printer=1;_ylt=Apzn8HSBX9En8XgmbT1rLuWbOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE- Initial results from a UN inspection of the Parchin military site in Iran have shown no signs of nuclear activity, diplomats told AFP, although final results are not yet in. If confirmed, the results would strengthen Tehran's case that there is no suspicious activity at Parchin against charges from Washington that Iran it is secretly developing nuclear weapons at the explosives testing center. "The very first preliminary results have not found anything so far," a diplomat close to the Vienna-based UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, stressing that these were still early indications. A second diplomat said that the IAEA was waiting for more analysis from environmental swipes taken November 1 at Parchin, 30 kilometres (20 miles) southeast of Tehran. Visits to sites like Parchin are beyond nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards requirements, which are limited to inspecting sites where there is sure to be nuclear material. It is possible there may be no nuclear material present at Parchin if the Iranians did "dry testing" bomb simulations with non-radioactive metals. In any case, a diplomat said, "we don't expect those samples to show any undeclared nuclear activities, after all the time Iran was given to sanitize those sites." IAEA inspectors had first visited Parchin in January but saw only five out of what are a much larger number of buildings. The Iranian government had up until November refused a follow-up visit. Final results are not expected until after a meeting November 24-25 in Vienna of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors, which in September found Iran in non-compliance with the NPT. This opened the door to bring Iran before the UN Security Council, which could impose penalties such as trade sanctions to get Tehran to suspend all nuclear fuel work and cooperate fully with IAEA inspectors. Diplomats say that Tehran appears to be showing more cooperation with IAEA investigators in order to avoid referral to the Security Council. A diplomat close to the IAEA said the agency may decide that it wants to hold off on deciding on referral since new information is still coming in that will have to be assessed before such a move can be taken. In addition, there appears to be movement on the diplomatic front. Iranian nuclear chief Ali Larijani said Friday in Tehran that Iran wants to conduct sensitive nuclear work on its territory but would be open to having the uranium enriched abroad. Washington denied backing a proposal to resolve the nuclear row by letting enrichment be done in Russia. The swipes at Parchin are samples taken by rubbing a cotton cloth on surfaces to see if traces of radioactive particles can be found that would prove the presence of nuclear material. Full analysis of the samples by spectrometry and other techniques can take up to six weeks. David Donahue, a unit leader at the IAEA's Seibersdorf laboratory which analyzes the swipes, said Friday that "some Parchin analysis has been done." He refused to say what the results were. But he said Seibersdorf had more swipes to analyze and would be doing more intensive tests on swipes already run through spectrometry experiments. In addition, the IAEA is waiting for results from a second lab, in another country, to confirm the results. Donahue said IAEA inspectors take six swipes at a time so they have replicas and then have at least two analyzed. Others are stored in archives. Donahue refused to indicate the total number of swipes taken at Parchin on November 1 but he said: "It's not hundreds." --------- korea Korean Government starts research on high-level nuclear waste storage Friday, 11 November 2005 Europa Korea http://korea.be/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1849&Itemid=2 The government has launched a feasibility research on the construction of a high-level nuclear waste storage, following the designation of Gyeongju in North Gyeongsang Province as the first dumpsite for low- and mid-level radioactive waste. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MOCIE) is poised to highlight the global issue on the handling of the most highly radioactive waste. “We started out to study domestic and foreign research documents on the high-level nuclear waste dumpsite,” Cho Seok, a director general in charge of new energy & nuclear power at the MOCIE, said. Saying that several developed countries are in active discussion to set up a high-level nuclear repository, respectively, he stressed the issue is a matter of urgency to Korea, which ranked 10th in energy consumption in the world. “We expect a series of backlashes from environmentalists and NGOs,” Cho said. “I believe the nation's atomic energy use would be impossible in the long run without a storage for waste.” But he admitted that advanced countries, including the United States, are also taking a wait-and-see attitude as the issue may trigger resistance among global activists as well as domestically. There is no nation that has a high-level nuclear dumpsite while there are about 70 low- and intermediate-level repositories in more than 30 countries. High-level nuclear waste could be a fatal threat to mankind while low- and mid-level waste would turn into harmless products in around 300 years. “It takes more than 10,000 years for high-level waste to become safe for humans,” Cho said. The U.S. designated Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the high-level waste storage in 2002. The central government is set to launch construction in consultation with the state government. Japan is also deep in internal discussions, aiming to operate a high-level waste facility in the 2030s. European countries, such as Sweden, Finland and Britain, have named a site or are in the final-stages of research. Korea has temporary dumpsites for the radioactive waste in several locations. But the storage capacity will hit the ceiling before 2010, according to atomic energy experts. On Nov. 2, South Korea named Gyeongju as the low- and mid-level nuke dumpsite via respective votes at four candidate locations. The designation through bidding competition involving voting was a worldwide unprecedented case, according to MOCIE officials. -------- security U.S. reactors helpless against air attack By MARTIN SIEFF UPI Senior News Analyst 11/11/2005 http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051111-112358-9520r http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20051111-014322-6688r WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- More than four years after Sept. 11, 2001, the 103 civilian nuclear reactors in the United States are still defenseless against direct air attack, and their minimum requirement for ground security has only been upgraded by a single security guard each. According to new guidelines mandated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and entered into the Federal Register on Monday, Nov. 7, the 65 nuclear power stations across the United States that house the 103 active civilian nuclear reactors will now be required to have a minimum of five security guards each on regular duty rather than four. Nor does the NRC appear to require any further upgrading of reactor security as necessary in the foreseeable future. "All the nuclear power plants are currently meeting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's requirements in regard to safety," NRC Commissioner Gregory Jaczko told a conference on nuclear power and safety organized by the Nuclear Policy Research Institute at Airlie, Va. Tuesday. However, critics charge that isn't the case at all. They say no practical measures whatsoever have been taken since Sept. 11, 2001, to protect any of the 103 civilian reactors against having aircraft crash into them. "No steps have been taken to ensure protection (of the reactors) against air attack. No steps have been taken to protect (the installations) against the number of attackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks," Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap nuclear watch dog group told the NIPRI conference. "It is just outrageous," said Hirsch, former director of the Program on Nuclear Safety at the University of Santa Cruz. "They are leaving the reactors vulnerable. These are in-place nuclear weapons. If a plane were to attack a reactor there is nothing to protect them. There is no protection. The plants are just completely vulnerable to air attack." The NRC requirement for each nuclear reactor to have only four guards each was based on the assumption held by the regulators for decades that no more than three terrorists or saboteurs could be expected to attack a nuclear plant at any one time and, therefore, all one needed at any time to protect against them, was a three-plus-one figure. Even the active involvement of 19 dedicated al-Qaida terrorists ready to sacrifice their lives by crashing four hijacked airliners into heavily populated targets on Sept. 11, 2001, did not significantly shake that assumption, he said. Also, the NRC has not required any of the utilities operating existing nuclear plants to install anti-aircraft missiles, or any other defenses against terrorists who might try to crash rented or hijacked aircraft into the reactors, Hirsch said. Such an attack need not even destroy or significantly damage the reactor directly. If the primary and back-up water cooling pipes and equipment were damaged enough to interfere long enough with the coolant flow, a meltdown on a Chernobyl scale would inevitably happen. "Even after a reactor is shut down, it has to be water-cooled for months" until the radioactive fuel inside it has sufficiently cooled down, Hirsch said. "All a terrorist has to do is disrupt the coolant." Nor does the U.S. Air Force or Air Force Reserve give continual air cover to the 103 civilian reactors. Nor does it take a nuclear explosion to destroy a working reactor and scatter its deadly radioactive material to be dispersed by the winds. A 1950s experiment that was recorded on film showed a small reactor being destroyed by conventional explosives. Nuclear safety advocates have proposed encasing the 103 civilian reactors in surrounding steel skeleton structures that would deflect any aircraft from crashing directly into them. "It would cost less than 1 percent of the construction costs of the reactor," Hirsch said. Although the fuel from the fully-loaded Boeing 767s that crashed into the World Trade Center towers melted the steel skeletons of the buildings after burning for more than an hour each, advocates of the steel skeleton plan say that, just as the World Trade Towers withstood the kinetic energy of being hit by the planes, such protective skeletons around reactors would too. NRC Commissioner Jaczko did not address these concerns or take questions on them when he appeared at the NIPRI conference. "The NRC needs to be continued to be wedded to safety and security," he said. But he gave no further details of how this was being done. An in-depth investigation published by Time magazine earlier this year found that there are only 8,000 full-time guards employed to cover all the nuclear power plants in America, giving an average of only 80 per power plant, of whom not more than 60 and probably even less would be on duty on any given shift. The magazine also reported that the guard towers around the plants were called "iron coffins" by the guards who manned them and that they could not repel even a .50-caliber rifle bullet. Time reported that many security experts believe U.S. nuclear power stations currently lack the number of guards, fire-power and defensive systems to repel determined attempts to storm them and wreck their operating systems in order to provoke catastrophic core meltdowns by as few as 19 or 20 terrorists. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- california Green to the Core? How I tried to stop worrying and love nuclear power by JUDITH LEWIS NOVEMBER 11 - 17, 2005 L.A. Weekly http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/51/features-lewis.php http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/51/features-lewis2.php Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. —Marie Curie A rock, glittery gold and slate colored, has been placed on a table next to a chip of old Fiestaware and a Big Ben clock inside a brightly lit classroom at Southern California Edison’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, the power plant whose twin containment domes define the coastline below San Clemente. Ray Golden, a spokesperson who conducts plant tours for schoolchildren, foreign diplomats and anyone else he can interest in the magic of nuclear fission, is telling me how radiation — in the form of the clock’s glow-in-the-dark radium or uranium oxide that gives the plate its deep reddish-orange hue — has been used for nearly a century in manufactured goods. But it’s the rock, a roughly elliptical piece of solid uranium ore, small enough to fit in my hand but able to throw off radioactive particles as it slowly decays into unstable thorium, radium and, eventually, lead, that attracts me. And when Golden turns his back to write some diagrams on the classroom’s whiteboard, I quickly pick up the rock, cradling it in one hand. Small doses of alpha, beta and even penetrating gamma rays begin to bombard my skin, and I savor the transmutation of elements happening under my very nose. Just about 10 seconds pass before I put the rock back where I got it, unnoticed by Golden. In practical terms, the chunk of ore is no more dangerous than any other stone I might have held. Still, when Golden runs a pale green plastic box, a dosimeter, across the surface of the rock to measure its radioactivity, the machine emits high-pitched beeps with each pass — sometimes slowly, like a moderate pulse, other times in rapid succession like a jammed letter on an old computer keyboard. Each beep represents 200 counts per minute; 2,000 counts makes a millirem, which is atomic science’s metric for absorbed radiation. Holding the rock for 10 seconds, I may have absorbed a millirem of radiation in various forms, which is not so bad: The average person gets about 360 millirems a year just from the radiation that beams down from the sun and occurs naturally in the Earth’s rocks and soil; mile-high Denver residents get nearly twice that. It would take much more to hurt me. “Fifty-thousand millirems would cause a slight change on your body chemistry,” Golden explains. “Five hundred thousand, if you got it in a few hours, would bring on burns, vomiting, sickness, hair loss and, for about half the population, death.” It would be impossible to get that kind of dose from a rock even 100 times the size of this one, and relatively easy to avoid getting any dose at all. Although it usually takes lead or concrete to block gamma radiation, the rock is so small and its gamma rays so weak that it’s mostly sending out alpha and beta particles, and when Golden places a piece of paper between the rock and the dosimeter, the beeping fades. A sheet of Plexiglas stops the beeping altogether. Even plutonium, one of the world’s most toxic materials, emits only alpha particles, which can be blocked by paper, a thin sheet of aluminum or even your skin. “As long as you don’t ingest or inhale [them],” Golden says, “alpha particles can’t hurt you.” Or, in the words of Elena Filatova, the intrepid Ukrainian motorcyclist who documented Chernobyl’s dead zone in photographs, “You can play billiard balls with pure plutonium. Just don’t swallow it by mistake.” Like every magical property of nature that man has harnessed, radiation, Golden insists, is neither good nor bad. But what about nuclear power? Is it good or bad for the Earth? Neither? Five years ago, few of us would have bothered to ask. You were either for or, more likely, against nukes — if you thought about them at all. But nuclear energy is seeping back into our public consciousness here in 2005, which may go down in history as the year in which global warming went from debunkable theory to indisputable fact for a significant part of the population, not simply because of our record-breaking hurricane season or the record-high temperatures in many cities around the world, but the reality that we regularly wake up to find evidence in our mainstream newspapers of an ecology gone awry due to warming seas and blistering droughts — disappearing cold-water plankton and starving seabirds in the Shetland Islands, the Russian ship that sailed to the North Pole in August without the aid of an icebreaker, the sudden disappearance of certain butterfly species in Baja. In light of these conditions, almost anything seems better than burning more coal, which for every megawatt of power blasts a ton of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the skies. This is one reason why nuclear has reemerged as a viable source of energy for new power plants — not just among George W. Bush and his business buddies (who like the idea of more nuclear and more coal), but even among futurists, environmentalists and Democrats in the U.S. Senate, from quasi-Republican Joe Lieberman to new hope Barack Obama. “Nuclear power is the only green solution,” began a spring 2004 editorial in London’s Independent by James Lovelock, the progenitor of the Gaia theory of the Earth as a self-correcting, self-regenerating organism. “We cannot continue drawing energy from fossil fuels, and there is no chance that the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time . . . we do not have 50 years.” Stewart Brand, the visionary founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, followed Lovelock this year in Technology Review: “The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power,” he wrote. “The industry is mature, with a half-century of experience and ever improved engineering behind it.” Later came Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace (although he quit the group a decade ago), the recently deceased Reverend Hugh Montefiore of Friends of the Earth in England and Fred Krupp, the notoriously well-paid head of Environmental Defense, who stopped short of endorsing new plants but conceded that “we all should have an open mind” about nuclear power. At first I was tempted to treat these statements as curiosities, extreme positions meant to stir controversy. But all this year I’ve met serious environmentalists, from Randy Udall of the Aspen-based Community Office for Resource Efficiency to a Bay Area friend who runs an energy efficiency company, who share Krupp’s “open mind” sentiment. Even Jared Diamond, author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, recently made his support for nuclear power explicit when he appeared with Brand before an audience in San Francisco. Is it possible that we have come to this: a choice between a catastrophic warming trend and the most feared energy source on earth? Back in the learning laboratory at San Onofre, where I’ve come on my own open-minded journey to test my assumptions about nuclear power, Golden holds up a small vial of yellow powder: uranium oxide, or yellowcake uranium, milled and refined — the substance at the heart of the current CIA leak investigation. Before its atoms’ energy can be harnessed, uranium oxide has to be enriched, by centrifuge or by being turned into a gas and passed through a series of membranes, a process called “gaseous diffusion.” Uranium comes out of the ground only .7 percent uranium-235 (or U-235); fueling a light-water reactor like San Onofre’s requires a concentration of 4.7 percent U-235. Using a mock-up of a reactor core that stands at the front of the room — a contraption that looks like the inside of a miniature pipe organ — Golden demonstrates how uranium pellets the size of baby fingertips fill the core’s 236 zirconium tubes, which are then bundled together in a fuel assembly. The few times I’ve seen the stout, easygoing Golden at public meetings and on this tour, his face has had the look of a perennial mild sunburn, and his reddish-blond hair always looks bleached by the sun. He has worked in public relations for the nuclear industry 23 of his 45 years on Earth — his own nuclear half-life. He accuses the nuclear industry of “falling down on the job” by keeping so many secrets about its world, and holds that if the American public, like the more nuclear-friendly French, knew all the facts — what happens when atoms split, how unstable nuclides decay, how uranium is enriched and waste is transported — nuclear energy might be more popular with the American public. “Most Americans think they know about radiation because of Chernobyl, science fiction or the three-eyed fish in The Simpsons,” he says. “So as a country, we are phobic about radiation.” Of course, the U-235 that fuels San Onofre is highly fissile: When one of its atoms absorbs an extra neutron, its nucleus splits and forms other nuclides, including radio­active versions of strontium, cesium and iodine, along with plutonium. It also lets loose more neutrons to hit other U-235 atoms, provoking a chain reaction of fission events. Fission generates heat, which in a light-water reactor turns water into steam. Maintaining the right balance of fission events — keeping the reactor at a “critical” state — is a tricky process. If too many neutrons fly around splitting atoms, the core gets too hot, in which case operators insert control rods made of boron and silver into the fuel assembly to slow or stop the chain reaction and avert a meltdown. If it doesn’t stay hot enough, the core loses power, provoking a different set of events that can lead to an equally disastrous loss of control. If the reactor drifts in either direction, or if for some reason the core loses too much water — which cools the core at the same rate it transfers heat — a partial or complete meltdown could result. In the early days of nuclear power, many people feared that once a meltdown was in process, it would continue to melt through the Earth’s core from North America all the way to China: the “China Syndrome” of the movie’s title. On the face of it, nuclear power seems like a lot of trouble just for a little steam to run a few turbines to produce a few thousand megawatts of electricity. The Rocky Mountain Institute’s Amory Lovins, a steadfastly anti-nuclear advocate of conservation and green power, has likened nuclear power to cutting butter with a chain saw. But the flip side of that excess is nuclear’s other great advantage: how small a uranium pellet it takes to power the world. The fission of one uranium atom releases 200 million electron volts of energy. “Our core is only a 12-foot cube,” Golden says, “yet it powers 1.2 million homes for four years before you ever need to refuel.” The trillions of fissile atoms in one tiny uranium pellet yield enough energy to replace 150 gallons of gas, 1,780 pounds of coal, 16,000 cubic feet of natural gas and two and a half tons of wood. And they do so without adding an ounce of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. It is widely accepted that one nuclear power plant spares the atmosphere the emissions of 93 million cars. When the pellets have been depleted down to 1 percent U-235, specially trained plant workers replace them with fresh fuel. Some other countries, France and England among them, take this waste and reprocess it, separating out the remaining U-235, as well as the plutonium, cesium and other useful nuclides, reducing the remaining waste by 75 percent. In the U.S., the spent fuel rods go into storage pools on site until they’ve cooled enough to be moved into dry-cask storage. And that’s the problem. Like everyone in the nuclear industry, Golden is acutely aware that no such dry-cask storage for those fuel rods exists. The spent fuel at San Onofre has been sitting in its cooling pools since the first refueling of Unit 1 in the early 1970s. “It’s an issue,” admits Golden. The U.S. had two reprocessing facilities, one in West Valley New York that operated for only a short time and another in Morris, Illinois, that never actually recycled any fuel. Both were shut down when Presidents Ford and Carter declared moratoriums on the technology out of concern for proliferation. The country’s only candidate for long-term storage of high-level nuclear waste, which includes spent fuel rods, is a five-mile-long tunnel bored through the rock at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, an endeavor that has been fought at every turn by the state of Nevada. The Department of Energy has missed its contractual deadline for receiving commercial high-level waste by more than seven years. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric, which owns the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, have sued to recover costs of storing the fuel themselves. This past spring, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report warning that the spent-fuel cooling pools have been inadequately protected and could be targets for terrorists. If the matter of where to put nuclear waste makes reasonable people uncomfortable about the continuing use of nuclear energy, the prospect of a nuclear accident has turned many others more hysterically against it. The history of commercial nuclear power in the United States is full of mishaps — the 1959 meltdown of the Sodium Reactor Experiment in Santa Susana, 30 miles north of downtown L.A.; the 1975 control room fire at Browns’ Ferry in Athens, Alabama, and, more recently a significant cooling system leak at the Davis Besse plant in Ohio. The most famous of those accidents, the partial meltdown in 1979 at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has been blamed for turning the American public against nuclear reactors for good, even though the electricity market had already begun to cool toward a technology that simply cost too much to start up. Whatever remnant of pro-nuclear public sentiment remained was finally erased shortly after April 25, 1986, when the graphite core of Chernobyl Unit 4 in then-Soviet Ukraine caught fire while workers were testing the reactor to see whether its safety systems could run without backup power. Thirty-one people died as a direct result, and a cloud of poison gas drifted across Ukraine, Belarus and much of Europe, contaminating the soil for millennia to come. The surrounding area was dubbed “the Red Forest” after its irradiated pine trees turned a deep red. But nuclear’s proponents argue that by all accounts, the Soviet RBMK reactor at Chernobyl was a backward design with no containment and large amounts of flammable graphite; poorly trained operators were executing a flawed experiment in running the reactor on its own power when it got so hot they could no longer control it. Accidents in the United States have so far simply not amounted to much: It’s useful to remember that no one died at Three Mile Island — at least not officially. And, while opinions of the incident’s effects differ, no one has proved that any radioactivity that might have escaped into the atmosphere during the meltdown endangered anyone’s health. California’s two remaining nuclear plants have, by industry standards, stellar safety records — in part, some say, because the state’s powerful cadre of anti-nuclear activists has ridden herd on them since they were built, forcing state and local authorities to police every misstep — but also because they have been well run by large public utilities that, at least until the deregulation of California’s electricity market, had the resources to prioritize safety. “Every day we manage complacency,” says Golden. “Every day we re-dedicate ourselves to safety. Every employee here who complains has their complaint taken seriously, even if it’s just about the food in the cafeteria. We want everyone to feel comfortable blowing the whistle if they have to.” The plant’s record is not spotless: In 1980, the Nuclear Regulatory Commssion, the federal agency charged with monitoring plant safety, fined Southern California Edison $100,000 after 66 workers received higher-than-acceptable doses of radiation while fixing leaky steam tubes; four years later, Edison paid the same fine after some fuel rods disintegrated during refueling. Unit 1 was shutdown for good in 1992 when its cracks cost too much to fix, and in 2001, an electrical fire on Unit 3 forced a four-month shutdown of that reactor. Just this summer, a plant worker failed a breathalyzer test and spent 30 days in rehab. But most of San Onofre’s safety violations are far more ordinary. Outside the building that houses the reactor itself is a sign registering the number of days since a such an event occurred. The day I visit, the sign says it’s been 28 days since the last incident. “What happened?” I ask Golden. He points to a short flight of stairs. “Someone tripped,” he tells me, “and broke his ankle. A compound fracture.” “It’s all lies.” Dr. Helen Caldicott throws back her red-streaked blond bob, flashes her blue eyes — really, she does — and stares across the table at me as if she’s about throw a punch. “They say they’re clean, do they? Nuclear power plants? Well, let me tell you: Millions of curies of radioactive gases are released in an unregulated way every year from nuclear power plants. And isotopes into the water. And we haven’t even talked about the radioactive waste.” (A curie, by the way, differs from a rem in how it measures radiation — by the activity of the material instead of the absorbed dose. One curie is the amount of radiation given off by one gram of radium. The 12 radium dots on the old Big Ben dial at San Onofre emit three one-thousandths of a curie of radiation.) Stewart Brand, whom Caldicott has not heard of, “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” James Lovelock, “to use a crude Australian expression, has his head . . . somewhere. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about; I really resent him.” And Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense Fund, his fence-sitting on nuclear notwithstanding? “He’s really a front for the nuclear industry. They all have fronts. So in order to do your reporting well, you have to investigate who these people are, and what connections they have, and if they’re biologists or not. And if they’re not, just discount what they say.” It’s true that almost all of Caldicott’s fellow firebrands who have come out in favor of nuclear power have some ties to the energy industry, be they financial or merely philosophical: Brand’s Global Business Network, for instance, secures funding via corporate members who pay $40,000 a year for a suite of services; among them are nuclear-power providers PG&E, Southern California Edison and Duke Power. GBN co-founder Peter Schwartz, who co-authored a pro-nuclear article in Wired magazine last winter, was once head of scenario planning at Royal Dutch Shell. And Lovelock serves as an informal adviser to the French-based Association des Ecologistes Pour le Nucléaire (Environmentalists for Nuclear). Yet while Krupp earns a controversial salary — over $300,000 a year according to tax records available on EDF’s Web site — there’s no evidence that he’s a “front” for anybody. He is not, however, a biologist, a physician or a geneticist, but a lawyer. Which means, spits Caldicott, he lacks all qualifications to opine about nuclear energy. “You might as well unleash him into the operating theaters and let him operate on patients. It’s as serious as that.” On a furnace-hot day in late May outside a San Pedro theater, Caldicott awaits her turn to rally opponents of liquefied-natural-gas terminals in Long Beach. For the occasion, she is dressed in a buttonless blue suit with a fluiddrape that emphasizes the fact that she almost never stops moving. Her elegant hands flail, she shifts in her chair, she shakes her head in exasperation. Her perpetual apoplexy is charming, even lovable, but not quite likeable — a distinction I hadn’t thought to make before I met her. Like a televangelist, she expects personal admissions of sin and shame in her presence; I make sure to tell her I traveled here by public transportation, then foolishly add that I’m grateful for the air-conditioning in city buses. “But you’ve got no right to run air-conditioning,” she chides. “You’re pouring HCFCs into the atmosphere. You shouldn’t do it.” Throughout most of the 1970s and ’80s, the Australian-born Caldicott was the center of the international anti-nuclear vortex. She wrote books, fought off the French effort to conduct atmospheric testing in the South Pacific, linked arms with Australian uranium miners who were dying of lung cancer. She has been lauded for her precisely targeted fury, but also ridiculed for her seemingly nuttier pronouncements. In the wake of the accident at Three Mile Island, Caldicott asserted that Hershey’s chocolate, made from the milk of cows that graze near the Pennsylvania plant, had been tainted with strontium-90. “We don’t know the ground measurements where the cows graze because they kept that secret,” she admits. “But I’ve been saying it for years: Don’t eat Hershey’s chocolates. They haven’t sued me. You shouldn’t eat them.” These days, Caldicott spends 50 percent of her time raising funds for the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, a D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to “creating consensus for a nuclear-free future.” She opposes nuclear technology in all its forms — from nuclear weapons to fission-generated electricity, it’s all the same to her. “The nuclear industry,” she says, “is a cancer industry. Nuclear power is going to induce millions of cases of cancer, particularly in children who are so radiosensitive. And it causes genetic disease, not just in humans but in other creatures. So it’s an evil industry, medically speaking.” I remark that several credible nuclear-safety advocates I have interviewed so far, including Rochelle Becker of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, Michael Marriott of the Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS) and Dave Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, have declined to make any proclamations about the health risks of living near nuclear power plants; the studies, say all three, are just not complete. Caldicott glares at me. “There are many studies. If they don’t know they should know. They’ve got no right not to know. Around Sellafield in Britain, which is also a reprocessing plant and a nuclear reactor, there are large clusters of cancers there. There are clusters of cancers in Wales, on the Irish Sea, which is the most polluted sea in the world, polluted by Sellafield. “In fact,” she says agitatedly, “the literature is replete with malignancy in people who live near reactors. But because of the latent period of carcinogenesis, the incubation time for cancer is five to six years. You have to wait for a while and do a decent epidemiological study to assess what’s going on.” In 1991, the National Cancer Institute in the U.S. conducted what might be considered a “decent epidemiological study” of deaths from 16 types of cancer, including leukemia, in 107 U.S. counties “containing or closely adjacent to 62 nuclear facilities,” all of which had been built before 1982. The survey compared cancer death rates before and after the facilities went online with similar data in 292 counties without nuclear facilities. After four years of research, the team of epidemiologists found no general increased risk of death from cancer near nuclear facilities. In some counties, the relative risk for childhood leukemia from birth through 9 years dropped a statistically insignificant few hundredths of a point after the startup of a local nuclear facility. The areas surrounding four facilities, including San Onofre, showed significantly lower rates for leukemia in teenagers compared with the rest of the country. A University of Pittsburgh study of the area within a five-mile radius of Three Mile Island showed no statistically significant increase in cancer rates 20 years after the accident at the reactor in 1979. What’s more, neither soil nor air samples in the area around Three Mile Island have been kept from the public. According to the Carter-era EPA, close to 10 percent of some 800 milk samples from local dairy farms the month after the accident showed trace amounts of radioactive contamination. But the highest concentration was still 40 times less than what showed up in milk after the fallout from Chinese nuclear testing in October 1976 that passed across the United States. None of which placates Caldicott. “If you look at my book, Nuclear Madness, I cite many studies. But they’re not government studies, because the government doesn’t do the studies. A, they’re difficult to do. You have to wait until people actually die, and there’s a mobile population. B, it’s expensive — you have to do autopsies on all of them, and C, you have to compare them to an unexposed group, and D they don’t want to find out.” At this point, I can only gaze across the table with a quizzical smile as Caldicott, in all her fired-up glory, rants on about all the things Americans “have no right” to do — drive cars, farm large tracts of land, spew 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide. “This country,” she says, “is quite obscene.” As an activist, she is magnificent. Inside the theater, she gives a speech so vivacious and funny no one seems to mind that she doesn’t have much to say about liquefied natural gas. But she won’t talk about children with asthma in the shadow of Tennessee’s coal-firedpower plants, or whether hurricanes have grown more intense because the climate is changing, or whether it’s possible to engineer safer models of nuclear reactors. “Listen to me,” she says. “You’re trying to balance both sides on this, and you can’t. There are no two sides to this issue. It’s like having a factory full of polio virus. And when the virus reproduces it makes heat and you turn the steam into electricity. But, by the way, millions of people might get polio. It’s exactly the same thing. “Promise me you’ll read my book Nuclear Madness before you write your article, okay? Promise me? Because then you won’t be confused anymore. Then you’ll know.” Look, you don’t want to go out and build a plant, spend all the money, and have the license jerked at the last minute. [Laughter.] Nobody’s going to spend money if that’s the case. —George W. Bush, speaking at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, June 22, 2005 No new orders for nuclear plants have been submitted in the U.S. since 1974, and none have been built since 1985. This is in part due to the accident at Three Mile Island, which happened 12 days after the popular movie The China Syndrome hit the theaters, and in part because of economics — many of the early plans were “turnkey” operations, so named because the manufacturer — General Electric, Westinghouse or Bechtel — paid for their construction (all the utility had to do was “turn the key”). When subsidies for new reactors disappeared, so did plans to build them. Nevertheless, nuclear fission still generates a full fifth of the country’s power. And to replace that energy with the other most readily available source, coal-fired power, would add 600 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. But either we replace it or lose it, because those 103 light-water reactors are fast closing in on the end of their natural lives. Thirty-two of the original licenses the Atomic Energy Commission (later the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC) granted to nuclear plants have already expired and been renewed; applications are pending on another 16, and many more will run out in the next 20 years, including licenses granted to the 2,200-megawatt San Onofre Units 2 and 3 and the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, whose two reactors power some 2 million homes. Like many other aging plants around the country, both San Onofre and Diablo Canyon will require extensive repairs to continue operating to the end of their licensing periods: Southern California Edison claims that the tubes in San Onofre’s steam generators are up to 11 percent cracked (the NRC allows 21 percent cracking before replacement) and has set the regulatory gears in motion to replace them for nearly $700 million; Pacific Gas & Electric already has preliminary approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to repair Diablo Canyon. But it isn’t enough to repair the old plants. “Without new construction,” explains the Department of Energy’s Rebecca Smith-Kevern at a workshop at the California Energy Commission during the second week in August, “nuclear capacity will fall off rapidly in the mid 2030s and be nonexistent by 2056.” If that happens, she warns, “the crucial challenge of capping and ultimately reducing U.S. and world greenhouse gas emissions would be considerably more difficult.” Eleven countries around the world are now constructing 30 nuclear power reactors, including India and China, which has plans for, literally, dozens more in the next half century — not necessarily to save the planet but because oil won’t last forever. Uranium, by contrast, is abundant, inexpensive and not controlled by any cartel. The Department of Energy’s “Nuclear Power 2010” program aims to jump-start the process of building new reactors — to explore new sites, speed the regulatory process and streamline licensing. At the August workshop, Smith-Kevern unveils a raft of new reactor designs — “evolutionary, not revolutionary” reactors, such as GE’s “simplified boiling water reactor,” and Westinghouse’s “advanced passive” pressurized water reactor. Next in line are the “Generation IV” technologies, such as gas-cooled fast reactors, lead-cooled reactors and molten-salt reactors. All reduce waste, have the potential to burn existing waste and produce economically competitive electricity, says Smith-Kevern, at 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour (electricity from coal-fired plants costs just over 2 cents per kilowatt hour; gas-fired electricity runs upward of 3 cents a kilowatt hour, according to the Utility Data Institute). They feature passive safety systems — controls that kick in without operator action — and address proliferation concerns by never separating plutonium from the waste. With the help of the new energy bill President Bush signed August 8, nuclear ambitionsmay actually have a prayer. Bipartisan efforts on nuclear power’s behalf secured benefits for the industry ranging from generous tax credits for new nuclear generation to a 15-year extension of the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries IndemnityAct — a controversial 1957 law limiting the industry’s liability in the event of major accident. The energy bill also directs the NRC and the DOE to develop a strategy for licensing a “Next Generation” nuclear reactor that will produce hydrogen for transportation. The first Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) is scheduled to be online at the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory by 2021. One of the more popular Next Generation designs is the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), a compact gas-cooled reactor with fuel assemblies the size of tennis balls filled with pellets of 10 percent U-235. Westinghouse plans to pitch a PBMR to the U.S. this year; South Africa’s Eskom Energy already has PBMRs in development. Unlike light-water reactors that use water and steam, the PBMR cools its core and drives its turbines with pressurized helium. Because the reactor’s 400,000 “pebbles” are fed into the reactor core little by little, a meltdown, at least in the conventional sense, is almost impossible. The PBMR is thought to be so safe, in fact, that it doesn’t require the four-foot-thick concrete containment building common to light-water reactors. Neo-nuclear environmentalists consider it a significant improvement in safety. Stewart Brand wrote last spring that “problematic early reactors like the ones at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl can be supplanted by new, smaller-scale, meltdown-proof reactors like the ones that use the pebble-bed design.” “It has some good features,” says Dave Lochbaum at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Studies have shown that even if a [PBMR] cooling line breaks, it won’t melt down. I’ve come to Lochbaum, who works out of a tiny, barely ventilated office in Washington, D.C., because he has a reputation among anti-nuclear activists and industry advocates alike for limiting his assertions to what he knows to be true. And his organization is as nervous about climate change as it is about the perils of nuclear power plants. “By not using water you’ve significantly reduced the amount of low-level waste you generate,” Lochbaum says, and then pauses. “On the other hand, there is no free lunch. While it may not melt down, it could catch on fire. The pebble bed is like the Chernobyl reactor in that it uses an awful lot of graphite. None of our reactors operating in the United States use graphite in the core. Graphite’s just carbon. If the carbon catches on fire, it’s pretty hard to put out. It’s particularly hard if you’re using airflow to cool the reactor, which the pebble bed does. If you have a fire and you stop the airflow, you also stop the heat removal. So you may stop the fire and start the meltdown. “You may not be able to get ‘fireproof’ and ‘meltdown proof,’” Lochbaum says. “You may have to pick one or the other.” Which one is worse? “I don’t know,” he says. “The Three Mile Island accident was a meltdown. It released a lot of radioactivity into the environment. We’ve never been sure how much. Chernobyl was a fire. Smoke carried the radioactivity into the environment. I guess they’re pretty much the same.” There’s one other problem with the pebble-bed reactor, one that’s less a safety issue than a logistical one: “Because the pebble-bed doesn’t have the same power density, or octane rating, as our current plants do, it generates about 10 times as much spent fuel for the same amount of electricity.” In other words, 10 times the waste. It is another unnaturally hot spring day when I visit Lochbaum, who cools his office with a small fan. The son of a nuclear engineer, Lochbaum worked in the nuclear industry for 14 years before the owner of Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna Nuclear Generating Station ignored his warning about a potentially deadly design flaw in the plant’s spent-fuel pools. Frustrated, Lochbaum submitted a lengthy report to the NRC, from which he received no response. Only much later, when another plant owner, concerned about the same problem at his plant, requested the report, did Lochbaum learn that in his haste to submit the report, he’d made one-sided copies of two-sided pages: Every other page was blank. “It’s evidence to me that the NRC never actually read my report,” he says. Lochbaum eventually went to Congress with his concerns, where safety improvements were mandated for Susquehanna and other plants with the same issue. He worked in the industry for three more years before joining the Union of Concerned Scientists in 1996. Lochbaum describes himself, and UCS, as “neither for nor against nuclear power — we’re just safety advocates, and we’re concerned about global warming, too.” But he is clearly not optimistic about nuclear energy’s future. It’s not so much the technology itself; Lochbaum believes it can be made to work, and made to work safely. But as the electricity market around the country becomes increasingly deregulated and competitive, plant owners have more cause to put profit above reliability and safety. And the NRC is not working the way it’s supposed to: According to a 2003 report by the NRC’s inspector general and the Government Accountability Office, 47 percent of NRC employees don’t feel comfortable raising safety issues. “We get more calls from NRC employees than from employees of all the plants combined,” says Lochbaum. He shows me a “bathtub curve” diagram from UCS’ ­literature: All the major accidents associated with nuclear power happened toward the beginning of each light-water reactor’s break-in phase, on the left-hand slope of the chart’s curve. “Our concern now is that all our nuclear power plants are in the wear-out phase,” he says. Lochbaum points to the right-hand, upward slope of the tub. “Left unchecked, we’ll start putting names on this side.” Thank you most of all for nuclear power, which is yet to cause a single, proven fatality, at least in this country. —Homer Simpson, saying grace in the Simpsons episode “Oh, Brother Where Are Thou” “I really believe that people go to work at that plant saying I have a huge responsibility to make sure this plant is safe,” says Rochelle Becker, the tireless executive director of the San Diego–based Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility. “But you can be running that plant with the best of intentions and the best of employees, and guess what? Nature bats last.” In recent years, Becker, a small woman with a slightly turned-up nose and straight, light-brown-to-graying hair pulled back in a ponytail, has focused almost all of her energy fighting the impending re-licensing of California’s two remaining nuclear power plants on the grounds that no safe solution exists for long-term storage of nuclear waste. Becker has read the National Academy of Sciences report on those storage pools and, like that report’s authors, she worries about terrorist attacks. But she worries as much about a 7.5-magnitude earthquake on the Hosgri Fault, which runs two and a half miles from Diablo Canyon’s door. She admits that an earthquake of such power has never hit that fault, but neither had a storm surge sufficient to submerge New Orleans ever hit the Gulf Coast. Geological time, like radioactive decay, is not measured in the tens of years, but in hundreds and thousands. “Earthquakes,” she says, ”don’t happen in 30-year time frames.” Both plants have been built to withstand, as PG&E’s literature puts it, “the largest earthquake deemed credible from the nearest earthquake fault.” The utility employs a full staff of seismic experts to assess the risk from nearby faults. Becker doesn’t care. “How many structures fell in the Northridge earthquake that were supposed to have been seismically sound? Freeway overpasses, buildings, all kinds of things. Look at where San Onofre is compared to the ocean. It’s pretty much right there. What happens if the coast shifts? And what happens if an earthquake hits at one of those plants while they’re moving fuel into the pools? Worst-case scenario: The fuel rods could come in contact with each other, initiating a chain reaction and subsequently starting a fire.” Cancer deaths from such an accident could soar into the five digits. And if it doesn’t kill you, rest assured your beach house will be rendered worthless, says Becker. “Oceanfront property,” she says, “will be pretty darn cheap.” Diablo Canyon’s spent-fuel pools will reach capacity in 2006, which is why PG&E has plans to institute on-site dry-cask storage at its facility, a decision Becker prefers to trucking waste across California. In March of 2004, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted PG&E a 20-year license to begin storing spent fuel in steel canisters packed in concrete and steel and anchored to concrete pads. There was only one problem: The license didn’t say anything about protecting the storage facility against a terrorist attack. The Sierra Club and Mothers for Peace, with the backing of California Attorney General Bill Lockyear, have appealed the NRC’s approval in the Ninth Circuit Court. But if both nuclear plants shut down when their licenses run out, how will California meet its energy needs without compounding global warming? Becker gave her official answer to the California Energy Commission at a Sacramento workshop: “Four thousand megawatts is a considerable amount of energy,” she said, “but we don’t believe it’s substantial. Hundreds of millions of California’s dollars have gone into a hole in the Nevada desert called Yucca Mountain. If the same investment in dollars were made in renewable, we would go from being the laughingstock to a leader in renewable energy.” Then again, she tells me over lunch one day, “I don’t really feel like it’s up to me to address how we replace that power. I do feel like it’s up to me to be questioning how much radioactive waste California wants to store on our earthquake-active coast. For years, we have been talking about these as energy-generation plants. All they do is produce energy. We’re acting like we don’t have over 6,000 tons of radioactive waste sitting on our coast. Well, we do. And there’s 200 more tons every year.” Even storage facilities for low-level waste have begun to tighten restrictions: Barnwell, South Carolina, will close its doors to out-of-region waste as of 2008; Richland, Washington, already has. “So when does California go, ‘This is enough’” asks Becker. “Why aren’t we making the Department of Energy, the NRC, the federal government deal with these problems like they promised? And why do we continue to produce more waste when we haven’t solved the problem of what we’ve got?” The answer to some of Becker’s questions can be found about 100 miles north of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain in the bleak expanse of Nye County, Nevada. Should it seem for any reason an inappropriate place to deposit several generations of America’s atomic detritus, Department of Energy spokesman Allen Benson is here to convince you otherwise. In his arsenal of evidence is the fact that Yucca Mountain gets only seven inches of rainfall a year and that the area surrounding the proposed repository is chronically underpopulated, on the edge of the Nevada Test Site, where atomic scientists working for the U.S. government sat at perilously close range while their mystical ordnance exploded 1,500 feet over the desert. If that isn’t enough, consider this: “Nye County,” observes Benson, “is shaped like a mushroom cloud.” It is impossible not to be awestruck by the sheer scale of the Yucca Mountain project, by the five-mile horseshoe-shaped tunnel that has been drilled through the mountain, by the railroad that runs through that tunnel, by the 450-foot-long drill that made that tunnel, the “Yucca Mucker” that still stands at the tunnel’s far end, because it’s too expensive to move. “If you know anyone who’s interested, it’s for sale,” Benson says, staring up at the beast-like machine. “$10 million.” “But it needs some work,” I offer. Benson laughs. “It needs some work. It’s only got five miles on it, though.” Inside the tunnel, thousands of note cards litter the cavern’s rock walls, engraved with the names of prominent scientists from Los Alamos, Sandia and Livermore laboratories — scientists who have taken samples of Yucca Mountain’s volcanic rockfor independent analysis of its density, its mineral content and, most of all, its porosity: Water is the thing that defines whether a nuclear waste storage facility will withstand the test of time and weather. It’s unfortunate, then, that on the day I take Benson’s tour, with two other journalists and a geologist named John Hartley, the desert is bursting with greenness fed by unusually plentiful spring rains. I expected Yucca Mountain to be dry and barren; instead, it’s a stunning stretch of high Western desert. It seems a heartbreaking place for a waste dump. “Get this straight,” says Benson. “We don’t dump anything. And that really is important if you’re going to report on this. It is not dumped. It is disposed of in a scientific and responsible manner to protect public health and safety.” But can’t that science change? What happens if global warming gives Yucca Mountain annual monsoons? “First of all, we’re dealing with solid material,” says Benson, “in specially designed canisters, in an engineered facility designed to enhance the natural geology. You’ve probably heard talk in some quarters that the mountain itself was supposed to protect the canisters. That’s not true.” The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, says Benson, clearly indicates that engineered facilities would be used in conjunction with natural geology to protect against radiation exposure. “So we’re following the law very clearly here, very precisely.” Benson has cause to be defensive: Nevada Senator Harry Reid calls it a “dump” nearly every time he mentions it; Shelley Berkley, the local congresswoman, calls it a “fiscal black hole.” This week Congress slashed the project’s funding by $127 million. Eight billion dollars have so far gone into the project, which was last scheduled to open in 1998. Victor Gilinsky, who formerly served on the NRC, has blasted DOE management for shrouding the project in secrecy. “It’s hard to have confidence in an agency that acts in such a secretive way.” Last winter, a series of e-mails exchanged by employees of the U.S. Geological Survey who worked on the project suggested that research on the site had not been as meticulous as it could have been, and in some cases may have been falsified. “We’re not talking about the e-mails,” Benson reminded us more than once. “The e-mails are part of an ongoing investigation, and we’re not going to do anything to compromise that ­investigation.” After a few hours at Yucca Mountain, it becomes clear why, despite a desperate need for a solution to the nuclear waste problem (there is already enough waste in temporary storage to fill it), the site has not opened: No one is absolutely sure what will happen if it does. If all the regulatory hurdles are cleared, if Nevada loses its political battle and Yucca Mountain’s license — which Benson says will be measured in “linear feet,” not pages — is finally approved, the waste that goes into it will last for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years. “We don’t know what will happen in 10,000 years,” Benson admits. “Will people speak English? There probably won’t be a United States.” He talks about the difficulty of establishing a warning system that will matter to creatures of the future, who likely won’t read our signs. But the very idea that such a system is possible seems absurd. In early August, the EPA proposed upgrading its 10,000-year safety standard for radiation exposure to humans near Yucca Mountain to 1 million years. As if the EPA will be around in 1 million years to enforce it. People in the nuclear industry, including San Onofre’s Ray Golden, respond to the problem of nuclear waste by advocating reprocessing. It sounds like a good idea to me, too, so I ask Dave Lochbaum about it. “On paper, it sounds good,” he says. “Everybody likes recycling. But we’ve tried reprocessing three times in this country and we’re 0 for 3.” Why? “General Electric spent a lot of money on a reprocessing facility in Morris, Illinois. They got it finished, but they never could get it to work. Once Ford and Carter issued nonproliferation executive orders, [closing] it was less face loss than admitting it didn’t work.” “So why,” I want to know, “don’t we just bring a bunch of French guys over here to show us how?” “Well,” Lochbaum hesitates, “the French don’t really follow our safety rules. I’m not sure that technology could be licensed in the United States unless we just waived our existing regulations. We have a little bit more concern about effluent. I’m not going to say the French are ‘no blood no foul,’ but they’re not quite as concerned about effluents as we are. They tend to believe more in ‘the solution to pollution is dilution.’ They have high releases, but they figure it’s going into the North Sea or the English Channel. That’s a big ocean. So there are certain beaches on the North Seawhere you can get a suntan at night.” Indeed, according to Britain’s Environmental Protection Agency, concentrations of technetium-99, an isotope produced in reprocessing, were four times higher in the coastal waters of Belgium and the Netherlands down-plumefrom France’s Cap de la Hague reprocessing plant. Shortly after I return from Yucca Mountain, I look over a map I got from Rochelle Becker showing my office in Los Angeles, just 4.7 miles away from the nearest nuclear waste transport route, along which waste would travel on its way from Diablo Canyon to Yucca Mountain. I find myself mentally running through the process of loading cats in their carriers, dogs on their leashes and cherished belongings unboxed in the car — and planning escape routes. The 101 freeway out of Hollywood would be jammed; the 5 freeway in either direction would be worse. I think of all those drivers stuck on the highways out of Houston, fleeing Hurricane Rita. “It would most likely evolve over days, not hours,” says Ray Golden of a nuclear accident. He takes me into the war room at San Onofre, a high-ceiling barracks filled with long tables lined with telephones. The phones have assignments: FEMA sits here, the local sheriff there, the plant manager over there. The NRC has a spot, too. “Yeah, they’d be here bossing us around,” says Golden, as though he’d rather handle any emergency by himself, with his trusted co-workers. As though he could. As my nuclear anxiety accelerates, I finish Caldicott’s Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do. I find in it Caldicott’s gloss narratives of nuclear energy’s accidents and horrors, a fairly familiar litany of the disasters that have happened and others that probably will. But I also find in the book a comprehensive summary of all the radioactive substances that have already been released into the environment — information I first learned from the federal EPA’s Web site: A fine dust of plutonium-239, discovered in 1941 but kept secret as a national security threat until seven years later, has accumulated over the world like a toxic blanket. Writes Caldicott more specifically: “Five metric tons were thinly dispersed over the Earth as a result of nuclear bomb testing, satellite re-entries and burnups, effluents from nuclear reprocessing plants, accidental fires, explosions, spills and leakages.” One-millionth of a gram is enough to cause cancer. And as far as living organisms on the Earth are concerned, plutonium is forever. It has a half-life of just under 25,000 years. As Caldicott points out, it can’t even be destroyed. “Plutonium does not simply vanish at the death of a contaminated organism. If, for example, someone were to die of a lung cancer induced by plutonium, and were then cremated, contaminated smoke might carry plutonium particles into someone else’s lungs.” Caldicott wrote the book in the same voice with which she speaks, and as I read I pictured her staring me down. This time, I take her seriously. To produce enough electricity to keep Yonkers going for a year, a light-water nuclear reactor would make, as a by-product, just about enough plutonium to obliterate Yonkers. — John McPhee, The Curve of Binding Energy, 1974. There are, at this point, many persuasive arguments against nuclear power. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute can show you graphs and charts proving it produces less energy for the dollar than wind or solar could, if anyone would implement renewables on a large scale. Wall Street analysts complain that even the current energy bill’s generous subsidies for nuclear energy are not sufficient to spur investment. No one knows what to do with the waste. And while its essential generation may be free of toxic air emissions we associate with smog and greenhouse gas, the process of mining and enriching its most fundamental element — uranium — huffs an astonishing load of Earth-destroying chemicals into the air. Caldicott had warned me of this, but I didn’t believe her until I saw the data on the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory for 2003: The two gaseous diffusion plants at Paducah, Kentucky, and Portsmouth, Ohio, pour almost 10 times the amount of CFC-114 — an ozone-destroying gas banned under the Montreal Protocol — as all other sources in the United States combined. But the most disturbing thing about nuclear power is that fission of any kind, for bombs or watts, creates toxic elements that would not otherwise exist. According to the U.K.’s National Radiological Protection Board, cesium-137 fallout from the Chernobyl accident will likely contribute to 1,000 additional cancers over the next 70 years among the population of Western Europe. Strontium-90, chemically similar to calcium, settles in bones and blood, triggering bone cancer and leukemia. It is perhaps not surprising that cancer clusters can’t be found in the immediate vicinity of nuclear power facilities: According to the EPA, strontium-90 has been so thoroughly dispersed into the atmosphere it is “almost impossible to avoid.” It has been found in milk and ­children’s baby teeth since the late 1950s, most recently by Dr. Jay Gould and a team of researchers in their 2000 study, “Strontium-90 in Deciduous Teeth as a Factor in Early Childhood Cancer,” which reported higher strontium-90 concentrations downwind of certain nuclear power plants. It is not far-fetched at all, then, to imagine that it also turns up in Hershey’s chocolate. Thinking in 10,000-year terms is new to us. We have a long way to go to comprehend even the size of the subject of very long-term responsibility. —Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility — The Idea Behind the World’s Slowest Computer In 1966, a young Stewart Brand dropped LSD, sat on the top of a building in San Francisco and observed the curvature of the earth. That led him to a campaign of buttons and bumper stickers demanding an answer to the question, “Why haven’t we seen a picture of the Whole Earth yet?” A few years later, an Apollo mission shot a vision of the Earth from space fully lit by the sun — the famous “Blue Marble” — and Brand launched the Whole Earth Catalog with the image as his logo. In some respects he was the original techno-environmentalist: The founder, in 1985 of the Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link (the WELL), a force behind Wired magazine, a philosopher who brought together the nature lovers — the “romantics” in Brand’s view — with the scientists. It was a surprise to many, and dismaying to some, when Brand granted nuclear power an honored place in the world’s energy portfolio. In the months since his article “Environmental Heresies” was published in MIT’s Technology Review, many have tried to persuade him otherwise. Clean-energy expert Joseph Romm tried to convince him that the nuclear industry would do just fine without his support — it’s renewables that need his backing. Environmental journalist Mark Hertsgaard wrote a pointed editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle accusing Brand of being, among other things, naive about nuclear power’s economics. Random bloggers have accused him of shortsightedness — a potent irony, as one of Brand’s affiliations these days is with the Long Now Foundation, which he co-founded with Danny Hillis to promote long-term thinking (among their projects is a clock that measures time in millennial increments). But Brand has held firm. The reason: Nothing — no reactor meltdown, no waste-storage conundrum, no fine dust of plutonium spread around the globe will cause as much damage to the Earth as the carbon-induced changing of the climate. “Amory Lovins bent my ear hard with how the economics don’t work,” Brand tells me over the phone from his office in San Francisco. “And indeed, the economics are problematic, but Amory has not done the economics on climate change.” Even if a nuclear disaster occurs, Brand says it won’t be as bad as losing every coastline to global tsunamis. “A fair question you could put to one of your concerned scientists would be, How many Chernobyls equals one abrupt climate change?” says Brand. “A climate change where we have warmer and warmer oceans and deeper and deeper waters, where Florida goes under, and Bangladesh goes under, and we have more and more New Orleans–type events every year? A climate change where the Gulf Stream turns off, and not only Europe but the whole world gets much colder, drier and windier, and the Earth then drops its carrying capacity by 20 or 40 percent? “And what,” Brand continues, “if you can engineer out any Chernobyl at all?” If there’s a lot Brand hasn’t worked out — he didn’t, for instance, know the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor produced so much waste — no matter; Brand has enormous faith in future engineering and human invention. “It may well be true about the pebble bed and waste,” he allows. “But then, okay, back to the old drawing board! That’s exactly the kind of debate about these designs one would like to see in public. I would like to see Greens engaging in it. Let’s bear down and say this or that or this other thing is a problem. Maybe we should be pushing ‘generation five’ nuclear technology — if we even know what it is. What you want is the back and forth instead of one side yelling ‘yes’ and the other side yelling ‘no.’ In the meantime, we can start building some stuff, bearing in mind that the worst nuclear disaster is still a lot better than the worst climate disaster that rachets us into a world we can’t come back from.” As for the waste that so worries Rochelle Becker, that’s easy, says Brand: Open Yucca Mountain for business. It doesn’t have to be perfect forever, because in time, we’ll figure out a better solution. “I think it’s a swell place to park this stuff for a 100 years while we think about what to do with it. A lot of engineers think we’ll send robots back in a few decades to use what will then be high-grade ore.” The way Brand sees it, the problem with Yucca Mountain is that the U.S. government has been trying to figure out how to store nuclear waste safely for 10,000 years. “And that’s a very expensive, irrelevant question,” he says. “The Canadians asked a different question — what do we do with it right now? They got the Indians involved, who told them seven generations is not a bad time frame. Seven times 25 is 175 — so we have responsibility for this thing for 175 years. After that, it is fair to say that it is the next generation’s problem. Let them deal with it.” Bequeathing subsequent generations nuclear waste is “way, way different than losing species you can’t get back. This is passing on an engineering problem to future generations. And that is fair to do.” But how does that square with the express philosophy of long-term thought, of the millennial clock? “When we went to Yucca Mountain, we took a member of our Long Now board,” says Brand. “And we found ourselves fascinated by the pathology of Yucca Mountain and the billions they were spending to study it. They were doing what we were promoting — they were thinking long term. They were thinking ‘Let’s have an absolute bulletproof determination of all that will happen in 10,000 years and develop an engineering solution for all those problems.’ “But this,” Brand continues, “was a case in which thinking in 10,000-year terms was a mistake.” He laughs. “I really liked it, because up until then we thought 10,000-years-plus is a good way to think about everything, but it isn’t. In this case, it created more problems than solutions. It was very bracing for us to learn that.” But will nuclear power save us from the fate Brand warns about? And just how many nuclear reactors would it take to make an appreciable difference in the carbon collecting in the atmosphere? In 2002, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research did that math and concluded that it would take 2,000 nuclear reactors producing 1,000 megawatts of power to make a dent in carbon emissions from coal-fired plants. At the United Nations, a multinational panel on climate change suggested reversing the carbon trend would require an average of 75 new nuclear reactors every year for the next century. By some estimates, the Earth will run out of uranium before we’d reach that capacity for nuclear generation. Brand, of course, dismisses such estimates as based on old technology and backward data. And this is no time to wring our hands about future uranium supplies and the release of toxic isotopes. We need to stop climate change now. “Chernobyl was local,” insists Brand. “It put a lot of crap into the atmosphere, and people downwind are in bad shape. But climate change is pretty damn universal and inescapable. It’s not like we’re going to go somewhere else.” Most of the world, he argues, will be uninhabitable — not just for humans but for every other species adapted to the seasons as we know them. And perhaps that’s where Brand wins: While climate change has already begun to endanger a diverse range of Earth-bound plants and animals, the consequences of widespread nuclear contamination matter most for humans. The evidence can be found in Chernobyl’s “exclusion zone,” an area 10 kilometers out from the scene of the 1986 fire. A few people have returned to Chernobyl, to the abandoned town of Pripyat and to the formerly Red Forest on the outskirts of the town and reactor, but the exclusion zone remains off-limits to humans, and will remain so for as long as we can imagine. But here’s the twist: In the absence of human impact, the land has reverted to one of the most robust wildlife refuges in the world. According to a report by geneticists Robert J. Baker and Ronald K. Chesser of Texas Tech University, who have conducted 12 research expeditions to the site, moose, roe deer, foxes and river otters frolic within the exclusion zone; 30 kilometers out live wolves, eagles and the endangered black stork. “Diversity of flowers and other plants in the highly radioactive regions is impressive,” wrote Baker, “and equals that observed in protected habitats outside the zone.” Upon his return from the expedition, a government official asked Baker to report on the accident’s consequences to the ecosystem. Baker told him that “the net ecological impact has been positive.” “How it could be possible that the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, releasing between 100 and 200 million curies of radiation into the environment, could produce positive ecological consequences?” the official wanted to know. “The answer was simple,” the men concluded. “Humans have evacuated the contaminated zone.” It’s not that radiation hasn’t harmed the animals — the mice in the freakishly abundant new wilderness show profound genetic mutations — it’s just that “the benefit of excluding humans from this highly contaminated ecosystem appears to outweigh significantly any negative cost associated with Chernobyl radiation.” Nuclear power may change the world after all. -------- georgia Pieces of nuclear fuel rods missing at Ga. plant November 11, 2005 Associated Press http://www.walb.com/Global/story.asp?S=4103614 SAVANNAH, GA. Pieces of highly radioactive fuel rods are missing from a nuclear plant in southeast Georgia. And Georgia Power acknowledge that it's likely some will never be found. The utility said more than five feet of spent fuel rods, removed in the 1980s from a reactor at the Hatch nuclear plant near Baxley, could not be found during an inventory last month. The pencil-thin rods, kept in containment pools at the plant, emit lethal doses of radiation. Georgia Power spokesman Tal Wright said the pieces likely remain unfound in the pools or were shipped to a waste disposal facility. Georgia Power, which operates the plant, notified the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission of the missing pieces Monday. N-R-C spokesman Roger Hannah said the deadly radioactivity of the pieces makes them virtually impossible to steal. He said they would not have left the plant without setting off its radiation monitors. At the Baxley plant, about 90 miles southwest of Savannah, workers have been searching 40-feet-deep containment pools with robotic cameras. But Wright says that's like hunting for a needle in a haystack. The plant's two reactors and two spent-fuel pools hold four and three-quarters of a (m) million feet of fuel rods. ---- Georgia Power Considers Reactor Application; Environmentalists Concerned By Jim Pinkerton, jpinkerton@wagt.com November 11, 2005 6:54 PM http://www.nbc26news.com/news/local/1963717.html Georgia Power's parent company will decide by next August whether to file for an early site permit to build another nuclear reactor in Burke County. That permit would let them do site research to see if a new reactor is feasible. Facilities like Plant Vogtle are a lightning rod for controversy and environmental groups are already citing safety concerns. There has been only one minor incident in the plant's 18 years of operation. But environmentalists say it's not the big accidents they're concerned about -- it's the long-term effects of exposure to small doses of radiation coming from the plant. The plant prepares for the worst just the same. Workers at Plant Vogtle conduct drills on a regular basis in their simulator. They're training for a worst case scenario and they use real-life disasters as part of the training. "We would analyze events that occur even outside the U.S. and simulate those conditions in the simulator and also in the classroom," said Plant Vogtle Training Manager Bob Brown. Workers at the plant go through 18-months of intense training before they ever step foot behind the controls... and they continue that training one week out of every seven. "So they become very comfortable and confident in their response." But it's not the big disasters that concern some environmental groups. They're worried that small doses of radiation leaving the plant could cause health problems over time. "It's that mystery. How much is to escape before it causes illness. That's the mystery," said Charles Utley of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense. Plant Vogtle officials say boxes are constantly monitoring air and they also check soil and water for radiation -- both in the plant and in a 10 mile zone around the facility. The findings have consistently been within Nuclear Regulatory Commission guidelines. If they weren't, plant officials say the NRC would shut the plant down. "If they saw any indication whatsoever -- that's the NRC's charge -- to make certain that these plants operate safely and have no effect on the public," said Georgia Power spokeswoman Carol Boatright. "What we're saying is why search for levels when we can just eliminate those levels by not producing it... because we do know it does have an effect," said Utley. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission say some radiation is released as a result of routine plant operation. They've set an acceptable guideline of exposure as 10 millirems each year. That's much less than the 360 millirems experts say we're exposed to from all other sources. In it's latest report to the NRC for the third quarter of this year -- and for the past several years, Plant Vogtle has emitted levels a fraction above zero millirems. The safe standard is considered anything lower than 1-point-5 millirems. Doctor William Dynan is using zebra fish to study the effects of radiation at the Medical College of Georgia. His group wants to determine if there's a safe dose for humans. Dynan says the NRC standards err on the side of caution. "In practice, the regulatory standards for the public are set at a small fraction of the natural background radiation. So the excess risk, if there is excess risk, is quite small," Dr. Dynan said. Environmental groups say they're also concerned about the Savannah River Site. Just last month, workers found a small leak in one of the oldest radioactive waste tanks there. SRS says the material never made it beyond the outside wall of the tank and caused no health or environmental concerns. Before that incident, a member of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board says testing of the air, ground and water around SRS showed safe levels of radiation. A cleanup of stored waste at SRS is slated to be finished by 2025. --------- utah Congress won't fund PFS fight 11/11/2005 Salt Lake Tribune http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3204118 WASHINGTON - Congress has formally denied funding to a Department of Transportation request for two attorneys to handle challenges to Private Fuel Storage's plans to ship waste to Skull Valley. Sen. Bob Bennett had the funding stripped from the Senate version of the transportation spending bill in July, and the Transportation Department withdrew its request. However, the House had already approved the funding, and it remained in the bill until House and Senate members agreed Thursday to strip it out. Bennett said he is pleased the House members agreed to remove the language and that they "agree that this is not a proper role for the federal government." "I remain committed to fight against any effort to bring spent nuclear fuel to Utah, and firmly believe that this waste should be stored where it currently is until we work out the economics and technology to reprocess it," Bennett said in a statement. The Transportation Department said earlier that it did not intend for the attorneys to fight Utah's attempt to block the waste from being shipped to the state, but admitted the request for funds was poorly handled. The compromise transportation bill will likely be finished next week, receive a final vote by the House and Senate, and sent to the president for his signature. -------- vermont 62 cracks found at Vt. Yankee By KRISTI CECCAROSSI Brattleboro Reformer Staff Friday, November 11, 2005 http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8860~3126276,00.html BRATTLEBORO -- There are 62 cracks in an important piece of equipment at Vermont Yankee, but plant officials and federal regulators say that's not a problem. The hairline, surface cracks in the plant's steam dryer were found this month during a routine shutdown. Entergy Nuclear, owners of the plant, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the cracks pose no safety threat. The cracks are not structurally significant and they are probably from the plant's early years of operation, according to Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC. They "appear to be old," he said. However, nuclear watchdogs say the cracks are one more reason why the NRC should put the brakes on Entergy's plans to boost power at the plant to 120 percent. A so-called "uprate" at Vermont Yankee is pending final review by the NRC. In other nuclear plants that have been uprated, cracks in the steam dryer have been a persistent concern. Vermont's congressional delegation has identified the cracks as a problem, too. The state's senators and sole representative wrote to the NRC on Thursday, urging the agency to evaluate the steam dryer issue before approving the uprate. The Vernon reactor has been off line for re-fueling since Oct. 22. During the outage, plant engineers looked at the reactor and the steam dryer, located at the top of the reactor. They found 42 cracks, ranging from 1 inch to 5 inches in length, said Rob Williams, spokesman for the plant. The other 16 cracks were discovered in March 2004, during the last refueling outage. The cracks could have been on the steam dryer more than 20 years, but they've only been discovered now because engineers are using cameras with higher resolutions than ever before. The images show the cracks have been reviewed by Entergy officials, as well as the NRC and General Electric. Vermont Yankee is a boiling water reactor that started running in 1972. When the reactor heats up, it produces steam which, eventually, produces power. Before the steam hits the plant's turbines, it passes through the steam dryer, where any traces of water are removed. The Quad Cities Generating Station in Illinois, also a boiling water reactor that went on line in 1972, was granted a 17.5 percent uprate by the NRC in 2002. Since then, the steam dryer has failed twice because of cracking. In one instance, a piece of the dryer broke off and damaged other components of the reactor. The plant has been shut down a number of times to try to fix the problem. The NRC is scrutinizing the steam dryer issue at Vermont Yankee as a result. This fall, it told plant officials that in order to have their uprate approved, they'd have to adhere to more stringent maintenance of the steam dryer. Entergy agreed to the condition. Ray Shadis, technical advisor for the nuclear watchdog New England Coalition, said the added oversight amounts to "an experiment on the banks of the Connecticut River." "They are now making the assertion that because these are surface cracks, they will go no further." And particularly in light of a 20 percent boost in power output at the plant, Shadis said, "that's preposterous." Entergy officials have until the end of the month to prove that the cracks won't be exacerbated by an uprate, said Sheehan, of the NRC. Plant engineers will evaluate the steam dryer and submit a report to the NRC for review. The NRC will not investigate the issue itself. However, in a letter to the NRC chairman, Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., and Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., indicated that's what they'd like the agency to do. "We request that the condition of the steam dryer be fully evaluated, using the techniques of the most recent inspection and any other appropriate means," the letter states. "... it is essential that our constituents receive needed information about whether the plant's steam dryer will be able to withstand boosted power conditions and operate safely and reliably." While Vermont Yankee was shut down, plant officials refueled the reactor with a fuel specifically designed for the plant's "uprated" production, according to Williams, plant spokesman. During last year's outage, plant officials installed the same fuel. Entergy has reportedly done other work at the plant in preparation for the power boost, but Williams could not say how much officials have spent in anticipation of an uprate. The uprate has been approved by the state's Public Service Board, a quasi-judicial panel that handles all matters related to utilities. The board's approval is not final, however; members are still deliberating whether they want an independent safety assessment of the plant done first. The NRC is the last, major agency that must endorse the uprate. This month, it all but granted tentative approval. It's "draft" evaluation will bear public review on Nov. 15 and 16, when an agency panel hosts hearings at the Quality Inn in Brattleboro. NRC officials have said they will issue a final evaluation of the uprate early next year. Kristi Ceccarossi can be reached at kceccarossi@reformer.com. ---- Vermont Yankee has more cracks; probe demanded November 11, 2005 By Susan Smallheer Rutland Herald Staff http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051111/NEWS/511110380/1003/NEWS02 BRATTLEBORO — A key component at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant has developed dozens of additional cracks, the plant's owner announced late Thursday. Entergy Nuclear said that sophisticated technology discovered a total of 62 cracks in the steam dryer during a special inspection during the power plant's ongoing shutdown and refueling. The company had reported last year that there were 16 cracks in the 17-foot-wide steel steam dryer. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that despite the cracks, the reactor was safe to resume operation, but it said the new cracks raised unanswered questions about the plant's ability to withstand the additional pressures that would come with its plans to generate more power. The large number of cracks quickly caught the attention of the state's congressional delegation. Led by Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., the ranking member of the Senate committee that oversees nuclear power plants, the delegation called for federal regulators to do their own investigation into the cause of the cracks in the steam dryer. "We request that the condition of the steam dryer be fully evaluated, using the techniques of the most recent inspection and any other appropriate means, as the NRC considers Entergy Nuclear's request to produce an additional 100 megawatts of power from Vermont Yankee," said the statement from Jeffords, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., to NRC Chairman Nils Diaz. "We believe it is essential that our constituents receive needed information about whether the plant's steam dryer will be able to withstand boosted power conditions and operate safely and reliably," the letter added. Cracking in steam dryers has been a critical issue in Entergy's ambition to boost power production by 20 percent, or 110 megawatts, because other General Electric-designed reactors have developed cracks in their steam dryers, resulting in failure. Entergy's long-stalled application for a power boost has been largely delayed over the NRC's concerns about the steam dryer. According to NRC information, only six reactors out of the 100 commercial reactors in the country have developed such cracks. The steam dryers are not a safety component by themselves, but their failure, which could result in pieces of steel falling back into large steam valves, which lead back to the reactor, could create serious safety problems. NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said Thursday the NRC was sure that the plant was safe to continue to operate and the plant had clearance to resume operation. The plant has been shut down for its regular refueling and maintenance outage since Oct. 24. But Sheehan said the NRC had asked Entergy for additional information about the cracking issue, a report that is expected by the end of the month. Sheehan said 16 cracks had been discovered in April 2004, the last time the plant was shut down for its regular refueling and maintenance. He said a testing with increased magnification revealed the additional cracks. "Our evaluation is these cracks don't pose any sort of a problem," Sheehan said. He said the NRC and Entergy had concluded that the cracks had been there "a long time," probably "early in the power history of Vermont Yankee." The reactor started operation in November 1972. Sheehan said he didn't know how big the cracks were, but said they were "very minor." "We don't believe these pose any problem for restarting," he said. The uprate or power boost is another matter, he said. Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy, said the cracks were "insignificant and didn't pose a safety hazard." Last year, the plant originally announced finding only four cracks, with one as long as 14 inches and another 3 inches long. They were cleaned and welded. Months later, the company later increased the number to 16. Williams said a "high-resolution inspection" had revealed 62 "shallow hairline surface cracks that Entergy, General Electric and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff have determined are acceptable because they are not structurally significant." Williams said the cracks are "similar to those found at other boiling-water reactors." He said the cracks occurred in metal less than a quarter-inch thick, while the "hairline" ones were 1 to 5 inches long. Unlike the cracks discovered last year, these cracks didn't have to be welded or reinforced, Williams said. Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for the anti-nuclear group New England Coalition, said it was "insulting to the public" that the information was released so late in the day, on the eve of a federal three-day weekend holiday, and leading up to important NRC hearings in Brattleboro on the technical problems of the so-called uprate. "These (surface) failures are indicators of future structural failures," Shadis said, saying that anyone with commonsense experience in welding, metal fabrication or metalurgy knew that cracking was a precursor to failure. He said Entergy, having now identified defects which probably existed since plant construction, "should have undertaken an analysis to determine whether or not they would have an effect on future safety." Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com. -------- us nuc waste Bush's Yucca pick endorses recycling of N-waste By Erica Werner The Associated Press 11/11/2005 http://sltrib.com/nationworld/ci_3204078 WASHINGTON - President Bush's pick to oversee the troubled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada said the country should move toward recycling - not just burying - spent nuclear fuel. Edward ''Ward'' Sproat, a nuclear industry executive tapped to head the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, made the comments at his Energy Committee confirmation hearing Thursday. ''If the country decides to go and close the fuel cycle, go to full reprocessing like our original intent was back in the 1960s and early 1970s, the impact would be a significant reduction in the amount of high-level radioactive waste that would have to be disposed of in a deep geological repository,'' Sproat said in answering a question from Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. ''I personally believe it makes a lot of sense,'' Sproat said. The United States abandoned reprocessing in the 1970s over fears that the resulting plutonium could be seized by terrorists, but the Bush administration has proposed reviving the approach. Lawmakers this week agreed to spend $50 million on recycling initiatives in 2006, even as they cut the budget for the lagging Yucca Mountain project. The project has been without a permanent director since Margaret Chu resigned in February. Since then, two different acting directors have overseen Yucca Mountain as it suffered setbacks, including the disclosure of e-mails suggesting government scientists on the project falsified data. Yucca Mountain is planned as a national repository for 77,000 tons of defense waste and used reactor fuel to be buried beneath the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The planned opening date of the project has been pushed from 2010 until 2012 at earliest. Sproat told senators that even if the country starts recycling nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain will still be needed to expand the use of nuclear power. The Energy Committee is expected to vote next week to approve Sproat's nomination and send it to the full Senate. -------- MILITARY -------- space Astronauts say 'beam' would divert asteroids By Guy Gugliotta The Washington Post Friday, November 11, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002617472_beam11.html?syndication=rss Bruce Willis starred in "Armageddon," a movie about an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Willis used a nuclear device to stop the asteroid, but scientists say their "tractor beam" would do the same thing — without the mess. Two NASA astronauts have figured out a way to create a real version of a "Star Wars" "tractor beam" to keep an asteroid from crashing into Earth. By hovering nearby for perhaps a year, the astronauts say, the spacecraft's gravity could minutely slow the asteroid's progress or speed it up, a process that 10 or 20 years later would cause the rogue rock to miss Earth by a comfortable margin. "The beauty of this idea is that it's incredibly simple," astrophysicist-astronaut Edward Lu said. Since momentum doesn't dissipate in space, with enough time, only a small early nudge is needed to cause a major orbital change. Lu, who has made three trips to space, including a six-month stint aboard the international space station, and fellow astronaut Stanley Love, who has not yet flown there, describe the design of their "gravitational tractor" Thursday in the journal Nature. The two are in the middle of a spirited debate among space buffs, astronomers and space agencies worldwide over what to do about "near Earth objects": incoming comets and asteroids such as the one many scientists say caused the catastrophic "extinction event" that finished off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This discussion, for years a sci-fi giggler among fans of movies such as "When Worlds Collide" and "Deep Impact," suddenly became serious late last year when astronomers detected an incoming asteroid whose probability of hitting Earth on April 13, 2029, rose from one chance in 170 to one chance in 38. By year's end, it was clear the 1,000-foot-wide space rock, originally designated 2004 MN4 but now named 99942 Apophis, will miss — but by only 22,600 miles. And if it gets exactly the right kind of gravity boost from the 2029 encounter, it will smack into the Earth seven years later with enough force to obliterate Texas or a couple of European countries. With this in mind, former astronaut Russell Schweickart in June wrote a letter to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin suggesting the agency send a mission to plant a radio transponder on Apophis to better monitor its orbit. Ruling out — or ruling in — a future collision requires the best available orbital data. Schweickart heads the B612 Foundation, an organization of experts who advocate developing a spacecraft that can alter an asteroid's speed enough to keep it from colliding with Earth. The foundation is named after the asteroid home of "The Little Prince" in the Antoine de St.-Exupéry story. Schweickart originally advocated a "tugboat" strategy to dock with an asteroid and push it gently off its course, but he endorsed Lu and Love's idea as "a delightful way to pull an asteroid instead of pushing it; we're all [in the foundation] sort of uncles to the tractor beam." Lu and Love's design would use a relatively small 20-ton spacecraft powered by charged atomic particles called ions, generated by an onboard nuclear reactor. Such a propulsion system would — at relatively low weight — provide enough power to accelerate the probe to the speeds needed to run down the target asteroid. Once in place, the spacecraft would hover above the asteroid, using its engines to stay in place. Gravity "is a two-way street," noted Love, also speaking from Houston. Even as the spacecraft counters the asteroid's gravity, he said, its own gravity will pull the asteroid out of orbit. "The velocity increment is small, fractions of a centimeter [hundredths of an inch] per second," Lu added. "Suppose the asteroid is traveling 60,000 mph. You want to make it 60,001." This, Lu suggested, might take a year or two years, but that would be enough, for the change would then accumulate over a decade or more, sending the asteroid harmlessly away. Unlike Schweickart's tug, the tractor would work even if the asteroid rotates or tumbles, and unlike nuking the asteroid — Bruce Willis' solution in "Armageddon," the tractor is not messy. "Impacts and explosions are difficult to predict and control," Love said. "When you're trying to save the Earth, you want them to be both controllable and predictable." -------- un UN VIP searched at airport 08/11/2005 07:55 - (SA) http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1830629,00.html Vienna - Mohamed ElBaradei, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize and heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, was searched at Boston airport, before being allowed to fly to Washington, an agency official told AFP Monday. IAEA deputy director general David Waller said that ElBaradei saw the incident "as nothing but a misunderstanding and he appreciates what the US administration has done to make sure we don't run into difficulty like that again." He said the incident occurred on Sunday. ElBaradei's wife, who is Egyptian like him, was also stopped and searched. An American and an Australian travelling with ElBaradei were not searched, diplomats said. One diplomat, contacted in Washington from Vienna, said ElBaradei, director general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was "really angry and embarrassed by the incident." Incident 'not important' But Waller said Elbaradei felt the incident was "not important. What is important is what Dr ElBaradei has come here to do, in the broadest sense we're talking about the (nuclear) non-proliferation agenda." Waller, who worked in the administration of former United States President Ronald Reagan, said he had immediately contacted "some people at the State Department and they bent over backwards to make sure that doesn't happen again." Waller, who is also travelling in the United States but was not with ElBaradei in Boston, said the people who had searched ElBaradei were "contract" security officials and "not government employees." "The point here is that the (US) administration has been very thoughtful in making sure that all aspects of the trip go well," Waller said. ElBaradei spoke last week at the UN General Assembly and then was in Boston where he spoke at both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was travelling to Washington where he will be attending a conference on non-proliferation and is to meet US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. ElBaradei and the UN watchdog IAEA were on October 7 declared the winners of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. The United States, which has severely criticised ElBaradei in the past, welcomed the honor without mentioning past disagreements over Iraq's suspected nuclear arsenal or initial US resistance to a third term for ElBaradei as IAEA chief. "I congratulate the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director general, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, on being awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize," Rice said on October 7. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- torture A Deadly Interrogation: Can The CIA Legally Kill a Prisoner? Friday, November 11th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/11/157256 We speak with journalist Jane Mayer of The New Yorker as the Senate rejects demands for an independent commission on torture and the US military. We look at whether CIA agents are being allowed to kill detainees in their custody. [includes rush transcript] The Republican-led Senate has rejected a Democratic effort this week to establish an independent commission to investigate the U.S. military for its interrogation practices. The 55 to 43 vote was split largely along party lines. The Democrats were trying to set up a panel along the lines of the 9/11 Commission to investigate how the U.S. has been treating detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. The vote came a week after the Washington Post revealed new details about a network of secret overseas prisons run by the CIA. And it came two weeks after Vice President Dick Cheney met with Senator John McCain to urge him to exempt the CIA from a proposed law to bar cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. The editors of The Washington Post responded to Cheney’s request by describing him as “Vice President for Torture.” On Thursday, Senator John McCain, who survived torture as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, spoke out against torture and said the Abu Ghraib scandal has enormously harmed the country. - Senator John McCain: “Torture does not work. The Israeli Supreme Court in 1999 said that the Israelis could not torture or practice cruel and inhumane processes on the people they take prisoners. The Israeli defense officials who I have discussed this with say that it doesn’t work and they use psychological techniques and so on, it doesn’t work. And two, it’s so damaging to us in an image fashion. And three, the next conflict we’re in this government will use that same rationale to inflict serious injuries to Americans who may become captive.” Last week former President Jimmy Carter criticized the administration’s detainee policies. - Jimmy Carter: “The insistence by our government that the CIA or others have a right to torture prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and around the world is just one indication of what this administration has done that is a departure from past policies.” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on Thursday that he has no concerns about how detainees are being treated in secret overseas prisons. He said, "I am not concerned about what goes on and I’m not going to comment about the nature of that." However, Frist questioned how classified information about the CIA’s secret prisons appeared in the pages of the Washington Post. He said, "My concern is with leaks of information that jeopardize your safety and security -- period. That is a legitimate concern." We look at whether CIA agents are being allowed to kill detainees in their custody. In the new issue of The New Yorker, investigative reporter Jane Mayer examines the death of Manadel al-Jamadi. He suffocated two years ago during a CIA interrogation at the Abu Ghraib prison. His head had been covered with a plastic bag and he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe. The U.S. government classified Jamadi’s death as a homicide. But the CIA officer who interrogated Jamadi has never been charged with a crime and continues to work with the agency. - Jane Mayer, investigative journalist, staff writer for the New Yorker Magazine. He recent article is A Deadly Interrogation: Can The CIA Legally Kill a Prisoner?. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, Senator John McCain spoke out against the torture and said the Abu Ghraib scandal has enormously harmed the country. SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Torture does not work. The Israeli Supreme Court in 1999 said that the Israelis could not torture or practice cruel or inhumane people on the people they take prisoner. The Israeli defense officials who I have discussed this with say that it doesn't work and they use psychological techniques, and so, (1) it doesn't work, (2) it's so damaging to us in an image fashion, and (3) the next conflict we're in this government will use that same rationale to inflict serious injury to Americans who may become captive. AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator John McCain, who survived torture as a prisoner during the Vietnam War. Last week former President Jimmy Carter criticized the administration’s detainee policies. JIMMY CARTER: The insistence by our government that the C.I.A. or others have the right to torture prisoners in Guantanamo and around the world is just one indication of what this administration has done that’s a radical departure from past policies. AMY GOODMAN: Former President Jimmy Carter on the Today Show. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Thursday he has no concerns about how detainees are being treated in secret overseas prisons. He said, quote, "I am not concerned about what goes on, and I'm not going to comment about the nature of that." However, Dr. Frist questioned how classified information about the C.I.A.'s secret prisons appeared in the pages of the Washington Post. He said, quote, "My concern is with leaks of information that jeopardize your safety and security, period. That is a legitimate concern," Frist said. Well, today we're going look at whether C.I.A. agents are being allowed to kill detainees in their custody. In the issue of The New Yorker magazine, investigative reporter Jane Mayer examines the death of Manadel al-Jamadi. He suffocated two years ago during a C.I.A. interrogation at the Abu Ghraib prison. His head had been covered with a plastic bag. He was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe. The U.S. government classified Jamadi's death as a homicide, but the C.I.A. officer who interrogated Jamadi has never been charged with a crime and continues to work with the agency. Jane Mayer joins us now from our studio in Washington D.C. She is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jane. JANE MAYER: Thanks a lot. Great to be here. AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you lay out the story of what happened to this man? JANE MAYER: He was captured by Navy Seals in his house in Baghdad. He was a suspect in blowing up a number of things, including the Red Cross headquarters, so we're not talking about a boy scout here, but he was captured in a fight and turned over to the C.I.A. And when he walked into Abu Ghraib prison on November 4, 2003, he was walking and talking, and 45 minutes later he was dead. And so, what I was trying to do was pull back the curtain. None of us really know exactly what's happening behind those doors, where people are being interrogated in secret locations by unnamed people. So what I was able to do was put together a paper trail, looking at documents that had come out in a related trial and see what it is they were doing in this case, and what they were doing was lethal in this case. So, anyway, it was just a way to try to shed some light on what's really been a secret practice. As you know, many people on the Hill have been unable to get their hands on the instructions for what kinds of interrogation techniques we do use, and the White House keeps saying, “We don't torture,” but obviously they're fighting very hard to keep some kind of loophole open there to be able to do something that they describe as ‘just short of torture,’ which is cruel, inhumane and degrading things. And what happened in this case was a man was – he was stripped and then had his hands shackled behind his back and then attached to a window up above his head, and eventually, because of the bag on his head and because he had several broken ribs, he was unable to breathe. He eventually just died of asphyxiation. JUAN GONZALEZ: Your article identifies the only C.I.A. agent who was in the room at the time, Mark Swanner, and also a translator – JANE MAYER: Right. JUAN GONZALEZ: – that was also in the room. And it also mentions that an Inspector General's report raised issues of possible criminality in this case, but that nothing has happened. JANE MAYER: Isn't that interesting? Yes. The Inspector General at the C.I.A. is actually said to be a very independent and quite, you know, conscientious investigator of some of the problems inside the agency. And he had – did a very thorough report, sent it on to the Justice Department saying that there was the possibility of criminal behavior in this case. That was more than a year ago that that report reached the Justice Department, and there it has, according to one of the lawyers I talked to, lain fallow, as they say, and nothing has gone forward. And I think the reason is, and I was interviewing a lot of people who know about the law and the C.I.A. were saying that to open – to prosecute this case would open a complete can of worms. It would mean that they would have to examine in court, in an open courtroom probably, what it is that the C.I.A. really is allowed to do to people when they interrogate them. What are these rules? What do they mean when they say it's not torture, but it is cruel, inhumane and degrading? And this would just be, you know, shining a klieg light on that. AMY GOODMAN: Jane Mayer, the picture we've seen repeatedly, one of them from Abu Ghraib, this is Jamadi, the man who was wrapped in plastic, dead? JANE MAYER: Yes, and they put him on ice so that his body wouldn't decompose, so he is sort of known – among at least the reporters, as ‘the iceman.’ Yeah. It was a picture that came out along with the other disclosures when all of the revelations broke about Abu Ghraib, and it was a picture that, you know, I think contributed mightily to the black eye that the country got, because, you know, it was clear that somebody had died in U.S. custody. And it's still clear, and it's still clear that nobody has been charged in connection with this death, at least not inside the C.I.A. Actually, a bunch of Navy Seals were put on trial in connection with charges of abusing Jamadi, and they were exonerated. So the question then was raised: If the Seals didn't kill him, who did? And the Seals’ defense lawyers are pointing the finger at the C.I.A. JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, Senator John McCain obviously has been leading an effort in Congress and the Senate to basically ban even the C.I.A.'s involvement in this kind of abusive behavior, but at the same time the senator also voted in the Senate vote yesterday that would basically prevent detainees at a place like Guantanamo from being able to appeal in the federal courts their cases. It's a bit of a contradiction, it seems, in the senator’s stance in some of these issues. JANE MAYER: Yeah, I agree. I do think that there – and it looked like a backdoor way for the administration really to get around the McCain legislation. They’ve just found another way to skin the cat. I mean, there's a lot of confusion about what the C.I.A. does, and what it ought to be allowed to do, but I can tell you this, I mean, I think that the administration has tried to make it sound like this is something that has always been true in times of war, that we've been able to use powers like this, and it's not so. The C.I.A. has never been in the business of holding prisoners or interrogating prisoners like this, and certainly not in using lethal force or, you know, forms of torture. This is – it really is a brave new world, because basically after 9/11 when Dick Cheney said, you know, “We need to be working on the dark side,” he was – the administration believed that there needed to be a new paradigm that would require them to use kinds of techniques and act in ways that had never been used before. The C.I.A. is bound by U.S. law, and so what they came up with was the notion that somehow if they did these things to foreign prisoners in non-U.S. territory, they could go through a loophole in the law that nobody else ever thought existed, and that's what they're fighting about. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Jane Mayer, who writes for The New Yorker magazine. Her latest piece is “A Deadly Interrogation: Can the C.I.A. Legally Kill a Prisoner?” Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, commented on the Lindsey Graham, that’s the Republican Senator’s measure that would override the Supreme Court decision that grants detainees the right to appeal. The Times reporting nearly two hundred of the roughly five hundred detainees currently held at Guantanamo have appeals pending. The approved amendment would nullify all of them. This is Michael Ratner. MICHAEL RATNER: This is saying that people who are fighting for their rights in Guantanamo, who have been kept there for four years, who have been detained, who have been tortured and who have so far had the rights to attorneys and who won the right to have attorneys in the Supreme Court, Congress is now saying, ‘Courts can no longer hear any case out of Guantanamo. The people are going to be kept, the detainees, simply at the behest of the President. He can do what he wants with them. If he’s going to torture them, he can do that. No lawyers will have access. No courts will be able to review those detentions.’ It's something that really has not happened since the Civil War in the United States. AMY GOODMAN: Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Our guest, Jane Mayer, writing for The New Yorker. Jane? JANE MAYER: I was just going to say, I think under-girding this is, while the administration hasn't said it outright, they do believe that torture works. I spoke last night with John Yoo, who used to be a lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, who wrote many of the guidelines on what can and can't be done. And he was speaking here in Washington and I talked to him for a little bit, and he said, “You know, torture works.” He said that we have a lot of information that we've gotten from terrorists by using these kinds of techniques. You know, what's interesting is almost every other expert that I've ever interviewed, people from the C.I.A., people from the F.B.I., they say you get unreliable information out of torture, and it doesn't work. In addition to the moral questions, it's not practical. But that's not what John Yoo thinks, and John Yoo was a very important member of the administration on this, so I think that is really what is beneath all of this. JUAN GONZALEZ: And he’s often a commentator on the Lehrer NewsHour and isn't quite as explicit when he’s talking on the Lehrer NewsHour as he was when he was talking to you. JANE MAYER: No, it was kind of amazing to have him say it outright. He's a law professor now, so maybe he can speak more freely, but, you know, I have to believe that Vice President Cheney thinks torture works and that these methods work somehow, and they also think – and the other thing that is under-girding this fight is the White House at this point believes that the President needs to have completely unfettered executive power to wage the war in any way he sees fit, and that none of the international laws or any of the constraints that might have been imposed by Congress are constitutional, as far as they're concerned. So this is really a lot about a theory of executive power that is, you know, imperial power practically. JUAN GONZALEZ: Any sense in your investigation of the impact on the career military officers or others within the government, their response to these extreme new measures that have been adopted by the Bush administration in recent years? JANE MAYER: Well, I mean, we had, you know, the case of Ian Fishbeck, who was a – I can’t remember his rank -- lieutenant or captain, who came out and said, “You know, the problem with all of this is it's creating confusion on the ground.” People don't know, the people who are stuck actually having to interrogate these prisoners don't know what the rules are, and they don't know where the limits are, and, of course, if they step over them they are in jeopardy of being prosecuted themselves. All the Lynndie Englands, all the lower level people are the ones who get in trouble. The people who have created this confusion have, so far, been indemnified, and very purposefully so. I mean, they’ve written sort of guidelines that make it almost impossible for them to get in trouble. AMY GOODMAN: How high up does this go? I mean, we know about Alberto Gonzales, as White House Chief Counsel, writing the memo that says the Geneva Conventions don't apply, and it turns out actually David Addington, who has now replaced Scooter Libby as Chief of Staff of Dick Cheney, was involved in the writing of that memo. He has since been elevated. Your reports talking about the autopsy being performed by military pathologists, according to Jeffrey Smith, the former General Counsel of the C.I.A., now private practice lawyer, “A decision to prosecute Swanner would probably go all the way to the Attorney General.” JANE MAYER: Well, I mean, the issue is that at the top of the Justice Department, Alberto Gonzales is the person who played a major part in creating these interrogation rules, so it would be very hard for him to actually bring prosecutions against people for following rules that he helped create. Now, in the case of Swanner, it's unclear whether he was following rules or if this was an unauthorized interrogation, but in any case, to raise all those issues is to shine light on top of, you know, Gonzales and others in the Justice Department. So it's very hard for them to bring prosecutions in a case like this without a lot of political damage being done. AMY GOODMAN: And that issue, you said of, well, ‘torture works.’ Torture also doesn't work, aside from the moral reasons, just in the last few days the New York Times reporting the Bush administration was warned in February 2002 that intelligence reports alleging ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda were likely fabricated by a member of al-Qaeda in U.S. detention. However, the Bush administration ignored the Defense Intelligence Agency warning that the detainee Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was lying. His faulty claims were repeatedly used to justify th