Treatment and Management of Sodium-Bonded Spent Nuclear Fuel to be Discussed

EarthVision Reports 08/05/99
http://204.255.211.112/ColdFusion/News_Page1.cfm?NewsID=8032&start=151

WASHINGTON, August 5, 1999 - The Department of Energy (DOE) last week announced the availability of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Treatment and Management of Sodium-Bonded Spent Nuclear Fuel. DOE has scheduled public hearings at four locations.

The department is proposing to treat and manage the sodium-bonded spent nuclear fuel and facilitate its ultimate disposal in a geologic repository. The Draft EIS evaluates the environmental impacts associated with the fuel in one or more spent nuclear fuel management facilities: Argonne National Laboratory-West, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (near Idaho Falls, Idaho), and either the F-Canyon or Building 105-L at the Savannah River Site (near Aiken, S.C.). The Draft EIS also analyzes the electrometallurgical, plutonium-uranium extraction (PUREX), high integrity cans, and melt and dilute treatment technologies, as well as a No Action alternative. The Department notes that it has no preferred alternative at this time.

DOE will host public hearings on:

August 17 in North Augusta, SC;
August 24 in Boise, Idaho;
August 26 in Idaho Falls, Idaho; and
August 31 in Arlington, VA.

The department will consider all public comments transmitted or postmarked by September 13, 999, in preparing the final EIS. Copies of the Draft EIS are available by calling 1-877-50-6904.

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Energy Department Issues Decision on Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride

EarthVision Reports 08/12/99
http://204.255.211.112/ColdFusion/News_Page1.cfm?NewsID=8093&start=91

WASHINGTON, August 12, 1999 - The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced its decision on what to do with approximately 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride currently stored at three of its sites.

The Department's Record of Decision for the Long-Term Management and Use of Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride outlines the future of the uranium hexafluoride stored at the gaseous diffusion plant sites in Paducah, Kentucky; Portsmouth, Ohio; and the East Tennessee Technology Park (formerly known as the K-25 site) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. In addition, DOE said in a news release that it is also making available an initial draft Request for Proposal to procure services from the private sector to convert the inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride to a more stable form.

"This Record of Decision will allow the department to proceed with the project-specific environmental analyses that are needed to locate and build facilities converting the inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride into an environmentally safer form," said Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson. "Meeting this milestone, as well as issuing the draft Request for Proposal, is an important step forward toward accelerating conversion of this legacy material to a safer form."

DOE has decided to convert the depleted uranium hexafluoride inventory to depleted uranium oxide, depleted uranium metal or a combination of both. The depleted uranium oxide products would be used as much as possible the Energy Department said, and the remaining depleted uranium oxide would be stored for potential future uses or disposal, as necessary. The department currently expects that conversion to depleted uranium metal would be performed as uses become available. At this time, DOE said it does not believe that long-term storage and disposal as depleted uranium metal are feasible alternatives, but remains open to exploring these options further.

The Record of Decision and procurement-related information are available through the Internet (below). Copies of the ROD can be requested by e-mailing scott.harlow@hq.doe.gov.

Associated Link: Record of Decision (56K .pdf file)
http://www.ne.doe.gov/duf6/rod.pdf

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SRS study almost complete

Web posted Aug. 23 at 10:25 PM, By Brandon Haddock Staff Writer
http://augustachronicle.com/stories/082499/tec_124-5664.shtml

Researchers soon will complete a controversial study of closures of radioactive-waste tanks at Savannah River Site, a U.S. Department of Energy official said Monday.

A draft of the environmental impact statement is being reviewed at Energy Department headquarters in Washington, said Larry Ling of the department's high-level waste division at SRS.

After the review, a hearing will be held near the federal nuclear-weapons reservation to gather public comment about the document, Mr. Ling told members of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board on Monday in North Augusta. The hearing likely will be held in September or October, he said.

Board members had urged Energy Department officials not to write the document, which studies how tank closures affect the environment. The board feared the study would slow efforts to close the site's 49 tanks, which hold millions of gallons of dangerous, highly radioactive waste.

Two tanks already are closed. A third is scheduled to close by 2003 under terms of an agreement between the Energy Department, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Westinghouse Savannah River Co., which operates SRS for the Energy Department, stands to earn a bonus if it completes much of the third tank's work during the coming fiscal year, Mr. Ling said.

``We're meeting the federal facilities agreement,'' he said. ``We're trying to do that with the limited budget that we have right now.''

Several new technologies will be used to speed cleanup of the third tank, Mr. Ling said.

But SRS officials aren't actively developing new technologies for future closures of ``problem'' tanks, such as those that have sprung leaks, Mr. Ling said upon questioning from retired site worker Lee Poe.

``We're just concentrating on these tanks right now, in accordance with the schedule,'' Mr. Ling said.

Board members also heard a presentation Monday from Whit Gibbons, an ecologist at the site's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Dr. Gibbons spoke about the site's diverse salamander populations.

Of 32 species of salamander native to South Carolina, 16 are found at SRS, Dr. Gibbons said. Because the amphibians split their lives between land and water, they would be acutely affected by any type of pollution at the site, he said.

Thus the creatures serve as indicators of the health of the environment, he said.

``They are going to reflect the conditions of a wide variety of habitats,'' Dr. Gibbons said.

Brandon Haddock covers energy issues for The Augusta Chronicle. He can be reached at (706) 823-3409 or bhaddock@augustachronicle.com.

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Bomb Triggers May Be Sent To Livermore

Energy Dept. considers shift in monitoring nuclear arms

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Saturday, August 21, 1999 ©1999 San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/08/21/MN13599.DTL

The Department of Energy is weighing plans to move a large number of plutonium ``pits'' -- the explosive nuclear triggers for hydrogen bombs -- from Los Alamos to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as part of a major shift in surveillance responsibilities over the nation's nuclear arsenal, it was disclosed yesterday.

Although the plans are not final, they would, for the first time, call on the Livermore lab's scientists to continually assess the pits' safety and explosive qualities. The pits form the core of the W80 nuclear warhead, which was developed at Los Alamos and is deployed in cruise missiles.

The disclosure was met by criticism from Bay Area anti-nuclear activists who fear increased radiation at the laboratory site and who say the proposed changes may be an attempt to sidestep existing U.S. commitments to reduce the nuclear weapons stockpile.

Full details of the proposed changes have not been made public, but Tri-Valley CAREs, the long- established and militant anti-nuclear organization in Livermore, obtained copies of portions of the Energy Department's proposed ``Integration Strategy.'' The organization's executive director, Marylea Kelley, released them yesterday.

``We are demanding that the Department of Energy and the Livermore lab conduct a new environmental impact review with full public hearings before any of these new plans are implemented,'' Kelley said.

``These changes will have far- reaching negative consequences for Bay Area public health and safety, for national efforts to rein in the escalating nuclear weapons budget and for international nuclear nonproliferation goals.''

A top Energy Department official, however, said that all aspects of Livermore's new work on plutonium pits would stay within existing regulations on the use of nuclear materials.

In a telephone interview with The Chronicle last night, Gilbert Weigand, the Energy Department's deputy assistant secretary for weapons research and development, said the plan would not involve shipping entire nuclear warheads of any kind into the Livermore laboratory.

Weigand insisted that the work on the W80 pits would be ``fully and totally in compliance with the existing environmental impact limits now in place for the laboratory.''

Livermore Mayor Cathie Brown said she has not spoken with lab officials about the plans but said any major change would have to be accompanied by in-depth environmental studies.

The lab has a reputation for using ``strong safety guidelines'' in its work, she added.

Mike Veiluva, an attorney for the Western States Legal Foundation in Oakland, called the plan ``particularly disturbing because the more plutonium you bring in, the greater the danger.

``It's a significant shift in Livermore's role,'' he added, ``and people in the area are going to think of the laboratory as no longer a campus, but more as a weapons factory.''

An article in the Albuquerque Journal yesterday quoted Weigand as saying that moving responsibility for the W80 pits to Livermore would give the scientists there hands-on responsibility for the weapons rather than performing their traditional role of more basic weapons-related research.

``You need a challenging workload where they are really touching the bomb,'' he was quoted as saying.

The Energy Department's proposal would also transfer two major research facilities from Los Alamos to the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles north of Las Vegas, where Livermore lab weapons scientists have been conducting a series of underground ``sub-critical'' tests involving small amounts of plutonium but no full-scale explosions for the past two years. The new proposal seeks more subcritical tests to ensure the continued reliability of the warheads.

None of the proposed changes would involve manufacturing new weapons, because the United States and Russia are committed to dismantling their warheads at an increasing pace.

But because nuclear weapons and their components can deteriorate with time, the Energy Department and its laboratories are constantly engaged in a costly program called Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship. That program calls for major new facilities to test the integrity of all the nation's nuclear weapons without actually exploding them. At Livermore, for example, the billion-dollar National Ignition Facility is nearing completion.

Shifting the assignment of inspecting plutonium pits to Livermore would give the lab a new $7.9- million-a-year project. Until now, the laboratory has only been assigned to ``immobilize'' as many as 20 pits a year by encasing them in ceramics.

As the crucial element of thermonuclear weapons, the pits, each about the size of a grapefruit, are egg-shaped shells of plutonium inside each warhead. When they are compressed, or imploded, by a surrounding shell of high explosives, they explode in a flash like a tiny atomic bomb and instantly ignite the hydrogen fuel of the vastly more powerful hydrogen bomb.

Under the Energy Department's proposal, work on two weapons research machines would be moved from Los Alamos to the Nevada Test Site. One is the $48.5 million project code-named Atlas, a device that uses huge bursts of electricity to crush tiny targets of various metals simulating the implosion of plutonium in an atomic bomb.

The Albuquerque Journal article yesterday said the Nevada tests would include a top-secret project code-named Appaloosa. This project would employ plutonium-242, an exotic metal formed into the shapes of plutonium pits that can be imploded without undergoing an explosive chain reaction, the newspaper reported. X-ray movies of such tests would be important in ensuring that the high-explosive shells surrounding plutonium in both A- bombs and H-bombs are perfectly shaped for their tasks.

Disarmament advocates said yesterday that the Appaloosa project and the Livermore test work could undercut U.S. compliance with its commitments with Russia.

``It's clearly a huge expansion of stockpile stewardship, and beyond any scenario of what might be needed to keep the arsenal in a safe condition,'' said Jackie Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation.

Chronicle Staff Writer Chris Heredia contributed to this report.

NUCLEAR TRIGGER
The W80 warhead would be inspected by Livermore scientists.

W80 warhead specs
Yield: 5-150 kilotons
Weight: 290 lbs.
Length: 31.4 inches
Diameter: 11.8 inches
Number in service: 1,750 .

Source: Federation of American Scientists

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Weapons Projects May Move

By John Fleck and Ian Hoffman Albuquerque Journal Staff Writers, Friday, August 20, 1999
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/1news082099.htm

The Department of Energy wants to shift key pieces of its nuclear weapons workload from Los Alamos National Laboratory to bolster a sister lab in California.

The proposal moves some work from Los Alamos to Nevada, shifts a large amount of plutonium and weapons maintenance now done at Los Alamos to Lawrence Livermore in California, and calls for a big new research complex at Sandia National Laboratories outside Albuquerque.

The moves, collectively called the "Mega Strategy," are aimed at balancing the workload at the department's major research and testing sites to ensure the right mix of skills is available in the future to maintain the nuclear stockpile, said Energy Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Gil Weigand, who is in charge of weapons research and development. The Livermore moves are aimed at giving scientists there handson responsibility for nuclear weapons, rather than simply weaponsrelated basic research, Weigand said in an interview Thursday.

"You need a challenging workload where they are really touching the bomb," he said. Weigand says the move is necessary to bolster the number of experienced U.S. weapons workers. Nucleardisarmament advocates see the changes as a worrisome retrenchment of U.S. nuclearweapons work. The proposal seeks a dramatic increase in explosive testing with plutonium and plutoniumlike metals.

"It's clearly a huge expansion of stockpile stewardship and beyond any scenario of what might be needed to keep the arsenal in a safe condition," said Jackie Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation in Oakland, Calif.

"For Los Alamos, this will mean more explosive tests with plutonium and more secret work at the plutonium facility," said Jay Coghlan, program director for Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, a watchdog group in Santa Fe. The critics also say other nations will read this spreading around of weapons work as the latest sign that the United States wants to keep its weapons indefinitely, rather than moving toward a smaller arsenal.

"For other countries, expanding activities at the Nevada Test Site is really offensive. It really flies in the face of what a test ban is all about," said John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy in New York.

With no change from the current path, Lawrence Livermore's dwindling handson work on nuclear devices jeopardizes its role in the nuclear weapons complex, said Bob Peurifoy, a retired Sandia National Laboratories nuclear weapons designer.

"If you go down that road, you're going to close Lawrence Livermore as a device lab," said Peurifoy, who frequently works as an adviser to the Energy Department and who has been briefed on the proposed changes. "They've got to have something to put their hands on."

Details of the proposal have leaked out of the department in pieces over the last month. But Weigand's interview Thursday marks the first public acknowledgement by the department of the details and scope of the plan.

Weigand said the plan, being developed as part of the Department of Energy's Fiscal Year 2001 budget proposal, would ensure the labs are able to do needed refurbishment and modification of U.S. nuclear warheads after the turn of the century.

Few if any people would be moved when the work is moved, Weigand said. The Nevada Test Site would be the new home of Atlas, a $48.3 million machine under assembly at Los Alamos that would smash soda cansized targets with massive jolts of electricity, yielding enormous pressures and temperatures needed to study how nuclear weapons work.

Weigand said moving Atlas to Nevada would free up Los Alamos to focus on hydrodynamic radiography, a crucial technique used by nuclear weapons designers. Scientists fire Xrays into exploding shells of high explosive and plutoniumlike metals. That lets scientists check and refine the operation of "primaries," the initial Abomb triggers for thermonuclear weapons. Weigand wants a more aggressive schedule of the tests at Los Alamos. Part of the tests involve a topsecret project, codenamed Appaloosa.

They employ an exotic metal, plutonium242, that can be imploded in bomb shapes without undergoing an explosive nuclear chain reaction. This gives scientists Xray movies of fullscale weapons tests that never go "nuclear." Moving plutonium work to Livermore will give Los Alamos more space at its plutonium facility for the Appaloosa work.

At the same time, Los Alamos would build one of the world's 10 most powerful proton accelerators to test out a new kind of hydrodynamic radiography. Scientists want more and higher quality pictures at more angles of exploding triggers. For a future machine, the Advanced Hydrotest Facility, they think the answer might be to surround triggers in multiple proton beams and Xrays, all delivering splitsecond pictures. Weapons designers can use these pictures as they do today, to verify the accuracy of weapons codes that simulate an exploding nuclear weapon. But critics inside and outside of the weapons labs wonder about the prudence and the cost of transferring work away from those most experienced at it.

“Moving Los Alamos work to Nevada doesn't make any sense from cost or technical standpoint," said Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, a disarmament organization in Santa Fe. "It's creating a new lab in the desert." Weigand would not say how much the moves would cost, but said the amount was "not significant." And he argues that weapons designers at Los Alamos are being stretched thin by their responsibility for maintaining weapons. Department of Energy policy calls for the lab that designed a weapon system to be responsible for regularly taking a few out of the stockpile and tearing them apart, looking for signs of deterioration.

Los Alamos is responsible for five nuclear warhead types, while Livermore is responsible for three.

Weigand said the workload was "exhausting" the Los Alamos weapons designers. As a result, he's proposing shifting responsibility for one of the weapons, the W80 cruise missile warhead, to Livermore.

Sandia National Laboratories benefits from the proposal. No major programs are leaving the Albuquerque lab, which is responsible for the electronic systems and other nonnuclear components in nuclear weapons. But Sandia will get a $300 million complex of buildings to centralize research into computer circuits and microscopic machines.

[Sidebar]

DOE PROPOSAL

The Department of Energy's proposal to shift workload among its nuclear weapons research and testing sites:

*Gives an unknown portion of Los Alamos' job inspecting plutonium pits to its sister lab, Lawrence Livermore in Livermore, Calif. This $7.9 millionayear job, called pit surveillance, is a linchpin of maintaining aging U.S. nuclear weapons. Pits are hollow, eggshaped shells of radioactive plutonium the size of a grapefruit. When crushed by high explosives, they become tiny Abombs that touch off the hydrogen fuel in thermonuclear weapons. Scientists fear plutonium and its highexplosive shell is vulnerable to aging. DOE wants to send pit surveillance to Livermore to give that lab more "handson" work with plutonium components. At Los Alamos, about 30 people inspect about 15 pits a year.

*Sends two Los Alamos research machines to Nevada. The prize is Atlas, a $48.5 million machine that uses electrical power equivalent to 100,000 lightning bolts to crush a soda cansize "target." Los Alamos has spent $2 million so far on Atlas, mostly refurbishing a building. Under the proposal, Atlas' 80foot ring of capacitors would have to be disassembled at Los Alamos, reassembled and tested at the Nevada Test Site at unknown additional cost. Atlas targets typically lead, tungsten and copper are standins for plutonium and uranium in weapons.

*Makes Los Alamos the nation's center for hydrodynamic radiography. It's a technique for nuclear weapons designers to refine and check the operation of nuclear weapons by detonating mock weapons, with inert materials substituted for their explosive plutonium. Xrays of the blasts allow scientists to study the results.

*Builds one of the world's 10 most powerful proton accelerators at Los Alamos to try out a new technique in weapons testing. The new accelerator at Los Alamos would operate at 50 Giga electron volts, about 60 times the power of the lab's current accelerator. Scientists want to try shooting the proton beam through exploding nuclear primaries from multiple angles in a future machine called the Advanced Hydrotest Facility.

*Builds a $300 million microelectronics complex at Sandia to develop components for refurbishing aging U.S. nuclear weapons.

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More Monitoring Wells Needed at Shattuck Superfund Site

EarthVision Reports 08/11/99
http://204.255.211.112/ColdFusion/News_Page1.cfm?NewsID=8081&start=91

DENVER, August 11, 1999 More problems have surfaced at the controversial Shattuck Superfund Site. Apparently, the monitoring wells for detecting any leaking radioactive contamination from the site are not in the right places.

According to a report in the Omaha World-Herald, the US Geological Survey is recommending that 17 more wells be drilled to find out if cleanup of soil tainted with radium, uranium and heavy metals at the south Denver site has been successful. The wells will also be used to identify the boundaries of the existing plume of contaminated groundwater.

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s emergency response team visited the site and reviewed the US Geological Survey’s report and agreed that the present system is flawed, according to Hugh Kaufmann, a national investigator who has criticized cleanup decisions of the local EPA office.

The Geological Survey’s report has given opponents of the EPA’s decision to leave the waste at the site another reason for shipping the hazardous waste off site.

"It just adds to the lack of credibility that the agency has in the decisions that have been made at that site, and that's why they totally lack public confidence," said Theresa Donahue, Denver's manager of environmental health.

Shattuck is a former radium-, uranium-, and chemical-processing site that was found to have about 50,000 cubic yards of radioactive dirt. Controversy started when, against the wishes of local residents, EPA decided to mix the waste with concrete and fly ash and leave it in place. It was then covered with one-story-tall clay and rock cap. The Denver EPA office approved the cap, which was completed last year.

According to an article in the Denver Rocky Mountain News , residents of the Overland neighborhood where the plant was located have long protested that the cap isn't sufficient to keep contamination from leaking into the water table.

Monitors at Shattuck show no radioactivity is escaping into the air, but whether groundwater is being contaminated is the subject of a continuing study, said Barry Levene, who heads Superfund programs at the Denver EPA office.

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U.S. Geological Survey Warns Against Using Yucca Mountain for Nuclear Waste

EarthVision Reports 08/13/99
http://204.255.211.112/ColdFusion/News_Page1.cfm?NewsID=8108&start=71

SAN FRANCISCO, August 13, 1999 - The U.S. Geological Survey issued a scathing report this week warning that the Energy Department's plan to build a vast nuclear waste repository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain is risky. However, the report placates its follow government agency by saying it concedes there is no better option at this time for dealing with the nation's nuclear waste. Reuters quoted the as saying the U.S. public "should know that the choices are not clear cut and that none is without risk." The Geological Survey is a division of the Department of the Interior. It was asked to review the engineering and earth sciences elements of the Department of Energy proposal.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently reviewing a draft environmental impact study on a plan to store huge amounts of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain. The site, which is located about 90 miles from Las Vegas, would eventually be used to store the 38,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel currently stored at reactors across the country. The article said that amount is expected to double in the coming years.

Reuters also quotes Geological Survey researcher Tom Hanks, author of the agency's report, as saying if Yucca Mountain is developed as the nation's first underground repository for high-level radioactive materials, "it would be one of the most complicated and expensive engineering projects ever undertaken by the U.S." He also said the only other alternative at this time is to leave the radioactive material at the more than 100 nuclear reactors across the U.S. That option, he added, would probably pose greater risks to a broader range of society than consolidating the material all at one site.

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Report Says Yucca Mountain Safe, However Key Issues Still Remain

EarthVision Reports 08/11/99
http://204.255.211.112/ColdFusion/News_Page1.cfm?NewsID=8078&start=91

WASHINGTON, August 11, 1999 A preliminary environmental impact statement (EIS) released by the Department of Energy concludes that very little radiation would leak from the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, but some key issues are not understood enough to recommend using the site to store spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

"This Draft EIS considers the possible environmental impacts that may result from the construction, operation and monitoring, and eventual closure of a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste," said Lake Barrett, acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "The Draft EIS also evaluates the possible impacts of transporting spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain, as well as the possible impacts of not developing a geologic repository and continuing to store these materials at commercial and DOE sites. The EIS will be important to any future decision on whether to recommend the site for development."

According to the report, there is very little safety difference in leaving the waste at the existing 72 commercial reactor sites and 5 energy department sites if the storage canisters are replaced every 100 years. However, the cost is much higher leaving the waste where it is rather than storing it at Yucca Mountain. The difference is that it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year for thousands of years to leave the waste where it is versus spending tens of billions of dollars to construct the repository.

One of the main concerns regarding the site is the flow of water. Water flowing underground could potentially carry radioactive materials beyond the site’s borders. A department official involved in the project said that they have a lot of work to do before a recommendation is made to the energy secretary to proceed with construction.

According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, the Environmental Protection Agency is this week scheduled to release draft rules that a repository would have to meet to be licensed for operation. EPA will call for the repository to contain the bulk of the radiation for 10,000 years, but people familiar with the draft said that the agency had not decided how many miles the radiation should be allowed to spread in that period.

Associated Link: Yucca Mountain Project
http://www.ymp.gov

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LETTERS - Debating Cassini

New York Times, August 24, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/082499sci-letters.html

To the Editor:

Those who protest Cassini's flyby of Earth ("En Route to Saturn, Cassini Gets a Boost From Earth," Aug. 16) are using bad science. Given the laws of physics, the odds of Cassini's striking Earth are similar to the odds of a boat's in the Colorado River hitting someone standing near the rim of the Grand Canyon.

In hoping to prevent the use of nuclear power in space, these protesters hope to confine mankind and his works to Earth and its close vicinity. Chemical fuels, however efficient, do not have the capabilities to take man to other planets and return safely to Earth, in a timely fashion, and with a margin for error.

GARY GREENBAUM Fairfax, Va.

--

To the Editor:

The wrong cancer risk has been debated (Aug. 17). The issue should be whether the money that went into the Cassini project could have been better spent on cancer research.

At the time when billions were being spent on Cassini, the Federal cancer research program was inadequately financed.

The mysteries of the solar system which Cassini may discover will be interesting. However, those discoveries could wait without harming humanity. Meanwhile, millions have suffered and died because the mysteries of cancer have been delayed due to inadequate financing.

LESTER FREUNDLICH Stamford, Conn.

Related Article

En Route to Saturn, Cassini Gets a Boost From Earth
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081799sci-nasa-cassini.html

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Youths are experts on nuclear energy
Eighteen students at Hanford Middle School and peers in Ukraine are writing a book on the subject

Tuesday, August 17, 1999, By ERIC RUTHFORD of The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/99/08/st081711.html

HANFORD, Wash. -- Some people might consider eighth-graders too young to fully explore the moral, political and economic issues surrounding nuclear energy and weapons.

But 18 Hanford Middle School students are writing a book on the subject in partnership with a group of Ukrainian students their age who live in the shadow of the failed Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Many of the students in the class claim they have learned too much on the subject.

"We know more than other people. When we mention things to other people, they say, 'Huh? What are you talking about?' " Melissa McCoy, 15, said.

Kalin Sloughter, 14, at first said the information they've picked up would be useful for the game show "Jeopardy!" but later she and her classmates admitted they could apply their knowledge and the research and interviewing skills they've developed to school and professional life.

Ben Ford, 14, said those skills have proved useful in other classes.

"We talked about Enrico Fermi in science, and then we already knew about him from here," Ford said.

The students, who recently finished eighth grade, were in Maureen McQuerry's "Passion Projects" class, a course in which they can research one topic in depth.

Now, they are spending two days a week during their summer to produce their book, which is a collection of articles they have written on nuclear energy, weapons and culture.

The project is being funded by Battelle and Bechtel Hanford, and the students hope to send the book to Battelle Press by September and have it in stores by Christmas, McQuerry said.

Students in Slavutych, Ukraine, also are writing articles for the book, which will be published in Ukrainian and English editions.

McCoy's job on the project has been to interview people who lived in the Tri-Cities before and during the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hanford produced the plutonium for the "Fat Man" bomb that destroyed Nagasaki.

"I really didn't understand how people could blow up thousands of people and not regret it, but now I understand how it was necessary and how it was important that Hitler didn't get it first," McCoy said.

She said that if she were given the choice of whether to drop the bombs, she could not bear the deaths on her conscience. But, she added, "It was necessary to stop something worse."

The book project is meant to present the perspective of children growing up near nuclear sites during the atomic age.

"A lot of adults have been told certain things and are close-minded, and young adults are more open," McCoy said.

They have also explored the diversity of businesses in the Tri-Cities. Most of the class members predicted the area's economy would collapse if the Hanford Nuclear Reservation were shut down, but the students who had been assigned more in-depth research on the subject disagreed.

"It'd be difficult, but I think we could stand on our own. But a few years ago, that would not have been a possibility," said Michael Juracich, 14.

The Ukrainian and American students have been communicating through e-mail and videoconferences via satellite.

Michael McCain, 13, said at first the articles were highly technical and did not incorporate much voice and opinion on the subject, but later drafts have improved.

It has not been easy for the Ukrainian students, McCoy said, because nuclear energy is a touchy subject in Slavutych.

McQuerry, who visited Slavutych in 1997, said the town is just outside the perimeter where people cannot live because of nuclear contamination from the 1986 accident, which killed 31 people. Many of the residents who were evacuated from houses near the plant were told they were leaving for only a short time and left behind their possessions.

The students said the knowledge they have gained has made them aware of many of the misconceptions people have about Hanford and the Tri-Cities.

McCoy said it makes for interesting conversation with people on airplanes. "A lot of people who don't live near here, they say, you live near where?" she said.

"They get all scared and ask what's going on there."

Sloughter said it added a bit of satisfaction to times when people make fun of the Tri-Cities and the nuclear reservation. "You can just look at them and realize that you're smarter than them," she said.

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Espionage Whistleblower Resigns
Energy's Trulock Cites Lack of Support as Debate About His Tactics Grows

By Vernon Loeb and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, August 24, 1999; Page A01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/24/097l-082499-idx.html

Notra Trulock, the intelligence official who triggered the federal government's investigation into suspected Chinese espionage at Los Alamos National Laboratory, resigned yesterday amid growing controversy about his handling of the case.

Trulock said in an interview he quit because the Department of Energy's inspector general last week issued a report that failed to back him up and hold senior Clinton administration officials accountable for security failures at Los Alamos. He called the report "a whitewash" and said, "I think the time has come for me to move on. I've done all I could do here."

Trulock has come under mounting pressure in recent weeks as two government reports and a growing number of intelligence and security officials sharply criticized him for singling out Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese American physicist at Los Alamos, as the government's prime espionage suspect.

Three officials who participated in various stages of the investigation have said they believe Trulock and FBI agents focused on Lee largely because of his ethnicity. At least three other Energy Department employees have filed grievances against Trulock for alleged discrimination and retaliation on the job.

Trulock's resignation as the department's deputy director of intelligence -- he was demoted last year after serving as director of intelligence for four years -- is the latest twist in a year of charges and countercharges about Chinese nuclear espionage.

At least five high-level government reviews have concluded that China's intelligence service has targeted U.S. weapons laboratories and succeeded over the past two decades in obtaining some information about the design of nuclear weapons, including the W-88, the United States's most advanced warhead. The Central Intelligence Agency, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and two congressional inquiries also have concluded that security and counterintelligence at the nation's weapons labs have been lax.

But most of the experts who have looked into the suspected Chinese espionage have concluded that it is not clear exactly how much classified data China has obtained or where the information came from. There is also a continuing debate about the value of the information and whether China has used it to update its nuclear arsenal.

Trulock has been a central figure in the espionage probe and an influential proponent of the view that China stole significant secrets from Los Alamos. When the allegations became public early this year, leading Republicans in Congress accused the Clinton administration of dragging its feet and hailed Trulock as a hero for drawing attention to security lapses at the weapons labs.

In March, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson fired Lee from his job in Los Alamos's top-secret X Division for violating security regulations by transferring classified files to an unclassified computer in his office.

Lee, a Taiwan-born nuclear physicist and U.S. citizen, has denied passing secrets to China and has not been charged with any crime. The Justice Department is considering whether to prosecute him for violating security procedures. But federal officials have acknowledged that they have no evidence that would warrant charging him with espionage.

Appearing on NBC's "Meet The Press" in May, Trulock expressed no reservations about the government's evidence, comparing the possible loss of nuclear secrets at Los Alamos to "the Rosenbergs-Fuchs compromise of the Manhattan Project information" at the end of World War II.

In June, however, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board criticized Trulock and other investigators for focusing almost exclusively on Lee when there was no solid evidence that he, or anyone else at Los Alamos, was the source of classified information that China had somehow obtained about the W-88.

Even sharper criticism was leveled at Trulock last week by Robert S. Vrooman, the former chief of counterintelligence at Los Alamos, who said Trulock and federal investigators had singled out Lee as the government's prime espionage suspect because he is a Chinese American.

Vrooman said Trulock and FBI agents pushed the case against Lee and ignored numerous "Caucasian" employees at Los Alamos who had similar access to secrets and had made similar trips to scientific conferences in China. "This case was screwed up because there was nothing there -- it was built on thin air," Vrooman said.

Trulock's supporters have suggested that Vrooman may have an ax to grind because he is facing possible disciplinary action for failing to cut off Lee's access to secrets.

In subsequent interviews, two other senior counterintelligence officials with direct knowledge of the Lee case -- one at DOE headquarters, and one at Los Alamos -- have said they believe that Lee was singled out because of his ethnicity.

Charles E. Washington, who was DOE's acting director of counterintelligence in 1996 when Trulock first started pursuing the espionage investigation at Los Alamos, gave The Washington Post a copy of a memorandum he wrote to Trulock at the time recommending that the case be closed for lack of evidence.

Washington said he told Trulock that he was unfairly singling out Lee and another Chinese American scientist at Los Alamos when numerous others had similar access to secrets. And Washington alleged that Trulock was motivated at least in part by a desire to win a larger budget for Energy's relatively small intelligence office, which he headed.

"Trulock used to say, 'We need one good espionage case to make this program grow,' " Washington said last week in an interview. "He said, 'There's one spy out there, and we're going to find him.' "

Washington, who is African American, is suing the Energy Department in federal court for alleged discrimination and retaliation by Trulock and has been on extended sick leave, undergoing treatment for stress, since January. Washington said his problems with Trulock began shortly after he expressed opposition to proceeding with the case against Lee and questioned Trulock's competence to run a counterintelligence investigation.

Michael S. Soukup, a physicist at Los Alamos who has spent years studying China's nuclear weapons testing and design complex, also said yesterday that he believes that Trulock and the FBI targeted Lee because he is Chinese American.

Soukup said in an e-mail message to The Post that "it became very clear to me that this investigation was driven almost exclusively by Notra Trulock."

Soukup said the "suspicion matrix" developed by investigators "was, and still is, a sham. I fit their matrix perfectly, and I was never interviewed and questioned."

Trulock responded yesterday that "there never was a matrix" and denied that he singled out Lee based on ethnicity.

"I'm sort of at a loss to understand how Vrooman thinks DOE singled out Wen Ho Lee, when there were 12 people on the list" of suspects forwarded to the FBI, Trulock said. "To allege as Vrooman has that ethnic profiling was used in this case is outrageous and false. I categorically deny that. We went to a dozen facilities and looked at a decade's worth of records. I'm satisfied that DOE did its job in this."

Trulock also denied as "ridiculous" and "absolutely false" Washington's assertion that Trulock had talked about making a high-profile espionage case to enhance funding for his office.

Trulock said he had informed his boss, DOE intelligence chief Larry Sanchez, yesterday morning that he would be resigning by the close of business. Trulock said he will begin work this morning at TRW Inc., a high-technology defense contractor with offices in Northern Virginia.

Energy Secretary Richardson was described yesterday as "disappointed" by Trulock's decision to leave the department, according to Brooke Anderson, Energy's spokeswoman.

Richardson said Trulock "performed valuable work" in persistently pursuing and uncovering evidence of espionage, for which he was awarded a $10,000 bonus, Anderson said in a written statement.

But she added that Richardson supported the Energy inspector general's report and rejected Trulock's contention that it was "a whitewash."

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Official Who Led Inquiry Into China's Reputed Theft of Nuclear Secrets Quits

By JAMES RISEN, August 24, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/082499china-nuke.html

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department official who led the initial inquiry into China's suspected theft of United States nuclear secrets resigned Monday, saying he was protesting roadblocks to his pursuit of the case by Clinton Administration policy makers and other Government officials.

In an interview on Monday, the official, Notra Trulock, the department's acting deputy chief of intelligence, complained that he had been squeezed out of the continuing spy investigation, code-named Kindred Spirit.

"They have moved me out from any participation in the Kindred Spirit case, and from any other aspect of the management of intelligence activities within the department," Trulock said.

Trulock added that he had been thinking about resigning for months because of what he said was political interference. But he said he made the final decision after the release this month of a report by the Energy Department's inspector general concerning the department's handling of the spy case.

The report found no conclusive evidence to support Trulock's assertions that he had been temporarily blocked from briefing Congress on the case in 1998.

"The I.G. report was the last straw," Trulock said.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said on Monday in a statement that he was "disappointed with Trulock's decision to leave the department." The statement added that Richardson "believes that Trulock performed valuable work," but that Richardson "supports the inspector general's conclusions" that angered Trulock.

Trulock has been a highly contentious figure within the Government because of his central role in the case.

Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation started a criminal investigation three years ago into evidence that China stole data about the United States' most advanced nuclear warhead, no arrests have been made, and the handling of the case by the Energy Department, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department has become fodder for special inquiries by both Congress and the executive branch.

Trulock served as a catalyst for public furor over the handling of the case in part because of his decision to become a secret witness late last year for a Congressional panel that investigated the spying accusations.

Trulock's contention that the Government's investigation was slowed by interference from senior officials at the Energy Department, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the White House quickly became enmeshed in the national debate over the proper course of United States policy toward China.

But his accusations, strongly denied by the White House and the Energy Department, also prompted strong criticism of his own handling of the case by current and former Government officials.

In June, Trulock's criticism of a report issued by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on the spy investigation led to a stinging response from Warren Rudman, the former Senator who is chairman of the panel.

Rudman wrote that Trulock was guilty of having "misread professional disagreements as personal affronts," and that he had misconstrued an obligation to be candid "as a license for calumny."

Just last week, the former chief of counterintelligence at Los Alamos, who himself has been disciplined for mishandling the investigation, charged that Trulock and others were responsible for botching the case because they had unfairly focused their attention on a Chinese-American scientist from Los Alamos.

Trulock has denied that race was a factor in the decision to investigate Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese-American scientist who was fired from his job at Los Alamos in March for security violations. Lee has not been charged with any crime.

Trulock has also had a mixed relationship with Richardson. In May, Richardson gave him a special $10,000 award for having raised the alarm within the Government about China's activities, and praised Trulock for persisting in the inquiry despite bureaucratic roadblocks.

But last year, Trulock lost his job as chief of intelligence at the Energy Department and was demoted to acting deputy chief.

Richardson declined to respond to Trulock's written request earlier this year to be reinstated as intelligence chief, and Trulock was told this summer that he would not be named permanent deputy intelligence chief.

Larry Sanchez, the current chief of intelligence at the Energy Department, said on Monday that he had repeatedly offered to make Trulock the permanent deputy but that Trulock had declined to accept the post. And he added that Richardson had declined to make Trulock the chief of intelligence because that would have meant firing Sanchez.

"I have been his protector, insuring that his message was continually being carried and insuring that he was at every Congressional hearing on the case that he should have been at," Sanchez said. "He was not actively being cut out of things. I knew he was going to leave anyway, and we knew he was actively seeking another job."

Trulock said he was taking a job in the private sector.

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Investigation in espionage case against Lee continues to languish

August 23, 1999, 5:40 p.m. ET http://www.courttv.com/national/1999/0823/spy_ctv.html

WASHINGTON (Court TV) Top Justice and Energy officials in Washington reportedly have serious doubts as to whether prosecutors should continue to pursue charges against Wen Ho Lee.

Lee, a Taiwanese-born Los Alamos physicist, was fired this year from the center of U.S. government nuclear weapons research for alleged security breaches. The larger goal for the government, however, has been to prove that Lee passed on classified information, including nuclear codes, to China. According to Newsweek, while Lee admits to downloading sensitive data onto his unsecured computer which is not an uncommon practice among federal employees investigators have unearthed little evidence to implicate Lee with charges of espionage.

With espionage charges seemingly out of the picture, prosecutors must now decide if alleged Lee's security breaches warrant the pursuit of further charges against him. Considering the lack of action by prosecutors in the past in similar cases, the government may have serious difficulty justifying such a move against Lee. In turn, defense attorneys for Lee could air a lot of dirty laundry if the government decides to take them to court.

First, Newsweek reported, Lee's defense could subpoena files and witness from many past cases in which investigators turned a blind eye to possible security breaches. Lee's lawyers have said they they will argue their client is the unfair recipient of "selective prosecution," based solely on his cultural background.

Along these lines, retired CIA director John Deutch would provide ample support for the defense's theory. The CIA learned in December 1996 that Deutch normally carried highly classified information back and forth from home and work, even loading the material onto his unsecured home computer. Like Lee, Deutch lost his security clearance, but the former director has faced no further investigation or criminal charges.

Furthermore, pursuing these lesser charges against Lee may not be worth the cost for the government. Newsweek reported that the government might be forced to reveal secretive "sources and methods" in the course of a trial against Lee. In addition, prosecutors would have to explain why Lee, of all suspected information mishandlers, has been pursued with such vigor.

Lee has steadfastly maintained his innocence, saying that he transferred the codes in an effort to make backup files of information after a computer crash in 1994.

In an investigation plagued by mistakes and setbacks, perhaps the government officials and prosecutors should cut their losses or at least give their employees a refresher course on information security.

Laura Barandes