NucNews - December 31, 1999

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----------- accidents

Crash kills two, spills waste

December 24, 1999
BY DEE DRUMMOND
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Toledo Blade
http://www.toledoblade.com/editorial/news/9l24radi.htm

TIFFIN - Two people were killed yesterday when a truck carrying low-level radioactive hospital waste collided with another truck at a rural intersection northwest of this city.

Firefighters arrived just after 7:35 a.m. to find the two vehicles fully engulfed in flames, said Dan Stahl, a Seneca County volunteer firefighter.

"You could tell it was a major crash by the condition of the two cars,'' Mr. Stahl said. "It was a really bad scene.''

John Pope, 43, of Waterville was westbound on County Road 35 when he failed to yield for a southbound truck on State Rt. 635, the Ohio Highway Patrol said.

The trucks collided and then struck a tree on the side of the road before bursting into flames.

Emergency crews work to free the body of one of the victims of a fiery crash on State Rt. 635 near Bascom.

(Toledo Blade photo by Lori King)

Mr. Pope, an employee of the Holland-based Syncor International Corp., was killed in the crash.

The Howell, Mich., man who was driving a delivery truck carrying cookies and crackers was identified as Karl Pervinkler, 36. It is not known whether the men died from the crash or the fire.

Firefighters were trying to extinguish the blaze when they noticed metal canisters with the warning "Radiation - Biohazard,'' said Mr. Stahl, who is the public safety administrator for Seneca County.

"We immediately got our radiation detection equipment and started checking the scene,'' Mr. Stahl said. " You could see the containers lying right on the ground. One broke open.''

After a syringe on the ground tested positive for radioactivity, workers blocked roads while they waited for officials from the Ohio Department of Health and the state Environmental Protection Agency to arrive.

"We isolated everything that was in a zone out to where we thought it was safe,'' said Gene Kinn, a volunteer firefighter for nearby Bascom. "We were all concerned about what we were dealing with.''

Mr. Pope, a Syncor employee for nine years, was in between hospital stops at the time of the accident. Syncor operates 130 nuclear pharmacies, delivering radioactive pharmaceuticals to hospitals, said manager Stacy Petot.

About 15 metal canisters containing small amounts of radioactive pharmaceuticals - biohazardous waste, such as syringes used to inject radioactive dyes - tumbled out of the Syncor truck. "Everything that was in that container was low-level,'' said Lynne Barst, an EPA spokeswoman. "It was not of a great concern.''

---------

[Lest we forget...]

Radioactive element found in U.S. baby teeth

USA: October 22, 1999
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=4304

NEW YORK - Higher-than-expected levels of a man-made, cancer-causing element first introduced as a by-product of nuclear bomb tests has been found in baby teeth collected near nuclear power plants in three states, U.S. researchers said yesterday.

Directors of the non-profit Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) said at a news conference that levels of the element, radioisotope Strontium (Sr-90), should have dropped to almost zero once all global aboveground nuclear bomb testing ended in 1980.

Most of the 515 teeth analysed were from the 1979-1992 period and had similar concentrations of Strontium-90 as those found in children in the mid-1950s when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were still doing atmospheric nuclear bomb tests, according to initial findings of a RPHP study.

"There is cancer-causing Strontium-90 in children's teeth. It shouldn't be there," Dr Ernest Sternglass, Professor Emeritus of Radiological Physics at the University of Pittsburgh said in releasing the initial findings of independent laboratory analysis conducted on 515 baby teeth from New York, New Jersey and Florida.

RPHP said the chemical structure of Strontium-90 is similar to calcium and the body is deceived by it and deposits Sr-90 in bones and teeth where it remains, emitting cancer-causing radiation.

RPHP directors attributed some of the radioactivity to accidents such as the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the Chernobyl reactor disaster in 1986. They said state and federal records showed a large amount of airborne emissions in the early 1980s from four nuclear reactors located near Suffolk County, New York.

"If it is not underground testing or aboveground testing, clearly the prime suspects are nuclear reactors or nuclear reactor accidents," Sternglass said. "The world has become too small for nuclear accidents to affect only the 10-mile zone of evacuation."

RPHP is calling for a national study by the U.S. government. It said a private foundation is supporting RPHP's plans to collect and analyse 5,000 baby teeth from across the country in "nuclear" and "non-nuclear" counties.

The teeth for the RPHP study were collected as part of the "Tooth Fairy Project," an appeal to parents by actor Alec Baldwin to send in baby teeth they put under their children's pillows for the "Tooth Fairy" after they fell out. Baldwin, a resident of Suffolk County on Long Island where RPHP focused part of its study, said he sent out 15,000 letters to parents in February 1999.

"The initial findings are disturbing," Baldwin said at the news conference. He added that "the same results (as in the mid-50s) should merit the same level of concern."

Strontium-90 was linked to childhood cancer during the 1950s, causing health concerns that led to President John F. Kennedy signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1963 banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. France and China continued aboveground testing until 1980.

----------- depleted uranium

Was Toxic Plutonium Dust On Gulf War Battlefield?

The Hartford Courant
December 24, 1999
By THOMAS D. WILLIAMS
http://www.ctnow.com/scripts/editorial.dll?render=y&eetype=Article&eeid=1278489&ck=&userid=146094473&userpw=.&uh=146094473,2,&ver=hb1.2.20

A Persian Gulf War veterans' advocacy group says the Pentagon probably used plutonium in ammunition and tank coatings that during wartime explosions emitted toxic smoke and dust, sickening many of those exposed.

``The Pentagon appears to have known that plutonium and neptunium were in the depleted uranium used in ammunition and armor during the gulf war and in the conflict in Bosnia,'' said Paul Sullivan, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center Inc. in Washington, D.C.

His stance is based on an October report by the U.S. Department of Energy, which reveals that during the process of making fuel for nuclear reactors and elements for nuclear weapons, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah, KY., created depleted uranium ``potentially containing neptunium and plutonium.''

The report was initiated by U.S. Secretary of Energy Hazel R. O'Leary in August in response to complaints about environmental, safety and health concerns of plant workers and residents around the plant.

The Washington Post interviewed workers and their families at the plant about what they consider abnormal cancer rates among those exposed to highly radioactive plutonium and neptunium on the job.

Sullivan said his group is concerned about the possibility of munitions manufactured for the military containing the more dangerous metals.

If plutonium and neptunium were in the munitions made at Paducah, it could put an entirely different light on the military's use of depleted uranium, said Rosalie Bertel, an epidemiologist for the International Institute for Public Health in Toronto.

It would mean the Pentagon should have tested the urine of veterans for the presence of plutonium and neptunium, she said. Plutonium and neptunium can cause cancer and fibrosis of the lungs and can create lung, liver, spleen and kidney problems, Bertel said.

The U.S. first used the low-level radioactive metal during the gulf war as an armor-piercing ammunition, as well as a protective coating for armored vehicles.

Since the gulf war ended in 1991, U.S. veterans and the Pentagon have been fighting over whether exposure to depleted uranium is responsible for sicknesses experienced by thousands of veterans.

When targets struck by DU-coated munitions catch fire and create smoke, radioactive uranium oxide and dust can travel for miles, causing air and water pollution. If inhaled or ingested in large enough quantities, scientists say, the smoke and dust can cause cancer and serious kidney damage.

Maj. William Bigelow, a spokesman for the Army, said, ``Our current position is that we stand by the Rand report.''

That report, commissioned by the Pentagon, suggested there is no evidence to show veterans became seriously ill from exposures to depleted uranium. But it said more studies on the subject are needed.

Sullivan said the Rand report did not address the hazards of plutonium or neptunium in depleted uranium.

For now, it remains unclear whether depleted uranium produced at Paducah and used to produce munitions elsewhere might have been fired in ammunition during the gulf war or in more recent conflicts such as Serbia or Kosovo. Munitions coated with DU also are being used in simulated military operations in Puerto Rico and the United States.

Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Md., has studied the environmental problems at Paducah.

``It would not be proper of the Defense Department to deny that there is plutonium and neptunium in their depleted uranium shells without a thorough independent investigation,'' he said. ``And from what I know they have not done that.''

----------- china

Inside the Ring
Notes from the Pentagon

Washington Times
December 24, 1999
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/ring-19991224.htm

Taiwan HARM

The government of Taiwan secretly asked the Clinton administration last month to sell it High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles, or HARMs, as part of its annual request for defensive arms, we are told.

Disclosure of the request for the air-launched missiles, which home in on radar beacons used to track aircraft, comes amid disclosure in this newspaper on Wednesday that China is building a new air-defense missile site near Taiwan.

A fight is under way inside the administration over the request for HARMs, which have been star weapons used in the Balkans and Iraq in recent months to knock out anti-aircraft batteries.

Pro-Beijing officials at the State Department are opposing U.S. sales of HARMs, arguing the missiles could be used to knock out the surface-to-air missile sites like the one being built at Zhangzhou on China's coast, thus would be considered offensive weapons because the site is on the mainland.

Pentagon officials in favor of the sale deem them necessary to maintain a balance of forces. They point out that the HARMs are defensive missiles allowed under the Taiwan Relations Act governing U.S. arms sales to the island. Officials told us the HARMs would be very effective against China's two new Sovremenny-class guided-missile destroyers, which come equipped with ample radar for HARMs to attack - and are not on the mainland.

Russia will turn over the first new destroyer to China Saturday in St. Petersburg. The ship is the first of two equipped with supersonic SS-N-22 cruise missiles to be based in Shanghai, conveniently close to Taiwan.

Keep watching the sky

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, known as NORAD, will use its formidable satellite and ground radar tracking systems for the 44th year in a row to monitor the transit of a sleigh and nine - not eight - tiny reindeer from the North Pole Friday.

Santa Claus' journey will be picked up first by Defense Support Satellites - those that would spot a Chinese or Russian intercontinental ballistic missile launch, says a smiling NORAD spokesman, Master Sgt. Larry Lincoln.

"We can pick up the heat from Rudolph's nose," Sgt. Lincoln said of the ninth reindeer pulling Santa's present-filled sleigh.

The monitoring is intended to "keep the magic alive for children around the world," he said.

About 100 Air Force and other volunteers will staff phone lines inside NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain complex in Colorado Springs for children to call in their Christmas wishes or get an update on Santa's travel. A World Wide Web site will provide animation showing Santa's annual Christmas Eve journey. (719/474-3980 and www.noradsant a.org.)

Last year 80 million people visited the Web site and about 20,000 people called to find out the latest Santa update.

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

----------- europe

Swiss find serious faults in British nuclear fuel

By Steve Connor,
Science Editor
23 December 1999
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Environment/nuclear231299.shtml

The nuclear safety authority in Switzerland confirmed yesterday that it had discovered serious faults with controversial mixed plutonium-uranium oxide (Mox) fuel supplied by British Nuclear Fuels.

The revelation that grave problems were found with BNFL's Mox fuel after it was loaded into a Swiss reactor is another blow to the credibility of its main product. Last week BNFL apologised to the Japanese government after it emerged that the company had made false assurances on the quality of its Mox fuel.

The Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate said that three Mox fuel assemblies supplied by BNFL in 1996 were found to be damaged a year after they were loaded into the Beznau 1 reactor. A further nine rods had to be removed forchecks two years earlier than had been planned.

Sources in BNFL have told The Independent that the Mox fuel sent to Beznau was checked at the Sellafield plant in Cumbria by the same three BNFL employees who were sacked for allegedly falsifying quality data.

Serge Pretre, director of the Swiss inspectorate, confirmed that an examination of one damaged fuel rod revealed that it had a manufacturing fault, although he believed this was unconnected with the issue of falsification of quality-control data.

"From what I know of the damage it doesn't seem to be a quality-assurance problem," Dr Pretre said. "We are aware of the problems and have asked the authorities in London to get more information on this case."

The operator of Beznau 1, Switzerland's north-eastern electricity utility NOK, had run a check on the fuel and reloaded it into the reactor before the Mox falsification scandal came to light in September.

Dr Pretre said he had been in touch with Britain's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) to try to find out more about the quality-control checks on the Beznau 1 fuel. "We were trying to know if [the fuel] was affected by this falsification." No clear answer has yet been received, he said.

However, a spokesman for the NII said last night that an investigation had revealed that some of the quality assurance data relating to the Mox fuel sent to Beznau was questionable. He said the inspectorate had contacted the Swiss regulators and informed them that suspect data should not affect the safe operation of the fuel.

BNFL said last night that the difficulties at Beznau were not connected with the Mox fuel pellets, but with the fuel pins into which they are loaded. "Nuclear reactors each contain many thousands of fuel pins and the nature of the Beznau problem is a fairly common occurrence with no safety implications," a spokesman said.

Government ministers are irritated with BNFL's repeated reassurances that its acknowledged falsification problems at Sellafield did not affect the first Mox fuel shipment to Japan, which arrived earlier this month.

Helen Liddell, the energy minister, has apologised in person to Japan's ambassador in London for BNFL's mistakes. She is also sending a senior civil servant to Japan in January to show that the Government is taking the matter seriously.

Shaun Bernie of Greenpeace International said that BNFL had again been shown to produce poor-quality, dangerous nuclear fuel. "There are clearly no limits to the extent of BNFL mismanagement when plutonium is involved. All plutonium Mox fuel production should be cancelled," he said.

------- india

No to War, no to Nuclear Bomb": Movie directors

India Today
December 1999
http://www.india-today.com/moviemasala/spice.html

Jamshedpur: A ten-day International Film Festival, featuring 57 movies from 11 countries, on the theme "No to War, No to Nuclear Bomb" began on December 11.

Film-maker Asoke Viswanathan, while inaugurating the festival said that modern cine directors are not making merely entertaining films but also realistic ones with social concerns. A retrospective of Israeli cinema will be showcased during the festival and a delegation from that country would attend it.

Movies of young and debutant Indian filmmakers will be the highlight of the festival and films by Vijay Ketan Misra, Susanta Misra, Santana Bordoloi, Rituporno Ghosh, Deepa Mehta, Gautam Ghosh, Rajen Khosla and Kaizad Gustad will be screened.

An exhibition of rare photographs on the nuclear bomb devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was also opened.

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

Safety in Indian nuclear plants: Assurance is not enough

Bengali Daily
2 November 1999
BY PRADIP DATTA, ANANDA BAZAR PATRIKA (Bengali daily), Calcutta,
From: Harsh Kapoor - aiindex@mnet.fr

A. Gopalakrishnan, a former chief of India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), disclosed recently that in 1995, the AERB had prepared a list of 130 flaws in different nuclear installations in the country. Some of them were nuclear enrichment plants. He said that safety standards at the older nuclear plants were so low that severe accidents like the one occurring at the Tokaimura uranium plant in Japan could occur here too.

According to Gopalakrishnan, the excessive secrecy in the functioning of the department of atomic energy (DAE) and the the constraints on the independent functioning of the AERB were responsible for the situation.The AERB works under the DAE, which can suppress any incident or information on the pretext of national security under the Official Secrets Act.

In spite of the pressure of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, the DAE had suppressed the AERB report r recommending, among other things, changes in the core coolant system essential for avoiding core meltdown at a reactor.

Some time back, the DAE itself conducted a survey on the possibilities of human errors at Indian reactors. This report was also not published.

As soon as Gopalakrishnan's statement came out, R. Chidambaram, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, told journalists that Indian nuclear installations had enough safety arrangements to prevent an accident like Tokaimura occuring here in the next 150 years.

There is little ground to be assured by Chidambaram's words. Two reactor disasters have been behind the global ebbing of enthusiasm over nuclear energy. First, the Three Mile Island accident in the USA in 1979, and second, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the USSR.

America had 47 reactor accidents of various proportions in the decade preceeding the Three Mile Island disaster. Those were also kept under wraps. People came to know about them after the Three Mile Island accident. Before that, the US experts used to claim that it was impossible for an accident to happen at TMI. Immediately after the disaster, the US Congress said it could be repeated any time.

Similarly, it became known after the Chernobyl disaster that a number of people knew about the serious flaws in reactor concerned earlier. The top Soviet nuclear scientists just lied about safety. Only a few days ago the Japanese authorities, too, used to boast about their safety standards. Now we know that workers at JCO Corporation, Tokaimura, had little idea of these standards and did not even wear radiation measuring badges to work.

One should ask Chidambaram whether the reactors and their safety arrangements in India are more developed than those in the USA, Russia, Japan, France or Germany. India generates slightly more than one per cent of its electricity (1,086 MW) from nuclear power plants. It sends its technologists to acquire skills to these countries and buys technology from them.

-------------- russia

U.S.-Russia missile talks yield no deal

Philadelphia Inquirer
12/23/99
By David Hoffman
WASHINGTON POST
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Dec/23/international/RUSSIA23.htm

MOSCOW - Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin discussed arms control yesterday, but both sides apparently failed to make headway in the disagreement over changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Interfax news agency reported that no progress was made in bridging the opposing views. The United States wants to change the treaty to allow the construction of a limited ballistic missile defense system, while Russia adamantly rejects any major modifications. Russia has said that if the United States unilaterally breaks out of the treaty it will destroy 20 years of arms-control agreements.

Talbott, after meeting with Foreign Ministry officials, asked for and got a meeting with Putin. The prime minister continues to enjoy a surge in his political standing as reflected in Sunday's parliamentary election in which a new, centrist party backed by him placed second.

It was not clear what, if anything, Talbott said about the war in Chechnya, but some Russian media speculated that a deal was in the works - if the United States will not pressure Russia on the war, then Moscow will once again attempt to get the START II nuclear arms-limitation treaty ratified. The treaty, signed in 1993, has languished in the Russian parliament, but the lower house, the State Duma, is soon to undergo major changes in composition as a result of Sunday's elections. The Communists who opposed the treaty have lost strength, and a pro-Western party will enter the chamber as well.

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

Yeltsin Quits, Is Granted Immunity

By Barry Renfrew
Associated Press Writer
Friday, Dec. 31, 1999; 6:17 p.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline181731_000.htm

MOSCOW -- Pleading for forgiveness, Boris Yeltsin resigned Friday as president, clearing the way for his hand-picked successor to take Russia into a new age and fix the mistakes he admitted having made through eight chaotic years.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the country's most popular politician, took control of the government and will serve as acting president until elections are held in 90 days. The change came just two weeks after Putin's supporters scored a surprise triumph in parliamentary elections.

One of Putin's first acts was to sign a grant of immunity to Yeltsin, inviting speculation that a deal had been made to entice Yeltsin into early retirement.

Looking grim and emotional, Yeltsin said he was stepping down immediately to give Putin the best chance of winning the presidential elections. Putin, already the top candidate to replace Yeltsin, now has a huge advantage that his rivals probably won't be able to counter.

"I am stepping down ahead of term," Yeltsin said during an address on state television, speaking in front of a gaily decorated New Year's tree and a blue, red and white Russian flag with a golden Russian eagle.

"I understand that I must do it, and Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new intelligent, strong, energetic people, and we who have been in power for many years must go," he said, making a surprise announcement during what was supposed to be a New Year's address.

Yeltsin, who has ruled Russia with a strong hand since 1991 and was due to step down in June, said he deeply regretted not meeting people's expectations in the post-Soviet period.

"I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I would like to beg forgiveness for not having justified your hopes," said Yeltsin, who rarely admits errors. "I beg your forgiveness for having failed to jump in one leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past to the light, rich and civilized future."

Putin, a former KGB officer, quickly assumed control of the government and said he would continue as prime minister. Yeltsin turned over to Putin the so-called nuclear suitcase controlling Russia's nuclear arsenal and the pen he used to sign key measures.

The transition of power is likely to be smooth, with no destabilizing effects. Russia has a decade of democratic elections under its belt, and political parties were already preparing for the presidential vote.

In Washington, President Clinton paid tribute to Yeltsin for dismantling the communist system and putting a democratic structure in place.

"I liked him because he was always forthright with me," Clinton said. "He always did exactly what he said he would do. And he was willing to take chances to try to improve our relationship."

Putin quickly signed a decree giving Yeltsin immunity from criminal prosecution, a lifetime pension and a government country home, bodyguards and medical care for him and his family.

But while the immunity will be seen by some as a key reason for Yeltsin's decision, the deal did not include his family, which has been linked to corruption allegations in recent months. Previous prime ministers, who also had their eye on the presidency, had talked of such a deal for Yeltsin, who is also concerned about Communist efforts to jail him for breaking up the Soviet Union.

The timing of Yeltsin's resignation probably had more to do with parliamentary elections less than two weeks ago, in which pro-Putin centrist parties did unexpectedly well in parliamentary elections. With the backing of the state media and showing strength in public opinion polls, Putin has a huge advantage in the presidential election, expected to be held on March 26.

Putin's confident handling of the war in Chechnya and no-nonsense manner appeals to many Russians, who want take-charge leadership to tackle the nation's enormous economic, political and social problems.

Putin said Friday there would be no change in government policies, including foreign relations. But he said efforts to modernize and strengthen the weakened military would continue and the state would ensure stability.

"The freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom of the press, the freedom of property rights - these fundamentals of civilized society - will be reliably protected by the state," Putin said in a New Year's address to the nation.

Many in the West view Putin's rise with concern, and domestic critics claim he wants to restore authoritarian controls because of his KGB past. He makes no secret of wanting to revive Russia as a great power, but has also sought to preserve the ties Yeltsin cultivated with the West.

Yeltsin's resignation shocked ordinary Russians, but caused little commotion. Most people were busy with preparations for New Year's Eve, the country's most important holiday. The news dominated Russian newscasts, but with few exceptions television stations did not interrupt their holiday programs for detailed coverage.

The Russian stock market jumped to a 15-month high on the news, with dealers saying hopes of strong new leadership would boost the economy.

"To be honest, I didn't think anything of Yeltsin lately," said 27-year-old teacher Lena Matrosova. "He was doing nothing as president. There was just this person we had, but he did not mean anything."

Yeltsin's political opponents welcomed the president's resignation.

"The Yeltsin party of power has fallen," said Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who came in second in 1996 presidential elections.

Plagued for years by heart and other health problems, Yeltsin was often ill and out of sight during his second term. But he continued to dominate Russian politics nonetheless. He easily defeated a Communist-led effort in May to impeach him and had dismissed four prime ministers in the last two years.

Yeltsin said he saw no point in staying in power for the last six months of his term because Putin was well-suited to take over. He said he was confident Russia would not return to its authoritarian past.

"I shouldn't be in the way of the natural course of history," Yeltsin said. "To cling to power for another six months when the country has a strong person worthy of becoming president - why should I stand in his way? Why should I wait? It's simply not in my character."

-----------

Nuclear Launch Authority Handed Over to Putin

December 31, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/99/12/31/late/31russia-nuke.html

Related Article
Yeltsin Resigns, Turns Over Powers to Prime Minister Putin (Dec. 31, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/31russia-yeltsin.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline085441_000.htm

Clinton Hails Yeltsin, Looks Forward to Putin
http://www.nytimes.com/99/12/31/late/31russia-us.html

Clinton Pays Tribute to Yeltsin
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-Yeltsin.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline074436_000.htm

Russia's Acting President a Tough Ex-Spy
http://www.nytimes.com/99/12/31/late/31russia-putin.html

World Leaders Stunned by Yeltsin's Resignation
http://www.nytimes.com/99/12/31/late/31russia-reax.html

Forum
http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.f056025

MOSCOW -- After announcing his resignation on Friday, Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over to his acting successor one of the most important symbols of power in Russia: the briefcase with codes to launch nuclear missiles.

Yeltsin received the briefcase from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who resigned on Christmas Day in 1991. Yeltsin parted from it only once during his term in office -- in 1996, when he underwent heart surgery and turned over his powers briefly to then Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

"The nuclear button is an effective mechanism to control Russian nuclear forces and also a symbol of the presidency," former Yeltsin press secretary Sergei Yastrzhembsky said when asked to describe the device.

The briefcase is carried behind Yeltsin by an officer dressed in a distinctive black navy uniform which makes it easy for the president to single him out in a crowd. But all information about it has been classified until lately.

A senior parliament member, Alexei Arbatov, has described the nuclear button as the first link in a chain of commands ending in onboard cruise computers of nuclear missiles.

"The nuclear button...transmits presidential sanction for the use of nuclear weapons to command centres where general staff officers are on duty around the clock," said Arbatov, an expert on national security with close ties to the Kremlin.

"On receiving a coded signal, officers...using appropriate codes, determine that it was the president who sent it, rather than someone else."

When the authenticity of the presidential message is confirmed, duty officers open safes containing their own codes and send them to missile launch pads and nuclear submarines.

"Then the codes are installed (in onboard cruise computers), launch keys are turned and the missiles blast off," he said.

Russia, which inherited the nuclear forces of the former Soviet Union, has some 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads, enough to destroy life on earth several times over, as well as stocks of medium- and short-range weapons.

Yeltsin himself reminded the world of this just weeks ago on a visit to China, when he confronted Western criticism of Russia's military action in Chechnya by saying U.S. President Bill Clinton had forgotten Russia was a nuclear power.

According to NTV commercial television, some 30 people are involved in handling the nuclear button network, run jointly by the Defence Ministry and the secret services.

Arbatov has said the defence minister has a similar nuclear button but the president did not need to coordinate his orders with the military chief.

"The first order (from the president) does not need a confirmation by the second," Arbatov said. He did not make clear whether the defence minister would need the president's authorisation to use his nuclear button. REUTERS Reut07:00 12-31-99

---

Putin rocked Russians with ruthlessness

MOSCOW, Dec 31 1999
Agence France Presse
http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/article.html?s=asia/headlines/991231/world/afp/Putin_rocked_Russians_with_ruthlessness.html

Vladimir Putin, the poker-faced ex-KGB spy, once tried to westernize a crumbling Soviet Union but has since galvanized a new Russia and is vowing to annihilate the rebels of Chechnya.

"We'll get them anywhere -- if we find terrorists sitting in the outhouse, then we will piss on them there. That's it. The matter is settled," barked Putin shortly after Russia launched its Chechen war in September.

Such talk could have cost his predecessors their job. But it boosted Putin's career.

He became acting president Friday when Boris Yeltsin suddenly announced he was stepping down, and is likely to retain the Kremlin hot seat for years to come.

Yeltsin, ailing and being edged out of power by his closest advisers, named the then virtually unknown security chief as prime minister last August.

He had been running the secretive but omnipotent Security Council.

He has since turned into one of the most admired figures Russia has seen this decade, even his opponents singing his praises.

"Putin has enchanted Russia," wrote Vyacheslav Kostikov, a former Kremlin spokesman and current board member of a Media-MOST empire that has campaigned heavily against the government.

"I honestly believe that Putin is capable of heroic deeds in the name of our humiliated Russia," Kostikov said.

Yet the 47-year-old prime minister and acting president remains a political enigma.

He helped found a new party, Unity, which rode into the State Duma (the lower house of parliament) on the back of his popularity in December 19 elections.

The party is described as "centrist." But the respected Moscow Times said in an editorial: "There is no particular reason to believe that Unity is 'centrist,' unless 'centrist' is another word for 'unknown.'"

The English-language newspaper added: "But what seems clear is that the Kremlin has been dealt a winning hand -- or the Kremlin has dealt itself a winning hand, depending on one's point of view."

What can be gleamed from Putin's bare biography suggests that he is intelligent and cunning, trusted enough by peers to be handed some of the most sensitive assignments.

Putin "was shaped by the single greatest mission in the history of the KGB," wrote the US-based private global intelligence firm Stratfor.

That mission was the "systematic restructuring of the Soviet economy, Soviet society and Soviet relations with the West in the hope of preserving the state and the regime."

Putin spent the 1980s in Berlin, where intelligence observers believe he slipped into West Germany to learn trade secrets of such companies as US computer giant IBM.

Observers believe KGB officers knew the Soviet Union was in ruins and could be preserved only by revolutionising its lagging technology and attracting investors from the West.

It remains unclear how successful Putin was. But he became the chief liaison for foreign investors after joining the pro-reform team of Saint Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sabchak in 1994.

Local journalists report that it was impossible to make foreign investments in Russia's second city without first contacting Putin.

He then also became a trusted ally of economics chief Anatoly Chubais, who brought Putin to Moscow in 1996 and made him responsible for monitoring regional leaders who were seeking greater independence from Moscow.

One political analyst reported that Putin was told to collect so-called "compromising material" on governors which could then be used as an "incentive" for them to toe the Kremlin line.

Analysts suggest the Kremlin is now repaying Putin by making him the star of a well orchestrated media public relations campaign, one which has put his presidential rating at an unheralded 46 percent.

The latest Public Opinion Foundation poll said Russians were three times as likely to vote for Putin in presidential election due in June than his nearest rival, Communist Party boss Gennady Zyuganov.

"Russia was and will remain a great country," Putin wrote in a 14-page essay entitled "Russia on the Threshold of a New Millenium" published this week on the government's Internet web site.

The message, at once an outline of policy objectives and a philosophical expose, was striking both in its relaxed tone and a novel content that mixed Western democratic and market ideals with traditional Russian mores.

"Russia is never going to be another USA or England, where liberal values have deep historic roots," Putin asserted.

"It is a fact that in Russia the attraction to a collective way of life has always been stronger than the desire for individualism."

At the same time, though, the country and its people understand better than many the dangers that a government -- particularly an executive branch -- endowed with excessive power can pose to people's freedom, he said.

"The global experience prompts the conclusion that the main threat to human rights and freedoms, to democracy as such, emanates from the executive authority," Putin wrote.

"The state must be where and as needed; freedom must be where and as required."

---

West watches, worries as Putin takes power

Friday, 31 December 1999 10:35 (GMT)
By Martin Sieff,
UPI National Security Editor
http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=55485

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- King Log has been succeeded by King Stork.

A corrupt but relatively democratic and pro-Western leader of Russia has been replaced by one who has given every indication he is likely to prove anything but.

Vladimir Putin, the 47-year-old, dour, ruthless former secret police chief who has just succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president of Russia, will make no move to ideologically reimpose communism in Russia.

In the West, we might very well come to wish that he would.

Instead, Putin is a striking expression of the gangster values, pervading cynicism, anti-Western nationalist sentiments and utterly ruthless implementation of policies that pervades modern Russia.

He is the embodiment of the new criminal-syndicalist state, a system where big business has been forced to adopt the literal practices of gangsters to survive, because the structures and procedures of the rule of law are virtually non-existent.

Putin has made clear that he will retain the basic, freewheeling free market structure of Russia.

But in foreign policy, he looks set to confront the United States and the West far more vigorously -- and ruthlessly -- than any leader in the past 16 years since the death of his own personal hero Yuri Andropov, who masterminded a wave of murderous international terrorism against the West.

He has not even pretended to have any "personal chemistry" with U.S. President Bill Clinton.

When Putin met Clinton in Oslo in early November, he was confrontational and -- deliberately -- charmless. Clinton and his press spokesmen were so taken aback that in their descriptions of the meeting, they omitted all the usual rhetorical boiler plate about "the chemistry was good" and "friendships remained strong" even if there was disagreement on every issue.

Putin is no "phony tough." He really is tough.

He reflects the obsession by the brutal and ferociously anti-Western wave of new nationalists in Russia with implementing the principle of U.S. President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt - "Talk softly and carry a big stick and you will go far." As prime minister, Putin already publicly threw his weight behind rapidly rebuilding Russia's mighty Strategic Rocket Forces, which even through the collapse of Soviet and Russian power have remained the most deadly nuclear strike force in the world.

He has approved confrontational stunts by the Russian armed forces such as plans to fly Tupolev Tu-22 Backfire bombers armed with nuclear cruise missiles to Cuba or Vietnam next year.

He won the warm support of the Russian army's top general staff command for giving them the green light to crush the secessionist Chechens, regardless of the thousands of Chechen civilians who would die.

Domestically, he may well unleash a repressionist terror that would have enormous public support.

Tsars Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century and Peter the Great in the 17th century both became popular figures by crushing and humiliating the boyars, the detested corrupt wealthy merchant class of their times.

Putin would enjoy similar overwhelming public support if he took such actions against the billionaire oligarchs who have amassed enormous financial, energy and media empires over the past decade while the living standard of ordinary Russians has collapsed into impoverishment.

Putin already has a powerful political coalition behind him.

The pro-government Unity bloc won a stunning 23 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections just 12 days ago.

The Union of Right Wing Forces led by his old political mentor, former Kremlin chief of staff Anatoly Chubais, won nearly 9 percent in the same election. Chubais, in the words of analyst Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, ran a shamelessly strident xenophobic and anti-Western campaign, supporting Putin's policies in Chechnya.

Since then, Putin has openly signaled his warm approval of Chubais.

Ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who scraped back into parliament with 6 percent of the vote, will also support Putin. He has little choice.

Zhirinovsky, who has threatened to obliterate Western cities with nuclear weapons if he should ever win power, cynically supported Yeltsin in every key parliamentary vote and was rewarded by having the pro-government television networks shower favorable publicity on him in the parliamentary election campaign.

He will not hesitate to applaud any and all confrontational, anti-Western moves that Putin makes.

Even the majority Communists will rally behind Putin on key issues, although they loathe his free market policies.

But they already support him on Chechnya and on confronting the West.

And they will cheer any moves he takes against the oligarchs.

The once-feared Fatherland-All Russia bloc will give Putin no real problem.

It is already falling apart.

Former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov is a veteran government insider with no stomach for being on the receiving end of the abusive media propaganda that Putin's supporters showered on him and his allies in the election campaign.

Also, it was Primakov who masterminded the anti-Western foreign policy strategy, forging close strategic ties to China, that Putin has energetically implemented.

But Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Lebed will have a joyless and worried time this New Year's Eve.

In ability, power base, ambition and their own relative youthfulness, they are the nearest things Putin has to challengers and rivals. And therefore they are bound to be his first political targets.

In his first weeks in office, Putin will concentrate on his election campaign. He may well present a moderate reassuring image to the West.

But once he is elected as president in his own right? Watch out.

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

Experts see continuity in China-Russia ties

Deseret News
Friday, December 31, 1999
By Reuters News Service
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,145015603,00.html

BEIJING, Dec 31 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin's shock resignation on Friday is unlikely to disturb warming China-Russian ties, Western diplomats said.

But one Chinese expert fretted over uncertainty in future relations if Yeltsin's chosen successor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin fails to marshal political support and loses elections scheduled for late March.

China has made no official comment on Yeltsin's resignation. A foreign ministry official said Beijing would issue an official reaction within hours.

"I don't think the transition will be any great shock to the Chinese," said a Western diplomat in Beijing. "I think they'll be comfortable with Putin."

Putin was handed presidential powers, including control of Russsia's massive nuclear arsenal, on Friday following Yeltsin's resignation earlier in the day.

As Russia's first democratically elected president, Yeltsin has built on a thaw in ties begun by Mikhail Gorbachev, forging what he and Chinese President Jiang Zemin have termed a "strategic partnership."

The trend has accelerated in recent months, bolstered by the two countries' abhorrence of NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, and shared opposition to U.S.-dominance in global affairs. They have blasted U.S. plans for a ballistic missile defence shield.

Jiang has also been the only major leader to back Russia's military campaign in Chechnya - a campaign which has drawn fierce criticism from Western governments.

China faces separatist threats of its own, particularly in Moslem Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as from Nationalist-ruled Taiwan.

Just days after being treated for pneumonia, Yeltsin visited Beijing earlier in December for a 26-hour visit filled with comradely bearhugs with Jiang.

"I think the Chinese had in mind that this was sort of a goodbye visit," the Western diplomat said.

"They wanted to give him a nice send-off."

The diplomat said Jiang had met Putin on several occasions in earlier stages of their political careers, and that a plan had been in the works for Putin to visit Beijing early next year.

But Li Fan, a political analyst from private think-tank the World and China Institute, said uncertainty about Putin's own political strength left a question mark over the future of ties with Moscow.

Putin is currently riding a massive wave of popular support in Russia for his forceful handling of Chechnya, viewed as punishment for terrorist bombings.

But without the support of Yeltsin, Putin's political fortunes could shift once Chechnya subsides as an issue.

"With Yeltsin's step-down, it will affect Putin's chances of being president and Russia's internal politics will be uncertain," Li said.

---

Yeltsin Catches World by Surprise

The Associated Press
Friday, Dec. 31, 1999; 10:32 a.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline103246_000.htm

LONDON -- Foreign leaders praised Boris Yeltsin today for leading Russia away from communism but also expressed hope that a new leader may improve Russia's strained relations with the West.

"Boris Yeltsin has played a crucial role in the history of Russia," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a short statement after Yeltsin announced his resignation as Russia's president today.

"He has steered his country through a most difficult and painful transition from communism to democracy ... We now look forward to the presidential elections when the Russian people will decide on Boris Yeltsin's successor and take a further step towards embedding the democratic process."

Appearing live on Russian television, Yeltsin apologized to the nation for failing to fulfill their dreams during his eight years of power, a period in which his health deteriorated and his leadership became increasingly bogged down by corruption and scandal. He said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who enjoys great popularity, would take control until presidential elections in March.

In a statement released in Washington, President Clinton said Yeltsin's succession by Putin is evidence of the Russian leader's constitutional achievements.

"We have had our differences, such as on Chechnya, but President Yeltsin and my starting point has always been how Russia and the United States could work together to advance common interests," Clinton said.

He cited as "genuine progress" the dismantling of thousands of U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear weapons and Russian peacekeeping troops in the Balkans.

While many leaders said they looked ahead eagerly to the presidential elections, they also offered congratulations and praise to Putin, who is the strong favorite to win in March.

French President Jacques Chirac addressed his congratulations solely to Putin, without mentioning Yeltsin.

"I am convinced in this period of transition that is so important for the Russian people that you will be able to act in favor of a return to peace, to the deepening of democracy and the pursuit of indispensable reforms," Chirac said in a statement.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has experienced years of economic decline and millions live in poverty. Efforts to build a market economy have had little effect on most people's lives and millions of pensioners and workers go months without being paid.

In Japan, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said Yeltsin had helped improve relations between the two countries, and he expressed his regret that the Russian leader had decided to step down.

"I hope that Yeltsin's successor will continue the current reforms in politics and the economy," he said, adding that Putin struck him as "a fearless and aggressive leader."

Yeltsin's relations with the West have also soured recently over Russia's military offensive in Chechnya and NATO's attack on Serbia earlier this year.

Portugal, which takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the 15-nation European Union on Saturday, expressed hope that Putin would improve his country's handling of foreign affairs. He said he hopes Putin "is able to listen to and interpret the voice of the international community in problems like Chechnya, which require more constructive attitudes by Russia."

In Denmark, Foreign Minister Helveg Petersen warned that Yeltsin's departure doesn't solve Russia's problems.

"Russia still is tormented by two huge problems: the war in Chechnya, and the lack of economical and social reform," Petersen said.

Leaders of former Soviet bloc countries noted Yeltsin's "historical significance" and expressed hope that Russia would proceed on the road of democracy.

While most foreign governments were caught off guard by Yeltsin's announcement, many officials said they did not find it entirely unexpected.

In Washington a White House spokesman, James Fallin, said "while there is an element of surprise it was not a complete one." He cited speculative reports in the Russian press for several months about the 68-year-old Yeltsin's health problems.

As for the dramatic way in which he resigned, many said that was vintage Yeltsin. Yeltsin's sudden departure was "an expression of the dramatic person he is," Petersen told reporters in Denmark.

---------

U.S., Russia Monitor Missiles

December 31, 1999 Filed at 12:46 p.m. EST
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Y2K-Nuclear-Watch.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline034801_000.htm

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AP) -- Side by side, Russian and American military officers monitored the skies today to ensure that the millennium doesn't begin with a nuclear missile launch accidentally sent because of the Y2K bug. The verdict in the first hours: Everything's going fine.

The cooperation was a long way from decades of Cold War paranoia and movies such as ``Fail-Safe,'' in which a technical problem with communications leads to a mistaken nuclear attack on Moscow and the destruction of New York by the United States' own bombers.

In real life, the former enemies created the joint unit at Peterson to make sure there were no accidental missile launches. They wanted to ensure, for example, that their systems didn't mistake a radar failure as a threat, or misidentify a commercial aircraft as a bomber. They also wanted to be on guard in case a terrorist tried to manipulate their computers.

Reporters were briefly allowed in the monitoring room just after clocks in Petropavlovsk, in the easternmost Russian time zone, struck 12:01 a.m. It was 5:01 a.m. local time.

The atmosphere in the monitoring room was anything but tense. The crews frequently broke into laughter. And more than an hour after extreme eastern Russia had entered the New Year, no problems had been detected.

``So far it's what we thought it would be, pretty dull,'' said U.S. Lt. Col. Greg Boyette.

The team was agreed upon by President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Early today, Yeltsin announced he was resigning and turning power over to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The resignation ``caught us a little off guard but kept the crew members awake because there was something to talk about,'' said Boyette. And Col. Sergey Kaplin, head of the Russian military team, said it showed ``the Russian Federation is ready to meet the New Year.''

Through mid-January, six-person crews -- two Russians, two Americans and two translators -- will be working eight-hour shifts around the clock, watching computer screens in a 1,200-square-foot, $4.5 million center in Building 1040.

The building is adjacent to U.S. Space Command, which controls all military space programs, and a few miles across Colorado Springs from the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S. and Canadian operation that monitors manmade objects in space from deep inside Cheyenne Mountain.

Senior U.S. commanders planned to be on duty at Cheyenne Mountain throughout the period, as were their Russian counterparts, thousands of miles away.

No U.S. officers were allowed in the Russian missile center, and the Russians will not be permitted in the NORAD facilities. Data from Cheyenne Mountain was passed on to the Y2K Strategic Stability Center at Peterson to be shared with the Russians.

---

First Russian Nuclear Reactor Passes Y2K Test

December 31, 1999
By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-nuclear-russia.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The first Russian nuclear reactor to cross into the new millennium survived the Y2K computer bug test, Russia's atomic power company said in Moscow on Friday half an hour after the plant entered the New Year.

``At 3:00 p.m. Moscow time (1200 GMT) the staff of the Bilibinsk nuclear power plant met the New Year. In connection with the change of date no shutdown in the work of the equipment was observed,'' the Rosenergoatom firm, which manages eight of nine civilian nuclear power plants in Russia said in a press release at 1230 GMT.

Itar-Tass news agency said radiation levels at the plant remained within normal bounds.

The reactor, in Russia's far eastern Chukotka province opposite Alaska, was the first to cross into the New Year, just three hours after President Boris Yeltsin resigned in Moscow at noon on Friday.

An Emergencies Ministry duty officer in Moscow said there were no problems due to the Y2K computer bug as of 15 minutes after midnight in Chukotka.

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

Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1999

NEWS IN BRIEF

A Russian court acquitted a retired naval officer charged with treason for writing about unsafe storage of nuclear waste. Alexander Nikitin was charged with revealing state secrets after writing a 1996 report in a Norwegian journal and discussing 52 nuclear submarines abandoned in a shipyard near Russia's border with Norway. The subs allegedly hold spent nuclear fuel that is susceptible to leakage, overheating, and explosion. Environmental groups expressed outrage when prosecutors demanded that Nikitin be sentenced to 12 years in a labor colony.<P>

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Nuke Reactor Enters 2000 Unscathed

December 31, 1999
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Y2K-US-Russian-Nukes.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline120352_000.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The first Russian nuclear plant to pass into 2000 did so without incident -- cause for optimism, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said today. ``But we have barely scratched the surface'' in terms of time zones, he added.

Four units at the Bilibino Nuclear Heat and Power Plant in northeast Siberia above the Arctic Circle were functioning normally after the rollover to 2000, Richardson said, and early reports indicate that Russia's other energy systems made the Jan. 1 switch without glitches.

``So far, international signs are encouraging but we have barely scratched the surface with the early time zones,'' Richardson said.

The Bilibino plant provides energy for the mining industry and the seaport of Pevask, which is connected to the plant by a 300-mile transmission line.

The first unit began operating in January, 1974 and the last one started up in December 1976, according to the Soviet Plant Source Book, published by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based trade association for the nuclear industry.

The units are targeted for closure in 2002 and 2006.

A 1996 visit by U.S. and international energy officials found safety and maintenance problems at the site in part of because of the high turnover of personnel.

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

Clinton and Yeltsin Remain Friendly

The Associated Press
Friday, Dec. 31, 1999; 5:28 p.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline172809_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- For seven years, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin hugged, laughed and disagreed with each other so regularly they seemed more like fraternity brothers than heads of state.

When the two presidents said goodbye over the phone Friday, they were on the outs over Russia's crackdown on Chechnya and hadn't spoken in more than a month. Still, Yeltsin offered to stay in touch.

"I am very glad that I was your friend," Yeltsin told the man he ebulliently called "Beel." "I will continue to be your friend."

"I liked him because he was always very forthright with me," Clinton told reporters afterward. "He always did exactly what he said he would do."

If they were an improbable pair, their separate struggles bonded them as friends and mutual defenders.

Clinton would declare the sickly Yeltsin robust, even when his health was clearly in decline. Yeltsin would wrap Clinton in bear hugs, as if to cheer up a president laid low by impeachment.

"We had our arguments, we had our fights, we had our genuine disagreement about our national interests from time to time," Clinton said. "But I think that the Russian people were well-served to have a leader who honestly believes that their votes ought to determine who was running the show in Russia."

Between mood swings, Clinton and Yeltsin could find each other hilarious. Once, they met at Franklin Roosevelt's home in Hyde Park, N.Y., in October 1995. Until then, Clinton and Yeltsin had talked mostly on the fringes of economic summits, and there had been speculation that the session would be a disaster.

When they emerged from their talks, Yeltsin stood before reporters and bellowed: "Now, for the first time, I can tell you that YOU'RE a disaster."

Clinton, standing beside him, turned red as a beet and laughed until tears ran from his eyes.

Letters and phone calls often flew between the two men. In September, with Yeltsin in the midst of a money-laundering scandal, it was the much-investigated Clinton who talked to him by phone for an hour, encouraging him to cooperate with investigators.

As Clinton grappled with the NATO bombing mission in Yugoslavia earlier in the year, it was Yeltsin who dispatched former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to serve as a diplomatic intermediary, even though Yeltsin was a virulent critic of the NATO campaign.

Yeltsin sent a congratulatory note for Clinton's 50th birthday three years ago. But Yeltsin also chewed Clinton out for ordering air strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for U.S. embassy bombings in 1998.

"I am indignant," Yeltsin said. "I didn't know that this strike would be carried out, and that means the whole world was unaware of that. And this makes the strike even more indecent."

A month ago, it was Clinton's turn to do the chewing out, this time over Russia's military crackdown on rebels in Chechnya. Yeltsin seemed sore over growing international objections to Russia's actions, saying other countries were meddling in an internal Russian affair.

During a meeting at a multinational summit in Turkey, Clinton reminded Yeltsin that not too long ago, the Russian himself was a rebel who climbed atop a tank to make the case for freedom, and who enjoyed the support of the very nations he was now telling to butt out.

"Your standing there on that tank said to those people, 'You can do this, but you'll have to kill me first,'" Clinton said. "If they had put you in jail instead of electing you president, I would hope that every leader of every country around this table would have stood up for you and for freedom in Russia and not said, 'Well, that is an internal Russian affair that we cannot be a part of.'"

The remarks only rankled Yeltsin even more - so much so that he said: "Mr. Clinton has forgotten Russia is a great power that possesses a nuclear arsenal."

But their conversation Friday bore no traces of that chilly exchange. Clinton told Yeltsin he believed historians would label him "someone who guided Russia to the point of democracy, where power is transferred by constitutional and civil means," said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart.

Yeltsin promised that he was leaving Russia in the hands of "a strong, intelligent, capable man" in Vladimir Putin, Lockhart said, and immediately Clinton said he would support Yeltsin's successor.

Then Clinton fell back into his usual mode as Yeltsin's defender.

"The president did say he was glad to hear him sounding so strong and vigorous," Lockhart said. "I believe the word was 'chipper.'"

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

Clinton Statements on Yeltsin Text

December 31, 1999
Filed at 4:35 p.m. EST
By The Associated Press

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Clinton-Yeltsin-Text.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline163550_000.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline081609_000.htm

President Clinton's statement and later comments outside the Oval Office Friday on Russian President Boris Yeltsin's resignation, as transcribed by the Federal Document Clearing House:

Today, President Yeltsin ends his historic tenure as Russia's first democratically elected president.

Under his leadership since 1991, the Russian people have faced the unprecedented challenge of creating new institutions and building a new life after decades of corrosive communist rule.

His lasting achievement has been dismantling that communist system and building new political institutions under democratically elected leaders within a constitutional framework. The fact that Prime Minister Putin assumes responsibility today as acting president in accordance with the constitution is but the latest example of this achievement.

The relationship between the United States and Russia under President Yeltsin has produced genuine progress for both our people. Five thousand strategic nuclear have been dismantled, and our nuclear weapons no longer are targeted at each other.

We have worked together to eliminate nuclear weapons from the other states of the former Soviet Union. Russia has withdrawn its troops from the Baltic nations.

Now its troops are serving alongside Americans to maintain the peace in the Balkans, and Russia was instrumental in achieving peace in Kosovo.

We have also had our differences, such as on Chechnya, but President Yeltsin and my starting point has always been how Russia and America can work together to advance common interests.

In this spirit I look forward to working with Acting President Putin as the Russian people begin the process of making the transition from one democratically elected president to another.

To President Yeltsin, let me convey my appreciation for the work we have done together. Hillary and I extend our warmest wishes to you and your family.

------

Not long ago I had about a 20 minute phone conversation with President Boris Yeltsin, who today ends his historic tenure as Russia's democratically elected president.

Under his leadership, since 1991, the Russian people have faced the unprecedented challenge of building a new democracy and a new life, after decades of corrosive communist rule. His lasting achievement has been dismantling the communist system and creating a vital democratic process within a constitutional framework. The fact that Prime Minister Putin assumes responsibility today as acting president, in accordance with the constitution, is the latest example of President Yeltsin's achievement.

The relationship between the United States and Russia under President Yeltsin has produced genuine progress for both our people. Five thousand strategic nuclear weapons have been dismantled. Our nuclear weapons are no longer targeted at each other. We have worked together to eliminate nuclear weapons from the other states of the former Soviet Union. Russia has withdrawn its troops from the Baltic nations. And now its troops are serving alongside Americans to maintain peace in the Balkans. In fact, Russia was instrumental in achieving the peace agreement in Kosovo.

Of course, we have also had our differences. But the starting point for our relationship has always been how Russia and America can work together to advance our common interests. In that spirit, I look forward to working with acting President Putin as the Russian people begin the process of making the transition from one democratically elected president to another.

To President Yeltsin, let me convey my appreciation again for the work we have done together. Hillary and I extend our warmest wishes to him, Naina and their family.

QUESTION: Mr. President, are you going to Moscow in February at the invitation of Prime Minister...

CLINTON: I have made no plans to do that, yet.

QUESTION: Mr. President, can you share some of your personal recollections of Boris Yeltsin? You seemed to have a warm, personal relationship with him. What did you admire? What are you thoughts about him as a person?

CLINTON: Well, I liked him because he was always very forthright with me, he always did exactly what he said he would do, and he was willing to take chances to try to improve our relationship, to try to improve democracy in Russia.

He took the Russian troops out of the Balkans. He recently agreed to take them out of Moldova and Georgia.

We got rid of all those nuclear weapons in the other states of the former Soviet Union. We got rid of thousands of nuclear weapons. He's committed to START II, and I hope it will be ratified by the Russian Duma so we can quickly move to START III and reduce our nuclear arsenals even further.

I liked him because I think he genuinely deplored communism. He lived with it, he saw it, and he believed that democracy was the best system. I think it was in every fiber of his being.

And we had our arguments, we had our fights, we had our genuine disagreement about our national interests from time to time, but I think that the Russian people were well-served to have a leader who honestly believes that their votes ought to determine who was running the show in Russia and what the future direction of the country should be.

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

Yeltsin Hands Putin Russia's 'Nuclear Briefcase'

Russia Today
Dec 31, 1999
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=122141

MOSCOW, -- (Reuters) After announcing his resignation on Friday, Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over to his acting successor one of the most important symbols of power in Russia: the briefcase with codes to launch nuclear missiles.

Yeltsin received the briefcase from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who resigned on Christmas Day in 1991. Yeltsin parted from it only once during his term in office - in 1996, when he underwent heart surgery and turned over his powers briefly to then Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

A senior parliament member, Alexei Arbatov, has described the nuclear button as the first link in a chain of commands ending in onboard cruise computers of nuclear missiles.

"The nuclear button...transmits presidential sanction for the use of nuclear weapons to command centers where general staff officers are on duty around the clock," said Arbatov, an expert on national security with close ties to the Kremlin.

"On receiving a coded signal, officers...using appropriate codes, determine that it was the president who sent it, rather than someone else."

When the authenticity of the presidential message is confirmed, duty officers open safes containing their own codes and send them to missile launch pads and nuclear submarines.

"Then the codes are installed (in onboard cruise computers), launch keys are turned and the missiles blast off," he said.

According to NTV commercial television, some 30 people are involved in handling the nuclear button network, run jointly by the Defense Ministry and the secret services.

Arbatov has said the defense minister has a similar nuclear button but the president did not need to coordinate his orders with the military chief.

"The first order (from the president) does not need a confirmation by the second," Arbatov said. He did not make clear whether the defense minister would need the president's authorization to use his nuclear button.

---

Facts about Russia's nuclear briefcase

Deseret News
Friday, December 31, 1999
By Reuters News Service
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,145015595,00.html

MOSCOW, Dec 31 (Reuters) - After announcing his resignation on Friday, Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over to his acting successor one of the most important symbols of power in Russia: the briefcase with codes to launch nuclear missiles.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Yakushkin was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying Yeltsin handed over the "nuclear briefcase" to Acting President Vladimir Putin shortly before finally leaving his Kremlin office at 1100 GMT. Yeltsin received the briefcase from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who resigned on Christmas Day in 1991. Yeltsin parted from it only once during his term in office-in 1996, when he underwent heart surgery and turned over his powers briefly to then Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

A senior parliament member, Alexei Arbatov, has described the nuclear button as the first link in a chain of commands ending in onboard cruise computers of nuclear missiles.

"On receiving a coded signal, officers...using appropriate codes, determine that it was the president who sent it, rather than someone else."

When the authenticity of the presidential message is confirmed, duty officers open safes containing their own codes and send them to missile launch pads and nuclear submarines.

"Then the codes are installed (in onboard cruise computers), launch keys are turned and the missiles blast off," he said.

According to NTV commercial television, some 30 people are involved in handling the nuclear button network, run jointly by the Defence Ministry and the secret services.

Arbatov has said the defence minister has a similar nuclear button but the president did not need to coordinate his orders with the military chief.

--------

DIVE! Re-creating the Cold War

Orange County Weekly
Dec 31 - Jan 6, 2000
MILLENNIUM ISSUE
by Nick Schou
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/00/17/lede21.shtml

Lurking in the Port of Long Beach, half-submerged in what's either the shadow of the Queen Mary or water permanently dirtied by the downside of the bustling harbor, is a stark reminder of the last chapter of the Cold War.

You remember the Cold War. It was supposedly the last great hostile hurrah of the second millennium. It ended back in 1989-the year the Berlin Wall came tumbling down-with America emerging victorious and Russia barely surviving as a hollow shell of its former self.

Something like that hollow shell is tethered to a pier in Long Beach: it's a Soviet sub, for more than two decades a mystical killing machine that represented the deep-water, nuclear-tipped-missile threat of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and for the past year a struggling tourist attraction.

No question this diesel-powered, Foxtrot-class, underwater weapon is an excellent illustration of the vast change in U.S.-Russia relations. The submarine used to be known as Podvodnaya Lodka, a name so polysyllabically sinister that the tourist brochure doesn't even bother to translate it. Now it's called the Scorpion, which really doesn't mean much, either, but is almost as scary and so much easier to say and market. And having been auctioned off along with the rest of the former Soviet Union's outdated war chest, the sub is an almost pathetic presence. There it sits, lashed to the pier for the curiosity, amusement and satisfaction of (hopefully) paying passersby, as humiliated as if in the public stocks, serving about the same victor-vs.-vanquished purpose as a head on a pike.

Meanwhile, of course, the post-Cold War "cooperation" that exists between Russia and America has become increasingly tenuous. The Russians still have imperial illusions, just as we do; in reaction to America's bombing of Serbia, the Russians recently invaded next-door neighbor Chechnya; in a tit for tat straight out of the Brezhnev era, each country recently arrested alleged spies for the other. With the future shaping up to be as tense as the past, there may be no better time to take the entire family on a tour of a big, bad, old Russian submarine. Indeed, next thing we know, they may try to reactivate it.

The Scorpion once traveled all the way from Leningrad, where it was built in 1972, to Cam Ranh Bay, the former South Vietnamese U.S. Navy base that opened its doors to the Russian fleet in 1975. It spent the next two decades dodging American anti-submarine craft and is rumored to have conducted surveillance along America's Pacific Coast before being decommissioned five years ago.

First sold by the Russians to an Australian museum, the Scorpion is now scheduled to spend the next few years sitting somewhat neglected in Long Beach. According to the exhibit brochure, "its displays will promote friendly relations with Russia and give Americans a unique opportunity to experience a part of Russia's maritime history."

What that means is that, for $15, you can take the self-guided tour of the ship. As long as you don't knock yourself unconscious trying to crawl through the trash-can-lid-sized holes that connect one compartment to the next, the tour will take you only about 20 minutes.

Anyone hoping for a glimpse of life inside Red October is likely to be deeply disappointed, however. The boat is tiny and old. Its operating systems feature no computers. Rather, weird knobs and gauges abound. Mostly, the sub seems to rely on technology lifted from a German U-boat. The biggest room in the ship is the officer's mess, a dinner-table-sized room with just enough space for eight officers to munch their lunch.

The tour itself isn't any more sophisticated. It revolves around the heavily accented voice of an invisible narrator whose explanations and observations are piped throughout the Scorpion. Think Yakov Smirnoff, except a little funny. Bottom line, the narrator's tone and pronunciation work to perpetuate America's Cold War stereotype about slow-minded Slavs. "The food on Scorpion eez quite good," Captain Smirnoff announces. "Or zo they tell us. They zay good food is good for men-Duh!" Despite his apparent wit and sense of humor, Captain Smirnoff sounds like he'd be a tough guy to live with underwater, and you can't help but feel sorry for the 78 crewmen who used to be packed into the boat like caviar.

Speaking of oily fish, halfway through the tour, the imaginary captain brags that there are only two washrooms on Scorpion. "I allow only one-minute shower ewery tree days," he says. Deeper into the sub, the rooms get more and more crowded-with pipes, knobs and shafts of various kinds. You learn that crewmates used to sleep in the torpedo room. The bunks are tiny, but with the exception of the captain and the first political officer, they were each shared by two men.

As you walk along, imagining the horror of being stuck in Smirnoff's tiny "wessel," his nagging voice never relents. If you linger too long in one area of the ship, the tape for that section of the tour starts over, finally ending a few minutes-and several dozen "jokes"-later with the inevitable invitation: "Come now, let us see rest of Scorpion," or "Please be following me into next compartment."

When your self-guided tour ends with a hearty dasvadanya from Smirnoff, you realize just how lucky you are that you were never a sailor on a Russian submarine like the Scorpion. On the other hand, Russian sailors didn't have to endure the museum gift shop. I counted exactly 13 mementos available at the store: "Russian Scorpion" shot glasses of various sizes, coffee mugs, beer steins, sweatshirts, baseball caps, golf hats, sailor caps, "Made in Russia" fur hats, denim shirts, tie clips, belt buckles, sugar spoons and tote bags.

Each product boasts the ominous hammer-and-sickle insignia of the former Red fleet below the words "Russian Scorpion." Then, lest anyone forget the fact that Russia and America are now supposed to be the best of friends, "Queen Mary Long Beach." It's still a cold, cold war.

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

Scuds Said Launched at Chechnya

The Associated Press
Friday, Dec. 31, 1999; 5:12 p.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline171231_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- Russia launched three short-range scud missiles into Chechnya on Friday, the Pentagon said.

The short-range missiles were monitored as part of the U.S.-Russia joint surveillance of any activity that might be related to the year 2000 computer glitch.

Thomas Pickering, undersecretary of state, said the launches were not related to any Y2K problems, however.

"We have confirmed with the Defense Department that this incident was not Y2K related, that the missiles were not strategic but short-range - that is, under the 500-kilometer-range definition for strategic," Pickering told reporters at Washington's Y2K command center.

Under a binational agreement setting up the joint monitoring, any launchings of 500 kilometers or more would be considered a "reportable event," with all details to be made public.

---------us nuc power faciliies

Few Report Y2K Glitches So Far

Las Vegas Sun
December 31, 1999
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/archives/1999/dec/31/123100055.html?nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR+radioactiv%3F%3F%3F+OR+missile%3F

Computers silently switched to 2000 in country after anxious country Saturday, but the dreaded Y2K bug's first bite was barely felt.

Japan reported the failure of a computer linked to radiation monitoring devices at a nuclear plant, but said it wasn't considered serious enough to shut the plant. Experts said many Year 2000 computer troubles still might take days or weeks to develop.

Yet there was little if any immediate impact of the new millenium's arrival on a computer-dependent world, where engineers and goverment leaders awaited the event in control bunkers in a state of high alert.

Cash machines kept working in New Zealand, one of the first nations where computers were put to the test by the date change from 1999 to 2000. The lights stayed on in India, planes landed safely in China and telephones still rang across the Middle East.

As Europe began the new year, aging nuclear power plants ran without a hitch in Russia and Ukraine, which in 1986 suffered the world's worst nuclear disaster with a meltdown in Chernobyl. The only troublesome bug reported in Yugoslavia was a nasty flu virus. No disruptions were seen in Angola, Uganda and Kenya, where the telephone system was said to be functioning as erratically as usual.

"Literally, you can count the number of Y2K-related calls we've received around the world on one hand," said Don Jones, head of Y2K troubleshooting for Microsoft.

Some small glitches were reported: Ticketing machines on some buses in Australia briefly jammed. A weather forecasting map in France showed the new year as "19100."

But as the new year rolled smoothly around the globe, a sense of anti-climax about Y2K spread right along with it.

"I feel like I should be reporting something dramatic, but I'm afraid I can't," said Ian Macfarlane, governor of Australia's central bank. He was almost apologetic as he announced no problems with his country's financial system.

Governments and industry spent an estimated $500 billion worldwide bug-proofing their computer systems, to avoid electronic confusion when '99 became '00. Some people stockpiled food, cash, gasoline and other essentials, anticipating the crash of an increasingly computerized world.

To be safe, many countries were shutting down vital systems for the midnight hour: Airports in several countries cancelled flights. Subways in Cairo and Istanbul were closed. Large ships were banned from the Bosporus strait. ATMs in Beijing were shut. Indonesia cut oil production.

The experts who long had warned of Y2K woes said it wasn't time yet to totally drop your guard.

"We do expect to see glitches, headaches, hiccups in the systems that support business, some of the accounting and billing systems, so these will create inconveniences next week," Bruce McConnell, director of the International Y2K Cooperation Center, said in Washington.

But for the moment, "things are going as well as can be expected and maybe even better," McConnell said.

The experts said it was still too early to assess the eventual impact of Y2K. Bruce Webster, co-chair of the Washington-based Year 2000 Group, said he expects the biggest system failures to occur gradually, over a period of days and weeks.

"Most Y2K errors are pretty dull," Webster said in an interview. "A program stops working or it makes a bad calculation. None of this means planes falling out of the sky or nuclear meltdowns."

He said much of the credit for the easy transition so far should go to computer repairs done in advance of the date change, and perhaps to quick repairs being done right now.

"Whatever problems that might show up, I'm sure are being handled swiftly and by and large quietly," he said.

As officials were doing in many parts of the United States, where the new year was arriving many hours later, Y2K authorities in the first countries to greet 2000 had gathered at control centers and in bunkers, ready for the worst.

The island of Guam, a U.S. territory selected by the Department of the Interior as one of the main stages for its Y2K-monitoring project, entered the new year at 9 a.m. EST Friday. Dozens of emergency management officials spent the evening in a civil defense compound, relaxing only when the first hours of the new day passed trouble-free.

While they had worried, New Year's Eve partiers danced at the island's tourism center.

"I think everyone was getting too paranoid," said Lourdes Rivera, an 18-year-old reveler who was Miss Guam 1999.

In country after country, as the new year arrived, telecommunications, transport, defense and power systems were all reported functioning normally.

Japan, South Korea and several other countries did note a brief overloading of phone circuits, blamed not on Y2K but on the surge of midnight calls by people to family and friends.

At just 10 minutes after midnight, Japanese officials detected the failure of a computer that receives monitoring information from the Shika Nuclear Power Station, 170 miles northwest of Tokyo. Officials said the problem was Y2K-related, but the plant would remain open while they tried to fix it. The actual monitoring devices were still working, they said.

A similar failure, also just after midnight, occurred in a computer receiving monitoring data from the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, 190 miles northeast of Tokyo. Power officials said it was quickly fixed and insisted it was not linked to Y2K.

It was the first significant Y2K glitch to be reported and, while not considered dangerous, was unnerving to a country where a serious accident at a uranium-processing plant occurred Sept. 30.

In Russia, much of which still runs on clumsy Soviet-era technology, officials said the transition to 2,000 was going smoothly. They reported no first-hour problems at nuclear weapons sites or at any of the country's 29 nuclear reactors.

"The energy systems have entered the New Year without any disruptions whatsoever," Anatoly Chubais, head of the national power monopoly UES, was quoted as saying by the news agency Interfax.

No immediate reports of trouble came from other republics of the former Soviet Union.

Fears of severe disruptions in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were so high that the U.S. embassies sent hundreds of workers and dependents out of the countries.

At the French weather service, forecasting maps initially displayed the New Year Day date as "01/01/19100."

Philippe Courtier, deputy director general of the weather service in Paris, called the glitch "a minor labelling problem" that wasn't affecting operations.

In the Australian cities of Adelaide and Hobart, bus ticket machines stopped working, a problem authorities said was Y2K-related and was also quickly fixed.

A provincial court in South Korea reported that it had issued automated summons to 170 people to appear for trial on Jan. 4, 1900 instead of Jan. 4, 2000.

---------- us nuc weapons facilities

Search Panel Set for New Weapons Agency Chief

Associated Press
Friday, December 31, 1999; Page A29
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/31/136l-123199-idx.html

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson named a high-level search committee yesterday to recommend candidates to head the department's new nuclear weapons agency.

Richardson said he hopes to have the new chief in place by March, when the agency, created by Congress during the uproar over alleged Chinese espionage, must begin operation.

The search committee will be chaired by Charles Curtis, former deputy energy secretary, and includes retired Adm. James Watkins, who was energy secretary in the Bush administration.

Congress created the National Nuclear Security Administration despite strong objections from Richardson, who said it gave too much independence to the agency.

Republicans in Congress said a new agency was needed to ensure that security and counterespionage programs are improved at the DOE's weapons labs.

But President Clinton, in signing the law that created the agency, triggered an uproar among some Republican lawmakers when he said that because of shortcomings in the law, Richardson would head the agency. Congressional critics accused Clinton of trying to sidestep the law.

Richardson said yesterday he formed the search panel after receiving an assurance from Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) that the senator would support legislation next year that ensures that the energy secretary will have clear authority over the new agency.

Domenici said he would pursue the change sought by Richardson. He called the naming of the search committee "a very positive step" toward resolving disagreements over the nuclear agency.

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

N.M. Scientist Case To Be Reviewed

06:40 PM ET 12/24/99
By RICHARD BENKE
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562819092-4c0

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) _ A federal judge on Monday will reconsider a ruling holding scientist Wen Ho Lee without bail until his trial _ likely more than a year away _ on charges that he stole nuclear secrets while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

U.S. Magistrate Don Svet ruled Dec. 13 that releasing Lee on bail would pose a ``clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.''

Lee's attorneys appealed, and a hearing is scheduled Monday before U.S. District Judge James Parker to review the detention order, U.S. Attorney John Kelly said Friday.

Prosecutors say a year's wait in jail before trial is not unlikely and the complexities of studying a mountain of classified evidence could delay the trial an additional 10 to 12 months.

Lee was fired in March and indicted Dec. 10. He was charged with transferring nuclear secrets to his desktop computer and portable data tapes and could face life in prison if convicted. The indictment doesn't accuse him of passing classified information to a foreign government.

Lee has said he is innocent.

Kelly and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Gorence, in court documents filed Thursday, argued that the 60-year-old Taiwan-born computer expert is a risk to flee the United States with stolen secrets if released on bail.

``Lee stole America's nuclear secrets sufficient to build a functional thermonuclear weapon. Lee absconded with that information on computer tapes, seven of which are still missing. Those missing tapes, in the hands of an unauthorized possessor, pose a mortal danger to every American,'' they wrote.

Although Lee's attorneys contend the tapes were destroyed, prosecutors said there is no evidence to prove it.

Other Los Alamos scientists and Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, have said Lee's actions are comparable to what other researchers and government officials do _ transfer classified material from one work station to another, not always mindful of security.

``We know of no one (else) who was ever charged with committing a crime for that,'' lab computer specialist Betty Gunther told The Albuquerque Tribune. In the Tribune article Thursday, Los Alamos astrophysicist Stirling Colgate described the prosecution of Lee as ``a real American tragedy.''

Dershowitz likened the magnitude of each of 59 counts against Lee to ``jaywalking.''

---

China rebuttal

Washington Times
December 24, 1999
http://www.washtimes.com/national/ring-19991224.htm

Some members of the special Cox committee on Chinese spying are irate at the bashing they took in a report by a Stanford University think tank.

The report, which received prominent play in liberal news outlets who take a benign view of Chinese global aims, castigated the bipartisan Cox team for purportedly jumping to wild conclusions. The Cox panel, named after Rep. Christopher Cox, the chairman and California Republican, concluded that Chinese spies stole design information for the most advanced thermonuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. The report was based on the most secret information in the U.S. intelligence community.

Now, an ally of Mr. Cox's has drafted a rebuttal to the Stanford critics. We obtained a copy of "50 Factual Errors in the Four [Stanford] Essays." The counterattack was authored by Nicholas Rostow, staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who worked for the Cox panel.

Pulling no punches, Mr. Rostow begins: "The publisher of the essays, Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, is the direct successor of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, an organization whose conclusions on Soviet intentions and compliance with arms-control treaties were notoriously wrong."

Mr. Rostow then proceeds to uncover what he termed 50 "factual errors disclosed in a cursory review of the four essays."

Some examples:

c "According to [one Stanford essay], the committee report 'maintains that PRC penetration of U.S. labs commenced in the late 1970s.' No such statement is made in the report."

c "[One essay] refers to the W-88 thermonuclear warhead as 'old' technology. It is, in fact, the most modern nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, and until it was compromised, no other nation in the world possessed such a weapon. . . . Since the W-88 is America's most modern nuclear weapon, [the essay's] description of it as 'old' trivializes a very important national security loss."

c One essay "states that 'no evidence is given in any of the reports that the design of the [new, smaller PRC nuclear warhead] was derived from U.S. information.' That the specific evidence is not given merely reflects the fact that it is classified. The conclusion has been stated, not only in the committee report but also in the public versions of the two intelligence community reports on this subject to Congress during 1999."

----------- us nuc waste

Nuke panel explores entombing reactors

Las Vegas Sun
December 14, 1999
By Mary Manning - manning@lasvegassun.com
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1999/dec/14/509591620.html

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was expected today to release a report that explores entombing commercial nuclear reactors on site, rather than shipping thousands of tons of contaminated metals to a proposed Yucca Mountain repository.

If the commission decides to entomb a reactor on site once it is shut permanently, radioactive steel vessels, pipes and other components would be filled with concrete or grout, sealing the contaminated parts where they stand for up to 130 years, until radiation drops to a safe level.

Radiation from cesium-137, cobalt-60, technetium-99, niobium-94 and nickel-59 poses a risk to workers dismantling the reactors if the metals have to be moved to a central repository.

While entombment might present an alternative to packing Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, with thousands of tons of contaminated metal, commission staff noted that difficult technical and legal issues face such a scheme.

The plan also would not derail the utility industry's efforts to ship thousands of tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel to Nevada for storage at Yucca Mountain.

Yucca Mountain is the only site under study by the Department of Energy to contain the nation's estimated 77,000 tons of highly radioactive reactor waste and Defense Department rubble from 44 years of nuclear weapons building.

The former Soviet Union entombed the crippled Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor in a sarcophagus after a nuclear meltdown in April 1986 to shield the environment from radiation after 135,000 people in an 18-mile radius were evacuated. Cracks have already appeared in that container.

The commission's staff noted that although all of the radioactive waste and reactor scraps could one day go to Yucca Mountain, the site has not been approved and the DOE has not agreed to accept contaminated reactor parts. Lawsuits, technical delays and other hurdles could delay the opening for decades.

If Yucca Mountain is approved, it is not expected to receive nuclear waste for another 15 years, the report says.

With entombment on site, Yucca Mountain would receive only spent nuclear fuel, not every scrap of contaminated reactor metal as well.

Just under 30 nuclear power plants in the U.S. have been shut down and require some kind of plan to protect the public and the environment from the radioactive remains.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided to look at an entombment option because of the high costs of disposing of the contaminated guts of nuclear power plants.

It could cost $251 million for immediate cleanup and burial of reactor parts, plus monitoring and security of a site for 121 years, the commission's report says.

If a reactor site could be encased in steel, concrete, sand, grout and other barriers with remote monitoring and periodic radiation testing, the expenses would drop to $121.9 million.

DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory began the study in 1997 leading to today's workshop at the commission's headquarters in Rockville, Md. The laboratory discovered a precedent for burying reactors at the site.

Three U.S. nuclear reactors, built by the DOE's predecessor the Atomic Energy Commission, have been buried on site since 1954. They include:

The Hallam nuclear power facility, a federal demonstration plant located in Hallem, Neb. Operated from 1963 to 1966, the reactor was buried in 1969. All nuclear waste was removed from the reactor, but remaining radioactive materials were sealed in underground vaults of the plant. The reactor was sealed underneath two steel plates welded into place, plus plastic film, tar and earth covering the entire structure. The minimum life of the tomb is 100 years. No surface radiation or ground water contamination has been detected.

The Piqua nuclear power facility was another federal demonstration plant located in Piqua, Ohio. Operated from 1963 to 1966, its on-site disposal was completed in 1969. As in Nebraska, the nuclear waste was removed from the reactor, and it was sealed. After decontamination, the reactor building became a warehouse. There have been no detectable radiation releases.

The Boiling Nuclear Superheater Power Station (BONUS) was a demonstration plant operating from 1964 to 1967 in Rincon, Puerto Rico. On-site disposal was completed in 1970. Areas outside the reactor tomb have been designated as a museum and are accessible to the public. Again, the nuclear waste from operation was removed, and the reactor was sealed within a concrete slab. The structure was built to withstand a severe earthquake (above a 7 magnitude) followed by a tsunami. However, the basement of the entombed reactor was flooded in 1993 after an exhaust fan failed, allowing rainwater in. A few spots of surface contamination were found "that potentially exceeded guideline values," the report said, but no further information was included.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is also concerned about handling the DOE's most contaminated site, Hanford, Wash., which once made plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Tanks filled with liquid nuclear waste and eight reactors that operated from 1944 to 1971 are under watch at Hanford. Entombment is possible and would be cheaper than removing the reactors.

The report said that historical evidence shows that concrete structures covered with soil have remained intact for thousands of years. With modern materials and techniques, most structures would remain intact and resistant to water for 500 years or more, plenty of time for the radiation to fall to safe levels.

Barriers to entombment include sites with high water tables, nuclear reactors near rivers and populated areas, and reactors near saltwater, which increases corrosion of contaminated steel and concrete structures.

---

DOE says more nuke waste heading to NTS

LAS VEGAS SUN
December 10, 1999
By Mary Manning - manning@lasvegassun.com
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1999/dec/10/509577145.html

Low-level radioactive waste from more than 40 years of building nuclear weapons will end up at Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state and the Nevada Test Site, U.S. Department of Energy officials announced on Thursday.

Hanford produced plutonium to boost the bang in nuclear weapons and is considered one of the most contaminated sites in the nation with liquid wastes stored in giant, aging steel vats.

The Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was considered the DOE's outdoor laboratory where scientists exploded nuclear weapons above and below ground until those experiments ended in 1992 under a moratorium still in effect today.

The DOE's emphasis shifted from building nuclear bombs to cleaning up the messes left at more than 20 of its sites across the country.

The Test Site has received low-level radioactive waste shipments for more than 30 years, DOE spokesman Darwin Morgan said. The latest effort will distribute the DOE's radioactive wastes within specific regions, but will not increase Nevada's burden, he said.

From 1994 through 1997 the Test Site received 677,350 cubic feet of low-level nuclear waste. Over the next 20-year period, the DOE expects 684,045 cubic feet of the low-level wastes to arrive at the Test Site.

Most important, the DOE has to keep the Test Site ready to resume full-scale nuclear weapons tests by presidential order, Morgan said. That is its primary mission in Nevada.

Under DOE's guidelines, the Test Site does not accept radioactive liquids or gases, Morgan said. While the DOE is responsible for ensuring that containers are intact and the wastes are solid, Nevada has stricter environmental rules for discarded items contaminated with both radiation and toxic chemicals, called mixed wastes.

Two areas along the eastern edge of the Test Site have received low-level nuclear waste shipments from DOE sites scattered across the country for decades. Anything from contaminated clothing to pieces of radioactive equipment have been buried there.

Nevada and Clark County officials have been working through the 1990s with the DOE to avoid shipping low-level radioactive wastes through the Las Vegas Valley or across Hoover Dam, but no decision has been made on routing.

---

ATW TECHNOLOGY FOR NUCLEAR WASTE GENERATES HEAT

Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 11:49:18 -0500
From E&E Publishing, LLC,
www.eenews.net

A new chapter is being added to the decades-long debate over disposal of high-level nuclear waste with the Department of Energy's serious consideration of accelerator transmutation of waste (ATW) technology, a method involving reprocessing and reuse of the waste.

The ATW proposal that is estimated to cost close to $280 billion to treat 87,000 tons of nuclear waste, however, has all the elements to explode into a controversy. In fact, ATW seems to have the potential to generate as much heat, if not more, as the current proposal to dispose high-level nuclear waste at a underground facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., if reactions of public interest and environmental groups to DOE's report on ATW are any indication. They say ATW is not a viable solution to the nation's nuclear waste problem, charging that it would only pose additional health and safety risks to the public by tripling transportation requirements.

The industry, on the other hand, views the ATW technology, the implementation of which would require reversal of the current policy of proscribing nuclear waste reprocessing, as an "over the horizon technology" and it remains focused on getting the current policy of disposing the waste at the proposed Yucca Mountain site executed.

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee, can be credited with giving ATW a high profile by advocating the use of the technology instead of permanently burying the nation's problematic nuclear waste. As the chairman of the subcommittee deciding the funding for DOE, Domenici provided $4 million in fiscal year 1999 to prepare a roadmap for implementing ATW technology and then followed it up with $9 million for the current year for additional research.

Domenici was also instrumental in attaching an amendment to the controversial legislation, S. 1287, setting up an Office of Nuclear Spent Fuel Research to study treatment, recycling and disposal of waste. The amendment also requires study of reprocessing and transmutation with international participation. Approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, S. 1287, which attempts to resolve the nuclear waste issue, is now awaiting floor action.

As required, DOE submitted to Congress in October a report "Roadmap for Developing Accelerator Transmutation of Waste Technology" outlining the research, development and funding that would be necessary to implement an ATW program. The energy agency then followed up with a Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee meeting earlier this month to discuss the ATW program.

In the report, DOE details that $280 billion would be needed over 117 years to implement the program, the first eights years of which would focus on researching and developing the transmutation technology. For the next 27 years, DOE will test out a demonstration project and the full-scale implementation of the program will be carried out in the remaining 90 years. The report also notes that eight ATW facilities would have to be built to implement the program in full.

DOE concedes that "such a large upfront expenditure commitment will be a major challenge." The agency notes that over the life-time of ATW plant operation, much of the capital, operational, and development and demonstration costs may be offset by electricity sales. However, when the time value of the money is considered, this offset may be small, according DOE.

The ATW program has public interest and environmental groups up in arms. They say the ATW program not only raises environmental and health risks, it has serious proliferation implications as well. According to environmental groups, the ATW program will not require the abandonment of the Yucca Mountain project. Instead, an underground facility would be necessary to store the high-level nuclear waste until such time as the ATW program is up and running, they say.

Amy Shollenberger, senior policy analyst of the public interest group Public Citizen, says the DOE report maps out a scheme that would involve transporting highly radioactive materials from nuclear utilities to the proposed underground facility, storing it there temporarily and then transporting it to the ATW facilities. The transportation does not end there. Some amount of high-level nuclear waste that would remain after the ATW process will then have to be shipped back to the underground facility, Shollenberger points out. Experts have said that ATW will not totally eliminate high-level nuclear waste. Also, it will leave behind a high stream of low-level radioactive waste.

Asserting that the DOE plan is unacceptable, Shollenberger in her comments to the DOE advisory committee, said, "ATW is not an alternative to a geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste. Instead, it will increase the danger to the public and the environment by requiring that spent nuclear fuel be transported not only to the repository, but also from the repository to the ATW facilities."

In addition, proliferation concerns have also been voiced. The ATW process puts the radioactive waste one step closer to weapons usable material, says Shollenberger.

The roadmap itself acknowledges that "the societal decision to proceed with deployment [of ATW] would require resolving a number of issues," including "interpretation of the U.S. policy concerning reprocessing as applied to ATW," points out Edwin Lyman, scientific director of the Nuclear Control Institute, which has urged DOE for a nonproliferation impacts assessment.

According to Lyman, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's reference to ATW while putting forward his proposal for dealing with high-level nuclear waste earlier this year has given the process more attention than it deserves.

The ATW roadmap calls for a six-year research program costing $281 million to further develop the concept, which Shollenberger criticizes for being carried out at the taxpayer expense.

To the nuclear industry, ATW is a long-term proposition and it not too engaged with the issue as it is with ensuring the construction of a centralized storage facility for the waste. Steve Unglesbee, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the policy organization of the nuclear industry, is quick to point out that the roadmap doesn't argue against building a geological repository, which the industry has been fighting to get for several years.

Unglesbee said the challenge is to have the current policy of building a underground facility for storing nuclear waste implemented. The proposed ATW program does not conflict with the plan to keep the proposed Yucca Mountain repository open and the nuclear waste retrievable for a hundred plus years, he said. Unglesbee sees merits in keeping the nuclear waste retrievable, saying "those isotopes are going to be valuable in the future" to be put to several uses, including treatment of cancer.

---

[In case you missed it --]
Fear in the fields: Part 1 How hazardous wastes become fertilizer

1997 The Seattle Times Company
Thursday, July 3, 1997
by Duff Wilson
Seattle Times staff reporter
http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/fert_070397.html

When you're mayor of a town the size of Quincy, Wash., you hear just about everything.

So it was only natural that Patty Martin would catch some farmers in her Central Washington hamlet wondering aloud why their wheat yields were lousy, their corn crops thin, their cows sickly.

Some blamed the weather. Some blamed themselves. But only after Mayor Martin led them in weeks of investigation did they identify a possible new culprit: fertilizer.

They don't have proof that the stuff they put on their land to feed it actually was killing it. But they discovered something they found shocking and that they think other American farmers and consumers ought to know:

Manufacturing industries are disposing of hazardous wastes by turning them into fertilizer to spread around farms. And they're doing it legally.

"It's really unbelievable what's happening, but it's true," Martin said. "They just call dangerous waste a product, and it's no longer a dangerous waste. It's a fertilizer."

Across the Columbia River basin in Moxee City is visual testimony to Martin's assertion. A dark powder from two Oregon steel mills is poured from rail cars into the top of silos attached to Bay Zinc Co. under a federal permit to store hazardous waste.

The powder, a toxic byproduct of the steel-making process, is taken out of the bottom of the silos as a raw material for fertilizer.

"When it goes into our silo, it's a hazardous waste," said Bay Zinc President Dick Camp. "When it comes out of the silo, it's no longer regulated. The exact same material. Don't ask me why. That's the wisdom of the EPA."

What's happening in Washington is happening around the United States. The use of industrial toxic waste as a fertilizer ingredient is a growing national phenomenon, an investigation by The Seattle Times has found.

The Times found examples of wastes laden with heavy metals being recycled into fertilizer to be spread across crop fields.

Legally.

In Gore, Okla., a uranium-processing plant is getting rid of low-level radioactive waste by licensing it as a liquid fertilizer and spraying it over 9,000 acres of grazing land.

In Tifton County, Ga., more than 1,000 acres of peanut crops were wiped out by a brew of hazardous waste and limestone sold to unsuspecting farmers.

And in Camas, Clark County, highly corrosive, lead-laced waste from a pulp mill is hauled to Southwest Washington farms and spread over crops grown for livestock consumption.

Recycling said to have benefits

Any material that has fertilizing qualities can be labeled and used as a fertilizer, even if it contains dangerous chemicals and heavy metals.

The wastes come from iron, zinc and aluminum smelting, mining, cement kilns, the burning of medical and municipal wastes, wood-product slurries and a variety of other heavy industries.

Federal and state governments encourage the practice in the name of recycling and, in fact, it has some benefits: Recycling waste as fertilizer saves companies money and conserves precious space in hazardous-waste landfills. And, mixed and handled correctly, the material can help crops grow.

"It's a situation where we are facing an overabundance of these materials in landfills and, of course, landfills are getting full," said Ali Kashani, who directs fertilizer regulation in Washington state. "So they (waste producers) are constantly looking for ways to recycle when they have beneficial materials."

The problem is that the "beneficial materials" in industrial waste, such as nitrogen and magnesium to help crops grow, often are accompanied by dangerous heavy metals such as cadmium and lead.

"Nowhere in the country has a law that says if certain levels of heavy metals are exceeded, it can't be a fertilizer," Kashani said. "That would be nice to have."

Instead, officials rely on fertilizer producers to document that their products are safe, and never check back for toxic components. There is not even a requirement that toxics be listed on ingredient labels.

The Times also found that:

-- There is no national regulation of fertilizers in this country, unlike many other industrialized nations. The laws in most states, including Washington, are far from stringent. The lack of national regulation makes it virtually impossible to measure the volume of fertilizers produced by recycling hazardous wastes.

-- Some industries dispose of tons of toxic waste by giving it free to fertilizer manufacturers, or even paying them to take it.

-- One major producer, Monsanto, has stopped recycling waste into fertilizer on its own because of concerns about health and liability. For years, it sold 6,000 tons a year of ashy, black waste from its Soda Springs, Idaho, phosphorus plant to nearby fertilizer companies.

The waste contained cadmium, a heavy metal that studies show can cause cancer, kidney disease, neurological dysfunction, diminished fertility, immune-system changes and birth defects at certain levels of consumption. Company scientists are trying to determine whether the material is safe to be used as fertilizer, even though the federal government allows it.

"What really is a concern is product liability," said Robert Geddes, a Monsanto official and Idaho state senator. "Is somebody going to sue Monsanto because we allowed it to be made as a fertilizer?"

-- Among the substances found in some recycled fertilizers are cadmium, lead, arsenic, radionuclides and dioxins, at levels some scientists say may pose a threat to human health. Although the health effects are widely disputed, there is undisputed evidence the substances enter plant roots.

Just as there are no conclusive data to prove a danger, there are none to prove the safety of the practice.

In other nations, including Canada, that lack of certainty has led to strict regulation. There, the approach is to limit toxic wastes in fertilizer until the practice is proven safe. Here, the approach is to allow it until it's proven unsafe.

Although experts disagree as to whether these fertilizers are a health threat, most say further study is needed. Yet, little is under way.

Few farmers, and probably even fewer consumers, know about the practice.

"This is a definite problem," said Richard Loeppert, a soil scientist at Texas A&M University and author of several published papers on toxic elements in fertilizers. "The public needs to know."

Some remember the Alar scare

Patty Martin is not a popular politician in parts of Grant County these days.

Since she began raising the alarm about the use of toxic waste as fertilizer, she has been threatened with a lawsuit by a local farmer, been verbally attacked in town meetings and seen the City Council - led by a son-in-law of the local manager of the Cenex fertilizer company - pressure her to shut up or quit.

Many farmers in and around Quincy, a town of 4,030, say they're doing very well, thank you, with the fertilizer and the help and advice they've received from Cenex Supply and Marketing, which sells expertise, financing and farm supplies in the West and Midwest.

They call Martin a troublemaker and fear she's fomenting a scare akin to the Alar alarm that nearly ruined Washington's apple industry in 1989.

In that case, the CBS television show "60 Minutes" reported that a substance sprayed on Washington apples to preserve them in packing was dangerous to consumers. CBS later admitted it had made some mistakes in the story, and the Washington apple growers sued the network. But the suit was dismissed, and in the end, Alar was classified by EPA as a carcinogen and banned for all food uses.

"We had a woman starting that one, too, and a lot of people got hurt by it," Bill Weber, an apple and potato farmer, said at one council meeting, bringing nods and laughter.

"We don't see a problem," said Greg Richardson, Quincy-based president of the Potato Growers of Washington and a staunch defender of recycling wastes into fertilizer.

Richardson wrote Martin a letter telling her to make "a statement of your trust in the appropriate government agencies and their ability to deal with . . . the waste in fertilizer issue."

Martin is standing firm, and a dozen or so Quincy-area farmers are standing at her side. They insist they, their families and their fields have suffered from bad fertilizer.

State environmental, agriculture and health officials have looked at the situation in Quincy. The environmental and agriculture officials, who encourage recycling waste into fertilizer, say that as far as they can tell, there's no danger to crops or people.

But some admit they wish they knew more. Kashani wants standards for heavy metals in fertilizer. Absent that, he said, he has to apply a general standard that recycled products cannot "pose a threat to public health or the environment."

Regulators in California have been studying the issue for years and still cannot say what constitutes a safe level for lead, cadmium and arsenic in fertilizer.

Mayor Martin's husband works for a potato processor, and when she feels under the harshest attack, he tells her she's doing the right thing.

"I just have the unfortunate distinction of having stumbled across this question and asking questions of the regulatory agencies," she said. "I didn't get the answers."

Trouble was brewed in pond

How Martin and her supporters stumbled upon the discovery of the recycling of toxic waste into fertilizer begins at a man-made, concrete pond across the street from Quincy High School. The pond, 36 feet wide, 54 feet long and 5 feet deep, was built in 1986 and used by Cenex to rinse fertilizer from farm equipment.

State investigators later found that the company also illegally used the pond to dump pesticides.

Cenex closed the pond in 1990. By then, it contained about 38,000 gallons of toxic goo, with heavy metals, suspected carcinogens, even some radioactive materials. State investigators couldn't determine how all this toxic material ended up there.

Cenex memos show how the company got rid of the sludge. John Williams, the Quincy branch manager, wrote his boss to say the "product," as he called it, would cost $170,000 to ship and store at the Arlington, Ore., hazardous-waste site, as required by federal law.

So Cenex decided to save money by spreading it on a rented plot of cornfield and let nature take its course. The land would act as a natural filter for the hazardous wastes.

Cenex struck a deal with lessee farmer Larry Schaapman. He was paid more than $10,000 to let Cenex put the material, which the company claimed had fertilizer value, on his 100 acres.

It killed the land.

The corn crop failed there in 1990, even though Schaapman and Cenex applied extra water to try to wash the toxics through the soil. Hardly anything grew there the next year, either.

The land belonged to Dennis DeYoung, whose family had farmed it since the early 1950s before he leased it to Schaapman. Since the land was poisoned, DeYoung couldn't make his payments, and the company that financed him foreclosed on a $100,000 debt. DeYoung also owed Cenex money for fertilizer and seed.

Soon after, Cenex bought the land from the financing company.

"They run a farmer out of business, then they get his land," DeYoung said. "Now isn't that something."

DeYoung sued Cenex for damages for ruining the soil, lost in summary judgment but won a reversal in the State Court of Appeals earlier this year. He's preparing for a new trial.

He also managed to stir up an investigation by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticide use. In a plea bargain, Cenex and its manager were given one year of probation for illegal disposal of a pesticide in the "product" spread on DeYoung's land.

The company never had to explain how the heavy metals - enough cadmium, beryllium and chromium to qualify as a Superfund site - got into the rinse pond in town.

That's where Martin and her supporters come in.

Farmers began comparing notes

Tom Witte is a 53-year-old farmer with 200 acres and about 100 cows a few miles east of Quincy. His father purchased the farm in 1956.

Witte had a disastrous year in 1991. His red spring wheat, silage corn and grain corn all yielded about one-third the normal levels.

"You always blame yourself, you know," Witte said. "You always think you screwed up. But then it wasn't just the crops. Then I started having all these weird problems with the cows."

Six of his cows got sick and died. The veterinarian found cancer in the three that were tested.

When Dennis DeYoung told Witte about his problems, Witte got to wondering about the effects of fertilizer on his fields. Although he hadn't used material from the rinse pond, he had used products from Cenex.

Witte still had the rusty, steel fertilizer tank Cenex had delivered and set up on his property in 1991.

Witte reached in the tank and scooped about two pounds of dust, rust and residue from the bottom. He sent the material to Brookside Farms Laboratory in Ohio, which found levels of arsenic, beryllium, lead, titanium, chromium, copper and mercury.

A reporter showed Max Hammond, the top Cenex scientist in the area, the test results last fall. Hammond, since deceased, said some of the metals might have come from dust or rust in Witte's tank, but he could not explain the beryllium or arsenic.

Arsenic, a known carcinogen, is a highly toxic residue from mining and smelting processes.

Mayor Martin, who had been closely tracking the rinse-pond controversy, caught wind of Witte's and DeYoung's problems.

Martin, Witte, DeYoung and others began researching fertilizer manufacturing. In their reading, they discovered that, as a result of landfill costs and the stringent environmental laws of the 1970s, a lot of heavy industries were recycling and marketing their hazardous waste as fertilizer.

In their research, they came upon an Oregon lawsuit they think provides a critical insight to Quincy's problems.

Aluminum case was studied

Northwest Alloys, a subsidiary of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), has a smelter in Addy, an hour's drive north from Spokane. Between 1984 and 1992, the company recycled more than 200,000 tons of hazardous waste from the smelter through a smaller company that sold it as a fertilizer and road de-icer.

Based on industry research that said the material was safe, state officials in Washington, Oregon and Idaho allowed the waste to be sold as "CalMag" and "AlMag" fertilizers and "Road Clear" de-icer.

The fertilizer was produced and marketed by L-Bar Products Inc. of Chewelah, near Addy. With the recycling, Alcoa saved at least $17 million in disposal costs, according to company documents, and many farmers used the products with apparent success.

But one Oregon farmer who used it saw his red-clover crop mysteriously wilt. In 1993, he hired James Vomocil, an Oregon State University soils expert, to test his fields and fertilizers.

Vomocil said L-Bar's sales flier was "designed to deceive" and the product was volatile, unpredictable and unsafe.

With that ammunition, farmer Wes Behrman of Banks, Ore., won an out-of-court settlement from L-Bar. He refused to discuss terms of the settlement; he has told other people it was substantial.

So what did that have to do with Quincy?

Perhaps nothing. Cenex managers in Quincy and in its regional office say they never bought anything from L-Bar Products and had never even heard of the company, according to Cenex spokeswoman Lani Jordan.

But a 1994 fax from L-Bar owner Frank Melfi indicates otherwise. It says Cenex had already bought the L-Bar product and was considering buying 30,000 tons that year in "some sort of mutual marketing or venture relationship."

Although that deal never happened, Melfi says now that he definitely sold CalMag to Cenex.

Mayor Martin thinks some of it wound up on fields in Quincy, among a variety of other recycled hazardous wastes.

And although Cenex denies buying recycled wastes from L-Bar, it has bought material from Bay Zinc to add to custom fertilizer mixes, said Pete Mutschler of Cenex. But Mutschler said the company didn't realize the Bay Zinc fertilizer contained recycled hazardous waste.

Dennis DeYoung began to wonder if fertilizer was to blame not only for his recent problems, but also for his land turning unproductive in the late 1980s, the reason he decided to lease it to Schaapman in the first place. At the time, his corn, beans and hay were going bad and he didn't know why.

And the more he and others read about what went into recycled fertilizers, the more they began to worry about possible health effects. Martin encouraged Witte and DeYoung to submit hair samples to a Chicago laboratory that tests for heavy metals in human tissues.

The lab, Doctor's Data Inc., found high levels of aluminum, antimony, lead, arsenic and cadmium in hair samples from DeYoung, Witte and Witte's children.

Joseph DiGangi, a scientist with Greenpeace in Chicago, reviewed the hair samples. "I thought it was kind of creepy, really - all the people, really headed for a serious health problem, if not now, then later," he said.

And it was all perfectly legal.

"It's amazing that something like this could run across the nation and nobody would know about it," DeYoung said.

Martin, Witte and DeYoung felt their discovery explained the heavy metals found in Witte's crops. They wondered if the toxic metals in the Cenex pond came from fertilizer residues rinsed from equipment, a theory Cenex vigorously denies.

Most importantly, the mayor and farmers knew that while they might never sort out exactly what had happened in their town, they had discovered something other farmers and consumers deserved to know about.

"This recycling might be great in theory, but in fact it's being abused," Martin said. "There's no enforcement. Nobody is watching the companies. Nobody can tell me what's really happening. Nobody knows."

Frustration grew

For a man with rough hands and dirty shoes, Tom Witte writes a good letter.

"The state has no mechanism set up to prevent toxic heavy-metals contamination of fertilizers," he wrote then-Gov. Mike Lowry last year. "Fertilizer is only tested for fertility elements. Nobody checks on what is in the inert ingredients, so we have a situation tailor-made for abuse.

"People in industry think that the best way to dispose of waste is to sell it for fertilizer and let unsuspecting farmers spread it on their land."

Agriculture Director Jim Jesernig wrote back, agreeing there were problems and promising to look into it further. The departments of agriculture, ecology and health have set up a staff group that plans to issue a report later this year saying the practice, which they have encouraged for years, is safe. State officials say they have tested a sampling of 27 potatoes and that heavy-metal readings were well within safe limits.

Meanwhile, Mayor Martin and Witte's sister, Nancy, a nurse, went to EPA Administrator Carol Browner's Children's Health Conference in Washington, D.C., in February. Nancy Witte prodded a nervous Martin to go to the microphone and ask a question of Browner.

Martin asked whether the EPA knew about companies making toxic wastes into fertilizer. Browner said she didn't know anything about it but she'd look into it. Later, an aide to Browner contacted the mayor, explained the benefits of waste recycling and assured her there would be further study.

Frustrated with the lack of action by public officials, Martin contacted The Times, asking the newspaper to develop this information.

Potential for danger unclear

So what to make of Mayor Martin and her crusaders? Are they, as Richardson of the Potato Growers of Washington insists, unnecessarily "opening up an ugly can of worms"?

All that's clear is that the potential for danger is unclear. Some scientists and public officials say the benefits of recycling waste outweigh the possible risks.

"The farmer is coming out a little ahead," said soils specialist Charlie Mitchell of Alabama's Auburn University. "The person spreading it is getting his profit. The company is using its waste instead of dumping it. So we're helping the environment. We're creating jobs. If it's done right, it can really be a win-win situation."

But Ken Cook, a soils scientist who heads the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, said no one yet knows what constitutes "doing it right."

Mayor Martin and friends are raising good questions, Cook says.

"Let's put it this way: We're well into the use of these materials before these questions are even asked, and that doesn't seem to me to be a good sign that we've been very rigorous in our science on this."

Meanwhile, Quincy farmers such as Witte, DeYoung and Duke Giraud want some action. Giraud lost his family's onion business because of poor yields, and he suffers from respiratory problems. He figures he unknowingly spread recycled-waste fertilizer on his fields.

It might be too late for him, he says, but he wants government agencies to look out for the welfare of other farmers.

"They have to start testing fertilizer for what they don't say is in there," Giraud says, "because they have no problem letting them add who-knows-what."

Let us know what you think. E-mail Duff Wilson at dwil-new@seatimes.com

Fear in the Fields, Part 2 http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/regu_070497.html

Examples throughout the country http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/natl_070497.html

Tag-along toxics http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/chemicals_070397.html

From factories to fields http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/factory_to_fields_070397.html

Two approaches to toxins in fertilizer http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/two_approaches.html

Chart: heavy metals in fertilizers http://www.wa.gov/ecology/pie/fert.html What's known, and not known, about toxics, plants and soil http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/food_070397.html

Experts: How to reduce risk http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/solu_070497.html

Resources on the World Wide Web http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/webb_070397.html

Here are some officials to call or write http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/contact_070497.html

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Throughout the country, example after example of hazardous wastes being turned into fertilizer

Seattle Times Friday, July 4, 1997
http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/browse/html97/natl_070497.html

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DOE to expand test site area

Las Vegas Sun
December 16, 1999
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1999/dec/16/509603028.html

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Energy Department has been given control over an extra 200 square miles of Defense Department land as part of an effort to monitor ground water contamination around the Nevada Test Site.

The land lies on the border of the test site and the Nellis Air Force Bombing Range in Nye County.

Legislation approving the transfer was signed by President Clinton in October, but the agencies needed time to work out the specific boundaries of the land switch.

The Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was the nation's nuclear testing grounds from 1951 to 1992.

The area at the northwest corner of the test site on the Pahute Mesa was one of the most active sites for testing nuclear weapons. The biggest underground nuclear explosions were set off on the mesa.

Since the end of nuclear testing at the site, the DOE has been charged with tracking and, if possible, cleaning the contamination left behind.

The Test Site increased from 1,378 square miles to 1,573 square miles - or from 882,332 acres to more than 1 million.

The agreement will allow the DOE scientific team to have complete access to the mesa, DOE spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said.

In 1997 DOE scientists discovered plutonium and other radioactive elements in tiny soil particles in two wells drilled on the mesa. It was the first time such contaminated particles other than tritium had been found almost a mile from a nuclear weapons experiment.

Radioactive contamination from underground nuclear weapons testing has never been found.

In February the DOE began drilling the first of eight wells designed to gather information on radioactive contamination moving in ground water that flows west and south from the Test Site.

More than 1,000 nuclear weapons were detonaed at the test site during the Cold War.

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Guinn seeks expanded NTS ground water tests

Las Vegas Sun
December 20, 1999
By Mary Manning - manning@lasvegassun.com
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1999/dec/20/509615981.html

Gov. Kenny Guinn has asked the U.S. Department of Energy for an extra $40 million to expand the monitoring of ground water for radiation contamination at the Nevada Test Site from hundreds of nuclear weapons exploded from 1951 until 1992.

The governor said in a letter to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson that estimates of ground water contamination may extend beyond 300 square miles. The Test Site encompasses 1 million square miles. Contamination depths may range from 500 to 5,000 feet, Guinn said.

"If this contamination moves offsite, it would eventually affect public and private lands encompassing thousands of square miles," Guinn said.

"No other site in the DOE weapons complex contains a comparable volume of contamination, and no other site is faced with mounting uncertainties concerning how this contamination can be effectively characterized, monitored and contained over the long-term," Guinn said.

Guinn wrote to Richardson on Dec. 7. As of late Friday, the governor had not heard from the DOE.

"Nope, not a word yet," Guinn's spokesman Jack Finn said.

Guinn asked that the ground water funds be included in the 2001 budget, which begins Oct. 1.

Since a moratorium on nuclear weapons experiments at the Test Site began in 1992, Nevada and DOE officials have tried to market the remote basin for other uses, such as retrievable space craft launches and scientific field experiments in alternative energy.

Guinn also asked that the DOE adequately fund defense program cleanup, such as closing 4,000 wells and boreholes on the site and removing or restoring 1,500 buildings, and sheds on the site.

The DOE's environmental management plan calls for continued monitoring of the Test Site for up to 75 years. However, there are no extensive proposals for cleaning up the desert site, chosen as the U.S. continental nuclear proving ground.

President Truman ordered the Nevada site opened in 1951 after U.S. nuclear weapons experiments in the Pacific Islands became too expensive and the Korean War endangered those tests.

In the mid-1990s the DOE began drilling new wells and monitoring the water after federal scientists discovered plutonium almost a mile from a 1968 underground nuclear weapons experiment in the northwest corner of the Test Site, known as Pahute Mesa.

However, the southeast boundary of the Test Site near an experimental area known as Frenchman Flat has never been monitored. The U.S. Geological Survey requested monies for monitoring wells along the eastern and southern borders of the area, but Congress never funded such a program. Las Vegas is 65 miles southeast of the test area.

More than 250 underground nuclear experiments were exploded at or near the ground water table at the Test Site.

To date, the DOE has reported no radioactive contamination in any off-site well or any drinking water source on the site. The department has spent $176 million so far on monitoring the ground water in the 90s.

Ground water computer models from both areas flunked independent scientific review earlier this year. Scientific experts said that the DOE did not have enough data about how fast the water flowed or in what direction it traveled to allow either model to work.

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Guinn requests $40 million for expanded cleanup

Las Vegas Sun
December 21, 1999
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1999/dec/21/509620135.html

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Energy Department has shortchanged environmental cleanup efforts at the Nevada Test Site and another $40 million is needed to expand the work, Gov. Kenny Guinn contends.

Guinn said scientists have not been provided adequate funding to deal with contamination left from 41 years of nuclear testing at the site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Some 1,000 nuclear devices were detonated at the site between 1951 and 1992, with one-fourth of those detonated near or below the water table.

The governor said in a letter to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson that estimates of ground water contamination may extend beyond 300 square miles. The site encompasses 1 million square miles.

Contamination depths may range from 500 to 5,000 feet, Guinn said.

"If this contamination moves offsite, it would eventually affect public and private lands encompassing thousands of square miles," Guinn said. "No other site in the DOE weapons complex contains a comparable volume of contamination, and no other site is faced with mounting uncertainties concerning how this contamination can be effectively characterized, monitored and contained over the long-term," Guinn said.

Guinn wrote to Richardson on Dec. 7 but had received no response as of Tuesday.

Guinn asked that the ground water funds be included in the 2001 budget, which begins Oct. 1. Since a moratorium on nuclear weapons experiments at the test site began in 1992, Nevada and DOE officials have tried to market the remote basin for other uses, such as retrievable space craft launches and scientific field experiments in alternative energy.

Guinn also asked that the DOE adequately fund defense program cleanup, such as closing 4,000 wells and boreholes on the site and removing or restoring 1,500 buildings, and sheds on the site.

The DOE's environmental management plan calls for continued monitoring of the test site for up to 75 years. However, there are no extensive proposals for cleaning up the remote site.

However, the southeast boundary of the test site near an area known as Frenchman Flat, has never been monitored. The U.S. Geological Survey requested monies for monitoring wells along the eastern and southern borders of the area, but Congress never funded such a program.

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Results clearly speak

Navajo Times
Thursday, December 9, 1999

EDITOR

As a Diné citizen and a member of the grassroots organization Diné CARE, I was very happy to see that the US Senate recently passed a bill which will bring much needed reform to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). The bill proposes ways to make it easier for our elders and relatives - miners, millers, and many of their families, as well as "downwinders", to find compensation and treatment for diseases caused by nuclear radiation.

I would like to point out to my fellow Diné, and particularly to our elected Tribal officials, that the passage of that bill was the result of community activism, not high-priced lobbyists. This is very important. We should not let this point go unnoticed. The world is changing. Common people can make a difference, and in this case, they have.

The Navajo RECA Reform Working Group, led by Mr. Melton Martinez, and the Western States RECA Reform Coalition, which included people from all over the Southwest, including Diné, people of the Pueblos, and many non-Indian people, were directly responsible for the passage of the latest reforms of RECA. Through broad organizing efforts, where we all stood together with one voice, we were able to get the attention of our leaders in Washington.

In fact, the lobbyists hired by the Navajo Nation were opposed to these changes. We don't fully understand their reasons, and we question whether their opposition to the RECA reforms were in the best interests of the miners, millers and other victims of radiation. But this is the important part: even though the lobbyists were against it, the reforms passed anyway.

What gave the grassroots organizations their power? They organized with the goal of finding out exactly what it is that the victims of radiation wanted. They held many sessions where miners, millers, families, and victims of fallout from nuclear weapons tests could voice their concerns, tell their stories, and let their needs be known. We took these to our elected officials. That is all - no fancy backroom deals, no horse-trading, and just the honest truth. When the Senators realized how many people were behind this movement, they had to give the people what they wanted.

The Navajo Nation has paid a lot of money for professional lobbyists on this issue. In the end, they were ineffective, and even opposed what the people wanted. Luckily, the people had organized themselves and taken matters into their own hands. There's a lesson in that for the future. For citizens of the Navajo Nation, the lesson is simple: together, we can do it. For the Navajo Nation government, the lesson is equally simple: put your funding resources into community groups, not high paid lobbyists. The results speak for themselves.

Earl Tulley Vice - President of Diné CARE Window Rock, AZ 86515

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Some Like It Hot

The Department of Energy wants to recycle decontaminated radioactive metal.
Not everyone's convinced it's a good idea.

David Case
http://www.TomPaine.com magazine,
November 12, 1999.

Headline writers get ready! The Department of Energy has a new plan for what to do with the contaminated innards of its old nuclear facilities, and it ain't necessarily pretty.

Before we give away the details, it's important to refresh the reader's memory of the context in which this latest tale unfolds. In recent years the DOE has proven itself to be a great source of outlandish and on-going yarns. For fans of The Blob, there's the nuclear-waste-pit-turned-gurgling-soufflé in Hanford, Washington, where a radioactive pimple might any day burst forth and engulf its neighbors in a toxic ooze. For readers who love farce, there's the bungled Chinese espionage investigation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which may or may not boil down to a millennial yellow scare. Or if outrage is your style, there's the tale about the irradiated workers in Paducah, Kentucky, whose DOE overlords allegedly failed to tell them that they were getting zapped daily with dangerous levels of radiation.

Coming soon, the same folks who brought you those stories want to fit your kids with braces made from the decontaminated bowels of nuclear weapons plants.

They swear it's safe!

DOE is actually attempting to put this idea to work by embarking on a $300 million decommissioning and recycling project at a dormant nuclear weapons plant in Oak, Ridge Tennessee, one of the world's largest industrial complexes, dating back to the Manhattan Project. It's to be tidied up, re-christened the East Tennessee Technology Park, and reborn as office and lab space, promising new jobs for the area's beleaguered, brainy ex-Cold Warriors.

All the radioactive junk within the containment zone-heavy equipment, piping and the like-would be chopped to pieces (after all, this is top secret stuff), decontaminated and put into the consumer product stream. The proceeds would defray some of the taxpayers' decommissioning costs. In fact, in lieu of cash the government's contractor agreed to accept as partial payment 6000 tons of contaminated nickel-worth about $50 million if it were clean-as well as enough scrap metal to make about 150,000 cars.

On the surface, the idea has a certain allure: inside America's DOE and commercial nuclear facilities is about two million tons of radioactively contaminated scrap metal, as well as tens of thousands of tons of valuable metals like the nickel at Oak Ridge. If it were clean it could be sold on the open market for a fortune. Otherwise, it would have to be sent to some radioactive waste facility no one wants in their back yard.

The Oak Ridge project sounded neat to Vice President Al Gore, who was happy that this was going on in his home state. He endorsed it, particularly the recycling concept. "This reinventing government initiative not only solves an environmental problem but will create jobs and stimulate the economy in the Oak Ridge area as well," the vice president proclaimed.

But reinventions are not always what they seem. Though proponents insist that the waste will be decontaminated before it's released, critics doubt DOE's word, and say that this amounts to nothing more than the government financing its nuclear weapons cleanup by selling radioactive braces to children. And "they're trying to push this through before the public even knows what's going on," says Diane D'Arigo of the Nuclear Information Resource Service.

In fairness to Mr. Gore, the project has changed since he put his stamp of approval on it. Originally, officials envisioned that they would restrict the uses of the recovered metal. That way if contaminants slipped through they wouldn't come into intimate contact with people. A year later, when the contract was signed, DOE agreed not to restrict the uses. Still, in recent months Mr. Gore's office has stonewalled a coalition of 187 environmental groups that think the recycling is unsafe.

Of all the alarming aspects of this project-and there are many-among the most disturbing is DOE's wanton disregard for the opinions of citizens who would have to live with the possibility that automobiles, silverware, soup cans, hearing aids, zippers or braces-anything made from scrap metal or stainless steel (of which nickel is an important component)-may soon bombard them with low level radiation. The department, it appears, subscribes to the head-in-the-sand theory of public relations. When TomPaine.com called to find out how officials plan to protect the public from errant radionuclides, the Cold War behemoth refused to comment.

Nor did DOE hold public hearings or produce an environmental impact statement concerning the metals recycling project, which it embarked on in the fall of 1997 after signing a contract with BNFL, the U.S. subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels Limited. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union sued to try to compel the government and BNFL to conduct an environmental impact statement. The case was thrown out of court because of a law banning suits that stall hazardous site cleanups. U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler, however, made clear whose side she was on. (See excerpts from the judge's decision.)

"The potential for environmental harm is great, especially given the unprecedented amount of hazardous materials [to be] recycled," she wrote in the June 1999 decision. It is "startling and worrisome that ... there has been no opportunity at all for public scrutiny or input on a matter of such grave importance."

Proponents of the project argue that for years materials like steel that are contaminated on the surface have been cleaned, basically through sandblasting, and recycled into the consumer product stream. Ten thousand tons were recycled in 1996 alone. Critics say that doesn't make it safe - sandblasting can leave dangerous "hotspots" of concentrated radionuclides - and they point out that the current initiative would vastly increase the quantity of metals recycled.

But at the heart of Oak Ridge controversy are the prized 6000 tons of nickel, which, if sold on the open market to manufacturers of stainless steel, would yield about $50 million. Unlike the steel, however, the nickel is contaminated throughout its mass, making decontamination far more complicated and difficult. Moreover, no federal standards exist for releasing this material to the public.

DOE's refusal to hold hearings would be bad enough if the technology that stands between the public and a possible cancer epidemic were tried and true. But the system to decontaminate the nickel is "entirely experimental at this stage," to use the judge's words. As with any new technology, this one may not be completely reliable. David Adelman of NRDC says that documents obtained during discovery indicated that BNFL, the DOE's contractor for the project, has been having problems with punctured filters. When the filters break, substantially elevated levels of radioactivity ends up in the nickel.

Here's a simplified explanation of how the nickel decontamination is supposed to work (technophobes: skip to the next paragraph). First, the nickel is dissolved in an electrochemical solution. Then it is passed through a filter that holds back the radionuclides. After this the nickel is deposited on an electrode, where it develops into a large ingot. The contaminants left behind are collected and shipped off to a nuclear waste dump, with the ingot is sold to metal plating operations, among others, which make stainless steel.

Tennessee regulators say that BNFL has proved to their satisfaction that the system is reliable, though Judge Kessler concludes that BNFL and DOE "have not disputed that there is no data regarding the process' efficacy or track record with respect to safety."

NRDC's Adelman says that when the decontamination system works properly, the nickel should be virtually free of radionuclides. Yet he says the process is complicated, and if it were to malfunction, as new systems typically do, dangerous levels of radiation-isotopes like Technetium 99, a major contaminant that has a half-life of over 200,000 years-could sneak through without detection. Inevitably, radioactive contaminants would then end up at the smelters, with workers unwittingly facing serious risks. The ultimate pitfall of the project, according to Adelman and others, is that there is no way to adequately monitor the decontamination to protect workers and the public.

To make matters worse, critics say that government oversight of the project is sketchy at best. Since no federal agency has been able to set a standard for release of the contaminated nickel (both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have tried and failed), BNFL got its license from the Tennessee Environment and Conservation Department. That's right, Tennessee is the august authority deciding whether America will receive 6000 tons-more than half an ounce for every man, woman and child in the U.S.-of nickel from a defunct weapons facility. Critics fear that if Tennessee gets away with this other states will soon follow.

The Tennessee Environment and Conservation Department informed TomPaine.com that monitoring the release of the nickel into the consumer product stream would primarily be the responsibility of BNFL itself. The department would dutifully drop by once every six months-oh, but if citizens filed specific complaints they'd be on the scene in no time.

Not everyone's convinced that Tennessee is up to the task. The state "has neither the resources nor the extensive expertise of a national regulatory agency," the judge wrote. A congressional aide points out that very few states check up on companies as often as required by environmental laws, and "Tennessee is known as an easy state. They're not capable of monitoring this." A Tennessee official counters that the department has some of the country's top scientists.

Democrats on the House Commerce Committee, led by Representative John Dingell of Michigan, have criticized the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allowing the nickel recycling to proceed, saying that neither Tennessee nor the NRC have the legal authority to release the materials to the public.

No small part of the critics' concern over radioactive recycling stems from DOE's consistently poor track record. Nationwide, the department's Cold War portfolio is renown for its toxic travails, a legacy that has saddled the country with a quarter trillion dollar cleanup bill. "The department has demonstrated time and again that it can't adequately manage these materials," Adelman says. "Now it's suggesting we market them to the public."

Who's to say that BNFL will fare any better? This a big question, not only because of the potential consequences of the Oak Ridge project, but also because BNFL is fast becoming DOE's darling of nuclear cleanup, with over $2 billion in contracts. Officials seem blissfully optimistic about BNFL's prospects. "As a business they should know that if they don't mind their p's and q's they'll no longer be in business," chimes a spokesperson from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who admitted that she knew little about the firm.

BNFL points out that its British parent company, British Nuclear Fuels Limited, is the only company in the world that has ever decontaminated a plant like the one at Oak Ridge. And a senior executive from a competing firm says that BNFL made the government an offer it couldn't refuse. The executive, who requested anonymity, says that not only did BNFL offer a very competitive price, but the firm agreed to a fixed price contract, which other contractors considered far too risky.

Environmentalists see things differently. Putting BNFL in charge of the cleanup is "like putting a serial rapist in charge of a battered women's shelter" says Damon Moglen of Greenpeace.

Though BNFL hasn't been active in the U.S. long enough to establish a track record, European environmentalists describe the parent company's record as "abysmal." Every day, the company discharges 9 million liters of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea. Greenpeace says that substantial quantities of radiation linked to one of the firm's facilities have been found in lobsters, pigeon guano and even seaweed hundreds of miles away in Scandinavia, and that that dead pigeons found near a facility operated by the company were so contaminated that the birds' carcasses had to be isolated and buried as radioactive waste (see related story). As recently as September,1999 British Nuclear Fuels Limited admitted that its employees had falsified safety checks on fuel rods that it shipped to Japan.

BNFL admits that its parent company has had environmental problems, but "most of what they're talking about are sins from the past," says spokesperson David Campbell. "We did discharge effluents into the Irish Sea at levels we probably shouldn't have." These days, he says that all of the firm's discharges are permitted in the U.K., and that "the levels of contamination are so low they're barely discernable. [The criticisms] are from a make-believe world of environmentalists who don't want any radiation from the environment at all." The fact is, he says, they're bombarded by radiation every time they go out under the sun.

Campbell declined to comment on the lack of an environmental impact statement, other than to say that it was DOE's responsibility, and that if one were required now the delay would probably force BNFL to cancel the contract. In contrast, Dan Guttman, a lawyer for the union OCAW, says that formerly confidential company documentation obtained during discovery shows that executives from the BNFL consortium were eager to avoid public review. The documents, Guttman says, suggest that in the months after the contract was signed with DOE, executives became aware of efforts by environmentalists to amend Tennessee law to require such scrutiny, so they rushed their application in order to set precedent before the law could be passed. Guttman also points out that "many of the documents in relation to the license were filed in secret and remain secret."

BNFL denies Guttman's allegations. "Our basic approach has been to be as responsible and factual in communicating the scientific underpinnings of this project as possible. We undertook to get a legal license, and we got that license," says Campbell.

He blames the controversy over its radioactive recycling not on sound science, but on OCAW, the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers union. OCAW had reigned at Oak Ridge for decades. After BNFL signed its contract, negotiations broke down, and OCAW was excluded from the workforce. Since then, the firm says, OCAW (which, since a recent merger, is called PACE) has led a charge in Washington and in the courts against BNFL.

Yet even officials from the Laborers Union, which won the contract in place of OCAW, are disillusioned, although the union stands to profit from billions of dollars worth of future contracts if BNFL succeeds at Oak Ridge. Dale Atkins, the president of the local union, reports a persistent series of accidents inside the contaminated facility since the work started less than a year ago, at least one of which led to a work stoppage. Recently, a fire filled the facility with smoke, and on another occasion a large piece of equipment fell through the floor, barely missing workers. "They need to get someone in there who knows what they're doing or they're going to get someone killed," Atkins says.

BNFL's Campbell confirms that there have been problems. He says that the company has changed supervisors, and "now has a manager who knows safety procedures." But he stresses that the work in the forty-year old plant is very difficult "and we've been dealing with a lot of lax behavior from the union."

In any event, BNFL's performance so far makes Atkins, the local union president, pessimistic that the firm will succeed in cleaning up the nickel. "It'll still be contaminated when they try to sell it to people," he predicts.

All the hubbub begs the question: if the firm struggles so much with safety standards and has a questionable environmental record, how can we trust it to clean radiation from metal that will end up in intimate contact with infants and pregnant women, among others?

Fortunately, critics say, there's a good chance that DOE and BNFL's radioactive end-run will get blocked before it can do too much damage: the metal industry is adamantly opposed to it. Steel plants-eager to protect consumers, their reputations and their plants-routinely check scrap metal for radioactivity, and reject any shipment that tests positive.

Yet for a substance that can cause cancer in very small quantities, cursory screening in steel yards is no substitute for a sound public policy banning this activity-at least until it's proven to the public beyond doubt that the metals can be decontaminated safely.

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The Department of Energy Taken to the Woodshed

TomPaine.com Magazine
November 11, 1999
http://www.tompaine.com/features/1999/11/11/index.html

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Federal District Court Judge Gladys Kessler's decision in the case, OCAW v. Pena. The plaintiffs (the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union and the Natural Resource Defense Council) sued to compel the defendants (the Department of Energy and BNFL, Inc.) to prepare an environmental impact statement for the radioactive recycling project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The suit, Civil Action No. 97-1926 (GK), was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The decision was issued on June 29, 1999.

The Court acknowledges and shares the many concerns raised by [the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union] and [the Natural Resource Defense Council]. The potential for environmental harm is great, especially given the unprecedented amount of hazardous materials which [BNFL and DOE] seek to recycle. (While parties dispute the exact amount of metals subject to recycling, at least 100,00 tons of metal are scheduled to be recycled pursuant to the proposed recycling plan.) The parties have not provided the Court, however, with any evidence of the safety of recycling in comparison with any other method of disposal.

The Court is further concerned by the fact that no national standard exists governing the unrestricted release of volumetrically contaminated metals. [Editors note: volumetrically contaminated metals are those that have radiation distributed throughout their mass.] Both [the Environmental Protection Agency] and [the Nuclear Regulatory Commission] have attempted to develop federal regulatory standards for volumetrically contaminated metals, but both agencies have tabled their efforts in order to focus on other concerns. The result is no oversight by any federal regulatory agencies. Instead, [the Tennessee Environment and Conservation Department], which has neither the resources nor the extensive expertise of a national regulatory agency, is the only body with any supervisory power.

[The law] is very clear, however, that courts are not to interfere with ongoing cleanup actions. The fact that EPA and NRC, after taking years to try to develop national standards, were unable to do so because of inability to develop consensus in the scientific community does not relieve the Court from applying [the law] in accordance with congressional intent.

[NRDC and OCAW] have also raised legitimate concerns as to the lack of public notice and comment surrounding the entire process by which [BNFL and DOE] settled on recycling as a disposal method. While it is true that [NRDC and OCAW] had an opportunity to raise their concerns during the first and only public comment period following publication of the [Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis], it is nevertheless startling and worrisome that from that early point on, there has been no opportunity at all for public scrutiny or input on a matter of such grave importance.

The lack of public scrutiny is only compounded by the fact that the recycling process which BNFL intends to use is entirely experimental at this stage. The process has not been implemented anywhere on the scale which this project involves. [NRDC and OCAW] allege, and [BNFL and DOE] have not disputed, that there is no data regarding the process's efficacy or track record with respect to safety. Furthermore, even as of March 18, 1999 ... it was not fully clear when BNFL would be granted the legal rights to use the recycling process.

While the concerns raised by [NRDC and OCAW] are entirely legitimate, this Court must nevertheless follow the dictates of the applicable Congressional statute. Congress enacted Section 113 (h) for the best of reasons - namely to prevent interference with efforts to cleanup hazardous, contaminated sites. Whether or not the situation here is what Congress had in mind, the Court cannot ignore the clear working of Section 113 (h). At this stage, where the government has structured and begun a complex cleanup action, Section 113 (h) makes abundantly clear that the Court is not to interfere.

---

In absence of Section 113 (h), an [environmental impact statement] would clearly be mandated under [the National Environmental Protection Act].

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BNFL Profile
Who They Are, What They've Done, Why Environmentalists Don't Like Them

By Damon Moglen,
Plutonium Campaigns Coordinator for Greenpeace International
http://www.tompaine.com/features/1999/11/12/4.html

After fifty years of the nuclear arms race, it is now clear that the Department of Energy has made the United States home to a series of the most heavily contaminated nuclear sites on the globe. After decades of pumping and dumping nuclear waste into the air, water, and ground at DOE weapons production sites across the country, it is now estimated that the U.S. will need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to try to stabilize and clean up the nuclear mess it made while preparing for a nuclear war that no one wanted.

While the threats posed have meant calamity to some, to others the nuclear waste crisis in the U.S. looks like one big piece of gold-plated pork. BNFL is one such company. BNFL is the American subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. The parent company is owned and controlled solely by the British government. Its primary job has been to produce nuclear weapons materials for the U.K. nuclear arsenal--a job that it has done with the same disastrous results to human health and the environment as has the DOE in the U.S. More recently though, the parent company has become a world leader, along with the French state-controlled plutonium company COGEMA, in providing weapons-usable plutonium to countries around the globe--a policy the U.S. has foresworn and does not condone abroad for fear that it will spread nuclear weapons.

One might think that this record would take BNFL out of the running for U.S. contracts but, in fact, BNFL is becoming one of, if not the largest, DOE contractor working on nuclear waste clean up in the U.S. The DOE has defended this absurd choice of contractor by suggesting that a company's track record abroad is not relevant?! What next, the Marlboro Man for Surgeon General?

For the record, British Nuclear Fuels is a world class despoiler of the environment and a major hazard to human health. As part of "normal" operations at the Sellafield plutonium separation ("reprocessing") site on the Irish Sea coast of northwest England, British Nuclear Fuels discharges some 9 million liters of nuclear waste into the sea each day. Stunning environmental contamination has ensued: for example, radioactive contamination in Irish Sea lobsters between 1993 and 1997 rose a terrifying 247 times--yielding lobsters available for the market which were 42 times the European Commission's intervention level for radioactivity in foodstuffs in the wake of a nuclear accident.

After decades of discharges into the sea, land and air, levels of radioactive contamination in areas outside Sellafield have been found to be higher than those found within the closed area surrounding the Chernobyl reactor which exploded in 1986. This kind of contamination has also led to environmental impacts: last year, for example, it was found that pigeons flying in and out of the Sellafield site were contaminated with plutonium and other long-lived, highly dangerous radioactive isotopes. Hundreds of pigeons had to be killed and treated as nuclear waste. Remarkably, pigeon droppings had contaminated soil off the Sellafield site to levels of radioactivity higher than those that forced the U.S. government to clean-up after nuclear weapons testing at Rongelap Atoll in the Pacific.

Clearly, this contamination has not spared the public. For example, a 1997 study funded by the British Department of Health found plutonium believed to be from Sellafield in the teeth of children throughout England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Although plutonium is one of the most radiotoxic materials known to humanity--inhalation of a speck of plutonium, smaller than a speck of dust, can cause fatal lung cancer-British Nuclear Fuels brushed the study aside, suggesting that it was a "chance finding."

Whose "chance" exactly? While the identification of radioactivity in children's' teeth led to the banning of atmospheric nuclear testing in the early 1960s, British Nuclear Fuels has brushed these shocking findings aside and continues to pump nuclear waste into the environment.

So, should the company's record be a matter of consideration to a Federal Agency sworn to protect the environment and public health? Yes. Has this company acted in ways which should ban it outright from the bidding process on contracts for nuclear waste clean-up in this country? Yes. The cost of getting this wrong is forever. BNFL?

-------- us nuclear weapons - spy

Lee's Links To Taiwan Scrutinized
Scientist Consulted For Secret Institute

BY WALTER PINCUS
Washington Post
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/31/170l-123199-idx.html
http://www7.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/lee31.htm

U.S. officials are investigating the possibility that physicist Wen Ho Lee copied nuclear secrets from the classified computer system at Los Alamos National Laboratory onto computer tapes to help his native Taiwan.

Although the initial investigation of the 60-year-old scientist focused on his contacts with nuclear researchers in China, investigators have expanded their attention to include Taiwan as well as the communist mainland because of Lee's long association with the island and his consulting work for a military institute there.

Lee has not been charged with passing secrets to any country, and authorities have said they do not have sufficient evidence to charge him with espionage. But a federal judge this week ordered him to be held without bail on a 59-count indictment alleging that he downloaded a huge trove of nuclear weapons data onto 10 tapes, seven of which are missing.

Lee's defense lawyers have said the seven tapes were destroyed, but they have not offered any proof. Nor have they explained why he copied the highly classified information in violation of security regulations.

Experts testified in court this week that if the tapes fell into the hands of a foreign country, they would allow that nation to design a reliable nuclear weapon quickly, even without testing.

Investigators said they still believe that Lee may have passed secrets to China, which has possessed nuclear weapons since 1964. But Taiwan is considered by U.S. intelligence agencies to be a potential nuclear weapons state. On at least two occasions in the past 20 years, the United States has pressed the Taiwanese to shut down clandestinely built reprocessing facilities designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Taiwan denies that it is developing nuclear weapons but acknowledges having an extensive program of peaceful research on nuclear energy. U.S. officials believe that at least some Taiwanese officials would like to have a nuclear deterrent against invasion from the People's Republic of China.

The most direct connection between Lee and Taiwan's research effort came in the spring of 1998, when he traveled to the island to work for several weeks as a consultant at the Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology, a top-secret, military-run facility devoted to nuclear research and missile development.

Last December, Lee returned to Taiwan for three weeks, delivering a speech at Chung Shan and again consulting with scientists there. During that visit, according to court testimony by a Los Alamos official, Lee dialed up the main computer at the national laboratory and used his password to gain access to the classified nuclear files he had previously downloaded.

Although Lee's 1998 trips to Chung Shan were approved by his Los Alamos group leader, Lee's departure from this country was a surprise not only to the FBI but also to the Energy Department's new counterintelligence chief, Edward J. Curran, who was monitoring the espionage investigation then underway.

On his return, Lee took a polygraph test in which he was asked whether he had committed espionage or divulged secret information. According to his attorneys, he passed.

Born on Taiwan, Lee came to the United States in 1964; he has two sisters who still live on the island. According to investigators, he began his open, legal assistance to Taiwan's nuclear research program in the late 1970s. By that time, thanks to the Nixon administration's normalization of relations with Beijing, the number of U.S. troops on Taiwan had been sharply reduced, all American nuclear weapons had been removed, and Taiwan was under the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

"Lee did not hide his support for Taiwan," one of the investigators said. According to a former colleague at Los Alamos, he was an active supporter of the Taiwanese independence movement.

In testimony last June before a closed Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Janet Reno outlined Lee's assistance over the past 20 years to Taiwan's nuclear research program.

Reno said Lee told FBI interviewers in 1983 that "he had been in contact with Taiwanese nuclear researchers since 1977 or 1978, and had done consulting work for them in addition to giving them unclassified research papers."

"Starting in 1980," Reno said, "he would receive requests for papers and reports from the Taiwanese Embassy, which he would then copy and mail to the embassy."

In 1984, Lee was polygraphed by the FBI after he was heard on a wiretap making a telephone call to a Taiwan-born former scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who had been forced to resign after allegedly trying to aid mainland China. Lee showed deception on the so-called lie detector test, and he later admitted to the FBI that he had been giving Taiwanese officials information that was unclassified but not generally available.

"Lee thought that this other scientist was in trouble for doing the same thing that Lee had been doing for Taiwan, and thus Lee had become concerned," Reno said.

In 1992, Lee and his wife made a pleasure trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong. In 1993 and 1994, Lee was informed that his job was "at risk" because of pending cutbacks in employment at Los Alamos. It was at this time that he began meticulously downloading huge computer files, first to his own unsecured office computer and later to portable tapes.

During this same period, Lee sent out seven letters expressing interest in jobs at research centers overseas, according to government investigators. Two of the letters went to institutes in Taiwan, but not to the military-run Chung Shan.

Lee's attorney, Mark Holscher, said yesterday that Reno's testimony shows "Doctor Lee had proper, lawful contacts with Taiwan" and "directly undercuts the Department of Justice's attempts to somehow link Doctor Lee with the country [mainland China] that is an avowed enemy of Taiwan."

James Lilley, a former U.S. ambassador to China and previously a senior CIA official, said yesterday he would be "very suspicious" of any notion that Lee was working for Taiwan. "My instinct is it could be a diversionary use of Lee by the Chinese, setting him up with the opposition, just like getting his wife working with the FBI."

Lilley noted that he does not have access to any of the classified material in the case. But "my sense is, Taiwan is sort of a red herring," he said.

Staff writers Steven Mufson and Vernon Loeb contributed to this report.

----------- us nuclear

Nuclear Horror Tale

Friday, December 31, 1999; Page A30
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/31/038l-123199-idx.html

FOR FIVE months, staff writer Joby Warrick has been laying out the ghastly story of the workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky, a government facility that, beginning in the 1950s, helped to produce the highly toxic materials used to create the nuclear arsenal that sustained this country through the Cold War.

It is a horrifying tale, in that these workers whom the politicians now hasten to acclaim as Cold War heroes were -- like their counterparts at other such plants -- systematically misled about the dangers of the work they were being paid to do, and that in some cases seems to have killed them. The plant, at least by today's standards, seems to have been almost casually designed and operated. The workers were not issued proper protective gear. The air was full of radioactive dust. They breathed it. It settled on their food at lunchtime. They took it home; some recount that they would find traces of it on their bed linen when they awoke in the morning.

Few records were kept of the workers' health, and no systematic studies have been done. But there is fragmentary evidence of a high incidence of some cancers and other diseases. The bones of one dead worker were disinterred. He had had a series of horrible ailments, including cancer, and had become what would now be called a whistle-blower. Superiors had induced him to retire in part with a promise of benefits then denied. At one point they went so far as to ascribe his ailments in part to eating too much country ham. His wife had the bones disinterred to vindicate him. "His body contained uranium at levels up to 133 times higher than is normally found in bones," Mr. Warrick reported.

Radioactive waste from the plant can be found in the surrounding community as well. "The situation is as close to a complete lack of health physics as I have observed outside of the former Soviet Union," a senior official in an environmental group has said.

How did it happen? The old Atomic Energy Commission, which ran the plant at the outset, was supposed to be a regulator of nuclear undertakings but too often acted as their cheerleader instead. The jobs and income the plant provided were coveted in an area that didn't have enough of either. The workers felt, with cause, that they were performing a patriotic duty, and that it would be unmanly to complain. The contractors that were operating the plant for the government sought to prevent what one memo called an "outcry" over radiation, to say nothing of a possible union demand for higher pay as compensation for the hazardous conditions. The recent contractors say the harm was done before they took over; the prior one says the truth is impossible to reconstruct.

It's not clear to what extent senior officials at the Energy Department were aware of the problems at the plant before Mr. Warrick's work began to appear. They now profess a welcome sense of urgency, as do the committees of Congress with jurisdiction they previously neglected to exercise. Perhaps it goes without saying that insofar as possible the workers and their families should be made whole and the environment cleaned up. But the duty of the politicians goes beyond that. This is a story of people who were harmed by a government that they trusted and that lied to them. That's the ultimate problem. Who trusts the government next, and who among the current politicians can restore such trust?

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The Case For Missile Defense

By Jeffrey Gedmin and Jon Kyl
Friday, December 31, 1999; Page A31
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/31/047l-123199-idx.html

As the debate about U.S. missile defense unfolds, it is important to remember the basics of leadership and vision. An example of the opposite -- timidity and shortsightedness -- is the recycled Cold War argument of Philipp C. Bleek and Frank N. von Hippel in their Dec. 12 op-ed piece ["Missile Defense: A Dangerous Move"].

The writers argue that "cooperative efforts" toward international security would be "derailed by a U.S. decision to go it alone in pursuit of illusory defenses." That theory, never very compelling, is entirely unpersuasive today, when we face a burgeoning missile threat and have effective defenses against it within our grasp.

Their argument against missile defense rests on two principal points. First, they contend, attacks by rogue states such as North Korea or Iran are improbable. "The desire for prestige and bargaining leverage may motivate North Korea and Iran to acquire intercontinental ballistic missiles," they write. "But these missiles are unlikely vehicles for a deliberate nuclear attack -- unless a country wants to commit suicide."

If indeed an increasing number of rogue states see missile capability as useful for blackmail and coercion, you might think that would be enough to spur American leaders to take steps to diminish that leverage and clout. Moreover, missile defense is not just about protection from "deliberate" attacks. It would be egregiously irresponsible not to defend against an equally deadly accidental launch.

But why are Bleek and von Hippel convinced that a deliberate attack by a rogue state is so unlikely? The bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission, which released its sobering report on ballistic missile threats in July 1998, concluded that a number of nations are working to acquire "ballistic missiles with biological or nuclear payloads." A rogue nation, the commission concluded, could have the capability to strike the United States in as little as five years.

The consensus on the Rumsfeld Commission's findings has only broadened since it came out. The 1999 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), representing the combined judgment of all U.S. intelligence agencies, underscores the fact. The NIE states that "the proliferation of medium-range ballistic missiles -- driven primarily by North Korean No Dong [missile] sales -- has created an immediate, serious, and growing threat to U.S. forces, interests, and allies, and has significantly altered the strategic balances in the Middle East and Asia."

Still, Bleek and von Hippel argue that the missile threat is overblown. They are concerned that missile defense is not foolproof. An attacker, after all, could still carry out an assault with a "boat or a civilian aircraft." What's more, the missiles of an adversary "would certainly be equipped with countermeasures" so that a missile, even one launched accidentally, "could penetrate the system."

Of course no defense system is ever infallible. Nor is missile defense intended as a means of dealing with the full spectrum of threats facing the United States. But this is an argument for doing nothing. The ballistic missile threat continues to be the primary threat facing the United States. Ballistic missiles are a cost-effective delivery system: Whether short- or long-range, they carry a high probability of delivering their payload to a target.

In the hands of the wrong people, moreover, they become a powerful geopolitical weapon. Would the United States and its allies have liberated Kuwait if Saddam had possessed an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead?

What about countermeasures? To every measure there is a countermeasure, to be sure. But America's strength is the immense and growing technological edge it has on its adversaries, real and potential. We may never be perfectly invulnerable, but the right missile defense system will considerably lower the risk of a missile's reaching the United States.

Bleek and von Hippel cite Russian, Chinese and European objections to a missile defense. "The most effective protection against nuclear weapons," they write, "is to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament regime."

It's true the Russians and Chinese object to current U.S. plans, and that our allies worry about a new arms race. But China and Russia know they have nothing to fear from American missile defense. The United States pursues cooperative policies toward both. Can anyone imagine how either China or Russia would profit by turning its back on the West? Moscow once opposed German unification and NATO expansion, too. But confidence and conviction on our part proved ultimately persuasive, and the sky did not fall.

There is no evidence to suggest that constructive arms control and nonproliferation policies are incompatible with prudent steps toward missile defense. It's time to leave the old Cold War thinking behind and get on with the task of defending the American people and our allies.

Jeffrey Gedmin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Jon Kyl is a Republican senator from Arizona and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

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

The Plutonium Scare
Non-Proliferation Hasn't Worked

By Tom Clements,
Executive Director of the Nuclear Control Institute
http://www.tompaine.com/features/1999/11/12/2.html

Little noticed by observers of the Washington scene is the blot that President Clinton's coziness with the international plutonium industry is leaving on his legacy. Although early on he said that he wanted to curb the stockpiling of weapons-usable plutonium, President Clinton will leave office with the situation out of control.

During his administration, Clinton has simply chosen to assume the role of a passive partner while plutonium companies such as British Nuclear Fuels (BNF Limited), France's COGEMA and Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM) threaten to drown the planet in plutonium, the prime fuel for nuclear weapons. The amount of so-called civilian weapons-usable plutonium worldwide has skyrocketed from approximately 60 tons in 1993 to around 200 tons today. Considering that a mere 8 kilograms is sufficient for an atom bomb, the buildup under of a plutonium mountain under civilian control sufficient for 25,000 weapons represents a massive policy failure.

On September 27, 1993, the White House issued a "Nonproliferation and Export Control Policy Statement" which outlined the major principles which would guide the Clinton Administration's approach to the issue. A key component of this policy, which officially remains in effect today, was a pledge to take comprehensive steps "to eliminate where possible the accumulation of stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium or plutonium" associated with civil nuclear power programs. The policy goes on to state that the United States "will explore means to limit the stockpiling of plutonium from civil nuclear programs."

This non-proliferation policy as it applies to plutonium was shelved virtually as soon as it was delivered and remains defunct. Shamelessly, no action whatsoever has been taken to slow the growth in global plutonium stockpiles by the government offices -- such as the National Security Council and the State Department's Office of Nuclear Energy Affairs - which are charged with ensuring non-proliferation. Vice President Gore, likewise, has refused to push for the implementation of the non-proliferation policy and Republican leaders in Congress have been courted into silence by the western plutonium companies.

Nuclear power reactors, fueled with uranium, produce plutonium in the course of their operation. But under normal procedures the plutonium remains embedded in the reactor's spent fuel. Only when plutonium is removed can it be used in nuclear weapons. Under the Ford and Carter Administrations, the U.S. adopted a sound non-proliferation policy of discouraging the removal via reprocessing of this dangerous material from civilian nuclear power fuel. Other countries, such as Russia, France, India and Japan, however, chose to pursue reprocessing out of a desire to reuse the plutonium in nuclear power plants, though possession of plutonium gives any country at least a de facto nuclear weapons status.

The state-owned companies in Britain and France operate reprocessing factories which spew out radiation into the environment while at the same time yielding their dangerous product. At the end of 1998, they each had accumulated about seventy tons of weapons-usable plutonium from the reprocessing of spent fuel from Japan, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and other countries, all of which are struggling with what to do with their deadly spent fuel. Due to reactor safety issues, high costs, and non-proliferation concerns, use of plutonium as a fuel in commercial reactors has been severely restricted. As Russia and the U.S. together hold almost 250 tons of plutonium under the military banner, the civilian stockpile will soon catch up to this figure. But no proposals are pending to stop the accumulation of plutonium. One proposal now before the United Nations Committee on Disarmament would ban plutonium production for military purposes yet would allow continued production under a more transparent civilian cloak. No such pseudo control can be effective in halting plutonium proliferation. A comprehensive Fissile Material Ban (FMB) outlawing all types of plutonium production and accumulation is the only step which will stem the plutonium tide and provide the optimum monitoring of existing reprocessing plants. But the Clinton Administration stridently opposes such a comprehensive step and has allied itself with countries such as Britain and France, home to companies profiting from reprocessing.

As the year 2000 approaches the global buildup in plutonium continues unabated. Will any candidate for president pick up the banner to stop plutonium proliferation or must we rely on economics or disaster to eventually bring the reprocessing beast to a halt?

---

Unofficial Sources: Radioactive Metals Recycling

TomPaine.com Magazine
November 12, 1999
http://www.tompaine.com/features/1999/11/12/1.html

Public interest groups at the forefront of the radioactive metals recycling controversy include the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (http://www.nirs.org/) and Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project (http://www.citizen.org/CMEP/), both of which feature extensive information on the issue on their websites.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (http://www.nrdc.org/) is also a key player, having teamed up with the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, (now the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union - http://www.paceunion.org/) in a suit to compel BNFL and the Department of Energy (http://www.doe.gov) to produce an environmental impact statement of their radioactive metals recycling program.

Sources of environmental information concerning BNFL include Greenpeace International (http://www.greenpeace.org), as well as the U.K.-based Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment.

Other important sources for nuclear related information are the Nuclear Control Institute (http://www.nci.org/), which focuses primarily on nuclear proliferation issues. The group's website provides information about the dangerous increase in civilian plutonium reserves during the 1990s. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, which has an office in Washington D.C. is a useful reference point as it is in touch with the scores of local nuclear activists around the country. Mr. Daniel Hirsch, of the Committee to Bridge the Gap in Santa Cruz, California, is adept at explaining the technical and political aspects of nuclear issues.

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

U.N. prosecutor abandons probe of NATO strikes

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 31, 1999
http://208.246.212.80/world/news3-19991231.htm

The United Nation's chief war crimes prosecutor at The Hague backtracked Thursday and said the office will not investigate the conduct of NATO commanders and pilots in the air war over Serbia. The reversal comes after U.S. protest.

The United Nation's chief war crimes prosecutor at The Hague backtracked Thursday and said the office will not investigate the conduct of NATO commanders and pilots in the air war over Serbia.

The statement from prosecutor Carla del Ponte came the day after the White House decried any war crimes inquiry as "unjustified." The Pentagon vigorously defended the way U.S. commanders and fliers performed duties in the 78-day air campaign that ended in June with the withdrawal of Serbian troops from Kosovo.

Mrs. del Ponte backpedaled from previous statements. She had told British journalists she was prepared to seek indictments against NATO personnel, if necessary, in the bombing of civilians.

This week, her spokesman said her office had compiled a report on NATO's actions and was contemplating a next step.

Thursday, the former Swiss government prosecutor issued a statement from The Hague, where since 1993 a tribunal has been investigating and prosecuting war crimes committed in the Balkans. She acknowledged her staff had met with "a variety of individuals" who wanted NATO commanders investigated.

Her statement said:

"NATO is not under investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. There is no formal inquiry into the actions of NATO during the conflict in Kosovo.

"During the past six months, the prosecutor has met with and received information from a variety of individuals and groups urging an investigation of NATO's actions during the Kosovo conflict, including members of the Russian Duma and several international legal experts. As with any other information provided to the prosecutor, this information is reviewed by her staff."

A formal criminal probe into NATO personnel - many of whom are U.S. service members - promised to worsen relations between the United Nations and Republicans in Congress. Some Republicans have balked at paying U.N. dues, while criticizing the organization's large bureaucracy and abortion funding.

The Washington Times Thursday quoted the White House as condemning any inquiry. Ex-military officers told the newspaper they were appalled that a U.N. prosecutor would equate atrocities carried out by the Serbs with the mistaken NATO bombing of civilians.

NATO bombs and missiles unintentionally struck about 20 civilian sites during the war, according to the alliance and Western news reports from Serbia. The government of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic claimed that more than 2,000 civilians were killed.

Western officials say Mr. Milosevic's forces systematically killed thousands of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo before leaving the Serbian province.

The White House on Wednesday said Mr. Milosevic's actions, not NATO's, should be the focus of Mrs. del Ponte's war-crimes investigation.

"We point out that NATO fully followed the laws of armed conflict in training, targeting and operations involving Kosovo and that NATO undertook extraordinary efforts to minimize collateral damage," the White House said. "Any inquiry into the conduct of its pilots would be completely unjustified."

The Pentagon hailed Operation Allied Force as the most accurate bombing campaign in military history, thanks primarily to laser- and satellite-guided munitions. It claimed that 99.6 percent of munitions hit the intended targets in nearly 10,000 bombing missions, the lion's share carried out by Americans.

Civilian sites bombed during the war included a passenger train crossing a railroad bridge at the precise moment an air-launched missile hit; the bombing of a civilian truck convoy thought to be Serbian military vehicles; and the B-2 stealth bomber attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. That blunder was blamed on outdated U.S. intelligence information that designated the embassy location as the site of a defense industry building.

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said:

"We're darn sure we followed the laws of armed conflict for anything and everything in Kosovo. I'd be hard pressed to think of an instance when a nation or coalition was more scrupulous in trying to avoid civilian casualties or collateral damage. It was so clear during the operations. It was central to our planning and conduct."

--------

Notes from the Pentagon
Sub shortage

Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
December 31, 1999
http://www.washtimes.com/national/ring-19991231.htm

The Silent Service is speaking out. The Navy's normally quiet fraternity of submariners took one on the chin earlier this year when Navy Secretary Richard Danzig criticized the force for being a "white-male preserve" and suggested women be put on board the tight-quartered vessels.

Now submariners are sounding the alarm against Pentagon plans to cut up seven Los Angeles-class attack submarines - one of the most effective military weapons in the U.S. arsenal - beginning in 2001.

The Clinton administration decided in 1997 that to save money the submarine force would be cut back from 72 boats to 50 by 2001.

However, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were recently sent a secret report on the Navy's dwindling number of submarines. The report, according to a naval insider, says the nation is at an "unacceptable risk" as the number of attack boats drops near the required 50 mark. The report said the Navy needs a minimum of 55 attack submarines to counter the Russian nuclear threat and also deal with emerging sub forces in China, Iran, India and Pakistan. The desirable fleet strength is 68, says the report by a private consultant.

A senior Navy official in the Pacific said the pace of operations is way above normal because of the submarine shortage. The Pacific-based USS Pasadena, sailed at a 90 percent operations rate this year, covering missions that included North Korea, Japan, Philippines, Singapore and the Persian Gulf.

"The problem is that as our sub force gets smaller we have increasing demand for their use," the official said. "The problem now is what crucial parts of the world do we risk not gathering intelligence on."

To cover the shortage, submarines, specifically in the Pacific, are being driven harder and faster, with less time for repairs and less time for sailors to go on leave.

The submarine force will have major problems carrying out both its peacetime and wartime missions without action on the matter, the official said.

The immediate solution: Keep operating the seven Los Angeles-class submarines slated for destruction. For the longer term, the United States is going to have to start building more submarines, by some estimates as many as three a year. The new Virginia-class attack submarine will be procured at a one-sub rate.

Another option under review is to convert four Trident nuclear missile submarines into cruise-missile shooters.

The attack subs' missions range from killing missile submarines -perhaps one of China's future Type 094 boomers now being built - to intelligence-gathering, anti-ship warfare, covert action and support for aircraft carrier battle groups.

Recent Pacific submarine activities have included underwater stints near Kosovo, North Korea, Taiwan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan.

Air Force's man

His friends inside the Navy are not the only ones rooting for Adm. Vernon Clark to be the next chief of naval operations. Some Air Force generals are too.

Here's why: Adm. Clark, currently Atlantic Fleet commander, is considered one of the top prospects from the Navy to be the next Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman in two years. But, if he gets the CNO job next summer, the move would likely preclude him from becoming a chairman candidate since he would only have been in his new post about a year.

With Adm. Clark out of the running, the odds improve for Air Force Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, the next commander of U.S. Space Command. Gen. Eberhart had only been in the job a few months as chief of Air Force Air Combat Command when he was suddenly picked to head Space. He instantly went from a job that does not qualify as a chairman candidate to one that does, under the federal law that regulates the selection process.

The Air Force is certain the next chairman will be either an airmen or sailor since an Army general has been selected for the last three, four-year terms. Insiders say Gen. Eberhart is the Air Force's best chance for the title of highest ranking military officer.

Two other possible Air Force competitors are Gen. Joseph Ralston, current Joint Chiefs vice chairman who is slated to become NATO supreme commander; and Gen. Richard Myers, the next JCS vice chairman.

India card

With U.S.-China relations deadlocked, the Pentagon is looking further westward. Adm. Dennis Blair, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, will travel in the next several months to India for talks with Indian military officials. The visit appears intended to signal to Beijing the United States' patience with China is wearing thin.

"We hope to establish basic [military] relations," said one military officer in the region.

The United States has had minimal military-to-military contacts with the world's largest democracy and relations turned sour last year after India conducted underground nuclear tests. Strategically, U.S.-Indian military cooperation would balance China's growing alliance with Russia. India blamed China - not Pakistan - for its decision last year to conduct a nuclear weapons test.

The Indian military also is modernizing its forces and could prove to be a lucrative market for U.S. defense contractors.

Friend of U.S.?

People's Liberation Army Gen. Xiong Guangkai, Beijing's most important liaison officer with foreign militaries, is set to arrive in Washington Jan. 24. The visit would mark the first real thaw in U.S. military ties with China since NATO's errant bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, earlier this year.

Gen. Xiong once told a former Pentagon official that the United States would not intervene in a conflict between China and Taiwan because it cares more about Los Angeles than Taipei. The remark was reported to the White House as a not-so-subtle threat to use nuclear weapons against the City of Angels.

Short takes

Look for Republican leaders in Congress to finish marking up the 13 annual appropriations bills - including defense spending -by Memorial Day. Republican leaders, weary of the snail's pace of money-allotting process, have been discussing the accelerated schedule during the holiday recess. Even some Democratic leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, are warming to the idea.

The endgame: send the bills to conference committees by Memorial Day and have floor votes on the finished products before the August recess. This would leave both parties more time to campaign in the pivotal 2000 election.

Navy officers are privately conceding that the twin-engine F-18E/F Hornet - the service's future carrier bomber - is underpowered. Sources say the engines - selected under tight cost constraints - simply don't provide the needed acceleration. But Navy officials don't dare admit to the shortfall publicly for fear Pentagon civilians will kill procurement or order a redesign.

--------

In Case on Nuclear Secrets, a Jovial Hearing on Bail Turned Deadly Serious

New York Times
December 31, 1999
LEGAL JOURNAL
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/99/12/31/news/national/nuke-lee-bail.html

At times even the most serious trials and hearings can feel like football games, with palpable shifts in momentum.

That was evident at the unusual three-day bail hearing in Albuquerque this week for Wen Ho Lee, the government scientist accused of mishandling nuclear weapons data.

When an FBI counterintelligence agent tried to persuade a skeptical judge that Lee had to remain isolated in jail because even "a simple utterance" to a family member might be a signal giving away the country's nuclear secrets, the courtroom, filled with Lee's supporters, broke into titters. The derisive chortling grew louder when the agent, Robert Messemer, added that Chinese, Lee's native language, was suited to deception because of its idiomatic character.

The judge, James A. Parker of U.S. District Court, asked questions suggesting that he would release Lee into some form of restrictive home detention. And that seemed a foregone conclusion, since Lee had been permitted to chat with his family and friends in the courtroom and even inspected a box of laundry his daughter had brought.

And then, just as suddenly, everything changed.

Parker concluded the hearing on Wednesday by denying bail to Lee. The decision condemned him to perhaps a year in solitary confinement until his trial on 59 counts of having improperly moved a huge volume of nuclear secrets from secure computers onto unsecure computers and computer tapes. Lee's cheerful visage turned grim and his two grown children burst into tears as the judge brought the hearings back to a grave consideration of national security. Parker said his decision had turned not on the holes the defense had punched in the government's case but on the unanswered question of what Lee had done with seven missing computer tapes that had contained much of the vast library of nuclear secrets he had downloaded.

"The danger is present principally in the missing tapes," Parker said, backing the notion that if, by some chance, Lee could slip them into enemy hands the global balance of power might be altered.

The judge added that if Lee could pass a lie detector test showing that he had told the truth when he said he had destroyed those tapes, bail would be reconsidered. But Lee had offered to take such a test when he was arrested and indicted earlier this month, and the government prosecutors had refused.

The judge encouraged the government to give the test, but did not order it, and the U.S. attorney expressed no enthusiasm for the idea after the hearing ended.

And so the short, slight, gray-haired Lee, a grandfatherly figure in a dark suit, was hustled out of court. He has not been charged with espionage, but he had still been called in this hearing one of the greatest villains since the dawn of the nuclear age. The hearing offered a series of such contrasts, underscoring what a peculiar business designing weapons of mass destruction is.

The court heard testimony from soft-spoken women and men who, despite their homespun manner had spent their lives designing sophisticated weapons that could kill millions of people in one unimaginable flash. John Romero, a weapons designer in the top secret X Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where Lee worked, was surrounded by reporters after he testified and was asked how he spelled his name.

"You're speaking to a person who knows what I know and that's what you ask?" he asked good-naturedly. He then indicated that for the most part he was unable to talk about what he does to anyone, except to say, as he had in one sobering moment on the witness stand, that it was a solitary profession in which the scientists received abstruse problems to work out on their own in cluttered offices.

And there were contrasts in the picture that emerged of Lee's actions. The government tried to show that he had meticulously worked around security precautions to move almost the entire arsenal of nuclear weapons design and testing theory from secure computers to unsecure computers, where hackers or others could gain access, although there was no evidence that anyone had taken advantage of that access.

Lee's defense lawyers showed that, for all the vaunted security measures in the lab's computer system, changing the status of files took only a few keystrokes and the system did not keep logs of the activity.

Indeed, one of the main defense contentions was that if Lee was a spy, he was a bad one, since he had left damning evidence of his actions in the open for up to six years. A security officer who investigates unusual computer activity learned of Lee's actions years ago and did not report them.

But for all the efforts the defense made to undermine the government's case, and the chortles the efforts sometimes drew, what ultimately determined the outcome was the question of the tapes. Why had Lee made them, when they seemed unrelated to his work, and what had he done with them? Whether that is the issue on which a trial turns remains to be seen, but it is the issue that has handed Lee another solitary task to endure.

----------- y2k

Russians and Americans team up to avoid missile mistake

CNEWS
Friday, December 31, 1999
http://www.canoe.com/TopStories/rushus_dec31.html

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AP) -- American and Russian officers claimed success Friday in their joint effort to make sure their were no accidental nuclear missiles launches caused by the Y2K computer bug.

After nearly 50 years on opposing sides of the Cold War, the two former enemies wanted to ensure, for example, that their systems didn't mistake a radar failure as a threat or misidentify a commercial aircraft as a bomber.

U.S. Maj. General Harry Radeuge said there were no Y2K-related problems at U.S. military bases around the world.

"Two of our most important milestones have passed. Moscow and Greenwich Mean Time," he said of the time standard used by the U.S. military.

U.S. Maj. Gary Gagnon of U.S. Space Command said no cyber attacks by computer hackers had been reported. "I feel great. This is fantastic. We spent a lot of money," and American taxpayers deserve results for their money, he said.

The American and Russian officers said they heard of Russian President Boris Yeltsin's resignation on U.S. television news broadcast in their monitoring room.

The resignation "caught us a little off guard but kept the crew members awake because there was something to talk about," said U.S. Lt. Col. Greg Boyette.

Col. Sergey Kaplin, head of the Russian military team, said Yeltsin's decision to hand over power to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin until a new election showed "the Russian Federation is ready to meet the New Year."

Kaplin said, "Our evaluation of the level of readiness of our warning system is still the same. I don't think these events will ... affect our readiness."

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials said U.S. intelligence had detected three Russian Scud missile launches at rebels in Chechnya. The information was collected at the nearby North American Aerospace Defense Command and was not passed on to the Russians because the launches were not covered under the joint U.S.-Russian monitoring operation.

---

Russia, U.S. Cooperate To Avert Nuclear Accident

Russia Today
Dec 31, 1999

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colorado, Dec 31, 1999 -- (Reuters) U.S. and Russian military experts sat side by side on Thursday in unprecedented cooperation to avert the deadliest of all nightmares - a nuclear attack triggered by the Y2K bug.

The Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability began operations on Thursday on the grounds of Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, manned by military personnel from the United States and Russia.

They will jointly monitor nuclear missile launch warning systems to avoid any catastrophic accident prompted by a Y2K bug.

The Y2K bug stems from mainly older computer systems which were programmed to read only the last two digits of a year. If the glitch is left uncorrected, systems could misread 2000 as 1900, causing systems to malfunction or even crash.

Peterson was chosen because it is near NORAD, the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command, built in the early 1960s to detect missiles approaching North America.

"From the U.S. perspective, it went very smoothly. Of course we haven't come to the rollover time yet so we're anticipating as things get further along that we may see a few things," U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. David Hale told reporters after the first shift got off duty.

The center will receive information from NORAD that the two sides previously agreed upon.

"We don't expect any problems with the U.S. or the Russian side but there may be some other foreign countries that could have some problems," Hale added.

"The risk is real low, but when you're talking about nuclear missiles the pain is real high," U.S. Air Force Col. Don Knight said.

Knight was speaking about the unique project devised by the Pentagon tomake sure any possible glitches that could spark a nuclear attack as computers roll over from 1999 to 2000 do not happen.

To bring this about a group of Russian Federation military experts is sitting with U.S. military personnel monitoring worldwide missile warning information.

The purpose of the center is to ensure that the world's two largest nuclear powers are in direct contact during the Y2K rollover.

The first crew coming off its eight-hour shift could report only one small glitch - a malfunctioning ringer on a telephone that links the center in Colorado with a similar monitoring operation in the Moscow area.

"There was a small glitch with our communications," Russian Federation Air Force Col. Sergey Kaplin told reporters through an interpreter, but he said it did not affect operations.

Six people, three Russians and three Americans, work on each eight-hour shift. They communicate with Moscow through a regular telephone, a backup phone and a satellite phone.

"I would prefer to speak about these centers as not two separate centers, but as two parts of one center," Kaplin said.

When the telephone in Moscow failed to ring, the center in Colorado called the back-up telephone to find out what happened. The ringer was fixed.

--------

U.S.-Russian Center For Strategic Stability On Millennium Glitch Alert

Russia Today
Dec 31, 1999
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=122083

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, -- (Agence France Presse) U.S. and Russian experts at the Center for Y2K (year 2000) Strategic Stability (CY2KSS) here are ready to call their respective armed forces in case of an unexpected nuclear missile launch.

"The telephone works well," Colonel Serguei Kaplin, head of the Russian Armed Forces' year 2000 department, told 19 Russian team members under his command here.

"There are no glitches," he added, visibly relieved that the hotline (special telephone line) linking him to Moscow was working after having broken down during a test.

The Russian and American teams that take turns manning the center, located inside the Peterson Air Base at Colorado Springs, fix their gaze on computer maps of the world, waiting for the new year to make its appearance across the time zones and watching for any problems caused by computers' inability to handle the date change-over.

The two team chiefs sit next to each at computer terminals, separated by an interpreter with his own screen. Their aides sit before their respective bosses, also separate by their own interpreter.

The two hand-picked military officers stare at a political map of the world, while their interpreters observe a computer program capable of gauging a missile launch by either side.

Any launch that exceeds 500 kilometers (300 miles) will appear on the operators' screens, said Lieutenant Colonel John Wicklund, in charge of press relations at the center.

Any missile falling short of 500 kilometers will not be considered a strategic or intercontinental missile and will not raise any alarm, Wicklund explained.

US and Russia have agreed to share seven types of missile launch parameters: launch time, weather at the impact site, the type of missile engine used, the missile's flight direction and whether it is a single or multiple launch.

All data appearing on CY2KSS computer screens originate from a single source: the North American Air Defense command (NORAD) inside Cheyenne Mountain in Wyoming, a few kilometers (miles) from Peterson base.

A joint warning center was supposed to have been completed in Moscow by 1998, but the project is still on the drawing board.

---

U.S., Russia pass nuclear weapons test

CNET
December 31, 1999, 9:10 a.m. PT
By Reuters Special to CNET News.com
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1009-200-1510374.html?tag=st

update PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo.--Cooperation between Russian and U.S. military services to make sure the Y2K computer bug does not trigger a nuclear arms disaster passed its first acid test today.

"There's been no glitches; everything is working smoothly. We're in contact with Moscow all the time," U.S. Air Force Col. Mike Therrien told reporters after the completion of the first shift on duty at the Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Russian and American military personnel at the command center sat side by side, jointly monitoring nuclear missile launch warning systems to avoid any catastrophic accident prompted by a Y2K bug.

The stunning news that Russian President Boris Yeltsin stepped down and handed the reins of power to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was taken in stride, with no change in operations, according to Russian and U.S. military officials on duty in the command center.

"We believe this event shows the Russian Federation is ready to meet the millennium," Russian Air Force Col. Sergey Kaplin told reporters.

"There was no change in operations," U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Edward Rios told reporters. The Russian military men barely changed the expressions on their faces, he said.

In Moscow, Vladimir Yakovlev, head of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, said he had no worries about an accidental nuclear launch.

"I am sure I will receive only holiday wishes on the New Year's night and not reports from any of the command points," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

"On the night to January 1, I will be in my yard setting off fireworks with my kids. These are the only rockets that will be launched into the sky," he said.

The purpose of the Colorado center is to ensure that the world's two largest nuclear powers are in direct contact during the New Year rollover.

U.S. military personnel have said they are highly confident any Y2K failures will not lead to an inadvertent launch of a ballistic missile by any country. They also note that a human, and not a computer, makes decisions on any actions.

The Y2K bug stems from mainly older computer systems that were programmed to read only the last two digits of a year. If the glitch is left uncorrected, systems could misread 2000 as 1900, causing systems to malfunction or even crash.

Peterson was chosen because it is also the site of NORAD, the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command, built in the early 1960s to detect missiles approaching North America.

U.S. Air Force Col. Daniel Mumaugh at the Cheyenne Mountain Command Center, located deep inside nearby Cheyenne Mountain, told reporters the first arrival of 2000 had proved to be "tranquil, very quiet."

Standing in front of the "blast doors," so called because they could withstand the force of a nuclear attack, Mumaugh said there had been no indications of problems since the early rollover of the New Year in eastern Siberia. He noted that any such problems would be detected first by Russian forces.

Col. Gary McMillen spoke to reporters via a special hook-up from the Marshall Islands, the first U.S. territory to usher in the New Year, one hour behind the international date line.

"I think the American people would be interested to know the lights are on, the toilets flush, our email is online and the video teleconferencing system that we use with Colorado Springs is working splendidly," said McMillen, who commands the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll. He said the 2,600 Americans on the island were enjoying the New Year, and a wedding had even taken place at the stroke of midnight.

He also said the instrumentation system on the island operates on GMT time and had not yet crossed over into 2000.

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

NRC safety policy relaxed for New Year's

by Paul Choinnere
The New London (CT) Day
Sunday, December 12, 1999 Page 1

It's shortly after midnight on Jan. 1 and sections of the nations' power grid are experiencing Y2K problems. Nuclear plants, which are connected to the grid, are having their own added difficulties. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with no time for a detailed evaluation, gives the OK for the plants to keep operating.

The NRC considers such a scenario realistic enough to have approved a special unprecedented policy that allows nuclear plants to keep operating with technical problems that would normally force them to shut down. Critics, however, contend the policy gives operators too much leeway to go outside their plant designs and may set the stage for a nuclear accident.

Under this plan, the NRC is allowing nuclear plants to stray outside their "technical specifications." Among the plants expected to be operating are Millstone 2 and 3 in Waterford.

Though both the agency and the industry say they think all significant Y2K problems have been eliminated, the NRC has the contingency in case they are wrong.

Dick Wessman,, deputy director of engineering at the NRC's office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation in Maryland, said the policy would come into play only if the power grid in a region becomes unstable and a blackout is possible. If, at the same time, a nuclear plant were having its own problems, the reactor operators can ask the NRC for permission to continue operations to help keep electricity flowing. NRC approval, Wessman said, would be given only if the decrease in safety were small.

NRC TO LET NUCLEAR PLANTS AVOID NORMAL RULES

An example of an allowed problem, Wessman said, might be the loss of one back-up system for cooling the reactor. This is the type of system needed only if multiple primary cooling systems fail.

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Project, said the policy amounts to "a furlough from safety."

"The power grid has become more important to the NRC than its role of protecting the public from the radiation that could result from a nuclear accident," said Gunter, whose organization is part of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, D.C.

Gunter's organization has recommended that the nation's 103 nuclear plants either be placed in a standby mode - the equivalent of a car idling in park - or be shut down entirely for several days, until the Y2K threat passes.

THE BLACKOUT THREAT

Though the power industry has assured Congress it is ready to move into the year 2000, the potential for blackouts cannot be ruled out, both utility industry critics and emergency planners agree. Emergency planners fear blackouts could trigger public panic. A national task force that reviewed the Y2K issue for the NRC warned that the "failure to provide electricity to customers at this critical time may have adverse impact on public health and safety."

The Union of Concerned Scientists had urged the NRC to establish guidelines on how far outside of its technical specifications a plant would be allowed to operate. The agency, Wessman said, opted to decide on a case-by-case basis, because it is impossible to predict what might happen.

Another factor in the NRC's decision to keep plants operating is the possible problem a blackout could cause for the plants themselves. Nuclear plants in this country do not run on their own power; they use electricity coming off the grid. If the grid fails, a condition known as "station blackout" is declared. Back-up batteries must be used to keep all systems running and the reactor cool. Power is then transferred to back-up diesel generators.

David Lochbaum, a safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said 40 percent of all reactor accident scenarios involve loss of off-site power. The NRC task force warned "an unreliable grid can adversely affect nuclear power plant safety."

But, Gunter said, there is possible danger in the NRC trying to keep the grid going.

He described this scenario: The power grid becomes unstable, and one or more reactors are allowed to keep operating with certain technical problems. Then, despite the plants' continued operation, the grid fails.

That, said Gunter, might leave the plants in a dangerous "station blackout" with existing technical problems.

The NRC does not expect that the special exception will be needed anywhere, Wessman said, because nuclear plants and the power grid nationwide should run well through New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

---

Nuclear war fear over Y2K bug

By Geoffrey Lean,
Environment Correspondent
Independent 12/19/99
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Science/bug191299.shtml

The Government is to send teams of millennium bug busters to locations around the world in an attempt to warn Britons of the possible dangers they face as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, writes Jo Dillon .

A special unit in the Foreign Office, staffed by three teams each of nine people, will be manning a 24-hour operation to field information from countries where the millennium comes earlier than in the UK. Reports giving details of any difficulties experienced abroad to the east are expected to reach London by noon on New Year's Eve.

In all, 76 key sites have been chosen to supply regular updates through the night. "The 76 have been chosen because they are key for political and commercial reasons," a Foreign Office source said. "The first reports will give us any signs of infrastructure failure. And if there are any real difficulties, they will get in touch with key contacts in the Government."

It is understood that each Government department has appointed a duty minister for millennium night in case of major failures, and they will be alerted to serious problems abroad in their fields.

"The key is to get information about what is happening overseas into the public domain as quickly and as accurately as possible," the source said. "Part of the advantage of being strategically placed in the middle (Britain will see in the New Year 13 hours later than it strikes first) is that we will be able to see what is happening in other countries and feed information to ministers and experts. We will be able to use it to make sure the same thing is not going to happen here."

British nationals abroad will be able to call on the services of a special "consular emergency unit", which will be on 24-hour standby, should they experience difficulties.

Russia and America are starting up an unprecedented joint early warning system this week, amid fears that the millennium bug could start a nuclear war.

Top brass from both sides will watch missile warning screens side by side in a specially constructed building until a week after the new year. They will try to detect false alarms from computer glitches, and avoid launching nuclear strikes in response.

But leading experts - including Nobel Peace Prize-winners and one of America's most distinguished bomb designers - says this does not go far enough, and are campaigning for Presidents Yeltsin and Clinton to deactivate their nuclear arsenals over the turn of the year. They say that the dangers have been made even greater by the tensions over the war in Chechnya.

The two superpowers have 4,400 nuclear weapons - more than enough to destroy the world - ready to be launched at a moment's notice. In the past, experts say, false alarms generated by faulty equipment have caused an alarming number of near misses: on one occasion a poorly designed chip, costing just 64 cents, deep in the US Defence Department's telephone switchboard hardware, started sending out signals that a Soviet attack was under way.

Last year an authoritative report concluded that there could be "no confidence" that the Pentagon would get its systems ready for Y2K, as the millennium bug is known in the US. Though the US has enormously improved its preparedness since, experts say that no one can be certain that its systems are 100 per cent fool-proof; and there is acute alarm about Russia's decaying nuclear control system.

This Wednesday some 20 senior Russian officers will join a similar number of Americans at a specially built "Centre for Y2K Stability" in Colorado Springs near the US early warning command centre deep in the mountains.

The centre will become fully operational on December 28 and from then until January 7 two Russian officers and two Americans will sit side by side around the clock, with hotlines to their respective command centres.

The arrangement, which has echoes of the admission of a Russian general to the US war room in the film Dr Strangelove, is modelled on the shared system of air traffic control used in Berlin during the Cold War.

But experts insist that the chances of an accidental war remain. Sir Joseph Rotblat, a member of the war-time Manhattan project, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for his work on nuclear disarmament, told The Independent on Sunday: "You cannot exclude the possibility that something may go wrong. The probability of it may be very slight, but the consequences would be enormous."

Professor Ted Taylor, who was one of the US's most senior bomb designers, adds: "No one can estimate the risk. It may be one in 10 or one in 1,000, but it is certainly there."

He says that keeping nuclear weapons on red alert after the end of the Cold War "may be one of the biggest mistakes humans have ever made".

Both have joined the campaign led by Dr Helen Caldicott, the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which is trying to persuade the leaders of both superpowers to deactivate their weapons.

The critics say that the danger is not that nuclear weapons will launch themselves automatically, but that the millennium bug will cause false alarms and shorten the 15 minutes in which a decision has to be taken on whether to launch a retaliatory strike. With tensions between Russia and the United States at their highest for years, even the joint control centre may not overcome the mistrust, they say.

--------

Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1999
NEWS IN BRIEF
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/12/31/fp24s2-csm.shtml

World

Computer experts were reportedly most concerned about the effect Y2K problems might pose in Russia, China, and developing nations. The World Bank reportedly regards Russia and the former Soviet Union as a critical region in terms of potential year-2000 computer problems, because those countries are believed to be particularly reliant on large numbers of outdated computers in essential sectors.

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

No sign of panic in Asia as alarmism is toned down

Irish Times
Friday, December 31, 1999
By Conor O'Clery, in Beijing
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/1999/1231/hom38.htm

Despite some alarmist predictions of Y2K computer breakdowns in unprepared Asian countries, there have been few signs of panic or hoarding, though air traffic will be substantially reduced this evening and tomorrow in China, Hong Kong, Tokyo and other cities.

The US Central Intelligence Agency has listed China among the countries most vulnerable to Y2K troubles, partly because of its heavy reliance on pirated software, but Beijing insists that it can cope with any emergencies which might arise.

While there may be power cuts and other service failures when computers mistake 2000 for 1900 at midnight tonight, leading to errors or system failures, the almost apocalyptic predictions that a nuclear missile might go astray or a nuclear power station malfunction have been discounted by analysts.

Most foreign embassies in Beijing have sent non-essential staff and dependants home for the new year period - a popular move - and equipped remaining officials with emergency rations and satellite telephones.

The US embassy in Beijing has advised Americans to have at least $2,000 in cash in case banks and ATMs stop dispensing money because of the Y2K bug. This may be needed if stores in Chinese cities refuse credit card sales over the next few days, as widely expected.

Banks will be closed today and tomorrow and China has brought forward its new year holiday to today, to help computer engineers make last-minute adjustments, and many problems may not show up until staff return on Monday.

But there has been no panic buying by the population and stocks of essentials supplies such as torches and tinned foods are still plentiful in Beijing shops.

In October Mr Lawrence Gershwin, the CIA official in charge of science and technology, told the US Congress that "we do not see a problem in terms of Russian or Chinese missiles automatically being launched, or nuclear weapons going off, because of computer problems arising from Y2K failures". He added, however: "Beijing will fail to solve many of its Y2K problems in the limited time remaining, and will probably experience failures in key sectors such as telecommunications, electric power and banking."

The Chinese State Power Corporation insists power supplies will be unaffected and China Telecom said yesterday its land lines and mobile phones will work normally. US high technology consultancy IDC has said that despite China's relative lack of preparedness, disruption is likely to be minimal.

Executives from China's main airline, Air China, will pilot a passenger aircraft this evening to underline confidence in the air traffic system. Mr Wang Lian and Mr Zhang Fugui will personally take control of a flight this evening from Beijing to the southern town of Shenzhen and back tomorrow.

China Eastern will also have a top executive on a flight spanning midnight from Shanghai to Beijing. Chinese ports will be closed to foreign shipping this weekend.

Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department said yesterday it expected a smooth transition for air traffic control during the rollover into the new millennium. With passengers shy of travelling today or tomorrow, airlines have cancelled at least 210 flights in and out of Hong Kong around the new year.

Twenty-four airlines have cancelled 172 passenger and 38 cargo flights between Thursday and Monday at Chek Lap Kok Airport. Hong Kong's top carrier, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, has scrapped 78, or 18 per cent, of its total schedule.

In Japan the danger of travel disasters is being taken very seriously. Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways, the two largest Japanese air carriers, will suspend all their flights between Japan and Europe departing late today. Several major rail companies including East Japan Railway plan to stop trains at nearby stations briefly around Friday midnight.

In Tokyo, banks are keeping extra staff on during the weekend - about 5,000 Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi officials will work from today to Monday - to reassure customers and print out data from computers which might crash.

---

Y2K Problem Strikes Japanese Plant

December 31, 1999
Filed at 5:31 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Y2K-Japan-Nuclear.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline160425_000.htm

TOKYO (AP) -- The Y2K bug struck a Japanese nuclear plant early Saturday morning, shutting down its radiation alarm system but not the plant itself.

There were no actual leaks or safety problems, but Japan's first significant Y2K glitch came just three months after the nation's worst nuclear accident ever.

The radiation detectors itself was unaffected. But the computer at the government office that receives information from Shika Nuclear Power Station, 170 miles northwest of Tokyo, went dead shortly after midnight, said Kohei Fukamoto, spokesman for Hokuriku Electric Power Co., the company that runs the plant.

The problem was detected about 10 minutes past midnight. It was unclear when the malfunction could be corrected, but there were no plans to shut down the plant.

At another plant, an alarm sounded two minutes after midnight, showing that radiation readings weren't being sent. But that problem, at Onagawa Nuclear Power Station 190 miles northeast of Tokyo, was fixed after about 10 minutes, said Tsutomu Satake, spokesman for Tohoku Electric Power Co., which runs that plant.

Authorities said this malfunction was not Y2K-related.

Although not immediately dangerous, the problems were especially unnerving in the wake of the worst nuclear accident in Japan's history. On Sept. 30, an accident at a uranium-processing plant 70 miles northeast of Tokyo killed one worker, seriously injured two people and exposed at least 150 people to radiation levels that were above normal levels.

The glitches surfaced after Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi had already announced on television that no major Y2K problems had arisen in the nation's utilities, telecommunication systems, trains, hospitals or nuclear facilities.

``We believe we were able to avoid any serious problems because of the cooperative efforts of the people in both the public and private sector,'' Obuchi said about an hour into the New Year.

--------

Russia Holds Longest Y2K Party

By Angela Charlton
Associated Press Writer
Friday, Dec. 31, 1999; 11:01 a.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline110115_001.htm

MOSCOW -- Across its 11 time zones, Russia held the world's longest New Year's Eve celebrations today, as Russians paraded through snowy streets and gobbled up caviar. But at midnight, many people greeted the new millennium at home with family.

Boris Yeltsin dominated holiday conversation, after his surprise resignation during a nationally televised address. The news stunned Russians, but parties proceeded as planned.

Russians largely shrugged off worries about the Y2K computer problems that have unsettled other countries. Russian officials insisted that the country's nuclear facilities and electricity network were prepared for the changeover to 2000, despite concern abroad that Russia has lagged on purging crucial computers of the so-called millennium bug.

No problems were reported after Russia's first few time zones moved into the new year, starting with the remote Chukotka peninsula across from Alaska.

"The energy systems have entered the New Year without any disruptions whatsoever," said Anatoly Chubais, head of the national power monopoly UES, according to the news agency Interfax.

Thousands of people watched fireworks over the main harbor in the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok, thronging with military boats decorated with lights and pennants.

Most of Russia's 146 million people were likely to spend the holiday at home with relatives and friends, exchanging gifts. New Year's is the biggest holiday of the year in Russia, and is traditionally a family affair.

Last-minute shoppers bought up cheap champagne and chocolates and children played with firecrackers in Moscow parks.

Security was tightened in Moscow and in the Caucasus Mountain region, where Russian troops are battling Chechen rebels. Both sides in the war said they were expecting New Year's attacks.

Despite the war and Russia's protracted financial and social problems, many Russians looked with guarded optimism toward the new year, amid signs that the economy is picking up, if slightly. And 2000 promises to be a pivotal year politically.

Presidential elections will be held in March, bringing Russia its first new leader since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Yeltsin transferred his powers today to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a moderate former KGB officer who is Russia's most popular politician. Putin has said he would run for president.

Yeltsin also bequeathed his annual New Year's address to Putin, who was to speak to the nation for the first time as acting president at midnight Moscow time (4 p.m. EST).

---

Millennium Quotes Around the World

The Associated Press
Friday, Dec. 31, 1999; 4:00 p.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline160014_000.htm

Some quotes about the millennium:

"Today, on the last day of the outgoing century, I resign."
-Russian President Boris Yeltsin, speaking in front of a gaily decorated New Year's tree.

"The lights are still on."
-Basil Logan, chairman of the Y2K readiness commission in New Zealand.

"We have much to celebrate on this wonderful occasion and many reasons to be proud. ... Even as we celebrate our successes, however, we must also acknowledge that we face many challenges in the century ahead. While we are making great strides toward achieving full equality and justice for all Americans, we must ensure that in the coming century all our people live in one America - an America where we are not separated from one another by prejudice, by economic injustice, or by a digital divide."
-President Clinton

"People who are alive today are so lucky that they will be able to cross this threshold."
-Archbishop Anthony Apuron of the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica in Hagatna, Guam.

"Harsh reality fills us with disappointment and grief. Can we hope, or will the new millennium bring with it deadly new experiences?"
-Archbishop Christodoulos, of the Orthodox Church of Greece, in his message for the year 2000, in which he questioned whether humanity could emerge from a world of "decadence and collapse."

"More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the United Nations."
-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan

"Something in everyone wants to be in the right place at the right time. ... And my God, this is a millennium."
-Jacqueline Tully, a San Francisco private investigator feting the New Year in Paris.

"We plan to do nothing."
-Judy McCalip, Alfalfa County, Okla.

"We're prepared for anything."
-Cmdr. Steve Jones, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Office in Orlando, Fla.

"This is so exciting. I think everyone was getting too paranoid."
-Miss Guam 1999, Lourdes Rivera, 18, while dancing with friends.

"For me, it is a deeply spiritual moment. I certainly attempt to make Jesus the model in my life. This moment in history reminds me that 2,000 years ago, He came to this Earth to show us how to live. I certainly hope that the year 2000 will help me deepen my commitment to be a follower."
- Judy Ball, managing editor of the Web site and Monthly Millennium newsletter of the St. Anthony Messenger Press, a Roman Catholic publishing house in Cincinnati.

"It's better than Times Square."
-Lt. Michael Bratton, on the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Topeka as it rested 400 feet under water while straddling the international date line and the equator.

"When people ask me what I did for the millennium, I want to say more than 'I went to a party. I wanted to say I was one of 2,000 Rockies."
-Tom Allen of Bensalem, Pa., who ran up Philadelphia's Art Museum steps as part of a "Rocky Run" recreating the 1976 Sylvester Stallone movie.

"The only thing I regret is I never met Abraham Lincoln."
- Octogenarian John Coyne, who was first elected mayor of the Cleveland suburb of Brooklyn in 1947 and whose tenure as the nation's longest-serving mayor ends Friday.

-----------

Three U.S. Nuclear Plants Go Down

Yahoo News
07:21 PM ET 12/31/99

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Three nuclear power plants unexpectedly shut down in South Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania as the new year approached, but federal officials said Friday the problems were not Y2K-related and the shutdowns were conducted safely.

``All safety systems at all three reactors are fully operative,'' Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said.

Two of the reactors were shut down Thursday evening _ one in Georgia and another in Pennsylvania _ and the third in South Carolina was reduced to 40 percent power at 1:11 a.m. EST Friday, officials said.

Meanwhile, Richardson said he was ``reasonably confident'' that America's electricity grids will roll into the new year without any major Y2K glitches. The first indicator was expected to come hours before midnight when interconnecting grids that are pegged to Greenwich Mean Time _ five hours ahead of U.S. time zones _ are tested.

Power plant computers are linked to local time, but about a third of the electricity equipment involves the interconnecting grids.

``While we're not ready to declare victory, we are reasonably confident,'' said Richardson, whose department was closely monitoring the electric grids, nuclear power plants and otherenergy sectors.

The three commercial nuclear power plants that shut down were:

_The Catawba reactor, operated by Duke Power Co., in South Carolina. The reason could not immediately been learned, but it was not Y2K-related, officials said.

_The Vogtle reactor, operated by Southern Co., in Georgia. The reason given was an unspecified distribution problem.

_The Limerick reactor, operated by Philadelphia Electric Co., in Pennsylvania, after a transformer problem.

Each of the shutdowns were normal and the plants remained stable, officials said. The utilities switched to other sources of power and there was no interruption of electricity, officials said.

Electric utility executives have expressed optimism that their preparation will lead to smooth transition with no power disruptions.

Richardson, speaking to reporters during a live video linkup with Russia's nuclear minister in Moscow, said he was gratified to hear that Russia's nuclear reactors as well as those in Ukraine handled the Y2K transition smoothly over their 11 time zones.

``This is great news. ... We had some concern about Ukraine,'' said Richardson.

Richardson also reported no indication of any international disruption in oil supplies as the oil-rich Middle East rolled through the transition. If there were any such disruptions, he said was prepared to release oil from the U.S. strategic reserve, and three oil producers _ Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Venezuela _ were committed to increase production.

``So far, we are confident that there will be no interruptions affecting the United States,'' said Richardson. ``We are confident there will be a successful Y2K rollover on electricity, natural gas. There will be enough fuel at all gas stations.''

---

Penn. Nuclear Plant Shut Down

December 31, 1999
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-BRF-Reactor-Shutdown.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline072243_000.htm

LIMERICK, Pa. (AP) -- One of two nuclear reactors at a power plant outside Philadelphia was closed Friday after a piece of equipment failed.

PECO Energy Co. declared an ``unusual event'' at the Limerick Generating Station, but company spokesman Neil McDermott insisted that the problem was not Y2K-related.

An unusual event is the least serious emergency classification for a nuclear power plant.

The 2:55 a.m. shutdown occurred when an insulator on the main generator transformer for Limerick Unit 2 failed, McDermott said. The transformer is non-nuclear equipment used to increase the voltage of the unit's output before sending electricity out to the power distribution system.

``It was all in the conventional part of the power plant. This could happen at a coal plant or hydro plant,'' McDermott said.

The 1,100-megawatt generating unit will be out of service until the insulator can be repaired, he said.

PECO Energy is a private utility that serves the Philadelphia area.

Related Information From Hoover's Inc. PECO Energy

-----------

Koskinen says U.S. all clear for now; Russian scud a Y2K dud

Federal Computer Week
DECEMBER 31, 1999
http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1999/1227/web-scud-12-31-99.html
BY JUDI HASSON (judi_hasson@fcw.com)
AND BOB BREWIN (antenna@fcw.com)

A world that has been relatively calm during the Year 2000 rollover received a minor jolt this evening when the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., picked up signals that a Russian missile had been fired earlier this afternoon.

But officials at both the Pentagon and federal government's Year 2000 war room in Washington, D.C., emphasized the missile firing was not Year 2000 related but instead part of Russia's ongoing military action against Chechnya.

The missile was picked up by the U.S. Space Command's Defense Satellite Program, whose satellites have been upgraded since the Persian Gulf War to detect short-range missile launches. Russian military officials are working side by side with the U.S. Space Command officials in Colorado Springs as a check against accidental missile firings.

Meanwhile, Year 2000 chief John Koskinen reported at 5 p.m. that no major date-change-related glitches had surfaced in the United States.

But he cautioned it would be next week before officials would be able to say for sure that there were no problems around the world.

"It is far too early to declare the rest of the world, the developing world, safe from Y2K problems, Koskinen said. But as 40 countries rolled over to the Year 2000, "no reports" of major problems have been received, he said.

Koskinen said only minor problems have been reported in the United States so far that can be linked to Year 2000 glitches. Among them was the shutdown of 150 slot machines at three racetracks in Delaware that were not Year 2000-compliant. There were also minor problems at nuclear power plants in three states -- Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Georgia -- but they were not Year 2000 related.

Even so, officials at the Vogtle nuclear power plant outside of Augusta, Ga., took no chance that the public may be confused. "Early reports in Washington that the unit was shutdown because of Y2K problems are false," according to a statement the power plant released hours after the ICC gave a news briefing.

"By the end of business on Monday, we should have a clear view of what the problems are," Koskinen said.

In a show of confidence about the FAA, Koskinen said he would be on a 6:30 (EST) shuttle to New York tonight.

Thomas Pickering, the undersecretary of State, said the State Department has received reports from 11 time zones and as of 4 p.m. EST, "No problems have been experienced by U.S. citizens overseas that we know of." he said.

---

Russia says it's ready for Y2K

ABC News
Fri, 31 Dec 1999 13:30 AEDT
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-31dec1999-27.htm

Officials in Russia are confident that all computer systems in the country have been adequately prepared for the year 2000 computer bug.

But western experts still say the former Soviet Union is a likely trouble spot.

Russian officials across the board are upbeat about their readiness for the Y2K moment.

After a slow start, in fact widespread denial of the issue, Russia has had a last minute push to remedy susceptible computers.

Russia is also counting on some protection from its relatively low level of computerisation.

And with New Year the biggest holiday of the year in Russia, most ordinary people brush off the issue.

But western experts predict power cuts, transport and communications troubles and while random nuclear missile launches are not expected, there is still lingering concern about Russia's aging nuclear reactors.

The predictions have seen key western embassies in Moscow, including Australia's, send all non-essential staff out of the country.

Other former Soviet states like Belarus and Ukraine are also said to be ill-prepared.

---

Y2K's first bite is barely felt

Anchorage Daily News
December 31, 1999 5:16 p.m. EST
http://www.nando.net/24hour/adn/technology/story/0,1976,500148758-500180463-500732493-0,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Y2K-World-Rdp.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991231/aponline194420_000.htm

(http://www.nandotimes.com) - As computers silently switched to 2000 in country after country, the dreaded Y2K bug's first bite was barely felt.

Japan reported the failure of a computer linked to a nuclear plant monitoring device, but said it wasn't considered serious enough to shut the plant. Experts said many Year 2000 computer troubles still might take days or weeks to develop.

Yet there was little - if any - immediate impact of the new millennium's arrival on a computer-dependent world, where engineers and goverment leaders awaited the event in control bunkers in a state of high alert.

The lights stayed on in Asia. Eastern Russia's nuclear plants ran without a hitch. Planes landed in Malaysia. ATMs in New Zealand handed out money and printed the right account balances.

Some small glitches were reported: Ticketing machines on some buses in Australia briefly jammed. A weather forecasting map in France showed the new year as "19100."

But as the new year rolled smoothly around the globe, a sense of anti-climax about Y2K spread right along with it.

To be safe, many countries were shutting down vital systems for the midnight hour: Airports in several countries canceled flights; subways in Cairo and Istanbul were closed; large ships were banned from the Bosporus strait; ATMs in Beijing were shut; Indonesia cut oil production.