-------- NUCLEAR (by country)
-------- business
Paducah Cleanup Oversight Hearing
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 14:19:54 -0400
From: jrmichel@icx.net
The Energy Research, Development, Production and Regulation Subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold an oversight hearing on a GAO report titled "Nuclear Waste Cleanup-DOE's Paducah Plan Faces Uncertainties and Excludes Costly Cleanup Activities." The hearing will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, June 27 at 2:30 pm in 366 Dirksen Senate Building.
Witnesses Scheduled to Testify:
1. Gary Jones, Associate Director, Energy, Resources and Science Issues, GAO
2. Carolyn Huntoon, DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management
3. David Michaels, DOE Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health
4. William Magwood, DOE Director, Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology
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USEC Makes Payment for Silex Technology
June 26, 2000
Company Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000626/md_usec.html
BETHESDA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)- USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU - news) has paid $2.5 million to Silex Systems Ltd. of Australia, following the recent announcement of an Agreement of Cooperation between the United States and Australia.
The Agreement makes possible ongoing development work on SILEX, a laser-based technology for enriching uranium, by allowing the transfer of classified aspects of this technology.
``Now that the two countries have an Agreement for Cooperation in place, we will move to the next phase of development of this promising technology,'' said William Bennett, USEC's Vice President of Advanced Technology.
USEC is exploring SILEX as an alternative to its current gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment process. If successfully deployed, it would reduce the production cost of enriched uranium, primarily because SILEX technology requires significantly less electricity.
Currently, electricity makes up the largest portion of USEC's enrichment production costs.
A previous payment of $2.5 million, for the successful completion of an earlier phase of research and development, was made in January 2000. The sum of both payments represents the total of a milestone payment designed to support and further research efforts.
In addition to pursuing SILEX, USEC is evaluating gas centrifuge as another enrichment technology.
USEC Inc., a global energy company, is the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
Contact:
USEC Inc. Elizabeth Stuckle, 301/564-3399 or Ron Seeholzer, 301/564-3225 (Investor Relations)
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Arms Trade Resource Center, Part 3
ATRC UPDATE, PART III
From: Frida Berrigan, Michelle Ciarrocca, and Bill Hartung
IN THIS ISSUE . . .
This issue is devoted in its entirety to a profile of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. This is the first in a series of profiles of major weapons makers that ATRC will be producing over the next six to eight months. We decided to do this series of profiles after discussions with Steve Staples of the International Network on Globalization and Disarmament and Alice Slater of the Global Research and Action Center on the Environment (GRACE) about the best ways to inject the issues of disarmament and military spending into the growing movement against corporate-dominated trade arrangements like the World Trade Organization. Other companies in the series will include Raytheon, Boeing, BAE Systems, Bechtel, and Alliant Tech Systems. We also found there is a growing demand among grassroots activists, citizen's organizations, and journalists for detailed information on the operations of major weapons producing companies. We hope this series will help fill part of that need, both by providing information and by sparking discussion on the best ways to deal with military mega-companies, in the realms of both research AND action. Your suggestions are welcome, on what companies to profile, on the most useful formats in which to disseminate this information, and on any specifics with respect to the subject of our first profile, Lockheed Martin.
LOCKHEED MARTIN: ALL-PURPOSE MERCHANT OF DEATH
LOCKHEED MARTIN IS THE WORLD'S LARGEST WEAPONS MAKER
Lockheed Martin is the nation's (and the world's) largest weapons manufacturer. The company received over $18 billion in U.S. government contracts in F.Y. 1999, including $12.6 billion from the Pentagon and more than $2 billion from the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons-related activities. To put this in some perspective, it should be noted that ONE COMPANY -- Lockheed Martin-- receives more federal funding each year than the ENTIRE BUDGET for the nation's largest welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which is meant to help tens of millions of Americans living in poverty.
LOCKHEED MARTIN HAS A BIG "POLITICAL FOOTPRINT"
Lockheed Martin is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, but the firm's promotional literature brags of its "facilities in all 50 states." This is a bit of a stretch, since many of these "facilities" are nothing more than small administrative offices. But the company does have impressive geographic reach, giving it what John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists describes as a big "political footprint." Lockheed Martin has major military research and production operations in Moorestown, New Jersey; Marietta, Georgia; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Orlando, Florida; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Fort Worth, Texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Vandenberg Air Force Base, California; Sunnyvale, California and the Nevada Test Site. Also, for its major production systems, like the F-22 "stealth" fighter plane, Lockheed Martin makes sure to spread its subcontracts around to as many Congressional Districts as possible, as a way to curry favor with key legislators.
LOCKHEED MARTIN WAS CREATED THROUGH A SERIES OF GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZED MERGERS
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were 10 to 15 major weapons producing firms in the United States. In the 1990s, that number has shrunk to just three major producers --Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon-- plus a few smaller niche players like Northrop Grumman, United Defense, TRW, and Northrop Grumman. The consolidation of the weapons industry was strongly pushed by Norman Augustine, then CEO of Martin Marietta, and was shepherded through the bureaucracy by William Perry and John Deutch, major policy makers in the Pentagon during the early years of the Clinton Administration who also happened to be paid consultants to Martin Marietta before joining the administration.
In the summer of 1993, Augustine appealed to Perry and Deutch to change the Pentagon's contracting rules so that weapons companies engaging in mergers could charge the costs of moving factories, paying executive bonuses, legal fees, and other costs generated as a result of there mergers to the U.S. government. Since Perry and Deutch had recent business dealings with Augustine, they had to get waivers of the conflict of interest regulations to rule on Augustine's request. They got the waivers and changed the rules, paving the way for Lockheed to merge with Martin Marietta and reap a windfall of over $1.2 billion in taxpayer funds for merger-related costs, including $2.9 million of the $8.2 million in special compensation that Norman Augustine received as a result of the merger, and roughly $250,000 in payments to former Tennessee Governor and two-time presidential contender Lamar Alexander for the "hardship" he endured when he was asked to step down from the board of directors of the newly merged company. In addition to Lockheed and Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin includes the former defense unit of the Loral Corporation, the aerospace unit of General Electric, and the space division of General Dynamics. Each of these companies in turn had been built up by various mergers before they were absorbed by Lockheed Martin.
LOCKHEED MARTIN SPENDS MORE ON CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS THAN ANY OTHER WEAPONS MAKER
Lockheed Martin has made over $1.6 million in Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions since 1997, plus another $500,000 in soft money contributions to Democratic and Republican party committees. Not surprisingly, the company's political spending has favored Republican candidates by almost a two-to-one margin, 66% to 34%. The company also spent $10.2 million on lobbying during 1997 and 1998, second only to Boeing among military/aerospace firms (Boeing spent $18.4 million on lobbying in 1997/98).
Lockheed Martin has the additional advantage of having key company associates involved at the top levels of the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns. Company Vice President Bruce Jackson, whose most recent claim to fame was his role as the director of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO during the battle over ratifying the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the alliance during 1997 and 1998, served as a vice chair for fund-raising in the Dole for President Campaign in 1996, and is doing the same for the George W. Bush campaign in the run up to the November 2000 elections. At a conference in Europe last year, Jackson was overheard bragging to his colleagues from European weapons companies that if George W. Bush wins the election, the arms industry will be in great shape because he, Bruce Jackson, will essentially write the Republican platform on defense. Meanwhile, Bernard Schwartz, a former Lockheed Martin board member who sold the defense unit of his company, Loral, to Lockheed Martin in 1996, was to top soft money donor to the Democratic Party during the 1996 election cycle, with $601,000 in donations, and he has already nearly doubled that amount in the year 2000 cycle, with more than $1.1 million in contributions to Democratic Party committees. That's one of the reasons that when Lockheed Martin talks, the President and the Congress listen.
LOCKHEED MARTIN IS THE WORLD LARGEST ARMS MERCHANT
Lockheed Martin exports $2 to $3 billion in arms per year, to customers that have included Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore. The firm also has investments in place or under way in the arms/aerospace industries of Poland, Argentina, and the United Kingdom. The company's most lucrative export is the F-16 combat aircraft, which has been used by the Turkish government to bomb and burn Kurdish villages in southeastern Turkey and to bomb alleged members of the Turkish-based Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK) in Northern Iraq. The F-16 has also been a staple of Israel's decades-long air war against Lebanon, which may finally be coming to an end as part of ongoing peace talks between Israel and Syria.
Lockheed Martin has pushed aggressively for changes in U.S. arms export policies that make it easier to sell U.S. weaponry in all corners of the globe, including the Defense Export Loan Guarantee fund (DELG), a $15 billion taxpayer-backed fund designed to help foreign purchasers finance arms deals with U.S. companies; the lifting of the ban on sales of U.S. fighter aircraft to Latin America; and the expansion of NATO, which in theory will make Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic increases their weapons purchases from Western arms manufacturers as part of their drive to meet NATO standards for "interoperability." Lockheed Martin has also been actively involved in efforts to defeat and/or water down the Code of Conduct on arms transfers, legislation that would make it much more difficult to supply U.S.-origin weapons to dictatorships and human rights abusers. Former Lockheed Martin CEO and current Chairman of the Board Norman Augustine has been instrumental in pushing through a number of these changes through his position as chairman of the Defense Policy Advisory Committee on Trade (DPACT), a confidential panel which gives advice on U.S. arms export policy to the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. Trade Representative.
LOCKHEED MARTIN'S DOUBLE DIP: DEVELOPING NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND PROMOTING A NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE
Lockheed Martin is in the unique position of deriving a double benefit from the current push to deploy a National Missile Defense system. For 1998/1999, Lockheed Martin ranks second to Boeing in total missile defense contracts with a total of $617 million in contracts.
Lockheed Martin's major missile defense contracts include the Payload Launch Vehicle for the National Missile Defense interceptor system; the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) "High" component, which is supposed to improve the tracking of incoming ballistic missiles; the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, a medium range ballistic missile defense system which recently yielded Lockheed Martin a $4 billion long-term contract from the Pentagon; the Airborne Laser (ABL) --in a partnership with Raytheon and Boeing-- an aircraft-based laser system that is designed to achieve the capability for destroying medium-range missiles as they leave their silos; the Navy Theater Wide system, which is based in part on Lockheed Martin's Aegis anti-tactical missile system, which is produced at the company's Moorestown, New Jersey facility; and the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), the major U.S.-European missile defense system which is being produced by Lockheed Martin in partnership with Alenia of Italy and Daimler Chrysler Aerospace of Germany.
On the nuclear weapons front, Lockheed Martin's Sunnyvale, California missiles and space unit is responsible for the production of the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile, the last major nuclear weapons delivery vehicle still being purchased by the Pentagon. Lockheed Martin receives roughly $2 billion per year to run the Department of Energy's Sandia Nuclear Weapons Laboratory in New Mexico, which is involved in the costly "Stockpile Stewardship program," an effort to gauge the "reliability" of U.S. nuclear stockpiles AND design new nuclear weapons. Lockheed Martin also has a subcontract to Becthel to help develop the capability to conduct simulated nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site.
REVOLVING DOOR, ONGOING SCANDALS, AND MORE . . .
As you can see, Lockheed Martin is involved in so many different aspects of the military industrial complex that it is difficult to provide a short summary of their activities.
Other aspects of the company's behavior to bear in mind are its hiring of former members of Congress (like former Democratic Senator Mack Mattingly of Georgia, former Rep. Sonny Montgomery of Mississippi, and former Georgia Rep. Buddy Darden) and former Pentagon officials to lobby on its behalf on issues like fate of the F-22 fighter aircraft; it's involvement in ongoing scandals like its supply of information that could have been used to improve the accuracy of China's ballistic missiles, for which it received the largest fine in the history of the Arms Export Control Act; its faulty launch vehicles which have contributed to the loss of billions of dollars worth of intelligence satellites; its involvement in bribery and bid-rigging in overseas arms sales; and its role in rigging missile defense tests in the 1980s and (possibly) the 1990s and beyond.
ACTION, NOT DEPRESSION: WHAT'S THE USE OF ALL THIS HEAVY INFORMATION?
Taken in one dose, all of this information on Lockheed Martin's far ranging and nefarious activities is liable to make a person feel like giving up. They're big, they're powerful, they're connected, and they usually get what they want, or so it appears. BUT DON'T GIVE UP YET. Despite its $18 billion per year in government contracts and its impressive lobbying operation, Lockheed Martin can be beaten.
Its shares have plummeted to half their prior value within the past few years, and even its former close allies on Capitol Hill, like Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) have taken on the firm on key issues like the ballooning costs of its F-22 fighter plane, which at $160 million per copy is the most expensive fighter plane ever built. The company depends on U.S. government contracts and foreign military sales for the vast majority of its revenues, and its presence in a number of controversial issues simultaneously --from nuclear weapons and Star Wars to weapons trafficking-- make it an inviting target for an international anti-corporate campaign on the issues of de-militarization and disarmament.
The Brandywine Peace Community in the Philadelphia area has long undertaken a campaign of public education and civil disobedience against the company's nuclear weapons work, dating back to when the relevant facilities were controlled by General Electric, and then Martin Marietta, and then Lockheed Martin. A number of religious shareholder organizations have also taken up the issue of nuclear weapons and arms sales with Lockheed Martin in recent years. In effect, these groups inherited Lockheed Martin as a result of the merger craze in the weapons industry. The question now is whether other groups in the international peace and social justice movements want to make Lockheed Martin a part of their work, either as a concrete example of militarism at work or as the focus of some kind of coordinated campaign involving organizations around the United States and around the world. We'd be interested in your thoughts on this point, both with respect to Lockheed Martin and with regard to the other companies we will be profiling in the months ahead.
QUICK SOURCE NOTE ON LOCKHEED MARTIN: In addition to looking at the various reports and articles on our web site, you can get good, up-to-date information on contributions by Lockheed Martin and other weapons makers to your representative on the web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, at www.opensecrets.org. Lockheed Martin itself gives an enormous amount of detail on its military work on its web page, at www.lmco.com. And for the best single guide to how to research a military company, see Lora Lumpe and Jeff Donarski, THE ARMS TRADE REVEALED, available on the web site of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project of the Federation of American Scientists, at www.fas.org/asmp.
William D. Hartung World Policy Institute 65 Fifth Ave. Suite 413 New York, NY 10003 (212)-229-5808, ext. 106 (212)-229-5579 (fax) hartung@newschool.edu
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USEC Makes Payment for Silex Technology
Excite News
June 26, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/bw/000626/md-usec
BETHESDA, Md. (BUSINESS WIRE) - USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU) has paid $2.5 million to Silex Systems Ltd. of Australia, following the recent announcement of an Agreement of Cooperation between the United States and Australia.
The Agreement makes possible ongoing development work on SILEX, a laser-based technology for enriching uranium, by allowing the transfer of classified aspects of this technology.
"Now that the two countries have an Agreement for Cooperation in place, we will move to the next phase of development of this promising technology," said William Bennett, USEC's Vice President of Advanced Technology.
USEC is exploring SILEX as an alternative to its current gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment process. If successfully deployed, it would reduce the production cost of enriched uranium, primarily because SILEX technology requires significantly less electricity.
Currently, electricity makes up the largest portion of USEC's enrichment production costs.
A previous payment of $2.5 million, for the successful completion of an earlier phase of research and development, was made in January 2000. The sum of both payments represents the total of a milestone payment designed to support and further research efforts.
In addition to pursuing SILEX, USEC is evaluating gas centrifuge as another enrichment technology.
USEC Inc., a global energy company, is the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
Contact: USEC Inc. Elizabeth Stuckle, 301/564-3399 or Ron Seeholzer, 301/564-3225 (Investor Relations)
-------- depleted uranium
Health Consequences of NATO Bombings - New Insights
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jeaton@fox.nstn.ca>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 02:05:28 +0000
Dear All:
The following contains two e-mails from Dr. Aleksandra Veljovic of the Cancer Foundation , Yugoslavia, sent to me in response to my requests for 1] information on the health consequences of NATO Bombings and 2] specific information on the recent conference held in April in Yugloslavia on "Consequences of Ecological Catastrophe on the Health of the Balkan Population."
Dr. Aleksandra Veljovic also forwarded by attachment to her first e-mail : "A Report of Current Cancer Epidemiology in Serbia based on Available Data " December 1999 which is not yet available on their website which is still under construction. In the section of this report entitled "Projection of Malignant Diseases", the authors note that "when the bombing of Yugoslavia started, the environment of the population of Serbia was greatly altered. The destruction of petrochemical and fertilizer factories, refineries and electro-energetic systems released cancerogens in the air: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen hydroxide, hydrocarbons, pyralene, vinyl-chloride-monomer, lead and other. Many cancerogens have polluted water flows. Excessive radiation is present in the form of uranium oxide from impoverished uranium. ..... It is hard to predict what kind of chemical reactions will take place in the air, soil or water. As a consequence of decreased quality of life and a life style in deprivation, it is reasonable to expect a much higher trend of increase of malignant diseases, both in terms of incidence and mortality."
They also note that long term effects will be visible in 5 to 15 years while suggesting: " It is our job to warn the population of the possible consequences in the future." [See also #3 below for Introduction]
The enclosed information may be useful for those attempting to determine the health consequences for the civilian population of Yugoslavia of NATO's aggressive and illegal bombings of petrochemical and chemical installations and their use of depleted uranium weapons.. Dr. Veljovic's e-mails also shed light on the on-going economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and the NATO bombings of medical and health care infrastructure [some 147 building in all ] and the deprivation these actions have caused in regard to basic medical and health care services and in depriving a whole people of the right to be healthy and to live to anticipated old age.
All the best, janet
--
1] Message #1 from Dr. Aleksandra Veljovic
From: "Fondacija protiv raka" <kbcbkosa@ptt.yu> To: "Janet M Eaton" <jeaton@fox.nstn.ca> Subject: Re: (Fwd) Need for information on cancer increase etc for IAC Trib Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 14:11:07 +0200
Dear Ms Janet Eaton,
I would like to thank you, on behalf of Cancer Foundation and my country, for your engagement in fighting for justice and peace in this world, which is not such a grateful task nowadays.
Since last year, almost immediately after the bombing, during which 147 objects (buildings) functioning as health care institutions were totally or partially destroyed and were unusable for the diagnostics and treatment of patients, most of our hospitals and primary health care institutions lack most of the basic and essential medicaments, infusion solutions, sutures, and 70% of the drugs normally provided in our pharmacies are nowhere to be found, especially citostatics. Obtaining a simple blood count has become almost impossible in more than a half of our otherwise relatively modern and advanced health centers.
Surgeons are using linen for sutures as they did 80 years ago, since the regular catgut is far too expensive and this leads to additional problems with respect to postoperative patient care and rehabilitation. Old people have no means to buy medication with their very small pensions. Only in January, in a very short time, almost 2000 people died from the flu pandemic and corpses waited to be buried for 10 or more days since there was not enough room to bury them --people died in numbers in a very short time from pneumonia and the consequences of a severe flu, which the doctors in other non-sanctioned countries were able to treat
The WHO UN charter guarantees the availability of basic health care needs to all, hopefully by year 2000, and here they are in a position of depriving a whole people of the right to be healthy and to live to be at least 74. Not to mention the high level of stress to which people in this country were exposed during all period of sanction and especially during the NATO bombing. Considering all above, we are faced with a severe cancer problem since the incidence of cancer is doubled! I am sending you, as an attachment, our Cancer Epidemiology Report with the projection for malignant diseases to year 2020, which will provide you, I hope, with useful information for your paper.
This report has evaluated our present cancer epidemiology situation, based on available data, which are currently incomplete due to difficulties in a proper registration of malignant diseases, so we can expect that the true numbers are much more higher.
Once again, thank you for your consideration and please, feel free to contact me should you be needing any other data.
Best regards and best of luck in your further activities, Aleksandra Veljovic, MD
Cancer Foundation Yugoslavia 11080 Belgrade Serbia, Yugoslavia Tel: (+381) 11 3010-721 Fax: (+381) 11 606-520
==
2] From: "Fondacija protiv raka" <kbcbkosa@ptt.yu> To: "Janet M Eaton" <jeaton@fox.nstn.ca> Subject: Re: Thank you again! Date sent: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 11:51:26 +0200
Dear Ms Janet, Once again we will try to help you. First of all , I want to give you more information about the Conference which Mr Radoje Lausevic has told you about and was organized by Cancer Foundation Yugoslavia. We forget how important our health is until we are in situation to seek for medical help. Economic crisis in our country has provoked crisis in health care as well (as I wrote to you yesterday). Hospitals are unable to fulfill the needs of all patients seeking for advice, check up or treatment. Also it limits the actions of prevention services. Nowadays it is very hard to make sure that all patients get adequate hospital care, to perform all the necessary diagnostic procedures and to provide necessary treatment. Series of new diagnostic procedures have been developed to enable early detection of malignant diseases, but still number of early detected cases of cancer does not increase as expected. That is why Cancer Foundation has been established. The opening of Cancer Foundation Yugoslavia was promoted by Medical Center "Bezanijska kosa", one of the most eminent health centers in Yugoslavia, in which our office is situated. Our team consists of physicians, molecular biologists, oncologists and health care and prevention proffesionals and we all participate in the actions of Cancer Foundation, as well as people of good will, ready to help the ones who need help. One of our actions was the organization of the first international symposium with the topic: Consequences of Ecological Catastrophe on the Health of the Balkan Population. Most eminent physicians, biologists and nuclear scientists took part in it. We are preparing the book which will include all their reports, and we hope that it will be published in the autumn, so I think that this will be something you are looking for. Till then I am sending you, as an attachment, the address book of all participants, so that you can make individual contacts due to your interests. We still do not have our web site but we are working on it, so be sure that I will contact you the very moment it is completed. Be free to quote our Cancer Epidemiology Report, hoping that this will help your philanthropic struggle. Best regards and feel free to contact me for any other data, Aleksandra Veljovic, MD
Cancer Foundation Yugoslavia Bezanijska kosa bb 11080 Belgrade Serbia, Yugoslavia Tel: (+381) 11 3010-721 Fax: (+381) 11 606-520
-------- japan
Okinawans commemorate 55th year of end of Okinawa ground battle
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 17:18:40 +0900
From: JPS <jpspress@twics.com>
TOKYO JUN 26 JPS -- On June 23, Okinawans observed the 55th anniversary of the end of the 1945 ground battle in Okinawa which took the lives of over 200,000 people, mostly non-combatants.
In the prefecture, the day is set aside for mourning the war dead in the only organized ground battle fought in Japan in WW II. Various events and ceremonies were held in many places to renew the prefectural people's pledge against war and for peace.
In the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman City in southern Okinawa's main island (the site of a fierce battle), a ceremony was held under the auspices of the prefectural government. About 5,000 people attended the ceremony in the park where there is a monument of black granite with the names and nationalities of all the known war dead engraved, regardless of their being friend or foe.
Former Japanese Communist Party House of Representatives member Saneyoshi Furugen attended the ceremony.
Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori made a speech calling for further steps to be taken by the Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), which will result in strengthening the U.S. base function in Okinawa.
Later in the day P.M. Mori in a street speech in Nagoya City referred to the ceremony in Okinawa as "for the service of mourning for 'eirei' (the souls of the fallen war heroes)."
The word "eirei" refers to a military and para-military personnel who died for the Emperor. The use of this word by the prime minister to describe the war dead in Okinawa shows that he views the civilian victims as same as the military. The war dead in Okinawa include such civilians who were killed by the Japanese Army as "spies" and even babies who were bayonetted by Japanese soldiers so that their cries wouldn't be heard from hiding places in caves. (end item)
JPS 06-073 The issue is national sovereignty - 40th anniversary of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty
TOKYO JUN 26 JPS -- On June 23, 1960 the revised Japan-U.S. Security Treaty took effect. Will Japan continue to be dependent on and subservient to the U.S. by upholding the Treaty system as sacrosanct? This is a question about Japan's choice of course for the 21st century.
Guidelines are War Laws paving the way for Japan's isolation
On June 14, the two leaders of North and South Korea signed a historic joint declaration stating their willingness to solve the question of reunification on their own. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung proposed to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that both sides discuss all possible measures for easing tension and building a system of peaceful reconciliation and cooperation on the Korean Peninsula.
In Japan, the government and the ruling parties were skeptical of the two Korean leaders' declaration.
Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Hiromu Nonaka said, "A threat to Japan has not altogether been removed by it." Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki said, "It has no direct influence (on Japan's two-pronged policy for North Korea of dialogue and deterrence),"
Clearly, the Japanese government has no strategy that meshes with the emerging movement.
Why doesn't the Japanese government have a peace strategy? It is because they have put all their energy into war preparation based on the new "Guidelines" for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation and the War Laws, by which Japan follows the U.S. interventionist war and aggression strategy on a global scale.
The May 1999 legislation of the War Laws marked a major change in the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty system, paving the way for Japan's participation in U.S. wars abroad in cooperation with the U.S.
According to Lt. Gen. Paul V. Hester, commander of U.S. Forces in Japan, details of plans have already been worked out for operations to be undertaken by the U.S. Forces and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF), and mobilization of Japan's local governments and private sectors.
Asagumo, a newspaper devoted to SDF affairs, reported on February 27 that the U.S. Forces and the SDF for the first time carried out a joint command post exercise based on an assumption that an "emergency" (war or turmoil) is breaking out in areas surrounding Japan.
The government and the ruling parties are advocating wartime legislation which will deprive the people of fundamental human rights as a major concept of war preparation.
Relevant government agencies have already drafted legislation based on what they studied. They're waiting for a political decision to submit the bills to the Diet, according to government sources.
Japan is called upon to choose between two ways, the way for peace in solidarity with the rest of Asian countries and the way of isolation that puts emphasis on a military solution.
Japan as a nation structured on U.S. military bases
In Okinawa, where the leaders of the Group of Eight nations will meet in one month, U.S. military bases occupy about 20 percent of Okinawa's main island. These bases were constructed on the land which the U.S. forces took away from local residents using bayonets and bulldozer.
In the northern Okinawan city of Nago, a state-of-the-art military base is going to be constructed. The U.S. forces wants the new base to remain active for 200 years.
In the past 40 years, the number of U.S. military bases in Japan has substantially increased. Although the number of those exclusively for U.S. forces has decreased, those used jointly by the U.S. forces and Japan's Self-Defense Forces has dramatically increased. As a result, the total area of all these bases has almost doubled in the past 40 years.
Tokyo is no exception. The U.S. Yokota Air Base occupies a large area in the western suburbs of Tokyo, as does the U.S. Navy Atsugi Air Station in Kanagawa Prefecture, Tokyo's southern neighbor.
U.S. forces training exercises include: low-altitude flight and bombing of civilian targets, night-landing practices (NLP) in densely populated areas, and live-fire exercises by U.S. Marines. Such exercises are taking place daily in complete disregard of Japanese laws. Noise pollution caused by sonic booms, aircraft crashes, crimes by U.S. soldiers against local citizens, and environmental destruction are what the large U.S. military presence entails.
The Japanese government since 1978 has given the U.S. forces extra sums of money in addition to the money Japan has promised to pay under bilateral agreements. The amount of extra money, which comes from the so-called "sympathy budget," is about 275 billion yen (about 2.6 billion dollars) in 2000.
Japan's contributions to U.S. forces is larger than those by any other U.S. ally. This is why the U.S. government refers Japan as its most generous ally.
A Japan-U.S. special agreement provides that Japan will pay all utility costs for U.S. bases and salaries of Japanese employees of the U.S. bases in Japan. This agreement expires next March. The U.S. forces are pressing Japan to agree with its extension.
How can we allow this subservience structured on U.S. bases to continue into the 21st century?
Government has lied about secret agreements regarding U.S. nuclear weapons
U.S. warships and aircraft carrying nuclear weapons can enter Japan's ports and airports without restrictions, and no prior consultation with Japan is required for transit.
This is what the Japanese and U.S. governments agreed to and kept secret. Japanese Communist Party Chair Tetsuzo Fuwa revealed this fact in the parliament early this year based on the text of a secret arrangement allowing U.S. nuclear weapons to be brought into Japan. The agreement was made at the time when the revised Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was negotiated.
The Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was signed on January 19, 1960. On January 6, Japan's Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas McArthur initialed three arrangements which the government has never made public. One of the three agreements was entitled "The Record of Discussion," which was a secret agreement on nuclear weapons.
A Department of State internal document says: While our treaty arrangements with Japan require formal consultation before nuclear weapons are 'introduced' into Japan, the Japanese Government has confidentially agreed, in effect, that weapons of vessels and aircraft in transit through Japan are none of its concern. The Japanese public is unaware of this confidential arrangement..." (June 14, 1961).
The Japanese government still refused to acknowledge the existence of secret agreements on bringing nuclear weapons into Japan.
However, the JCP has uncovered many facts that have been hidden from the public:
- The bringing in of nuclear weapons to Japan has been a customary practice since the early 1950s;
- On April 4, 1963, Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer held talks to re-examine the text and reached complete agreement on what the "Record of Discussion" says;
- When Yokosuka was made a homeport for a U.S. aircraft carrier, nuclear weapons on the carrier were not removed.
Today, the coalition government of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Komei Party, and the Conservative Party obstinately refuses even to try to confirm if the "Record of Discussion" is retained by the Japanese government.
This secret agreement has distorted Japan's foreign policy and undermined Japan's sovereign independence.
The secret agreement on nuclear weapons is not a matter of the past. It indicates that the mechanism in which Japan will be a solid advance base for U.S. nuclear strategy continues to exist well into the 21st century.
JCP calls for an end to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and establishment of foreign policy for peace
One of the major JCP goals is the abrogation of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. Article 10 of the Treaty states: "...after the Treaty has been in force for ten years, either Party may give notice to the other Party of its intention to terminate the Treaty, in which case the Treaty shall terminate one year after such notice has been given."
This means that if a majority of the Japanese people call for the Treaty to be abrogated, it can be scrapped.
However, there are many problems to be resolved immediately without waiting for the abrogation of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, including:
- Prevent the War Laws (for involving Japan in U.S. wars under the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation) from being invoked, and work with the rest of the world through diplomacy for peace;
- End all outrageous acts by U.S. forces, such as low-altitude bombing training;
- Oppose the construction of a new U.S. base in Nago City in Okinawa and call for U.S. bases in Japan to be reduced and dismantled; and
- Rid Japan of any apprehension about nuclear weapons continuing to be brought into Japan. (end item)
-------- ukraine
Germany hopes West will help Ukraine post-Chernobyl
UKRAINE: June 26, 2000
Story by Dmitry Solovyov
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=7260
KIEV - Germany on Friday praised Ukraine's decision to close its accident-prone Chernobyl nuclear plant by the end of this year and said it hoped the West will help ease the financial burden associated with the closure.
"We consider it very important that Ukraine's government has finally made its decision and set the closure date for December 15," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told a news conference at the end of his brief visit to Ukraine.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and Fischer will jointly chair a conference of donor states in Berlin on July 5 to raise funds needed to reinforce the "tomb" sealing Chernobyl's reactor number four, which exploded in 1986.
Fischer said Ukraine's decision to finally shut down the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster had boosted chances of obtaining necessary Western funds.
"The world community, certainly, is obliged to help Ukraine in overcoming the problems linked to the closure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant," he said. "I hope for the success of the donor conference due in July."
Fischer's visit comes at a time when nuclear power is in the political limelight at home. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government struck a deal this month that would phase out nuclear power in Germany in the mid-2020's.
Fischer's own Greens began a party congress in Muenster on Friday and debated whether to support the measure.
UKRAINE SEEKS $375 MILLION, ACTUAL NEEDS MUCH HIGHER
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk told the news conference the project to renovate the concrete "tomb" built to contain radiation from the Chernobyl disaster cost $768 million.
"As of today, a total of $393 million has been raised already," he said. "The task of the conference is to raise the remaining $375 million," he said, adding that he believed Fischer was optimistic that the goal would be reached.
But the tomb project reflects only a fraction of the cost associated with closing Chernobyl.
Experts say the decommissioning of the plant, completion of two new reactors at other plants to replace lost output, construction of safe waste storage sites and social guarantees for Chernobyl workers might cost up to $2 billion in total.
The projects are to be financed by the European Union and members of the G7 group of leading industrial states in line with a memorandum signed in 1995.
Fischer and Tarasyuk avoided speaking in detail about the work that needed to be done and the cost of replacing lost output. Ukraine, already suffering from an energy crisis, relies on nuclear power to supply nearly half its electricity with Chernobyl providing 6-8 percent of all electricity, depending on the season.
UKRAINE VALUES GERMAN SUPPORT OF ITS 'EUROPEAN CHOICE'
Tarasyuk said Kiev valued warm relations with Berlin as part of its strategy of gradual integration into European structures.
"During the presidential election (last November), Ukrainians backed the current president on his platform of a 'European choice', and in realising this course Ukraine counts on the support of Europe, foremost Germany," Tarasyuk said.
He said President Leonid Kuchma and Schroeder would meet in the eastern German town of Leipzig on July 11-12.
Fischer called on Ukraine to boost reforms.
"The eastward enlargement of the European Union implies a new challenge to us. But at the same time I want to say this is a big chance for Ukraine," he said.
-------- us nuc facilities
-------- california
ACTION ALERT CUT FUNDING FROM the NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 13:52:05 -0400
From: "Frida Berrigan" <BerrigaF@newschool.edu>
Representative Paul Ryan (R) Wisconsin, will be introducing a floor amendment early the week of June 26. This amendment will cut $74 million in construction funding for the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The NIF is a nuclear weapons project and will promote nuclear proliferation.
Please call your representative and ask them Co-sponsor and support the Ryan amendment. If you do not know your representative's number then call the capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. This is not a partisan issue, please contact both democrat and republican offices to cosponsor. Your representative's staff can contact Leah Braesch in Ryan's office to sign-on to the amendment.
This is a really important opportunity and can make a big difference in our efforts to stop NIF. Please make this a priority and call the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability's DC office at (202) 833-4668 to let us know who you've contacted.
This action alert is sponsored by a coalition of environmental groups including Taxpayers for Common Sense, U.S. Pirg, Tri-Valley CARES, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, Friends of the Earth, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
BACKGROUND
The National Ignition Facility Ignites Controversy and Skyrocketing Costs but not Ignition
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a partially built stadium size laser facility at the Lawrence Livermore Lab (LLNL) in Livermore, California.
NIF is the most expensive project in the DOE's Stockpile Stewardship nuclear weapons program. Its stated purpose is to simulate the conditions inside the later stages of a nuclear weapon explosion by fusing atoms at pressures and temperature that obtain a net gain of energy. This process is known as thermonuclear ignition. Information gained from these experiments is useful for understanding and potentially improving weapons design. There is a fine but crucial line between maintaining current weapons capabilities and creating new weapons designs. New nuclear weapons designs may ignite a new arms race. ·
Massive cost overruns have transformed NIF into a fiscal black hole siphoning enormous amounts of money from many DOE programs. In the last five years, due to ongoing technical problems and reprehensible management practices, NIF's estimated construction and operation costs over its life-cycle have doubled from 5 Billion to 10 Billion, threatening the funding for other DOE programs and facilities.
In a highly unusual official statement, the Sandia National Laboratory publicly criticized NIF's budgetary overruns and called for a reduction in NIF's funding and laser structure.
Basic Questions about NIF's fundamental purpose, it's chances of achieving ignition and its engineering problems should be further scrutinized. Before this occurs, we must first halt construction. The construction budget of 74 million and Energy Secretary Richardson's supplemental construction request of 95 million should be cut now, during NIF's reevaluation.
NIF IS PLAGUED BY TECHNICAL AND DESIGN PROBLEMS
NIF Optics are Subject to Frequent Blowouts: As each laser beam is converted to ultraviolet (the 3rd harmonic), it damages the very expensive final optics components, causing them to explode after only a few dozen experiments. This problem could take a decade or more and many millions of dollars to resolve. Further, its resolution at any price is uncertain.
Target Material TBA: At the meeting of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Task Force on NIF on Dec. 13, 1999, Lab scientists revealed they have not yet found a material to make ignition capable targets - BB-sized pellets that will hold the frozen radioactive fuel for thermonuclear ignition. ·
Diagnostics are Priceless: Also at the SEAB Task Force, it was revealed that NIF's diagnostics have not been designed and will only be partially designed by 2003. Diagnostics show researchers what is actually going on in a NIF explosion, without which there will be no data. Diagnostic costs are not included in most of NIF's rising cost estimates.
No Ignition at the National Ignition Facility??? Even Livermore lab's NIF project manager Ed Moses, stated his reservations about the chances of achieving ignition "the goal of achieving ignition is a longshot" (San Jose Mercury News 11/16/99). The General Accounting Office (GAO) report scheduled for release in June, 2000 may specify half and quarter size options for NIF. A NIF with half or quarter lasers reduces the possibility of ignition exponentially.
A DANGEROUS CATCH-22
NIF is purported to eliminate the need for nuclear testing but upon closer inspection it may eventually lead to the necessity for future nuclear tests. Despite DOE's statement that NIF is essential to the maintenance of the nuclear arsenal, many experts have concurred that NIF has almost no relevance to its stated goal of maintaining the safety and reliability of the current stockpile. Edward Teller, known as the father of the atomic bomb, was asked about the NIF's usefulness to maintaining nuclear weapons, he replied "None whatsoever" (Contra Costa Times 5/14/00). Furthermore, Los Alamos theoretical weapon physicist, Rod Schultz, wrote that NIF's touted importance to the weapons stockpile "does not reflect the technical judgment of the nuclear weapons design community. (Albuquerque Tribune 4/29/97)
NIF would, however, enhance the capability for design of new nuclear weapons and modification of existing weapons. If NIF is realized, lab directors may soon point out that some of the new, modified, nuclear weapons cannot be reliably certified without full scale nuclear testing, thus providing the rationale for future nuclear testing. This is in stark contrast of NIF's stated purpose of eliminating the need for nuclear testing.
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT THE WEBSITE OF TRI-VALLEY CARES AT http://www.igc.org/tvc/
Frida Berrigan Research Associate Arms Trade Resource Center 65 Fifth Avenue, Suite 413 New York, New York 10003 212-229-5808 ext. 112 fax: 212-229-2279 email:berrigaf@newschool.edu
-------- colorado
Colorado Mayor Wants Rocky Flats Nuclear Site for Research, School
By Brian Hansen
June 26, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-26-02.html
ARVADA, Colorado, The now mothballed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant - where the soil is still contaminated in spots with high levels of plutonium and other dangerous materials - might make a fine place to build a 400-acre research park or educational facility after it closes in a few years.
So declared Arvada, Colorado, Mayor Ken Fellman in letters sent last week to Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, and Representative Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat. Both have proposed federal legislation that would forever preserve the 6,000-acre site as some form of non-developable open space.
Arvada Mayor Ken Fellman (Photo courtesy Office of the Mayor)
"We would like Rocky Flats to be cleaned up to a level that permits reasonable unrestricted access to the site ... regardless of land use designation," Fellman wrote in his June 16 letter to Allard. "We expect new ideas [pertaining to the future use of the site] may come forward as the cleanup progresses. Federal legislation restricting future options would prevent potential new and better uses."
Allard's bill, which has not yet been introduced to the Senate, would designate Rocky Flats, near Denver, as a federal wildlife refuge. Udall's measure, which was introduced earlier this month, would classify the 6,000-acre site as federally protected open space. Both pieces of legislation would prohibit any permanent development on the site, including the construction of any "through" roads."
Fellman took issue with those restrictions in his letters to the two federal officials.
Colorado Senator Wayne Allard (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator)
"It is premature to make final decisions about the future use, ownership, and management responsibility of the site," Fellman declared in his letter to Allard. "The City of Arvada recommends that a range of options be preserved."
In his letters, Fellman declared that future management of the site should be completely turned over to local governments, because federal agencies such as the Department of Energy "do not share the interests of local residents and communities."
However, if federal legislation regarding the future disposition and management of the site were to be drafted, Fellman maintained that it should include the following:
A provision that would "allow and provide for research or educational re-use of land area in or equivalent In size and infrastructure) to the current 400-acre industrial area."
A provision that would "specify numerical cleanup levels in the Buffer Zone and Industrial Area that allow for reasonable unrestricted access and a range of options for re-use."
A provision that would "provide substantive economic considerations to adjacent communities affected by the loss of 5,000 jobs."
A provision that would "provide for substantive involvement of local governments on all issues pertaining to cleanup and reuse."
Fellman, in his correspondence, also re-wrote large portions of Udall's bill and sent it back to the Boulder Congressman.
Fellman redacted Udall's language pertaining to the ecological importance of the Rocky Flats buffer zone, adding his own paragraph that authorizes the establishment of a research or educational facility on the site.
Colorado Congressman Mark Udall (Photo courtesy Office of the Congressman)
The Arvada mayor also incorporated into Udall's bill a land swap provision that would allow that development to be established anywhere on the 6,000 acre parcel, as well as a measure that would authorize the construction of a major highway across any portion of the site.
David Abelson, executive director of the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, said that the issues raised by Fellman and the City of Arvada are "clearly inconsistent with the preferences of the RFCLOG board of directors, six local governments, a United States Senator, a United States Congressman, the Colorado Attorney General and the governor."
"The City of Arvada is proposing to turn some portion of the Rocky Flats buffer zone into industrial use, and that is inconsistent with the long stated desires of the community," said Abelson.
Boulder County Commissioner Paul Danish, Boulder County's representative to RFCLOG, was more frank in his assessment of the proposals articulated by Fellman and the City of Arvada.
"They said last February that they were going to march to the beat of a different drummer, but somehow I never imagined that it was going to be Smokey the Bear who's beating the drum for them," quipped Danish. "It ain't exactly a confidence-building measure."
Danish said that he was particularly concerned by Fellman's proposal to have the management of Rocky Flats assumed by local governments.
"The biggest concern I have is that I think Rocky Flats is the federal government's responsibility, and I hope they keep that responsibility in perpetuity, or until there is zero chance of contamination from the property," Danish said. "I would strongly oppose turning Rocky Flats over to local governments that do not have the resources to manage something that has the kind of unknown risks that are out there."
Specifically, Danish said he was alarmed by the provision that would allow for the establishment of a 400-acre "research" or educational" facility on the site.
"It's obviously an ambiguous, 'Clinton-esque' term - what does he mean by 'research' or 'education?'" Danish asked. "To give some sense of just how intense that could be, the campus of the University of Colorado - which has over 25,000 students and 6,00 staff members - is 300 acres. If the research consists of studying the Preble's jumping mouse or other unique species that might be found on Rocky Flats, that isn't much of an impact. But if the research is something like the Stanford research center or Los Alamos National Laboratory, that's a very different kettle of fish."
Danish also had questions about the transportation related changes that Fellman proposed be made to Udall's bill.
"That opens the possibility of highways designed to serve development," Danish said. "Let's put it this way - it's preserving the option of highways designed to serve development that would be preserved when we preserve another option - and there's a little too much option preservation in there for my liking."
ENS has also learned that the City of Arvada has hired Patton & Boggs, a high powered Washington based lobbying firm, to represent it in matters pertaining to the disposition of Rocky Flats and other federal issues.
"I assume they're not doing that in order to achieve a lower level of use than has been proposed in the Allard and Udall bills," Danish said.
Fellman told ENS that Danish and other critics had the misconstrued the intent of his letters.
"Paul Danish has told me to my face that he doesn't believe me when I say that we're not looking to develop Rocky Flats," Fellman said. "He's a little hesitant to say I'm a liar, but when Arvada says we're not interested in economic development, their position is that they don't believe us.
"I can't stress this enough - we are not looking for economic development or economic re-use at Rocky Flats," Fellman added. "There is the potential for new ideas that we haven't thought of yet, that might relate to alternative energy or some kind of educational or research issues. We just raised that [in the letters] because we think its good policy."
Fellman said that it would be unwise to pass federal legislation now that restricts how Rocky Flats could be utilized a full six years before the facility is scheduled to be closed.
Waste Treatment Control room at Rocky Flats (Photo courtesy Rocky Flats)
Fellman was also quick to reject criticism of the proposed 400 acre research/educational site. The Arvada mayor said that the number is insignificant.
"We had to pick some number, or everyone would have said, 'Oh my god, they want to develop the whole 6,000 acres!'" Fellman said. "I didn't spend more than two seconds thinking about that number. It just strikes me as amusing that people on this coalition have so little trust for anything that Arvada does. If we hadn't put any limitation on there. we'd be accused of wanting to develop the whole 6,000 acres."
Fellman also denied that he was trying to pave the way for the construction of a major highway through the middle of the Rocky Flats buffer zone by proposing changes to Udall's bill.
"That wasn't our intention at all," Fellman said. "We're not asking for any kind of corridor through the middle of the site - we're talking about some kind of corridor adjacent to the site, wherever it is determined is the best place to go."
Fellman also defended the hiring of Patton & Boggs, noting that lots of cities hire lobbying firms.
"We hired Patton Boggs to represent us on federal issues, not specifically Rocky Flats," he said. "We have a wide range of federal issues that we're dealing with. They're a respected firm with a lot of Washington connections."
Udall, reached by telephone in Washington, said he would study Fellman's letter carefully.
"I appreciate Arvada's continued involvement in the discussion of the future uses at Rocky Flats," Udall said. "We'll respond at an appropriate time."
Tanks for storage Of plutonium-containing solutions. (Photo courtesy Rocky Flats)
The Rocky Flats Plant, established in 1951, was a top-secret weapons production plant. The Plant manufactured triggers for use in nuclear weapons and purified plutonium recovered from retired weapons. Activities at the Plant included production, stockpile maintenance, and retirement and dismantlement.
Rocky Flats produced most of the plutonium triggers used in nuclear weapons from 1953 to 1964, and all of the triggers produced from 1964 until 1989, when production was suspended.
In addition to production processes, the Rocky Flats specialized in research concerning the properties of many materials that were not widely used in other industries, including plutonium, uranium, beryllium, and tritium.
----
LOCAL MAYOR PROMOTES ROCKY FLATS NUCLEAR WEAPONS SITE FOR RESEARCH OR SCHOOL
By Brian Hansen ARVADA, Colorado, June 26, 2000 (ENS) - The now mothballed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant - where the soil is still contaminated in spots with high levels of plutonium and other dangerous materials - might make a fine place to build a 400-acre research park or educational facility after it closes in a few years. For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-26-02.html
-------- idaho
USA Today
06/26/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/idmain.htm
Idaho Idaho Falls - A government panel looking at alternatives to an incinerator that would process plutonium-contaminated waste won't include environmental critics. The group Keep Yellowstone Free says it won't participate because the panel is not made up of qualified scientists. The panel was created as part of a settlement reached between the government and western Wyoming environmental groups over construction of radioactive waste processing facilities at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
-------- kentucky
Paducah plant set up secret radiation tests
June 26, 2000
Associated Press
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/jun00/328018.html
PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- Managers of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant were concerned that workers were being harmed by radioactive dust as far back as 40 years ago, so much so that they secretly arranged for tests on laboratory animals.
Fearing adverse publicity, some managers resisted government recommendations that they screen the workers for neptunium, a dangerous contaminant in the dust.
Documents obtained by The Courier-Journal of Louisville through the Freedom of Information Act show that over the years, officials of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant continued to discuss the hazards of various radioactive materials in the plant but never told workers of their concerns.
In the early 1980s, managers secretly compiled a list of 13 current and former workers who became ill with leukemia and allied diseases.
It wasn't until a lawsuit was filed last year by three workers that others say they learned they might have swallowed and inhaled dust tainted with highly radioactive materials that can cause cancer.
The highly radioactive elements came into the plant as contaminants in the spent nuclear fuel the plant re- energized from 1953 to 1977. During production, the contaminants were spread as fine dust throughout the tubing in the processing equipment.
Workers risked exposure during a neptunium-recovery project from 1958 to 1962. A June 1, 2000, draft report, in which the U.S. Department of Energy tracked the path of radioactive materials through the plant, said neptunium exceeded allowable limits in air samples taken during the recovery operation in 1959.
"There is no indication that respiratory protection was used during these activities,'' it said. "Urine samples collected and sent to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for analysis tested positive for neptunium.''
Workers also faced a high risk in the feed plant, where they prepared uranium for processing, and in maintenance shops when they were replacing pieces of equipment.
Managers for Union Carbide -- the company that then ran the federal government's diffusion plants near Paducah; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Oak Ridge, Tenn. -- were concerned about workers being exposed to neptunium, according to records released to The Courier-Journal.
L.B. Emlet, production manager for the uranium plants, wrote the Atomic Energy Commission in 1959 requesting animal studies on how workers metabolized neptunium.
"We find some data to indicate a discrepancy in the presently accepted excretion rate by the human organism,'' Emlet wrote. "We recommend that you initiate studies on this problem at some appropriate site.''
----
Plant managers secretly arranged for radiation tests on animals
June 26, 2000
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/012818.htm
PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- Managers of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant were concerned that workers were being harmed by radioactive dust as far back as 40 years ago, so much so that they secretly arranged for tests on laboratory animals. Fearing adverse publicity and trouble with the union, some managers resisted government recommendations that they screen the workers for neptunium, a dangerous contaminant in the dust.
Documents obtained by The Courier-Journal through the Freedom of Information Act show that over the years, officials of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant continued to discuss the hazards of various radioactive materials in the plant but never told workers of their concerns.
In the early 1980s, managers secretly compiled a list of 13 current and former workers who had gotten leukemia and allied diseases.
It wasn't until a lawsuit was filed last year by three workers that others say they learned they might have swallowed and inhaled dust tainted with highly radioactive materials which can cause cancer.
``Workers feel betrayed, and they're angry that these people put their health at risk,'' said David Fuller, president of local 5-550 of the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union. ``Workers resent the fact (that the government) decided to risk their health without telling them.''
The highly radioactive elements came into the plant as contaminants in the spent nuclear fuel the plant re-energized from 1953 to 1977. During production, the contaminants were spread as fine dust throughout the miles of tubing in the processing equipment.
Workers risked exposure during a neptunium-recovery project from 1958 to 1962. A June 1, 2000, draft report, in which the U.S. Department of Energy tracked the path of radioactive materials through the plant, said neptunium exceeded allowable limits in air samples taken during the recovery operation in 1959.
``There is no indication that respiratory protection was used during these activities,'' said the report, which The Courier-Journal obtained. ``Urine samples collected and sent to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for analysis tested positive for neptunium.''
Workers also faced a high risk in the feed plant, where they prepared uranium for processing, and in maintenance shops when they were replacing pieces of equipment.
``The units must be cut open with torches,'' said a 1960 memo from an Atomic Energy Commission medical-research official. ``The pieces certainly can't be handled gently or contained very readily because they are too massive.''
Managers for Union Carbide -- the company that then ran the federal government's diffusion plants near Paducah; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Oak Ridge, Tenn. -- knew and were concerned about workers' being exposed to neptunium, according to records released to The Courier-Journal under the Freedom of Information Act.
L.B. Emlet, production manager for the uranium plants, wrote the Atomic Energy Commission in 1959 requesting animal studies on how workers metabolized neptunium.
``We find some data to indicate a discrepancy in the presently accepted excretion rate by the human organism,'' Emlet wrote. ``We recommend that you initiate studies on this problem at some appropriate site.''
The following year, Richard C. Baker, a radiation-protection official at the Paducah plant, wrote a memo about a ``neptunium biology research project'' to the plant's medical director, Dr. A. Neal Ward. Baker said early animal-test results at the government's Hanford Laboratories in Washington state showed ``evidence of chemical rather than radiological toxicity'' after animals breathed high concentrations of ``Paducah dust.''
In 1961, Ward wrote in a memo that he had presented a summary of the ``problem of the neptunium contaminated process equipment at the Paducah plant'' to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Maryland. Ward suggested that ``further animal studies be conducted at Hanford.''
Just a year earlier, Ward had been among the Paducah managers resisting neptunium testing of workers, according to the 1960 memo from Dr. Bruner of the AEC. Bruner wrote that Ward and others ``were not receptive to the idea of sending 8 to 10 of the men'' with the most radiation in their urine to Oak Ridge for testing with a wholebody radiation counter.
``There are possibly 300 people at Paducah who should be checked out,'' Bruner wrote, ``but they hesitate to precede (sic) to intensive studies because of the union's use of this as an excuse for hazard pay.''
He added that he had urged Ward to obtain tissue samples from any potentially contaminated workers who die, so they could be tested for radiation, ``but I am afraid the policy at this plant is to be wary of the unions and any unfavorable public relations.''
The resistance to testing apparently faded by the mid-1960s. In a 1966 memo, Baker reported that whole-body counts of some workers had confirmed ``low exposure levels'' to neptunium -- though workers have said they were not told the results of such testing.
The memo said studies of rats exposed to dust containing small amounts of neptunium showed that they retained little of the element and rapidly cleared it from their lungs, suggesting it wasn't a health threat.
But Baker went on to note that higher levels of exposure to neptunium were possible in other ``phases of handling recycling of high burn-up nuclear fuel.''
In fact, the Energy Department reported earlier this year that its investigators had found documents indicating some Paducah workers received high-level exposure to neptunium.
In 1985, an Energy Department task force recommended a study to determine whether Paducah workers were exposed to plutonium, but it was never done.
----
Is contamination being underreported?
By JAMES R. CARROLL,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_back.html
PADUCAH, Ky. -- There is a sharp disagreement among state officials about whether the federal government is properly assessing contamination around the Paducah plant.
On one side, a state environmental official says that for years, the U.S. Department of Energy has been reporting radiological and metal contamination in a way that can minimize threats to the environment and public.
Albert Westerman, manager of the risk--assess-ment branch of the Kentucky Division of Environmental Services, said the DOE is in some cases using flawed background readings to come up with contamination measurements.
Kentucky's top radiation-safety official disputes Westerman's contention, as does the Energy Department.
To know whether radioactivity and metal concentrations are higher than those naturally occurring, scientists compare the readings of soil, water and air samples to "background" levels -- which are supposed to reflect the small amounts of radiation and metals normally found in Western Kentucky. Samples with readings higher than background levels mean there is contamination.
Westerman said in interviews last week that the DOE has distorted its measurements by using areas contaminated by the plant to determine the "background" levels -- including locations at the plant fence.
In a 1994 memorandum, he wrote: "Background level information has essentially only been collected from within (a contaminated) five mile radius; therefore, all comparisons to the background or reference sites are meaningless."
Last week, he said the presence of technetium, a man-made radioactive element, in the DOE's background samples is evidence that they were taken from a contaminated area.
Technetium, which does not naturally occur, shouldn't be in background samples, he said, because DOE is "the only show in town . . . that has that stuff."
Similarly, Westerman's 1994 memo criticized the DOE for using a Tennessee creek hundreds of miles away as a "reference site" for assessing PCB contamination in fish from creeks near the Paducah plant.
But John Volpe, manager of the state Radiation Health and Toxic Agents Branch of the Cabinet for Health Services, said his agency believes the DOE's background levels were "consistent for the earth's crust" in the Paducah region.
When DOE determined background levels in soil in 1997, it took samples from a 6-by-12-mile area west-northwest of the plant, a place considered upwind and less likely to have been affected by contamination from the plant.
Greg Cook, a spokesman for the DOE's cleanup contractor, Bechtel Jacobs Co., said the company "would not propose using any kind of background levels taken from suspect areas."
----
Monitoring gaps let hazards go undetected
Radiation left plant in air, water, vehicles, clothes
By JAMES R. CARROLL,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_mon.html
This air monitor and two others have been newly installed north of Drum Mountain. Although there are 162 air monitors in four buildings at the plant, the most populated parts of Paducah and other communities in the area -- representing up to 60,000 people -- are unprotected by air monitors.
C-J Photo: Michael Clevenger PADUCAH, Ky. -- Spotty monitoring of the air, water, soil and vegetation around the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant could be letting radioactive and chemical contamination spread undetected.
A Courier-Journal review of government documents and interviews with state and federal officials suggest that over the decades there has been an ineffective investigation of the dangers the plant poses outside the gates.
For example, tests for contamination in ground water and animals have not looked for most radioactive elements that are present at the plant, including plutonium.
Areas with the heaviest population, including Paducah and nearby communities, lack air monitors to detect radiation.
And, no radiation survey has been conducted despite evidence that:
Contaminated vehicles, people and their clothing left the uranium plant unimpeded.
Used vehicles were sold to the public from the plant without being routinely and thoroughly checked for radiation.
At least 66 tons of uranium was released into the air between 1952 and 1990.
Chemicals known to be radioactive or otherwise hazardous were dumped at sites away from the plant. The absence of monitoring in populated areas needs to be re-examined, David Michaels, the U.S. Department of Energy's assistant secretary for the environment, safety and health, said earlier this month.
"We should be working with public health agencies and the (federal) Health and Human Services Department, and the state of Kentucky and community groups to set some priorities and decide what's important to do."
CITY'S ONE MONITOR Testing is adequate, state official contends In the late 1980s, air monitoring for radiation in the city of Paducah consisted of instruments at a single house near Noble Park.
Now, although there are 162 air monitors in four plant process buildings operated by the United States Enrichment Corp., the most populated parts of Paducah and other communities in the area -- representing up to 60,000 people -- are unprotected by air monitors.
Seven state air monitors and five USEC air monitors have been set up close to the plant. (The state and USEC also each have one monitor farther from the plant for data comparisons.)
But by the state's own admission in a 1996 report, even those monitors, because of where they are, can detect only about 33 percent of the uranium and 70 percent to 80 percent of the technetium-99 discharged from plant operations.
The locations weren't changed, the report said, "because of contractual limitations."
John Volpe, manager of Kentucky's Radiation Health and Toxic Agents Branch, said he disagreed with the report's assessment.
More recent work by the Department of Energy, done in the past year, "indicates they are in acceptable locations," he said. "The monitors will catch (radiation) sources out there."
This assumes the monitors are always on. The Courier-Journal discovered last summer that the monitors had been turned off for a time because there was no one to record their data.
"I think they don't want to know," said Merryman Kemp, a Paducah resident and businesswoman who is on the citizens advisory board for the plant.
Volpe and other state officials insist there is no need to monitor in Paducah because there is no danger.
"I wouldn't have a bit of a problem taking my family and living on Ogden Landing Road (north of the plant)," he said.
GROUND WATER Studies seek few radioactive substances Possible radiation hazards in everything from water to vacant lots to vehicles also have gone undetected because of limited monitoring.
Bob Gross, left, and Jimmy Hicks, technicians with a consulting firm, took samples from a well in the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area this month to test for some contaminants.
C-J Photo: Michael Clevenger Ground-water testing has generally focused on the two known contaminants, because that allows scientists to track the spread of the underground pollution. Other than technetium, specific radioactive substances usually haven't been included in ground-water surveys.
Likewise, many animal studies have not tested for most radio-nuclides, according to information obtained under the state open-record law. The reason, according to UK scientists who did water and animal studies, was that government officials told them that radioactive contaminants other than technetium weren't a significant problem in the environment.
That view is changing in the aftermath of publicity in the past year about plutonium and other highly radioactive contaminants at the plant.
Alan Fryar, an assistant professor in the University of Kentucky's Department of Geological Sciences, said he plans to begin sampling ground water near the plant this summer for radioactive contaminants, including plutonium.
And no one has tested a lot on Palestine School Road about a mile and a half from the plant, though an aerial survey in 1990 found elevated radiation emissions there.
Once a site for storing radioactive cylinders of uranium, the lot has not been used in several years. The site is fenced, but the fence has holes in it, and there are now houses within 100 yards.
In response to Courier-Journal questions about the lot, Volpe said the state will conduct some tests.
In May, the citizens advisory board proposed to the DOE that people on selected land within 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) of the plant -- the distance at which traces of plutonium were found in 1989 -- should be eligible for government grants to test soil, water, vegetation and themselves.
In 1989 traces of neptunium were found in apples grown near the plant, and occasional tests have turned up traces of other radioactive elements in vegetables and crops.
Vegetables haven't been checked for radiation since 1995. "We weren't seeing anything," Volpe said.
A 1996 UK report, however, said Volpe's radiation-control program "should continue monitoring vegetables for Tc-99 (technetium) and other radio-nuclides . . . (for) the foreseeable future."
"We'd be glad to do anybody's gardens," Volpe said.
Efforts also have not been made to track down contaminated vehicles that may have been sold by the plant until the late 1980s.
In a June 1 draft report obtained by the newspaper, the Energy Department said, "Vehicle floorboards and seats were also spot-checked before sale to the public, but the process was informal and was not required by procedure. . . . It is possible that contaminated items were released to various parties during public sales."
Last Friday, Greg Cook, a spokesman for the department's cleanup contractor, Bechtel Jacobs Co., said the issue of possibly contaminated vehicles, and what to do about them, had arisen among company officials in the past week.
ACROSS THE RIVER Illinois official says he didn't get the message Another monitoring problem has been caused by a breakdown in communication.
A 1997 Kentucky report recommended that the DOE and environmental agencies check the municipal wells across the river in Metropolis, Ill., to make sure ground-water contamination from the Paducah plant was not a threat.
It turned out that no one ever talked to Rick Cobb, manager of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency's ground--water section.
Mark Donham, a member of the citizens' board who lives in Brookport, Ill., said he contacted the Illinois EPA about the testing, but Cobb said he didn't learn of the recommendation to check the Metropolis wells until a few weeks ago, from The Courier-Journal.
"We didn't know anything about that," he said. "Just knowing about this, we might want to get additional data from those wells."
Cobb said his latest samples were 5 years old.
The state of Kentucky approached the city about visiting the wells, but the Metropolis mayor's office denied access, according to Jack Conway, who heads Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton's interagency task force on the Paducah plant.
But Mayor Beth Clanahan said she has not denied Kentucky access to the wells, and she doesn't think her predecessor, Bill Kommer, did either. She was Kommer's administrative assistant until she became mayor in 1997.
"I think I would remember something like that," she said. "We have since told them (the Kentucky officials) they are welcome to come over and test. . . . Just let us know when they are coming, and we'll be there, too."
The city tested the wells this spring and "we found nothing," Clanahan said. "Everything's fine."
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Raccoons show scientists contaminants are accumulating
By JAMES R. CARROLL,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_bio.html
Because they eat almost anything, raccoons trapped at and near the plant give scientists valuable information.
Photo courtesy of Philip N. Smith PADUCAH, Ky. -- One morning in the spring of 1998, scientists checking a trap northeast of the uranium plant found an grizzled old raccoon inside.
The 11-pound animal, nicknamed Old Snaggletooth by researchers, was sedated and scanned for radiation.
Up near his neck, he registered radiation counts that were three times those of raccoons far from the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. While the amount wasn't lethal, it clearly indicated he had taken in radioactive materials from the plant.
The $325,000 bioaccumulation study conducted by Texas Tech University found that more than half of 44 raccoons examined had above-normal radiation emissions. Five raccoons' readings were double the normal background levels.
In addition, many raccoons showed significant levels of PCBs, which cause cancer in animals.
The findings are significant, because raccoons eat almost anything, so if there is contamination low in the food chain, it would show up in them.
Bioaccumulation, the way in which tiny amounts of deadly poisons can be consumed by creatures, then move up the food chain and concentrate in larger animals, has gotten little emphasis at Paducah.
But it has potentially grave implications for humans and the environment.
Philip N. Smith was born and raised 20 minutes from the plant and trained his bird dogs in the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area outside the plant fences.
He also was involved in the study of the raccoons as part of his Ph.D. work for Texas Tech, where he is a research assistant professor.
"There are two concerns," Smith said. "The first is with human health: Is there a potential for movement (of contamination) into humans? Considering the fact that you have a wildlife refuge surrounding the plant where hunting is very common -- I've done it: I've quail-hunted and I've rabbit-hunted there -- that has to be a concern."
"The second concern is with the ecology surrounding the plant," he said. "Do these compounds result in altered survival, altered fitness and altered reproductive capability of these organisms?"
The answers are unknown.
"To tell you the truth, there's still not enough data to tell," said Wayne Davis, chief of the environmental section of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
The study was supposed to pursue the bioaccumulation inquiry for two more years, but Bechtel Jacobs Corp., the U.S. Department of Energy's environmental contractor at the plant, stopped funding the project after the first year.
Walter Perry, spokesman for the DOE at its office in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said the raccoon money was used instead to investigate zinc contamination at one of the plant's discharge points. The DOE was able to do some work to prevent additional contamination, he said.
Perry said wildlife on the entire site will be studied.
Scientists will begin taking hair samples from bats this summer to see whether they are storing contamination, Davis said.
"Bats in general (eat) insects heavily, so if the insects are contaminated, bats are a logical receptor," Davis explained.
The Texas Tech researchers did not try to determine what substance produced the radiation readings in the raccoons. Smith said the animals may have ingested the radiation either through food or by grooming themselves after being in contaminated places on or around the plant grounds.
In fact, the radiation scans were added on to what was primarily a study of PCB contamination.
Old Snaggletooth didn't test very high for PCBs. But some of his neighbors did. Three female raccoons living on the east side of the plant had the highest PCB readings; one of the three was living in a building that is closed and is known to be contaminated.
While it was clear that the Paducah raccoons were exposed to PCBs, the scientists also found that some of the raccoons used for comparison, which were trapped at the Ballard Wildlife Management Area about a dozen miles northwest of the plant, also showed high levels of PCBs. Smith believes the Ballard animals probably got contaminants from the Ohio River, which could have received them from a number of places besides the uranium plant.
The scientists also found elevated amounts of metals in some raccoons, both at Paducah and at the Ballard location.
The raccoon studies, along with several conducted on fish, show evidence of bioaccumulation of contaminants, Davis said.
"The question now is: Is it an incidental thing, is it localized, or is it widespread?" he said. "There are a lot of questions that need to be answered."
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Cleanup: Elusive, terribly expensive
Current plan excludes some enormous tasks
By JAMES R. CARROLL,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_clen.html
Workers with protective gear and heavy equipment began to clean up Drum Mountain Friday afternoon. That huge task is just one of many involving contaminants.
Photo: Jim Roshan Special to the C-J PADUCAH, Ky. -- By 2070, people will most likely have set foot on Mars, elected a woman president and conquered cancer.
But the U.S. Department of Energy, or whatever it's called by then, will still be watching over at least part of the 3,400-acre Paducah uranium-plant site.
The Energy Department or contract employees will be cutting the grass and fixing fences, and, more important, monitoring the barren property for residual contamination from operations begun 118 years before to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and power plants.
The stark fact is that the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant isn't likely to be cleaned up, in the way most people understand the term, by the 2010 deadline. And it's not going to be anything more than an industrial site for decades to come.
The DOE has estimated it will cost $1.3 billion to eliminate all the contamination. Federal investigators recently questioned that estimate after finding that it left out much cleanup work. And state officials privately say that figure could more than triple.
Putting a final price tag on the cleanup will be impossible until officials know exactly what is on the site; whether it is spreading; what danger it poses; and what can be done to stop the contamination and to mitigate any environmental effects.
"There has been no thorough, independent review of the extent of air, land and water contamination," said Tom FitzGerald, an environmental lawyer and director of the Kentucky Resources Council. And that's the only way to know that the cleanup would fully protect off-site areas, he said.
Further complicating matters is the fact that significant portions of the contamination can't be attacked until the plant closes. Also, there are questions about the effectiveness of some cleanup methods.
"You're dealing with waste materials that will continue to be a significant environmental problem well beyond our lives," FitzGerald said.
DEADLINES, DOLLARS Critics say DOE budgets too little time, money The 2010 deadline the state has set for the Energy Department to clean up the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is the date by which Kentucky wants contaminated scrap metal and other waste removed, vacant buildings knocked down, buried waste hauled away and sources of pollution attacked.
Yet even if all that happens -- a question mark in itself -- the whole cleanup job at Paducah is very likely going to take much longer.
The 3,400-acre Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, seen from the air May 31, will take much longer to clean up than it did to build. One reason is that 496,000 tons of radioactive uranium hexaflouride is stored there.
C-J Photo: Michael Clevenger Right now, the scope, cost and length of the cleanup are only partially known. All of those factors -- but especially cost -- are going to dictate the pace of the cleanup work.
The DOE estimates that repairing the vast environmental damage will cost $1.3 billion. That includes removing or containing contamination of the ground water, surface water, soil and buried wastes, as well as treating and disposing of 52,000 drums of mixed waste, and decontaminating and demolishing two large, unused buildings.
The state puts the number at $2 billion, adding in the cost of treating and removing 37,000 cylinders of depleted uranium now stored at the site. In the end, though, some officials in Frankfort say, the final cost of cleanup could be as much as $4 billion.
"Dollars are what's gonna talk," said Rob Daniel, director of the state's Division of Waste Management, who said spending will need to be "well over $100 million a year."
So far, the nearly $400 million in federal money spent on cleanup at the site has cleaned up almost nothing. According to the Energy Department, much of that spending went to finding out what contaminants are at the site, and to trying to contain the most serious threats to worker and public health, like treatment of the plumes of ground water fouled with trichloroethylene and radioactive technetium.
Glossary Depleted or spent uranium: A byproduct of the enrichment process, this is a solid compound of unusable uranium and fluoride. It is stored in cylinders at the plant. Dosimeter: A tag worn to measure a person's exposure to radiation -- the dose received. Gaseous diffusion: A process that converts natural uranium into enriched uranium, which can be used either in weapons or as fuel for nuclear power plants. The process separates out the uranium-238 isotope, increasing the concentration of uranium-235, the form of uranium that fuels nuclear reactions. Hazardous waste: Toxic chemicals and metals, as well as scrap, old equipment, soil and other materials contaminated with these toxic substances. Mixed waste: A combination of hazardous and radioactive waste. Pyrophoric uranium: Uranium shavings that ignite if exposed to air or water. Radioactive waste: Unusable material -- including chemicals, used parts, soil, water, clothing, tools and scrap -- that emits radiation. Transuranic elements: Eleven elements, all radioactive and not naturally occurring, with atomic numbers greater than 92. They are neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium and lawrencium.
Critics say too much time has been lost, allowing contaminants to spread.
"The problem is serious," acknowledged Wendell Seaborg, the DOE's site manager at Paducah. "We may have tried too hard to know too much when we got started."
Now, under pressure from a very dissatisfied and impatient Kentucky delegation in Congress, the Clinton administration has begun funneling more money to Paducah with the aim of achieving noticeable cleanup at a site that has been sickening workers and contaminating the soil, water, air, animals and plants for almost five decades.
The first visible result of that increased spending is the start of the removal of Drum Mountain, a vast, 8,000-ton pile of crushed and contaminated barrels. The work began Friday.
But congressional investigators and Kentucky officials say still more money is needed to meet the 2010 deadline. The General Accounting Office, the non-partisan auditing arm of Congress, says that $124 million a year is needed, almost $50 million more than will be spent this year.
"2010 is realistic with a significant increase of federal funding for the cleanup job and increased focus from the Department of Energy," said Jack Conway, who heads Gov. Paul Patton's interagency task force on the Paducah plant."
GLARING OMISSIONS Cleanup plan leaves out some enormous problems Even if the 2010 deadline is met, the plant site would not really be clean.
The plant continues to produce radioactive waste and other contaminants, and the cavernous buildings and huge gaseous-diffusion equipment would eventually have to be cleaned and removed -- at an estimated cost of $1 billion.
And as long as the plant continues to operate, it may be impossible to reach the source of the contaminants leaking into the ground water. That source is believed to be under a building still in use.
Federal and state officials also have deep disagreements -- some of them being fought out in court -- over how "clean" the Paducah site should be.
The Energy Department and the state, for example, disagree over what level of radioactivity would be acceptable after the site is cleaned up. The DOE wants to leave some waste that the state wants removed.
There are numerous other items that are not reflected in the Energy Department cleanup plans but were found earlier this year by investigators from the General Accounting Office:
The 496,000 tons of uranium hexafluoride stored in canisters on the site need to be converted to a more stable form and removed. The cost to build and operate a conversion facility is estimated at $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion. The conversion process itself would take almost 25 years.
Sixteen unused buildings and structures have to be cleaned and removed. There are no cost or schedule estimates for such work.
A million cubic feet of scrap metal and waste stored all over the plant must be treated and removed. John Volpe, the state's top radiation-control official, said the buildings, scrap and waste could be cleaned up by the 2010 deadline -- if the DOE put that work on a fast track.
WILL METHODS WORK? Intended technology is unproven, GAO says The GAO auditors also said some cleanup projections relied on unproven technology -- for example, a plan to inject a gummy gel into the ground to intercept contaminated water underground.
If this new treatment doesn't work as planned, it actually could change the trichloroethylene (TCE), one of the two major contaminants in the water, into vinyl chloride, an even more toxic substance.
Another project calls for injecting steam underground to force the TCE back to the surface. Environmental Protection Agency officials told congressional auditors of problems with this technology at another site and said they weren't sure whether the geology under the Paducah plant would let it work there.
Existing efforts to remove contamination have already fallen short.
The "pump and treat" system that brings contaminated water to the surface, cleans it, then puts it back into the ground, didn't halt the flow of TCE and radioactive technetium to the Ohio River, nor did it stop the underground contaminants from spreading into surface streams.
Even if some of these technologies ultimately succeed, options for future uses of the site appear limited.
"This will never be an industrial site that will be . . . cleaned up where the general public would be interested in it," said Ric Ladt, chairman of the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization, who emphasized he was speaking only for himself and not for his federally funded economic-develop-ment organization.
The property could remain a uranium-enrichment plant, become some type of metal-recycling facility, or a place for heavy manufacturing that could use some of the buildings or materials already there, Ladt said.
Other possibilities include waste-water treatment or power generation, he said.
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Toxins altering life in fragile ecosystem
Official reassurances breed skepticism
By JAMES R. CARROLL and JAMES MALONE,
The Courier-Journal
June 26, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/uranium/legacyd2_env.html
This creek is closed off -- though the gate was open in May -- because of radiation. And that's not the only problem in streams: University of Kentucky scientists found the lead level multiplying.
C-J Photo: James Malone PADUCAH, Ky. -- Nearly every creature that swims, walks or flies near the Paducah uranium plant carries unseen poisons that have escaped from the nuclear-fuel factory.
>From the furtive mink to the darting sunfish to the soaring red-tailed hawk, nature's denizens now have new, lifelong companions -- chemical and radiological contamination, reports obtained by The Courier-Journal show.
Toxic chemicals have entered the Western Kentucky food chain, and abnormalities similar to birth defects have already shown up in at least one species.
A half-century of emitting, burying and dumping waste from the vast plant built to safeguard America has caused ecological damage for miles around, a 10-month investigation by the newspaper has found.
Streams, ponds, underground water, soil, plants and animals have been contaminated with some of the most dangerous chemicals known, including plutonium and dioxin.
The U.S. Department of Energy, Kentucky officials and the company that leases and runs the plant say environmental conditions at the site are improving. They note that polluted areas on plant grounds and in a surrounding wildlife area, which is used for hunting, fishing and camping, are marked and roped or fenced off.
And they have assured workers and the public that the contaminants pose no "imminent" danger.
"When I walk around that place, I am not worried for my health," said David Michaels, the assistant secretary of energy for the environment, safety and health. "At pres-ent, it (the threat to public health and workers) is extremely low. And I'm comfortable and confident saying that."
"I would not be afraid to live there," said Robert Logan, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection.
But the official judgment on the contamination is being met with deep and mounting skepticism from many plant workers, environmentalists and residents -- because much remains unknown about the extent of pollution and about past operations at the secretive plant, which was once part of the government's Cold War nuclear weapons complex.
"They are putting a soft spin on everything, the same as they've always done," said Merryman Kemp, a businesswoman who has lived in Paducah since 1965.
A member of a citizens' advisory board on the plant, she is worried that contamination is more widespread than is being admitted.
"I've been buying bottled water. I've quit eating the fruit off the two trees in my back yard," said Kemp, who lives about 10 miles from the plant. "I'd like to move."
BEYOND THE FENCE Records show pollution didn't stay within plant For nearly a year, The Courier-Journal has examined thousands of pages of public and secret government records obtained -- through state and federal freedom-of-information laws -- internal plant documents and files from lawsuits, and has interviewed state, federal and plant officials, scientists and community leaders. The findings include these:
Fish studied by University of Kentucky scientists for at least 12 years show increasing contamination with various toxic metals. A 1998 UK report found that Big Bayou Creek and other streams near the plant contain 50 to 100 times as much lead as they did a decade earlier.
Dioxin -- the potent chemical that caused cancer among the residents of New York state's Love Canal neighborhood and was so prevalent in Times Beach, Mo., the town had to be destroyed -- was found in soil samples from five drainage areas outside the plant fence in the early 1990s. The levels at Paducah weren't on the scale of Love Canal or Times Beach, but they exceeded standards the state had set for the Energy Department. The contaminated soil is now stored at the plant in more than 11,000 55-gallon drums, most of which are buried.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which cause cancer and other diseases in animals and possibly in humans, have been found at levels ranging from traces to significant concentrations in fish, hawks, mice, rats, mink, raccoons and a bobcat.
Incomplete records suggest that almost 9 ounces of highly radioactive plutonium were released into the air and water and buried at the plant, greater than the amounts released at most other Department of Energy nuclear sites. Traces of plutonium and neptunium were found in soil samples 11 years ago as far as nine miles from the plant, and traces of neptunium were found in apples, but there apparently was no further investigation.
Streams that flow off site are now believed to be carrying small amounts of radioactive material into the Ohio River, the DOE recently conceded. Though diluted by the Ohio's huge flow, radioactive substances may build up in sediment and enter the food chain.
Underground, three plumes of water contaminated with tri-chloro-ethyl-ene, a suspected carcinogen, and radioactive technetium are spreading northward from the plant, and one is believed to have reached the river. Traces of contaminants have penetrated as far as 14 stories below ground. The Paducah plant is not the worst of the sites on the nation's Superfund list -- a sort of Fortune 500 of environmental problems -- at least based on what is now known.
The West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area adjoins the uranium plant (background). Earlier this year 11 miles of rope was strung to warn of radioactive debris dumped in the wildlife area. Veterinarian Johnny Myers worries that the area will be closed if the government doesn't clean it up.
C-J Photo: Michael Clevenger But there are gaping holes in the Energy Department's data about pollution. For example, the DOE acknowledged last summer in its plan for attacking surface-water contamination that "documentation pertaining to specific releases from the (plant's) storm sewer system currently is not available."
In a February letter, the Environmental Protection Agency called the lack of information on the "primary pathways for contaminants . . . completely inappropriate."
A former top Energy Department official said he thinks the agency is concealing dangers to workers and the public. The DOE thinks it can get away with this, charged Robert Alvarez, a consultant who was formerly a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, because it perceives Paducah as comparatively remote, geographically and politically.
"I would apply what I call the East Hampton test to this," said Alvarez, referring to the swank summer resort of the rich and powerful on New York's Long Island.
"If you found this in East Hampton, do you think there would be 'no imminent danger?' "
209 TROUBLE SPOTS 'The place is unique,' U.S. energy official says Over the decades, contaminants spread from the plant through wholesale dumping and discharges of radioactive and other hazardous waste into the air and water.
So far, 209 contaminated sites have been located on plant grounds and nearby land. Earlier this year a contractor strung 11 miles of rope to warn of radioactive debris dumped in the neighboring West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area.
Wendell Seaborg, who became the DOE site manager in Paducah this year, said, "The place is unique in my experience because there was contamination in an area where the public had access."
Paducah veterinarian Johnny Myers, who runs retrievers in the wildlife area, said concerns about the contamination contributed to a 50 percent drop in attendance at a recent dog field trial.
David Evans, who trains retrievers weekly on public land near the plant, says he is not worried about the contamination.
C-J Photo: James Malone He worries the area will be closed if the government doesn't clean it up. "We have a gold mine here," he said.
David Evans has the same fear. Evans said he has trained dogs in the wildlife ara for years and has not been concerned about pollution.
He worked at the plant for seven years and his father worked there for about 30 years.
"If they show me proof of a danger, then I'd be thinking about it," he said. "My major concern is that it could close. It's the only area available to work dogs."
Disposal practices considered acceptable in the 1950s, 1960s and even into the 1970s were looser than they are today. Indeed, the dumping dated to the operations of the Kentucky Ordnance Works, an ammunition plant, on the same site during World War II. It left chunks of TNT behind.
The TNT, spread over "a few acres" in the wildlife area, is now fenced off. It is "pretty stable" but would ignite if heated, said Gary Chisholm of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' district office in Louisville. "You just don't want kids or hunters picking the stuff up or walking home with it."
After the uranium plant opened, radioactive and hazardous waste, including uranium and asbestos, went into what had been a dump for construction debris, according to an Energy Department draft report dated June 1, 2000.
Air and water pollution were not much of a concern in the plant's first decades, either. All kinds of chemicals flowed into the streams from what eventually totaled 19 pipes and ditches. For example, in a report released in February on past practices at Paducah, the Energy Department said tritium, a radioactive substance used in nuclear-bomb triggers, had been found in 1991 in five drainage flows.
The report also said contaminated gases were released for decades. "The magnitude of these unmonitored releases is unknown," the DOE said. Past estimates of how much radiation reached the public are clearly "questionable," it said.
The DOE estimated, however, that 66 tons of uranium spewed from the stacks between 1952 and 1990. Although uranium is a millionth as radioactive as plutonium, it's also a toxic metal that can harm the kidneys.
The agency also said radioactively contaminated emissions apparently had been discharged into the air at night, when they were less visible.
Dumping, burying and discharging wastes on the plant grounds, plus major leaks under buildings, created another path of contamination -- into the ground water.
The underground plumes of polluted water have become well-known to hydrologists and geologists nationwide as "the mother of all plumes," said Jack Stickney, a geologist with the Kentucky Geological Survey.
The chief contaminants in the plumes are trichloroethylene (TCE), a degreasing solvent that can break down into even more toxic substances such as vinyl chloride; and tech-ne-tium, a radioactive element.
TCE, the Energy Department's Michaels said, is "probably of greater concern than the radioactivity in some cases."
A June 1999 investigation conducted for DOE found severe contamination in the ground at four places around a repair and machine shop at the plant. The sites pose risks of cancer and toxicity that "exceed the accepted standards" of the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the investigators wrote.
They found TCE, PCBs, neptunium, cesium, beryllium and other toxic metals. In two of the areas -- one a fifth of a mile long and another a sixth of a mile long -- more than 6.3 million cubic feet of soil was estimated to be contaminated, enough to fill about the first 17 floors of the 102-story Empire State Building. One boring found toxic metals in soil below the water table at levels as much as 400 times normal.
Contaminants also have been spread in other ways, according to three current employees who filed a whistle-blower lawsuit last year. They allege that radioactive salt was used to melt ice on roads, employees tracked contamination off the site to their cars and homes, and vehicles transported radioactive materials right into the heart of Paducah.
New standards, monitoring and controls, as well as technological improvements, have decreased pollution from the plant, although it still occurs and sometimes exceeds what is allowed under permits from the state.
Earlier this month, the state cited United States Enrichment Corp., which leases and operates the plant, for high levels of toxic chemicals at three discharge points outside the plant fence. The releases, checked during March and April, were six to 27 times the state-allowed toxicity.
USEC must determine what is causing the high readings and report to the state by mid-July.
INCREASING EFFECTS 'Nearly every fish . . . shows signs of contamination' The contamination reaches into nearly every organism near the Paducah plant that has been tested.
Fish, for example, have been studied for at least 12 years. And the contamination in those fish is generally rising, UK studies show.
"Nearly every fish we looked at shows signs of contamination," said Wesley Birge of the University of Kentucky's School of Biological Sciences.
A 1998 report on stone-roller minnows near the plant found that "metal pollution in the Bayou Creek system, especially Big Bayou Creek, now exceeds by a considerable margin that reported in 1988."
At one site of plant effluents, not one minnow embryo survived.
The report said a host of metals -- beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, silver and zinc -- are moving downstream and were found in the fish at levels higher than in 1988. A study of the underwater vegetation minnows eat found high metal concentrations.
The DOE's annual environmental report for 1998 noted that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), "the highest potential ecological concern to fish-eating birds and mammals," were present in sunfish and stone-rollers at twice the level in fish from a less polluted creek farther from the plant, meaning the PCBs were coming from the plant. Copper, lead, selenium and uranium also were found in the fish.
The DOE report said PCB levels in fish in Little Bayou Creek "continue to be low." But fish the state recently sampled in the area had almost 10 times the state PCB standard for fish that can be safely eaten, said Albert Westerman, a branch manager in the Kentucky Division of Environmental Services.
Another UK study in 1998 found that PCBs were moving through the food chain. Some red-tailed hawks contained enough of those chemicals to perhaps decrease the hawk population in the plant area. A 1997 Clemson University study showed that white-footed mice and marsh rice rats collected around the uranium plant also contained PCBs. The contamination also showed up in the livers and kidneys of minks.
PCBs also have been found in raccoons and a bobcat. Copper, iron, manganese and zinc have been detected in rabbits. The muscles and livers of some deer have revealed exposure to silver, beryllium, nickel and vanadium.
Radioactive material, too, has been found in animals on the site and around the plant. A 1990 DOE inspection report states that trace quantities of neptunium were found in deer, rabbits, and squirrels. Other annual environmental reports tell of finding uranium, strontium, technetium and, starting in 1993, plutonium in deer.
The 1998 UK minnow study found so much toxic metal in the water and sediment of streams near the plant that "metal pollution may pose a threat to environmental health as far downstream as the Bayou Creek confluence with the Ohio River." Such spreading contamination should be given "high priority," the study said.
The implications for life in the Ohio River are obvious, said Birge, one of the authors of the minnow study.
"There's little doubt the Ohio River is receiving contaminants," he said. "That means you will see further downstream sediment contamination in fish."
Most ominous are the abnormalities found in one type of tiny insect.
A 1992 environmental report by UK said that places where eyes form on the larvae of midges sometimes weren't properly defined, were fused together or were missing. In some cases, the eyes were forming in the wrong places, the study found.
"In humans, we would call it birth defects," Birge said.
At one location on Big Bayou Creek, a third of the larvae had eyespot abnormalities. At six other locations, between 6 percent and 17 percent of larvae were abnormal.
But no studies have been done around Paducah to determine whether the pollution is causing genetic mutations, Birge said. That would be more serious, because animals pass such changes on to their offspring.
The DOE's Michaels said in an interview that the contamination is insufficient to have a significant impact on wildlife.
"My sense is that none of the exposures are at any level where we can expect any sort of genetic shift in the biota, in the flora and the fauna," said Michaels, who is an epidemiologist with 20 years' experience dealing with occupational- and environmental-health issues.
"I think the bigger concern is that the contamination of either animals or plants will lead to human disease. And that's the reason we try to control that."
DIOXIN Toxin-laced wood drew salvage hunters to dump One of the most deadly carcinogens known also has leached from the plant.
Dioxin was in wood preservative used on the redwood linings of cooling towers at the Paducah plant, according to Greg Cook, spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., the DOE's environmental contractor.
Records of 1986 tests on the wood show dioxin was not one of the substances looked for. The wood was put in landfills at the plant.
The landfills were accessible to the public and the dioxin-laced redwood "attracted salvaging from the public and possibly workers," said the Energy Department's June 1 draft report.
The dioxin from the wood had contaminated enough soil at four plant sites by 1990 that the state required the soil to be excavated and put in drums. The dirt contained as much as 4.5 times the dioxin that the state allowed.
Of the more than 11,000 barrels of dioxin-contaminated soil, about 3,000 are stored above ground, primarily because they also contain radioactive contaminants. The rest of the drums of soil were crushed and put into a landfill at the plant.
USEC checked for dioxin in its effluents in 1994, 1997 and 1999 and found nothing, according to company spokeswoman Georgann Lookofsky.
Bechtel's Cook said the Energy Department has found no spread of dioxin contamination, either.
Animal studies have shown that even at extremely low levels, in parts per trillion, dioxin causes reproductive and immunological disorders as well as damage to growth glands and the liver.
PLUTONIUM 9 ounces are missing; traces are in soil, water Eleven years ago, traces of plutonium and another highly radioactive element, neptunium, were detected in soil 8 miles and 9.3 miles from the site.
The samples were taken at locations south and west of the plant. The wind rarely blows in those directions over the plant. No samples were taken at similar distances in other directions from the plant.
A 1990 internal memo from DOE's Oak Ridge office said "the significance of trace quantities of trans-uran-ics in the environment did not appear to have been fully evaluated."
The memo said traces of neptunium also were found in apples grown nearby. Radioactive substances also have shown up in vegetable gardens and crops near the plant. In 1992 Kentucky scientists detected radioactive technetium in turnip greens, beets, lettuce, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, corn and squash.
Plutonium, often referred to as the world's deadliest poison, came into Paducah in minute quantities as an accidental byproduct of "impure" uranium that had been used to fuel reactors that made plutonium at other DOE facilities. The DOE estimated the total amount of plutonium at Paducah through the years at 328 grams, or 11.6 ounces.
The whereabouts of three-quarters of that plutonium, almost 9 ounces, is unknown, other than evidence of it in the environment.
In its February report on Paducah, the DOE acknowledged that plutonium and neptunium were released into surface water, especially from 1956 to 1970, and that the amounts were "significantly" underestimated. The department did not say by how much.
Traces of plutonium also were found in ground water outside the plant fence, the DOE said last October.
The February report said plutonium and neptunium also could have been released into the air, though such releases were "considered to be insignificant." However, the DOE has said there was no specific monitoring for air emissions of those two elements.
The 11.6 ounces of plutonium that passed through the plant is what could reasonably be inferred from the plant's poor record-keeping. Alvarez said that number is just a guess. A draft DOE report obtained this month by The Courier-Journal, however, said a new analysis confirmed the accuracy of the earlier estimate.
Plutonium is so dangerous that inhaling as little as 3 millionths of an ounce -- the weight of just one of 6,250 equal slices of an aspirin tablet -- would guarantee fatal lung cancer in a human being.
Put another way, the 11.6 ounces of plutonium known to have passed through the Paducah plant was enough to kill more than 4.1 million people -- more than all the men, women and children in Kentucky -- if they each had inhaled just that speck.
"You can expect that there was probably some exposure to the public from these radio-nuclides that was avoidable," said Edwin Lyman, scientific director at the Nuclear Control Institute, a non-profit research organization based in Washington.
"It doesn't matter how little plutonium there is in the body; no one wants it there. Once you inhale it, it's there for a long time and gets incorporated into the bones."
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Salvation came with a price Uranium plant went from godsend to nightmare
Evansville Courier & Press
06/26/00
By The Associated Press
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200006/26+salvation062600_news.html+20000626
When the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission decided in 1951 to build a gaseous-diffusion plant to enrich uranium on 5,000 acres of swampy land in Western Kentucky, it was a godsend to the residents of Paducah.
The Ohio River city was still struggling to get back on its feet from the devastating 1937 floods. The plant, however, changed all that.
Overnight, Paducah became one of the nation's fastest-growing cities. Residents took to calling it "Boomtown," and Life magazine reportedly came to do a photo essay.
"It turned the community on its ear," said John E.L. Robertson, a local historian and retired professor. "It got Paducah moving."
But Paducah's salvation also came with a price.
Fifty years after welcoming the uranium plant into their community, residents are beginning to believe the unthinkable: that their patriotic toil at the height of the Cold War has created a toxic, radioactive badland in their midst.
Though federal and state officials have reassured workers and the public that the contamination poses no "imminent" danger, a 10-month investigation by The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., shows there are many reasons to be troubled.
Neither the companies that have operated the plant nor the U.S. Department of Energy has given the public a clear picture of the scope and virulence of the problems arising from enriching uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors.
Sloppy safety practices, concealed health concerns, and decades of ignorance, expediency and poor oversight have left workers, nearby wildlife and the land itself damaged by chemical and radioactive toxins.
Contamination from radioactive and hazardous chemicals, including plutonium, has spread well beyond the plant's chain-link fences. Biological abnormalities have been found in one species of insect, and disease-causing PCBs and toxic metals are moving through the animal food chain.
Dozens of former workers have lung damage that has been partly attributed to inhaling asbestos and other chemicals on the job.
In the 1980s, as wells were capped because the drinking water had become contaminated and suspicions grew over worker illnesses and deaths, a few began to buck the taboo against questioning the plant.
Plant managers secretly compiled a list of 13 current and former workers who had gotten leukemia and allied diseases.
It wasn't until a lawsuit was filed last year by three workers that others say they learned they might have swallowed and inhaled dust tainted with highly radioactive materials which can cause cancer.
"Workers feel betrayed, and they're angry that these people put their health at risk," said David Fuller, president of Local 5-550 of the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union. "Workers resent the fact (that the government) decided to risk their health without telling them."
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Can't anybody keep a secret?
The nuclear leakage at the Energy Department keeps getting worse
US News & World Reports
U.S. News 6/26/00
By Warren P. Strobel and Douglas Pasternak
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000626/nuke.htm
The scene was both shocking and shockingly familiar: yet another major security lapse, and thundering senators demanding answers-and maybe heads-from apologetic bureaucrats. The last year has seen State Department computers go missing, suspected Chinese infiltration of U.S. nuclear labs, and a former CIA chief caught taking his secret-stuffed computer home. What now?
This: Two computer hard drives the size of soap bars, filled with information about U.S. and foreign nuclear weapons, disappeared from a supposedly secure 3-by-10-foot vault at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The hard drives are used by the Energy Department's Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), trained to find and disarm errant nuclear weapons.
Booby trap. When they turned up at week's end behind a photocopying machine in a secure area of the lab's nuclear weapons design bureau, X Division, it wasn't much comfort. Officials didn't know who had moved the drives, whether they'd been tampered with, and why it took more than three weeks to report the loss, discovered May 7 during an evacuation because of an approaching fire. The drives contain "raw and unadultered nuclear design information" that could help someone develop a bomb, says a U.S. official. Even worse, they might help terrorists build a booby trap in an existing bomb to foil NEST's attempts to disable it.
And a new report by the department's inspector general details yet another security blunder with hard drives, this one at the department's Savannah River site in South Carolina. Drives and floppy disks with unclassified, but still sensitive, nuclear data were sold for surplus. They were being readied for shipment to China when a local businessman noticed the mistake and alerted officials.
The FBI is still investigating the Los Alamos fiasco. But there was rapid political fallout, with Energy Secretary Bill Richardson the target (box, Page 18). Past security breaches "he's been able to put off on some predecessor. Not this one," acknowledged a White House official.
Congress thought it had ordered Energy's security debacles fixed last year, establishing a new agency in the department to oversee the vast nuclear weapons complex. But the White House and Richardson didn't want to cede authority to the National Nuclear Security Administration. With exquisitely bad timing, news of the missing drives broke as a fellow Democrat, Sen. Richard Bryan of Nevada, was holding up confirmation (many suspect at Richa