------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
IAEA list of world's nuclear power stations
Repaired nuclear sub leaves Gibraltar
Nuclear Fuel Firm Fights for Russia Deal
Nuclear power comes "clean" in US ad campaign
Durakovic's depleted uranium study
Austria says Czech nuclear shutdown confirms fears
New Administration Draws Europe's Ire
EU Delegation Visits Chechnya
To European Eyes, It's America the Ugly
Israel death squad defies call for truce
EU: N. Korea Talks Hinge on Missiles
Missile defense policy flawed
Misapprehensions About Missile Defense
No to Missile Defense
Russian Scientists Nervously Await U.S. Decision
NRC to meet Consumers on possible Mich nuke violation
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste review moves forward
DOE report details threats to site
New burial design may be more dangerous
DOE delays seeking Yucca license:
Dems Criticize Bolton Nomination
When She Talks Arms, Washington and Moscow Listen
US nuclear power industry showing new signs of life
Nuclear Power's New Day
MILITARY
Israelis seize ship loaded with weapons
Israel: Boat With Weapons Captured
Western Officials in Bosnia Town Rescued
Macedonia on verge of declaring war
Macedonia Again Shells Albanians in Hills
U.S. Loses Seat on U.N. Committee
The Underground Military
Air Force to Head U.S. Military Space Efforts
Rumsfeld Makes Air Force Changes
Pentagon Plans Major Changes in U.S. Strategy
Navy wins battle vs. Pentagon to keep big aircraft carriers
Defense Strategy Review Nearly Done
OTHER
BPA to buy 150 MW of wind power in US Northwest
Polluted HK looks to the winds for cleaner power
Calif. Grid Operators Issue Warning
White House energy report stirs industry, greens to act
Pipeline Expansion Approved in West
Montanans Weigh Options on a Toxic Legacy
U.S, Europe plan to dump toxic wastes in Nigeria
White House Debates Fate of Pollution-Control Suits
Foot - and - Mouth Disease Hits Brazil
Water Parasite Could Sicken Hundreds Across Canada
Bush Calls More Open Trade a 'Moral Imperative' for U.S.
Bush Cites Free Trade Benefits
Research: Prison Worker Sensitivity
Cincinnati Police Officer Charged With Negligent Homicide
Man Freed After Wrongful Conviction
Beijing Jails a U.S.-Based Chinese Entrepreneur
U.S. Resumes Reconnaissance Flights Off China's Coast
U.S. Resumes Surveillance Flights Off China
Terror Trial Defendant Stands Firm
ACTIVISTS
Nuclear resisters sentenced to prison
-------- NUCLEAR
IAEA list of world's nuclear power stations
UK: May 7, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10731
LONDON - Below is a list of the number of nuclear reactors operating in 2000, according to the United Nations' atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
country/ number of reactors/ capacity electricity supplied
Argentina 2 935 MW 7.26 percent
Armenia 1 376 MW 33.00 percent
Belgium 7 5,712 MW 56.75 percent
Brazil 2 1,855 MW 1.45 percent
Bulgaria 6 3,538 MW 45.00 percent
Canada 14 9,998 MW 11.80 percent
China 3 2,167 MW 1.19 percent
Czech Rep. 5 2,569 MW 18.50 percent
Finland 4 2,656 MW 32.15 percent
France 59 63,073 MW 76.40 percent
Germany 19 21,122 MW 30.57 percent
Hungary 4 1,755 MW 42.19 percent
India 14 2,503 MW 3.14 percent
Japan 53 43,491 MW 33.82 percent
Korea, Rep of 16 12,990 MW 40.74 percent
Lithuania 2 2,370 MW 73.68 percent
Mexico 2 1,360 MW 7.92 percent
Netherlands 1 449 MW 4.00 percent
Pakistan 2 425 MW 1.65 percent
Romania 1 650 MW 10.86 percent
Russia 29 19,843 MW 14.95 percent
South Africa 2 1,800 MW 6.67 percent
Slovakia 6 2,408 MW 53.43 percent
Slovenia 1 676 MW 37.38 percent
Spain 9 7,512 MW 27.63 percent
Sweden 11 9,432 MW 39.00 percent
Switzerland 5 3,192 MW 35.50 percent
UK 35 12,968 MW 21.94 percent
Ukraine 13 11,207 MW 47.28 percent
U.S. 104 97,411 MW 19.83 percent
Reactors under construction
Argentina 1 592 MW
China 8 6,420 MW
Czech Rep 1 912 MW
Iran 2 2,111 MW
Japan 3 3,190 MW
Korea 4 3,820 MW
Romania 1 650 MW
Russia 3 2,825 MW
Slovakia 2 776 MW
Ukraine 4 3,800 MW.
-------- britain
Repaired nuclear sub leaves Gibraltar
Washington Times
World Scene
May 7, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010508-79758440.htm
GIBRALTAR -- A repaired British nuclear-powered submarine left Gibraltar yesterday, nearly a year after it docked on Spain´s southern tip.
The HMS Tireless departed with 116 crew members aboard. Its destination was not immediately known.
The Tireless arrived in Gibraltar on May 19, 2000, after a crack was found in its cooling system. Its presence provoked concern and anger from residents and from Spaniards who said they feared an environmental disaster and staged repeated protests demanding the vessel be repaired in Britain.
-------- business
Nuclear Fuel Firm Fights for Russia Deal
By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 7, 2001; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51254-2001May6?language=printer
These should be banner days for USEC Inc., the Bethesda-based company that is the only American supplier of enriched uranium for commercial nuclear power plants.
The price of USEC's publicly traded stock has nearly doubled since December to close at $8.19 on Friday, recovering about half what it lost after the company was spun off from the government in 1998. Prices for the enriched uranium USEC sells have climbed nearly 20 percent in a year, according to UX Consulting Co. data. With support from the Bush administration, the outlook for the nuclear power industry has brightened.
Most important, says USEC, its long-term purchases of nuclear fuel reprocessed from Russian missiles -- a key part of USEC's revenue stream -- are on schedule, eliminating the equivalent of 4,500 Russian nuclear warheads so far while contributing $1.7 billion in U.S. currency to Russia.
"I wonder when we're going to start celebrating," USEC President William H. "Nick" Timbers said plaintively at a conference Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the District.
Not yet, it appears.
USEC's handling of its dual missions -- commercial supplier of U.S. reactor fuel and strategic conduit for decommissioned Russian warheads -- is as controversial as ever.
And now there is a new player, the Bush administration.
USEC needs White House approval of a new version of the Russian deal that is widely considered to be vital to the company's financial survival.
If approved by U.S. and Russian governments, it would lower the price USEC pays Russia for the converted warhead material, at least initially.
Profit on the Russian transactions are needed to offset losses on sales of enriched fuels from USEC's plant in Paducah, Ky., according to outside analysts. USEC also proposes to buy some commercial Russian nuclear fuel.
But some of USEC's adversaries and critics hope to block the agreement with Russia.
USEC's financial gain would come at Russia's expense, threatening to undermine the Megatons to Megawatts warhead reduction program, critics say.
Those critics warn that if Russian officials approved the agreement and later became dissatisfied with prices, they might cut deliveries of the reprocessed fuel and threaten the U.S.-Russian agreement to reduce nuclear arms.
"It's highly dangerous from a national energy point of view and potentially disastrous for our nonproliferation agreement," Thomas Neff of MIT Center for International Studies said at Thursday's conference.
Timbers replied that the new pricing plan has been endorsed by USEC's Russian counterpart, and is also supported by senior Russian officials.
"We expect the pricing agreement to become final before 2002," Timbers said recently. "Getting the terms right is very important to the company and its future success."
Neff challenged Timbers on that point at Thursday's conference, citing his own recent conversations with senior Russian officials. "The price is not high enough," he said. "It is not defensible in their political system." USEC is trying to get the Bush administration to help force the Russians to accept the new pricing plan, Neff said.
"We disagree very, very strongly," Timbers replied.
A Bush administration spokesman said no decision had been made on the plan.
Ominously for USEC, one of its sharpest critics, former Harvard professor Richard Falkenrath, is on the Bush administration's National Security Council. He turned down a request for an interview.
Falkenrath has called the privatization of USEC "a dreadful error," arguing that USEC's commercial interests in profiting from the Russian agreement, and U.S. interest in reducing the Russian weapons stockpile as much as possible, were at odds.
Falkenrath has argued that the government should reacquire USEC and resume direction of the Megatons to Megawatts program.
The Bush administration might find that step more trouble than it's worth, said Bob Hoehn, head of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. The privatization has "worked pretty well," he said. "It's brought a lot of money to the Russians.
"By and large, people in the National Security Council rank this among the best of the cooperative nuclear programs," Hoehn said. "I'd be shocked if they were preparing to cause the deal to fail. Whether USEC is the right entity to be implementing this deal is a question. At this point, I don't see any clear alternative." But the U.S. utility industry does.
Some of the largest U.S. energy companies, headed by Chicago-based Exelon Corp., would like to replace USEC as the federal government's commercial agent for the Russian program, or share that assignment with USEC. "If that were available, we'd be interested," an Exelon official said.
USEC hasn't shaken off critics in Congress and in labor unions who opposed the company's decision to close one of its two uranium enrichment processing plants last year, a step that USEC says will cut its operating costs substantially. Closing the plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, and abandoning a research project on a new enrichment process, reneged on promises that were part of the government's agreement with USEC when the company was spun off, those opponents charge.
Even some USEC shareholders are complaining, despite the stock's improvement.
Analysts say the higher share price is partly because of the preliminary success of trade complaints that USEC has lodged with U.S. agencies. The company contends that European competitors had been selling nuclear fuel in this country at unfairly low prices, violating trade laws. If USEC wins the final rounds in those cases late this year or early in 2002, the European producers would be socked with penalty duties that could sharply raise the prices they would have to charge on U.S. sales, or force them out of the American market altogether.
That would leave USEC's remaining processing plant and the Russians as the sole suppliers for American nuclear plants, a prospect that upsets influential domestic energy companies and some leading nuclear nonproliferation experts.
The other, more important, reason for USEC's improved stock price is investors' hopes that the company may be taken over, said David M. Schanzer, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia. In spinning off USEC, the government restricted the ability of one investor gaining too much control of USEC's stock. But that restriction comes off in a month.
Anticipating that change, USEC's board recently approved anti-takeover provisions that nettled several institutional investors who took part in a recent company conference call.
One investor asked whether the change was a tactic "to entrench management and let shareholders dangle."
No, Timbers said. The anti-takeover measures are customary tactics, designed to preserve USEC's bargaining power and block coercive moves by a would-be buyer, he said.
The anti-takeover provisions haven't prompted investors to sell USEC shares, however. "The serious players won't be deterred by this," Schanzer said.
At the Carnegie conference, Timbers complained that USEC's role in reducing Russia's weapons stockpile had been ignored, while academics and the media focus on USEC's financial challenges.
"Why do we keep wringing our hands and trying to fix things that ain't broke? Let our shareholders worry about the [USEC's profit] margin," Timbers said.
----
Nuclear power comes "clean" in US ad campaign
USA: May 7, 2001
Story by Janet McGurty
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10727&newsDate=7-May-2001
NEW YORK - When you think of nuclear power, what comes to mind? The looming towers of Three Mile Island? The eerie desolation after the Chernobyl disaster? Or hip young things with cellphones and scooters?
The Nuclear Energy Institute's latest print ad campaign features a young girl with all the accoutrements of her generation - down to shimmering blue nail polish and a glittery stick-on face tattoo.
The sky is blue. The clouds are fluffy and white. The headline reads "Clean air is so 21st century" and it goes on to say "Our generation is demanding lots of electricity...and clean air."
"It's saying those old, green people are so twentieth century," said Barbara Lippert, ad critic for "Adweek Magazine."
Not exactly, counters Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the industry lobbying group Nuclear Energy Institute.
"The purpose of the ads are to remind the American people and policymakers that we are here."
The campaign is part of an effort by the nuclear power industry to ride on coattails of the resurgence in solar and hydroelectric power - the darlings of the clean, green power generation set - to create a triumvirate of emission-free power producers in the minds of Americans.
And they appear to have some degree of success. On the NEI's Web site (http://www.switchonamerica.com), respondents voted an overwhelming "Yes" to the question "Are you willing to use more emission-free electricity, like hydroelectric, nuclear and solar power?"
In the United States, emission-free power sources provide about one-third of all electricity. Of that, nuclear power provides about two-thirds, or about a fifth of all electricity in the United States.
CHENEY FACTOR
"They are lobbying for a share of the Cheney pie," said Linda Gunter, Communications Director with Safe Energy Communication Group, which calls itself an "active watchdog for false, misleading and inaccurate energy advertising."
SECC has done battle with the NEI on advertising before. In 1999, it said as a result of its part in a complaint against NEI advertising, the Better Business Bureau found NEI advertising "inaccurate and misleading" and recommended it should be discontinued.
But the case lost steam when the Federal Trade Commission issued a split decision on whether or not the advertisements were deceptive.
Under President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former head of energy services company Halliburton is leading a task force on energy strategy. One of the cornerstones of the policy appears to be using a mix of energy sources to prevent power shortages such as the one that has hit California.
"The larger point is that there are pluses and minuses with all energy sources. There is no perfect energy source that has no adverse environmental impact," said Kerekes.
But is the ad campaign effective? Will it convince the American public - which still focuses on the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 - that nuclear power is viable?
"Visually and verbally there is nothing new there," said Frank Ginsberg, chairman and chief creative officer of advertising agency Avrett Free & Ginsberg, part of True North Communications.
"That kind of trite and stereotyped visual image does nothing to capture what youth of today is about. They need a new persuasive argument to act on," he said.
"I can see why they are doing it," said Steve Hayden, vice chairman of Olgivy & Mather, part of WPP group.
"It has to have occurred to everyone that the California power crisis and the threat of over other heavily populated parts of the U.S. that it's time to look for new sources of power," he said.
Still, Hayden say, the industry has a long way to go to change its image.
"I sense that the average American's impression of nuclear power plants is shaped by 'The Simpsons,'" he said, refering to the television cartoon show in which Homer Simpson tosses pieces of used nuclear material out of his car window as he heads home from his job at a local nuke plant.
-------- depleted uranium
Here the Durakovic's depleted uranium study in plain text format
From: vlario@yahoo.it
Mon, 07 May 2001
Croatian Medical Journal, 42(2):130-134,2001
PDF version of the article also on:
http://saba.on.to in the uranium-news
FORUM On Depleted Uranium: Gulf War and Balkan Syndrome Asaf Durakovic Nuclear Medicine Division and Clinical PET, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
The complex clinical symptomatology of chronic illnesses, commonly described as Gulf War Syndrome, remains a poorly understood disease entity with diversified theories of its etiology and pathogenesis. Several causative factors have been postulated, with a particular emphasis on low level chemical warfare agents, oil fires, multiple vaccines, desert sand (Al-Eskan disease), botulism, Aspergillus flavus, Mycoplasma, aflatoxins, and others, contributing to the broad scope of clinical manifestations. Among several hundred thousand veterans deployed in the Operation Desert Storm, 15-20% have reported sick and about 25,000 died. Depleted uranium (DU), a low-level radioactive waste product of the enrichment of natural uranium with U-235 for the reactor fuel or nuclear weapons, has been considered a possible causative agent in the genesis of Gulf War Syndrome. It was used in the Gulf and Balkan wars as an armor-penetrating ammunition. In the operation Desert Storm, over 350 metric tons of DU was used, with an estimate of 3-6 million grams released in the atmosphere. Internal contamination with inhaled DU has been demonstrated by the elevated excretion of uranium isotopes in the urine of the exposed veterans 10 years after the Gulf war and causes concern because of its chemical and radiological toxicity and mutagenic and carcinogenic properties. Polarized views of different interest groups maintain an area of sustained controversy more in the environment of the public media than in the scientific community, partly for the reason of being less than sufficiently addressed by a meaningful objective interdisciplinary research.
Key words: environmental exposure; leukemia, radiation induced; military personnel; Persian Gulf syndrome; radiation accidents; radiation genetics; radiometry; uranium; veterans; war.
No time can be more unfavorable for philosophy than that in which it is misused on the one hand to further political objectives, on the other as means of livelihood. Some intend to live and indeed do live by philosophy (Primum vivere deinde philosophari). Yet, nothing is to be had for gold but mediocrity, the truth will always be of few men and must equally and modestly wait for those few whose unusual mode of thought may find it enjoyable. Life is short but truth works far and lives long.
(Schopenhauer)
The ostrich syndrome preceded the two syndromes. Yet, denial does not eliminate the fact that veterans of Gulf War and Balkan conflict are sick and dying. While the etiological factors of the clinical entities, known as Gulf War syndrome, are far from being understood, well-described facts still remain. Sharp increase in cancer rate in the Gulf War veterans (1) point to exposure to oncogens and mutagens, among which depleted uranium (DU) has been identified by objective research as one of the agents present in the internal environment of the contaminated veterans. It has been identified as an oncogene-inducing factor by both in vitro and in vivo experimental research (2).
The use of uranium as a warfare agent of mass contamination is not that new. Towards the conclusion of World War II, when Japan launched over 6,000 explosive-laden air balloons to the continental United States, there was a serious concern of a possible use of uranium oxide against US megacities in the form of aerosol for mass contamination.
Depleted uranium as a product of the environment of natural uranium for the reactor fuel and nuclear weapons is partially altered by the extraction of U-235 to about one third of natural uranium content (2). This residue, also known as tails, is a radioactive waste with the current stockpiles of over 600,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF6 ). UF6 is an unstable toxic chemical, which forms uranyl fluoride (UO2 F2 ) and hydrogen fluoride (HF) if released in atmosphere. It is identified as toxic substance (3) with serious health consequences if inhaled, by both chemical and radiological properties (1). The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) governs the use and transportation of depleted uranium for the use and transfer of maximum of 15 pounds at a given time and 150 pounds in a calendar year. Also, the NRC requires detailed documentation of DU intended use, training of personnel, compliance with health, safety, and environmental standards (4). Depleted uranium is an internal health hazard. By its parenteral entry in the extracellular fluid, it gets incorporated in the target sites of its retention - predominantly skeletal tissue and kidneys, where it exerts nephrotoxicity by its effect on the proximal convoluted tubules. It has also been demonstrated that it induces transformation of human osteoblasts into the neoplastic phenotype in cell culture studies (5). In vivo studies reported mutagenic activity in the experimental animals implanted with DU pellets (5). Human data of spatiotemporal models of mapping cancer mortality reported an elevated lung cancer rate in the vicinity of DU processing facilities (6). Some recent reports indicate the increase in urinary excretion of DU in US Gulf War veterans wounded by the shrapnel during the operation Desert Storm (7). Similar findings were reported in the British, Canadian, and US veterans exposed to DU by inhalation during the Desert Storm Operation, where the presence of DU was verified by the methods of neutron activation analysis (8) and mass spectrometry (9). The isotopic ratio of DU and the presence of U-236 - an uranium isotope not found in nature, in Desert Storm Operation veterans opens yet another compartment of Pandora's box. It poses an inevitable question of the origin of DU used in the Gulf war, recently further augmented by the finding of traces of plutonium and other actinides (americium, neptunium) in DU shrapnel. The scientific inquiry into DU as a possible etiological factor in the causology of Gulf war and Balkan conflict illnesses has not been met with unbiased scientific criticism.
No Turn Left Unstoned
Some of the arguments relate to the short range of alpha particles (10), the other to the radiation being too low to induce mutagenic and oncogenic effects. Most of the polemics are in the arenas of extremely polarized interest groups on both sides of the fence, each side conspicuously lacking presence of the actual experts on actinides. The opinions are commonly exchanged in the mass media by the non-experts, and often by non-professionals, inevitably ignoring the complexity of DU interactions with the internal environment of stem and dividing transit cell population (11), basic laws of radiation biology and cellular radiosensitivity to alpha interactions (12,13), and effects of organotropic radionuclides in the human body (14), unskillfully navigating through uncharted seas of low level radiation. As usual, truth is often found between the extremes of Confucian pendulum, easier found in the science textbooks than on the Internet screen, which often lacks the basics of chemical synchronization, mitotic selection, fundamentals of the mitotic cell collection, and uniformity of cell cycle, cell culture, survival curves, and cellular response to radiation. The biological effects of DU do not differ from other alpha and beta internally deposited emitters and have to be considered in the light of cellular radiosensitivity as related to the mitotic cycle, with clear concepts of radiosensitivity and radioresistance in different phases of the mitotic cycle. The intermitotic and dividing cell population in the vicinity of final retention sites of depleted uranium includes pluripotent stem cells, hematopoietic system, intestinal villi crypt cells, intermitotic pool in the bone marrow, and basal cells of the skin. The mechanisms of DU interactions are far from being adequately understood even by the experts. Thus, it is perhaps premature to classify DU as a non hazardous substance, even if the proponents manage to master the basics of the host of factors that determine the biological consequences of internal particulate emitters, including dose-rate effects, linear energy transfer, oxygen effects, relative biological effectiveness, repair mechanisms, and damage recovery. Furthermore, the established concepts of cell survival curves are currently being re-examined in the realm of low-dose radiation (15). Radiation-induced cancer incidence at low dose exposure with BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) and UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) adopted linear non-threshold curves postulate no safe dose for any exposure to ionizing radiation. But, no threshold hypothesis was more conceptualized on mathematical than biological considerations. Reassessment introduces biphasic curve, addressing the mechanisms of damage of radiosensitive cells. It postulated, by the experimental evidence, that a part of the radiation-damaged cell population would become more susceptible to mutagenic alterations as the dose increases from point zero. It also includes the transformation to neoplastic entities. With further increase of the dose, radiosensitive cells would sustain lethal damage with a consequent fall in mutations. At that point, less sensitive cells would start a new rise in oncogenic events, which, after the second peak, would result in a death of the organism (16). Second event theory, although new, has attracted considerable attention. It postulates that two hits can interact with the same cell. The first one creates high sensitivity phase, and the second further damages the cell in its sensitive phase, with both events occurring during cell replication. This is of importance to contamination with uranium isotopes, where the size of a particle determines the delivered dose. DU particle of 0.2 microns in diameter would deliver an alpha dose equal to annual exposure of 2 mSv, rapidly increasing delivery dose by the increased particle size (16). Current reevaluations of the human and animal data recognize a large error of the conventional models of the risk assessment in the low-level exposure health risk evaluation.
Chernobyl Revisited
Recent application of the re-examination of low dose effects applied to Chernobyl accident has identified new relationships between the actual number of cases with malignant alterations and the numbers predicted by the conventional model of radiation risk (17). There is a significant increase in the number of the children with leukemia while being exposed in utero to radionuclides from Chernobyl fallout. The infant leukemia cohort has been reported in Scotland (18), Greece (19), United States (20) and Germany (21). It is being applied to current research on Gulf war legacy, which, unlike multiradionuclide Chernobyl fallout exposure, is a result of a mass contamination with the isotopes of a single radionuclide. Naming of the non-existent syndrome rages in the semantic controversy, which - for the sake of sanity, we may temporarily call Gulf war illness or Gulf war syndrome.
No single thing abides, but all things flow fragment to fragment clinges; the things thus grow until we know and name them. By degrees they melt and are no more the things we know.
(Lucretius)
Whatever the name of the illness, the fact remains that 15% to 18% of several hundred thousand of Desert Storm veterans are sick and over 25,000 are dead, regardless of the official statements of various Departments of Defense and Ministries of Defence that no unique illness can be associated with the Operation Desert Storm (22).
Several criteria of classification of the Gulf war syndrome have been considered, ranging from the terminology such as Haley's factor analysis classification in six syndromes (23), to a broad category of Mucocutaneous-intestinal-rheumatic Desert Syndrome, with three major and 17 minor categories (24), or a neuroimmune syndrome (25) - all distinctly different from postraumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), which was for some time meant to phagocytize the Gulf war syndrome (26).
Probable causology includes chemical, biological, and radiological etiology. All discussion in the literature in a considerable length often lacks objective analytical support, sometime in Swiftian resemblance of a Gulliver's encounter with scientists from an academy proudly explaining their success in the research of extracting sun-beams from the cucumbers. Be as it is, the DU research has been lacking for whatever reason, none being the lack of awareness of its toxic properties and health hazards.
Yesterday, upon the stair I met a man who was not there. He was not there, again, today. I wish that man would go away.
(Unknown)
The present stockpile of DU in excess of 600,000 metric tons as a product of enrichment process is stored as radioactive waste in the form of DUF6 in approximately 50,000 carbon steel cylinders at three main sites in the United States: in the plants at Oak Ridge (TN), Paducah (KY), and Portsmouth (OH). Additional large quantities of DU are being continuously produced. The United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) estimates production of 85,000 metric tons of DU through 2005, the disposal of which has not yet been determined (27). Over 350 metric tons of DU was used in Gulf war. If only 1 to 2% was released in the atmosphere in the form of submicron or micron size aerosol particles after pyrophoric impact of DU projectiles, a conservative estimate would amount to 3-6 millions grams of airborne aerosols. This presents an inhalation hazard by both alpha and beta emission due to U-238 daughter products thorium-234 (beta 0.26 NV) and protactinium-234 (beta 0.23 MEV), with respective half-lives of 24 days and 6.7 hours. Thorium and protactinium add to internal hazards of DU by beta interactions with orbital electrons, bremsstrahlung radiation of the free electrons, and their interactions with radiosensitive sites.
Que sais-je (Montaigne)
Pragmatic question remains how to integrate all of the objectively verified properties of DU into a maze of Gulf war illnesses. Available data agree in at least one fact: depleted uranium is elevated in the urine of veterans contaminated by either a shrapnel or inhalational pathway. Several methods have been utilized in DU urinary analysis. Inductively coupled mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) demonstrated 0.2-0.33% of U-235 in the urinary concentration of 150 ng/L, whereas the non-exposed veterans contained 0.7-1.0% of U-235, with the urinary concentration of 14 ng/L (28). A rapid detection procedure for DU in metal shrapnel fragments provides a practical method of distinguishing between DU and non-DU shrapnels using pyridylazo dye. It might provide useful guidelines for early therapeutic decisions (29). The ICP-MS protocols have been critically evaluated in comparison with DU alpha spectrometric data (30). The results were in favor of IMP-MS with higher detection sensitivity (30). Kinetic phosphorimetric studies of DU isotopes in pellet-implanted rats have reported quantitative tissue distribution during 18 months after implantation (31). The highest retention was observed in the kidney and tibia, and measurable quantities of DU were found in the heart, brain, striated muscles, lungs, testicles, and lymph nodes (31). The utility of spot collection of urine for bioassay has been reported as a useful kinetic phosphorescence analysis method. It uses creatinine-corrected 24-h samples, suggesting a higher merit in DU bioassay than uncorrected spot sampling (32). The method was correlated with data of urinary excretion of DU in shrapnel wounded veterans (33). Surface ionization mass spectrometry seems the most accurate method, capable to measure DU isotopic composition in low nanogram quantities. The most precise results have been obtained by the mass spectrometers using two and three phase techniques (34). They were originally designed by the Knoll Atomic Power Laboratories and first used in the analysis of DU abundances of U-234, U-235, U-236, and U-238 in accidentally discovered DU contamination in environmental air filters collected at the US Navy training sites in New York States. Specific design of the system provided the detection capacity of one part per trillion, with 1-3% of accuracy. Commercial multi-collector Finnigan MAT-262 is a thermal ionization spectrometer that uses secondary electron multiplier (SEM) with an ion counting system. The results of urine analysis by this method demonstrated DU ratios in the urine of Gulf war veterans contaminated via the inhalation pathway with small but definitive presence of U-236. The data are being carefully re-evaluated and the initial findings repeatedly confirmed, taking into consideration the analysis of background contribution of the electron multiplier systems, filament, vacuum system, separation chemistry, and hydrocarbon background effects. The studies are continuing on the larger groups of British, Canadian, and US veterans.
Although DU shrapnel wounded veterans continue to excrete elevated quantities of uranium isotopes (33), not many casualties are the consequences of shrapnel wounds. Shrapnels are of a lesser importance in understanding DU role in Gulf war illnesses than mass contamination by the inhalation of DU containing dust, initially described as Al-Eskan disease (35). The effects of uranium-embedded particles have been known for almost two centuries (36). The causological correlation between depleted uranium and Gulf war illnesses (37) remains the most important but unanswered question. The studies of DU role in Gulf war illnesses have been not only as diversified as the symptomatology of the illness, bur also inadequately studied (38), not for the want of expertise, technology, patient population, or resources, but rather due to incapability to subscribe to Francis Bacon's Utopian dream of New Atlantis and replace the politician with the scientist.
References
1 Busby C. Science on trial: on the biological effects and health risks following exposure to aerosols produced by the use of depleted uranium weapons. Invited presentation to the Royal Society; 2000 Jul 19; London, UK; given in part to the International Conference against Depleted Uranium; 2000 Nov 4-5; Manchester, UK. Occasional Paper 2000/11. Aberstwyth: Green Audit; Oct. 2000.
2 Durakovic A. Medical effects of internal contamination with uranium. Croat Med J 1999;40:49-66.
3 Meyer MC, Paschke M, McLendon T, Price D. Decreases in soil microbial function and functional diversity in response to depleted uranium. Journal of Environmental Quality 1998;27:1306-11.
4 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 10 C.R.F. Sect. 0.735-1 (1990). Chapter 1. US Government Printing Office, Washington (DC), USA.
5 Miller AC, Blakely WF, Livengood D, Whittaker T, Xu J, Ejnik JW, et al. Transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by depleted uranium-uranyl chloride. Environ Health Perspect 1988;106:465-71.
6 Xia H, Carlin BP. Spatio-temporal models with errors in covariates: mapping Ohio lung cancer mortality. Stat Med 1998;17:2025-43.
7 McDiarmid MA, Keogh JP, Hooper FJ, McPhaul K, Squibb K, Kane R, et al. Health effect of depleted uranium on exposed Gulf War Veterans. Environ Res 2000;82:168-80.
8 Durakovic A, Sharma H. Urinary excretion of uranium isotopes in the Gulf War Veterans after inhalational exposure to depleted uranium. In: Moriarty M, Mothersill C, Seymour C, Edmondton M, Ward J, Fry R, editors. Proceedings of Eleventh International Congress of Radiation Re-search; 1999 July 18-23; Dublin, Ireland. Lawrence (KS): Allen Press, Inc; 2000. p. 57.
9 Durakovic A, Dietz KA, Horan P. Quantitative analysis of uranium isotopes in Canadian, US, and and British Gulf War Veterans. Eur J Nucl Med 2000;27:5-75.
10 Uijt de Haag PA, Smetsers RC, Wittox HV, Krus HW, Eisenga AH. Evaluating the risk from depleted uranium after the Boeing 747-258F crash in Amsterdam, 1992. Journal of Hazardous Materials 2000;76:39-58.
11 Terasima T, Tolmatch LJ. Growth and nucleic acid synthesis in synchronously dividing populations of HeLa cells. Exp Cell Res 1963;30:344-62.
12 Kadhim MA, Lorimore SA, Hepburn MD, Goodheard DT, Buckle VJ, Wright EG. Alpha-particle induced chromosomal instability in human bone marrow cells. Lancet 1994;344:987-8.
13 Bergonie J, Tribondeau L. De quelques, resultats de la radiotherapie et essai de fixation d'une technique rationelle. Comptes Rendu des Seances de l'Academie des Sciences 1906;143:983.
14 Burlakova EB, Naiditch V, Reitan JB. Radiobiological consequences of nuclear accidents: contamination, radiobiology, radioecology and health [editorial]. In: Burlakova EB, Naiditch V, Reitan JB, editors. Radiobiological consequences of nuclear accidents: contamination, radiobiology, radioecology and health. Proceedings of the Second International Conference; 1994 Oct 25-28; Moscow, Russia. Radiation Protection Dosimetry 1995;62(1-2):ix-x.
15 Nagasawa H, Little JB. Induction of sister chromatide exchanges by extremely low doses of alpha particles. Cancer Research 1992;52:6394-6.
16 Busby C. Commentary on the Second Event Theory of Busby by A. A. Edwards and R. Cox. Int J Radiat Biol 2000,76:123-5.
17 Edwards AA, Cox R. Commentary on the Second Event Theory of Busby. Int J Radiat Biol 2000;76:119-22.
18 Gibson BE, Eden OB, Barrett A, Stiller CA, Draper GJ. Leukemia in young children in Scotland. Lancet 1988;2:630.
19 Petridou E, Trichopoulos D, Dessypris N, Flytzani V, Haidas S, Kalmanti M, et al. Infant leukemia after in-utero exposure to radiation from Chernobyl. Nature 1996;382:352-3.
20 Mangano J. Childhood leukemia in the US may have risen due to fallout from Chernobyl. BMJ 1997;314: 1200.
21 Michaelis J, Kaletsch U, Burkart W, Grosche B. Infant leukemia after the Chernobyl accident. Nature 1997;387:246.
22 Writer JV, DeFraites RF, Brundage JF. Comparative mortality among US military personnel in the Persian Gulf region and worldwide during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. JAMA 1996;275: 118-21.
23 Haley RW, Kurt TL, Hom J. Is there a Gulf War Syndrome? Searching for syndromes by factor analysis of symptoms. JAMA 1997;277:215-22.
24 Murray-Leisure K, Daniels MO, Sees J, Suguitan E, Zangwill B, Bagheri S, et al. Mucocutaneous-intestinal-rheumatic desert syndrome (MIRDS). Definition, histopathology, incubation period and clinical course and association with desert sand exposure. Intern J Med 1997;1:47-72.
25 Sartin JS. Gulf War illnesses: causes and controversies. Mayo Clin Proc 2000;75:811-9.
26 Nicolson GL, Bruton DM, Nicolson NL. Chronic fatigue illness and Operation Desert Storm. J Occup Environ Med 1996;38:14-6.
27 Byrd Davis M. What's ahead for the nation's depleted uranium hexafluoride? Yggdrasil Institute: Uranium enrichment project 2000 Nov 22. Sponsored by the John Merck Fund. Available at: http://www.earthisland.org/yggdrasil/duf6.html. Accessed January 31, 2001.
28 Ejnik JW, Carmichael AJ, Hamilton MM, McDiarmid MA, Squibb K, Boyd P, et al. Determination of the isotopic composition of uranium urine by inductively couppled plasma mass spectrometry. Health Phys 2000;78:143-6.
29 Kalinich JF, Ramakrishnan N, McClain DE. A procedure for rapid detection of depleted uranium in metal shrapnel fragments. Mil Med 2000;165:626-9.
30 Baglan N, Cossonnet C, Trompier F, Ritt J, Berard P. Implementation of ICP-MS protocols for uranium urinary measurements in worker monitoring. Health Phys 1999;77:455-61.
31 Pellmar TC, Keyser DO, Emery C, Hogan JB. Electro-physiological changes in hippocampal slices isolated from rats embedded depleted uranium fragments. Neurotoxicology 1999;20:785-92.
32 McDiarmid MA, Hooper FJ, Squibb K, McPhaul K. The utility of spot collection for urinary uranium determinations in depleted exposed Gulf War veterans. Health Phys 1999;77:261-4.
33 Hooper FJ, Squibb KS, Siegel EL, McPhaul K, Keogh JP. Elevated urine uranium excretion by soldiers with retained uranium shrapnel. Health Phys 1999; 77:512-9.
34 Dietz LA. Investigation of excess alpha activity observed in recent air filter collections and other environmental samples. Unclassifed technical report. Schenectady (NY): Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory; 1980, January 24. Tech. Rep. No. CHEM-434-LAD; obtained under Freedom of Information Act. Published in Oak Ridge National Laboratory Report DOE/OR/21950-1022, "Responsiveness Summary: Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis (EE/CA) for the Colonie Site", p. A70-A89, Jan. 1997.
35 Korenyi-Both AL, Korenyi-Both AL, Juncer DJ. Al Eskan disease: Persian Gulf Syndrome. Mil Med 1997;162:1-13.
36 Gmelin CG. Versuche uber die wirkungen des bartis, strontians, chroms, molibdans, Wolframs, tellurs, titians, osmiums, platins, irridiums rhodiums, paladiums, nikels, cobalts, urans, ceriums, eisens mangans auf den tierishen organismus. Journal fur Chemie und Physik (Halle) 1825;43:110-5.
37 Jamal GA. Gulf War Syndrome - a model for the complexity of biological and environmental interactions with human health. Adverse Drug React Toxicol Rev 1998;17:1-17.
38 Evans HJ. Radiation biology. Alpha-particle after effects. Nature 1992;355:674-5.
Correspondence to:
Asaf Durakovic Nuclear Medicine Division and Clinical PET King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia TAhaideb@kfshrc.edu.sa
-------- europe
Austria says Czech nuclear shutdown confirms fears
AUSTRIA: May 7, 2001
Story by Julia Ferguson
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10728
VIENNA - Austria said on Friday that the temporary shutdown of the neighbouring Czech Temelin nuclear power plant confirmed its fears over the safety of the controversial facility.
The reactor was taken offline last week with a malfunctioning rotor in one of the turbines, and will be reconnected at the beginning of July at the earliest.
The incident is the latest in a string of problems at the $2.6 billion plant, just 50 km (30 miles) from fiercely anti-nuclear Austria's border. It has a Russian VVER-1,000 reactor and a U.S.-made control system by Westinghouse, now owned by British Nuclear Fuels.
"Current events confirm our assumptions that the turbine problems are far more serious than were previously made public," Environment Minister Wilhelm Molterer said.
The latest technical failure underlined the need to discuss unsolved questions, notably the plant's safety and its impact on the environment, he added.
"The key issue here is that we should now use the time aggressively and intently to ensure the Melk agreement is adhered to," Molterer said.
An assessment of the plant's environmental impact was carried out in accordance with a declaration signed in the Lower Austrian town of Melk last year by Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel and his Czech counterpart Milos Zeman.
A Czech-led independent commission, which included observers from the EU, Austria and Germany, gave the plant high marks in their study. But critics say the panel was not independent and pandered to the pro-nuclear power lobby.
The Austrian government is among the critics increasingly frustrated at what they see as insufficient answers by the Czech side to their questions concerning Temelin's safety.
Austria's opposition Social Democrats said the enforced hiatus should at the very least be used to draw up a proper environmental impact study and to define exit strategies.
Environment spokeswoman Ulli Sima said she hoped EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, who was in Vienna on Friday, would make a clear statement on Temelin and would ensure the Melk declaration was honoured.
"After all, Temelin is a problem for the whole of the European Union," she said.
GASMASK WELCOME
Activists from Austrian environmental group Global 2000 greeted the EU commissioner with gas masks and a banner asking "...and what are you doing about Temelin, Mr Verheugen?"
But the German, speaking later at a news conference, called for "more composure" and said that the Czech side had already made concessions it was not obliged to make as a non-EU member.
"My impression of the Czech side is that they have been acting exceptionally constructively up to now. I know of no case where neighbouring countries have been granted full insight into sensitive technical areas," he said.
Verheugen said the issue of whether Austria would block the Czech Republic's admission to the European Union in protest at the start-up of Temelin, would remain "purely hypothetical".
Membership candidates have to comply fully with EU regulations and standards in all fields and Austria has in the past made thinly veiled threats it may veto Czech entry.
- Additional reporting by Alexandra Zawadil.
----
New Administration Draws Europe's Ire
May 7, 2001
By ROGER COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07EURO.html
BERLIN, May 6 - Before becoming president, George W. Bush seemed acutely aware of the need for a country as powerful as the United States to show restraint. "If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us," he said. "If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us."
The words appear to have been forgotten. A torrent of hostile articles in Europe has greeted Mr. Bush's first three months in office. Their chief theme has been the arrogance of what the German weekly Der Spiegel recently called "the snarling, ugly Americans."
On its Web site, the respected Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung lists seven articles summing up the themes of Mr. Bush's first 100 days. They are not unrepresentative of widespread European views.
The titles include: "Selling Weapons to Taiwan: Bush Throws His Weight Around in the Pacific"; "North Korea: Bush Irritates the Asians"; "World Court: No Support From United States"; "Iraq: Bombing Instead of Diplomacy"; and "Climate Agreement: The United States Abandons the Kyoto Protocol."
There can be little doubt that it was irritation over those and other issues that lay behind the vote last week that ousted the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the first time, while leaving countries like Algeria and Libya as elected members.
Speaking in Berlin today, Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, described the administration's foreign policy as "unsmooth" and the handling of environmental issues as "disastrous." But he noted that the Bush team is still taking shape and that transitions always involve difficulties.
Certainly, Mr. Bush's predecessor had problems. In their current irritation, European officials appear to have forgotten that the president whose absence they now seem to rue - Bill Clinton - infuriated them in his first year in office by appearing to pay scant attention to the Continent, dithering over Bosnia, and long delaying his first visit.
Those officials, and particularly the French, also seem inclined to overlook the fact that discomfort or irritation with the extent of post-cold- war American power - military, political, economic and cultural - has been running high for some time.
Well before Mr. Bush's arrival in office, France began referring to the United States as a "hyper-power." Other countries, from Russia to China, have also made much of the need for "counterbalances" to American power. In this sense, any missteps by the Republican administration have provided ammunition for a gun already partly loaded.
But Mr. Bush's apparent insensitivity to European concerns on a broad range of issues - he has never visited London or Paris or Berlin - has clearly opened the way for a season of America bashing.
Celebrating the record number of votes - 52 of a possible 53 - won by France in the election that ousted the United States, Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United Nations, attributed his country's success to a French foreign policy "founded on dialogue and respect."
The message was clear: the embarrassing snub to the United States could be attributed to a seeming absence of "dialogue and respect" in the Bush administration's approach to the outside world.
In their glee at America's discomfort in the vote, the Chinese used language similar to that used by the French. The ousting, for China, showed that the United States had "undermined the atmosphere for dialogue."
The time has arrived for the United States "to enter into dialogue on equal footing with other countries, rich or poor, strong or weak" and to stop using "human rights issues as a tool to pursue its power politics and hegemonism," China said.
Instructions from China on human rights seem certain to raise as many eyebrows in Washington as French tips on diplomacy do. But there is little doubt that Mr. Bush's generally more confrontational stance on Russia and China, his apparently slow learning curve on how much the environment matters to Europeans and his lukewarm support for South Korea's so-called sunshine policy for improving relations with the North have reinforced a European sense that the United States is a power more inclined than before to ride roughshod over its allies.
When Michael Steiner, the chief diplomatic aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, visited Washington earlier this year, he was surprised to find Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, telling him that he must be aware that the only way to get results from the Russians was to be tough with them.
That was one small example of the ways in which the Bush administration seems to be out of step in its thinking with a European Union disinclined to reopen divisions on the Continent and generally more concerned about the quality of food and the environment than possible security threats from Moscow or North Korea.
But Karl Kaiser, a German foreign policy analyst, said he thought that awareness of those differences was growing in the Bush administration and he questioned whether there was any deep justification for European anxieties.
He noted that Mr. Bush's recent policy speech on a possible missile defense shield was marked by extreme sensitivity to allied and Russian concerns. The antimissile project, Mr. Kaiser went on, is no longer "national" but intended to help all friendly countries; it will be built only after thorough consultation.
"Through this speech, Mr. Bush clearly differentiated himself from the Republican right wing and marked a return to the mainstream of multilateralism," Mr. Kaiser said.
How far such a "return" will go remains to be seen; currents of unilateralism seem far stronger in this administration than in any for some time. But it does seem clear that the speech reflected the concern of Colin L. Powell's State Department - the one office of the Bush administration that has been spared the harsh criticism reserved in Europe for the Pentagon and the White House.
One particular target of European criticism has been President Bush's policy toward China, and particularly his strong expressions of support for Taiwan that have been widely viewed as unnecessarily provocative. Europe, like Russia, has been concerned that America is throwing its weight around in a reckless manner.
But James R. Lilley, a former United States ambassador to China, said that while it was fair to say that, "Until you get your act together, you are going to cause some concern," the Europeans had overstated the dangers.
"The fact is China and Taiwan are moving together economically," he said. "The compelling fact of making money together undercuts the notion of estrangement." No American weapons sales to Taiwan would alter that reality, he said.
In the end, it may be style as much as substance that is causing the growing hostility to the United States. The revival of some cold war language under Mr. Bush and the emergence into clearer view of another America more concerned with itself and quite at ease with the death penalty has come as a shock to many outside the country.
In Britain the other day, The Guardian described America's position on the death penalty as "morally untenable." Of course, that position may be many things, but it is scarcely "untenable," just as America's human-rights record may have blemishes but is hardly comparable to that of Algeria.
That, however, is not the point. The fact is Mr. Bush has contrived to prove his own theory that arrogance provokes resentment for a country that, long before his arrival, was already the world's most conspicuous and convenient target.
----
EU Delegation Visits Chechnya
MAY 07, 13:26 EST
By LYOMA TURPALOV
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7BRDLNO0
GROZNY, Russia (AP) - Ambassadors from European Union nations traveled Monday to Chechnya's capital Grozny as Russian troops and rebels stepped up attacks that have left at least six people dead in the city since Saturday.
Virtually every day over the past week, vehicles have been blown up by mines planted by rebels in Grozny's rubble-strewn streets. Several Russian servicemen were wounded Monday when a mine ripped through a four-vehicle military column on a main Grozny thoroughfare, and three Russian soldiers and a Chechen policeman were killed on Saturday when their truck was blown up.
On Sunday, someone threw a grenade that landed close to three Russian armored vehicles parked near a military checkpoint. The vehicles turned their heavy guns on a nearby residential neighborhood and shot up 10 high-rise buildings. Two residents were killed and three were wounded, witnesses said.
``There was a shootout. It looked like a provocation,'' said Ruslan Minkailov, who lives in one of the buildings.
He said that the two men were killed as they raced across the yard toward their apartment building. Following the shooting, Russian forces looted a food store in the neighborhood, he said.
``I could see perfectly well how they loaded the stuff onto their armored personnel carrier,'' Minkailov said.
A city official accused the federal forces of killing the two men without justification, the Interfax news agency reported.
``The law enforcement bodies have done nothing to identify the culprits and make them answer for their actions,'' mayoral spokesman Ruslan Martagov was quoted as saying.
The head of the pro-Russian Chechen government, Stanislav Ilyasov, complained over local television on Sunday that federal troops were acting illegally and that he personally had trouble getting through Russian checkpoints.
Ilyasov met Monday with the EU delegation, headed by Swedish Ambassador Sven Hirdman, but no details of the meeting were made public.
The EU delegation was also scheduled to meet with Akhmad Kadyrov, the pro-Russian civilian administrator of Chechnya, Grozny Mayor Bislan Gantamirov and Viktor Kazantsev, the general turned presidential representative for Russia's North Caucasus region, said EU press officer Sylvie Kofler in Moscow.
The EU and other western organizations and governments have criticized Russian forces for human rights abuses, including looting Chechen towns and detaining Chechen civilians, many of whom have reportedly not been seen since.
A Chechen policeman, Aslanbek Kukayev, was buried in Grozny on Sunday after his body was discovered on the outskirts of the city. He had been arrested in Grozny in November, during a military sweep, and had reportedly tried to defend civilians whom federal troops were robbing.
In the town of Alkhan-Kala west of the capital, residents gathered in a central square to protest the detention of town residents.
``For 10 years now, we've been living like outcasts,'' said one protester, Isa Tokayev. ``No matter who controls our town, they rob and kill us.
----
To European Eyes, It's America the Ugly
New York Times
May 7, 2001
By ROGER COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07EURO.html?searchpv=nytToday
BERLIN, May 6 - Before becoming president, George W. Bush seemed acutely aware of the need for a country as powerful as the United States to show restraint. "If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us," he said. "If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us."
The words appear to have been forgotten. A torrent of hostile articles in Europe has greeted Mr. Bush's first three months in office. Their chief theme has been the arrogance of what the German weekly Der Spiegel recently called "the snarling, ugly Americans."
On its Web site, the respected Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung lists seven articles summing up the themes of Mr. Bush's first 100 days. They are not unrepresentative of widespread European views.
The titles include: "Selling Weapons to Taiwan: Bush Throws His Weight Around in the Pacific"; "North Korea: Bush Irritates the Asians"; "World Court: No Support From United States"; "Iraq: Bombing Instead of Diplomacy"; and "Climate Agreement: The United States Abandons the Kyoto Protocol."
There can be little doubt that it was irritation over those and other issues that lay behind the vote last week that ousted the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the first time, while leaving countries like Algeria and Libya as elected members.
Speaking in Berlin today, Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, described the administration's foreign policy as "unsmooth" and the handling of environmental issues as "disastrous." But he noted that the Bush team is still taking shape and that transitions always involve difficulties.
Certainly, Mr. Bush's predecessor had problems. In their current irritation, European officials appear to have forgotten that the president whose absence they now seem to rue - Bill Clinton - infuriated them in his first year in office by appearing to pay scant attention to the Continent, dithering over Bosnia, and long delaying his first visit.
Those officials, and particularly the French, also seem inclined to overlook the fact that discomfort or irritation with the extent of post-cold- war American power - military, political, economic and cultural - has been running high for some time.
Well before Mr. Bush's arrival in office, France began referring to the United States as a "hyper-power." Other countries, from Russia to China, have also made much of the need for "counterbalances" to American power. In this sense, any missteps by the Republican administration have provided ammunition for a gun already partly loaded.
But Mr. Bush's apparent insensitivity to European concerns on a broad range of issues - he has never visited London or Paris or Berlin - has clearly opened the way for a season of America bashing.
Celebrating the record number of votes - 52 of a possible 53 - won by France in the election that ousted the United States, Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United Nations, attributed his country's success to a French foreign policy "founded on dialogue and respect."
The message was clear: the embarrassing snub to the United States could be attributed to a seeming absence of "dialogue and respect" in the Bush administration's approach to the outside world.
In their glee at America's discomfort in the vote, the Chinese used language similar to that used by the French. The ousting, for China, showed that the United States had "undermined the atmosphere for dialogue."
The time has arrived for the United States "to enter into dialogue on equal footing with other countries, rich or poor, strong or weak" and to stop using "human rights issues as a tool to pursue its power politics and hegemonism," China said.
Instructions from China on human rights seem certain to raise as many eyebrows in Washington as French tips on diplomacy do. But there is little doubt that Mr. Bush's generally more confrontational stance on Russia and China, his apparently slow learning curve on how much the environment matters to Europeans and his lukewarm support for South Korea's so-called sunshine policy for improving relations with the North have reinforced a European sense that the United States is a power more inclined than before to ride roughshod over its allies.
When Michael Steiner, the chief diplomatic aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, visited Washington earlier this year, he was surprised to find Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, telling him that he must be aware that the only way to get results from the Russians was to be tough with them.
That was one small example of the ways in which the Bush administration seems to be out of step in its thinking with a European Union disinclined to reopen divisions on the Continent and generally more concerned about the quality of food and the environment than possible security threats from Moscow or North Korea.
But Karl Kaiser, a German foreign policy analyst, said he thought that awareness of those differences was growing in the Bush administration and he questioned whether there was any deep justification for European anxieties.
He noted that Mr. Bush's recent policy speech on a possible missile defense shield was marked by extreme sensitivity to allied and Russian concerns. The antimissile project, Mr. Kaiser went on, is no longer "national" but intended to help all friendly countries; it will be built only after thorough consultation.
"Through this speech, Mr. Bush clearly differentiated himself from the Republican right wing and marked a return to the mainstream of multilateralism," Mr. Kaiser said.
How far such a "return" will go remains to be seen; currents of unilateralism seem far stronger in this administration than in any for some time. But it does seem clear that the speech reflected the concern of Colin L. Powell's State Department - the one office of the Bush administration that has been spared the harsh criticism reserved in Europe for the Pentagon and the White House.
One particular target of European criticism has been President Bush's policy toward China, and particularly his strong expressions of support for Taiwan that have been widely viewed as unnecessarily provocative. Europe, like Russia, has been concerned that America is throwing its weight around in a reckless manner.
But James R. Lilley, a former United States ambassador to China, said that while it was fair to say that, "Until you get your act together, you are going to cause some concern," the Europeans had overstated the dangers.
"The fact is China and Taiwan are moving together economically," he said. "The compelling fact of making money together undercuts the notion of estrangement." No American weapons sales to Taiwan would alter that reality, he said.
In the end, it may be style as much as substance that is causing the growing hostility to the United States. The revival of some cold war language under Mr. Bush and the emergence into clearer view of another America more concerned with itself and quite at ease with the death penalty has come as a shock to many outside the country.
In Britain the other day, The Guardian described America's position on the death penalty as "morally untenable." Of course, that position may be many things, but it is scarcely "untenable," just as America's human-rights record may have blemishes but is hardly comparable to that of Algeria.
That, however, is not the point. The fact is Mr. Bush has contrived to prove his own theory that arrogance provokes resentment for a country that, long before his arrival, was already the world's most conspicuous and convenient target.
-------- israel
Israel death squad defies call for truce
07 May 2001
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=70663
Even as the Israeli government was pondering the call for an immediate and unconditional end to violence issued by the Mitchell Commission one of its death squads was in action yesterday, assassinating another Palestinian militant.
Eye-witnesses said Israeli forces shot dead Ahmed Khalil Assad, 37, pumping more than 20 bullets into his head and torso as he left his home in Artas village, close to Bethlehem, early yesterday.
The Israeli army denied all knowledge, but it rarely comments on its assassinations, which have been repeatedly condemned as illegal by international human rights groups.
The killing of Mr Assad, an activist with Islamic Jihad, comes as Israel and the Palestinians are preparing responses to the draft report of the committee, led by the former US senator and Northern Ireland peacemaker George Mitchell, into the causes of the past 31 weeks of violence, and how to prevent it recurring.
The confidential report, acquired exclusively by The Independent on Sunday, passes no judgement on Israel's assassination policy a policy denounced as "illegal, state-sponsored terrorism" by Dr Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian legislator, yesterday.
But the committee is clearly unhappy about Israel's use of lethal force against unarmed Palestinians, and the lack of investigations into the killings.
It calls on Israel to reinstitute mandatory investigations by its military police into the deaths of Palestinians killed by the Israeli armed forces in the occupied territories "in incidents not involving terrorism".
Israel maintains that it is engaged in an "armed conflict short of war", a definition it has used to justify suspending such mandatory investigations.
In reality, many of the hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops were unarmed.
"By abandoning the blanket 'armed conflict short of war' characterisation, and by reinstituting mandatory military police investigations, (Israel) could help mitigate deadly violence and help rebuild mutual confidence," states the 32-page draft.
Much of the report's importance resides in what it did not say. There is, for example, no mention of Palestinian children being used as human shields a claim repeatedly made by the highly active pro-Israel lobby. Nor is does it present Yasser Arafat as controlling the violence day by day.
The report rejects Israel's claim that the uprising was planned. Nor, it says, was the intifada caused by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount on 28 September, although this was "provocative". More significant, it says, were the events of the following day the use of live ammunition by Israeli police against Palestinian demonstrators, killing four.
The report also questions Israel's contention that its troops kill Palestinians because they are facing live fire attacks "on a significant scale". It says that, for the first three months of the intifada, most incidents did not involve the Palestinian use of firearms or bombs.
Nor will the Sharon government appreciate the call for a total freeze on building in the occupied territories, and for an end to Israeli blockades in the West Bank and Gaza.
But the findings have not all gone the Palestinians' way. The five-member Mitchell team did not endorse the deployment of an international protection force, a central Palestinian demand, without Israel's approval.
They also called for the Palestinian Authority to condemn, prevent and punish "terrorism". The release of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the early stages of the intifada has been one of Israel's key complaints. Yesterday, near Bethlehem yet again the Israeli army decided on a more direct and bloody solution.
-------- korea
EU: N. Korea Talks Hinge on Missiles
May 7, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-EU-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A senior European Union official said Monday after talks with Bush administration officials that the EU's fledgling dialogue with North Korea will not survive if Pyongyang continues to export missile technology.
Lars Danielsson, who accompanied Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson to North Korea last week, said Pyongyang's missile exports are a ``great concern'' to the EU.
He said EU ties with North Korea cannot ``develop further'' if Pyongyang continues its missile sales. He noted that the United States has placed similar conditions on its dialogue with North Korea.
Danielsson held separate briefings for NSC and State Department officials on Persson's groundbreaking attempt last week to promote reconciliation between the two Koreas, among other goals.
During five hours of talks with the EU delegation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pledged to keep a moratorium on missile tests until 2003 but also defended his country's sales of missile technology to Iran, Syria and other countries.
Kim told the Europeans that he sees these sales as a valuable income source for his country. The United States and many other countries see the North Korean sales to be highly detrimental to international efforts to control missile proliferation.
Danielsson said Kim indicated he might agree to curb missile sales if he receives compensation.
According to Danielsson, the U.S. officials with whom he spoke were supportive of the European initiative to Pyongyang.
The Clinton administration and North Korea tried to negotiate a curb on North Korea's missile development and missile exports.
The Bush administration is reviewing the policy. A senior official, asking not to be identified, said Monday it will be weeks or months before the review is completed.
He said there may be a U.S. attempt to broaden the negotiations to include U.S. concerns about North Korea's deployment of 1 million troops near the Demilitarized Zone.
Danielsson said the EU delegation touched on the human rights issue in general terms with Kim. Kim, he said, promised to open a human rights dialogue with the EU. Danielsson acknowledged there is a ``wide gap'' on human rights between the EU and North Korea, widely regarded as one of the world's most repressive police states.
-------- missile defense
Missile defense policy flawed
May 7, 2001
Staff Editorial
Harvard Crimson Harvard U.
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010507/university-27
(U-WIRE) CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In a much-needed clarification of his administration?s intentions for an anti-missile system to protect the nation from attack, President George W. Bush last week outlined what he termed a "new framework" for countering missile threats from so-called rogue nations and accidental launches.
The latest plan, which is likely to cost far more than the $60 billion estimate made by the Congressional Budget Office under President Bill Clinton, contravenes the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia. In addition, the new policy questions whether the policy of "mutually assured destruction," which has guided American nuclear policy for so long, still applies in a world with many nuclear powers. Although the president's overtures to Russia -- which is eager to have a stake in any defense strategy lest its rusting arsenal become irrelevant -- is laudable, his planned abrogation of the 1972 treaty is both alarming and provocative. An even greater worry is Bush's unconcern for the Chinese reaction to his missile defense plans. And we doubt Bush's assurances that a large-scale missile defense is technologically possible without breaking the bank.
Bush reasons that the world has changed since the 1972 treaty was signed. The treaty had relied for deterrence on the absence of missile defenses -- and thus a guarantee of mutual destruction after any first strike -- to keep the peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But in an age when dictators like Saddam Hussein could obtain nuclear weapons, a rogue state could launch an attack and might just be crazy enough to accept the horrible consequences. Bush's arguments on those grounds, however, fall flat. Most terrorists or rogue states lack the missile capacity to attack the United States and would most likely sneak nuclear, chemical or biological weapons into the U.S. through other means -- say, a suitcase in a commercial plane. It is unlikely that a nation such as Iraq, Iran or North Korea would develop and launch a ballistic missile when much less-challenging and easier-to-conceal methods are available.
The focus on missile defenses has also raised significant dangers due to the near-total exclusion of China from the negotiations surrounding the plan. China has been left out of the continuing talks between Washington and Moscow about how the defense system will be structured. In a speech at the National Defense University last Tuesday, Bush stressed the importance of building a relationship between Russia and the U.S., but China, which is important for both military and economic reasons, was ignored.
China is one of the most likely targets for the defenses that Bush has proposed, as its small arsenal of nuclear warheads could be nearly completely countered. Russia's arsenal is far too vast to be defended against, but China -- which would fear an American first strike without the ability to retaliate -- would have a strong incentive to build up its arsenal in order to overwhelm the defenses. A renewed arms buildup could be severely destabilizing, and leaving China out of this process only courts further tension.
Given the abysmal record of the current testing of the American anti-missile system. the best defense against missile attacks would therefore be the small, local shields that are explicitly allowed under the 1972 treaty. Such shields would be able to guard against a few missiles from terrorists or rogue states but could not be used against an arsenal such as China's. But they would not require immense expenditures and have a far higher chance of producing a working, reliable defense for Americans.
Bush's overtures toward unilateral reductions in nuclear weapons are heartening, but the missile defense scheme he has proposed is unworkable and diplomatically dangerous. The 1995 nerve gas attack on a Japanese subway was a warning that the most serious threats to the U.S. in the future will come from terrorists who are unlikely to play by the old rules of military engagement. The president should concentrate on such smaller-scale and regional defenses before playing a needless game of nuclear politics.
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Misapprehensions About Missile Defense
By Fareed Zakaria
Monday, May 7, 2001
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52452-2001May6?language=printer
In one of the most memorable scenes in the movie "Annie Hall," Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are standing in line at an arty Manhattan movie house while a pompous academic pontificates about Marshall McLuhan (who, incredibly, was considered a serious thinker in the 1970s). Exasperated, Woody finally goes to the lobby and wheels out McLuhan himself, who turns to the professor and announces: "I heard what you were saying. You know nothing of my work. . . . How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing."
Listening to the debate about National Missile Defense, I wondered what Thomas Schelling would think of it. Schelling is the economist who first seriously applied game theory to politics and international relations, work that should have won him the Nobel Prize (if economists weren't such snobs about political science). A recent Rand Corp. document describes him as having "established the basic conceptual structure of deterrence theory."
In fact, one could go further. Schelling's ideas are at the heart of the counterintuitive logic of mutual assured destruction that has underpinned American nuclear and arms-control strategy for four decades.
Thomas Schelling is now a genial 80-year-old. After having taught for most of his life at Harvard, he moved 10 years ago to the University of Maryland at College Park, where he still teaches game theory and international affairs. I asked him whether he thought President Bush's proposals undermined strategic stability.
"No," he said, "but that's because missile defense is not likely to be as revolutionary as either its proponents or opponents believe. Both sides are vastly exaggerating the scope of this program. The defenses that the United States and the Soviet Union were trying to develop in the 1960s and early 1970s were not really defensive in orientation. They were complements to an offensive force."
They would have made us each feel our forces were protected, and thus we could have become trigger-happy. That's why the ABM treaty banned them. Schelling explained, "The current proposals, to the extent we have any details, are really oriented toward defending the United States against small attacks from rogue states. That's why I don't like the way the president is selling his program as a shield to protect the whole nation. It isn't, and I think we have incurred diplomatic costs around the world because of this rhetorical posturing."
Will Bush's plan trigger a new arms race with Russia?
"I don't see how," Schelling said. "Stability between the United States and the Russians depends on the fact that both sides can inflict unacceptable harm on the other even if one were hit by nukes first. That 'second-strike capability' will be intact, since no defense system we could develop would protect us against Russia's massive arsenal. I think the Russians understand this, which is why they have stopped being so belligerently opposed to missile defense."
What about the ABM treaty and arms control?
"The ABM treaty was wonderful for its time. But maybe it has to be modified because the situation has changed. Arms control doesn't depend on negotiated treaties. It depends on both sides restraining themselves out of self-interest. If you can get good mutual understanding, you can actually move faster without treaties. We now have a pretty good understanding with the Russians about arms reductions. And if we both keep reducing nuclear weapons -- which we should -- how can one say that this is a new arms race?"
What about China?
"Well, Schelling said, tentatively, "I don't think they have the ability to survive an American first strike anyway. If that vulnerability spurs them to build, it would do so with or without missile defense. By the way, one could make the case that over time, stability might be enhanced by the Chinese, like the Russians, having a second-strike capacity. But don't try making that case in Congress."
So should we develop a missile-defense capability?
"If we could develop an effective defense against what North Korea has -- and might have -- it would be worth having. The reality now is that increasingly the concept of deterrence will be used against us. Countries like North Korea will try to develop some nuclear-missile capability so that it deters us in a crisis situation. If we found ourselves in another war on the Korean peninsula, the fact that the North has nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems complicates American strategy considerably."
Schelling is comfortable with missile defense in theory. His misgivings are practical. "I think we are years away from anything that works well and is cost-effective," he says. "Remember, there are many ways to get nuclear and other weapons into America, missiles being just one of them. And if we do develop some defenses, countries will try other paths. We have to work on many fronts. The opponents of the system are quite right to say that so far, the research and testing has yielded very little. Of course they can't have it both ways. If the system is unworkable, then it can hardly be so destabilizing can it?"
The writer is editor of Newsweek International and a columnist for Newsweek.
----
No to Missile Defense
Monday, May 7, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52467-2001May6?language=printer
President Bush's insistence on a missile defense system is wrongheaded for several reasons [front page, May 2].
First, NORAD can detect the launch signature of an ICBM anywhere in the world. Who, then, would launch an ICBM attack knowing the United States would turn their country into a crater?
Second, all offensive and defensive weapons systems throughout history have had countermeasures developed against them. Radar saw the advent of stealth, tanks saw the evolution of antitank weapons, etc. Missile defense will be no different.
I anticipate, for example, the development of an ICBM that would use Exocet technology to skim the oceans. Then how useful would a space-based missile defense system be?
Third, it is much more within the limited technological reach of our enemies to place their nuclear weapons in suitcases and trucks. These also would avoid NORAD detection.
Our government already knows all this. So why does President Bush want this system?
RALPH HOMAN
Twin Lakes, Colo.
•Many logical arguments can be made against President Bush's decision to build a missile defense system, but logic has nothing to do with it.
The project is a blatant dividend to the high-tech companies that invested so heavily in America's election campaigns. Logic offers no other reason to spend so much money on such unconscionable idiocy.
GLENN CHENEY
Hanover, Conn.
-------- russia
Russian Scientists Nervously Await U.S. Decision on Fate of Nuclear Program
May 7, 2001
JUDITH INGRAM,
Associated Press Writer
http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/breakingnews/2001/05/07/russian_nuclear.html
MOSCOW (AP) _ A thief or terrorist trying to get at the seven nuclear reactors at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute will have to break through a sophisticated, dlrs 3 million set of safeguards financed by American taxpayers.
The research center's security system is just one result of a 10-year-old U.S.-Russian program to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The joint effort has also brought much more dramatic achievements, including eliminating nuclear weapons stockpiles in the former Soviet republics of Kazakstan, Belarus and Ukraine, and deep cuts in Russia's own vast nuclear arsenal.
But some U.S. Congress members are questioning the cost and value of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. U.S. President George W. Bush has ordered a review _ and that's making Russian nuclear scientists nervous.
On a broader front, trust has been undermined over such issues as NATO expansion, Moscow's ties with Iraq and North Korea, and the Bush administration's missile defense plans. Also, some U.S. officials involved in the arms reduction program are being expelled from Russia as part of a wider, tit-for-tat spy scandal between Washington and Moscow.
``We've achieved very important results, which are visible not just on paper but in the physical (security) systems,'' said Nikolai Ponomaryov-Stepnoi, the vice president of the Kurchatov Institute, named for the father of the Soviet atomic bomb.
Over the past five years, the institute has won contracts to develop security systems for the Russian Navy, one of the institutions that Russian and U.S. officials had considered most vulnerable to theft and potential leaks of weapons-grade nuclear materials.
``The risk of proliferation of nuclear materials is lessening significantly,'' Ponomaryov-Stepnoi said.
The joint threat reduction program was launched in December 1991 in the final days of the Soviet Union with a law authored by U.S. Sens. Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar that sought to seize a rare opportunity to cut strategic weapons arsenals.
The program is aimed broadly at cutting Russia's nuclear arsenal, preventing the leakage of nuclear and biological weapons technology to terrorists or other countries, and destroying stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Those aims are being promoted through more than two dozen separate projects that have cost the United States some dlrs 4.7 billion so far.
``It's a very effective defense by other means: Spending relatively little money, you seriously decrease the military potential of your probable enemy or rival,'' said Ivan Safranchuk, the nuclear arms control project director at the independent PIR institute in Moscow.
According to the Pentagon program's director, Jim Reid, the United States has helped to junk 300 of Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles, 2,000 nuclear warheads, 52 ICBM silos, 308 submarine launchers, 18 submarines and 42 bombers.
The program helped accelerate Russian disarmament and put Russia on track to meet the Dec. 5, 2001 deadline for arms cuts under the 1991 Start I treaty, which should bring each side down to 1,600 strategic missiles and bombers and 6,000 warheads.
Considering Russia's economic difficulties, ``it would have taxed them significantly to try to use those funds to meet the treaty themselves,'' Reid said.
Other goals have been partially met. Sensored fences, the first step in comprehensive security systems, have been built around more than half of Russia's nuclear weapons storage places, Reid said. The rest haven't been secured, and the Soviet-era protection systems have broken down, leaving potentially serious security breaches.
Two of the highest-profile projects _ to build a fissile materials storage plant in the town of Mayak and a pilot plant for destroying nerve agents stored at Shchuchiye _ have been stalled by U.S.-Russian differences over how they should be run.
The spy scandal hardly helps. An analyst who has seen the list of 50 U.S. diplomats to be sent home by July said about a dozen are involved with the Pentagon's threat-reduction program. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
Scientists at the Kurchatov Institute said they were already feeling the effects, with American partners introducing new financing procedures that could set back some projects.
``I don't know who's pulling the strings, but we already feel that the work is facing difficulties,'' Ponomaryov-Stepnoi said morosely. ``It seems they feel they have to introduce a tougher line.''
The harshest U.S. critics question whether the program should be continued at all, especially in light of Russia's increasing cooperation with such potential nuclear proliferators as Iran.
In general, U.S. aid programs to Russia face increasing American criticism for inefficiency and vulnerability to corruption, and Russians complain that much of the money ended up in U.S. contractors' pockets.
In the arms reduction field, the Russian security service may feel the U.S. monitors are getting too intrusive.
The program gives the monitors ``unique access,'' said Alexander Pikayev, an arms control expert at the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment. ``If political relations deteriorate, Russia will be less interested in transparency.''
Gennady Khromov, a Russian negotiator, said the Americans demanded only plutonium from weapons be stored at Mayak. ``But to prove that, we're being asked to strip naked and show everything we have,'' he said.
Reid rejected the criticism, saying there were demonstrated ways of providing those guarantees without revealing Russian secrets.
The National Security Council is supposed to wind up its review of the program in mid-May, according to Reid.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- michigan
NRC to meet Consumers on possible Mich nuke violation
USA: May 7, 2001
Story by Eileen Moustakis
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10725&newsDate=7-May-2001
NEW YORK - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said Friday it will meet May 8 with Consumers Energy to discuss an apparent violation of NRC rules at the 789-megawatt Palisades nuclear power unit in Michigan.
During an inspection in March, the NRC found the utility had supplied incomplete and inaccurate information when Consumers requested authorization to permanently close off one of two steam lines connected to an auxiliary feedwater pump.
The auxiliary feedwater system is part of a backup system to remove heat from the reactor if the normal feedwater system is lost.
On February 5 of last year, while the plant was shut down for a planned maintenance outage, an underground steam pipe to a steam-driven pump ruptured. The pump was shut down and the leak terminated, however when the pipe was replaced the remainder of the underground pipe could not be fully inspected to verify its "integrity," the NRC said.
The utility decided the steam line was not needed since a second steam pipe was available to provide steam to the pump and requested that the NRC eliminate a requirement that it be tested periodically.
In its request, the utility said its past safety analysis had considered the steam line as available for use in just one situation, that of an unlikely fire in an electrical cable room. Other means of maintaining the reactor in a safe condition were available without using the steam line in question, the utility indicated.
Based on its review of the information supplied, the NRC granted temporary authorization to eliminate the testing requirement and then approved the permanent closing of the steam line.
NRC inspectors, however, subsequently found a second fire scenario which considered the steam line as available for use to maintain the reactor in a safe shutdown condition following a fire.
The apparent violation is the failure of the utility to identify and evaluate the second fire scenario when it requested the change in NRC requirements for the steam line.
No decision on the apparent violations or any enforcement action, such as a civil penalty, will be made at the conference, but would come at a later time, the NRC said.
The plant, in South Haven, Mich., has been shut since March 30 for a scheduled refueling outage.
It is expected to return to the region's power grid around mid-May.
Consumers is a unit of CMS Energy Corp. . In late April, Consumers received regulatory approval to amend the license of the Palisades plant to transfer the plant's operating authority to the Nuclear Management Co. (NMC).
NMC operates and manages the nuclear plants of Xcel Energy Inc. , Alliant Energy , Wisconsin Energy Corp.'s Wisconsin Electric Power Co. and WPS Resources Corp.'s Wisconsin Public Service Co.
-------- nevada
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste review moves forward
USA: May 7, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10719&newsDate=7-May-2001
WASHINGTON - Documents released on Friday by the Department of Energy move forward the public comment process to finalize a decision on whether the energy secretary will recommend the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada as the nation's permanent nuclear waste repository this year.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected this winter to offer his recommendation to President George W. Bush on whether to proceed with Yucca Mountain as the repository site, an agency official said.
The nuclear industry wants the site finalized, saying by decade's end some 40,000 tons of used fuel rods from commercial reactors could be stored safely in the Nevada desert.
Environmentalists, many in Congress and a block of Nevada officials want to block the site's use. Concerns about the enforcement of radiation exposure standards, geological positioning of the repository and transportation of waste are among the main reasons for the objections.
DOE spokesman Joe Davis said Friday's document release consists of some 20 years of scientific and engineering data, and opens comment periods for the public on both the science and draft environmental impact portions of the process.
Davis said public hearings would be held in Nevada three times over the next 45 days, starting next Friday, on the science and engineering report.
The Nuclear Energy Institute applauded the science report, saying it showed the long-term performance of the storage system would be safe from exposure for at least 10,000 years. The industry said the estimated cost of finishing the storage process, from building the site to completion, is estimated at $49.3 billion in year 2000 dollars from this year forward.
Some $6.7 billion has already been spent on preliminary investigation and research into the Yucca site through the year 2000, NEI said.
"The science strongly suggests the site is suitable," said Joe Colvin, president and chief executive officer of the NEI.
"Now the project should complete the work leading up to a secretarial recommendation to the president," he said.
Nuclear utilities have complained that industry survival and growth depends on settling the decades-old issue of where to store radioactive fuel waste from commercial power plants.
The Department of Energy, under the law, is supposed to have constructed a site and taken title to the waste.
Opponents of the Yucca project believe nuclear utilities should continue to store spent fuel on-site.
Currently, 103 operating nuclear plants provide 20 percent of the country's power generation needs.
--------
DOE report details threats to site
May 07, 2001
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2001/may/07/511790108.html
The Energy Department's 1,000-page "Yucca Mountain Science and Engineering Report," released Friday, summarizes the research on potential problems with water, earthquakes, volcanoes and nuclear reactions in a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The report does not recommend Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository for 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste from commercial reactors and weapons activities.
Instead, it provides information to the public "on the secretary's consideration of the possible recommendation of the Yucca Mountain site as a potential repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste."
In late summer or fall, the DOE will schedule public hearings on the report.
Some of its highlights include:
Water flow
Water is important to the study of Yucca Mountain because mineral-laden ground water or rainwater that picks up high volumes of minerals can corrode canisters holding nuclear waste. That could allow radiation to escape into the environment. The report found:
The DOE recognizes that the volcanic rock that makes up Yucca Mountain is riddled with cracks, fractures and fissures. From long, narrow crevices to cracks as small as capillaries, the openings can allow water to flow through the mountain. If water reaches the buried packages, it could react with container materials, causing corrosion and allowing radiation to escape into the environment before 10,000 years. However, the DOE believes heat from the buried wastes will drive water away from the containers.
Chlorine-36, a byproduct of atomic weapons explosions in the Pacific Ocean in the early 1950s as well as a naturally occurring element, was found in soil samples taken at the repository level, raising concern about the speed of water movement through the mountain. The report notes the chlorine evidence is in dispute and is undergoing further study by other DOE scientists.
Rainfall at the proposed desert repository averages about 7.5 inches a year. Monsoons coming every three to seven years can add almost a foot of water to the mountain's surface. The DOE estimates that rainfall, infiltrating the mountain at about 0.18 of an inch a year in normal conditions, could jump to 0.48 inches during monsoon rains. A similar amount and range of infiltration would occur during a glacial period, possible some time beyond 2,000 years from now.
The current water table is about 3,400 feet below the surface of Yucca Mountain. The repository level is about 1,000 feet above the water table. A nuclear waste canister could be buried about 690 feet above the current water table if a repository spaced the waste farther apart to keep the rock cool. In wetter climates, the water table could rise up to 390 feet above the existing water table, so most of the repository would still be 610 feet above the water table during glacial periods. Earthquakes
The danger of earthquakes has been studied, because it could disrupt the burial site of the containers, possibly crushing them and allowing radiation to escape. The report found:
DOE scientists have mapped 39 earthquake faults in and near Yucca Mountain. If nuclear waste is placed inside the mountain, the DOE plans to drill holes for the packages away from any known faults. Although some faults have moved 89 feet at some point, none of them indicates a major quake has occurred in the past 2 million years. The Sundance fault runs within the boundaries of the repository for 2,460 feet, but has not moved in more than 2 million years.
DOE research indicates that an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 or higher would not crush or break open buried containers filled with nuclear waste. Volcanoes
Yucca Mountain is composed of volcanic ash, but it is not a volcano itself. However, an eruption near the site could affect the repository. The report found:
Volcanic activity at or near Yucca Mountain is considered highly unlikely. The last known eruption occurred about 80,000 years ago, producing an ash cloud up to six miles high. The chance of a volcanic eruption in the first 10,000 years of a Yucca Mountain repository is 1 in 6,250, scientists believe. Volcanic ash contaminated with radiation could fall 12 miles away, depending on wind direction.
Even though Yucca Mountain is not a volcano, consultants for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are studying the chances of an eruption through the repository. While these scientists agree with the DOE that the chance for an eruption is small, they say such an eruption, if it occurred within 1,000 years of the repository's closure, would be a catastrophe. Nuclear criticality
One other danger being studied is the possibility that the nuclear elements would react with each other, creating a chain reaction and contaminating both the air and water. The report found:
Certain types of uranium and plutonium that would be buried in Yucca Mountain could create a criticality, or a chain reaction. Water inside the mountain could enhance the process if nuclear wastes spilled out of a container and piled up inside a storage tunnel.
The chance that nuclear waste could go critical inside Yucca Mountain is one chance in 10,000 over 10,000 years. Those chances would increase dramatically if a volcano erupted through the repository.
---
New burial design may be more dangerous
May 07, 2001
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2001/may/07/511789901.html
Workers burying waste in a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain could be exposed to more radiation if a "cooler" design is used, a supplement to last year's draft environmental impact statement says.
The 86-page supplement, released Friday with a 1,000-page scientific report on the project, adds a possible design that would place the canisters of spent nuclear fuel farther apart -- one that scientists say would keep the mountain's rock cooler over time.
That design would change calculations of how much radiation workers might be exposed to as they bury the waste over the 60 years it should take to build and fill the repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Workers could be exposed to a fraction of a higher radiation dose under the cooler design, the supplemental report says.
The current repository design allows the rock temperature to exceed the boiling point and result in two worker deaths. A cooler, more spacious repository would keep the temperature below boiling but result in 2.8 worker deaths, the Energy Department calculated.
The greater danger to workers comes from longer exposure to the waste as they build and monitor more tunnels. Robots would handle the waste containers, the report says.
DOE scientists have calculated that no radiation is expected to escape into the environment for up to 10,000 years, the supplement says. That conclusion reflects the original draft environmental impact statement.
The supplemental report also allows for a larger waste-handling area on the surface of the mountain to prepare for burial of four types of nuclear waste arriving from commercial reactors and defense sites.
The types include commercial spent nuclear fuel -- up to 70,000 tons, most of it uranium metal pellets -- and another 7,000 tons of military wastes such as Navy reactors, liquid wastes transformed into glass blocks and weapons wastes.
The DOE has already received 11,000 public comments on its original draft environmental impact statement, released last August. Comments on the supplement may be submitted at a public hearing, in writing, by fax or via the Internet by June 25:
Public meetings. The DOE will provide information to the public about its "Supplement to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement" from 5 to 9 p.m. at each hearing. May 31 -- 6 to 9 p.m., Longstreet Inn & Casino, Amargosa Valley.
June 5 -- 6 to 9 p.m., Suncoast Hotel & Casino, 9090 Alta Drive.
June 7 -- 6 to 9 p.m., Bob Ruud Community Center, Pahrump.
Internet. Written comments or requests for copies of the documents may also be submitted electronically at the DOE's Yucca Mountain Project website: ymp.gov. Go to "Environmental Impact Statement."
Fax: (800) 967-0739
Mail: Dr. Jane Summerson, EIS Document Manager, M/S 010, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office, P.O. Box 30307, North Las Vegas, NV 89036-0307.
----
DOE delays seeking Yucca license:
Budget shortfall may hinder 2010 opening of site
May 07, 2001
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2001/may/07/511790003.html
Lack of funding has pushed back the Energy Department's application for a license to open a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain by a year and could threaten the proposed project's 2010 opening, a DOE official says.
The Energy Department needs $1 billion a year for the next seven years to get the project through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rigorous licensing procedure, according to Victor Trebules, the DOE's Office of Project Control.
The DOE, which would build and operate the repository if it is approved, is $98 million short, and as a result, the agency has postponed its plan to file its license request from 2002 to 2003, Trebules said Friday.
Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied to store 77,000 tons of commercial nuclear reactor fuel and defense waste.
"To maintain the 2010 opening, more money is necessary from Congress each year," Trebules told state and local government officials after the DOE released four reports updating scientific information about Yucca Mountain.
This year the DOE received $390 million for scientific studies after requesting $430 million. In 2000 Congress approved $351 million compared to a $409 million request.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was behind the move to freeze the Yucca Mountain budget for this year, as well as yanking money used to advertise public tours of the project.
Reid, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, plans to continue trimming DOE funding for Yucca Mountain, committee spokesman David Cherry said.
The Senate Energy and Water Subcommittee meets on Thursday, and Reid plans to question the DOE on the need to increase its budget, Cherry said.
Reid said he will examine the DOE's funding request carefully.
"I'm going to see what I can do," the senator said.
While studies inside the 5-mile-long exploratory tunnel continue, the DOE had planned to spend the extra money for designing a repository with enough detail to satisfy the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Trebules said.
Instead, the DOE funneled money to support ongoing scientific work, and the license request was put on hold, he said.
In addition, more than $11 billion has been added to cost estimates for the repository, bringing the total to $58 billion, Trebules said. The bulk of the increase is $7 billion to install titanium shields to protect buried containers from water moving through the mountain.
Other expenses include $2.7 billion for steel reinforcements to protect machinery and workers inside the repository, $1 billion for regulatory hurdles and management and $1 billion to expand surface facilities, including an extra pool for storing spent reactor fuel until it is prepared for burial.
"What is clear from these new reports is that the overall cost of this proposed repository has ballooned to more than $50 billion and will likely continue to climb as design work continues," Reid said in a statement Friday.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said that the rising cost for Yucca Mountain "shows this project is out of control. Yucca Mountain is not the answer to our nation's nuclear waste problem."
In addition, Reid, the assistant Democratic leader, noted no limit for radiation releases from a repository has been set and no specific transportation routes have been proposed.
None of the DOE's reports released Friday addresses effects from transporting the nuclear wastes or what would happen if there were an accident before trucks or trains reached the site. There is no rail line to either the Nevada Test Site or the mountain.
Meanwhile Gov. Kenny Guinn vowed not to let the Legislature remove his $5 million request for state funds to fight the repository on legal and public levels. The bulk of the money would be used to hire the best attorneys specializing in nuclear matters, Guinn said late Friday.
Some of the money would be used to support a nationwide information campaign to explain the dangers of shipping high-level nuclear waste across 43 states.
"We're going to fight back," Guinn said. "We are going to put up the best fight you've ever seen."
With the thousands of pages of documents from the DOE, state officials will analyze the scientific evidence for indications that building a repository will harm the state, the governor said.
"If they take any action that substantially causes harm, the state will be prepared," Guinn said, adding Nevada plans to go to court.
Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa said the DOE ignored earthquake hazards and water in the mountain, forming the basis for the state to take legal action.
"As Nevada's chief legal officer, let me reiterate that this office is committed for the long haul and is preparing to challenge the Yucca Mountain Project with all the resources at our disposal," Del Papa said.
-------- us nuc politics
Dems Criticize Bolton Nomination
New York Times
May 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Arms-Control-Bolton.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- John R. Bolton's nomination as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security came under fire Monday from Democrats.
``If ever there was a case of a fox in a chicken coop, it is Mr. Bolton's nomination to be undersecretary of state for arms control,'' said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. ``He is the wrong person in the wrong place.''
Republicans were deferring their comments until shortly before the vote, scheduled for Tuesday morning.
Bolton appeared likely to win confirmation despite the criticism from Democrats. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent the nomination to the floor on a 10-8 vote, with one Democrat, Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, voting for him. A straight party-line vote in the 50-50 Senate is all it would take, given the tiebreaker vote wielded by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Dorgan said he didn't know Bolton personally, but his views on arms control and other issues he would be handling at the State Department concerned him.
At the same time, Dorgan acknowledged that Bolton's positions appeared to be in sync with those of the Bush administration.
``The expressions he's made about this subject in recent years suggests that he doesn't care a whit about arms control,'' said Dorgan. ``He seems to believe, as this administration does, that arms reductions are not part of the strategy that makes much sense for this country, that treaties, arms control talks, somehow represent a display of weakness, apparently.''
Much of the criticism of Bolton expressed by Dorgan and Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., turned into criticism of Bush's plan to build a national missile defense.
Dorgan said the Bush plan was to ``build a national missile defense system, and if that ignites a new arms race and we see Russia and China building new offensive weapons, so be it, it doesn't matter at all. That is, in my judgment, a pretty thoughtless approach. It does matter.''
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When She Talks Arms, Washington and Moscow Listen
New York Times
May 7, 2001
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/politics/07LIVE.html
WASHINGTON - ANYONE in the Bush White House tempted to think that there are issues more important than nuclear cooperation with Russia might want to talk with Rose Gottemoeller about those 70-pound buckets of plutonium.
Ms. Gottemoeller, an expert on the Russian nuclear arsenal, remembered visiting a plutonium storage center in Russia a few years ago, when she was working in the Clinton administration. Inside, she said, she was startled to discover that plutonium was being stored in simple metal buckets.
"Basically they have buckets on the floor with handles on them, and you could walk in and pick them up and carry them out," she said. "Seventy, 75 pounds. They handed one of the buckets to me and said, 'Here, feel it, it's nice and warm.' " And to her astonishment, she remembered, the storage center was largely unprotected from intruders: "There was no perimeter fence. It was chilling."
She offered the anecdote in explaining why Russian nuclear weapons and the facilities to build them still pose such a threat, and why a Democratic Party loyalist has offered herself up as a channel between the Bush administration and Russia at a time when relations between Washington and Moscow have chilled.
Officials in each country have seemed eager to take advantage of her offer, especially as President Bush prepares to sweep away almost three decades of traditional arms control doctrine and begin construction of an extensive antimissile defense shield.
Although Ms. Gottemoeller (pronounced GOTTA-muller) is a lifelong Democrat who had hoped to return to the White House in a Gore presidency, she is widely respected by Republicans. And after returning from a trip last month to Moscow, where she met with senior Russian military officials and diplomats, she found a receptive audience among White House, State Department and Pentagon officials who wanted to know what the Russians were thinking.
"It's dangerous to think about me as a participant in the policy process, because I'm not," she told a visitor to her office at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which she joined last fall after leaving an Energy Department post overseeing nuclear nonproliferation. "I'm a channel that the two sides can choose to use or not use." said Ms. Gottemoeller, 48.
The Russians, she says, are alarmed by the Bush administration's threat to scrap the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which bans national missile defense systems and which has been a cornerstone of American and Russian defense planning.
They are concerned not so much about that one treaty, she said, as about the possibility that Washington might dismantle the larger framework of arms control agreements that have restricted the number and type of weapons that the two sides can deploy.
"When I've talked to the Russian generals, they're quite confident that they would have sufficient weapons to overcome any defensive system we would build, but they are concerned about an unpredictable meltdown in the overall strategic situation," Ms. Gottemoeller said.
She says she, too, is critical of the American threat to pull out of the ABM treaty. "We've got a long way to go before - in technical terms - we know what we want to do on missile defense, so there's no need to rush into this."
But at the same time, she - and, she suspected, the Russians - found something to like in Mr. Bush's speech last week announcing his plans, especially in his commitment to unilateral cuts in the American arsenal. "I did welcome the notion that it's time to get beyond the cold war," she said.
REARED in Columbus, Ohio, Ms. Gottemoeller was the fifth of sixth children born to an insurance executive father and a mother who stayed home to keep order in what Ms. Gottemoeller described as her "big German Catholic family."
She has been working for the government on Russian technology issues since she was a teenager. When she was a high school senior, her fluency in Russian landed her a part-time job with a government research institute sifting through Soviet scientific journals, looking for anything that might be of interest to the Pentagon.
"I was a language nut," she said. "I was one of those Sputnik babies from the 1960's. In those days, a lot of obscure high schools offered Russian because of Sputnik and the fear that somehow Russia was going to overtake us."
After graduating in Russian from Georgetown University, she went to work at the Commerce Department, where an assignment to a fisheries agency introduced her to her future husband, Raymond Arnaudo. "We were an office romance," she said. "I was in the office in charge of the Soviet fishing fleet. He was in the office in charge of the Western European fishing fleet." The couple - her husband is now a career State Department official - have two teenage sons.
Ms. Gottemoeller joined the Rand Corporation as a defense analyst in 1979, with a specialty in the Soviet military, and remained there until she joined the Clinton administration in 1993. Her first job there was in the National Security Council, where she helped negotiate agreements that led to the removal of the last nuclear weapons stored in the non-Russian republics of the former Soviet Union.
She was admired by others in the Clinton White House for her unflappability, and for her willingness to allow others to take credit for the administration's accomplishments. "I have two slogans," she said. "One, keep your eyes on the prize and don't worry about the nonsense. And two, that you'll be amazed how much you can get done in this town if you don't take the credit."
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US nuclear power industry showing new signs of life
USA: May 7, 2001
Story by Richard Cowan
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10730&newsDate=7-May-2001
WASHINGTON - With tight electricity supplies predicted this summer in California, New York and other high-demand states, politicians and federal regulators are taking another look at the nuclear power industry that for decades has been synonymous with "Three Mile Island" and "Chernobyl."
The industry is expected to get a boost this month, when President George W. Bush unveils a national energy strategy that is certain to include nuclear power in a menu for expanding domestic energy production.
The Bush administration has said that the nation's growing thirst for electricity means more than 1,300 new power plants will have to built over the next 20 years to meet demand.
"We know there is great interest in the (nuclear) industry. We're in a time of enormous change right now," Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard Meserve told Reuters after testifying Thursday to Congress on the state of the nuclear power industry.
"We're trying to gear up in anticipation" of what could be a flurry of requests for added nuclear capacity, Meserve said. The agency's role is not to promote nuclear energy, but merely to ensure safe operations, he added.
Meserve said he could not predict how many construction applications might fall into the NRC's lap in coming months, or whether nuclear power's 20 percent hold on overall electricity production in the United States might grow appreciably.
What is clear, however, is that powerful interests in Congress are hoping the long-dormant nuclear power industry will blossom after 25 years during which no permit has been issued for building a new nuclear power plant.
Senate Energy Committee Chairman Frank Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, opened Thursday's hearing by observing, "Four or five years ago, who would have thought we would hear talk of buying and selling (nuclear) plants, and, yes, even building new plants. Today this discussion is happening."
INTERNAL PROBLEMS, OUTSIDE OPPOSITION
Even proponents of nuclear power acknowledge that after decades of trying, nobody has solved a key problem: What to do with radioactive waste from the 103 plants now in operation.
Meserve told senators the lack of a national disposal site will mean a large increase this decade in storage at individual power plants.
That makes people living near the plants nervous and gives nuclear power critics one more argument that the industry cannot swear wall-to-wall safety of its operations.
"The bottom line is, nuclear power is unacceptable, unsafe and unreliable," said Anna Aurilio, legislative director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
In an interview, Aurilio criticized the NRC for lax enforcement and oversight of existing nuclear plants and for promoting weaker radiation standards than those sought by the Environmental Protection Agency.
She argues that without government subsidies, the nuclear power industry "would not exist today."
Critics also point to the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant, where the failure of the plant's water cooling system led to the partial melting of a reactor's uranium core. That $1 billion accident effectively halted the U.S. nuclear industry in its tracks.
In 1986, the world's worst nuclear reactor disaster occurred in Chernobyl when Russian engineers initiated an uncontrolled chain reaction in the core of the reactor, which exploded and ripped the top off the containment building.
SIGNS OF REBIRTH
Despite the criticisms from the environmental community, there are some tangible signs the U.S. nuclear power industry is trying to stage a comeback.
According to the NRC, the average capacity factor for light water reactors in the United States was 88 percent in 2000, up from 63 percent in 1989.
There also is "increasing interest," Meserve said, in license renewals to allow plants to operate beyond the original 40-year term. The NRC already has renewed licenses of two plants in Maryland and South Carolina for an extra 20 years.
And recently, the NRC has allowed several plants to increase their output.
Corbin McNeill, chairman of Exelon Corp., which operates 17 nuclear reactors that generate nearly 17,000 megawatts of electricity, told the Senate Energy Committee his company plans to add about 1,000 megawatts of new capacity over the next three years at existing nuclear plants.
Exelon also is touting a new technology, which McNeill claims will help overcome some of the major obstacles to a bigger nuclear industry.
The "pebble bed modular reactor" is a relatively small, 110-125 megawatt reactor that McNeill says is cheap to build at roughly $150 million. That compares to the $2 billion to $3 billion pricetag attached to more conventional reactors.
That, he said, would allow for easier private financing and quicker construction.
But as with everything nuclear, the new technology draws critics, who claim it might create an even more complicated nuclear waste headache and has the potential for more flaws during the manufacturing process.
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Nuclear Power's New Day
The New York Times
May 7, 2001
By RICHARD RHODES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/opinion/07RHOD.html?searchpv=nytToday
MADISON, Conn. - Technologies are born, grow, thrive and decline, much as living organisms do. That should not be surprising. Since they derive from human knowledge, their effective application must be learned, and they compete for social and economic territory.
Nuclear power, a product of naval propulsion research, emerged in the United States in the 1950's. Its first use as a commercial energy source came about because it had obvious benefits for pollution control. A Pennsylvania utility, Duquesne Light, built the first commercial nuclear power reactor at Shippingport, Pa., in 1954. The utility had planned to build a coal-fired power plant. When the public objected to further smoke pollution around smoky Pittsburgh, Duquesne switched to nuclear power.
Public acceptance of a new technology is essential to its growth. Nuclear power, associated in the public's mind with nuclear weapons, was probably commercialized prematurely, while its complexities were still being worked out. Its environmental benefits were not fully appreciated in the early decades because air pollution was abating under government regulation in the 1960's and 1970's, and global warming had not yet emerged as the ultimate environmental challenge. When conservation slowed electricity demand after the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and 1974, utilities canceled orders for new power plants, both nuclear and coal. Almost all new plants built since then have been fueled with natural gas.
But the populatio