U.S. House Commerce head sees resurgence in U.S. nuclear power

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>]

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Index:



U.S. House Commerce head sees resurgence in U.S. nuclear power

German police use water cannon on nuke activists

German minister slammed by Greens party colleagues

Protests slow German nuclear waste train

Child Cancer Cures Up Risk in Adults

==============================================



U.S. House Commerce head sees resurgence in U.S. nuclear power



WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - Nuclear power is on its way back and 

the once-dying industry could play an important role in helping the 

nation grapple with electricity shortages, the Republican head of the 

House Energy and Commerce committee said on Tuesday. 



Although no new U.S. nuclear power plants have been built in 25 

years, Republican lawmakers are taking a closer look at how the 

industry could fit into a broad national plan to boost domestic 

energy supplies and limit oil imports. 



Rep. Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, said the federal 

government needs to make it easier for nuclear power generation to 

remain a vital component of the national energy mix. 



"There should be no question that the nation's energy problems would 

be much worse without the nuclear industry's impressive and safe 

track record of sustained output," Tauzin said in a statement 

delivered at a House energy subcommittee hearing. 



"Recently, I have noticed the initial stages of a resurgence of 

interest in nuclear power. The current energy crisis has helped us to 

understand that natural gas and coal should not be the only fuel 

sources for developing future generating capacity." 



Environmentalists generally oppose expansion of the nuclear industry, 

saying the plants produce huge amounts of radioactive waste that must 

be safely stored for hundreds of years. 



20 PCT OF U.S. ELECTRICITY FROM NUCLEAR POWER 



Nuclear power from 103 commercial plants currently provides 20 

percent of U.S. electricity generation. 



Coal, which fuels a sizable number of U.S. power plants, dirties the 

air. Natural gas- and oil-fueled power plants have become more 

expensive and have other environmental issues. 



But the future role of nuclear power is clouded because plants are 

aging and no new nuclear plants have been permitted in this country 

since 1975. 



Added to that is the continuing battle over nuclear waste. 



Some 40,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods are 

now stored at scores of plants despite a requirement that the 

Department of Energy build a permanent repository. 



The most likely site in Yucca Mountain, Nev., has not been approved 

yet. The Republican-led Senate failed last year to override then-

President Bill Clinton's veto of legislation to start building a 

repository in the Nevada desert. 



Tauzin's remarks echoed the sentiments of Vice President Dick Cheney, 

who last week said nuclear power could help alleviate concerns about 

global warming. 



"If you want to do something about carbon dioxide emissions, then you 

ought to build nuclear power plants. They don't emit any carbon 

dioxide. They don't emit greenhouse gases," Cheney said on MSNBC 

television. 



Cheney leads a White House task force preparing recommendations for 

President George W. Bush on how the nation could boost domestic 

energy supplies. While the recommendations are being prepared, House 

and Senate Republicans are forging ahead with their own legislative 

proposals. 



WASTE DANGEROUS-GREEN GROUPS 



Environmentalists blanch at the idea of using nuclear power as an 

answer to global warming concerns, or even as a potential source of 

new generation. 



Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy organization, last week said 

that despite what Cheney believes, nuclear power cannot be considered 

a zero-emissions fuel source. 



"Contrary to the vice president's assertions, nuclear power is not 

capable of combating global warming because of the exorbitant cost of 

reactors and the long lead time needed to build them," the 

organization said. 



It also said the steps needed to generate nuclear power, like mining 

uranium and enriching radioactive fuel, add carbon dioxide to the 

atmosphere. 



Tauzin told the House panel that the following areas could be 

addressed by federal regulators or Congress to make nuclear power 

more viable: 



* Require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to administer its rules 

"in a consistent and even-handed manner that does not discourage 

companies from future investment." 



* Prepare the NRC to renew as many as 30 reactor licenses that are 

set to expire in a few years. Thus far, the NRC has renewed licenses 

to extend the life of five nuclear reactors. 



* Train "rusty" NRC staff for possible future requests to gain 

permission to construct a nuclear reactor. 



* Work harder to solve the nuclear waste issue, since Tauzin said "it 

is not safe to store spent nuclear fuel in dozens of locations across 

the country." 



* Reauthorize the compensation and liability provisions of the Price-

Anderson Act that are to expire in August 2002. 



Tauzin said without the measures, the industry would likely not 

construct or operate new nuclear facilities. 

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



German police use water cannon on nuke activists

  

DANNENBERG, Germany, March 27 (Reuters) - Clashes between German riot 

police and environmental activists trying to stop a nuclear waste 

train worsened on Tuesday as police fired water cannon to disperse 

protesters. 



Police said they fired after protesters in the north German town of 

Dannenberg shot flares in the direction of the gathered police ranks. 





"The situation has become more grave. Protesters have fired flares on 

police, including helicopters, there are reports that activists are 

preparing attacks with vinegar acid and a police car was set on 

fire," a police spokesman said. 



The train is carrying slag from a French plant that reprocesses fuel 

rods from German reactors. It is the first such shipment since a ban 

imposed three years ago and it has required one of the biggest 

peacetime security operations Germany has ever seen to keep the line 

open. 



The train was halted near the town of Dahlenburg about 14 km (nine 

miles) from Dannenberg after activists damaged a section of track by 

chaining themselves to the line. The six wagon-sized containers were 

to be unloaded at Dannenberg and moved 25 km (16 miles) by road to 

Gorleben on Wednesday.

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



German minister slammed by Greens party colleagues



BERLIN, March 27 (Reuters) - German Environment Minister Juergen 

Trittin was rapped on the knuckles on Tuesday by Greens party 

colleagues who blame weekend poll losses on his remarks comparing a 

member of the opposition to a neo-Nazi skinhead. 



The Bundestag lower house votes on Wednesday on a call by opposition 

conservatives for Trittin, a hardline left-winger in the ecologist 

party governing in coalition with the larger Social Democratic Party, 

to step down. 



But Trittin said after meeting coalition colleagues that he was 

confident the coalition parties would back him. 



"I got the impression from both parties in the coalition that no one 

was prepared to help the Christian Democrats in their efforts to 

bully someone out of government," Trittin told NTV television. 



Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Monday criticised opposition calls 

for Trittin to quit as a "manhunt." 



GREENS VOTE DOWN 



Trittin's remarks early this month -- which accused Christian 

Democrat general secretary Laurenz Meyer of having a "skinhead 

mentality" -- cost votes in Rhineland-Palatinate, where the Greens 

barely scraped back into the state assembly. 



They scored 5.2 percent in the state, down one percentage point and 

barely above the five-percent threshold required to gain seats under 

Germany's proportional representation system. Greens support also 

slipped by 1.5 percent in Baden-Wuerttemberg to 7.7 percent. 



Greens parliamentary leader Kirsten Mueller said after the 

parliamentary party meeting that no individual politician could be 

blamed for the weekend's losses. 



"The Greens will unanimously back Trittin. We need to show solidarity 

to be successful. We can only win back voters if we stand together 

and don't falter," Mueller said, adding that the party needed to make 

changes to win back voters. 



Trittin has also been criticised in the past days for saying the 

controversial shipments of nuclear waste from France that resumed on 

Monday were a necessary part of his plan to phase out nuclear power 

by 2025. 



A heavily-guarded train returning waste from France rumbled across 

Germany on Tuesday, protected by some 30,000 police and special 

forces against demonstrations by thousands of environmentalists. 



Greens deputy Franziska Eichstaedt-Bohlig, who had been critical of 

Trittin, said the minister had been formally warned. 



"He got the yellow card, but not the red card," she said. 

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



Protests slow German nuclear waste train



LUENEBURG, Germany (Reuters) - Hundreds of German environmental 

activists brought a heavily guarded nuclear waste train to a brief 

halt Tuesday by rushing massed ranks of riot police, but the 

controversial cargo rolled on toward its goal. 



Carrying slag from a French plant that reprocesses fuel rods from 

German reactors, the first such shipment since a ban imposed three 

years ago, took one of the biggest peacetime security operations 

Germany had ever seen to keep the line open. 



After a day of playing cat-and-mouse with the police, including 

sporadic protests as the train wove a secret route across the heart 

of Germany, several hundred activists surged through police lines 

near Lueneburg and blocked the transport some 30 miles short of its 

destination. 



Police had some 20,000 officers on hand along the route to try to 

prevent the battles that marred previous shipments. 



It still took them well over an hour to drag the protesters from the 

tracks -- largely without violence -- to let the train continue 

toward the Gorleben nuclear storage facility. 



Some activists chanted slogans, others sang folk songs and hymns. 

About 200 were detained in a special police train. 



Others, forced off to the side of the tracks, jeered when the waste 

eventually rumbled past them at walking pace. One man leapt from a 

low bridge onto one of the white, armored waste casks, known as 

Castors, forcing it briefly to a stop again. 



Others earlier used inflatable power boats to dodge police. 



The cargo was due at Dannenberg late in the evening, from where the 

six wagon-sized Castor containers were to be unloaded and moved 16 

miles by road to Gorleben Wednesday. 



Under pressure from France to ease a backlog of German waste at its 

La Hague reprocessing plant near Cherbourg, Chancellor Gerhard 

Schroeder lifted the transport ban imposed on safety grounds in 1998. 

About two cargoes a year are now planned. 



CALLS FOR CALM 



Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, one of Schroeder's ecologist 

Greens coalition allies and himself once a protester at Gorleben, 

called for calm. He sees the waste shipments as an integral part of 

deal he struck with the electricity industry last year to phase out 

Germany's 19 reactors by about 2025. 



But protesters say they want not so much to block the waste 

altogether -- it has to go somewhere -- but to make handling it so 

expensive that the industry shuts down its reactors now. 



"We want to make these transports so expensive that they are neither 

economically feasible nor politically justifiable," said pensioner 

Helmut Piethers, huddling by a campfire near Gorleben. 



While younger "eco-warriors" are in the vanguard of taking on police, 

Piethers was not atypical among the angry thousands gathered around 

Gorleben, on the western bank of the river Elbe. 



Organizers expect 10,000 people to block the trucks Wednesday. Last 

time, police used water cannon to force the road open. 



Germany sends spent fuel rods to France where most of the uranium is 

recovered. The small amount of waste is heated into a form of glass 

which is then sealed in metal canisters. 



Each Castor -- the name is short for Casks for Storage and Transport 

of Radioactive Material -- holds 28 canisters and weighs over 100 

tonnes. The canisters will be kept in warehouses at Gorleben pending 

a decision in several years' time on their final disposal. One 

possibility is burial in a nearby salt mine. 

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



Child Cancer Cures Up Risk in Adults



NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Survivors of childhood cancer face six times the 

usual risk of getting entirely new cancers in early adulthood - 

almost certainly because of the chemotherapy and radiation treatments 

that cured them, a large study found. 



Doctors' ability to cure childhood malignancy has been one of the 

clearest successes of the war on cancer. About 1 in every 1,000 

Americans in their 20s is a cancer survivor. 



Several earlier reports have shown a surprisingly high cancer risk as 

young patients grow older, but the latest study, involving more than 

13,000 survivors, gives the most comprehensive assessment yet of this 

unexpected downside of a medical victory. 



When doctors began regularly curing childhood leukemia in the mid-

1970s, they gave little thought to the possibility of distant ill 

effects. But because of the newly recognized risks, doctors now 

routinely try to use the least damaging treatment that will still 

cure the disease. 



``It's clear that people treated for cancer in childhood are at 

increased risk of cancer later in life,'' said Dr. Joseph Neglia of 

the University of Minnesota. He presented the findings Tuesday at a 

meeting in New Orleans of the American Association for Cancer 

Research. 



His research shows that while new cancer - especially breast cancer - 

occurs more often than expected in these patients, it still is rare. 

And the benefits of having cancer cured in childhood far outweigh any 

later risk. 



Overall, the cancer survivors have a 3 percent risk of developing an 

entirely new cancer over the next 20 years. This is about six times 

greater than would be expected among people this age. 



The researchers based their findings on a follow-up of 13,581 

children and adolescents from 25 hospitals in the United States and 

Canada who had survived at least five years after treatment for 

leukemia and other forms of cancer. Their average age is now in the 

late 20s. 



In all, 298 of the patients got new cancers. They were diagnosed an 

average of 12 years after their first malignancy. The most common new 

tumor was breast cancer, followed by thyroid and brain cancer. 



In general, Neglia said, chemotherapy appears to increase the risk of 

new leukemia, while radiation boosts the risk of breast and other so-

called solid tumors. These two main forms of treatment also probably 

work in combination to trigger cancer, probably by damaging patients' 

genes. 



Among the study's findings: 



Breast cancer was 16 times more common than expected and often 

occurred when women reached their late 20s and 30s. The researchers 

recommended that girls who got radiation to their chests have a 

mammogram by age 25. 



Bone cancer was 19 times more common than usual and thyroid 11 times 

more common among the cancer survivors. 



The highest extra cancer risk was seen in children who were treated 

for Hodgkin's disease. They had an almost 8 percent chance of new 

cancer during 20 years of follow-up. The risk was lowest among 

longtime survivors of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. 



The same underlying genetic defect that triggered the patient's 

original cancer might have caused some of the new tumors. But the 

researchers believe chemotherapy and radiation were largely to blame.



Doctors say they try to minimize exposure to toxic treatments as much 

as possible, especially radiation. This has largely been abandoned as 

a treatment for Hodgkin's disease and some leukemias. Now, about one-

quarter of young cancer patients get radiation, compared with half 15 

years ago. 



``We really have to worry about the children we are curing,'' said 

Dr. Barton Kamen of New Jersey's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. 



Still, he said, doctors must treat aggressively enough to cure 

patients on the first attempt, because the disease rarely can be 

eliminated once it returns in these patients. 



Between 8,000 and 10,000 new cases of childhood cancer are diagnosed 

in the United States each year. About 70 percent are cured. 



Dianne Traynor of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation noted that 

childhood cancer survivors may face a variety of other health 

problems, including learning problems, epilepsy and permanent hair 

loss. 



The latest findings, she said, ``will certainly spur new research 

efforts. They show the important of new treatments that are less 

invasive.'' 



On the Net: 



Meeting site: http://www.aacr.org 







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

Sandy Perle                                     Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100                                     

Director, Technical                             Extension 2306                                  

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service         Fax:(714) 668-3149                                          

ICN Pharmaceuticals, Inc.                       E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net                                                      

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue           E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com                       

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Personal Website: http://sandyfl.nukeworker.net

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com



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