Cheney May Recommend Nuclear Plants for Energy Policy, AP Says

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

Index:



Cheney May Recommend Nuclear Plants for Energy Policy, AP Says

Nuclear fuel shipment sparks protest in Poland

U.S. said considering shift in nuclear targets

Nuclear Reactor Shut Down in Ukraine

Cheney Says US Can Do Little to Ease California Energy Woes

Defusing green booby-traps

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



Cheney May Recommend Nuclear Plants for Energy Policy, AP Says

  

Washington, April 27 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney 

indicated nuclear power plants will be part of his recommendations for a 

national energy policy that may be announced by the end of next month, 

Associated Press said. 



Cheney warned Californians today they are in for ``a tough summer'' and 

said almost nothing can be done to produce enough kilowatts for California 

in the short term, AP said. Nuclear power plants are ``the one way to 

generate electricity that does not produce greenhouse gas emissions,'' AP 

quoted Cheney as saying. 



Federal energy regulators approved a plan on Wednesday to control 

wholesale-power prices in California, where electricity shortages and 

financially troubled utilities have caused rolling blackouts and soaring 

energy costs. 



The vice president, who left the chairmanship of the Texas oil services 

company Halliburton Co. last year, is heading a Bush administration task 

force that's developing the national energy policy.

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



Nuclear fuel shipment sparks protest in Poland



SZCZECIN, Poland, April 29 (Reuters) - Anti-nuclear activists blocked 

railways to the Baltic seaport of Szczecin on Sunday to protest against 

planned shipments of nuclear fuel through Poland to the controversial 

Czech power plant, Temelin. 



About 40 Polish activists and Greenpeace members from Austria and 

Germany also put flags with nuclear warning signs on navigation buoys in 

Szczecin harbour. 



The protest followed last weekend's shipment of U.S.-made nuclear fuel, 

which reached Temelin after being carried by rail through western Poland. 



"We don't know when the next ship will come, so we are doing the action 

now," Greenpeace spokesman Franko Petri told Reuters. "We are also 

painting the rails with yellow colour to show the Polish people that there will 

be a nuclear fuel transport on the way to Temelin soon," he added. 



Temelin -- a $2.6 billion nuclear power plant in the southern Czech 

Republic, just over 50 km (31 miles) from its 



border with Austria -- has been running on a test basis since the reactor 

started up in October. 



It has been fiercely opposed by Austrian environmentalists, who have 

staged border blockades demanding closure of the station, which they say 

may be unsafe. 



Last weekend Poland handled a U.S. shipment of 23 tonnes of uranium 

oxide rods bound for Temelin. The rods were unloaded in Szczecin and 

transported to the Czech Republic by train under tight security. 



No major incidents were reported, largely as a result of Polish officials 

keeping the operation under wraps. 



Polish government officials have not said when they expect the next fuel 

shipment, citing freight security reasons. 



Protesters said the government had no right to conceal the timing of the 

two or three further freights expected. 



"We knew there would be no transport today, but our action is targeted 

against keeping future transports a secret," said Jakub Szumin, the head of 

local environment organisation Gaja. 



Sunday's protest -- rare in Poland because the country has no nuclear 

power plants -- was largely symbolic as the rails on which the 

demonstrators sat are rarely used. 



The Temelin plant, which combines a Russian-made reactor with a control 

system made by U.S firm Westinghouse, has suffered several shutdowns 

because of vibrations and a crack in steam piping in the turbine in its non-

nuclear generation section. 



But a recent Czech-led independent commission, which included observers 

from the European Union, Austria and Germany, gave Temelin high marks 

in an environmental impact study. 

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



U.S. said considering shift in nuclear targets



WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) - The United States is considering major 

changes in America's nuclear posture, such as slashing the number of 

strategic warheads, taking most B-52 and B-2 bombers out of the nuclear 

force and shifting some targets from Russia to China, the Washington Post 

reported on Sunday. 



The Post, quoting administration officials and independent experts, said the 

proposed changes had grown out of an inter-agency review of nuclear 

strategy and weaponry ordered by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. 



It said the Pentagon was ready to cut the number of strategic warheads 

from about 7,500 to below 2,500 if President George W. Bush changes the 

formal guidance on what nuclear forces are needed to meet the declining 

threat from Russia, the smaller but growing challenge from China, and the 

limited danger posed by nations such as Iraq, North Korea and Iran. 



On Friday, a White House official said Bush would begin consulting 

skeptical U.S. allies next week on his controversial plans for a missile 

defense system. He plans to give a speech in Washington Tuesday in 

which he will link deployment of a defense shield for the United States and 

its allies with reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. 



Bush was not expected to include specifics in his speech, the Post said, 

but it quoted other officials familiar with the inter-agency review. 



During his campaign, Bush promised to develop and deploy a missile 

defense to guard against rogue nuclear launches and other attacks, as well 

as reducing U.S. nuclear weapons to "the lowest possible number 

consistent with our national security." 



The Post said the Air Force may absorb major changes, such as switching 

most B-2 and B-52 bombers to conventional missions. This was proposed 

in 1997, when the Clinton administration discussed reducing to 2,500 

warheads. 



In addition, the Air Force may lower the readiness of its 50 MX 

"Peacekeeper" intercontinental ballistic missiles, each carrying 10 

warheads, the Post said. 



They are scheduled to be withdrawn by 2007 under the second Strategic 

Arms Reduction Treaty, or START II. 



The U.S. Navy also may reduce its fleet of Trident ballistic missile 

submarines from 18 to as few as 10. 

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



Nuclear Reactor Shut Down in Ukraine



KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - A nuclear reactor at a Ukrainian power plant was shut 

down following a hydrogen leak Saturday, officials said. 



Reactor No. 3 at the Soviet-designed Yuzhnaya plant was stopped early in 

the day, the state Energoatom nuclear company said. It gave no further 

details but reported no increased radiation levels. 



The incident came two days after ceremonies in Ukraine marking the 15th 

anniversary of the reactor explosion and fire at Chernobyl, the world's worst 

nuclear accident. The last working reactor at the ill-fated plant was closed 

in December 2000. 



That left Ukraine with four nuclear power plants and 13 operating reactors, 

which are frequently shut down over malfunctions or for repairs but still 

provide about 40 percent of the former Soviet republic's electricity. 



Ukraine had hoped for an influx of Western money to finish building two new 

reactors, which it sees as compensation for Chernobyl's lost power. But 

with the aid largely delayed, officials including President Leonid Kuchma 

say the country may have no choice but to complete construction by itself. 

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



Cheney Says US Can Do Little to Ease California Energy Woes

  

Washington, April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said 

``there's almost nothing'' the federal government can do to ease California's 

short-term energy shortages. 



``They're going to have to go through a tough summer,'' Cheney said in an 

interview on CNN's ``Larry King Live.'' 



Cheney, who left the chairmanship of the Texas oil services company 

Halliburton Co. last year, is heading a White House task force that will give 

President George W. Bush recommendations on ways to solve the U.S.'s 

energy concerns. The panel's work was given greater urgency by a power 

crisis in California that administration officials have said may ripple across 

the state's borders. 



Federal energy regulators approved a plan on Wednesday to control 

wholesale-power prices in California, where electricity shortages and 

financially troubled utilities have caused rolling blackouts and soaring 

energy costs. 



Cheney's task force recommendations will come ``in about a month'' and 

will include suggestions on how to boost the country's energy supply, 

Cheney said.  ``More nuclear power may be required'' in that effort to boost 

supply, since nuclear power plants ``are the one way to generate electricity 

that does not produce greenhouse gas emissions.'' 



1,300 New Plants Needed 



The U.S. will need to build at least 1,300 new power plants over the next 20 

years, and the money for that project would come from the private sector, 

Cheney said. The government's role is to address regulations related to the 

construction of those new plants, he said. 



In a Bloomberg interview this week, Environmental Protection Agency head 

Christine Todd Whitman said the U.S. won't recommend easing 

environmental rules to spark more exploration in the U.S. The Bush 

administration wants to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and 

other public lands for oil drilling to help solve the U.S. energy supply 

issues. 



``People love to drive; we drive a lot, we like big SUVs,'' Cheney said. ``We 

consume more energy, each one of us, than (people in) any other country 

in the world. It's got to come from someplace.'' 



China 



Cheney also said that Bush's comments this week about defending Taiwan 

were sparked by increased aggressiveness by China. 



China ``hasn't been as committed to the notion of a peaceful process as 

they have in the past,'' Cheney said. ``There's been a big buildup in military 

capability, in missiles deployed across the mainland.'' 



Bush this week said the U.S. would do ``whatever it took'' to defend Taiwan 

if China were to attack, though he also said the administration stands by 

the one-China policy that calls on the mainland and Taiwan to resolve 

disputes peacefully. Previous presidents have not been as explicit in calling 

for the defense of Taiwan. 



On the overall U.S. economy, Cheney said ``the jury's still out'' on whether 

``we'll actually get into a recession.'' Cheney was the first Bush official to 

use the word recession in December when warning of the impact of the 

slowdown in the economy. 

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



Defusing green booby-traps

WorldNetDaily.com April 28, 2001

The polls say that Americans, by a margin of about two to one, think 

George II is doing a really good job as president. The media elite -- having 

told us that he isn't -- don’t understand why so many of us think that he is. 

Well, for one thing, we don’t see him much on television, rushing off every 

day in Air Force One to the scene of every seven-car pileup or creek 

flooding its banks to feel our pain. No, the president and his bomb-squad 

have been busy in the nation’s capitol, searching for -- and sometimes 

defusing -- various booby-traps left there by the Gore-Greenies. 

After only a few days in office, President Bush announced that he had no 

intention of complying with Al Gore’s Kyoto Global Warming Protocols. He 

had to do that to defuse one of the Kyoto booby-traps left by the Gore-

Greenies at the EPA -- the Gore-Greenies had got Christy Whitman to 

propose regulating carbon dioxide as a "pollutant." 

Power-generation facilities burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) do 

produce carbon dioxide and water vapor -- both of which are Gore-Greenie 

"greenhouse gases" -- but neither of them are "pollutants" as defined by the 

Clean Air Act. The Gore-Greenie plan was to use the Clean Air Act as a 

regulatory hammer to force compliance with the Kyoto Protocols, which 

would require us -- by 2012 -- to cut back our carbon dioxide emissions to 

the levels of 20 years before. If the Gore-Greenies had prevailed, not only 

would we not be able to build any more coal- or natural gas-fired plants, but 

we would have had to shut down all the plants built during the 1990s. 

But the president’s bomb squad can’t relax just yet. Having lost that Kyoto 

battle, the Gore-Greenies at EPA are at it again. They want to drastically 

reduce the arsenic levels allowed in drinking water, from 50 parts per billion 

to 5 ppb. Actually, they have had to settle for reducing it to 10 ppb, but they 

wanted to reduce it to 5 ppb. 

What do arsenic levels in our water have to do with Kyoto? 

Well, a 1,000 megawatt coal-fired plant, producing enough electricity for a 

city of about 300,000 people, burns about three million tons of coal a year, 

and releases -- among other heavy metals (such as mercury and uranium) --

 450 pounds of arsenic! 

So when you find a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking, don’t suck on 

it. 

Now, coal-fired plant emissions are already suspected by the EPA of being 

responsible for the heavy metal "contamination" of lakes and rivers in 

northern states. According to the EPA, in Wisconsin alone, more than 200 

lakes and rivers are contaminated with mercury. The amount of mercury in 

coal is much, much less than the amount of arsenic. If the EPA already 

suspects coal-fired plants of contaminating rivers and lakes with mercury, 

how much longer will it be before coal-fired plant operators are hauled off to 

jail for contaminating America’s lakes and rivers with arsenic? 

So, perhaps the Gore-Greenie objective in setting the 10 ppb arsenic level 

in drinking water is not to drive cities and municipalities into bankruptcy, 

after all. It’s to force the shut-down of all remaining coal-fired plants, ala 

Kyoto. 

But if we do that, the only remaining option is nuclear power! 

Incidentally, according to the National Council on Radiation Protection and 

Measurements, because of the release of uranium and thorium -- and their 

radioactive decay products such as radium, radon and polonium -- when 

burning coal, the effective radiation dose-equivalent to the population from 

the operation of a 1000MWe coal-fired power plant is more than 100 times 

that from a 1000 MWe nuclear power plant. It’s not so much that the 

radioactivity released by the coal-fired plant is all that much -- it’s really that 

the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires nuclear-power plants to keep 

its releases unrealistically low. 

Which brings us to "hormesis" -- a biological term for the stimulation of any 

organism by low doses of any agent. Hormology is the study of excitation 

produced by the stimulation. Low doses of many hormetic agents result in 

a positive effect; large doses of the same agent produce a negative effect. 

Many such chemical hormetic agents are known, and one of them is 

arsenic -- which plays a minor but significant hormetic role in our 

metabolism at relatively low concentrations. That is, not only is a little 

arsenic good for you, you couldn’t get along without a little of it. It’s 

something like the zinc, iron and selenium in your One-A-Day vitamin 

capsules. 

But you can read all about arsenic and that particular Gore-Greenie booby-

trap somewhere else. This column is about ionizing radiation -- the "health 

threat" the EPA and the Gore-Greenies have used to make nuclear-power 

plants an endangered species in this country. The EPA and the Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission have based their radiation safety criteria on the so-

called "zero-threshold" model, which says that all radiation exposure is bad 

for you and that the operation of any nuclear-power plant -- or any x-ray 

machine -- will inevitably cause unacceptable additional cases of cancer in 

the general population 

However, it now appears the EPA and NRC "zero-threshold" linear-

extrapolation model has been wrong all along. As we learn more and more 

about how our bodies function at the cellular level, it appears that all the 

cells in your body -- not just your skin -- benefit from a little irradiation. That 

is, ionizing radiation is a hormetic agent. You need a little of it every day, 

like sunshine, but don’t get too much. 

Every living creature on the planet’s surface is exposed to ionizing 

radiation, which varies from place to place by factors of two or three. The 

background radiation from cosmic rays is greater in high-altitude places like 

Albuquerque, N.M., and greater over a Pennsylvania coal seam because of 

radioactive radon gas venting from the uranium and thorium in the coal 

seam. Evidently, two or three times average background levels is not too 

much. In fact, statistically, people who live at high altitudes and over coal 

seams are less likely to develop cancer. That is, it appears that higher 

background levels are better for you than lower ones. 

Each cell in your body is struck -- on average -- a couple of times each 

year by background radiation. Each "hit" on a cell could cause DNA 

damage to that cell that could result in cancer later in life. And that is 

basically what the "zero-threshold" dogma assumes will happen. But there 

are other possible responses for both the cell and the organism to ionizing 

background radiation. 

For example, the individual cell that’s been hit may at some later time try to 

function and may realize that there is something wrong and commit 

"suicide" -- a process called apoptosis -- which also removes the cancer 

risk to the organism. Or the immune system of the organism may be 

stimulated by the radiation damage of some cells to search out and destroy 

not only the cells damaged by radiation, but all the defective cells it can 

find. In other words, a little background radiation can cause the body to kill 

cancer cells caused by some other carcinogen -- cells it would not have 

otherwise sought out and destroyed. Far from causing cancer, a little 

ionizing radiation may even result in the organism defeating some other 

cancer causing agent. 

At an American Nuclear Society meeting in San Francisco a few years 

ago, Japanese researchers reported on their study of the incidence of 

carcinoma among two large groups of Japanese in or near Hiroshima and 

Nagasaki in 1945 when the atomic bombs were dropped -- one group having 

been exposed to significant amounts of ionizing radiation, and another 

control group that was not. The Japanese researchers reported that there 

were more -- statistically significantly more -- carcinomas in the unexposed 

group than in the group that had been exposed to ionizing radiation many 

orders of magnitude greater than background. And they got that exposure 

all at once, not distributed uniformly over a year’s time, as is the case with 

background radiation -- an incomprehensible result from the standpoint of 

the "zero-threshold" dogma of EPA and NRC. 

Which is not to say that you would be better off taking a teaspoon of 

arsenic every day. But because both arsenic and ionizing radiation are 

evidently hormetic -- like vitamins -- the EPA and NRC should not be driving 

the allowable exposures of arsenic and ionizing radiation down to zero. You 

might wind up getting scurvy or something like that. 

But if getting some Gore-Greenie transmitted disease doesn’t bother you, 

how about this? These "zero-threshold" Gore-Greenies are deliberately 

driving up the cost to infinity of electricity generated by coal-fired and 

nuclear plants. If they’re successful, then all you soccer moms out there in 

la-la land are not only going to be pale and anemic in the daytime, but 

you’re also going to be freezing in the dark at night. 





**************************************************************************

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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