Scientists affirm mass of neutrinos, corroborate Japan study

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

Index:



Scientists affirm mass of neutrinos, corroborate Japan study

Antinuclear torch relay begins in Hiroshima

Ex-Nuclear Official Sues Over Book

N.Y. businesses say 10,000 MW of new power needed

Kazakhstan mulls storing foreign nuclear waste

TEPCO to close reactor due to cooling water leak

Aomori gov. vows to continue accepting spent nuclear fuel

Grass Could Endanger Nuke Reservation

Robot Could Protect Nuke Workers

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



Scientists affirm mass of neutrinos, corroborate Japan study



TOKYO, June 19 (Kyodo) - An international team of scientists from 

Canada, Britain and the United States has found ''direct evidence'' 

proving that tiny subatomic particles called neutrinos have mass, 

team members said Monday. 



The findings on neutrinos, which have so far been shrouded in 

mystery, were drawn from observations made at the Sudbury Neutrino 

Observatory (SNO) near Sudbury in eastern Canada. 



Neutrinos are produced in vast numbers by the sun and other 

astrophysical objects due to nuclear fusion within the sun's 

interior. 



Members said the latest results, which study the presence of mass in 

neutrinos from a different angle, corroborate earlier measurements of 

the scattering of solar neutrinos from electrons in ordinary water 

which were made three years ago by a team composed mainly of Japanese 

scientists. 



The first SNO results were detected through the SuperKamiokande 

detector at the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research of the University 

of Tokyo in Gifu Prefecture. 



These combined data provided direct evidence of the phenomenon that 

neutrinos oscillate, according to members. 



Members said they have arrived at definitive results that electron 

neutrinos from the sun transform into neutrinos of another type, 

wherein such a transformation points to direct evidence that 

neutrinos have mass. 



They said that results showed that ''by combining this with 

information from previous measurements, it is possible to set an 

upper limit on the sum of the known neutrino masses.'' 



The SNO, located 2,000 meters under ground in a nickel mine, uses 

1,000 tons of heavy water to detect all three types of neutrinos 

including electron neutrinos. 



Construction of the SNO laboratory began in 1990. Measurements at the 

laboratory began in 1999, a year after its completion. 

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



Antinuclear torch relay begins in Hiroshima



HIROSHIMA, June 19 (Kyodo) - An antinuclear torch relay that will 

pass through all 86 cities, towns and villages in Hiroshima 

Prefecture began Tuesday, with participants voicing hope that the 

world will not experience war or nuclear attack in the 21st century. 



The 12-member leadoff group of runners, including Kazuo Harada, 

secretary general of a Hiroshima prefecture group to promote peace, 

began the 20th relay from Hiroshima Peace Park at 8:15 a.m., the time 

the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, during 

World War II. 



About 40 people, including A-bomb survivors, observed a moment of 

silence near the Cenotaph for the Atomic Bomb Victims during a 

ceremony to commemorate the start of the relay. 



According to organizers, the relay will cover about 1,816 kilometers 

and end July 26, when the last batch of runners arrives at the park. 

Some 10,000 locals are expected to participate in the event. 

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



Ex-Nuclear Official Sues Over Book



WASHINGTON (AP) - A retired Los Alamos nuclear security official 

filed a lawsuit Monday to try to force the government to allow the 

release of his book on the Chinese nuclear weapons program. 



For the last 18 months the government has blocked the publication of 

Danny Stillman's book while various agencies scrutinize each line to 

decide if it divulges national security secrets, according to his 

attorney, Mark Zaid. 



``We're not threatening to release classified information,'' Zaid 

said. ``We're challenging the government to prove their case and we 

don't think they're going to be able to do it.'' 



The suit against the Defense Department, Energy Department, Defense 

Intelligence Agency and CIA was filed in U.S. District Court in 

Washington. It alleges the agencies have violated their own rules for 

classifying material and Stillman's constitutional right to publish 

the book. 



Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood said the review of the 

manuscript is continuing. 



``We plan to do a thorough job. We're not going to rush it,'' he 

said. 



Stillman worked for 28 years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 

New Mexico, 14 as the head of the intelligence division. He retired 

in 1993. 



Between 1990 and 1999, Stillman made nine trips to China, visiting a 

nuclear test site and a nuclear lab, meeting with scientists and 

attending lectures. 



None of the trips was taken at the request of the U.S. government, 

although he was voluntarily debriefed by government officials when he 

returned. 



Stillman took notes of his trips and compiled them into a 500-page 

manuscript entitled ``Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program.'' In 

January 2000, Stillman turned over the manuscript to the government 

for a security review - a prepublication condition imposed on any 

government worker granted security clearance. 



Since then, Stillman and his attorneys have pressed the Energy 

Department and Defense Department to finish the review. 



A Defense Department memo from last September said the Pentagon 

objects to publication of any portion of the manuscript because of 

security concerns. The memo also said publication could ``damage 

American foreign relations with China,'' according to the lawsuit. 



Zaid said that argument is absurd, since the Chinese scientists and 

other officials in the program gave Stillman all of the information 

for the book. 



``This can't embarrass China, because the Chinese expected this 

information to get (out),'' Zaid said. 



In his book, Stillman argues that the Chinese weapons advances were 

made without the benefit of espionage. 



About the time Stillman finished his manuscript, Wen Ho Lee, a 

Taiwanese-born Los Alamos scientist, was arrested amid fears of 

Chinese espionage. 



Lee was charged with 59 counts of illegally downloading nuclear 

secrets, not espionage, and eventually pleaded guilty to one count of 

mishandling information. A judge apologized for the nine months Lee 

spent in solitary confinement, saying he had been misled by 

prosecutors. 



Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy specialist with the Federation 

of American Scientists, said national security is not a blanket 

excuse to limit free speech rights. 



``It would be one thing that if they said there is this or that 

detail that needs to be modified in the interest of national 

security, but it is completely implausible to claim the entire 

manuscript needs to be suppressed,'' he said. 



On the Net: 



Federation of American Scientists: http://www.fas.org 



Defense Intelligence Agency: http://www.dia.mil 

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



N.Y. businesses say 10,000 MW of new power needed

  

NEW YORK, June 18 (Reuters) - As New York puts together a new Energy 

Plan, the Business Council of New York advised the Energy Planning 

Board to concentrate on adding at least 10,000 megawatts of electric 

generating capacity within five years. 



"Only by adding this capacity can New York sustain economic growth 

and foster the robust competition in energy markets that will drive 

energy costs down," Daniel Walsh, president and chief executive of 

the statewide association of over 4,000 businesses, wrote to the 

board in a letter released Monday. 



The State Energy Planning Board is expected to release a draft 

revision of its Energy Plan this fall, and today is the deadline for 

public comments on the existing plan. 



Statewide public hearings are to be conducted before the final 

revision is adopted next spring. 



The Energy Plan is an influential policy document, Walsh told the 

Energy Board in the letter, adding that for this reason the board 

should emphasize the need for more generating capacity. 



The state will have a shortfall of 9,658 megawatts (MW) within five 

years, based on past demand increases and recommendations from the 

New York Independent System Operator, Walsh said. 



But he said his business council recommends as much as 15,000 MW of 

generation be added over the next five to seven years to "err on the 

safe side" and avoid California-like power shortages and price 

spikes. 



New York's peak power demand in 2000 was 30,200 MW, Walsh said, and 

assuming a five-year growth rate of 9.82 percent -- the same growth 

rate New York experienced from 1995-2000 -- peak demands will grow by 

2,965 MW. 



Preserving an 18 percent margin needed for reliability will require 

5,969 MW, and adding 15 percent of capacity to foster competition 

would make an extra 5,870 MW necessary, bringing the total projected 

shortfall to 9,658 MW, Walsh said. 



Although New York has not replicated California's errors in 

restructuring power markets, Walsh said, "the two states share this 

fundamental similarity: demand for electricity has been growing 

without new capacity being developed to meet it." 



>From 1980-2000, New York's annual peak demand for electricity grew 

5.1 times as much as the population, and 2.1 times as much as the 

state's employment base, Walsh said. 



During the same 20-year period, peak demand grew by roughly 1,000 

more megawatts than the state added in new generating capacity, he 

said, adding from 1995-2000 demand grew by 2,700 MW, but the state 

added only 293 MW of new capacity. 



The business council also recommended the state streamline and 

accelerate its new plant siting process and upgrade the  electricity 

transmission systems. 



Also, Walsh said New York must upgrade its natural gas pipelines to 

meet increasing demand for the fuel, and said that power plants run 

by a range of fuels, including natural gas, coal, oil, and nuclear 

power, are needed to protect consumers and businesses from volatility 

in natural gas markets. 



Energy efficiency and energy conservation programs must also be 

emphasized, Walsh said. 

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



Kazakhstan mulls storing foreign nuclear waste



ASTANA, June 18 (Reuters) - A senior Kazakhstan official said on 

Monday the vast but sparsely populated Central Asian state might 

boost revenues by burying imported low-radioactivity nuclear waste on 

its territory. 



Mukhtar Dzhakishev, head of the state nuclear firm Kazatomprom, told 

parliament that Kazakhstan might earn $30-40 billion in the next 25 

to 30 years by storing foreign nuclear waste. 



Kazakhstan is the size of Western Europe but has a population of only 

15 million. 



"This is a very lucrative business, and we may arrange deals under 

which the government receives annual bonuses worth $200-500 million," 

Dzhakishev told deputies. 



He said large amounts of waste could be buried in existing open-cast 

uranium mines in the western Mangistau region and sophisticated 

storage technology would not be needed. 



"Barrels with compressed low-radioactivity waste are received, put in 

pits and covered with soil, and there is no radiation on the 

surface," he said. 



Dzhakishev said Kazakhstan did not possess technology which would 

allow it to process and store high-radioactivity waste, but it could 

easily handle low-radioactivity waste like gloves, overalls, and 

other material from foreign nuclear power plants. 



It was not immediately clear whether or when the government would 

submit a draft law to parliament. Dzhakishev gave no time frame or 

details of possible deals with foreign nuclear plants. 



Earlier this month the lower chamber of the Russian parliament 

adopted a bill that is likely to open Russia to imports of spent 

nuclear fuel. 



The bill, expected to be passed into law, has been given a hostile 

reception by environmentalists and the public in Russia who say it 

could turn the country into a nuclear dump. 



Environmental concerns are also strong in Kazakhstan, whose 

northeastern Semipalatinsk region underwent hundreds of atmospheric, 

surface and underground nuclear tests in 1949-89. 



The Soviet-era tests are blamed by scientists for a rising number of 

cancer cases and birth defects among local people. 

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



TEPCO to close reactor due to cooling water leak



TOKYO, June 18 (Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO) said 

on Monday it will temporarily shut down a 1.356-gigawatt nuclear 

reactor in northern Japan after it found cooling water had leaked 

from a tank. 



TEPCO, Japan's largest power company, said no radiation had escaped 

into the environment from the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant's No 6 

reactor as a result of the incident. 



TEPCO will manually close the reactor late on Monday for checks and 

repairs, the company said, adding that the leak occured in a place 

unrelated to the operation of the reactor. 



The company did not say when the reactor would restart. 



Japan has 51 commercial nuclear reactors, which provide about one-

third of the country's power. 



The industry has been criticised for a series of accidents, including 

Japan's worst-ever at a uranium-processing plant in Tokaimura, north 

of Tokyo, in 1999 that killed two workers. 

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



Aomori gov. vows to continue accepting spent nuclear fuel



AOMORI, Japan, June 18 (Kyodo) - Aomori Gov. Morio Kimura said Monday 

he will continue to allow the shipment of spent nuclear fuel to a 

reprocessing facility in the village of Rokkasho in the northeastern 

Japan prefecture. 



Kimura made the remarks after meeting with Economy, Trade and 

Industry Minister Takeo Hiranuma at the prefectural government office 

over the so-called ''pluthermal'' project, which involves the use of 

plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, and national atomic energy 

policies, local government officials said. 



Kimura said at a press conference after the meeting that the 

prefectural government will continue to have spent nuclear fuel 

delivered to the facility, which is currently under construction in 

the village and is scheduled to start reprocessing in July 2005. 



During their meeting, Kimura asked Hiranuma whether the central 

government will change its policy of promoting the pluthermal project 

in the wake of last month's plebiscite in the village of Kariwa in 

Niigata Prefecture, in which a majority of local residents voted 

against the use of MOX fuel at a nuclear power plant straddling their 

village and Kashiwazaki city, the officials said. 



Hiranuma responded that the government will make further efforts to 

seek public understanding on the pluthermal project and asked for 

cooperation and understanding from Aomori Prefecture on the issue, 

the officials said. 



Under the pluthermal project, the government and power companies plan 

to use MOX fuel in light-water reactors. The fuel is made by mixing 

uranium with plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel. The word 

pluthermal combines the words plutonium and thermal. 



Kimura also told Hiranuma that he hopes the International 

Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), an international project 

jointly planned by Japan, several European nations and Russia, will 

be built in the prefecture, according to the officials. 

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



Grass Could Endanger Nuke Reservation



RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - Blackened Rattlesnake Mountain is green again, 

a year after the largest fire in Washington state threatened 

radioactive waste storage areas at Hanford nuclear reservation and 

burned 11 homes in nearby Benton City. 



Unfortunately, a lot of that green, green grass of spring is an 

invader species called cheat grass, with the potential to boost fire 

danger at Hanford again this summer. 



``The cheat grass is bad news. It is the scourge of the West,'' said 

Greg Hughes, a project leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 

which manages the Hanford Reach National Monument, including the Arid 

Lands Ecology Reserve. 



The fast-moving, 163,000-acre Hanford fire was sparked by a fatal 

traffic collision last June 27 on the northwestern edge of the 

reservation, where plutonium was once made for the nation's nuclear 

arsenal. 



It was a scorching summer day, with plenty of grass and sagebrush to 

burn in the arid desert country of south-central Washington. Steep 

slopes made firefighting difficult. 



``The fire blew up. It came roaring out of the canyon. The wind and 

fuel and heat forced it down the face of the mountain,'' Hanford Fire 

Chief Don Good said. 



At one point, the flames traveled an almost unheard of 20 miles in 90 

minutes, Good said. ``This fire had all the elements that you don't 

want to happen all at one time,'' he said. 



Some 850 firefighters and support staff from around the Northwest 

were called to help the 106-member Hanford Fire Department. 



The flames moved perilously close to Hanford's 200 West Area, where 

some of the most deadly radioactive waste here at the most-

contaminated nuclear site in the country is stored in underground 

tanks and pits. 



Firefighting activities are believed to have released minute amounts 

of radioactive elements into the air, elevating readings at 

monitoring sites around the 560-square-mile reservation, which is 

owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. 



Within reservation boundaries, the biggest environmental casualty was 

the 77,000-acre Arid Lands Ecology Reserve - an uncontaminated 

portion of Hanford that is home to hundreds of elk and the rare and 

fragile shrub-steppe ecosystem. The reserve burned, some elk suffered 

burn injuries or fled and a few died in the fire. 



But time and nature have transformed the Rattlesnake Hills on the 

reserve, and though charred sticks that once were sagebrush still 

poke out of the dirt, the area is now briefly verdant with grasses, 

pink phlox and purple lupine. 



Native plants are relatively resistant to fire in the Columbia Basin, 

which gets only about 7 inches of rain and snow each year. Summer 

temperatures that top 100 degrees are not uncommon. 



But when the land is disturbed, the native habitat is degraded, 

inviting such invader species as cheat grass and Russian thistle, 

also known as tumbleweed, said Larry Cadwell, a staff scientist at 

the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. 



``Each time we have a fire, we lose some element of native grasses,'' 

he said. ``Sixty percent of the 15 million acres of shrub-steppe in 

the entire Columbia Basin is gone.'' 



Hanford's native grasses are bunch grasses, which grow just as their 

name indicates, in clumps separated by bare patches of dirt. Cheat 

grass grows in a more continuous mat that aids the spread of fire. 



``Cheat grass is a ladder fuel that brings fire up into the sage like 

a candle, ... and cheat grass is like gasoline next to the highway,'' 

Hughes said. 



Through the Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation plan, the Fish and 

Wildlife Service is working to control invader species such as cheat 

grass by chemical and mechanical means. 



It is a high-tech form of weeding, using global positioning satellite 

data and aerial photography to identify sites for monitoring and 

control. 



While the goal is total eradication, cheat grass, much like 

tumbleweeds, was already well-established before the fire. 



``On the ALE (reserve), the plan would be to wipe out as much cheat 

grass as we can, and plant native grass as needed if it doesn't come 

up naturally,'' Hughes said. 



``Because of this fire, the invasion of nonnatives has been 

accelerated. We can't continue to go out and put Band-Aids on little 

pieces and watch it get reinvaded by cheat grass and invasive weed 

species.'' 



The price tag for revegetation is high - $6.5 million - and it is 

still undetermined how much money would be available for restoration, 

Hughes said. 



The Fish and Wildlife Service has planted on the reserve about 

150,000 sagebrush seedlings that were scheduled for planting before 

the fire. 



Because the reserve is a research site, the invasion of alien plant 

life also is seen as a learning opportunity, and the Fish and 

Wildlife Service has hired a specialist to monitor the effects of the 

fire on the Hanford vegetation. 



Off the reserve and on Hanford's central plateau, some replanting 

also is under way, but high winds and the dunelike nature of parts of 

the burned area have made that a challenge, said Ray Johnson, a 

biological control manager at Fluor Hanford, the contractor managing 

the site for the Energy Department. 



Crews have been planting and in some areas, replanting, bunch grasses 

on 1,000 acres around the 200 West Area, where dust from the burned-

over area has been so bad that workers sometimes are sent home by 

midday. 



``The winds have been absolutely brutal on those,'' Johnson said. 

``We had excellent growth as early as last fall, then we had 50 to 70 

mile an hour winds. The young grass didn't survive that well. The 

moving sand either shears the young grass off or else will cover it 

up.'' 



Fluor is looking for innovative ways to help young grasses survive 

and is considering, among other things, sprinkle irrigation to get 

the plants established. 



On the Net: 



Hanford nuclear reservation: http://www.Hanford.gov 



U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: http://www.r1.fws.gov 

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



Robot Could Protect Nuke Workers



RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - Some waste pits at the Hanford nuclear 

reservation are so hot they emit in only one hour a dose of radiation 

100 times higher than the amount workers are allowed to receive in a 

year. 



But the pits must be cleaned and many of them upgraded for 

transferring radioactive waste from Hanford's underground tank farms 

to a vitrification plant now being designed to turn some of the 

deadly material into glass logs for long-term storage. 



In response to the dangers, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory 

has designed the ``Pit Viper,'' a versatile, robotic arm and remote 

video monitoring station that will allow workers to rehabilitate 

contaminated pits without getting near them. 



Pit work exposes handlers to more radiation than any other cleanup 

task at the tank farms, where nearly 54 million gallons of highly 

radioactive waste are stored in 177 aging and leak-prone tanks. 



Even workers standing near some pits can be exposed to their annual 

limits of radiation in a few hours or a few days, said Don Niebuhr, a 

field work supervisor for the CH2M Hill Hanford Group, which manages 

the tank farms. 



``Doing this work is extremely hazardous. It is the most dose-

intensive task,'' said Sharon Bailey, Pit Viper project manager for 

the laboratory. ``We expect this (Pit Viper) may reduce personnel 

dose rates by up to 75 percent.'' 



The lab recently showed off a prototype Pit Viper, a $1 million 

system that will be used at the reservation this summer. The three-

joystick control board and four monitors in the control trailer look 

deceptively simple. 



``That's the idea,'' said Carl Baker, a senior development engineer 

for the lab. ``We want this to be actually used.'' 



An operator, working as far away as 200 feet, has views from four 

cameras showing what the robotic arm is doing. It can lift as much as 

200 pounds. 



``We have 600 equipment pits that need to be cleaned up before we can 

proceed with vitrification,'' said Paul Kruger, the U.S. Department 

of Energy's associate manager for science and technology in Richland. 





The swimming pool-like pits average about 8 feet-by-10-feet in area 

and 8 feet deep. Some pits record radiation dose rates so high that 

prep work with shields and other protective devices is required 

before workers can enter, Niebuhr said. 



There are no plans to use the Pit Viper at other Energy Department 

sites - no other site has this particular problem - but if other 

sites saw potential use, the lab would work on modifications. 



CH2M Hill would like to have about six Pit Vipers for its work, said 

Rick Raymond, the company's vice president for projects. 



Whether the money would be available is unknown. 



If funding can be found for the Pit Vipers, the pits can be cleaned 

out more safely and more efficiently, eventually saving money, 

Raymond said. 



The Bush administration has budgeted for the Energy Department's 

Office of River Protection $814 million for fiscal year 2002. The 

office, which oversees the tank farms and the glassification project, 

needs $1.1 billion to meet its contract obligations. 



The vitrification plant is expected to be up and running in 2007.



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

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://www.geocities.com/scperle

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



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