UK police investigate nuclear 'guinea pig' claim

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

Note: I am including the MedPhysics Listserver in this distribution since there are a 

couple of medical physics related items.



Index:



UK police investigate nuclear 'guinea pig' claim

Japanese State must pay health allowances to S. Korean A-bomb survivor

NRC mulls reissue of nuclear plant status report

Man to Plead Guilty in Nuclear Case

Sectra Receives Another Major Order for Digital Radiology in Norway

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



UK police investigate nuclear 'guinea pig' claim

  

LONDON, Dec 28 (Reuters) - British police said on Friday they were investigating a 

complaint that military personnel were intentionally exposed by the government to 

deadly levels of radiation during nuclear tests on Pacific islands in the 1950s. 



"I can confirm that the Met specialist crime group is carrying out a preliminary 

assessment of information received by them in August 2001," a spokesman for 

London's Metropolitan Police Service in reply to a question about the nuclear tests. 



He declined to give further details or estimate when the investigations might be 

completed. 



A police source said the investigation was prompted by the widow of a Royal Air 

Force pilot, Squadron Leader Eric Denson, who had been ordered to fly his plane 

several times through the mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb detonated on 

Christmas Island in the Pacific in 1958. 



"The claim is that he...clearly in effect was being used as a human guinea pig," 

Shirley Denson's lawyer Alan Care told BBC radio. 



Newspapers said Denson fell ill after the flight and became depressed, and 

committed suicide in 1976 after three attempts. 



Several thousand British service personnel took part in the nuclear tests at 

Christmas Island and other Pacific atolls in the 1950s. 



Protective equipment was scarce as full knowledge of the deadly effects of radiation 

sickness was only slowly coming to light after the nuclear bombs dropped by the 

United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. 



In the 20 years after the British tests many of the participants began complaining of 

illnesses they said were related to the radiation exposure. 

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



Japanese State must pay health allowances to S. Korean A-bomb survivor

  

NAGASAKI, Dec. 26 (Kyodo) - The state was ordered Wednesday to pay a South 

Korean survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki a total of 1.03 million yen in 

health care allowances that it failed to give him after he left Japan following a brief 

stay for treatment in 1994. 



The Nagasaki District Court ruled in favor of Lee Kang Young, 74, who claimed that 

the 1994 Atomic Bomb Victims Relief Law does not say A-bomb survivors living 

outside Japan are excluded from receiving such benefits. He had demanded 4 million 

yen in compensation. 



''The plaintiff does not lose his status as an A-bomb survivor stipulated in the law 

even if he returns home and no longer resides in Japan,'' Presiding Judge Masanori 

Kawakubo said. 



Lee's certificate confirming that status has not become invalid, he said. 



The decision followed a landmark ruling by the Osaka District Court on June 1 that 

ordered the state to pay Kwak Kwi Hoon, a South Korean survivor of the 1945 A-

bombing in Hiroshima, health care allowances that it stopped providing after he left 

Osaka for South Korea following treatment in 1998. 



''I found the ruling quite natural,'' Koichiro Tatsuta, Lee's lawyer, told reporters after 

the Wednesday's ruling. ''The government definitely should not appeal the ruling.'' 



''The government should immediately change its inhumane and senseless policy for 

overseas survivors,'' he added. 



According to the lawsuit, Lee visited Japan in July 1994 to undergo treatment for 

diabetes and other sicknesses and was given a state certificate confirming his status 

as an A-bomb survivor. The state also decided to provide him with health benefits for 

three years. 



However, the state stopped extending Lee health benefits through the Nagasaki city 

government after he returned to his Pusan home in October that year following 

treatment in Japan. 



Lee was exposed to radiation as he was working at a munitions factory in Nagasaki 

when the United States dropped the A-bomb on the city on Aug. 9, 1945. He was 17 

years old at that time. 



Lee accuses the Japanese government of not respecting the 1994 law for A-bomb 

survivors, but instead following a health ministry order to local authorities issued in 

1974. 



He called the state's move ''illegal'' and claimed the state violated the Constitution 

that guarantees equal rights as well as the A-bomb relief law that aims to help 

survivors on humanitarian grounds. 



The order, issued by the then Health and Welfare Ministry's public health bureau 

chief, said the law does not apply to A-bomb survivors once they stop living in Japan. 



The ministry said the law does not apply to overseas A-bomb survivors as it is a 

social welfare law covering only people residing in Japan. 



Lee said he is not fighting the Japanese government for money but in defense of the 

human rights of the more than 5,000 overseas survivors of the atomic bombings -- 

about 2,200 in South Korea and 3,000 in China, North Korea, the United States and 

Brazil. 



The plaintiff called on the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to nullify 

the 1974 order to pave the way for overseas A-bomb survivors to receive the same 

health benefits as survivors in Japan. 



The ruling came after Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi 

announced Dec. 18 that Japan will help overseas A-bomb survivors visit Japan to 

undergo treatment beginning in fiscal 2002, with Tokyo earmarking some 500 million 

yen for the project for the year. 



But critics say the proposal will not help overseas survivors since they, most of whom 

are in their 70s and 80s, have to travel to Japan to receive the allowances for 

treatment. 



The Osaka ruling marked the first time a Japanese court had found overseas A-

bomb survivors eligible for receiving such allowances from Japan. But the state and 

the Osaka prefectural government appealed the ruling on June 15. 

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



NRC mulls reissue of nuclear plant status report

  

NEW YORK, Dec 28 (Reuters) - After withdrawing data from its Web site for security 

reasons after the Sept. 11 attack, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said on 

Thursday it still has not decided whether to reissue its daily plant status report. 



The NRC report listed the daily operating status of the nation's nuclear power 

reactors. 



"We're still evaluating. It's a Catch 22. Our concern is a security issue. We're trying to 

balance that with the public's right to know," said Victor Dricks of the NRC Office of 

Public Affairs in Rockville, Maryland. 



"We understand the plant status report is sorely missed ... not just by the trade press 

but by John Q. Citizen who likes to log onto the Web site and find out if the plant he 

lives near is up or down," Dricks said. 



Wholesale electricity traders use the report, along with other data, to determine 

whether the price of spot power will rise or fall. 



Nuclear power, which accounts for about 20 percent of all energy consumed in the 

United States, is one of the cheapest means of generating electricity. 



When a nuclear power plant is shut, the regional grid operator, which dispatches the 

cheapest units available to meet the daily demand, has to turn on several smaller, 

more expensive fossil plants that burn oil or natural gas to generate electricity. 



Shortly after the terror attacks in New York and Washington, the NRC and other 

federal agencies removed data from Web sites to evaluate whether that information 

could be used to harm the public. 



Over the past few weeks, the NRC redesigned its Web site, www.nrc.gov, but did not 

reissue the plant status report or a related document, the daily events report, which 

lists safety-related events at the plants. 



WHY OPERATORS WON'T HELP 



In the wholesale power market information is king. 



Those with knowledge of what will happen tomorrow can make a lot of money buying 

and selling electricity. To the power trader, electricity is a commodity, similar to oil, 

grain or gold. It rises and falls in value based on the law of supply and demand. 



An electricity trader with nuclear plants has an advantage over other traders because 

he or she knows when the reactors will shut for work and how long they will be off 

line. 



With this knowledge, traders with nuclear plants can buy power supplies at lower 

cost before prices rise when the reactor shuts. 



To maintain the competitive edge, many nuclear operators, including the federally-

owned Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) which operates nuclear plants in the 

Southeast, refuse to discuss the operating status of their reactors. 



"We can't force the utility to give you the information. We don't have that authority. 

We try to exercise whatever leverage we have to get (the operators) to be more 

forthcoming about (their plants) in the interest of building public confidence in nuclear 

power," the NRC's Dricks said. 



"If they want to withhold the information, I'm not sure there's much we can do," Dricks 

explained, especially since the NRC itself has yet to decide what information the 

agency wants to make public on its Web site. 



NEW YORK'S INDIAN POINT 



But people who live near a nuclear reactor often care more about safety. They want 

to know whether the plant they live near is operating and when it is not operating. 



Wednesday morning, unit 2 at the Indian Point nuclear station in New York tripped off 

line. 



An official at Entergy Nuclear, a unit of energy giant Entergy Corp. <ETR.N> of New 

Orleans which operates the station, would not discuss the outage for competitive 

reasons. 



The company, however, did tell the NRC and Westchester County, where the plant is 

located, about the shutdown. 



Despite rumors of the outage in the New York electricity market, news of the outage 

did not surface until Wednesday afternoon when Westchester Executive Andrew 

Spano issued a statement informing county residents of the shutdown. 



In his statement, Spano said the plant, which is located about 35 miles north of New 

York City in the town of Buchanan, shut at about 0720 EST (1220 GMT) Wednesday 

morning. 



He then told the public what they really wanted to know, that "there were no safety 

issues associated with the shutdown" and "there was no risk of radioactive release." 



Some people who live near Indian Point are concerned about the possibility of a 

nuclear catastrophe in the heavily populated area following a string of safety-related 

shutdowns at the plant over the past few years, including a radioactive steam leak 

that shut unit 2 for most of last year. 



"We're trying to resolve this the best we can," the NRC's Dricks said. "We have to 

balance the public's right to know with security sensitivity." 

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



Man to Plead Guilty in Nuclear Case

  

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A man accused 16 years ago of illegally exporting potential 

nuclear triggers to Israel will plead guilty Friday to two charges in federal court, his 

attorney said. 



Richard Smyth, 72, a former electronics supplier, will plead guilty to two of 30 counts 

contained in his indictment, his attorney James D. Riddet said Thursday. He had 

previously pleaded innocent to all charges. 



The remaining counts will be dismissed as part of a plea agreement. 



The original indictment involved the alleged export of about $60,000 worth of 

krytrons, two-inch triggering devices that can be used in nuclear weapons. 



Smyth intends to plead guilty to a single count each of illegal shipments and 

preparing false documentation for the export of roughly 800 of the tubelike devices. 

Authorities said they were sent to Heli Corp. in Israel between January 1980 and 

December 1982. 



Krytrons may not be exported without a license or written approval from the State 

Department. 



Smyth faces a maximum of seven years under sentencing guidelines. Riddet said he 

would ask that Smyth, who has been held since July, be sentenced to time already 

served. 



Smyth fled the United States after pleading innocent in 1985. He was extradited from 

Spain last month, and re-entered his innocent plea Nov. 26. He is being held without 

bail. 

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



Sectra Receives Another Major Order for Digital Radiology in Norway

  

STOCKHOLM, Sweden--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 21, 2001--Sectra has received an 

order for one of the world's largest solutions for digital radiology at Mid-Norway 

Health Region, comprising nine hospitals in central Norway. The order value adds to 

USD 6 Million and installations begin next year. 



The order includes Sectra's cutting edge systems for picture archiving and 

communication (PACS) and patient data administration (RIS) for all nine hospitals in 

the region. By digitizing the entire radiology operation, images and patient 

information are made available to all hospitals in the Mid-Norway Health Region, not 

only to the hospital at which the actual examination was performed. This way, 

patients can have examinations at the radiology department of their choice, with 

previous examinations and information still quickly and easily accessible. 



"Sectra offers an effective and reliable enterprise solution combined with a very high 

degree of security ensuring extensive patient integrity," says Roald Bergstr0m, 

project manager from the Norwegian competence center for medical IT. 



Mid-Norway Health Region is one of the largest healthcare regions in Norway, 

performing approximately 460,000 radiology examinations annually. The major 

hospital is the Region hospital of Trondheim. 



"We are of course very happy to be entrusted with this large and important 

installation," says Age Sjafjell, President at Sectra Norge AS. "It is particularly 

satisfying to receive this order since Namdal hospital, which is part of the region, has 

been using Sectra PACS for several years. The order is a proof that Sectra PACS 

lives up to the high expectations health care providers have when investing in a 

PACS." 



Sectra is one of today's major PACS providers with more than 200 PACS 

installations worldwide. The Swedish based company operates through partners in 

most of the world, but delivers directly to end customers in Northern Europe. The 

core business is to deliver top-of-the-line high- availability, robust enterprise PACS 

for 24/7 operation. In Sweden, which is currently the country with the largest 

penetration of PACS in the world, Sectra holds a dominant market leadership with 

more than 60% of all film free installations. The company has its largest number of 

installed systems in Sweden and the US (through partners), but has also an installed 

base in Germany, Norway, Finland, UK, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands and the Far 

East. 



Sectra's operations 



Sectra has its roots in Linkoping Technical University and is one of Sweden's fastest 

growing high-tech companies in the IT area. Since the mid-1980s, Sectra has 

successfully conducted development and sales of high-technology medical IT and 

telecommunications products. Today, the business includes products in medical 

systems, secure communication systems and wireless information systems. 



Sectra's medical business is conducted in Sectra Imtec AB, which is a wholly-owned 

subsidiary of Sectra AB. Internationally, Sectra PACS is marketed and sold through 

different partners. 



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

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://sandy-travels.com

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





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