Nev. Files Challenge on Nuclear Waste

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

Index:



Nev. Files Challenge on Nuclear Waste

Tight genes make radiation-munching bug strong

Bulgaria court overrules EU deal to close reactors

US says Pacific arms tests use depleted uranium

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



Nev. Files Challenge on Nuclear Waste



LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada filed a new constitutional challenge Thursday 

to the government's plan to bury the nation's nuclear waste under a 

mountain 90 miles from Las Vegas.



The lawsuit is the sixth lodged by the state against the Yucca 

Mountain project.



``The national government lacks the power to require a sovereign 

state to singularly bear the burden, and thereby relieve all other 

states from bearing any burden,'' the lawsuit said.



President Bush and Congress last year overrode Nevada's opposition 

and a veto by Gov. Kenny Guinn to approve the Energy Department's 

plan to entomb 77,000 tons of radioactive waste at the edge of the 

Nevada Test Site.



The new lawsuit was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals in 

Washington, D.C., on behalf of the state, Clark County and the city 

of Las Vegas. It asks a judge to declare approval for the Yucca 

Mountain project unconstitutional and to halt all development and 

licensing work.



A spokesman for the Energy Department in Washington did not 

immediately respond to requests for comment.

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



Tight genes make radiation-munching bug strong



WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Tight genes help a nuclear waste-

munching bacterium resist the deadly effects of radiation, Israeli 

and U.S. scientists reported on Thursday.



The DNA of Deinococcus radiodurans, which can also survive extreme 

cold and dryness, is tightly packed into a circle, the researchers 

report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.



That dense ring helps keep damaged DNA in place, allowing broken-off 

pieces to move eventually back into position, said Avi Minsky of the 

Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovoth, Israel. Radiation severely 

damages DNA, and the pieces break off and float away in most 

organisms.



But in Deinococcus, the structure keeps them in place until they come 

back together, Minsky and colleagues believe.



Unfortunately, humans may not benefit from this finding, said the 

researchers, including a team at the U.S. National Institutes of 

Health.



"Our DNA is structured in a fundamentally different manner," Minsky 

said in a statement.



Deinococcus is sometimes employed in cleaning up nuclear waste, but 

scientists are studying its genetic structure to see if they can 

genetically engineer something even tougher.



It can withstand 1.5 million rads, a measure of radiation, which is 

1,000 times more than any other life form.



Its existence suggests that life, in the form of bacteria, could have 

survived in space and may thrive on other planets.

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



Bulgaria court overrules EU deal to close reactors



SOFIA (Reuters) - A Bulgarian supreme court overruled a government 

deal with the European Union on Thursday that would have closed two 

Soviet-era nuclear reactors by 2006.



Sofia agreed to a demand from Brussels to shut number three and four 

reactors at the Kozloduy nuclear power plant to avoid derailing 

accession talks with the European Union last year.



Ruling on an appeal brought by members of the opposition Socialist 

Party, the Supreme Administrative Court said the agreement ignored a 

vote in parliament which decreed that the reactors should be kept on 

line until Bulgaria's entry into the European Union, set for 2007.



Brussels wants the reactors shut in 2006 for safety reasons despite 

the fact that the plant produces half of Bulgaria's electricity and 

its closure would raise power prices which already pose an enormous 

expense for impoverished Bulgarians.



Government officials in Sofia say the closure is a necessary 

sacrifice, but opposition parties and some Bulgarians have branded 

the deal a betrayal.



Government spokesman Dimitar Tsonev told Reuters the government would 

most likely appeal the court's decision in front of an expanded panel 

and expected to win.



Local lawyers said if the expanded court panel confirmed the current 

court's ruling, it meant Sofia should open energy talks with Brussels 

again, potentially hampering its goal to complete EU membership talks 

by May 2004.



Tsonev said Sofia managed to secure a last-chance "peer review" 

inspection from the EU this year, which it hoped would prove the two 

reactors were safe and allow it to re-negotiate later closure.



Sofia shut Kozloduy's first two oldest reactors in late December to 

please Brussels.

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



US says Pacific arms tests use depleted uranium



SEATTLE, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy confirmed on Thursday it 

uses depleted uranium shells in arms tests off the Washington state 

coast but rejected criticism that the radioactive ammunition could 

harm people and the environment.



Peace activist Glen Milner said he discovered through a Freedom of 

Information Act filing that the Navy, every three months, test-fires 

Phalanx anti-missile guns using shells containing the armor-piercing 

metal in prime Pacific Ocean fishing waters. Some scientists say 

depleted uranium can cause kidney damage and leukemia.



"It's destruction of our environment," Milner said.



Navy spokeswoman Karen Sellers said the uranium was fully encased 

inside the ammunition to protect military personnel who handled and 

stored it.



She added that the Navy was switching to tungsten rounds but did not 

provide further details.



Sellers said she could not say if depleted uranium shells were used 

farther north off Canada's coast during exercises in conjunction with 

Canadian forces.



A Canadian military spokesman said Canada's Navy had stopped using 

the shells.



The U.S. military used depleted uranium weapons in the 1991 Gulf War 

and again during fighting in Kosovo and Bosnia.



Navy officials "have told me that DU is 40 percent less radioactive 

than naturally occurring uranium found in sea water," Sellers told 

Reuters by telephone.



"The DU rounds dissolve so slowly that they would not contribute to 

naturally occurring (radiation) levels ... and do not pose a 

significant risk."



But Milner and other critics call depleted uranium highly toxic. Last 

year Britain's Royal Society of scientists said hundreds of soldiers 

in the Gulf and the Balkans could have inhaled enough toxic dust to 

cause health problems.



Douglas Rokke, a former U.S. Army health physicist assigned to 

monitor the effects of depleted uranium battlefield use, accused the 

Pentagon of not providing adequate medical treatment and testing for 

soldiers exposed to the substance, or for himself.



"These individual rounds are solid chunks of uranium. You can't hold 

them in your hand. It's too dangerous," he said by telephone.



Besides the hazardous trace that uranium left behind when fired from 

the Navy's guns, thousands of rounds on the ocean floor would 

contaminate marine animals including the fish eaten by people, Rokke 

said.



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

Sandy Perle

Director, Technical

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100  Extension 2306

Fax:(714) 668-3149



E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net

E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com



Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/

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



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