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Last of Plutonium Leaves Colo. Facility
Note: Now that I have successfully completed cataract surgery and
lens implants in both eyes, the news distribution will once again
commence....
Index:
Last of Plutonium Leaves Colo. Facility
Even Small Radiation Sources Get Scrutiny
Motsu mayor leaked info on nuclear plan to gangster
FirstEnergy sees Ohio nuke back on grid late Wed.
Iran Warns Israel on Nuclear Reactors
================================
Last of Plutonium Leaves Colo. Facility
GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) - Crews have finished removing the last of more
than 12 tons of weapons-grade plutonium left at Rocky Flats, marking
a milestone in a $7 billion cleanup of the former nuclear weapons
site that closed in 1989.
The 6,000-acre site 15 miles northwest of Denver is slated to become
a national wildlife refuge after the $7 billion cleanup ends in 2006.
``Rocky Flats ... is no longer in the nuclear weapons business,''
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Tuesday in a statement issued
in Washington.
Removal of the plutonium was finished 12 years ahead of schedule,
Abraham said. The material will be shipped to a site South Carolina
for conversion into fuel for nuclear reactors.
``It is the end of Rocky Flats' nuclear mission, and it brings us
that much closer to the safe closure of Rocky Flats,'' said David
Abelson, executive director of the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local
Governments.
For 40 years, Rocky Flats manufactured plutonium triggers for nuclear
weapons. When it was shut down in 1989 for safety violations, more
than 12 metric tons of the highly radioactive metal was left.
Gene Schmitt, the Energy Department's site manager, said with the
plutonium gone, about $2 million spent each month on security can be
applied to cleanup work.
Shipments of plutonium to South Carolina began last summer in tractor-
trailers guarded by armed federal agents under secret schedules.
Former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges lost a federal court fight to
block the waste and was rebuked by a federal judge when he tried to
ban the shipments.
Linton Brooks, the Energy Department's undersecretary for nuclear
security, said the last of the plutonium left Rocky Flats in late
July.
Greenpeace International on Tuesday criticized incentives for
contractors to accelerate the cleanup, saying the South Carolina
facilities have safety problems and were unprepared for the
plutonium.
Rocky Flats still has lower-grade waste, such as contaminated
equipment, that will be transported to a site near Carlsbad, N.M.
On the Net:
Cleanup: http://www.rfets.gov
-----------------
Even Small Radiation Sources Get Scrutiny
CHANTILLY, Va. (AP) - It looks like any other piece of construction
equipment.
But when Alexis Burton lifts a 60-pound soil-testing gauge from the
back of her Jeep Cherokee, she's knows it's anything but that.
Inside the gauge, which appears strangely like a small carpet
sweeper, two steel-encased capsules contain small amounts of highly
radioactive Cesium-137 and Americium-241.
What worries some is that in the hands of terrorists, the radioactive
material - imbedded in a device that has been a staple of the
construction and road-building industries for decades - could be used
to make a so-called dirty bomb.
That dozens of gauges keep getting stolen from sites across the
country only heightens the fear, officials say.
For two summers, Burton, 21, who is studying civil engineering at the
University of Virginia, has been using such gauges to test the
density and moisture of soil at construction sites across northern
Virginia for Engineering Consulting Services, one of hundreds of
companies licensed to use the devices.
In the morning she checks out her gauge, locked in its yellow
container, from the ECS building. She keeps it under lock and key
when not in use and returns it each evening to the same locked
storage room in the ECS compound. She is prohibited from taking it
home overnight.
When not in use, the company's 48 nuclear gauges must be under
double, sometimes triple, lock and key, even when they are kept - as
is sometimes the case - overnight at a construction site, said Stan
Murphy, ECS's radiation officer.
``We take it pretty seriously,'' Murphy said.
But federal regulators are worried that's not the case everywhere.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission now wants to toughen its security
requirements for the gauges - some 20,000 of them used nationwide by
more than 5,100 licensees.
Every year about 50 gauges - ``practically one a week'' - are
reported stolen, and many are never recovered, said Lydia Chang, an
NRC official who has been working on the new requirements. They were
approved last month by commission members and are expected to be in
place later this year.
NRC officials emphasize there is no evidence that any of the thefts
are in any way connected. They also caution that the amount of
radioactive material in each device is so small that it would take
hundreds of them to produce enough Cesium-137 or Americium-241 to be
useful in a dirty bomb, which uses conventional explosives to spread
radiation.
Nevertheless, the thefts are worrisome and ``it is time the NRC took
action on this,'' said NRC Commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield. The
radioactive devices have been a concern for years because many of
them end up in landfills or are just discarded beside a road.
The NRC said their safekeeping has become even more urgent since the
Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and awareness that al-Qaida operatives
have discussed the possibility of detonating a radioactive device.
The new government regulations require anyone using nuclear gauges to
have two independent physical controls, such as separate locks, to
secure the devices when they are not under surveillance. Some states
already require even more stringent controls.
For example, the NRC staff dismissed as too costly a requirement in
Rhode Island that restricts how far from a company's home base the
gauges may be used. The agency estimated the new rules would add $200
to the lifetime cost of a gauge, which typically costs about $5,000
to purchase.
Murphy said that ECS, a nationwide engineering consulting firm,
already meets the new NRC requirements and exceeds them in some
cases. The room where the gauges are kept is locked. Each device is
locked in its own container which, in turn, is chained to a wooden
bench. The room is monitored by camera at all times.
But all those precautions didn't prevent one of ECS' gauges from
being stolen last April when thieves broke into a trailer at a
construction site in Bethesda, Md. The gauge has yet to be found,
said Murphy, adding that it was under double lock when it was taken
with other tools.
Last year, a nuclear gauge owned by another engineering firm, Chicago-
based Professional Service Industries, disappeared from a
construction site near Columbia, Md., only to turn up a month later
at a pawn shop. The owner noticed the radiation-warning decal on its
surface and called police. The radioactive material, secured inside
the device and shielded from the environment, was not compromised,
officials said.
While there are other technologies for measuring soil moisture and
density, ``there is nothing that has the same accuracy and
precision'' as the nuclear gauges, nor speed in getting the job done,
said Stephen Browne, an executive at Troxler Labs, one of the leading
manufacturers of the devices.
Nuclear terrorism experts say it is unlikely the gauges would be of
much good to terrorists given the small amount of nuclear material,
generally less than one curie and in many cases far less.
``Radioactive sources in this application generally pose minor
security risks,'' writes Charles Ferguson of the Center for
Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute.
-------------------
Motsu mayor leaked info on nuclear plan to gangster
AOMORI, Japan, Aug. 20 (Kyodo) - The mayor of Mutsu, Aomori
Prefecture, admitted Wednesday he informed a gangland-related
supporter in 1999 of his plan to invite storage facilities for spent
nuclear fuel to the city so that the latter could buy land that would
be used for the facilities.
Mayor Masashi Sugiyama said he told the supporter, the president of a
gravel company, ''We will make a move soon to invite the facilities
near Sekinehama port.''
Sugiyama told the city assembly this June he would invite Tokyo
Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) to set up the country's first storage
facilities for such fuel in the city.
Asked at an emergency news conference whether the company president
has connections with an underground crime syndicate, Sugiyama said
the president has ''very close ties.''
With the revelation of the scandal, the completion of the project may
be delayed, city assembly members and other local authority figures
said.
Before TEPCO can begin the project, it must also be approved by the
governor of Aomori Prefecture.
According to Sugiyama and other sources, the mayor secretly informed
the gangster-linked company president about the project around
December 1999.
In January 2000, a city executive gave a drawing of the candidate
site used in negotiations with TEPCO to the company president, and
the company bought about 4 hectares of uncultivated land there in May
that year, the sources said.
After the plan to invite TEPCO to build the facilities began to be
reported, the company transferred the ownership of the land to a
different company in January 2001, the sources said.
''Citizens may harbor distrust. But my hands are completely clean,''
Sugiyama said. ''It was bad that I told about the project.''
TEPCO has proposed building two interim storage facilities in Mutsu
capable of holding a combined 5,000 to 6,000 tons of spent nuclear
fuel. The utility has said it wants to put one facility into
operation by 2010.
It started a geological survey of the area in April 2001 and
concluded in April this year that ''the construction is technically
possible.''
Nuclear power plants in Japan are currently holding their spent
nuclear fuel on their own but many of them are expected to reach
capacity around 2010.
Power companies are thus hoping to build interim facilities to store
the spent nuclear fuel for up to around 50 years.
--------------
FirstEnergy sees Ohio nuke back on grid late Wed.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Utility FirstEnergy Corp. said Tuesday it
expects to put its big 1,320 megawatt Perry nuclear station in Ohio
back on the transmission grid by late Wednesday.
Perry, which produces power for more than 1 million homes, is
expected to restart late Tuesday and to increase power to link to the
grid late Wednesday night, a company spokesman said.
The Perry station, one of the largest nuclear plants in the Midwest,
was shut down last Thursday by the enormous blackout that struck the
Northeast, parts of the Midwest and Canada's Ontario province.
The blackout shut off nine nuclear plants in the U.S., with the
Indian Point 3 station in New York still closed Tuesday.
New York grid operators said they expect Indian Point 3 to get back
in service sometime Thursday.
Industry investigators have cited transmission lines in Ohio owned by
FirstEnergy as a possible source of the blackout, but FirstEnergy and
U.S. officials have said it is still too early to pinpoint a cause.
----------------
Iran Warns Israel on Nuclear Reactors
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran, building its first nuclear reactor and
planning a second, warned Israel Monday against attacking the nuclear
installations as it did an Iraqi facility in 1981.
Hamid Reza Asefi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters
Monday that he hoped Israel, which has warned against Iran's alleged
nuclear weapons program, would not resort to such an ``adventure.''
``At any rate, the Zionist regime proved to be adventurous in the
past and doesn't abide by any principles. In case it will commit such
a mistake, it will pay dearly,'' he said.
Israeli officials have been urging the United States and Europe to
pressure Iran to stop its alleged nuclear weapons programs after
Tehran inaugurated a missile capable of hitting Israel.
Analysts have speculated that Tehran's possession of the bomb could
trigger an arms race between Iran and Israel. Israel bombed an Iraqi
facility in 1981.
Israel has never confirmed being a nuclear power, but it is widely
believed to have as many as 100 to 200 such weapons.
Iran denies that it intends to make nuclear weapons and says it seeks
nuclear power as an alternative source of energy as its oil reserves
diminish.
With Russian assistance, Iran is building its first nuclear. The
official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Thursday that its
second nuclear reactor will have a capacity of 1,000 megawatts.
The United States suspects Iran of developing a clandestine nuclear
weapons program and has lobbied for the International Atomic Energy
Agency to declare the country in violation of the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty.
The IAEA, a U.N. watchdog, has been pressing Iran to allow unfettered
access to its nuclear sites.
-------------------------------------------------
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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