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Mitsubishi Heavy, Westinghouse to bid on China nuke plants
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Mitsubishi Heavy, Westinghouse to bid on China nuke plants
Daughter Fights for Ailing Nuke Workers
==================================
Mitsubishi Heavy, Westinghouse to bid on China nuke plants
TOKYO, Jan. 21 (Kyodo) - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) and
Westinghouse Electric Corp. of the United States have teamed up to
offer tenders for nuclear power plants in China, a Mitsubishi
spokesman said Wednesday.
The bids involve the construction of two pressurized-water reactors
(PWRs) with an output capacity of 1-1.5 million kilowatts each in
Guangdong Province and Zhejiang Province, he said.
The four reactors will become operational in 2010, he said.
China plans to solicit tenders for the primary and secondary systems
of the reactors.
A reactor's primary system vaporizes water with heat from nuclear
energy, while the secondary system turns power-generation turbines
with the vapor.
"Among Japanese manufacturers, Mitsubishi Heavy is the sole company
that can make pressurized water reactors, so all the reactors that
are
now operational at Japanese nuclear plants were made by us," the
spokesman said.
"Generally speaking, when China places orders, it involves recipients
of the orders transferring their technologies," he said.
The estimated value of the reactor systems was not immediately known.
----------------
Daughter Fights for Ailing Nuke Workers
MOSCOW MILLS, Mo. (AP) - When Denise Brock sat with her cancer-
stricken dad in the 1960s, she made lots of racket, hoping the noise
would prevent his dying on her watch. Today, the 43-year-old Brock is
clamoring all the louder, a full-time activist on behalf of aging
Cold War-era nuclear workers and their survivors.
"I'm obsessed with this," she said, conceding a soft spot for the
elderly. "If I don't help them, who's going to?"
A 3-year-old federal law requires the government to compensate
workers in the nuclear weapons industry, or their survivors, for job-
related cancer or other diseases. Workers from about 350 sites
nationwide may qualify.
Ten sites are in Missouri, including the old Mallinckrodt Chemical
Co. plant in St. Louis where Brock's father, Christopher Davis,
worked from 1945 to 1960. The plant produced uranium dioxide for the
Manhattan Project, exposing its workers to large doses of radiation.
Brock's father died of lung cancer in 1978. When she started helping
her 80-year-old mother file a benefits claim in 2002, she ran into
obstacles.
Employment records had been destroyed. The family could only guess
what Davis was exposed to. Workers used code words like "juice,"
"biscuit" and "tube alloy" to describe what they made.
Brock dug up old city directories and Social Security records to
prove her father's employment and hunted down documents to trace his
exposure. If she failed to prove her case, her mother would not get
the $150,000 payment she was due.
The experience made Brock angry and determined to act for others.
For more than a year, she has crusaded among those she calls "my
workers," mostly elderly former plant employees, their aging spouses
or children to help them construct a picture of the years when the
workers were exposed.
She founded United Nuclear Weapons Workers, which operates from her
eastern Missouri mobile home. Her teenage daughter fields phone calls
and inputs computer data. Her husband, an ironworker, listens calmly
to her rants and drives her to countless meetings, even some out of
state.
Documents from innumerable Freedom of Information Act requests fill
filing cabinets in the bathroom and bedroom. Last fall, she received
5,000 pages of classified records to help claimants fill information
gaps. Among them: decades-old urine analysis reports that told how
much uranium dust a worker inhaled and secreted.
Brock has made so many FOIA requests, she obtained fee waivers. Her
monthly phone bill averages $700. She regularly calls the Labor
Department, which handles the claims.
Over the last year, she organized hundreds of workers and union
tradesmen who risked exposure when called to the sites. She recruited
a board of directors, held claims workshops, walked nervous claimants
through mock telephone interviews, even providing a script.
Her work is free. The payback is the hugs, letters and thanks from
grateful people.
"She's such an energetic person, she's doing everything in her power
to help people out," said 82-year-old Harold Mauk, of Farmington, who
worked at Mallinckrodt and Weldon Spring in the 1950s and '60s.
"She's doing a fantastic job."
Richard Miller, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Government
Accountability Project which represents whistleblowers, watched Brock
step in with no background, just a big heart for the hundreds of
workers and survivors she discovered were in the same predicament as
her parents.
"She has forced people to deal with Mallinckrodt that otherwise might
have been a forgotten site. She's brought it to prominence. I'm
impressed," he said.
At Brock's urging, a federal advisory board that oversees the
compensation program held a public hearing where a report on the
Mallinckrodt plant was unveiled by the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health. It found that workers were exposed to
radiation up to 2,400 times greater than doses acceptable by modern
standards. It referred to conditions at Mallinckrodt's uranium-
processing plant as routinely dusty and hazardous.
In some cases, evidence of radiation exposure at Mallinckrodt was so
overwhelming that NIOSH could bypass an individual determination of
workplace exposure.
But for other Mallinckrodt workers, not all the proof is available,
the report said. From 1942 to 1948, no one monitored workers' health.
Miller said a provision in the law believes workers if records aren't
available. Mallinckrodt clearly is a candidate for that exception, he
said.
The problem is that the Department of Labor rule governing that
provision is yet to be released. The department says it's coming. On
Jan. 13, Missouri's Sen. Kit Bond asked Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy Thompson to give workers the benefit of the doubt.
"These are sick, dying, dead workers," Brock said. "Now how hard is
it to see they need help? Fix it!"
A year ago, the Labor Department predicted long delays to assess an
individual case. Payments today are moving faster. Of 50,000 claims
filed nationwide, nearly 9,900 have been paid $753 million,
representatives said. More than 1,100 claims were filed in Missouri
alone.
Help wasn't quick enough for Charles Bredensteiner Jr., of St.
Charles, who succumbed to cancer Jan. 7, the day of his scheduled
interview with NIOSH. Brock had met with him and his family the night
before. The memories of her own father's death overtook her.
"I was like a scared kid," she said. "It was as if a hand pounded me
in my heart. I felt the agony of the wife and daughter."
Brock's group is now focused on finding the thousands of potentially
eligible Missouri workers who are unaware of the program.
"There were 3,300 employees of Mallinckrodt, plus the building
trades," Brock said. "I want to reach all 3,000. I feel they have a
right to know. Where are they?
"Some little old man could use $150,000. How do I get to them? I'm
thinking of going to nursing homes and senior centers."
------------------------------------
Sandy Perle
Vice President, Technical Operations
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.
3300 Hyland Avenue
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100 Extension 2306
Fax:(714) 668-3149
E-Mail: sperle@globaldosimetry.com
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/
Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.globaldosimetry.com/
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