U.S. Revives Study of Fallout

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

Note:  I'll be out of the country March 25 - April 11. I do not 

expect to be mailing any news distributions during this time



Index:



U.S. Revives Study of Fallout

Ohio Nuclear Power Plant Running Again

Fukui police to set up special unit to guard nuclear facilities

Fukui gov't OKs use of reprocessed spent fuel at nuclear plant

UN watchdog, U.S. want to clean up atomic 'mess'

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



U.S. Revives Study of Fallout



March 19 (The New York Times) To cope with the possibility that 

terrorists might someday detonate a nuclear bomb on American soil, 

the federal government is reviving a scientific art that was lost 

after the cold war: fallout analysis.

   

The goal, officials and weapons experts both inside and outside the 

government say, is to figure out quickly who exploded such a bomb and 

where the nuclear material came from. That would clarify the options 

for striking back. Officials also hope that if terrorists know a bomb 

can be traced, they will be less likely to try to use one.



In a secretive effort that began five years ago but whose outlines 

are just now becoming known, the government's network of weapons 

laboratories is hiring new experts, calling in old-timers, dusting 

off data and holding drills to sharpen its ability to do what is 

euphemistically known as nuclear attribution or post-event forensics.



It is also building robots that would go into an affected area and 

take radioactive samples, as well as field stations that would dilute 

dangerous material for safe shipment to national laboratories.



"Certainly, there's a frightening aspect in all of this," said 

Charles B. Richardson, the project leader for nuclear identification 

research at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. "But 

we're putting all these things together with the hope that they'll 

never have to be used."



Most experts say the risk of a terrorist nuclear attack is low but no 

longer unthinkable, given the spread of material and know-how around 

the globe.

   

Dr. Jay C. Davis, a nuclear scientist who in 1999 helped found the 

Pentagon's part of the governmentwide effort, said the precautions 

would "pay huge dividends after the event, both in terms of the 

ability to identify the bad actor and in terms of establishing public 

trust."



In a nuclear crisis, Dr. Davis added, the identification effort would 

be vital in "dealing with the desire for instant gratification 

through vengeance."



Vice President Dick Cheney was briefed on the program last fall, Dr. 

Davis said. The National Security Council coordinates the work among 

a dozen or so federal agencies.



The basic science relies on faint clues . tiny bits of radioactive 

fallout, often invisible to the eye, that under intense scrutiny can 

reveal distinctive signatures. Such wisps of evidence can help 

identify an exploded bomb's type and characteristics, including its 

country of origin.  

   

Solving the nuclear whodunit could take much more information, 

including hard-won law enforcement clues and good intelligence on 

foreign nuclear arms and terrorist groups. For that reason, several 

federal agencies are involved in the program, among them the 

Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of 

Investigation.



The program addresses true nuclear weapons as well as so-called dirty 

bombs, ordinary explosives that spew radioactive debris.



"It's a very hard job," said William Happer, a physicist at Princeton 

who led a panel that evaluated the identification work.



Mr. Happer said he was worried that a rush for retribution after a 

nuclear attack might cut short the time needed for careful analysis. 

"If we lose a city," he said, "we might not wait around that long."



The effort to fingerprint domestic nuclear blasts is part of a larger 

federal project to strengthen the nation's overall defenses against 

unconventional terrorist threats. Mostly, the goal is prevention. For 

instance, the government recently sent teams of scientists with 

hidden radiation detectors to check major American cities for signs 

that terrorists might be preparing to detonate radiological bombs.



In contrast, the identification program seeks to increase the 

government's knowledge and options should prevention fail. "We're 

trying to resurrect some of our capability," said Reid Worlton, a 

retired nuclear scientist from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in 

New Mexico who has been called in to aid the fallout endeavor. "It 

sort of died. They're not doing radiochemistry on nuclear tests 

anymore, so it's hard to keep these people around."



The effort draws on work that began at the dawn of the atomic era. 

Scientists working on the Manhattan Project built an array of devices 

to monitor nuclear blasts in the New Mexico desert in July 1945 and 

at Hiroshima and Nagasaki a month later. The experience helped 

scientists learn what to look for.



The first hunt zeroed in on the Soviet Union. In the late 1940's, 

military weather planes used paper filters to gather dust particles 

around the periphery of Russia, and scientists in the United States 

who analyzed the data at first sounded dozens of false alarms, said 

Jeffrey T. Richelson, an intelligence expert in Washington.



Then, on Sept. 3, 1949, a weather plane flying from Japan to Alaska 

picked up a slew of atomic particles. "That was the real thing," Mr. 

Richelson said. Twenty days later, President Harry S. Truman 

announced that the Soviets had exploded their first nuclear device.



The ranks of fallout investigators swelled during the cold war as 

foreign nations conducted hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests. By 

all accounts, the sleuths made many important discoveries about the 

nature and design of foreign nuclear arms.



In time, the ranks dwindled as more and more nations decided to move 

their test explosions underground, eliminating fallout. The last 

nuclear blast to pummel the earth's atmosphere was in 1980, and the 

last known underground test, conducted by Pakistan, was in 1998.



As the terrorist threat rose in the 1990's, the government began to 

consider the quandary that would arise if a nuclear weapon exploded 

on American soil. In 1999, Dr. Davis, then head of the Defense Threat 

Reduction Agency at the Pentagon, began an effort to address the 

identification problem by financing research at the nation's weapons 

laboratories, many of them run by the Energy Department.



The first money came in late 2000, Dr. Davis said, and the attacks of 

September 2001 "made it clear that a very organized event on a large 

scale was credible." That perception, he said, helped the effort 

expand.



The secretive work won rare public praise in a June 2002 report 

("Making the Nation Safer") from the National Research Council of the 

National Academies, the country's leading scientific advisory group. 

Having the ability to find out who launched a domestic nuclear 

strike, the report said, could deter attackers and bolster threats of 

retaliation. The report urged that the program go into operation "as 

quickly as practical" and that the government publicly declare its 

existence.



Since then, weapons laboratories and other federal agencies have 

worked hard on the problem. "They're making progress but they've got 

a ways to go," said Mr. Worlton, the retired Los Alamos scientist.



In a drill this year, dozens of federal experts in fallout analysis 

met at the Sandia laboratories in Albuquerque to study a simulated 

terrorist nuclear blast. Mr. Worlton said they were broken into teams 

and given radiological data from two old American nuclear tests, 

whose identities remained hidden, and were instructed to try to name 

them. Some teams succeeded, he said.



Mr. Richardson of Sandia said the laboratory was developing a land 

robot that could roll up to 10 miles to sample fallout and return it 

to human operators for analysis. It could also radio back some 

results if it became stuck. Mr. Richardson said the robots, now in 

development, are to be ready in a couple of years.



Experts say a new aircraft for atmospheric sampling of nuclear 

fallout is also in development. The Air Force currently has one, the 

WC-135W Constant Phoenix, for such work. It was first deployed in 

1965.



Weapons experts say getting samples fast is important because some 

radioactive debris can decay rapidly. If captured quickly, they can 

shed light on a weapon's design.



One way of trying to identify a bomb's origin positively, several 

experts say, is to match debris signatures with libraries of 

classified data about nuclear arms around the world, including old 

fallout signatures and more direct intelligence about bomb types, 

characteristics and construction materials.



"If you're talking about a stolen device, you might try to do that," 

Mr. Richardson said. "But if it's improvised, that's less likely to 

work. It might not look like things you've seen before."



A further complication is that even knowing who made a bomb may say 

little about who detonated it. In a 1991 Tom Clancy novel, "The Sum 

of All Fears," Islamic terrorists find and rebuild an Israeli nuclear 

weapon and set it off at the Super Bowl.



Federal experts say complex threat scenarios (for instance, an 

American warhead being stolen and detonated in an American city) mean 

that many types of intelligence might be needed for successful 

identification. Over all, it is unclear how much money the government 

is spending on the effort.



Private experts offered suggestions for improvement. Dr. Happer of 

Princeton, who heads a university board that helps oversee campus 

research, said the program might be cooperating too little with 

nuclear allies. "It's to our advantage," he said, "for all of us to 

share."



Dr. Davis, the former head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 

made several policy recommendations last April in an article for The 

Journal of Homeland Security. He said the F.B.I. should lead the 

program, presidentially appointed overseers should guide it, goals 

should be set for how long analyses should take and legal issues of 

prosecution should be examined.



In an interview, Dr. Davis said his suggestions had made little 

headway, partly because of the topic's grisly nature. "This is an 

ugly subject because your best effort is going to be barely 

adequate," he said. "That's not the kind of phrase people like to 

hear."



Mr. Richardson of Sandia said that the attribution effort had made 

good technical progress and had already some ability to identify an 

attacker.



"We're hoping for deterrence," he said. "We don't want anybody to 

think they can get away with it."

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



Ohio Nuclear Power Plant Running Again



OAK HARBOR, Ohio (March 16) - The Davis-Besse nuclear power plant 

started generating electricity Tuesday for the first time since it 

was shut down more than two years ago, when inspectors found that 

acid had eaten nearly all the way through a steel lid on the reactor.



The plant was restarted early in the morning and by afternoon was 

running at 21 percent of full power, producing about 120 megawatts of 

electricity, said plant spokesman Richard Wilkins. A return to full 

power should take 10 to 14 days.



The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave operator FirstEnergy Corp. 

permission a week ago to restart the reactor.



After the plant was shut down in February 2002 for routine 

maintenance, inspectors found that boric acid from leaking cooling 

water had eaten nearly all the way through the 6-inch-thick steel 

cap.



The damage led to a review of 68 similar plants nationwide. Both 

FirstEnergy and regulators were blamed for missing warning signs and 

allowing the leak to go unnoticed for years.



The Akron-based utility spent $600 million on repairs and buying 

replacement power.

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



Fukui police to set up special unit to guard nuclear facilities



FUKUI, Japan, March 19 (Kyodo) - The Fukui prefectural police will 

set up a special unit to guard nuclear facilities, including nuclear 

power plants, in the prefecture amid growing concerns over terror 

attacks on Japan, the force said Friday.



The police will set up the 38-member unit to guard the nuclear 

facilities starting March 26 in the first such move by Japanese 

police, it said.



There are more than 10 nuclear facilities in Fukui and police have 

been guarding them around-the-clock since the terrorist attacks on 

the United States of Sept. 11, 2001. The prefecture hosts the largest 

number of nuclear power plants in Japan.



But since they did not have the special unit, they had to ask police 

forces in neighboring prefectures for backup.



Takashi Ueda, a senior official with the prefectural police, said, 

"We have decided to foster a professional unit to guard nuclear 

facilities to strengthen our security system."

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



Fukui gov't OKs use of reprocessed spent fuel at nuclear plant



FUKUI, Japan, March 15 (Kyodo) - The Fukui prefectural government 

gave the go-ahead Monday for restarting a process leading to Japan's 

first use of reprocessed spent nuclear fuel for burning in nuclear 

power reactors.



Fukui Gov. Issei Nishikawa expressed his intention to allow Kansai 

Electric Power Co. (KEPCO) to manufacture overseas the mixed uranium-

plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel for use at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at 

its Takahama nuclear power plant in the prefecture.



Nishikawa said he will convey the prefectural government's decision 

to the company's president by the end of this week.



With the consent, KEPCO is expected to sign a contract with a foreign 

company by the end of this month on MOX production and to actually 

introduce the fuel at the reactors in fiscal 2007 starting in April 

that year, sources close to the company said.



The governor has decided to restart the MOX project, which has been 

stalled since 1999 due to a data falsification scandal, after KEPCO 

took a series of measures last October to prevent a recurrence of 

data falsification.



The measures included stationing KEPCO staff members overseas to 

inspect the manufacturing process, establishing a double-checking 

system to ensure that manufacturers strictly manage data on the 

nuclear fuel, and asking third parties to verify data.



The central government and the municipal government of Takahama, 

which hosts the nuclear power plant, earlier endorsed the measures, 

which prompted the prefectural government to follow suit.



KEPCO's plan to use MOX for nuclear power generation was originally 

approved by the central government in 1998 and by the Fukui 

prefectural and Takahama municipal governments in June 1999.



But the plan was stalled after the scandal, in which British Nuclear 

Fuels PLC doctored inspection data on MOX it produced for the 

Takahama plant, surfaced in September 1999.



Japanese power companies hope to introduce MOX as fuel at 16-18 

nuclear reactors by 2010.

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



UN watchdog, U.S. want to clean up atomic 'mess'



WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. atomic watchdog 

said on Thursday the United States would help it clean up all the 

weapons-grade nuclear material spread across the globe to keep it 

from from being used in bombs.



International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei met with 

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to follow up on discussions he had 

with U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday.



ElBaradei told reporters after the meeting at the Department of 

Energy that he and Abraham discussed a number of issues, particularly 

a plan to clean up highly enriched uranium and plutonium still in 

civilian sites.



"There's about a 100 facilities in 40 countries with research 

reactors and others that still use highly enriched uranium (HEU). The 

president agreed that this is unacceptable," ElBaradei said.



The atomic energy agency is pushing a plan under which reactors 

fueled by HEU would be converted to ones using low-enriched uranium, 

which would not be suitable for a bomb. The weapons-grade material 

would be evacuated to Russia, the United States or elsewhere.



Both the United States and Russia made reactors that used highly 

enriched uranium, though such reactors have become obsolete.



"A lot of it's Russian," ElBaradei said. "There are 21 Russian HEU 

reactors around the world."



However, he said, "Irrespective of whether it's Russian, irrespective 

of whether it's American, we need to clean up the mess, if you like, 

clean up the potential threat."



Asked who would pay for the recovery of the HEU and conversion of the 

plants, ElBaradei said: "I don't think the resources are an issue."



Earlier this month, the IAEA supervised an airlift to Russia of 

enriched uranium from a reactor near Tripoli, the Libyan capital. It 

said the metal was almost pure enough to be used in a nuclear weapon. 

Libya has agreed to give up its weapons of mass destruction programs.



The IAEA has often said the chances of terrorists being able to build 

a full-scale nuclear weapon were slim. It says the real danger was 

that terrorists would make a "dirty bomb" -- a conventional bomb 

laced with radioactive material.



A dirty bomb would cause more panic than actual physical damage, 

nuclear experts say.



It would take 55 to 80 pounds of highly enriched uranium to make a 

conventional nuclear bomb, but a Vienna-based nuclear expert that it 

would be possible to make a crude nuclear-fission device with "just a 

few kilos" of HEU.



The result would be "a very badly done, but done nuclear weapon," he 

said.



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

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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