Agencies seek grand jury documents on former nuke site

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

Index:



Agencies seek grand jury documents on former nuke site

Japan Atomic Power missed pipe inspections until 2001

Mitsubishi Heavy used notebooks to keep track of nuclear

Audit: Plutonium Program Behind Schedule

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Agencies seek grand jury documents on former nuke site



Aug 20 (CNN) State and federal agencies want to see the sealed files 

of a grand jury that investigated alleged environmental crimes at the 

former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant after an advocacy group said 

cleanup plans for the site were dangerously incomplete.



The federal Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of 

Energy and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment 

requested or planned to request the files from U.S. Attorney John 

Suthers, spokesmen for the agencies said Thursday.



U.S. attorney's spokesman Jeff Dorschner said Suthers has received at 

least one of the requests, but he did not know when Suthers would 

respond. A court order would be required for Suthers to release the 

documents.



The request came a day after an FBI agent who led a 1989 raid at 

Rocky Flats warned against plans to turn the site, about 10 miles 

west of downtown Denver, Colorado, into a wildlife refuge, saying it 

would be too dangerous.



Agent Jon Lipsky said he had been ordered by superiors not to comment 

on his investigation, but said concerns raised by the advocacy group, 

the Ambushed Grand Jury Citizens' Investigation, were valid.



He had appeared at a Wednesday news conference, where Jacque Brever, 

a member of the advocacy group and a former Rocky Flats employee, 

released a report accusing federal officials of lying about the 

extent of contamination at the site.



Brever's report said so much radioactive waste was disposed of 

clandestinely at Rocky Flats that some contaminated areas are not 

part of the cleanup.



"I am happy that we are the catalyst and hope they will not certify 

the site as clean until they have gone back and looked at the areas 

we have pointed out to them," said Caron Balkany, co-author of a book 

compiled by the group, "The Ambushed Grand Jury."



Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons until 

production was shut down after the 1989 FBI raid. A federal grand 

jury investigated allegations of safety violations by the contractor 

and the Department of Energy.



The grand jury wanted to issue eight indictments, including two 

against corporations, but the Justice Department declined. The grand 

jury's report and investigative files remain sealed.



One of the plant's operators at the time, Rockwell International 

Corp., pleaded guilty to 10 hazardous waste and clean water 

violations in 1992 and paid an $18.5 million fine.



The Department of Energy plans to convert the site into a wildlife 

refuge after a $7 billion cleanup is complete.

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



Japan Atomic Power missed pipe inspections until 2001



OSAKA, Aug. 21 (Kyodo) - Japan Atomic Power Co. did not carry out 

inspections of a section of pipe at one of its nuclear power plants 

in Fukui prefecture until 2001, when it inspected a point 

corresponding to the section of pipe that caused the country's 

deadliest nuclear plant accident on Aug. 9 in another nuclear plant, 

company officials said.



Japan Atomic Power conducted inspections at the point on the pipe at 

the No. 2 reactor of the Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant for the first 

time in 2001 after Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., which had 

conducted inspections of the reactor, notified its operator of the 

need for further inspections, the officials said.



The company, owned chiefly by the nation's nine electric utilities, 

builds and operates nuclear power plants. It started operations of 

the reactor at the Tsuruga plant in February 1987.



At the inspections conducted in 2001, Japan Atomic Power concluded 

that the pipe could be used for about four more years, they said.



The company plans to replace the pipe in December this year during 

regular inspections, according to the officials.



Four workers were killed and seven others injured by superheated 

steam that burst from a ruptured coolant water pipe at Kansai 

Electric Power Co.'s No. 3 reactor at the Mihama Nuclear

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



Mitsubishi Heavy used notebooks to keep track of nuclear



OSAKA, Aug. 21 (Kyodo) - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. kept track 

of nuclear inspections in notebooks when it was first assigned to 

inspect the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture in 1989, 

informed sources said Saturday.



The coolant water pipe of Mihama's No. 3 reactor -- the cause of 

Japan's deadliest nuclear accident earlier this month -- was missing 

from the list of inspection items, the sources said.



Mitsubishi Heavy says it is looking into why the pipe was missing 

from the list.



On Aug. 9, four workers were killed and seven others injured when 

superheated steam burst from a ruptured coolant water pipe of the 

reactor operated by Kansai Electric Power Co.



According to Mitsubishi Heavy and other sources, the company kept 

track of about 6,000 inspection items using notebooks for about six 

years through 1994, when it computerized the record-keeping system.



Mitsubishi Heavy created the notebook-based inspection system in 1989 

at the request of KEPCO, three years after an accident at the Surrey 

nuclear power plant in the United States, which also involved a 

ruptured pipe.



In 1996, Mitsubishi Heavy handed the notebooks over to Osaka-based 

Nihon Arm Co., which took over the inspection work, the sources said.



Nihon Arm said it computerized the information in the notebooks on 

its own so it could easily collate drawings of pipes and other parts 

of the reactors with the list of inspection items.



Nihon Arm said one of its veteran engineers discovered that the part 

of the coolant water pipe involved in the accident was missing from 

the inspection items while inspecting the power plant in April 2003.



Nihon Arm said it notified KEPCO of the finding, but KEPCO said it 

was unaware of the omission until the accident.

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



Audit: Plutonium Program Behind Schedule



WASHINGTON (AP) - A decade-old program to secure plutonium and other 

fissionable material at Los Alamos National Laboratory is years 

behind schedule, increasing the likelihood of accidents and workers' 

exposure to radiation, according to an Energy Department audit.



The program to "stabilize" fissionable material, including plutonium, 

at the government's weapons research lab in New Mexico was supposed 

to have been finished two years ago. But it now is targeted for 

completion in 2010, with its expected cost ballooning to at least 

$183 million, or 75 percent more than the original price tag.



The delays and failures to meet milestones outlined for the program 

have increased "the possibility that containers (of vulnerable 

radioactive materials) could leak and workers could be exposed to 

radiation resulting in serious health consequences," said the report 

by Gregory Friedman, the department's inspector general.



The report noted an incident at Los Alamos last August in which two 

workers were exposed to plutonium 238 while examining a degraded 

package of contaminated rags. The department fined the lab $770,000, 

but it won't have to pay because by law the lab manager, the 

University of California, is immune from such penalties as a 

department contractor.



While some progress has been made in recent years in repackaging and 

disposing of the radioactive material at Los Alamos, "stabilization 

has not been accelerated to the level anticipated," Friedman wrote. 

He cited a failure to fully fund the program and management 

shortcomings.



Unless the effort is given a higher priority "radioactive materials 

at the laboratory may continue to deteriorate and negatively impact 

the safety and health of workers," Friedman wrote Energy Secretary 

Spencer Abraham in a letter dated Aug. 16 and made public Thursday.



Many of the inspector general's concerns mirror issues raised by the 

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent advisory 

panel, in a letter to Abraham last February.



The board urged the department to speed up its processing and 

repackaging of thousands of items containing fissionable or 

radioactive materials- many of them left over from Cold War-era 

nuclear research.



The accident last August "should have reinforced the urgency" of the 

task at hand, yet neither the department nor Los Alamos officials 

have demonstrated "an appropriate sense of urgency" about addressing 

the total inventory of radioactive and fissionable materials at the 

site, said the advisory group.



Its report said that of 5,718 items in need of attention, 1,403 have 

been dealt with as of Sept. 31, 2003. They include radiation-

contaminated rags, non-weapons grade plutonium oxides, steel drums of 

uranium-tainted materials, and items simply labeled "excess material" 

from weapons-related work, but which are viewed as low risk.



And even more items have yet to be inventoried, according to the 

inspector general's findings and the advisory board. At least 155 

additional containers not considered in the stabilization plans have 

since been found, auditors said.



Responding to the inspector general's report, Michael Kane, an 

associate administrator at the National Nuclear Security 

Administration, said he "generally agrees" with the inspector 

general's findings. NNSA is responsible for the Energy Department's 

nuclear programs,



"While the auditors are correct the laboratory is behind schedule in 

some areas, they have exceeded scheduled expectations in other 

areas," Kane wrote in a letter formally replying to the report.



Kane also said that while the program has been underfunded in the 

past by as much as 40 percent in the late 1990s - funding has 

increased each year since 2001 and full funding is anticipated 

beginning in 2006.



Kevin Roark, a spokesman at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, 

referred questions about the inspector general's report to the NNSA. 

"The report speaks for itself," he said.



The Energy Department in 1995 ordered nuclear facilities including 

Los Alamos to better secure their fissionable and radiaoctive 

materials from Cold War-era activities. It directed the job be 

completed by 2002, a deadline that was later extended to 2005 and 

more recently to 2010.



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

Sandy Perle 

Senior 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 



Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/ 

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

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