-----------------------------------------------------------
Breast Cancer "Study" Ignored Radiation

LONG ISLAND, New York - In October, results of a multimillion dollar
Long Island breast cancer study revealed no links between the
chemicals studied and breast cancer incidence. This federal study took
place over 10 years and examined high rates of breast cancer on Long
Island. Tellingly, radiation was not included as an environmental
factor in the study.

Dr. Janette Sherman, an internist and toxicologist who has extensively
studied the relationship between radiation and breast cancer,
criticized the blatant omission in a letter to the New York Times:
"Long Island is home to the leaking Brookhaven Lab and downwind from
nuclear power reactors in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
Residents have been exposed to more than 200 radioactive
chemicals emitted during routine operation, including strontium-90,
cesium-137 and iodine-131, all demonstrated carcinogens."

At the outset of the study, co-coordinator Alice Slater of the Global
Resource Action Center for the Environment questioned the
administrator from Columbia University as to why radioactivity was not
included. Slater said, "He told us this is a NationaL Institute of Health
study and the NIH does not want to step on the toes of the
Department of Energy."

- East Hampton Star, Aug. 22, & New York Times, Aug. 17,2002.

Floating Chernobyls?

MOSCOW - In October, the head of the Russian Atomic Ministry approved
the technical design of two low-powered floating nuclear reactors in
the region of Severodvinsk. The first reactor, a $120 million project,
is expected to take 40 months to build. It will be constructed by
Sevmash Enterprise, which specializes in me production of military
submarines. After completion it will be transported to a nuclear
submarine base, where it will make the town independent of the local
power grid. Russia has 10 nuclear power reactors in operation. The
safety standards of the Soviet designs have been questioned by
international experts, leading to the new reactors being dubbed
"floating Chernobyls."

- Pravda, Nov. 2002.

Don't Get Too Close

MIDDLETOWN, Iowa -A helicopter crew began Oct. 23 looking for signs of
radiation at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant with a low-level flyover
that will take four to six days. PR officials with the IAAP said a
specially equipped helicopter will cover the entire 19,000-acre
complex in southeast Iowa. The helicopter will pass about 50 feet
above the ground, its equipment measuring radiation in 200-foot
swaths, covering 5 square miles a day. It also will fly over areas of
Middletown that border the complex. The helicopter will search for
radiation emissions - from plutonium, depleted uranium or radium -
that might have been left behind by the now-defunct Atomic Energy
Commission which assembled and test-fired nuclear weapons components
at the site from 1947 to the mid-1970s. The discovery of declassified
documents by former workers suggested that some contamination may
remain. Two years ago, shards of depleted uranium were found at two
test-firing sites. Officials said results of the flyover would be
included in a report that will be issued by the Army in March, but the
Army said it was prepared to take immediate action if anything is
found that is considered an imminent threat to employees or the
public.

- Omaha World-Herald, Oct. 18, 2002.

Nuclear Safety Lies

TOKYO - The world's third largest nuclear utility, the Tokyo Electric
Power Company (TEPCO), announced in August that safety inspections at
its reactors had been skipped, and that test data was falsified
throughout the 1980s and 1990s. TEPCO's plan to introduce
controversial mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel in power reactors has now been
indefinitely postponed. TEPCO president Nobuya Minami said "We
personally hurt the public's trust in us. We cannot ask for
understanding to continue the MOX project." On Oct. 25, TEPCO's
managers were suspended from operating the Fukushima reactor No. 1 for
a year. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ordered the
suspension because regulators said rigging the tests was a "serious
misdeed."

The scandal comes as the bankrupt, bailed-out British firm BNFL
returned a cargo of its rejected MOX fuel from Japan to Sellafield,
England. The fuel shipment was refused after BNFL was caught lying to
another Japanese firm about falsified quality control data. Britain
has agreed to pay over 100 million pounds in compensation to Japan in
exchange for a promise that Japan would buy more MOX fuel from BNFL.

- Mainichi Shimbun (Japan), Oct. 25, & The Ecologist, Oct. 2002.

Civilian Reactors Used for Nuclear Weapons

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - The NRC has disregarded the international agreement
not to use civilian nuclear reactors to supply weapons material. In
September, the NRC approved two Tennessee reactors for tritium
production. Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, is used in
thermonuclear weapons to boost explosive power. The DOE halted tritium
production in 1988 and, despite the May 2002 Strategic Offensive
Reductions Treaty in which the U.S. and Russia agreed to cut their
nuclear warhead stockpiles by nearly half, the department plans on
replenishing the tritium in the entire nuclear weapons stockpile. The
new license allows the Watts Bar and Sequoyah reactors to install
tritium-producing burnable absorber rods in their cores. Each reactor
will irradiate 2,256 fuel rods over an 18-month fuel cycle and then
ship them to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina where the
tritium will be extracted for use in new nuclear weapons.

- Arms Control Today, Nov. 2002.

Neptunium Tested for Yet Another H-bomb

TAGS, New Mexico - For the first time ever, a radioactive material
other than plutonium or uranium has been used to achieve a nuclear
chain reaction. Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
announced that they used neptunium-237 to achieve "criticality," which
can lead to yet another H-bomb design. Neptunium is a waste byproduct
of nuclear reactor operation and is extracted when waste fuel is
reprocessed. Because it is so accessible, the scientists at Los Alamos
have expressed concern over the proliferation risks of neptunium. The
lab contends that it's only because of these worries that it is
planning to conduct experiments to establish the material's "full
range of capabilities."

- Albuquerque Journal, Oct. 2002.

County Proposes Condemnation of Reactor

BUCHANAN, NY - Andrew Spano, County Executive in Westchester County
where the Indian Point Power Reactors are located, proposed Nov. 13
that the county take over the reactors and replace them with natural
gas-powered generating units. If Entergy Nuclear Northeast, owner of
Indian Point, is unwilling to sell, the county could condemn the
facility in state court, just as the county has the ability to acquire
other property from an unwilling seller. Spano proposed spending
$500,000 out of the county budget for an in-depth study that would
answer questions involved in the proposal. The takeover is estimated
to cost $3 billion, and the county would have to pass a referendum in
order to borrow the money. Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, said, "It would be unprecedented for a state,
county or town to condemn an operating reactor in this country."

- The White Plains, NY Journal News, Nov. 14,2002.

National Sacrifice Zone Tainted by DU

MADISON, Indiana - The Pentagon has closed the 200-acre proving ground
where it test-fired depleted uranium rounds in Indiana. Cleaning up
the site will cost at least $7.8 billion, but won't repair permanent
damage to vegetation and soil to a depth of six meters. The military
considered the full cleanup cost too high, and offered to give the
tract to the National Park Service for a nature preserve - an offer
that was promptly refused. Now there is talk of turning it into a
National Sacrifice Zone and closing it forever.

- Windows East and West, Summer 2002.

Russian Duma Protests Navy's HAARP System

MOSCOW - The Russian State Duma is concerned about a U.S. program to
develop geophysical weapons that would influence the lower atmosphere
with high-frequency radio waves. The State Duma maintains that the
U.S. High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP), based in
Alaska, "Will create weapons capable of breaking radio communication
lines and equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke
serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas
pipelines, and have a negative impact on the mental health of people
populating entire regions." A commission of the State Duma's
international affairs and defense committees wrote the statement. In
August, an appeal that demanded an international ban on large-scale
geophysical experiments was sent to the UN and its member states as
well as other international organizations.

-Interfax News Agency, Aug. 9,2002.

Radioactive Produce Season in Moscow

MOSCOW - The Moscow atomic food inspectors job is to nab fruits and vegetables rich in cesium and strontium before they reach any of the city's 69 open air produce markets. Ever since the 1986 Chemobyl nuclear meltdown, just 415 miles from Moscow, forest produce - mushrooms, wild berries and other delicacies that are handpicked in the wild - must be checked for radioactivity before moving on to the market. Inspectors are located in laboratories at each of the city's markets, where they run hand-held scanners over each crate that passes through. Last year 3,000 pounds of produce were seized; as of September this year, 160 shipments had been stopped, a rate 10% ahead of the previous year. Radioacti ve produce season runs roughly from June through October.

- New York Times. Sept. 13, 2002.

UK Minister Suggests Replacing Nuclear Power

CARDIFF, Wales - British Cabinet Minister Peter Hain, the Welsh
Secretary, has called for nuclear power to be consigned to the
past. The former Energy Minister said a huge expansion in green energy
sources could replace electricity from nuclear reactors. Hain told The
Western Mail it would require a planning shake-up to overcome local
objections to green projects. He stated: "We've got to end the curse
of 'nimbyism' [not-in-my-backyard-ism] which is really like a
plague... Or we will end up, whether we like it or not, with more
nuclear power. But... I don't see a queue of companies wanting to
build nuclear power stations. And there's an enormous legacy of
liabilities in terms of storing and disposing the waste." He added,
"I think that we need to ask if we want to be dealing with that legacy
forever."

- The Western Mail (UK), Nov. 24, 2002.

15,000 Drums of Plutonium Waste Sent to WIPP

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho - With a bit of fanfare, the DOE announced that it
has trucked 15,000 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste from the
Idaho National "Environmental" Engineering Lab (INEEL) to the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The agency didn't
report that it still has 485,000 barrels to go.

The 55-gallon drums are filled with plutonium wastes from decades of
nuclear weapons production. On their way to WIPP from Idaho they pass
through Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, Denver and Colorado Springs. In May
2000, one of the barrels failed a stress test when a 30-foot drop
caused a 4-by-9/16-inch crack between the lid and the container. The
maximum "allowable" cracking is 3-by-l/8-inches!

An Idaho/DOE agreement requires the feds to deliver at least 9,700
drums of INEEL's plutonium waste to WIPP every year, so that the
barrels will be out of INEEL by 2019. Over the next 35 years, the
government plans 40,000 truck deliveries from around the country to
the controversial site. In 1988, DOE scientists discovered water leaks
in the deep underground salt bed that should have disqualified the
site.

- Idaho Statesman, Oct. 25, 2002.

So. California Edison's Hemispheric Shell Game

CHARLESTON, S.C: - The State Ports Authority (SPA) is challenging the
safety of shipping a 35-year-old, 1.4 million pound used nuclear
reactor from California, through the Panama Canal, to the state's
Bamwell radioactive waste dump. The reactor's owner, Southern
California Edison, says it hired Charleston International Ports to do
the job and may ship the reactor through Charleston as soon as March.

The utility's plan is to ship the reactor to Charleston by barge, then
move it by truck to a rail car for shipment to Barnwell.

Southern California Edison spokesman Ray Golden told Post and Courier
the reactor has been filled with concrete then sealed in a steel
canister with more concrete between the reactor and canister. The
total package weighs about 700 tons (1.4 million pounds). "It would be
almost impossible for terrorists to seize the reactor and make any use
of it," Golden said.

Golden said appropriate state and federal agencies have approved the
arrangement and only the shipping route needs to be finalized. The
evidently inappropriate SPA says the issue isn't settled. SPA'S Peter
Hughes recently wrote Charleston International Ports saying, "The
movement of a spent nuclear reactor is a uniquely dangerous and
complex operation with significant security and safety issues." Hughs
concluded that, "We are unable to consent to your supervising this
movement."

-The Charleston, S.C. Post and Courier, Nov.12, 2002

Click for previous Nuclear Shorts