Nuclear Shorts Compiled by B. Mills

Reprinted from the Nukewatch Pathfinder, Fall 2002
The Progressive Foundation
P.O. Box 649
Luck, WI 54853

Reactor Closures Improve Health

WASHINGTON - Local infant deaths and childhood cancer rates have dropped dramatically following the closure of eight U.S. nuclear reactors. According to a report published in the Archives of Environmental Health, there has been a 17.4 percent fall in infant mortality in counties lying up to 40 miles downwind of nuclear reactors in the two years following the reactors' closure. Over the same period, the national decline was just 6.4 percent.

Furthermore, in three of the eight areas analyzed, cancer rates among children under five declined by 25 percent in the seven years following reactor closure. Nationally, there was a 0.3 percent increase. "We finally have reliable peer-reviewed accurate data attaching nuclear power reactors to death and injury in the host communities," commented New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky. "This is a sobering and significant study, and we all need to take it seriously." - The Ecologist, July/August 2002.

Bedroom Boycott Protests Reactor Plans

HELSINKI - Seven hundred Finnish women vow they will not give birth for the next four years unless Parliament scraps plans to build another nuclear power reactor. Finland has four reactors now. "This form of protest is logical because this issue doesn't concern just our generation," said Elina Venesmaki, 25, one of the founders of the petition circulating in the country. Venesmaki said she hoped the petition would sway members of Parliament to reject the government proposal. - Reuters, April 5, 2002.

Wildfires Spread Chernobyl Radiation

MINSK, Belarus - In July, 90 separate peat and forest fires were burning thousands of acres in parts of Belarus that were heavily contaminated by fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. Radiation levels rose in the area, according to unnamed officials, while Belarus'.emergency ministry said, "No rise in radioactivity levels has been observed in the villages near the fire." Minister Valery Astapov appeared on national television and claimed that the situation was not dangerous. The Gomel and Brest regions were blanketed with Chernobyl fallout and 4,000 firelighters were working to put out the blazes. Belarus, a former Soviet republic, is still struggling to recover from the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.

The Ukrainian Health Ministry said in 1995 that 125,000 deaths had been traced to radiation from the 1986 catastrophe. Nearly six million people continue to live in contaminated zones, according to UN figures.

Authorities in Belarus blamed the military for the fires after not asking for help once they started on the Poleski testing range. The fires were subsiding as of August. - AP, July 16, 2002; Agence France-Presse, July 19, 2002.

Escapees Hop Nuclear Waste Train

RALEIGH, NC - A train carrying highly radioactive used fuel rods - from the Robinson reactor in Hartsville, S.C., to the Shearon Harris site in New Hill for storage - was boarded by two escaped parole violators making their way to freedom. At
least one man got on a flatbed car as the train slowed for other rail traffic but jumped off seconds later when he saw armed troopers and guards on board. The Harris facility receives shipments of the deadly fuel rods from the Hartsville and Brunswick reactors about 10 times a year. Carolina Power & Light,a subsidiary of Progress Energy, reported the incident to the NRC. The Raleigh-based utility didn't publicize the incident because there was no danger to nearby residents. - Associated Press, May 1, 2002.

Uranium Explosion Survivors File Suit

TOKYO - On Sept. 30, 1999, more than 600 neighborhood esidents and workers were exposed to neutron radiation for 20 hours after a uranium "criticality" fire at JCO Company, a fuel fabrication facility in Tokaimura. Two workers inside JCO died within seven months of the accident. Area residents were belatedly evacuated but some area workers were never informed of the danger. The government never acknowledged the exposure of area residents, including school children 500 meters from JCO. However, the company paid 4.5 billion yen for the loss of crops in the vicinity.

Three survivors have filed a lawsuit for health care compensation, the first by Japanese residents in the history of nuclear power. - Plutonium Action Hiroshima, Aug. 19,2002.

Britain Plans "anti-terrorist" H-bombs and Successor to Trident Warheads

LONDON - Not to be outdone by U.S. manufacture of "more usable" hydrogen bombs at Oak Ridge, Tenn. 's Y-12 factory, a giant nuclear warhead factory is being planned for Aldermaston, near London. As reported by the London Observer, weapons experts believe it will produce H-bombs "for use against terrorist groups and rogue states." The factory has been officially approved without public debate, causing outrage among Members of Parliament.

A blatant violation of international laws against nuclear weapons production, the factory would violate Britain's binding obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The formerly secret plans were confirmed by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) and involve closing the 270-acre Burghfield site, which has produced Britain's nuclear warheads for 50 years. It would be replaced by a giant complex, for designing atomic weapons as well as storing existing Trident warheads at AWE'S 700-acre headquarters.

Contradicting the claim that "smaller" nuclear weapons are to be produced there, an AWE spokesman said they had to "maintain the capability to design a successor" to Trident.
The government has not asked AWE to start work on one.

The disclosure also reveals plans for factories for producing tritium - a radioactive gas used to turn an atom bomb into a hydrogen bomb - designing and developing of nuclear weapons, and simulating the effects ofH-bomb blasts. - The Observer (London), July 19, 2002.

DOE Nuclear Shell Game Continues

NEVADA - Citing security concerns, the Energy Department is considering transporting weapons-grade nuclear material from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to the Nevada Test Site. The TA-18 Site at Los Alamos holds two tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. It is considered a high-risk facility due to security lapses during a series of war games. The radioactive material would be moved to the Device Assembly Facility, a 100,000-square-foot bunker 85 miles from Las Vegas that is used to assemble non-nuclear test materials. The move would cost at least $90 million. - Las Vegas Review Journal, Aug. 13, 2002.

Chernobyl-Poisoned Fruit Seized In Moscow

MOSCOW - Nearly 1,500 pounds of radioactive berries were removed from Moscow markets after officials determined they contained 14 times the acceptable levels ofcesium-137. The
billberries were grown in western Ukraine and Belarus, areas that were heavily contaminated by the 1986 Chrnobyl power reactor catastrophe. [Ed.: This report ends with no word either on how much was sold before the remainder was seized, or what the authorities consider an "acceptable" level of cesium-137 contamination.] - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 8, 2002.
It's the Pits
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The DOE announced in May that it will resume production of plutonium "pits," the official euphemism for nuclear bombs. Until 1989, the pits were produced at Rocky Flats in Colorado. The site is now undergoing experimental decontamination costing $650 million per year until 2006.

A new bomb factory is expected to cost between $2.2 and $4.4 billion. The site selection process will begin in September and production is anticipated to begin by 2020.

Plutonium bombs are "needed," according to the White House, despite the May agreement between Presidents Bush and Putin to reduce strategic nuclear arsenals from current levels of 6000 deployed warheads apiece, to 1,700-2,200. The agreement does not require the destruction of a single warhead, but removes warheads from operational status and places them in reserve. While on reserve, the Energy Department plans to upgrade or replace out-of-date components of the warheads, including the plutonium "guts." The White House's pretext for new pit production is to have components ready and available to produce nuclear weapons quickly if
"needed." The plan actually makes work for national laboratories that would otherwise have no purpose. - New York Times, June. 1, & Washington Post, June 3, 2002.

Major U.S. Nuclear Bomb Tests Proposed

WASHINGTON, DC - Talk of a return to full-scale nuclear bomb testing got louder in August. Dale Klein, Assistant Secretary of Defense for nuclear and chemical and biological defense programs, suggested that testing might be needed, possibly within five years, "to check the reliability and safety of aging nuclear stockpiles." Klein's statement came just months after the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review put forth the option of resuming full-scale testing.

Between 1945 and 1992 the U.S. conducted 1,054 nuclear tests in Nevada and the South Pacific. A 2002 study by the National Cancer Institute and the Center for Disease Control estimates that 80,000 people in the past 50 years have contracted or will contract cancer because of exposure to radioactive fallout from the tests. The fallout contaminated every square foot of the continental United States.

Jackie Cabasso, director of the Western States Legal Foundation, says that a return to testing "will represent the final shedding of any semblance of any international law constraints on U.S. military power." The antinuclear community believes that DOE excuses for breaking the moratorium are a cover-up for developing new nuclear weapons like the earth- penetrating "mini-nuke." -Las Vegas Review-Journal, Aug. 15, 2002.

Defective MOX From Corrupt BNFL Rejected

AUSTRALIA - On July 22, two ocean-going freighters carrying 560 pounds of mixed plutonium oxide (MOX) reactor fuel back to England for British Nuclear Fuels, Ltd. (BNFL), were confronted by a Greenpeace flotilla off the coast of Australia. Protesters, including an Australian MP, jumped into the sea holding a "Nuclear Free Pacific!" banner. Japan had rejected the BNFL-made reactor fuel because the company falsified certification of safety tests. The shipment is-part of a series of plutonium transports being made between waste reprocessing factories .in Britain, France and Japan.

The protest flotilla of 11 .boats set up a line between Australia's Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands. The freighters were held off for a time but eventually slipped through the line. The movement of the two ships across the Pacific drew sharp criticism from the 78-nation African, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACP). At a summit shortly before the transport, ACP released a statement condemning the recklessness, "We call for the immediate cessation of such practice in order to prevent... accidents that could seriously threaten ACP states' sustainable development and the health of their people." - Agence France-Presse, July 22, 2002.

Space Command to Join Nuclear War Planners

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon announced plans in June to combine the nuclear war-planning agency Strategic Command (StratCom) in Omaha, with the Colorado Springs-based Space Command. The move shreds the veil of "defensiveness" used to promote Stars Wars and "missile defense" programs. All the weapons controlled by the joint-command would be offensive. StratCom controls all the Pentagon's nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines. Space Command oversees the hundreds of satellites and ground sensors that warn of missile launchings around the world The nuclear war-fighting function of the reorganization was hinted at by the New York Times which reported, "The new command would ... harness in one entity the nation's missile warning network and the new national missile-defense system now breaking ground, as well as the country's ability to plan and launch offensive strikes with nuclear weapons." -- New York Times, June 25,2002.