THE HANDSTAND

july 2005

Sellafield radioactive leak to cost £300m

UK nuclear industry in turmoil after closure of vital plant

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Monday June 13, 2005
The Guardian

The massive leak at the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria will keep it closed for several more months and cost Britain's clean-up programme at least £300m in lost revenue this year alone, it emerged yesterday.

The crippled £1.8bn flagship of the nuclear industry was supposed to make £2.5bn over five years to help fund the clean-up of past wastes but cannot contribute anything while closed.

In the meantime it is costing millions more, also potentially coming out of the clean-up budget, to make the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) safe.

The subsequent repair, if it proves viable at all, will cost even more, forcing its new owners, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), set up by the government to take over Sellafield's assets on April 1, to consider whether Thorp should ever reopen. The NDA has confirmed that it is already reviewing the future of the plant.

Estimates of how long the plant would take to repair have lengthened considerably since the Guardian first revealed in May that 83 cubic metres of nitric acid containing 22 tonnes of dissolved uranium and plutonium from irradiated fuel had leaked from a fractured pipe into the internal workings of the plant.

The highly dangerous liquid is currently being pumped out of the plant in small batches into storage tanks. The company said this will take another two weeks to complete and then it will have to devise a way of repairing the damaged pipework. This can only be done using robots because the area is so radioactive that any human being entering it would die.

The British Nuclear Group, the company formed from the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels to manage the plant on behalf of the NDA from April 1, has admitted that the leak begun as early as last August but operatives failed to notice it until April 18, when enough liquid to fill half an Olympic swimming pool had already gone missing.

The company blamed a faulty gauge but also conceded that workers at the plant missed opportunities to notice that something had gone badly wrong.

The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, the government's safety watchdog, has not yet completed its own investigation, which could lead to prosecution. It has to approve any repair plan on safety grounds both to prevent any danger to workers and to make sure a similar problem does not arise again.

Barry Snelson, managing director of the British Nuclear Group, said last week he regarded the Thorp leak as "a stumble not a fall" and reassured workers fearing job losses that he was sure the plant would reopen.

"I am confident that Thorp will re-open but the decision is not ours, it rests with the NDA and the government," he said.

"Our role is as operators rather than owners is to show that we have the capability to restore Thorp to service safely and also to demonstrate what the economic benefits are."

This is a significant change since the April 1 takeover by the NDA. Even though Sellafield is still effectively government-owned and what happens there is ultimately decided by ministers, the British Nuclear Group cannot spend money without first justifying it to the NDA.

Previously BNFL spent the money and even the most dedicated nuclear watchers were unable to untangle where it had gone from studying the accounts.

Martin Forwood, of Cumbrians Opposed to Radioactive Environment has written to Ian Roxbrough, the chief executive of the NDA, asking that Thorp be closed immediately and saying further delay would only add to costs to the taxpayer and delay clean-up.

Dr Roxbrough replied that the NDA was actively reviewing Thorp's future.

Mr Forwood said: "All that Thorp does is produce more and more uranium and plutonium. British Energy, which has the bulk of fuel waiting to be reprocessed, says it has no possible use for this material, There us no logic to this and common sense says Thorp should be shut down now."

Planned nuclear dump sites revealed

Friday June 10, 2005

Environmental campaigners today called on the government to abandon nuclear power after it emerged that 12 communities in the UK were earmarked as dumping grounds for radioactive waste in the 1980s.

The agency Nirex, set up to manage the UK's intermediate-level waste, published the information under the Freedom of Information Act. It said the proposed burial programme was abandoned in 1997 and no alternative sites were currently being sought in the UK.

The 12 sites shortlisted as dumping areas were: Bradwell and Potton Island in Essex; Dounreay and Altnabreac in Caithness; Fuday and Sandray in Western Isles; Killingholme in South Humberside; Stanford in Norfolk; two sites at Sellafield in Cumbria; and two offshore sites, one close to Redcar Port and another close to Hunterston Port.

Environmental groups and local politicians were angered that the list had been kept secret and said nuclear power should be ruled out as a future energy source.

Chris Balance, MSP for the south of Scotland, said: "Nuclear power should be unequivocally ruled out as a possible energy option. Until then communities up and down the country, especially those on the final list of 12 sites, will be living with the prospect that their environment will become a nuclear waste dumping ground.

"The public has a right to know where dangerous radioactive wastes are going to be dumped, but after years of procrastination and manipulation Nirex still cannot bring itself to front up to the public and tell them the exact truth," said Jean McSorley, a Greenpeace nuclear campaigner.

"Nirex must reveal which sites are really in the frame for a nuclear dump. Not only is it vital for communities who will be on the receiving end, but it is unfair on people living in areas no longer considered suitable whose lives have been blighted by rumours of potential dumps," she added.

Nirex said that if new potential dumping sites were chosen in future, the previous lists would not form the starting point of the selection process.

Chris Murray, the agency's managing director, said: "Radioactive waste exists and needs to be dealt with whether or not there is any programme of new build in the UK. Dealing with the waste is as much an ethical and social issue as a scientific and technical one. This is the key lesson we have learned from the past.

"Openness and transparency must underpin everything that is done in this area," he added.

He said he hoped that by publishing the list Nirex could help focus attention on the new debate on disposal of intermediate-level waste.

The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) is due to report next July with recommendations for waste management.

"Many things have changed since this old list was drawn up, but what has not changed is that the waste still exists and needs to be dealt with in a safe, environmentally sound and publicly acceptable way for the long term," said Mr Murray. "Responsibility lies with this generation to ensure this is done."

The CoRWM is charged with determining the best option, or combination of options, for managing the UK's long-term radioactive waste. If it recommends using deep geological repositories to deal with intermediate- and low-level wastes, a new process of site selection would not begin until 2007 or 2008.

Radioactive waste has been created in significant quantities in the UK since the 1940s, and the nation has significant amounts that will remain potentially hazardous for thousands of years.

Past attempts to provide a long-term facility for these wastes have failed. Most recently, the government blocked the development of an underground rock characterisation facility at Sellafield in 1997. The waste is currently being stored at 34 locations around the UK, awaiting long-term disposal.

Nirex said the confidentiality about which sites were being considered - apart from Dounreay and Sellafield - had been in line with government policy prior to the introduction of information freedom laws.

But the director of Friends of the Earth, Tony Juniper, said: "It is an absolute disgrace that the location of these sites has been kept from the public for so long.

"Despite what ministers might say, Nirex has made it quite clear that each of the sites considered geologically suitable in the past could be considered suitable in the future. Every community named on this list should take steps to help halt plans to expand nuclear power in the UK."

The Conservative leader of Essex county council, Lord Hanningfield, said: "I am obviously very concerned that such a study was undertaken in absolute secrecy and without any involvement from the affected community.

"However, I am pleased both that this previously secret historic data has finally been published and that Nirex have committed themselves to a much more open public consultation when they launch any future search for sites."

The Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, Norman Baker, said: "It is irresponsible and contrary to established environmental principles that one or two generations have created this problem to last for so many future generations.

"It shows that nuclear power generation is essentially unsustainable and should not form part of any future power generation mix in this country."

High Uranium Levels Found in Troops and Civilians

Civilian populations in Afghanistan and Iraq and occupying troops have been contaminated with astounding levels of radioactive depleted and non-depleted uranium as a result of post-9/11 United States’ use of tons of uranium munitions. Researchers say surrounding countries are bound to feel the effects as well.

In 2003 scientists from the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) studied urine samples of Afghan civilians and found that 100% of the samples taken had levels of non-depleted uranium (NDU) 400% to 2000% higher than normal levels. The UMRC research team studied six sites, two in Kabul and others in the Jalalabad area. The civilians were tested four months after the attacks in Afghanistan by the United States and its allies.

NDU is more radioactive than depleted uranium (DU), which itself is charged with causing many cancers and severe birth defects in the Iraqi population–especially children–over the past ten years. Four million pounds of radioactive uranium was dropped on Iraq in 2003 alone. Uranium dust will be in the bodies of our returning armed forces. Nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police serving in Iraq were tested for DU contamination in December 2003. Conducted at the request of The News, as the U.S. government considers the cost of $1,000 per affected soldier prohibitive, the test found that four of the nine men were contaminated with high levels of DU, likely caused by inhaling dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops. Several of the men had traces of another uranium isotope, U-236, that are produced only in a nuclear reaction process.

Most American weapons (missiles, smart bombs, dumb bombs, bullets, tank shells, cruise missiles, etc.) contain high amounts of radioactive uranium. Depleted or non-depleted, these types of weapons, on detonation, release a radioactive dust which, when inhaled, goes into the body and stays there. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Basically, it’s a permanently available contaminant, distributed in the environment, where dust storms or any water nearby can disperse it. Once ingested, it releases subatomic particles that slice through DNA.

UMRC’s Field Team found several hundred Afghan civilians with acute symptoms of radiation poisoning along with chronic symptoms of internal uranium contamination, including congenital problems in newborns. Local civilians reported large, dense dust clouds and smoke plumes rising from the point of impact, an acrid smell, followed by burning of the nasal passages, throat and upper respiratory tract. Subjects in all locations presented identical symptom profiles and chronologies. The victims reported symptoms including pain in the cervical column, upper shoulders and basal area of the skull, lower back/kidney pain, joint and muscle weakness, sleeping difficulties, headaches, memory problems and disorientation.

At the Uranium Weapons Conference held October 2003 in Hamburg, Germany, independent scientists from around the world testified to a huge increase in birth deformities and cancers wherever NDU and DU had been used. Professor Katsuma Yagasaki, a scientist at the Ryukyus University, Okinawa calculated that the 800 tons of DU used in Afghanistan is the radioactive equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The amount of DU used in Iraq is equivalent to 250,000 Nagasaki bombs.

At the Uranium Weapons Conference, a demonstration by British-trained oncologist Dr. Jawad Al-Ali showed photographs of the kinds of birth deformities and tumors he had observed at the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra just before the 2003 war. Cancer rates had increased dramatically over the previous fifteen years. In 1989 there were 11 abnormalities per 100,000 births; in 2001 there were 116 per 100,000—an increase of over a thousand percent. In 1989 34 people died of cancer; in 2001 there were 603 cancer deaths. The 2003 war has increased these figures exponentially.

At a meeting of the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan held December 2003 in Tokyo, the U.S. was indicted for multiple war crimes in Afghanistan, among them the use of DU. Leuren Moret, President of Scientists for Indigenous People and Environmental Commissioner for the City of Berkeley, testified that because radioactive contaminants from uranium weapons travel through air, water, and food sources, the effects of U.S. deployment in Afghanistan will be felt in Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China and India. Countries affected by the use of uranium weapons in Iraq include Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, and Iran.

UPDATE BY BOB NICHOLS: (Oklahoma City) Throughout the world people are familiar with the "smoking gun" solution so prized by murder mystery writers. Many think that once the smoking gun in any mystery is discovered, it is time for the "bad guys" to give up. Wish it were only so.

The smoking guns are Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone from New York's 442nd Guard Unit—they are the first confirmed cases of inhaled uranium oxide exposure from the current Iraq conflict. Dr. Asaf Durokovic, professor of Nuclear Medicine at the Uranium Medical Research Centre http://www.umrc.net/ conducted the diagnostic tests. The story was released April 3, 2004 in the New York Daily News. There is no treatment and there is no cure. http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180333p-156685c.html

Leuren Moret reports, "In my research on depleted uranium during the past 5 years, the most disturbing information concerns the impact on the unborn children and future generations for both soldiers serving in the depleted uranium wars, and for the civilians who must live in the permanently radioactive contaminated regions. Today, more than 240,000 Gulf War veterans are on permanent medical disability and more than 11,000 are dead. They have been denied testing, medical care, and compensation for depleted uranium exposure and related illnesses since 1991."

Moret continues "Even worse, they brought it home in their bodies. In some families, the children born before the Gulf War are the only healthy members. Wives and female partners of Gulf War veterans have reported a condition known as burning semen syndrome, and are now internally contaminated from depleted uranium carried in the semen of exposed veterans. Many are reporting reproductive illnesses such as endometriosis. In a U.S. government study, conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs on post-Gulf War babies, 67% were found to have serious birth defects or serious illnesses. They were born without eyes (anophthalmos), ears, had missing organs, missing legs and arms, fused fingers, thyroid or other organ malformations."

"LIFE Photoessay:"
http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html

Moret concludes, "In Iraq it is even worse where babies are born without brains, organs are outside the body, or women give birth to pieces of flesh. In babies born in Iraq in 2002, the incidence of anophthalmos was 250,000 times greater (20 cases in 4,000 births) than the natural occurrence, one in 50 million births. Takashi MORIZUMI's photos: in http://www.savewarchildren.org/ record the tragedy in Iraq."

For more information on the American President's continuing campaign of contaminating the land, check the World Uranium Weapons Conference, http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/ ,
Check the Uranium Medical Research Center and Dr. Asaf Durakovic at http://www.umrc.net/ ,
and for updates on the related Nuclear Power Plants see Russell Hoffman's website at: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/index.htm .

Write Leuren Moret, Independent Scientist and radiation specialist, City of Berkeley Environmental Commissioner, Past President, Association for Women Geoscientists: leurenmoret@yahoo.com

"Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War" by Leuren Moret, World Affairs Journal, July, 2004. http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

These YahooGroups host discussions about uranium munitions:
<mailto:du-list@yahoogroups.com>du-list@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:du-watch@yahoogroups.com>du-watch@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:pandora-project@yahoogroups.com>pandora-project@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:nucnews@yahoogroups.com>nucnews@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:abolition-caucus@yahoogroups.com>abolition-caucus@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:earthfirstalert@yahoogroups.com>earthfirstalert@yahoogroups.com
Read Bob Nichols at: www.dissidentvoice.org .

UPDATE BY TEDD WEYMAN: UMRC found artificial uranium in bomb craters, surrounding watercourses and the bodies of civilians exposed to US Coalition bombing in Afghanistan. Civilians surveyed presented with the classical symptoms of internal contamination by uranium, which began after exposure to the bombing. The presence of artificial uranium in environmental and biological samples indicates that the bunker buster warheads used in Afghanistan are made of uranium.

Uranium is a chemically and radiologically toxic element, clinically proven to be a cause of various types of cancer and congenital malformations (birth defects). Internal contamination of uranium is responsible for variety of systemic and organ system problems, which has never been considered or studied by the Defense Department or Veterans health programs as possible cause of Gulf War Illness. The symptoms of internal contamination by uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan civilians are identical to the symptoms of US and Coalition veterans complaining of Gulf War Illness.

The Pentagon/DoD have interfered with UMRC's ability to have its studies published by managing, a progressive and persistent misinformation program in the press against UMRC, and through the use of its control of science research grants to refute UMRC's scientific findings and destroy the reputation of UMRC's scientific staff, physicians and laboratories. UMRC is the first independent research organization to find Depleted Uranium in the bodies of US, UK and Canadian Gulf War I veterans and has subsequently, following Operation Iraqi Freedom, found Depleted Uranium in the water, soils and atmosphere of Iraq as well as biological samples donated by Iraqi civilians.

The United States and several of its Coalition partners and NATO allies have been deploying in battlefield and experimenting with chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metals in various types of bullets, bombs and warheads since the early 1970s. Uranium powder is taken from the nuclear fuel reprocessing cycle, after it has been mixed with nuclear reactor waste products and spent fuel, to supply the non-fissile weapons' manufacturing industry.

Uranium is preferred over all other "ballistic" metals (e.g. lead, iron, tungsten) because it offers a set of unique metallurgical properties: it is extremely dense yet ductile metal (not brittle); it is pyrophoric (uranium dust burns spontaneously at room temperature); and, solid metal uranium is autoigniting at 170° F. Uranium metal has a very unusual property not available in any other metal; it is "self-sharpening", meaning that when it hits a target at high velocities (1 km/sec) it erodes and breaks in such a way as to continuously re-sharpen its point — the leading points of all other warhead metals flatten or mushroom under these conditions. These properties give uranium a superior performance as a penetrating warhead alloy capable of breaching the hardest and thickest armor plating, retaining penetration capabilities at 15 % greater distances and lower speeds than the most common alternative metal, tungsten. Burning uranium is hard to extinguish, and if doused with water, it will explode. Uranium used in specially designed high velocity liquid metal penetrators can bore through 20 feet of super-reinforced concrete bunkers in classified weapons called "shaped charges" and "explosively formed penetrators". The hard (dense), resilient (ductile) and heavy (sustaining momentum) characteristics of uranium also make its optimal in the warhead of robust earth-penetrating bombs to carry them into buried targets and caves.

The mainstream press in the US and Canada does not show any general interest in the story, let alone an investigative interest. European mainstream press is more interested and follows key developments. The NY Daily News April 5, 2004 has covered Gulf War II results by UMRC's studies of US veterans. DoD has lied and misled the public and the veterans in an attempt to undermine the significance of the story. There is significant alternative press and internet press coverage. The technique for coverage is to approach the story as a debate between government and independent experts in which public interest is stimulated by polarizing the issues rather than telling the scientific and medical truth. The issues are systematically confused and misinformed by government, UN regulatory agencies (WHO, UNEP, IAEA, CDC, DOE, etc) and defense sector (military and the weapons developers and manufacturers).

UPDATE BY STEPHANIE HILLER: This is a shocking story since it suggests that experimental nuclear bombs were dropped around Kabul at the end of the war Operation Enduring Freedom. (Did they mean enduring radiation?) And what have they dropped on Iraq?

Continued research shows that we have all been irradiated here in the United States, at an enormous cost to the public health. Cancer rates alone show that genetic mutation has been rapidly increasing since the first bomb was tested in Almorgordo, NM in 1945. But the effects of low-level radiation have been systematically hidden from public view!

In April after sick vets from the current war got no help from the Pentagon, the mother of one of the soldiers went to the papers. Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News launched an investigation. The News paid for nine men to be tested by Asaf Durakovic. He found that four of them were contaminated with uranium. The News got the attention of New York Senator Hilary Clinton. She held a teleconference— but Durakovic was not allowed to participate!

Amy Goodman interviewed Durakovic later the same month on Democracy Now!— don't know if it was thanks to my story. AlterNet rejected the story because their source on depleted uranium, John Fahey, did not agree with it.
I don't know of any mainstream media that has picked up the story, and I don't find any references to the Gonzalez piece either. The BBC and the Seattle Post Intelligencer covered it before me.

To learn more about uranium weapons search the web! It's a huge topic. Start with the world Uranium Weapons Conference held last October in Hamburg: <http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de> The Power Point by Dr. Ali shows the most excruciating consequences of Persian Gulf One -- deformed babies. Also, Join WBW! Women for a Better World has begun an information campaign to educate the public about depleted uranium, especially young people who might be called to join the military and their families, regarding the contamination of Central Eurasia. Come to our web site for more information, flyers, and to sign a petition opposing the draft for the same reason. http://www.awakenedwoman.com/wbw.htm

Notes:

URANIUM MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER, January 2003
Title: “UMRC’s Preliminary Findings from Afghanistan & Operation Enduring Freedom”
and
“Afghan Field Trip #2 Report: Precision Destruction- Indiscriminate Effects”
Author: Tedd Weyman, UMRC Research Team

AWAKENED WOMAN, January 2004
Title: “Scientists Uncover Radioactive Trail in Afghanistan”
Author: Stephanie Hiller

DISSIDENT VOICE, March 2004
Title: “There Are No Words…Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs”
Author: Bob Nichols

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, April 5,2004
Title: “Poisoned?”
Author: Juan Gonzalez

INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE, March 2004
Title: “International Criminal Tribune For Afghanistan At Tokyo, The People vs. George Bush”
Author: Professor Ms Niloufer Bhagwat J.

Evaluator: Jennifer Lillig, Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Kenny Crosbie

Project Censored - Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA 94928
(707) 664-2500

A UN OFFICIAL REPORTS

AMMAN (Reuters) - Iraq's environmental problems - among world's worst - range from a looted nuclear site which needs cleaning up to sabotaged oil pipelines, a U.N. official said on Thursday.

"An improvement is almost impossible in these security conditions. Chemicals are seeping into groundwater and the situation is becoming worse and creating additional health problems," said Pekka Haavisto, Iraq task force chairman at the United Nations Environmental Programme.

"Iraq is the worst case we have assessed and is difficult to compare. After the Balkan War we could immediately intervene for protection, such as the river Danube, but not in Iraq," Haavisto, a former Finnish environment minister, said on a visit to Jordan to meet with Iraqi officials.

Lack of spare parts and Iraq's inability to maintain pollution standards during two previous wars and more than a decade of crushing sanctions have damaged the environment, including the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where most of Iraq's sewage flows untreated.

The situation became worse after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, in which depleted uranium munitions were used against Iraq for the second time and postwar looting and burning of the once formidable infrastructure caused massive spills and toxic plumes, Haavisto said.

"The bombing and war carried a cost but the looting cost the environment more, such as in the Dora refinery or Tuwaitha nuclear storage," Haavisto said.

"There has not been proper cleanup and only assessment work at some of these sites. Very little has changed and Iraqi teams are in the process of getting in some of these locations."

The U.N. official was referring to the 56 square km (22 sq mile) Tuwaitha complex south of Baghdad where 3,000 barrels that stored nuclear compounds were looted.

In the Dora depot on the edge of Baghdad, 5,000 barrels of chemicals, including tetra ethylene lead, were spilled burned or stolen, a U.N. survey showed.

Contaminated sites near the water supply also include a 200 square km (77 sq mile) military industrial complex, torched or looted cement factories and fertilizer plants, of which Iraq was one of the world's largest producers, and oil spills.

"Iraq was a modern industrial society in many ways. The chemicals are very risky on its future. The more time passes the more consequences on health," Haavisto said.

He said postwar assessment of the environmental damage was proceeding despite threats to the 1,000 staff of an Iraqi environment ministry, set up as an independent unit after the American invasion.

The field studies will eventually include depleted uranium, a toxic, heavy metal used to make bombs more lethal, of which the United States used an estimated 300 tonnes in 1991 Gulf War and an unknown quantity during the last invasion.

Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited.

Jamie Wilson in Washington
Tuesday June 28, 2005
The Guardian

The United States is planning its first production since the cold war of plutonium 238 - one of the most deadly forms of the element - for use in secret missions, possibly including spy satellites and undersea devices.

The isotope, which is so radioactive that a speck can cause cancer, has no central role in nuclear arms. Its steady heat is used to create electricity; nuclear batteries powered by it work for years and even decades, and have been used to power spacecraft that go where sunlight is too dim to produce solar power.

Federal officials told the New York Times the programme would produce a total of 150kg (330lb) over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory in Wyoming. The programme could cost $1.5bn (£820m) and generate more than 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste.

It is likely to face opposition from environmentalists who fear it is a potential threat to the nearby Yellowstone national park.

Experts unconnected to the project told the New York Times that the plutonium would probably power devices for conducting espionage and devices used to tap undersea communications cables.

Batteries powered by the substance were used during the early 1960s until a series of accidents led to questions about their safety. In 1964 a rocket failure led to the destruction of a navigation satellite powered by plutonium 238, spreading radioactivity around the globe.

Federal experts told the New York Times that new versions of the batteries were designed to withstand rupture and the chances of an accident were extremely low.

Timothy Frazier, a senior official at the US energy department, told the newspaper the goal was to start production by 2012.

 

France wins battle to host experimental fusion reactor
By David Holley, Los Angeles Times | June 29, 2005

MOSCOW -- In a bid to harness what backers say could be a nearly limitless source of clean electric power, an international consortium chose France yesterday as the site for an experimental fusion reactor that will aim to replicate how the sun creates energy.

The planned $13 billion project is one of the most prestigious and expensive international scientific efforts ever launched. But critics say the technological hurdles to be overcome are so vast that the money could be better spent in other ways.

Japan and France, backed by roughly equal factions in the consortium planning the project, had competed fiercely for the prestige and economic benefits of hosting the project. But Tokyo agreed to a compromise: The fusion reactor is to be sited at Cadarache, near Marseille in southern France, while Japan will have the next-largest role in the project. Cadarache has one of the biggest civilian nuclear research centers in Europe.

''We are making scientific history," Janez Potocnik, the European Union's science and research commissioner, said at a news conference in Moscow held to announce the agreement for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project.

''This is a great success for France, for Europe, and for all of the partners in the ITER," French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement. ''The international community will now be able to take on an unprecedented scientific and technological challenge, which opens great hopes for providing humanity with an energy that has no impact on the environment and is practically inexhaustible."

Fusion is the process of atoms combining at extraordinarily high temperatures that not only provides the energy of the sun and stars but also gives hydrogen bombs their enormous power. The challenge faced by the international project is to control that energy in a self-sustaining reaction in which the heat released by fusion can be used to generate electricity, an engineering feat of daunting complexity.

But the theoretical attractions of the idea are also great. The reactor's main fuel, deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen, can be obtained from water. The project's website states that Lake Geneva alone contains enough deuterium to meet global energy needs for several thousand years.

Existing nuclear reactors use fission, or the splitting of large atoms, to produce power, a process that leaves waste that remains highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. Fusion reactors, by contrast, would produce minimal waste that would be radioactive for a much shorter period, backers say.

A joint declaration signed yesterday at a meeting in Moscow of representatives of the United States, the 25-member European Union, Russia, China, Japan, and Korea, said the project would explore ''the long-term potential of fusion energy as a virtually limitless, environmentally acceptable, and economically competitive source of energy."

The project is important for ''the rapid realization of fusion energy for peaceful purposes and the stimulation of the interest of succeeding generations in fusion," it said.

The experimental reactor project was conceived at an international summit in 1985 as a showpiece for cooperation during the Cold War. Construction of the reactor is expected to take 10 years to complete. The reactor itself is budgeted to cost about $6 billion and will produce about 10,000 jobs. The rest of the $13 billion is for associated research, a significant portion of it in Japan.

If the project is successful, long-term plans call for a demonstration fusion power plant to be built in the 2030s and the first commercial fusion plant to be built in midcentury.

''As a project of unprecedented complexity spanning more than a generation, ITER marks a major step forward in international science cooperation," said Potocnik, the EU commissioner. ''Now that we have reached consensus on the site for ITER, we will make all efforts to finalize the agreement on the project, so that construction can begin as soon as possible."

Vladimir Kuznetsov, director of the program for nuclear and radiation safety of the Russian Green Cross, said that, ''Russia was the country that initiated this kind of research" half a century ago, but that ''since then nothing spectacular was achieved along that road." He expressed doubt that the project would ever come to fruition.

According to the agreement reached yesterday, the European Union as a whole will cover 40 percent of the cost and France alone will cover another 10 percent. The remaining half will be paid by the other five partners, including the United States, at 10 percent each. France will provide 40 percent of total staffing and Japan 20 percent.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/06/29/france_wins
_battle_to_host_experimental_fusion_reactor