1. Oak Ridge
2. Paducah
3. Portsmouth
4. US Department of Energy
5. US Enrichment Corporation
6. Russia
7. Altlernative technology
8. Depleted uranium
9. Scrap metal

I. OAK RIDGE, INCLUDING THE K-25 SITE

The "top to bottom" review of DOE’s environmental management program initiated by the Bush administration is apparently already having an impact on Oak Ridge. DOE notified the state of Tennessee October 31 that it was terminating a section of the Oak Ridge Site Treatment Plan that deals with mixed transuranic wastes. Mixed transuranic wastes are contaminated with toxic chemicals as well as with transuranic radioelements such as plutonium and americium. The Oak Ridge mixed transuranics are currently stockpiled at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and, under a 1996 agreement signed by DOE and the state, were to be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico beginning in 2003. DOE says that it will no longer be bound by the milestones in the plan--that amendments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act exempt the mixed waste from the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. John Owsley of Tennessee’s Department of Environment and Conservation says that the state will go to court if necessary to enforce the milestones. (Frank Munger, [Knoxville] News-Sentinel, 12/9/01; Paul Parson, Oak Ridger, 12/13/01)

The board of directors of the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee (CROET) voted December 12 for a resolution that transfers leases from CROET to three recently formed subsdiaries: Horizon Center, Heritage Center, and Heritage Railroad Corp. and that stipulates that in the future property, will be transferred directly from DOE to subsidiaries. Only twelve members of the board were present, although fourteen are required for a quorum. The board will presumably ratify the resolution at its next meeting with a quorum. Susan Gawarecki, executive director of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee and Paul Boyer, Oak Ridge city manager, voted against the resolution. Gawarecki wanted the resolution to give board members access to the leases after the transfers have taken place. The board rejected that amendment "until CROET’s lawyers can look at the issue." (Paul Parson,Oak Ridger,12/13/01)

DOE held a public meeting at Oak Ridge December 4 to receive input on plans to convert depleted uranium hexafluoride for reuse or disposal. Currently DOE plans to ship the 4700 containers at the K-25 site to Portsmouth for conversion. John Owsley, who heads Tennessee’s environmental oversight office in Oak Ridge, said that a breach occurred in one of the containers last winter, and that DOE took "months to fully address the situation." In addition to posing the threat of a release of uranium hexafluoride, the cylinders constantly emit a measurable amount of radiation "shine," which presents a hazard that is not compatible with converting K-25 to a private industrial park, Owsley reported. (Frank Munger, [Knoxville] News-Sentinel, 12/5/01)

British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) has admitted that its liabilities exceed its assets by $1.7 billion pounds. The British trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt, announced, as a result, that the nuclear industry in the United Kingdom would be reorganized. A new Liabilities Management Authority "would take responsibility for and control of the nation’s nuclear waste, including everything currently owned and run by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and BNFL." The reorganization would require "a white paper in the spring with primary legislation." The future of BNFL enterprises and contracts to clean nuclear sites in the United States is not known. BNFL signed a $238 million, six-year contract in 1997 to decontaminate and decommission the K-29, K-31, and K-33 process buildings at the K-25 site. (Paul Brown, the Guardian, 12/14/01; Paul Parson, Oak Ridger, 12/3/01)

II. PADUCAH ENRICHMENT PLANT

DOE held a public meeting at Paducah December 6 to receive input on plans to convert depleted uranium hexafluoride for reuse or disposal. Although business and county government representatives supported the conversion project, some citizens and groups expressed concerns about the safety of the conversion and also about the safety of the cylinders themselves. Gene Hoffman, a retired DOE official from Oak Ridge, asked that DOE include in the environmental impact statement a study of the result of the crash of a large aircraft onto the cylinders. Previous studies have only considered the crash of a small private plane, he pointed out. An airplane crash would be likely to result in a massive release of fluorides and other toxic materials. (Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 12/13/01; Frank Munger, [Knoxville] News-Sentinel, 12/12/01)

The executive committee of the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization (PACRO) voted December 19 to ask the US Department of Energy (DOE) to approve use of $175,000 already on hand from DOE for initial work on an industrial park. The park would be initially constructed on 1500 acres off US 45 near the McCracken County line. PACRO is seeking $10 million each from the state and from DOE for the park, at the rate of $3 or $4 million each per year. Senator Jim Bunning has asked DOE to support the park. PACRO also plans to ask for money from the Delta Regional Authority. (Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 20/12/01)

The Paducah Annual Site Environmental Report for 2000 has been released. The report, which reviews DOE’s environmental restoration program, notes that in 2001 PCBs were found in deer in the West Kentucky Widlife Management Area for the first time. The maximum in any deer was 146 parts per billion. (The Food and Drug Administration permits levels of 3000 parts per billion in red meat.) Don Seaborg, DOE site manager, states that monitoring in 2000 produced "no surprises." The levels of contaminants "are staying stagnant." To obtain a copy of the report, call Greg Cook at 270-441-5023. (Bill Bartleman, Paducah Sun, 12/13/01; DOE News Release, 12/12/01)

DOE will hold a public meeting January 10, at its Environmental Information Center to solicit input on a draft Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis for the Decontamination and Decommissioning of the C-410 Feed Plant. The draft outlines the alternatives and proposed action for eventual reuse or demolition of the C-410 complex, which converted uranium oxide to uranium hexafluoride from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. Written comments may be submitted to Craig Czuchna, DOE Paducah Site Office, Box 1410, Paducah, KY 42001; fax, 270-441-6801. The public comment period ends January 21. A copy of the draft is available at the Environmental Information Center (270-554-6979) and at the McCracken County Public Library. For more information, call Stacey Young, Bechtel Jacobs, 270-441-5204. (DOE News Release, 12/20/01)

John Driskill, governmental and public affairs officer for Local 111 of Security Police and Fire Professionals of America wrote to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) the week of December 17 to request an upgrade in security rules to protect the Paducah plant. The NRC rejected a similar request made in March 2000. NRC spokesperson Jan Strasma said that the NRC is reviewing security at all the plants that it regulates, and will take Driskill’s letter into consideration in regard to Paducah. (Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 12/22/01)

III. PORTSMOUTH ENRICHMENT PLANT

The Portsmouth plant was scheduled to conduct an emergency preparedness exercise September 12, 2001. Because of various consequences of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, this exercise was postponed. USEC has requested a temporary exemption from the requirement to perform an emergency preparedness exercise every two years at Portsmouth (the last exercise was held September 14, 1999), and now plans to hold the exercise before April 30, 2002. The NRC has prepared an environmental assessment on USEC’s request, with a finding of no significant impact. (Federal Register, vol. 66, no. 233, pp. 63077-63078, 12/4/01)

NRC staff met with USEC officials on December 14 in a predecisional enforcement conference on possible safety violations at the Portsmouth plant. In an inspection September 22, the plant staff found that the plant was not meeting requirements designed to prevent an accidental nuclear criticality, ie a nuclear chain reaction in process piping containing enriched uranium. "The inspectors determined that three apparent violations occurred that resulted in a situation where all criticality controls were lost for a . . . mass deposit of uranyl fluoride," the NRC said in a report sent to USEC November 16. The apparent violations included loss of a dry air buffer, which prevents the uranyl fluoride from absorbing moisture. A critical mass would be about 690 pounds. The NRC staff determined that the deposit could have weighed up to 930 pounds. The NRC nevertheless described a criticality in the situation as "unlikely." Predecisional enforcement conferences are held to discuss apparent violations, their causes, and their significance for safety. NRC officials decide at a later time whether violations actually occurred and whether a fine should therefore be levied. (Jeff Beattie, Energy Daily, 12/14/01; US NRC, News Release No. III 01-056, 12/7/01)

December 18 the US House of Representatives passed legislation that includes authorization for DOE to "expend such funds as may be necessary for the purposes of maintaining enrichment capability at the Portsmouth, Ohio, facility." The bill is HR 3343 to amend title X of the Energy Policy Act of 1992. Its main purpose is to reauthorize reimbursement for thorium cleanup. The stipulation on cold standby was added as an amendment. Representative Ted Strickland (D, Lucasville, OH) stated on the House floor his pleasure that "the Speaker of the House, the Under Secretary of Energy Bob Card, and the Energy and Commerce Committee were able to work together to craft" the House legislation. In the Senate, the thorium legislation has been introduced as S 1147 and referred to committee without the amendment. Currently funding for standby is not guaranteed after the close of the 2002 federal fiscal year, September 30.

Strickland remarked in his statement to the House that he believes that "the best way to fund Cold Standby is to use a portion of the $1.2 billion in funds contained in the USEC fund that are not already reserved under PL 105-204 for conversion of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6). These funds [which the Clinton administration had decided to use for cold standby] are held in the Treasury." He urged the Office of Management and Budget to re-examine use of these funds and to work with Congress to make them available. Alternatively Congress could appropriate funding for cold standby. (Rep. Ted Strickland, Floor Statement, 12/18/01; HR 3343; Jonathan Riskind, Columbus Dispatch, 12/16/01)

DOE proposes to transfer a tract of land approximately 340 acres in size to the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative as part of a reindustrialization program. The land contains several wetlands. A Notice of Wetland Involvement appeared in the Federal Register December 17, 2001 (Vol. 66, no. 242, pp. 64963-64964). Comments were due January 2, sixteen days after publication of the Notice, not counting weekends, Christmas and New Year’s. The Notice does not identify the 340-acre parcel nor the wetlands on it. DOE does not appear to desire comments.

IV. US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE)

Congress has amended the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), which went into effect in July 2001. The act will now compensate children of deceased DOE nuclear weapons workers who were independent adults when their parents died. The act as originally passed compensated only children who were under the age of eighteen or dependents when their parents died. (The family of a deceased worker can receive a total of $150,000.) The amendment also relaxes the criteria for determining who is suffering from silicosis; adds leukemia to the list of cancers for which workers at specific sites, including the gaseous diffusion plants, are automatically eligible for payment; and raises the percentage of the compensation that a lawyer representing a worker can receive (from up to 2% to up to 10%).

The changes were attached to the Senate version of the Fiscal Year 2002 National Defense Authorization Act but were not attached to the House version. House members concerned with compensation, including Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Lucasville, Ohio), had to do battle to ensure that the amendments were in the final version passed December 13. (Nancy Zuckerbrod, Associated Press, U.S. Newswire, 12/14/01)

Nationwide 15,683 claims have been filed under the EEOICPA; and 567 payments have been made. (Frank Munger, News-Sentinel, 12/14/01)

Janet Michel of Knoxville published an op ed piece in the Oak Ridger comparing the outpouring of assistance to victims of the World Trade Center attack to the limited assistance given to victims of work on nuclear weapons at DOE sites. She states that although she "fully supports" compensation for the victims of the New York catastrophe, she finds it hard to understand "why there is so much resistance" to compensating weapons workers. (12/27/01)

The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health will meet in Washington, DC, January 23, at the Holiday Inn on the Hill. The meeting is open to the public, but the room accommodates only about fifty people. The board was established under EEOICPA to advise the President on a variety of policy and technical issues relating to the compensation program, in particular on probability of causation guidelines, which are being promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and on methods of dose reconstruction, which have been promulgated as an interim final rule. The President delegated responsibility for funding, staffing, and operating the board to HHS, which delegated this authority to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). NIOSH implements this reponsibility for CDC. (Announcement by John Burkhardt of CDC, 12/17/01 , FR Doc. 01-31462)

Brief biographies of the ten board members are available at www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas Workers have asked to be better represented on the board. (See UEN Dec. 01)

In their conference report, the House-Senate conferees on the Fiscal Year 2002 National Defense Authorization Act, directed the energy secretary to report to Congress annually on the vulnerability of DOE facilities to terrorist attack. (Summary of the report from the House Armed Services Committee, circulated by the Energy Communities Alliance, 12/12/01)

V. US ENRICHMENT CORPORATION (USEC)

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) declared November 14 that it has no authority to review USEC’s decision to close the Portsmouth plant. The PACE local at the plant had asked the NRC to reconsider its March issuance of a certificate amendment allowing USEC to increase the enrichment level at the Paducah plant. This amendment had made enrichment at the Portsmouth plant unnecessary. The NRC’s reasoning included its assessment that USEC’s decision in regard to Portsmouth was a business judgment, not a consequence of an NRC regulatory requirement or direction. (Michael Knapik, Inside N.R.C., 12/19/01)

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has missed its December deadline for signing a contract with one or more private companies to supply it with electricity by June 2004. However, TVA has prepared a short list of firms under consideration and hopes to reach a decision by early 2002. The short list includes a consortium composed of USEC; Constellation Power Sources, a Baltimore-based utility; and Marubeni Corp., a Japanese company that trades commodities. The consortium would build a 600-megawatt, gas-fired plant near the Paducah enrichment plant. (Bill Bartleman, Paducah Sun, 12/18/01)

December 14 the US Commerce Department (DOC) in its final ruling determined that countervailing duties of only 2.26% on the value of imported low-enriched uranium and no antidumping duties should be imposed on Urenco. It determined that combined antidumping and countervailing duties of 32.78% on the value of low-enriched uranium should be imposed on Eurodif. USEC had sought combined duties of at least 25% on Urenco imports and about 50% on Eurodif imports of low-enriched uranium. USEC states that the duties translate to an estimated 54.63% duty on the value of Eurodif Separative Work Units (SWU) and 3.77% on Urenco SWU. The US International Trade Commission (ITC) will vote January 18 as to whether USEC has been materially injured by imports from Urenco and Eurodif. If it finds that USEC has been so injured, DOC will issue final countervailing duty and antidumping orders that will result in the imposition of the duties. (USEC Press Release, 12/14/01; Platts Nuclear News Flashes, 12/17/01; Michael Mann, Financial Times, 12/18/01)

The European Commission has threatened to take the United States to the World Trade Organization if an amicable settlement cannot be reached in the dispute between USEC and the European enrichers. USEC, the commission says, should not have been allowed to file an unfair trade petition, because it is a provider of a service, not a producer of low-enriched uranium. (Jeff Beattie, Energy Daily, 12/19/01)

Various USEC shareholders who claim that they have lost money because USEC and a number of the financial underwriters of USEC’s privatization misrepresented the company during the initial public stock offering have filed a securities fraud lawsuit in US District Court in Maryland. (Platt’s Nuclear News Flashes, 12/8/01)

VI. RUSSIA

In their conference report, the House-Senate conferees on the Fiscal Year 2002 National Defense Authorization Act, directed the President to submit to Congress a plan for disposing of Russian and other former Soviet states’ excess nuclear weapons and weapons-grade materials. The conferees also required the President to develop plans to assist Russia in downsizing its nuclear weapons research and production complex. (Summary of the report from the House Armed Services Committee, circulated by the Energy Communities Alliance, 12/12/01)

President Bush issued a statement December 27 summarizing the results of the administration’s review of US assistance to Russia to control nuclear and chemical weapons material. The review determined that most of the programs work well. The White House is asking for some cutbacks. The administration wants a more effective and less expensive way of helping Russia to dispose of excess weapons plutonium and consolidation of the Nuclear Cities Initiative with a related program, for instance. However, the administration will propose an overall increase in spending on nonproliferation when it submits its budget for the coming fiscal year. (Mike Allen, Washington Post, 12/27/01; Barry Schweid, Associated Press, 12/27/01)

Revmir Fraishtout recently resigned as head of Technsabexport, the Russian executive agent for the US-Russian Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU) agreement. He will apparently stay on for a few months, but is seventy years old and in poor health. Fraishtout was in the midst of negotiating with USEC new terms for implementation of the agreement at the time of his resignation. His becoming a lame duck may hinder conclusion of a deal. USEC had hoped that a new contract for implementation of the HEU agreement would go into effect January 1, 2002, as the old expired at the end of 2001. However, no contract was apparently in place by that date. (Platt’s Nuclear News Flashes, 12/18/01)

VII. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

Peter Lenny, president of Urenco Inc.,the US marketing subsidiary of Urenco; Klaus Messer, chief executive of Urenco Ltd., and executives from Exelon met with NRC officials the week of December 3 to discuss the process by which NRC would evaluate a proposal for construction of a centrifuge enrichment plant. A spokesperson for the NRC told the press that it would take about three years from the date of an application to a decision on whether to license a plant. Lenny predicts that, if Urenco (presumably along with Duke Power and Exelon) go forward with a plant, it could be operational within the next five years. Urenco would license its enrichment technology to the new project. Preliminary plans call for a plant with an output of 3 million SWU per year. A location has not been chosen, but the plant would probably be built at an existing nuclear site.

Urenco, Duke Power Co. Fluor Daniel, and Northern States Power in a partnership known as Louisiana Energy Services (LES) worked from 1991 to 1998 on obtaining a license to build an enrichment facility in Homer, Louisiana. They abandoned the attempt after the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled against the plant on the basis of "environmental justice." Following the initial discussions with the NRC, Lenny stated that the NRC does not seem to be the same organization that it was when LES launched the Louisiana project. However, the fact that Urenco will not have to pay high duties on exports to the United States may dim the company’s enthusiasm for another try in this country. (Jeff Beattie, Energy Daily, 12/11/01; AFX-Asia, 12/12/01; Electricity Daily, 12/14/01)

VIII. DEPLETED URANIUM

DOE has announced that it will award a contract to convert the depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF6) stored at Oak Ridge, Paducah, and Portsmouth, January 15, 2002. The three finalists for the contract are 1) American Conversion Services formed by USEC and CH2M Hill; 2) Jacobs COGEMA formed by Jacobs Engineering Group and the French fuel chain firm COGEMA (COGEMA operates a conversion plant (Usine W) at its Pierrelatte site in the east of France. The plant converts the depleted UF6 produced by the Eurodif enrichment plant.); 3) Uranium Disposition Services, formed by Framatome ANP Richland, Duratek Federal Services, and Burns and Roe Enterprises (Framatome is a French/German firm that builds reactors and manufactures nuclear fuel; Duratek specializes in waste disposal; Burns and Roe is an architectural and engineering company.). Ken Wheeler hopes that research related to the conversion will be carried out at the Paducah Information Age Park. (Bill Bartleman, Paducah Sun, 12/15/01)

Geologist Drew Coleman and graduate student Michael Bulleri from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have announced that black oak appears to preserve a record of uranium pollution. By coring, they found depleted uranium in the bark of black oaks nearly a mile from the Starmet plant in Concord, Massachusetts. This plant, now a Superfund site, made depleted uranium weapons. Because of the position of the trees, water could not have carried the depleted uranium to them. Apparently air carried the uranium, possibly in smoke from fires at the plant. The trees therefore appear to provide evidence of contamination no longer present in the air. (Catherine Clabby, Scripps Howard News Service, 12/6/01)

A study, coordinated by Professor Albrecht Schott, has shown that eight British veterans of conflicts in which depleted uranium weapons were used have high levels of deformed chromosomes. The genetic damage, which could lead to cancer and abnormalities in offspring, was ten times greater than that in the general population. Schott is a retired chemist who worked until recently at the Free University of Berlin. The British Ministry of Defense advised the Army Benevolent Fund not to pay for the testing of the soldiers, which it considers was "neither well thought out nor scientifically sound." A US government survey of 21,000 American veterans, released in October, found that veterans who served in the Gulf war were two to three times more likely to report having children with birth defects. (Nic Fleming, Express, 12/24/01)

IX. SCRAP METAL

The Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization (PACRO) plans to ask the Kentucky congressional delegation to seek an exception to a DOE moratorium on release of scrap metal from radiological sections of DOE plants. PACRO member Henry Hodges has told the press that the nickel will be purer after reclamation than when it was mined. The Canadian firm Chemical Vapor Deposition Manufacturing, which is interested in recycling the nickel, has agreed to treat samples of the contaminated metal to verify its conversion process. PACRO has been waiting to ask the congressional delegation to obtain an exception to the moratorium, until the question of funding for the industrial park is settled. Prior to the moratorium, Paducah had planned to recycle about 28 tons of copper, 2000 tons of iron, 9700 tons of nickel, and 25 tons of stainless steel.

DOE plans to send aluminum from Paducah that is too contaminated for recycling to "a hazardous waste landfill in Nevada," presumably the Envirocare site. Other aluminum with lower levels of contamination is a candidate for recycling, Greg Cook of Bechtel Jacobs has said. (Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, 12/20/01; Bill Bartleman, Paducah Sun, 12/14/01)

The Associated Press acquired a draft internal DOE memo on allowing release of potentially contaminated metal from DOE sites. The memo indicates that it was written for Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham by three DOE officials, including Jessie Roberson, assistant secretary for environmental management. It outlines procedures for release of metals "from areas where radiation has been present." These procedures entail testing the materials and documenting their release. "The purpose of this action is to reduce site inventories in radiological areas of scrap metals that have not been radioactively contaminated by DOE activities or operations." DOE is currently producing a Programmatic Environmental Statement (PEIS) on the Disposition of [Radioactively Contaminated] Scrap Metal. The draft memo states that the release of metal "would not bias the analysis" for the PEIS.

Environmentalists, led by Public Citizen’s Critical Mass and by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), emphatically disagreed. Joe Davis, spokesperson for DOE, hastened to state that the memo is "moot, because the decision has been made by the department that we will do a full environmental impact statement before any decision is made." The PEIS will probably be completed in the summer of 2002, he stated. (Nancy Zuckerbrod, Associated Press, 12/12[?]/01, 12/13/01; Public Citizen Press Release, 12/12/01)

Note: Due to the pressure of other commitments, we do not plan to publish full-scale newsletters in February or March.