KEEP YELLOWSTONE NUCLEAR FREE
News Update - March 25, 2000 - 6th Issue

Welcome to the weekly online newsletter of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free.
Our goal is to bring you the latest developments, news, meeting dates, and
actions you can take to 'Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free.'
We welcome your comments and suggestions.
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Donations to the organization are now tax deductible.
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MEDIA COVERAGE IS INTENSIFYING
BNFL, DOE and radioactive waste problems are making US headlines. Articles
(or excerpts) from the New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and
the BBC News are included here.  An investigative reporter from NBC Nightly
News was in Jackson this weekáwe'll let you know when the segment is going
to air.
_______________________________________
Energy Secretary Richardson places BNFL under "extra scrutiny." The
plutonium incinerator is mentioned in the last paragraph.
A LAPSE AT HOME COMES TO HAUNT A BRITISH EXPORT
By MATTHEW L. WALD - March 21, New York Times
WASHINGTON -- From simmering tanks of high-level nuclear waste in Washington
State and plutonium laced with chemical poisons in Idaho to production of
radioactive gases in South Carolina, the federal government's nuclear
weapons program has festering technical and environmental problems like no
one else in the country.

With no easy way to solve them, the Energy Department has gone to one of the
few entities in the world with experience as broad as its own: British
Nuclear Fuels, part of the nuclear power and weapons agency of the British
government, now spun off as a government-owned company.

But as the British company now known as BNFL prepares to tackle the American
problems, an embarrassing lapse has emerged back home in its core business,
which is producing plutonium fuel. British government inspectors reported in
February that for months, employees who were supposed to be performing a
final measurement of fuel pellets bound for Japanese reactors were instead
copying numbers from previous shipments. BNFL executives said workers felt
the work was boring and a crew on the night shift had apparently found it
easier to falsify the numbers.

Concern over the company's business practices is now affecting its contracts
with the United States government. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, in a
telephone interview from Algeria, where he is meeting OPEC ministers, said
he had ordered his department to send a team to England to meet with British
investigators. "We are now placing BNFL under extra scrutiny because of
these problems," he said. "I have been uneasy about some of their operations
in the U.S. If we uncover anything, I will take swift and strong action."

He added, "Business as usual is over with BNFL and with all our contractors,
but especially with BNFL." The situation, Mr. Richardson said, was "itching
for stronger management review."

The company said the incident with the pellets was an isolated problem. "We
feel very badly about the pellets," said David R. Bonser, a director of the
government-owned company, and head of waste management and decommissioning.
He said it was a problem caused by "a handful of people in one of the plants
who did things they absolutely should not have done."

Britain's nuclear installations inspection agency, however, rejected that
defense. "Although various individuals were at fault, a systematic failure
allowed it to happen," a report, published in February, said. "In a plant
with the proper safety culture, the events described in this report could
not have happened."

John J. Taylor, the company's chief executive, has resigned, but the
company's problems continue. Sellafield, the plant on the west coast of
England where the fuel was made, was never popular with neighbors: for years
it has dumped radioactive waste into the Irish Sea; English anti-nuclear
advocates and the Irish government would like it shut; and the British
government reported that pigeons in the area had become radioactive from the
plant's emissions. But now the problem is not just with neighbors, but with
customers.

Japan asked the British company to take back the fuel, although the company
insists that two automatic systems measured the pellets and found their
diameter to be within specifications. A German utility, PreussenElektra
A.G., shut a reactor running on the fuel that was not properly measured, and
asked for compensation; Germany also suspended imports of additional fuel.

Well before its fuel problem at Sellafield, however, it was clear to leaders
of the British company that the future profitability of that business was
uncertain. As a result, they moved decisively into the United States. With
an American partner, the Morrison Knudson Corporation, the company acquired
many assets of the old Westinghouse Corporation, which had been a major
Energy Department contractor; it also bid directly on Energy Department work
at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash. And it has hired several former
Energy Department officials, including one who approved giving a contract to
BNFL without making the company take part in a fully competitive bidding
process.

The Hanford contract, which involves solidifying liquid nuclear wastes in
glass, is expected to take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars. At
Hanford, BNFL hired the Energy Department's former site manager, one of four
high-ranking Energy Department officials now on its payroll.

Meanwhile, a coalition of American groups that has been pressing the Energy
Department for years to clean up its nation-wide archipelago of weapons
operations plans to file a petition with the department on Thursday urging
that BNFL be barred from government contracts, for lack of integrity and
competence. "We think clearly a case can be made, and that the case is
self-evident, that this is a company that does not possess those qualities,"
said Thomas
Carpenter, a lawyer with the Government Accountability Project, in Seattle.

The problem is serious for the Energy Department, critics say, because its
track record on overseeing its contractors is particularly poor. No evidence
of wrongdoing has been found in BNFL's American operations. But at Rocky
Flats, near Denver, where a BNFL subsidiary works in plutonium clean-up, a
prior contractor committed five felony violations of environmental laws with
no apparent notice from the department, which owned the plant. At Savannah
River, where the company is now involved with the plant that refuels
hydrogen bombs with a radioactive form of hydrogen gas, a prior contractor's
list of 30 reactor accidents over the years came as a complete surprise to
top Energy Department officials.

Secretary Richardson has had the department put special emphasis on
improving its oversight, but in January of this year a report by its own
inspector general complained that at Hanford, where BNFL has been selected
for the largest environmental cleanup in the country, the department lacked
the personnel, plans and other management tools needed to oversee the
project. Without those plans, the inspector general warned, "the Department
may be unable to control, predict, explain, or defend future changes to cost
and schedule." The cost estimate is now $47 billion, up from an estimate of
$30 billion to $38 billion in 1996. The company's portion would be $6.8
billion to $10 billion, by current estimates. A decision on a contract is
supposed to be made by August.

In addition, outside groups that have followed the Energy Department's
clean-up efforts for years now say that the company has taken on other jobs
for the department in areas in which it has no special qualifications. For
example, in Oak Ridge, the department has enormous derelict factories that
it formerly used to enrich uranium for reactor and weapons fuel, and which
it would like to release for private industrial use. Forgoing bidding, the
Energy Department gave BNFL a $238 million contract in 1997 based on the
idea that it had done similar work at Capenhurst, in England. The department
relied on a contracting system called "other than full and open
competition."

The Energy Department reported to Congress that it wanted BNFL because of
"efficiencies in the approach to recycle and building decontamination based
on the company's successful experiences at Capenhurst." A key point for the
Energy Department was the ability to decontaminate tons of nickel, a
valuable metal that was used in the enrichment process.

But the company did not do that work at Capenhurst; the nickel there is
still contaminated. And the system it proposed to use for decontamination of
nickel at Oak Ridge is now the subject of a patent dispute between its
American inventor and the Energy Department. In a suit brought by the Oil,
Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union against the plan, a federal
district court judge in Washington described the process as "entirely
experimental." Because of uncertainty about what standards should apply, the
department has dropped plans, for now at least, to sell the nickel on the
open market.

The contracting officer for the Energy Department who approved "other than
full and open competition" later went to work for BNFL. So did the former
manager of the Hanford site, who is now an executive vice president at an
American subsidiary of the company, and so did the former manager of the
Energy Department's Idaho Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, where
BNFL won a contract to build an incinerator for plutonium mixed with
hazardous chemicals not far from Yellowstone National Park.

"They're swallowing fairly important and influential executives right and
left," said Mr. Carpenter of the Government Accountability Project. Energy
Department officials said that none of the officials had violated any
conflict-of-interest rules.

BNFL's problems at Sellafield have produced ammunition for a group opposed
to the incinerator, Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free, as they have for other
critics around the country.  "It is inconceivable," said Tom Patricelli, the
group's executive director, "that the United States government would allow a
foreign corporation surrounded by such scandal and turmoil to build a
first-of-its-kind incinerator on American soil, so close to the crown jewel
of our national park system."
________________________________

March 23  - BBC News Online - US Reconsider BNFL Contract

This story includes a photo and quote from Jackson's Jim Laybourn at the
press conference where 33 organizations filed a petition to bar BNFL from US
government contracts.  (see next article)  For the story, click on the
address below, or copy and paste it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_688000/688594.stm

If you have Real Player, once at the site click on the symbol by Philippa
Thomas's story (left-hand side of the page) to play a BBC-TV clip, complete
with video and audio of Jim Laybourn speaking at the news conference.
________________________________

March 23 - 33 Public Health and Environmental Groups
File Petition to "Suspend and Debar" BNFL

A news conference was held today at the Washington DC Press Club to announce
the filing of petition with Secretary Bill Richardson to "suspend and debar"
British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) and its subsidiaries from Department of
Energy contracts because of the firm's global record of repeated
environmental crimes, including deliberate falsification of nuclear safety
records and pollution of the Irish Sea. Such action would terminate BNFL's
contract to build a plutonium waste incinerator in Idaho.

Speakers included Beatrice Brailsford, Program Director for the Snake River
Alliance in Idaho, Jim Laybourn, representative of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear
Free, Jackson, Wyoming, and Louis Clark, Executive Director, Government
Accountability Project (GAP), Washington, DC.

WHY:  In recent years BNFL has become a major Department of Energy
contractor, operating programs at the agency's Oak Ridge, Hanford, Idaho,
Savannah River, Rocky Flats, and Fernald nuclear weapons plants. Yet, the
company has repeatedly violated contracts, environmental regulations, and
integrity standards in its operations around the world.

Most recently, BNFL admitted to fabricating data about Mixed-Oxide (MOX)
Fuel it sold to several nations. As a result Japan and Germany have
suspended dealings with the company. BNFL also has produced severe
contamination at its Sellafield, England plant, threatening human health and
the environment. In the U.S., BNFL was involved in a questionable scheme to
"recycle" radioactive material into commercial markets and now plans to
build a plutonium waste plant in Idaho.

Secretary of Richardson has announced that he will decide by April 1 whether
to move ahead with BNFL's contract for the Idaho plutonium waste incinerator
and crusher.

The Secretary of Energy has the authority to suspend and/or debar firms from
agency contracts according to Section 48 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
___________________________________

Los Angeles Times   March 23, 2000
Nuke Cleanup Firm Takes Criticism
Environment: British company, under fire for lacking a 'safety culture,'
holds
$9 billion in contracts for operations at U.S. installations.
By: KIM MURPHY
TIMES STAFF WRITER

First, there were the pigeons: hundreds that spent part of their day feeding
in the
garden of a rural English cottage, and part of their day brooding atop
radiation-contaminated buildings at British Nuclear Fuel LTD's Sellafield
complex a few miles away.

The garden was found to be so contaminated that workers in protective suits
had to come in, wring the necks of 700 radioactive pigeons and dispose of
them as low-level nuclear waste. Two official review committees in June
accused BNFL of mismanagement in allowing the spread of nuclear contaminants
to residential areas nearby.

Then, last month, the British government's nuclear oversight agency found
that BNFL workers had deliberately falsified quality control data on nuclear
fuel shipped to overseas markets, a breach the agency said reflected BNFL's
inadequate "safety culture." Germany, Japan and Switzerland announced they
would no longer accept BNFL fuels.

Much of this would be distant, if sobering, news if BNFL were not the
company the U.S. government is relying on most heavily to clean up America's
nuclear weapons mess. The company holds nearly $9 billion in U.S. contracts
for some of the most technologically challenging environmental cleanup tasks
in the nation--contracts that public interest groups are now demanding be
canceled because of the revelations.

"Here in the United States, they're going to be handling the most dangerous
materials known to man. And the fact is, the problems they have in England
come down to a lack of a safety culture and a lack of integrity on the part
of their operators," said Tom Carpenter of the Government Accountability
Project, one of 22 public interest and anti-nuclear groups that are filing a
petition today with the Department of Energy to bar BNFL from U.S. nuclear
cleanup contracts.

Richardson Orders Review of Operations
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Wednesday ordered a "top-to-bottom
review" of BNFL's operations at five DOE sites that will look at the
company's management and safety record in the U.S. and Britain.

"In light of recent events overseas, we are putting BNFL under extra
scrutiny . . . to be sure that the problems uncovered at Sellafield don't
exist at DOE sites," a department statement said. The company, whose chief
executive resigned in the wake of the revelations, said it has overhauled
its British operations to prevent future errors but said the fuel delivered
was never unsafe.

"The issue of what's going on in the U.K. is a very important and troubling
matter. . . . We had some systems at one of our sites that aren't as
comprehensive or as far-reaching or as stringent as they should have been.
But most of those related to quality control programs, not safety programs,"
said David Campbell, manager of external corporate affairs for BNFL's U.S.
subsidiary.

Company Inherits Westinghouse Projects
BNFL, wholly owned by the British government but scheduled for partial
privatization, is one of the leading companies in the world in nuclear waste
reprocessing and plant decommissioning. With its recent acquisition of
Westinghouse Electric Co.'s nuclear operations, it has become one of the
biggest British employers in the U.S.

And it is one of the most important linchpins in the DOE's decades-long plan
to clean up hundreds of millions of gallons of radioactive waste, the legacy
of half a century of nuclear weapons production across the U.S.

BNFL in August is scheduled for a final award of a $6.9-billion contract for
cleanup of extremely hazardous tank wastes at the Hanford Nuclear
Reservation in Washington state that are threatening the Columbia River. It
is set to sign a $1.2-billion contract for construction of a mixed-waste
processing facility in Idaho, a project that includes a plutonium
incinerator that opponents fear could threaten nearby Yellowstone National
Park with airborne contaminants.

At the DOE's Oak Ridge site in Tennessee, BNFL has a $238-million contract
to decontaminate and decommission three gaseous diffusion plant buildings.
The company is doing $110 million a year in solid waste disposal, processing
and shipping at the Savannah River, S.C., site and is a cleanup partner at
DOE sites in Colorado, New York and New Mexico as well.

Cleanup work is already running years behind schedule at places such as
Hanford, and doubts about the only contractor geared up to do the work could
present a devastating setback.

Indeed, BNFL officials said the controversy over the falsified data comes
just as the company is attempting to secure billions of dollars in financing
to commence construction of a high-tech plant at Hanford to convert waste
from underground tanks into glass logs. Under the contract, BNFL stands to
make a $1.9-billion profit over 20 years, and the U.S. government agrees to
pay off its construction loans if it defaults.

"It's terrible timing, and it's fair to say that the environmentalists and
these public interest groups who have been on a rather rabid campaign have
done an excellent job of creating an environment that's difficult to proceed
in," Campbell said.
The fact that federal officials appear bound to stick with BNFL or risk
years of delays is the agency's own doing, the result of failing to invest
in alternative technologies at a time when BNFL's own technologies are less
than proven, critics said.

"If DOE is between a rock and a hard place, it has worked extremely hard to
get itself there," said Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and
Environmental Research, who believes the $7-billion plan to vitrify just 10%
of the tank wastes at Hanford is not likely to work as conceived.

In their petition to bar BNFL from federal contracts, public interest groups
raised questions about the firm's growing importance in cleanup of the DOE
weapons complex and in the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry.

"Is it advisable to have a foreign-government-owned company assume a
monopoly role in DOE's cleanup program?" the petition asked. Moreover, the
petitioners cited BNFL's "disastrous environmental performance," which
includes a history of radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea.

In addition to the pigeons so contaminated they qualified as nuclear waste,
the petition cites a British Department of Health study published in 1997
that found large numbers of children throughout England, Northern Ireland,
Wales and Scotland contaminated with plutonium in quantities "inversely
proportional to the distance from which the children lived from BNFL's
Sellafield plant."

BNFL Fined After 1997 Guilty Plea
The company was fined more than $32,000 in 1997 after pleading guilty to
violating Britain's Radioactive Substances Act. The court cited BNFL's
"total disregard" of recommendations for "urgent remedial action" of a
328-foot bridge carrying radioactive discharge from the Sellafield plant to
the Irish Sea.

The conduct under scrutiny in the most recent government report involved
BNFL's nuclear fuel reprocessing, a technology not in use in the U.S. It
involves taking spent fuel and separating reusable uranium and plutonium
from waste products. Although the size of the fuel pellets produced under
the process is measured automatically, manual measurements are required as a
backup. British government investigators documented that BNFL workers had
falsified those measurements on at least 22 lots of fuel because taking the
actual measurements was too tedious.
_____________________________________

USA Today - Feature Story - Front Page - March 20,2000

Safety Over A Barrel (excerpts)
WASHINGTON -- For 12 years, the Department of Energy (DOE) has
failed to fully implement a law requiring that contractors running
federal nuclear weapons plants and labs pay a price when they
don't play it safe.

The law, passed by Congress in 1988, authorized fines and other
penalties for companies that don't protect workers and the public
from radiation hazards while operating and cleaning up federal
weapons sites. But DOE still hasn't drafted all the administrative
rules needed to enforce the law.

The remaining rules would set specific safety standards for the
department's contractors, which pull in $16 billion a year for
handling some of DOE's riskiest jobs -- from nuclear weapons
maintenance to radioactive waste disposal.

The department's failure to put those rules in place diminishes
its options for ensuring that the companies put safety first.
And it shows how bureaucratic tangles and special interests can
subvert congressional will, even when it has the power of law.

''The department's record (on this) is abominable,'' says Rep.
Ron Klink, D-Pa. Energy officials promised angry members of Congress
at a hearing last June that the rules would be done by October.
Now, Klink asks, ''How can anyone believe that DOE wants to (assure
safety) when it refuses to use its main enforcement tool?''

Modeled on standards applied to the commercial nuclear industry,
the unfinished safety rules would set standards for DOE contractors
on everything from worker training to how to respond to emergencies.

DOE officials say implementation has been delayed by more pressing
safety initiatives and disputes over the rules' structure. Meanwhile,
they say, the rules already in place, coupled with safety orders
built into all DOE contracts, give the agency enough power to
assure safety.

Critics, including lawmakers from both parties, disagree. They
say that DOE contractors have opposed the remaining rules and
suggest department officials are putting the companies' agenda
ahead of public interest.

A smoking memo?
As top DOE officials met last fall to discuss the safety rules'
implementation, John Wilcynski, a senior manager in charge of
integrating policy at contractor-run sites, sent out a memo urging
them to consider ''not doing any additional rulemaking at all.''
The 500-word memo, obtained by USA TODAY, said the rules would
''cause migration toward minimum acceptable standards.'' Contractors
are burdened with enough regulations, Wilcynski said, and the
way to assure safety is with incentive-based programs, not an
''onerous environment of more fines and penalties.''

Two weeks later, Wilcynski took a top job at BNFL Inc., a firm
with $730 million in contracts to clean up contaminated DOE sites.
Wilcynski says there was no conflict in opposing the safety rules
while negotiating a job with a contractor. He says his role as
associate deputy energy secretary for field management required
that he represent the interests of contractors and DOE field
managers.

''There's no relationship whatsoever between this memo and anything
I might have done in terms of employment beyond DOE,'' he says.
''I was stating . . . how I thought it best to improve (DOE's)
safety program.''

DOE critics say the memo shows conflicts of interest at an agency
with a ''revolving door'' problem, a reference to officials leaving
for private sector jobs that trade on knowledge and connections
they built during their government service.

''People on their way out the revolving door are greasing the
skids for their new employers,'' says Richard Miller of the Paper,
Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International
Union, which represents workers at DOE sites.

DOE officials say the agency's general counsel is reviewing whether
the memo violated ethics rules. But they dismiss the notion that
it affected the safety rules' implementation.

An 'important' tool
The effort to adopt the rules dates to 1988, when Congress amended the
1957 Price-Anderson Act to expand DOE's responsibility for
legal damages that might be assessed against its contractors
for a nuclear accident. To balance that provision, which rests
on the idea that contractors can't afford to take on high-risk
DOE operations without indemnification, lawmakers empowered the
agency to fine contractors for safety lapses.

To implement the law, DOE initially said it needed to write and
adopt 11 rules detailing specific safety requirements contractors
would have to satisfy, guidelines for reporting infractions and
penalty schemes.

The DOE issued proposed rules in 1991 but has finalized only
two -- one outlining general expectations for contractor safety
and a more explicit rule on protecting workers from radiation.
At the same time, DOE also built an ''Integrated Safety Management''
program that aims to engineer safety measures into all operations
at DOE sites and requires those measures in all its contracts.

Last June, DOE officials said at a congressional hearing that
they no longer see a need for the nine remaining safety rules.
The two finished rules, coupled with a new plan to cut payments
to contractors that don't work safely, have proven sufficient
to levy the kind of financial punishments envisioned by Congress'
1988 law, they said, and only a few more rules are needed to
put remaining safety standards in place.

Still, DOE Assistant Secretary David Michaels testified that
the department considers it ''important'' to get the few remaining
rules done and vowed to do it by Oct. 1.

The General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency,
was more adamant. It said in a critical report this summer that
the DOE's two existing safety rules don't cover enough safety
requirements. ''DOE's inaction in converting the many other aspects
of nuclear safety into . . . rules has limited the overall effectiveness
of the (safety) enforcement program,'' it said.

Risky work
Given the risks associated with the work done by DOE contractors,
many say the agency can't afford to let the remaining safety
rules linger.

Contractors run virtually all operations at most DOE sites. They
assemble and maintain nuclear warheads. They manage thousands
of tons of highly radioactive material.

The unfinished rules would set boundaries for such work, affecting
everything from how much nuclear material can be in one place
without risking a critical reaction to procedures for preventing
radiation leaks.

''These are the most dangerous jobs in the country,'' says Bob
Schaeffer of the nonpartisan Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
''They're (tasks) that if handled improperly, at minimum, can
kill people. At worst, they can poison aquifers in large population
areas.''

So why aren't all the safety rules in place? In part, DOE officials
say, because they've focused on other safety measures, including
those now built into contracts. Officials concede, though, that
much of the delay stems from internal debate over how to structure
them: Should rules allow contractors flexibility in meeting safety
goals? Should different facilities face the same standards?

It's been ''more difficult to bring people together than I'd
hoped,'' Glauthier says.

Since DOE put its initial two safety rules in place, its eight-person
enforcement office has levied 45 fines totaling $3 million. Infractions
included exposing workers to excessive radiation and violating
procedures meant to prevent a nuclear accident.

There's no telling whether accidents would have been prevented
if the remaining rules were in place. But Congress is tiring
of the wait.

Rep. Thomas Bliley, R-Va., who chairs the House Commerce Committee
that oversees DOE, has introduced a bill to give safety oversight
at the agency's facilities to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The NRC regulates civilian nuclear facilities and has rules similar
to those DOE has not implemented.

But many contractors argue that such rules are unnecessary.

DOE's existing rules provide all the clout it needs to ensure
safety, contractors say, especially when added to the threat
of lost fees. They contend that more rules would mean more bureaucratic
distractions, more paperwork and less attention for true safety
initiatives.

Though many contractors have brought former DOE officials into
top jobs, they scoff at the idea that it has helped them sidetrack
the rules.

Wilcynski and other former DOE officials help their new employers
''interpret things you hear from the government'' and design
business strategies, says David Campbell, a BNFL spokesman.

Such hires are common.
Former DOE assistant energy secretary Tom Grumbly left in 1997
for a job with Kaiser Engineers, which has billions of dollars
in DOE contracts. Hazel O'Leary, a former DOE secretary, sits
on Kaiser's board.

Wilcynski's memo on the safety rules has complicated his move.

DOE officials say it will be up to Mary Anne Sullivan, DOE's
general counsel, to determine whether the memo violated ethics
rules.

She, it turns out, was one of the memo's recipients.
__________________________________
Date Change
In anticipation of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's April 1 announcement
regarding options to incineration, and whether to proceed with construction
of the plutonium incinerator in Idaho, Senator Craig Thomas has rescheduled
his Congressional hearing on the matter from March 28 to April 6.
_________________________________
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