[sacw] S A A N Post | 9 August 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

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South Asians Against Nukes Post
9 August 2000
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#1. India: Hiroshima Day observed in Jadugoda, Bihar
#2. USA: Journalists and the Bomb
#3. A Nuclear War Feared Possible Over Kashmir
#4. India: Letter to Bengal Chief Minister opposing Nuclear Power Plant
#5. Japan: Atom Bomb Survivors Fight Old Age, Loneliness
#6. USA: Report Warns of Perpetual Peril at Nuclear Sites
#7. Book Announcement: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons

--------------------------------------------

#1.

HIROSHIMA DAY OBSERVED IN JADUGODA

More than a thousand people including hundreds of school children
participated in a rally through Jadogoda to protest against the nuclear
waste dumping, spreading of dangerous low Uranium content ore
overground and the Uranium mining by Uranium Corporation of India
Limited (UCIL) in the Jadugoda area of Jharkhand. The occasion was
Hiroshima Day, 6th August, 2000. The programme was organized at Jadugoda
High School. It started with observance of silence in memory of over two
lakh people who died in Hiroshima bombing in 1945. A cultural programme
was presented by handicapped local artist Shri Durga Prasad Murmu after
this. About 60 children whose mental and physical abilities have been
affected in one way or the other due to radiation were brought together
by Jharkhandis Organization Against Radiation (JOAR), the hosts, and
were given an opportunity to express their feelings and emotions with
crayons. It was quite obvious from what the children has drawn that
there was lack of coordination between different faculties of these
children. All children were presented gifts by the organizers which
included Lok Abhiyan (Lucknow) and National Alliance of People=92s
Movements (NAPM) in addition to JOAR. Also, Gandhar Karmkar was
presented a wheel chair and Manju Murmu, Duniya Uraon, Alowati Uraon,
Surya Singh were presented crutches by Asha organization.
An exhibition from Hiroshima which was put up on the occasion reminded
people of the destructive power of a nuclear weapon. The heart rending
scenes of Hiroshima and the disable children of Jadugoda filled the
entire atmosphere with grimness and made the humanity hang its head in
shame. A signature campaign was concluded this day with a demand from
the government to stop nuclear waste dumping and Uranium mining in
Jadugoda. Also, a nuclear disarmament and global peace cloth signature
campaign was being conducted by the Pakistan Indian People=92s Forum for
Peace and Democracy. Presently this campaign is going on in both
countries. Thousands of paper cranes, symbols of peace, had arrived from
all over the world which were made by children to express their
commitment towards a radiation free world. These cranes were hung from
trees on the school campus and all around the main programme area.
Children present also made cranes on the spot and offered them to the
picture of Sadako, the Japanese girl affected due to radiation ten years
after the Hiroshima bombing who had dreamt of living forever by making
one thousand paper cranes. Sadako had died before reaching the figure of
one thousand paper cranes but the children of Japan and other parts of
the world are still carrying forward her campaign for nuclear
disarmament.
At noon the people who had assembled on the campus, numbering more the
thousand, including mostly school and village children and women, took
out a rally through the Jadugoda main road and UCIL colony. The police
which were informed of the event a day earlier warned the people not to
enter the UCIL colony just before the rally started from the High
school. However, they stood as helpless spectators as the people anyway
decided to stick to their pre-planned route. Slogans were raised asking
the government and UCIL to stop littering radioactive material in the
area. The tribals also asserted their right over the natural resources
of their area and warned the government not to poison the area with
radiation.
The concluding event of the day was a public meeting. Highlight of the
meeting was the revelation by the medical and nuclear expert Dr.
Sanghamitra Gadekar, who had been measuring the radiation levels in the
area with a Geiger counter as part of a study she is conducting, that
discarded radioactive material had been used by the UCIL in road and
building construction in the area making the inhabitants of the region
prone to diseases caused due to radiation. The radiation level in the
boundary wall of the high school, the building of which was constructed
by UCIL, where the Hiroshima day programme was being conducted was found
to be ten times higher than the acceptable level. Considering that
children are more vulnerable to radiation than adults it is simply an
unpardonable crime that UCIL has committed here and must be taken to
task for this oversight.
________

#2.

The History News Service
August 1
Op-Ed.

JOURNALISTS AND THE BOMB

By Uday Mohan and Leo Maley III
History News Service

Every August, the American news media note the anniversary of
one of the most important events of the twentieth
century--the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities. Most reporters and
commentators who write about Hiroshima and
Nagasaki uncritically support the popular assumption that the use of
atomic bombs was absolutely necessary to end the war
and save American lives. Many journalists also proclaim the widely-held
but mistaken notion that only untrustworthy
"revisionists" or members of the irresponsible 1960s generation have
criticized the atomic bombings.
If the news media's uncritical acceptance of mass violence
wasn't disturbing enough, its fondness for name-calling and
half-baked historical theorizing threatens to prematurely close the
debate on a deeply disturbing moment in American history.
American news analysts once knew better. In fact, many
influential journalists concluded in 1945 and soon after that the
use of the atomic bomb was both immoral and unnecessary. Even those with
close ties to military and political leaders didn't
hesitate to go public with their critical views. Consider the following:
David Lawrence, the conservative editor of U.S. News & World
Report, wrote within days of the Hiroshima bombing
that Japanese surrender had appeared inevitable for weeks. The claim of
"military necessity," he argued, rang hollow. Official
justifications would "never erase from our minds the simple truth that
we . . . did not hesitate to employ the most destructive
weapon of all times indiscriminately against men, women and children."
A few months later, one of the most popular radio commentators
during the war years, Raymond Swing, declared in an
ABC broadcast that the Japanese had been "looking for an opportunity to
surrender, and the testimony of various Japanese
leaders indicates that some other excuses would have been found at an
early date even if the atomic bomb had not been
dropped."
Henry Luce, the owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines,
raised critical questions about the atomic bombings in the
late 1940s. In a 1948 speech Luce stated: "If, instead of our doctrine
of 'unconditional surrender,' we had all along made our
conditions clear, I have little doubt that the war with Japan would have
ended soon without the bomb explosion which so jarred
the Christian conscience."
Hanson Baldwin, military editor of The New York Times, a
graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a staunch cold
warrior, argued in a 1950 Atlantic Monthly article that ". . . the
Japanese would have surrendered even if the bomb had not
been dropped, had the [Allied declaration at Potsdam] included our
promise to continue the Emperor upon his throne."
On the day of his retirement in 1953, Washington Post editor
Herb Elliston was asked by his newspaper, "Any regrets,
now that you're out from under the daily deadline pressure?" Elliston
replied, "Oh yes, plenty. One thing I regret is our editorial
support of the A-bombing of Japan. It didn't jibe with our expressed
feeling [before the bomb was dropped] that Japan was
already beaten."
In 1960 Walter Lippmann, perhaps the most respected and
influential newspaper commentator of all time, added his
voice to the list of prominent media dissenters when he remarked on a
CBS television program, "Japan was ready for surrender
before we dropped the bombs. And in my view, we should have negotiated a
surrender before we dropped them. One of the
things I look back on with the greatest regret, as an American, is that
we were the ones that first dropped atomic bombs."
In his 1991 memoir another New York Times journalist, the
Presidential Medal of Freedom and Pulitzer Prize winner
James Reston, explained that "the diplomatic course was inadequately
explored before the military strategy was accepted."
These are but some of the prominent media voices that were once
critical of America's use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. They appear in stark contrast to the now common media
stereotype that opposition to the atomic bombings
emerged only in the 1960s, or that critics must, necessarily, be
pacifists, "revisionists," or disgruntled members of the Sixties
generation.
Renewed notice of the mostly forgotten comments of such
influential news analysts of an earlier generation should prompt
today's journalists to rethink their uncritical acceptance of the
conventional wisdom they so often dish out to the public on
Hiroshima anniversaries. Only in this way will Americans be able to
honestly and critically confront one of the most disturbing
episodes in our nation's past.

Uday Mohan and Leo Maley III are graduate students at American
University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,
respectively. They research and write about Hiroshima and American
culture.
________

#3.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/080800india-pakistan.html

New York Times
August 8, 2000

A NUCLEAR WAR FEARED POSSIBLE OVER KASHMIR

By JUDITH MILLER and JAMES RISEN
=20=20=20=20=20

The Associated Press

India has increased security in Kashmir, fearing unrest before India's
Independence Day Aug. 15. A soldier stood guard on Monday in Srinagar.
Issue in Depth
=95<library/world/asia/india-pakistan-index.html>India and Pakistan
ehind President Clinton's blunt warning last spring that South Asia was
the world's most perilous region lay an assessment from American
intelligence agencies that the likelihood of a war between India and
Pakistan that could erupt into a nuclear conflict had increased
significantly, according to officials with access to the secret
intelligence.

The officials said that the Central Intelligence Agency and the
nation's other intelligence organizations had reached their consensus after
examining the nuclear capacities of both countries and the growing
tensions between them, in particular over the disputed Himalayan territory
of Kashmir.

The assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, began late
last summer after Pakistan-backed militants crossed over the high mountain
peaks of Kashmir into the Indian-controlled area of Kargil, setting off
weeks of heavy fighting that included airstrikes.

At that time, the administration grew fearful that the conflict could
escalate into a nuclear exchange, officials said, citing both states'
relatively poor intelligence about each other's intentions and movements
and their lack of direct communications.

"The Kargil episode really got everyone's attention," said George
Perkovich, deputy director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the author
of "India's Nuclear Bomb," published last year by the University of
California.

Several analysts who took part in drafting the assessment said the
report had succeeded in underscoring the importance of working to ease
political tensions between two rivals that have fought three wars in the 50
years since their independence. In the past, the administration had focused
mainly on trying to stop the development and spread of nuclear weapons on
the subcontinent.

Last week, for instance, President Clinton talked by telephone with
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India, who is due on a state visit
next month, said Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser. Mr.
Berger added that he himself talks with Pakistan's military leader, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, as part of the dialogue with Islamabad.

President Clinton received the intelligence assessment shortly before
his first visit to South Asia in March. And he clearly reflected the
report's conclusions when he twice called the Indian subcontinent "the most
dangerous place in the world." India's president scolded Mr. Clinton and
called the description "alarmist."

After the Kargil episode, the assessment, which remains secret,
concluded that there was a sharply increased chance of a nonnuclear
military conflict between India and Pakistan, possibly erupting into a
nuclear exchange.

The chances of such a nonnuclear conflict, one White House official said,
were put in the "50-50 range."

"The likelihood of a nuclear conflict goes up and down," said another
official. "It's less important to assign a probability to it than to warn
senior officials that there is a serious threat here that demands immediate
and focused attention and action."

The assessment contained no specific guidance on what the
administration could do to reduce tensions, according to those familiar
with the document. But Mr. Clinton and other top officials have urged
senior Indian and Pakistani officials in public and private meetings to
open a direct political dialogue and give up their nuclear programs,
warning them of the growing peril of an accidental or deliberate nuclear
exchange.

While administration officials agreed that Mr. Clinton's visit
helped ease some tensions, neither country has signaled that it intends to
halt development of the arsenals the two countries revealed to the world by
exploding nuclear devices in quick succession in 1998.

India continues to see its nuclear arsenal as necessary for its
status as an emerging power and to deter not only Pakistan but also
neighboring China, a Pakistani ally. Pakistan, less populous and poorer
than India, sees its nuclear force as essential to counterbalance its
rival's larger conventional forces.

Additionally, analysts have warned that if American plans for a
missile defense prompt China to build up its nuclear arsenal, still more
momentum will be added to the arms race across the region.

While the president's visit has not prompted New Delhi or Islamabad
to scale back its nuclear program, many experts say the trip and subsequent
administration diplomacy have helped to nurture other positive political
developments.

India has released some political prisoners related to Pakistani-backed
militant groups in Kashmir, and last month one of the most important of
those groups, the Hizbul Mujahedeen, declared a unilateral three-month
cease-fire. The group opened talks with India on Friday. But diplomats and
other experts still see the chances of a lasting breakthrough as low, and
violence has continued in Kashmir.

Given the Kashmir dispute, diplomats and arms control experts see
nuclear weapons on the subcontinent as particularly dangerous. India and
Pakistan, unlike other nuclear powers -- for example, the United States and
Russia -- share a common border, have had no sustained dialogue and lack
even a framework to hold serious negotiations.

After Pakistan moved into Kargil, Pakistan's rhetoric grew
increasingly harsh and India prepared to mobilize a significant force that
could have led to a dramatic escalation, experts say.

"Kargil proved that having nuclear weapons would not deter new
conflicts," Mr. Perkovich said. "It also showed that unless such conflicts
themselves were prevented, the possibility of an accidental or deliberate
nuclear exchange would also increase given both states' relatively poor
systems of intelligence surveillance and nuclear command and control."

While neither private experts nor the American government has firm
estimates of the size of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear arsenals, Mr.
Perkovich estimates that India has produced enough plutonium for 60
weapons.

But he said he believed that India had far fewer actual bombs, "in the
neighborhood of 35 weapons." In the event of a nuclear war, these would be
delivered by aircraft. Pakistan has enough highly enriched uranium for
roughly the same number of bombs, he added, and it could deliver them by a
combination of bombers and missiles.

Stephen P. Cohen, a South Asian policy scholar at the Brookings
Institution in Washington, called the risk of nuclear conflict "serious"
and "increasing." But the president's trip, he said, had succeeded in
engaging Washington in the region, a development that was particularly
important to India, which has long desired to be seen as an Asian power.
"The president should have gone much earlier," he said.

Robert Oakley, a former ambassador to Pakistan, said that Washington
may have inadvertently helped fuel Pakistan's nuclear ambitions and reduced
American leverage over Islamabad by failing to resume economic and military
assistance to Pakistan that Congress cut off in 1990 because of the
Pakistani nuclear program.

Experts and diplomats said President Clinton had been determined to
visit India after Mrs. Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, toured the
country in 1995, and when he finally went, in March, the trip was billed as
a "war prevention trip," according to one participant in the intelligence
assessment, which was begun with the two-month Kargil conflict that ended
the previous July.

"Since the intelligence report concluded that the region demanded
high-level attention to defuse tensions and prevent the outbreak of
conflicts that could escalate, the politics of the trip dovetailed
perfectly with the intelligence assessment," he said.

During his visit, in an address to the Indian Parliament, Mr. Clinton
appealed to the "great nation of India" to give up its nuclear arsenal, and
he urged India to take the lead in starting a dialogue with Pakistan.

Progress toward such a dialogue seemed to be building with a meeting of
the two countries' prime ministers on their border in early 1999. But after
the Kargil incursion, which came just months later, India's leadership felt
betrayed.

Since Kargil, Pakistan's civilian government was overthrown in a
military coup last October. Mr. Clinton met briefly with the leader,
General Musharraf, after his much longer visit to India, but made no
headway on a range of American concerns, including when Pakistan would
return to democratic government.

Pakistan continues to maintain that it will not scale back its nuclear
program unless India does so first.

While India has said that it will not be the first to use nuclear
weapons in a conflict in the region, it has made clear it will respond if
attacked. Indian officials brushed aside efforts by Deputy Secretary of
State Strobe Talbott to persuade them to join international talks aimed at
ending the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. And Prime
Minister Vajpayee has steadfastly refused to renounce the country's
nuclear arsenal, though he has pledged not to conduct further nuclear
tests.

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company

________

#4.

8 August 2000

Shri Jyoti Basu,
Chief Minister,
West Bengal.

Sir,
Sub : Opposition To Proposed Nuclear Power Plant in West Bengal.

We the undersigned as individuals and members of organizations working in
various fields Workers' unions, womens' organizations, Human Rights
organizations, Environmental Organizations, Political parties, opppose your
decision to set
up a nuclear power plant in the Sunderbans. The experience of last half
acentury shows that nuclear power is extremely dangerous to health, for the
environment
and also it is expensive. Even the industrialised countries are dismantling
their nuclear power plants.
The disposal of its waste material is equally harmful. A party which swears
by communism which envisages the ultimate betterment of human life can not
take decisions which have destructive effects on human and other life-forms=
.

Maya Valecha Rohit Prajapati
Inqilabi Commmunist Sangathan (Indian Section of Fourth International)

Shanabhai Vaghela Sudhir Biniwale Thakorbhai Shah
Vadodara Kamdar Union

Grudas Singh
Apollo Tyre Kamgar Sangh

Narpatsinh Solanki
Joyti Karmachari Mandal

Trupti Shah
Sahiyar (Stree Sangathan)

Gunavatsinh Solanki
Wankabori Ashrgrastha Sangarsh Samiti

Kirit Bhatt
People's Union for Civil Liberties, Gujarat

Pankaj Patel
Documentation Centre for Study and Action, Gujarat

Shripad Dharmadhikari
Narmada Bachao Andolan

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#5.

IPS Gender And Human Rights Bulletin
7 August, 2000

DEVELOPMENT-JAPAN: Atom Bomb Survivors Fight Old Age, Loneliness
By Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Aug 6 (IPS) - Fifty-five years after the world's first atomic bombs
were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan's dwindling number of
survivors are battling old age, loneliness, and an increasing feeling of
rejection by society.
Toyoko Yoshino, a 76-year-old survivor from Hiroshima, is recovering from
partial paralysis after suffering a blood clot in her brain 14 years ago.
She says she has been feeling tired and helpless these past few years.
"I have reached my limit," said the greying woman, who lives alone. "I am
tired and dejected these days."
Yoshino, who survived the atom bomb attack on Aug. 6, 1945 by American
warplanes carrying out instructions to end the Pacific War, belongs to
Hiroshima o Kataru Kai (Forum for Conversations about Hiroshima).
It is a voluntary group comprised of 14 survivors who, for the last 16 year=
s
since they formed the organisation, have been sharing their experiences wit=
h
visitors to Hiroshima.
They lecture people about the horrors of nuclear warfare, relating their
experiences on that day and their lives since then.
More than 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima, and a second bomb that
hit Nagasaki three days later killed about 74,000 people.
Today, the government says there are 297,613 survivors of the atomic
bombings, the first time the number has dropped below 300,000.
Last week, the Nagasaki Red Cross Atomic Bomb hospital released statistics
showing it admitted a record 1,242 victims in Japan's fiscal 1999, which
ended in April.
A total of 29.3 percent were admitted for cancer and 12.6 percent for brain
and heart disorders. Of the total number of atom bomb survivors admitted,
5,606 were new patients.
"We stress the message that life must be respected," Yoshino said of the
point that survivors make to those who listen to their stories. To this day=
,
she continues to suffer from sleep problems because of the guilt she feels
for the lies she had told dying children on the day of the atom bomb attack=
.
"The children were suffering from horrible burns and were crying out for
their mothers, and I told them that their mothers would come soon. But I
knew that would not happen as the they were dying like flies," she said.
Despite the busy schedule of Hiroshima o Kataru Kaithe-the group has talked
with more than 400,000 visitors-Yoshino says the organisation plans to
disband in March due to financial difficulties and its members' ill health.
Yoshino reports that four members have passed away since the group started,
and that the average age of members has reached 74 years. She says it has
been difficult to find the money to pay for transportation expenses to meet
with visitors, which is why Hiroshima o Kataru Kaithe cannot carry on with
its work.
But Seiko Ikeda, a 71-year-old housewife and executive vice president of th=
e
Hiroshima Council of (A-bomb) Victims Organisation, says the biggest letdow=
n
is the fact that Japan does not seem to have learned enough from the lesson=
s
of the atom bomb attacks.
"The biggest blow of all for us is that the Japanese government continues t=
o
support nuclear issues such as the expansion of the domestic nuclear
industry, and continues to support the United States despite its nuclear
arms proliferation," explained Ikeda.
She says she became listless for several days in September, after news
spread of an accident at a nuclear power plant in Japan. One worker died du=
e
to severe radiation, and several others were also exposed.
Ikeda was 12 when the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima, a day locals called
'Pika-Don', or Flash Bang.
On that day, she had been mobilised by the Japanese military to clean an ol=
d
building 1.5 km from the epicentre of the atom bomb explosion-close enough
for Ikeda to be burnt so badly that she was almost unrecognisable.
She had 15 surgical procedures done on her face, where her burnt skin hung
"looked like dripping wax from a lighted candle", Ikeda recalls.
"The mental and physical pain was excruciating. As a result I am wholly
against nuclear weapons and war, which only inflicts suffering on people,"
said Ikeda, who has traveled to the United States, India and Pakistan to
lobby against nuclear weapons.
Her sentiment is shared by many survivors. In a June poll of 239 people age=
d
between 54 and 91 years old, more than half of the survivors of the 1945
atomic bomb attacks said they did not expect nuclear weapons to be abolishe=
d
in the 21st century.
"The United Nations should work to prevent the development of new and
stronger weapons that can replace nuclear weapons in the next generation,
but in reality it is unlikely to happen since the UN has failed to abolish
current nuclear weapons," a 71-year-old Nagasaki resident responded in the
survey.
A 79-year-old man said that anti-nuclear activists are regarded as black
sheep in Japan. An overwhelming 58 percent of respondents replied that it
would be difficult to pass on their experiences to the younger generation.
Despite the dejection often felt by Japan's ageing survivors, peace
activists say they play an important role in the fight against nuclear
weapons.
"Their first-hand testimony is a powerful tool for us activists especially
when Japan is poised to enter a more active global role in the 21st
century," pointed out 25-year-old Rie Nakamura, who says she still weeps
when she listens to the survivors' stories. (END/IPS/ap-dv-ip/sk/js/00)

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#6.

Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, August 8, 2000

REPORT WARNS OF PERPETUAL PERIL AT NUCLEAR SITES

By NORMAN KEMPSTER, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON--More than 100 nuclear weapon development sites in this
country will never be free enough of radioactive debris to allow
unrestricted public use, and the government has failed to develop adequate
plans for their long-term management, according to a scientific study
released Monday.
The report, prepared by the National Research Council at the request
of the U.S. Energy Department, says there is no convincing evidence that
the government's existing plans for what amounts to perpetual oversight
will prove reliable or that it can guarantee permanent funding to get the
job done.
The report says the department should assume that most systems it
intends to use to contain radioactive waste "will eventually fail."
Moreover, it notes, "much of our current knowledge of the long-term
behavior of wastes . . . may eventually be proven wrong."
Some of the sites covered by the report are small, such as mounds of
uranium mine tailings in relatively remote areas. But the list includes
such sprawling facilities as the Hanford reservation in Washington state,
the Oak Ridge reservation in Tennessee, the Savannah River site in South
Carolina and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
And some involve severe contamination, such as underground tanks and burial
sites containing high-level radioactive wastes.
Nine of the sites are in California. Although none of them is regarded
as heavily polluted, none is expected to be released for unrestricted
public use, either.
The National Research Council, an offshoot of the National Academy of
Sciences and National Academy of Engineering, provides scientific and
technical advice under a congressional charter. Its report is another dose
of bad news for the Energy Department, which has been plagued by recent
problems including security breaches at its nuclear laboratories, electric
power shortages in California and a wildfire that menaced the Los Alamos
nuclear lab.
"DOE often makes a plan as if things were going to work, which don't
always work. [The department's] planning assumption should be that things
may turn out to be wrong," said Thomas Leschine, associate professor at the
University of Washington and chairman of the committee that wrote the
report. "You know, a day will come when someone forgets about that pile of
waste and someone else comes along to build a house on it."

Steps Being Taken, Department Assures
Gerald Boyd, a deputy assistant Energy secretary, said the report
"makes a very good point that we have to think very hard about those
residual contaminants for a very long time."
But he insisted that the department is planning a long-term strategy
for monitoring the sites and will continue to review the containment
strategy to see that it is effective. Even over the long term, "I don't
think there's any chance the federal government will renege on those
responsibilities," he said.
Of 144 facilities that played a role in the U.S. nuclear weapons
programs, the Energy Department has concluded that 109 will never be clean
enough to permit unrestricted use by the public. The department recently
created an Office of Long-Term Stewardship to indefinitely oversee those
sites, located in 27 states and on Puerto Rico and Pacific islands.
At many sites, the Energy Department intends to rely on long-term
surveillance, physical barriers such as fences and legal measures such as
deed restrictions to protect the public and the surrounding environment
from any residual contamination.
Although that would appear to be a relatively low-cost strategy, the
report says there is no way to estimate the total cost of such a program
because no one knows what might go wrong or how long it will have to be in
place.
It says that the department has failed to consider the costs to
society of containment failure, such as "aquifers becoming contaminated by
residual wastes whose propensity for off-site migration was not understood
at the time" active cleanup ended.

Cleanup Impossible or Too Costly at Some Sites
Since some radioactive wastes remain dangerous for several thousand
years, the problem is analogous to a waste-management program established
during the Roman Empire. It is unlikely that the Romans would have been
able to foresee conditions in today's world, but their waste products might
still be poisoning the environment.
The report says that the reasons most sites will not be completely
cleansed are "technical, social, fiscal and political."
Leschine elaborated in a telephone interview, explaining that a
complete cleanup would be impossible at some sites and considered too
expensive at others.
"You lose the political will . . . to continue pouring money into the
problem," he said.
The reluctance of Congress to continue appropriating funds to clean up
nuclear sites has an impact on the Energy Department's plans to monitor
facilities that remain too "hot" for normal use. Congress usually
appropriates money on an annual basis, not for programs that must be
maintained for millenniums.
"There is no assured funding," Leschine said. He noted that Tennessee
recently established a trust fund to pay for perpetual monitoring at Oak
Ridge. But there is no way to know whether that fund will last long enough.
The report offers few specific suggestions beyond advising the
department to be more flexible in its planning and to expect the unexpected=
.
"The best decision strategy overall appears to be one that avoids
foreclosing future options where sensible, takes contingencies into account
wherever possible and takes seriously the prospects that failures . . .
could have ramifications that a good steward would want to avoid," it says.
"Today's scientific knowledge and technical and institutional
capabilities are insufficient to provide much confidence that sites with
residual risks will continue to function as expected for the time periods
necessary."
The California sites include the Energy Technology Engineering Center
near Simi Valley, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San
Francisco, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory near the UC Berkeley
campus, the Sandia National Laboratories facility in Livermore and the
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University.

----------

#7.

Dear Sir or Madam:
I have recently published a book that may be of interest to your community.
Please find below a short description of the book. I would appreciate you
posting this information on your website.
With thanks,
Professor T.V. Paul
Department of Political Science
McGill University

Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons
By T.V. Paul, Professor of Political Sceince, McGill University

In this timely book T.V. Paul explains why some states have decided to
forswear nuclear weapons even when they have the technological capability o=
r
potential capability to develop them. Paul develops a prudential-realist
model, arguing that national nuclear choices depend on specific regional
security contexts: the non-great power states most likely to forgo nuclear
weapons are those in zones of low and moderate conflict, while nations
likely to acquire such capability tend to be in zones of high conflict and
engaged in protracted conflicts and enduring rivalries. He applies this
argument to pairs of states with similar characteristics - Germany/Japan,
Canada/Australia,Sweden/Switzerland, Argentina/Brazil - in addition to
analysing the nuclear choices of South Africa, Ukraine, South Korea, India,
Pakistan, and Israel.

Published- July 2000 228 pp 6 x 9
Paper ISBN 0-7735-2087-2 $27.95 US price $22.95
Cloth ISBN 0-7735-2086-4 $60.00
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