With a new Iraqi disclosure that it will turn over two bombs to U.N. inspectors, including one that possibly contains biological weapons agents, U.N. Security Council members were anticipating a heavy U.S. diplomatic onslaught to obtain their support for a new resolution on Iraq issued this week, council diplomats said (see GSN, Feb. 25).
At least six nonpermanent members — Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan — are still undecided on supporting the new resolution and are preparing for intense U.S. pressure to do so, USA Today reported.
“There’s an old saying that in good times, your friends find out who you are; in bad times, you find out who your friends are,” U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said last week.
There are several ways the United States could attempt to influence the decisions of the wavering council members, including by offering defense cooperation, trade deals and loans from international institutions, said James Paul, director of the Global Policy Forum.
“There’s no end to it,” Paul said. “Everything we know about negotiations from the past suggests that’s how things play out,” he added.
The still-undecided members have several historical examples to consider as they try to assess the risks of opposing the United States, according to USA Today. For example, when Yemen cast one of two dissenting votes against a 1990 U.N. resolution authorizing the Gulf War, the United States almost immediately canceled a $70 million aid package. During last year’s negotiations over U.N. Resolution 1441, which established the current inspections regime, the United States complained of weak support from Mauritius, which was a council member at the time. In response, Mauritius recalled its U.N. ambassador, who was publicly criticized for failing to express his country’s support for the U.S. plan (Bill Nichols, USA Today, Feb. 26).
At least two of the three undecided African council members — Angola and Guinea — might decide to back the United States, according to diplomats and international observers.
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos is considered the most likely to succumb to U.S. pressure, according to the Financial Times. Angola is counting on international loans to help fund the costs of reconstruction after the country’s long civil war. Dos Santos might also feel indebted to the United States over rumored U.S. aid in providing intelligence leading to the killing last year of Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, the Times reported.
Angola’s U.N. Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins indicated yesterday that a compromise could be reached on the new resolution.
“The cards are on the table,” Martins was quoted as saying. “Now I think we need to sit down jointly and come out with ... a common solution,” he added.
Guinea is also considered to be a possible U.S. supporter because of its weak post-colonial relationship with France, a key opponent of the United States in the Security Council, according to the Times (White/Lamont, Financial Times, Feb. 25).
Mexico also appears to be moving to back the United States, according to a new foreign policy directive obtained by the Associated Press.
Soon after an address yesterday by Mexican President Vicente Fox, the Mexican Foreign Ministry issued the directive to its embassies outlining a new position based solely on Mexico’s main “national interest” — its relationship with the United States, AP reported. While the directive does not explicitly say that Mexico will vote for the U.S.-supported resolution, it does say that Mexico will now focus solely on the disarmament of Iraq.
“Nothing is more urgent, no time can be lost in achieving this objective,” the directive said (Dafna Linzer, Associated Press/Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26).
The remaining permanent Security Council members, however, still appear to be strongly against the U.S.-British-supported resolution. U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said yesterday after talks with Russian officials in Moscow that Russia had not changed its stance.
“I didn’t detect any shift in their (Russia’s) position,” Bolton said, following two days of meetings.
Bolton indicated that the United States will continue to attempt to gain Russia’s support for the new resolution, saying his visit “is not the last of the diplomatic discussions” (People’s Daily, Feb. 26).
New Signs of Iraqi Cooperation “Positive,” Blix Says
Meanwhile, U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday that there were “positive” elements in six letters Iraq has recently sent to the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. These “new elements” still needed to be “followed up” by inspectors, Blix said.
One of the letters says that Iraq has discovered handwritten documents related to the disposal of prohibited items in 1991, Blix said. Another letter details the discovery of an R-400 bomb containing liquid, which was found at a known former biological weapons disposal site, he added (United Press International, Feb. 25).
The R-400 bomb is equipped to hold about 20 gallons of liquid and Iraq has previously admitted to using such weapons to test biological agents, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Iraq is believed to have used such bombs in biological and chemical weapons attacks against Iranian troops and its Kurdish population (Bob Deans, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 26).
U.S. President George W. Bush discounted the new Iraqi admissions, saying it was just another attempt by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to fool the international community into thinking he is comply with inspections.
“I suspect that he will try to fool the world one more time. After all, he has had a history of doing that for 12 years,” Bush said. “I suspect we’ll see him playing games ... The world will say disarm, and he will all of a sudden find a weapon that he claimed he didn’t have,” he added (Blomquist/Orin, New York Post, Feb. 26).
War Costs
The White House is preparing a number of supplemental spending requests totaling up to $95 billion to cover the cost of a war with Iraq and the aftermath, officials said (see GSN, Dec. 31, 2002).
The total cost might be only about $60 billion because defense officials do not yet know how long a war with Iraq would last or what, if any, support other countries will provide, according to the Wall Street Journal. The $95 billion amount indicates that the total costs for war and reconstruction could reach an earlier estimate of more than $100 billion — an estimate that shocked members of Congress at the time.
Pentagon officials want Congress to approve at least some of the supplemental funding before it goes into recess April 10.
White House and Pentagon officials are divided over whether the funding requests should be combined into one large bill or broken up into smaller, separate pieces of legislation, the Journal reported. White House officials favor preparing two or more bills in order to provide greater control over spending and to reduce the political effect because each request would be relatively small. Pentagon officials favor one large bill that would include funding for both the war and the reconstruction of Iraq to prevent a disruption of funding at the end of the current fiscal year (Jaffe/McKinnon, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 26).
Some officials close to the financial planning process have said that military planners do not have a firm idea as to what the total cost of a war with Iraq might be, leading to frustrations within the White House.
“It’s like watching numbers roll higher and higher on a slot machine,” a State Department official said.
During recent interagency meetings, White House budget aides put their hands over their ears and said, “‘We’re not listening,’” the official said.
“We can’t take any more requests. Get a grip on this process and figure out exactly what you’re planning,” the official remembered the aides as saying. “They basically said, ‘Get ahold of yourselves,’” the official added (Gosselin/Wright, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26).
United States Continues Airstrikes
U.S. aircraft yesterday attacked conducted two attacks on Iraqi mobile missile systems in the southern part of the country, according to the U.S. military. The first airstrike involved the bombing of a surface-to-air missile site near al-Basrah, about 245 miles southeast of Baghdad. The second strike involved the bombing of a surface-to-surface missile system that was also located near al-Basrah (United Press International II, Feb. 25).
Inspections
U.N. inspectors visited at least 13 suspect Iraqi sites yesterday, according to an International Atomic Energy Agency press release.
UNMOVIC missile inspectors visited five sites: al-Rasheed Company, al-Fatah Factory, the Electronic Base factory, al-Kadhimiya Company and al-Qa Qaa Storage site.
Inspectors visited al-Falha Egg Production Company, according to the IAEA release. UNMOVIC chemical inspectors visited the Baji underground refinery. UNMOVIC biological conducted two inspections at Mosul University’s College of Agriculture and Forestry, including the Department of Food Technology and the Department of Plant Protection. UNMOVIC biological inspectors also visited the Khalil customs post and the Mosul Ammunition Storage Facility.
IAEA inspectors conducted a radiation survey at Nida, the agency release said. IAEA inspectors also visited al-Tahdi electronics research and electrical repair factory.
As of yesterday, there were 97 inspectors operating within Iraq, 84 from UNMOVIC and 13 from the IAEA (IAEA release, Feb. 25).
For further information, see:
UNMOVIC
IAEA Iraq Action Team
U.N. Resolution 1441
Experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have conducted hundreds of inspections in Iraq since resuming the post-Gulf War inspection regime Nov. 27. More than 200 U.N. personnel, including about 100 inspectors, are now based in the country at two facilities in Baghdad and Mosul. The following chart summarizes some of the inspectors’ recently reported activities.
| Date | Site | Activity | | Feb. 25 | Al-Rasheed Company | See GSN, Feb. 26. | | Al-Fatah Factory | | Electronic Base factory | | Al-Kadhimiya Company | | Al-Qa Qaa Storage | | Al-Falha Egg Production Company | | Baji underground refinery | | Department of Food Technology of the College of Agriculture and Forestry at Mosul University | | Department of Plant Protection of the College of Agriculture and Forestry at Mosul University | | Khalil customs post | | Mosul Ammunition Storage Facility | | Al Tahdi electronics research and electrical repair factory | | Nida | IAEA inspectors conducted a car-borne radiation survey (see GSN, Feb. 26). | | Feb. 24 | Al-Rasheed Company | See GSN, Feb. 25. | | Al-Qaid Factory | | Al-Eyz State Company | | Al-Mutasim Factory | | Baghdad Institute of Technology | UNMOVIC chemical inspectors conducted a rebaselining inspection (see GSN, Feb. 25). | | Airfield southwest of Baghdad | See GSN, Feb. 25. | | Munitions test range southwest of Baghdad | | Old munitions destruction site | UNMOVIC biological inspectors inspected munitions fragments (see GSN, Feb. 25). | | Environmental Engineering Laboratory at Mosul University’s Department of Civil Engineering | See GSN, Feb. 25. | | Mosul Airfield | UNMOVIC biological inspectors inspected shelters and bunkers related to the site (see GSN, Feb. 25). | | Area southwest of Baghdad | IAEA inspectors conducted a car-borne radiation survey (see GSN, Feb. 25). | | Al-Midlad State Company | IAEA inspectors inspected the use of high-strength magnets at the sites (see GSN, Feb. 25). | | Al-Karama | | Al-Razzi State Company | | Al-Yarmook | | Missile engine and guidance system production plant | See GSN, Feb. 24. | | Missile engine and guidance system production plant | | Chemical and explosives plant | | Anti-aircraft missile maintenance facility | | Feb. 23 | Al-Rafah | UNMOVIC missile inspectors observed a static test of an al-Samoud 2 missile (see GSN, Feb. 24). | | Al-Quadissiya | See GSN, Feb. 24. | | Al-Melad | | Al-Murage Company for Perfume Production in Baghdad | | Tabook State Company, formerly known as the Karbala Ammunition Filling Plant | | Veterinary College at Mosul University in Mosul | | Ninevah Food Industrial Company in Mosul | | Al-Muthanna area | IAEA inspectors conducted a radiation survey (see GSN, Feb. 24). | | Feb. 22 | Ibn al-Haytahm | UNMOVIC missile inspectors inventoried al-Samoud 2 missile components and subassemblies (IAEA release, Feb. 22). | | Undisclosed area | UNMOVIC missile inspectors inspected the remains of a liquid engine propellant test stand and tagged two pieces of manufacturing equipment (IAEA release, Feb. 22). | | Al-Nasser | IAEA release, Feb. 22. | | Iraqi Army Liquid Propellant Analytical Laboratory in west Baghdad | | Research center in the Baghdad area | UNMOVIC biological inspectors observed the destruction of a small amount of previously monitored out-of-date bacterial growth media (IAEA release, Feb. 22). | | Testing laboratory in the Baghdad area | | Yarmouk GE Site area | IAEA inspectors conducted a radiation survey (IAEA release, Feb. 25). | | Al-Kadessiya General Establishment | IAEA release, Feb. 22. | | Al-Nahrawan munitions factory | | Feb. 21 | Musaayib Power Station | UNMOVIC missile inspectors checked for possible storage of missile-related items (IAEA release, Feb. 21). | | Area west of Baghdad | UNMOVIC biological inspectors conducted an aerial inspection of an undisclosed site (IAEA release, Feb. 21). | | Area northwest of Baghdad | UNMOVIC biological inspectors conducted an aerial inspection of an undisclosed site (IAEA release, Feb. 21). | | Feb. 14-20 | See GSN, Feb. 21. | |
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During his four-day Asia trip, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell did not meet with much public success in gaining regional support for U.S. policies on Iraq and North Korea, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Feb. 25).
As he headed back to the United States, Powell said that North Korea had not restarted a reactor or a plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, the Post reported.
“I think that’s a wise choice, if it’s a conscious choice,” he said (Doug Struck, Washington Post, Feb. 26).
If Pyongyang restarted the facilities, however, it would “change the entire political landscape,” Powell added (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, Feb. 26).
Backchannel Meetings Continue
Han Song Ryol, North Korea’s second highest ranking U.N. official, visited Atlanta last week for discussions with James Laney, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and Han Park, a professor at the University of Georgia who has connections with officials from Pyongyang and Seoul.
During the discussions, Han also met with John Kelly, former assistant U.S. secretary of state for the Near East and South Asia and Gen. William Livsey, former commander of U.S. military forces in Korea (Moni Basu, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 25).
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By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.S. smallpox immunization plan, which has been slowed by a lack of volunteers, was never intended to reach an often-reported, 30-day goal of inoculating 500,000 health workers, a spokesman from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today (see GSN, Feb. 6).
On Dec. 13, 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush announced an initiative to prepare the United States for a possible smallpox attack (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2002).
That day, U.S. health officials described a two-part program in which an estimated 500,000 smallpox response personnel would first receive the vaccine followed by up to 10 million emergency responders.
In that briefing, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said, “There are 439,000 individuals that we’ve designated right now in order to receive the vaccination in the first tranche,” adding that the plan was “a voluntary program and not every one of those individuals will receive it.”
CDC Director Julie Gerberding added that she was encouraging states to implement the first wave quickly. “In our planning guidance, we recommended that they try to accomplish this in 30 days from the point at which they actually open the clinics and begin the immunization,” she said.
The program began Jan. 24 and the Washington Post reported that participation has been limited to 4,200 people, as of Feb. 24. Potential volunteers are concerned about sicknesses associated with the vaccine and several medical unions have delayed endorsing the plan until a compensation plan is provided for patients who experience the vaccine’s side effects.
CDC spokesman Tom Skinner told Global Security Newswire that the “the 500,000 number was floated around,” but that the immunization plan’s sole goal was to prepare the United States to respond to a smallpox attack.
“We’re trying to do a better job of clarifying what the purpose of this program is, and the purpose of this program is to better prepare our country to respond to a bioterrorism event involving smallpox,” Skinner said.
The plan’s two phases still exist, he said, but they are “seamless.”
CDC officials will determine when to begin immunizing firefighters, police and other emergency workers — phase two — and the progress of the plan will not depend on passing a fixed number of immunized volunteers or a set date, according to Skinner.
He denied that health officials had set 500,000 immunized first responders as a target for the first phase. In planning their separate vaccination scenarios, states and major cities collectively estimated they would need between 400,000 and 500,000 inoculated personnel in phase one, but federal health officials never adopted that number as a target, according to Skinner.
“This is a tremendous amount of backpedaling. This is very embarrassing for them, and it should be,” said Yale University professor Ed Kaplan, a vocal critic of the CDC’s smallpox vaccination plans (see GSN, July 29, 2002).
U.S. officials began distancing themselves from the 500,000 figure in early February, when it became apparent that the program was plagued by low turnout.
“It would be a success if no one receives the vaccine, but we offered this opportunity to all the right people,” said Joe Henderson, CDC associate director for terrorism preparedness, at a Feb. 5 bioterrorism conference hosted by the National Governors Association.
Some medical experts said it was reasonable to work without using the 500,000 figure as a benchmark.
That figure “is more of a planning number and somehow it became the goal,” said Patrick Libbey, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Libbey said that the CDC’s discussion of readiness, instead of numbers, “is not throwing me a curve.”
“The exercise has always been about readiness, the 500,000 was a number out of the air,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
“The number issue really is a moving target,” he added.
Kaplan said the CDC is not solely to blame for the low turnout, or the slowly moving immunization plan, but health officials are stuck with the shortfalls in the plan.
“We haven’t seen too much senior discussion of this plan since it was discussed in December,” he said.
Being Prepared Is The Goal
Experts agreed that readiness is the ultimate goal, and they said that the United States is not yet prepared.
The smallpox vaccination program has not been widely accepted despite strong White House support, said Paul Offit, chief of the Philadelphia Children’s hospital’s infectious diseases section and a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. “If the intent was a first line of defense, that intent is not being met, it’s at best a very leaky first line of defense,” he said.
Offit, and other experts said preparing an effective plan to respond to a smallpox attack was more important than immunizing limited numbers of first responders today.
“The more pressing issue is, what would we do if there was an event in the United States … what plans are there in place to distribute that vaccine in large numbers?” Offit asked.
Skinner said the CDC is working with states to develop a mass vaccination plan, which he described as “evolving.”
“We might tweak this plan a little bit as we go,” he said.
Experts said they did not believe the United States is prepared to respond to a smallpox attack with mass vaccinations.
The United States needs to immunize “a hell of a lot more than 4,000 people,” Kaplan said. He applauded CDC Director Gerberding’s assessment that the United States will be prepared when officials can vaccinate the entire country in 10 days, but he estimated that effort would require more than a million immunized medical workers.
“It’s disconcerting … the bottom line is that I’m quite worried,” Kaplan said.
The CDC does not know what is needed to immunize the entire country in 10 days, according to William Bicknell, a former Massachusetts public health commissioner who is now a professor of public health at Boston University and a member of the state’s smallpox working group.
“Right now I do not think the nation is adequately protected,” Bicknell said.
He called for an examination of how many immunized personnel and vaccination sites would be needed for a nationwide vaccination campaign.
“I don’t believe anybody has calculated that number. That’s a mistake. That’s an oversight,” he said.
Kaplan suggested that the United States attempt to immunize 50,000 volunteers in one day, “just to see if you can do it.”
“The machinery needs to be ready. Somebody needs to test these things out,” he said.
Experts and officials have acknowledged that it will be difficult to know when the nation is ready because it is hard to predict what form an attack would take.
“I don’t think anybody knows what an actual event might look like,” Skinner said.
U.S. officials do not know what to expect and do not know if they have prepared sufficiently, and because of that fact, the CDC should plan for the worst possible scenario, Bicknell said.
“It’s always hard to measure ready,” said the APHA’s Benjamin.
The United States yesterday awarded contracts to two companies to develop a safer smallpox vaccine, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Feb. 21).
A safer vaccine might even be appropriate to inoculate people with depressed immune systems. The new vaccine uses a virus called “modified vaccinia Ankara” and is a weakened version of the original smallpox vaccine, according to the Post.
Acambis, of Cambridge, Mass., and Bavarian Nordic, of Copenhagen, each received about $10 million to develop the virus. The process of growing the virus, testing it on animals, and testing it in humans, should be finished by the end of 2003, according to Gordon Cameron, of Acambis.
The virus was developed in Germany and used in the 1970s on eczema patients, who are susceptible to regular vaccine. The virus did not sicken the patients, but there was no smallpox outbreak in the area so researchers do not know how effective it is against the disease.
“Whether at the end of the day there will be an effective vaccine to protect them, I don’t know,” said Mark Feinberg, an AIDS vaccine researcher at Emory University. “Coming up with an effective vaccine to protect immunodeficient people will be a difficult task,” he added (David Brown, Washington Post, Feb. 26).
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Prior to Monday’s anti-ship missile test, North Korea gave notice that it would conduct three missile tests, possibly including one today, Reuters reported this morning, citing a British official (see GSN, Feb. 25; Martin Nesirky, Reuters, Feb. 26).
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed that Pyongyang had given notice of the tests.
“We have known for several days that they had made a declaration, a notice to mariners, that such a test might be coming,” Powell said (Kate Dawson, Voice of America, Feb. 25).
South Korean media reported that second recent North Korean missile test had failed.
“I think there’s a pattern with North Korea of fairly hamfisted gestures and I think this [is] in keeping with that kind of profile,” said Bill Rammell, British Foreign Office minister for Northeast Asia. “We were aware of that particular advance notice and I think the indication is that there were those two and there’s possibly another one today,” he said (Nesirky, Reuters).
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Tensions on the Korean Peninsula and Chinese ballistic missile deployment have highlighted Taiwan’s need for a missile defense system, according to Taiwanese President Chen Shui-ban (see GSN, Feb. 13).
“The North Korea missile incident reflects the gravity, importance and urgency of the missile defense system proposed by the U.S. government,” Chen said (see GSN, Feb. 25). “North Korea test-fired a missile into the Sea of Japan and communist China has deployed missiles along its coasts. These are problems we must all face seriously,” he added (see GSN, Sept. 10, 2002).
Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Stokes, the Defense Department’s Taiwan desk officer, earlier this month said that Taiwan faces “the most daunting conventional ballistic missile threat in the world.”
Washington has urged Taiwan to bolster its own missile defenses, Reuters reported (Reuters/South China Morning Post, Feb. 25).
China, meanwhile, might be willing to side with the United States more on the North Korean and Iraqi situations in exchange for decreased military equipment sales to Taiwan, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The United Daily News, a Taiwanese paper, reported last week that China had withdrawn missiles that target the island nation and returned them to a base in China’s interior.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it had no information of such a move. A Pentagon official said China is adding about 75 missiles a year to the arsenal facing Taiwan (Hamish McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 26).
Even though Japanese defense agencies knew of North Korea’s anti-ship missile test Monday, they did not inform the Japanese Cabinet until yesterday, according to the Los Angeles Times (see GSN, Feb. 25).
The United States had informed the Japanese Defense Agency several weeks earlier that North Korea might test a missile, according to the Times. Rival departments within the agency, however, failed to share that information with each other or senior officials. The result was that the Japanese Cabinet was not informed until several hours after North Korea fired the missile, the Times reported.
Midlevel defense analysts did not believe that the test was significant enough to report to senior officials, said defense spokesman Ichiro Imaizumi. “They judged it wasn’t of interest to the director or the Cabinet,” Imaizumi said.
Analysts, however, said the lack of information sharing illustrated Japan’s poor emergency response system.
“Japan has a very weak sense of crises,” said Zenji Katagata, president of System Research Center, a crisis management firm. “They assume North Korea is still crying wolf. ... Anything could happen, and this could have turned into a real catastrophe,” Katagata said.
One problem is that even with the current crisis over Pyongyang’s resumed nuclear program, Japan has still not developed a defined North Korea policy, analysts said. Japan also has a cultural tendency to play down unpleasant things, hindering the country’s ability to prepare for danger, Katagata said.
“We have a proverb: ‘You forget the hotness once it passes your throat,’” Katagata said. “People have forgotten how hot things were. In addition, those responsible when lapses occur aren’t really held accountable,” he added (Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26).
Japan to Consider Own Missile Defense
Meanwhile, Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba suggested yesterday that Japan might need to develop its own ability to prevent missile attacks (see GSN, Nov. 12, 2002).
Under Japan’s constitution, the country is only allowed a defensive military force and for almost 60 years Japan has been under U.S. protection.
“Until the other side actually starts something we cannot exercise self-defense,” Ishiba said in an interview with the London Times. “It has been agreed that Japan is the shield and the U.S. is the arrow, but we have to discuss whether this is adequate or not. Henceforth, this will be discussed in parliament,” he added (Parry/Thompson, London Times, Feb. 26).
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By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released this month a proposal for new tests to determine the security of spent nuclear fuel shipping casks against “extreme” road and rail accidents (see GSN, Sept. 20, 2002).
The proposed tests, part of the NRC’s Package Performance Study, are meant to help reassure public confidence in the safety of spent-fuel shipments and to assess previous computer accident models, a commission official told Global Security Newswire yesterday. Nuclear energy industry representatives have supported the new tests, but other experts said the proposed tests do not sufficiently address terrorism concerns.
Under current NRC regulations, spent-fuel shipping containers must be able to survive a series of test that include a 30-foot fall onto an unyielding surface and a 30-minute immersion in a fully engulfing fire. The casks are generally tested through a combination of computer modeling and tests on scale-models or cask components.
The NRC proposal calls for conducting additional drop and fire tests and for using only full-scale casks. The new tests would drop the casks from greater heights and a variety of angles. These tests would be conducted at speeds between 60 to 95 miles per hour, with the commission proposing they occur at a speed of about 75 miles per hour. Under current commission guidelines, impact tests are conducted at a speed of about 30 miles per hour, according to Edwin Lyman, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a nuclear activist group.
The updated fire tests would subject casks to fire for longer than the current half-hour test, but the NRC did not provide details as to the exact proposed time-span.
The commission has proposed the new tests to increase public confidence in the security of spent fuel shipments and to better assess current computer models, said Andrew Murphy, NRC senior technical adviser for earth sciences and engineering. In its proposal, the NRC noted public attention to spent-fuel shipments has increased, in part, because of the likelihood that shipments will increase, particularly when the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada is opened (see GSN, May 22, 2002).
The commission has contracted the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico to conduct the proposed tests, which will be performed on one rail cask and one road cask, Murphy said. The tests should be completed 18 to 24 months from the beginning of June.
The NRC has released the details on the proposed tests to obtain public comment, Murphy said. He added that the commission would present the proposed tests in a series of eight public forums that are to be held over the next three weeks.
The nuclear energy industry is supportive of the proposed tests and the NRC’s aim of increasing public confidence in the safety of spent-fuel shipments, said Rod McCullum, senior project manager for used fuel management at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main lobbying organization for the nuclear industry. These tests should help reassure the public to “what the engineers know”: that the shipping casks are secure, he said, adding that NEI is currently examining the commission’s proposal.
Lyman, who has often advocated for increased security of spent nuclear fuel, offered tentative praise for the proposed tests (see GSN, Jan. 31). The increased impact speeds that the casks would be subjected to is a significant improvement because the proposed speeds are more realistic, Lyman said, noting that U.S. highway speed limits have increased since the 1960s, when the regulations were first completed.
The proposed fire tests, however, are still inadequate because there are a number of real-life examples of fires that burn longer than an hour, Lyman said. One of the most vulnerable components of a spent-fuel shipping casks is the rubber seal between the lid and the body, which has been found to melt when subjected to a fire of 800 degrees Celsius for about an hour, he said. Once that seal is damaged, gaseous fissile materials and aerosolized cesium particles could be released, Lyman said.
Terrorism
The proposed tests also do not address factors that spent-fuel shipping casks could be subjected to during a terrorist attack, such as an attack involving a shaped charge or an anti-tank missile, Lyman said.
The NRC is conducting a separate study, “significantly divorced” from the Package Performance Study, to examine the vulnerability of casks to sabotage, Murphy said. One reason why terrorist scenarios were not included in the proposed test factors was that their inclusion might have resulted in less public interaction, because of the use of sensitive information, and would in turn defeat the purpose of the new tests, he said.
The nuclear energy industry also defended the lack of terrorism-related scenarios in the proposed tests. More can be learned by subjecting a cask to a broad range of factors than by designing a large number of tests for every possible scenario, McCullum said, adding that the speculation on such scenarios could be “endless.” He added that by validating the current transportation accident models, similar assumptions could be made on the models used to assess the vulnerability of casks to intentional attacks. While U.S. residents are now more concerned about possible acts of terrorism, they have had more experience with road and rail accidents, which is the main focus of their concern, McCullum said.
Lyman said he understood the potential need to evaluate terrorism risks to shipping casks in a separate study, but he criticized the NRC for conducted such tests “behind closed doors.” While terrorists should not be provided a “cookbook” on how to attack a spent-fuel shipping casks, they probably already know how to do so, Lyman said. The general U.S. public, however, needs to be aware of the risks, he said.
Nigeria has requested assistance from the International Atomic Energy Agency to recover radioactive material missing from oil operations in the southern part of the country, the Associated Press reported today.
“We have ... informed the International Atomic Energy Agency in case somebody stole it and wants to take it outside Nigeria,” Shams Elegba, head of Nigeria’s nuclear regulatory body, said yesterday.
Nigeria alerted residents in a broadcast last week that an oil company had reported the loss of radioactive material from its operations in the southern Niger Delta region, AP reported. Radioactive materials used in oil operations include cesium-137, which could be used in a “dirty bomb” (see GSN, Feb. 20).
Nigerian officials are concerned that potential terrorists might have obtained the material, Elegba said. All security agencies have been placed on alert, he added (Associated Press/Environmental News Network, Feb. 26).
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2002 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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