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abolition-usa-digest     Monday, February 1 1999     Volume 01 : Number 067




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

Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 07:43:35 -0500
From: Peace though Reason <[e-mail]>
Subject: (abolition-usa) NucNews (US-1) 2/01/99 - Ohio Series, Cleveland Plain Dealer

- --=====================_358904==_.ALT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"


1. Environmentalists unhappy about RMI handling own cleanup
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/011942.htm
See Also: Titanium Cleanup-Glance
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/005546.htm

2. Some paid heavy price for radiation exposure
http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/casick31.ssf

3. RMI - part of dirty nuclear legacy
http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/cawash31.ssf

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

1. Environmentalists unhappy about RMI handling own cleanup

http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/011942.htm

ASHTABULA, Ohio (AP) -- The Department of Energy's decision to let a northeast
Ohio titanium company handle its own radiation cleanup raises conflicts of
interest, environmental watchdog groups say.

RMI Titanium Co., which for decades during the Cold War forged uranium metal
into plutonium for nuclear weapons, is working under a $188 million contract
with the DOE to decontaminate its own property.

It's a job that needs to be done, but by someone else, said David Adelman, an
attorney in the nuclear program at the Washington, D.C.-based Natural Resources
Defense Council.

``The key issue is it's the fox guarding the henhouse,'' Adelman said in a
story published Sunday in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. ``It's a combination of
a conflict of interest both with regard to the degree of contamination at the
site, as well as in obtaining the contract itself -- the circularity of all
that.''

James Henderson, manager of RMI Environmental Services, said the company has
everyone's best interests in mind.

``The company never expected that they were going to extract a pound of flesh,
if you will, from the government to the disadvantage of the taxpayers, the DOE
or anyone else.''

Kenneth Morgan, a spokesman for the DOE, said the agency has an on-site project
manager who is monitoring costs and the progress of the cleanup.

``Essentially, what's expected is that whoever did the pollution is expected to
clean it up,'' he said. ``In the case of Ashtabula, where it was DOE-directed,
the taxpayers pay for it.''

``I have never heard of that before,'' said Diana D'Arrigo of the Nuclear
Information and Resource Service, a Washington-based public-interest research
group. ``It sounds like a big ripoff.''

RMI, the largest subsidiary of a newly formed holding company, RTI
International Metals Inc., is primarily a contractor to the military and
commercial aerospace industries.

RMI said it would have been difficult to allow an outside contractor onto its
property to handle the cleanup, although it is subcontracting about 60 percent
of the project to experienced firms.

In 1993, RMI obtained a no-bid contract from the DOE to decontaminate its
property. The current value of the contract, which is not fixed, is $188
million, The Plain Dealer reported.

The project calls for the demolition and removal of 21 buildings and the
excavation and disposal of 40,000 tons of contaminated soil. It is expected to
be completed sometime around 2005.

RMI has asked the DOE to pay about $1.5 million in uninsured liability for the
cleanup of Fields Brook, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site.
The brook, a heavily polluted tributary of the Ashtabula River, runs behind
RMI's property.

``It appears that RMI is trying to extract as much out of DOE as they possibly
can,'' Adelman said. ``I think that just adds more kindling to the fire.''

Titanium Cleanup-Glance
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/005546.htm

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 31, 1999

A look at Ohio's small weapons component facilities:

- -- Feed Materials Production Center, Fernald: Largest DOE weapons plant in
Ohio. Processed uranium from Hanford and Savannah River nuclear reactors from
1951 to 1989. Annual cleanup budget exceeds $260 million.

- -- Alba Craft Laboratory, Oxford: Machine shop that produced uranium slugs for
AEC reactors from 1952-57.

- -- Associated Aircraft and Tool Manufacturing Inc., Fairfield: Drilled and
reamed uranium slugs for the Atomic Energy Commission in 1956.

- -- B&T Metals, Columbus: Extruded uranium metal rods for Hanford nuclear
reactor during 1943.

- -- Battelle Columbus Laboratories, Columbus: Performed atomic energy research
between 1943 and 1980.

- -- Baker Brothers, Toledo: Machined uranium rods into slugs to fuel the Oak
Ridge graphite reactor in 1943-44. Also performed uranium machining for Hanford
reactor.

- -- Copperweld Steel Co., Warren: Straightened and degassed uranium rods for
Hanford and Oak Ridge reactors in 1943.

- -- Herring-Hall Marvin Safe Co., Hamilton: Machined uranium in slugs in 1943.

- -- Harshaw Chemical Co., Cleveland: Refined uranium for Oak Ridge in 1942-43.

- -- Brush Beryllium Co., Cleveland: Performed fuel and target fabrication for
AEC in 1942-43.

- -- Brush Beryllium Co., Luckey: Processed beryllium and uranium in 1949-58.

- -- Mound, Miamisburg: Developed and built nuclear weapons components between
1947 and 1995. Also retrieved and recycled tritium from dismantled nuclear
weapons. Annual cleanup budget exceeds $90 million.

- -- Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Portsmouth: Began producing enriched
uranium for nuclear submarine reactors and power plants in 1954. Still performs
uranium enrichment for nuclear power utilities.

- -- RMI Titanium Co., Ashtabula: Formerly known as Reactive Metals Inc. From
1962 to 1988, extruded uranium received from Fernald for use as fuel and target
fabrication at Hanford and Savannah River reactors.

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

2. Some paid heavy price for radiation exposure

http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/casick31.ssf

Sunday, January 31, 1999

By TED WENDLING PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

ASHTABULA - Chris Trepal remembers the day she was approached by a high school
chemistry teacher while giving a presentation on the health and environmental
hazards posed by RMI Titanium Co.

"He told me one of his students had brought a hunk of uranium from RMI to
school," said Trepal, who was giving a speech on behalf of the Sierra Club. "He
said he told the kid to get it out of there. The kid said his dad brought it
home.

"I think RMI was really sloppy, but they were no different from every one of
those nuclear weapons manufacturing plants. The whole industry was filthy. It
had that cloak of secrecy and they did whatever they needed to get the job
done, whatever the cost."

During the 1980s, Trepal, joined by members of the Sunflower Alliance and
Greenpeace, were unrelenting in their criticism of RMI, staging demonstrations
near RMI's Ashtabula extrusion plant, lobbying Congress and bombarding
regulators with requests for information.

Widely viewed by RMI workers as outsiders and meddlers, the protesters got a
boost in 1989 when Jack F. White, a former president of the United Steelworkers
of America local that represented RMI's 100 employees, emerged as one of RMI's
fiercest critics.

White had worked as a forge inspector for 15 years before being stricken with
an undiagnosed illness that made breathing difficult and caused him to suffer
rashes, loose teeth, bleeding gums and blurred vision. A 1988 report by his
doctor said White's symptoms "represent the results of continued exposures to
uranium, plutonium and radiation."

A decade later, White still lives in Ashtabula, not far from RMI. At 52, he
said he has no desire to tangle with RMI again and declined requests for an
interview.

Trepal, who now co-directs the Earth Day Coalition in Cleveland, said White
suffered terribly.

"The weird thing about health and human risk is, I remember going to a union
meeting with Jack and there were men there who were perfectly fine," she said.
"They were as healthy as the day they were born, and then you had Jack, who was
as sick as a dog."

In even worse condition was Joe Pennington, another forge operator. During the
mid-1980s, Pennington, 75, lapsed into a three-day coma, suffered kidney
failure and contracted scleroderma, a disease in which his skin hardened.

"Me and Jack met with a lawyer . . . but he said it [a lawsuit- would take
years," Pennington said. "If we did that, they [RMI- would cut off our
insurance and everything we had coming to us. We'd have nothing, so we decided
not to sue.

"RMI treated me pretty good, but they always said there was no danger. We had
[radiation experts- come in one time, telling us the effects of uranium, like
your hands would get all red and swell. Well, mine did. But when I asked them
to look at my hands, they said, "Oh, that's not caused by uranium.' I said,
"What the hell did you just get through saying?'

"But they kept denying it, and it was a little after that that I came down
sick. I couldn't walk 50 feet without sitting down, so I had to take
retirement."

Among RMI employees, forge inspectors received the highest skin radiation
doses, a consultant's report warned in 1985.

"Extremity doses have not yet been measured," the report added. "There is a
potential for significant extremity doses, particularly for forge operators."

Because uranium emits nonpenetrating alpha rays, it is most dangerous when
inhaled or ingested, said Dr. Floro Miraldi, director emeritus of nuclear
medicine at University Hospitals in Cleveland. That could occur from inhaling
uranium particles or from eating or smoking after handling uranium, he said.

At RMI, using gloves and masks or respirators would have all but eliminated the
risk to workers, Miraldi said.

But Pennington and Delton Fuller, another former employee, said that even
though those items were provided, they weren't mandatory and so workers often
didn't wear them. Pennington said he and White frequently handled the billets
with their bare hands, wiping them down with penetrating oil and filing burrs
on the tubes with metal files.

Miraldi said that would explain the skin burns Pennington received. However, he
warned: "Cancer can have many triggers. It's hard to pin it down because there
are so many different things that can cause it."

James W. Henderson, manager of RMI Environmental Services, a division of RMI
Titanium that is overseeing the decontamination of the site, said he didn't
know much about the company's health and safety standards in the 1960s and
'70s. He said RMI's standards today exceed those of regulators.

"The standards that are established by the regulators are the minimums that we
have to meet," he said. "Internally, to my knowledge, we've always had
[exposure- standards that are at least 10 percent below what the regulators
require."

By all indications, the cleanup of RMI is a minutely regulated undertaking. The
preamble to the contract between the Department of Energy and RMI
Environmental, which fills two large notebook binders, requires RMI to comply
with eight regulatory agencies and laws that didn't exist during most of the
period that RMI Titanium manufactured uranium bomb components for the
government.

Even the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has weighed in, informing RMI that the
woods behind its plant provide "a potential habitat" for the Indiana bat, an
endangered species.

Despite the fact that no Indiana bats have been spotted on RMI's contaminated
property, the federal agency has ordered RMI officials not to remove trees with
shaggy bark or cavities in their trunks between May 1 and Aug. 31, the bats'
prime nesting period.

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

3. RMI part of dirty nuclear legacy

http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/cawash31.ssf

Sunday, January 31, 1999

By TED WENDLING PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

ASHTABULA - In 1990, when the Department of Energy forced RMI Titanium Co. to
close its uranium extrusion operations here, environmental regulators realized
that the 32-acre nuclear weapons-component plant had made a long-lasting
contribution to a terrible national legacy.

At 49 sites in 22 states, DOE atomic bomb-making operations had left in their
wake an estimated 79 million cubic meters of contaminated soil, sediment,
rubble and debris and 475 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater.

The estimated price of the cleanup: $147 billion, making it the largest and
most expensive environmental remediation project in world history.

Because most of the weapons-production sites were owned by the government, U.S.
taxpayers have been picking up the entire tab. That includes the cost of
"decommissioning" even some privately owned sites such as RMI, which exercised
a clause in its contract that required the DOE to pay for the cleanup.

The company then formed an environmental engineering division, RMI
Environmental Services, and obtained a $188 million, no-bid contract from the
DOE to decontaminate its own property.

The project calls for the demolition and removal of 21 buildings and the
excavation and disposal of 40,000 tons of soil laden with uranium and
radioactive technetium. Accidental spills and equipment leaks over the years
also have left the soil contaminated with lead, barium, arsenic and
trichloroethylene, a byproduct of a degreasing solvent.

The soil alone would fill 7,000 trucks, each of which would have to be driven
more than 1,600 miles to nuclear waste dumps in Utah or Nevada.

Convinced that such an undertaking would be cost-prohibitive and present
unacceptable transportation risks, DOE and RMI officials began experimenting
with a technology that previously had been used to remove chemical pollutants
from soil.

They decided to "wash" the dirt.

Soil washing was pioneered in Europe and first used in the United States in the
early 1990s, but it has never been used on a large scale to remove radioactive
contaminants, according to Ward E. Best, director of the DOE's Ashtabula
Environmental Management Project.

The plan calls for the excavation of contaminated soil to a depth of 18 inches.
The soil will be loaded onto a conveyor system that transports it into a
machine called a drum scrubber, which separates large material such as rocks
and grass from coarse dirt and sand.

The finer material will be mixed with a heated corbonate solution, fed through
a machine that removes the soluble uranium and then sent through an
ion-exchange system that extracts uranium from the liquid. The uranium will
then be precipitated, producing "yellowcake," a uranium concentrate.

Of the original 40,000 tons of soil, roughly 4,000 tons of yellowcake and soil
that will be too contaminated to wash will have to be trucked off-site.

Best said area residents and RMI employees have no reason to worry about
accidental exposures to radiation.

"Some guys have expressed some nervousness with me," he said, referring to
plant workers. "I've explained it to them and some of the guys are comfortable
with it and some are not.

"It's not like I don't wander around that place. My daughter goes to preschool
right across Route 11 [less than a mile from RMI]. It's not like I'm worried
about that plant."

Far more worrisome, Best said, are the risks associated with demolition and
operating heavy equipment.

"That's what's going to hurt somebody here if somebody gets hurt," he said.
"The radioactive considerations are comparatively insignificant."


_____________________________________________________________

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Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"

<html><div>1. Environmentalists unhappy about RMI handling own
cleanup</div>
<div><a href="http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/011942.htm" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/011942.htm</a></div>
<div>See Also: Titanium Cleanup-Glance</div>
<div><a href="http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/005546.htm" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/005546.htm</a></div>
<br>
<div>2. Some paid heavy price for radiation exposure </div>
<div><a href="http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/casick31.ssf" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/casick31.ssf</a></div>
<br>
<div>3. RMI - part of dirty nuclear legacy </div>
<div><a href="http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/cawash31.ssf" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/cawash31.ssf</a></div>
<br>
<div>-----------------------------------------</div>
<br>
<div>1. Environmentalists unhappy about RMI handling own cleanup</div>
<br>
<div><a href="http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/011942.htm" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/011942.htm</a></div>
<br>
<div>ASHTABULA, Ohio (AP) -- The Department of Energy's decision to let a
northeast Ohio titanium company handle its own radiation cleanup raises
conflicts of interest, environmental watchdog groups say.</div>
<br>
<div>RMI Titanium Co., which for decades during the Cold War forged
uranium metal into plutonium for nuclear weapons, is working under a $188
million contract with the DOE to decontaminate its own property.</div>
<br>
<div>It's a job that needs to be done, but by someone else, said David
Adelman, an attorney in the nuclear program at the Washington, D.C.-based
Natural Resources Defense Council.</div>
<br>
<div>``The key issue is it's the fox guarding the henhouse,'' Adelman
said in a story published Sunday in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. ``It's
a combination of a conflict of interest both with regard to the degree of
contamination at the site, as well as in obtaining the contract itself --
the circularity of all that.''</div>
<br>
<div>James Henderson, manager of RMI Environmental Services, said the
company has everyone's best interests in mind.</div>
<br>
<div>``The company never expected that they were going to extract a pound
of flesh, if you will, from the government to the disadvantage of the
taxpayers, the DOE or anyone else.''</div>
<br>
<div>Kenneth Morgan, a spokesman for the DOE, said the agency has an
on-site project manager who is monitoring costs and the progress of the
cleanup.</div>
<br>
<div>``Essentially, what's expected is that whoever did the pollution is
expected to clean it up,'' he said. ``In the case of Ashtabula, where it
was DOE-directed, the taxpayers pay for it.''</div>
<br>
<div>``I have never heard of that before,'' said Diana D'Arrigo of the
Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington-based
public-interest research group. ``It sounds like a big ripoff.''</div>
<br>
<div>RMI, the largest subsidiary of a newly formed holding company, RTI
International Metals Inc., is primarily a contractor to the military and
commercial aerospace industries.</div>
<br>
<div>RMI said it would have been difficult to allow an outside contractor
onto its property to handle the cleanup, although it is subcontracting
about 60 percent of the project to experienced firms.</div>
<br>
<div>In 1993, RMI obtained a no-bid contract from the DOE to
decontaminate its property. The current value of the contract, which is
not fixed, is $188 million, The Plain Dealer reported.</div>
<br>
<div>The project calls for the demolition and removal of 21 buildings and
the excavation and disposal of 40,000 tons of contaminated soil. It is
expected to be completed sometime around 2005.</div>
<br>
<div>RMI has asked the DOE to pay about $1.5 million in uninsured
liability for the cleanup of Fields Brook, a U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Superfund site. The brook, a heavily polluted tributary
of the Ashtabula River, runs behind RMI's property.</div>
<br>
<div>``It appears that RMI is trying to extract as much out of DOE as
they possibly can,'' Adelman said. ``I think that just adds more kindling
to the fire.''  </div>
<br>
<div>Titanium Cleanup-Glance</div>
<div><a href="http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/005546.htm" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/005546.htm</a></div>
<br>
<div>BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 31,
1999</div>
<br>
<div>A look at Ohio's small weapons component facilities:</div>
<br>
<div>-- Feed Materials Production Center, Fernald: Largest DOE weapons
plant in Ohio. Processed uranium from Hanford and Savannah River nuclear
reactors from 1951 to 1989. Annual cleanup budget exceeds $260
million.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Alba Craft Laboratory, Oxford: Machine shop that produced uranium
slugs for AEC reactors from 1952-57.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Associated Aircraft and Tool Manufacturing Inc., Fairfield:
Drilled and reamed uranium slugs for the Atomic Energy Commission in
1956.</div>
<br>
<div>-- B&T Metals, Columbus: Extruded uranium metal rods for Hanford
nuclear reactor during 1943.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Battelle Columbus Laboratories, Columbus: Performed atomic energy
research between 1943 and 1980.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Baker Brothers, Toledo: Machined uranium rods into slugs to fuel
the Oak Ridge graphite reactor in 1943-44. Also performed uranium
machining for Hanford reactor.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Copperweld Steel Co., Warren: Straightened and degassed uranium
rods for Hanford and Oak Ridge reactors in 1943.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Herring-Hall Marvin Safe Co., Hamilton: Machined uranium in slugs
in 1943.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Harshaw Chemical Co., Cleveland: Refined uranium for Oak Ridge in
1942-43.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Brush Beryllium Co., Cleveland: Performed fuel and target
fabrication for AEC in 1942-43.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Brush Beryllium Co., Luckey: Processed beryllium and uranium in
1949-58.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Mound, Miamisburg: Developed and built nuclear weapons components
between 1947 and 1995. Also retrieved and recycled tritium from
dismantled nuclear weapons. Annual cleanup budget exceeds $90
million.</div>
<br>
<div>-- Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Portsmouth: Began producing
enriched uranium for nuclear submarine reactors and power plants in 1954.
Still performs uranium enrichment for nuclear power utilities.</div>
<br>
<div>-- RMI Titanium Co., Ashtabula: Formerly known as Reactive Metals
Inc. From 1962 to 1988, extruded uranium received from Fernald for use as
fuel and target fabrication at Hanford and Savannah River
reactors.</div>
<br>
<div> ----------------------------------------</div>
<br>
<div>2. Some paid heavy price for radiation exposure </div>
<br>
<div><a href="http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/casick31.ssf" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/casick31.ssf</a></div>
<br>
<div>Sunday, January 31, 1999</div>
<br>
<div>By TED WENDLING PLAIN DEALER REPORTER</div>
<br>
<div>ASHTABULA - Chris Trepal remembers the day she was approached by a
high school chemistry teacher while giving a presentation on the health
and environmental hazards posed by RMI Titanium Co.</div>
<br>
<div>"He told me one of his students had brought a hunk of uranium
from RMI to school," said Trepal, who was giving a speech on behalf
of the Sierra Club. "He said he told the kid to get it out of there.
The kid said his dad brought it home.</div>
<br>
<div>"I think RMI was really sloppy, but they were no different from
every one of those nuclear weapons manufacturing plants. The whole
industry was filthy. It had that cloak of secrecy and they did whatever
they needed to get the job done, whatever the cost."</div>
<br>
<div>During the 1980s, Trepal, joined by members of the Sunflower
Alliance and Greenpeace, were unrelenting in their criticism of RMI,
staging demonstrations near RMI's Ashtabula extrusion plant, lobbying
Congress and bombarding regulators with requests for information.</div>
<br>
<div>Widely viewed by RMI workers as outsiders and meddlers, the
protesters got a boost in 1989 when Jack F. White, a former president of
the United Steelworkers of America local that represented RMI's 100
employees, emerged as one of RMI's fiercest critics.</div>
<br>
<div>White had worked as a forge inspector for 15 years before being
stricken with an undiagnosed illness that made breathing difficult and
caused him to suffer rashes, loose teeth, bleeding gums and blurred
vision. A 1988 report by his doctor said White's symptoms "represent
the results of continued exposures to uranium, plutonium and
radiation."</div>
<br>
<div>A decade later, White still lives in Ashtabula, not far from RMI. At
52, he said he has no desire to tangle with RMI again and declined
requests for an interview.</div>
<br>
<div>Trepal, who now co-directs the Earth Day Coalition in Cleveland,
said White suffered terribly.</div>
<br>
<div>"The weird thing about health and human risk is, I remember
going to a union meeting with Jack and there were men there who were
perfectly fine," she said. "They were as healthy as the day
they were born, and then you had Jack, who was as sick as a
dog."</div>
<br>
<div>In even worse condition was Joe Pennington, another forge operator.
During the mid-1980s, Pennington, 75, lapsed into a three-day coma,
suffered kidney failure and contracted scleroderma, a disease in which
his skin hardened.</div>
<br>
<div>"Me and Jack met with a lawyer . . . but he said it [a lawsuit-
would take years," Pennington said. "If we did that, they [RMI-
would cut off our insurance and everything we had coming to us. We'd have
nothing, so we decided not to sue.</div>
<br>
<div>"RMI treated me pretty good, but they always said there was no
danger. We had [radiation experts- come in one time, telling us the
effects of uranium, like your hands would get all red and swell. Well,
mine did. But when I asked them to look at my hands, they said, "Oh,
that's not caused by uranium.' I said, "What the hell did you just
get through saying?'</div>
<br>
<div>"But they kept denying it, and it was a little after that that
I came down sick. I couldn't walk 50 feet without sitting down, so I had
to take retirement."</div>
<br>
<div>Among RMI employees, forge inspectors received the highest skin
radiation doses, a consultant's report warned in 1985.</div>
<br>
<div>"Extremity doses have not yet been measured," the report
added. "There is a potential for significant extremity doses,
particularly for forge operators."</div>
<br>
<div>Because uranium emits nonpenetrating alpha rays, it is most
dangerous when inhaled or ingested, said Dr. Floro Miraldi, director
emeritus of nuclear medicine at University Hospitals in Cleveland. That
could occur from inhaling uranium particles or from eating or smoking
after handling uranium, he said.</div>
<br>
<div>At RMI, using gloves and masks or respirators would have all but
eliminated the risk to workers, Miraldi said.</div>
<br>
<div>But Pennington and Delton Fuller, another former employee, said that
even though those items were provided, they weren't mandatory and so
workers often didn't wear them. Pennington said he and White frequently
handled the billets with their bare hands, wiping them down with
penetrating oil and filing burrs on the tubes with metal files.</div>
<br>
<div>Miraldi said that would explain the skin burns Pennington received.
However, he warned: "Cancer can have many triggers. It's hard to pin
it down because there are so many different things that can cause
it."</div>
<br>
<div>James W. Henderson, manager of RMI Environmental Services, a
division of RMI Titanium that is overseeing the decontamination of the
site, said he didn't know much about the company's health and safety
standards in the 1960s and '70s. He said RMI's standards today exceed
those of regulators.</div>
<br>
<div>"The standards that are established by the regulators are the
minimums that we have to meet," he said. "Internally, to my
knowledge, we've always had [exposure- standards that are at least 10
percent below what the regulators require."</div>
<br>
<div>By all indications, the cleanup of RMI is a minutely regulated
undertaking. The preamble to the contract between the Department of
Energy and RMI Environmental, which fills two large notebook binders,
requires RMI to comply with eight regulatory agencies and laws that
didn't exist during most of the period that RMI Titanium manufactured
uranium bomb components for the government.</div>
<br>
<div>Even the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has weighed in, informing
RMI that the woods behind its plant provide "a potential
habitat" for the Indiana bat, an endangered species.</div>
<br>
<div>Despite the fact that no Indiana bats have been spotted on RMI's
contaminated property, the federal agency has ordered RMI officials not
to remove trees with shaggy bark or cavities in their trunks between May
1 and Aug. 31, the bats' prime nesting period.</div>
<br>
<div>----------------------------------------</div>
<br>
<div>3. RMI part of dirty nuclear legacy </div>
<br>
<div><a href="http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/cawash31.ssf" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/cawash31.ssf</a></div>
<br>
<div>Sunday, January 31, 1999</div>
<br>
<div>By TED WENDLING PLAIN DEALER REPORTER</div>
<br>
<div>ASHTABULA - In 1990, when the Department of Energy forced RMI
Titanium Co. to close its uranium extrusion operations here,
environmental regulators realized that the 32-acre nuclear
weapons-component plant had made a long-lasting contribution to a
terrible national legacy.</div>
<br>
<div>At 49 sites in 22 states, DOE atomic bomb-making operations had left
in their wake an estimated 79 million cubic meters of contaminated soil,
sediment, rubble and debris and 475 billion gallons of contaminated
groundwater.</div>
<br>
<div>The estimated price of the cleanup: $147 billion, making it the
largest and most expensive environmental remediation project in world
history.</div>
<br>
<div>Because most of the weapons-production sites were owned by the
government, U.S. taxpayers have been picking up the entire tab. That
includes the cost of "decommissioning" even some privately
owned sites such as RMI, which exercised a clause in its contract that
required the DOE to pay for the cleanup.</div>
<br>
<div>The company then formed an environmental engineering division, RMI
Environmental Services, and obtained a $188 million, no-bid contract from
the DOE to decontaminate its own property.</div>
<br>
<div>The project calls for the demolition and removal of 21 buildings and
the excavation and disposal of 40,000 tons of soil laden with uranium and
radioactive technetium. Accidental spills and equipment leaks over the
years also have left the soil contaminated with lead, barium, arsenic and
trichloroethylene, a byproduct of a degreasing solvent.</div>
<br>
<div>The soil alone would fill 7,000 trucks, each of which would have to
be driven more than 1,600 miles to nuclear waste dumps in Utah or
Nevada.</div>
<br>
<div>Convinced that such an undertaking would be cost-prohibitive and
present unacceptable transportation risks, DOE and RMI officials began
experimenting with a technology that previously had been used to remove
chemical pollutants from soil.</div>
<br>
<div>They decided to "wash" the dirt.</div>
<br>
<div>Soil washing was pioneered in Europe and first used in the United
States in the early 1990s, but it has never been used on a large scale to
remove radioactive contaminants, according to Ward E. Best, director of
the DOE's Ashtabula Environmental Management Project.</div>
<br>
<div>The plan calls for the excavation of contaminated soil to a depth of
18 inches. The soil will be loaded onto a conveyor system that transports
it into a machine called a drum scrubber, which separates large material
such as rocks and grass from coarse dirt and sand.</div>
<br>
<div>The finer material will be mixed with a heated corbonate solution,
fed through a machine that removes the soluble uranium and then sent
through an ion-exchange system that extracts uranium from the liquid. The
uranium will then be precipitated, producing "yellowcake," a
uranium concentrate.</div>
<br>
<div>Of the original 40,000 tons of soil, roughly 4,000 tons of
yellowcake and soil that will be too contaminated to wash will have to be
trucked off-site.</div>
<br>
<div>Best said area residents and RMI employees have no reason to worry
about accidental exposures to radiation.</div>
<br>
<div>"Some guys have expressed some nervousness with me," he
said, referring to plant workers. "I've explained it to them and
some of the guys are comfortable with it and some are not.</div>
<br>
<div>"It's not like I don't wander around that place. My daughter
goes to preschool right across Route 11 [less than a mile from RMI]. It's
not like I'm worried about that plant."</div>
<br>
<div>Far more worrisome, Best said, are the risks associated with
demolition and operating heavy equipment.</div>
<br>
<div>"That's what's going to hurt somebody here if somebody gets
hurt," he said. "The radioactive considerations are
comparatively insignificant."</div>
<br>
<br>

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

Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 09:47:09 -0500
From: "Phyllis Turner Jepson/Local-Regional Coord." <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (abolition-usa) New brochure

Dear Bob,

Would you please send a sample brochures to the following addresses:

Nancy Small, National Coordinator
Pax Christi USA
532 W. 8th St.
Erie, PA 16502

Dave Robinson, Program Coordinator
Pax Christi USA
532 W. 8th St.
Erie, PA 16502

Phyllis Turner Jepson
Pax Christi USA Local/Regional Coordinator
442 33rd Street
West Palm Beach, FL 33407

Thanks.

Peace,
Phyllis



At 12:41 PM 1/26/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Physicians for Social Responsibility is pleased to announce that in
>February we will publish a new four-color brochure on abolition of
>nuclear weapons, intended for mainstream distribution.  The abolition
>movement needs some easy-to-read pieces that are intended for the
>general public, and we hope that this one will help to bring more people
>into our effort and enlarge our base.
>
>The brochure was explicitly written so that other organizations will be
>able to distribute it.  While it mentions in two places that it is
>produced by PSR, that fact is not featured prominently.  Indeed, it
>urges people to "join a group working to eliminate nuclear weapons," so
>our hope is that other groups will want to distribute it.
>
>The back panel is left blank, but it is not a self-mailer.  Thus you can
>not only put your own mailing labels and postage, but also put on your
>own return address.  The size is approximately 5x7 inches.
>
>We will provide up to 50 brochures free to any organization that wants
>them, though we will not pay for overnight mail.  If you want more than
>50, please contact me and we will discuss a price.
>
>For those who will be in Santa Barbara next month, I expect to have some
>copies available for you there.
>
>We hope that this brochure will be helpful to you and to the abolition
>effort.
>
>Shalom,
>Bob Tiller, Physicians for Social Responsibility
>phone [phone], ext. 220
>fax [phone]
>e-mail <[e-mail]>
>
>-
> To unsubscribe to abolition-usa, send an email to "[e-mail]"
> with "unsubscribe abolition-usa" in the body of the message.
> For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send
> "help" to the same address.  Do not use quotes in your message.
>
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Phyllis Turner Jepson
Pax Christi USA Local/Regional Coordinator
<mailto:[e-mail]>[e-mail]


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

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 13:56:03 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: (abolition-usa) VitW 250 Mile Walk Against War reaches UN

<< Subj:     VitW 250 Mile Walk Against War reaches UN
 Date:    1/30/99 12:05:29 PM Eastern Standard Time
 From:    [e-mail] (Kathy Kelly)
 To:    [e-mail]

 ANNOUNCEMENT

 250 Mile Walk Against War to arrive at United Nations on February 2, 1999

 On February 2, 1999, at 12:30 p.m., Voices in the Wilderness members who
 will have walked 250 miles, from the Pentagon to the United Nations,
 carrying declarations of solidarity and support from people across the US,
 will meet supporters at First Avenue and 45th Street for a brief gathering
 across from the UN.  They will then walk to the Isaiah Wall at 43rd Street
 and First Avenue,  where they have invited UN representatives to join them.
 The walkers are carrying declarations from people across the United States
 that express solidarity with the campaign to stop the eight year state of
 siege which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.

 Since leaving the Pentagon on January 15 to embark on an 18 day walk, the
 walkers have met with numerous groups, held media events, and spoken with
 many people along the route.  Throughout the walk, they've encouraged people
 to express support for the United Nations as an organization founded "to
 eliminate the scourge of warfare."  They've urged people to advocate that
 the UN now "walk away" from becoming an instrument of warfare.  Voices in
 the Wilderness members assert that maintenance of economic sanctions against
 Iraq has constituted a lethal and devastating form of warfare that primarily
 brutalizes Iraqi children. UN statistics estimate that the deaths of 6,000 -
 7,000 Iraqi children, each month, are directly attributable to economic
 sanctions.  The sanctions clearly undermine the UN's credibility as an
 organization founded to eliminate the scourge of warfare.

 Their itinerary in New York also includes:

 February 1, 1999  7:30 p.m. CUNY Graduate Center Auditorium  33 @est 42nd
 Street:  participation in a Citywide Teach-In  call:  212-502-0707

 February 2, 1999 11:00 a.m. morning walk from Maryhouse Catholic Worker,
 near Third Street and First Avenue, to the gathering spot across from the US
 Mission to the UN, 45th Street and First Avenue.  For details about route
 and time, call Kathy Breen at the Maryhouse Catholic Worker:  212-777-9617

 February 2, 1999 7:00 p.m.  Candlelight vigil    Isaiah Wall 43rd Street and
 First Avenue  Walkers will light an Iraqi lantern with oil purchased in Iraq
 and encourage people and nations around the world to buy Iraqi oil and break
 the embargo.   Contact:  Susan Blake  Peacesmith  516-798-0778
                      Sonia Ostrom  Peace Action Metro NY  212-870-2304


 For more information about the walk and its itinerary leading up to NY, call
 Voices in the Wilderness in Chicago at 773-784-8065 or Rick McDowell,
 312-543-6540 or Trish Schuh at 212-673-1376


 Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the UN/US embargo against Iraq,
 has sent 19 delegations to Iraq in violation of the UN/US sanctions.
 Members oppose the development, storage sale and use of any weapons, whether
 nuclear, chemical, biological, conventional, or, in the case of sanctions,
 economic.  The US government has issued them a pre-penalty notice of
 $160,000 in fines, charging that they have committed a crime by bringing
 "medicines and toys" to Iraq.  The campaign has clarified that they will not
 pay any penalties, that they will continue to bring medicines to Iraq and
 that they invite US government members to join them in their efforts.






 Voices in the Wilderness
     A Campaign to End the US/UN Economic Sanctions Against the People of Iraq
 1460 West Carmen Ave.
 Chicago, IL 60640
 ph:773-784-8065; fax: [phone]
 email: [e-mail]
 website: http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw




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

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