NIF/new hazards/pu, U, LiH

[marylia <marylia@igc.org>]

Hello.

This is the second, and far shorter, of two articles that have
appeared in Livermore Valley newspapers based on NIF documents declassified
due to the lawsuit.

Fellow peace and environmental advocates -- happy reading in general.
Fellow litigants, please pay particular attention to the way David Crandall
is nuancing the types of experiments under consideration, leaving out key
types.

Regarding next steps: I have written about these experiments in a journal
article on NIF, and on Monday will be talking to some of the larger
papers about the issue. Here is the article from the Herald...

Declassified documents radiate at lab

Reports say Livermore may test plutonium, uranium

Sunday, March 08, 1998

By Nancy Mayer

LIVERMORE -- Nuclear weapons experiments at the world's largest laser
complex at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory may become more dangerous and more
expensive over time, according to activists citing newly declassified
documents.

Reports authored by top Livermore scientists suggest that long-term plans
for the $1.2 billion National Ignition Facility may include experiments
with plutonium and uranium -- not just with tritium, as Energy Department
officials said while trying to sell the project to Congress and the public.

Experiments with lithium hydride -- which explodes on contact with air,
flames or heat -- also have been proposed, although top Energy Department
officials said they would prefer experiments with safer substitutes.

The reports, dating from 1991 to 1996, were declassified by a lawsuit by 39
anti-nuclear and environmental watchdog groups led by the Natural Resources
Defense Council (NRDC) in Washington, D.C.

The Department of Energy has said there were no such proposals, said
Marylia Kelley of Livermore-based Tri-Valley Citizens Against a Radioactive
Environment, one of the plaintiffs. But that's not what the record shows.

Some of the information reveals a quantum leap in health and safety risks,
and contradicts statements made by top Energy Department officials as late
as last summer, said Christopher Paine, an NRDC policy analyst.

He prepared an affidavit on the reports to update the groups' lawsuit,
which claims the Energy Department's environmental impact statement on a
10-year, $40 billion upgrade in nuclear weapons research tools is
incomplete.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin will hear arguments in the lawsuit 
June19.

In past hearings related to the case, Sporkin said national security
interests outweigh environmental worries, and denied the activists' request
to halt laser construction pending further environmental study.

Dave Crandall, the Energy Department's director of NIF research, said the
newly declassified documents represent proposals, not plans, and for that
reason were not included in an existing environmental impact statement.

His department's official position is that the feasibility of such
experiments remains highly speculative, and experiments of this type are
not reasonably foreseeable.

He said, however, he could not rule them out as future options.

This is a state-of-the-art facility for things that have never been done
before. What it could evolve to, no one can say, Crandall said.

Plutonium and uranium are the radioactive metals used as explosives in
nuclear bombs, which were designed at Livermore Lab during the Cold War
arms race. The metals remain radioactive for many thousands of years, while
tritium -- commonly used in cancer research -- loses its potency much
faster.

Since a U.S. moratorium on nuclear bomb tests under the Nevada desert was
declared in 1993, Livermore Lab has been developing ways to use lasers and
supercomputers to model the physics of nuclear bomb detonations.

When the National Ignition Facility is completed in 2003, scientists there
will aim 192 laser beams -- each the length of two football fields -- at
pea-sized capsules of radioactive fuel to create miniature stars. The stars
will last less than a billionth of a second, and generate temperatures and
pressures like those in warhead detonations.

The Energy Department says the difficult experiments are designed to
attract top scientists to nuclear weapons work despite the end of the Cold
War, while providing a tool for assessing whether aging bombs in the U.S.
arsenal are still in working order.

Crandall said his department is reviewing its decision not to include
proposals in its environmental impact statement.

But he emphasized that quantities of plutonium and uranium that would be
used in laser experiments -- if they are used at all -- are microscopic.

What people are arguing over here is sort of silly because the amounts are
so small, he said.

The function of NIF is to raise materials to very high energy densities
--higher than what has been done before. That can't be done with large
amounts of material, and that's the point, Crandall said.

While the environmental activists have focused their arguments on the
nuclear reaction that would occur in the laser's target chamber, the
greatest risks come from the possibility of fires elsewhere in the system
-- no worse than risks in other high-tech or industrial facilities,
Crandall said.

The environmental activists contend that the newly declassified
information, however, casts grave doubt on the accuracy of the Energy
Department's previous statements.

The documents also suggest that costs could rise.

To accommodate some of the proposed experiments, new facilities would have
to be added on to the stadium-sized laser complex. Costs could climb by as
much as $300 million, for instance, for just one of the proposed additions,
according to one of the documents, dated Aug. 8, 1995.

In the case of proposals involving lithium hydride, the laser complex's
hazard rating would have to be increased from low to moderate.

This would be done after NIF was built, said the same document, which was
authored by Livermore scientists Hans Kruger, Gregory Simonson and Michael
Tobin, along with eight other scientists from other laboratories.

In their report, the scientists also recommended environmental reviews be
conducted on the proposal.

Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley CAREs believes the more hazardous and more
costly experiments were deliberately left out the environmental review --
in part because NIF was already controversial in its more benign form.

Over the period covered by the newly declassified documents -- most of them
from 1995 -- NIF was being hotly debated in Congress, which came close to
axing money for laser complex construction in 1994 and 1995.

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(c) 1998 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspaper

Marylia Kelley
Tri-Valley CAREs (Citizens Against a Radioactive Environment)
Peace - Justice - Environment since 1983
5720 East Ave. #116, Livermore, CA USA 94550
(510) 443-7148 - phone
(510) 443-0177 - fax