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Traditional owners in the NT's Kakadu region have decided to continue a ban on mining at the $5 billion Koongarra uranium deposit. The French company Areva wants to mine 14,000 tonnes of uranium at the site that is surrounded by Kakadu National Park. The lucrative deposit sits three kilometres from Nourlangie Rock - a sacred art site and major tourist attraction. Representatives of traditional owners, the Northern Land Council, Areva and the Territory and Federal governments met in Jabiru and Cooinda this week to discuss the future of the deposit. Traditional owners decided mining should not go ahead at the site

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission manned Incident Response Centers in Atlanta and Rockville, Md., Wednesday night, dispatched its resident inspector and called in criticality safety experts to monitor an alert declared at B&W Nuclear Operations Group in Lynchburg, Va. An alert is the lowest level of NRC emergency classifications for fuel facilities such as B&W. The NRC staff continued to monitor the incident, which began at 7:45 p.m. Wednesday until its successful resolution at 12:35 a.m. Thursday. B&W staff activated the facility's Emergency Operations Center after identifying a potential criticality issue in the Uranium Recovery area. A criticality can occur when highly enriched uranium comes together in sufficient quantity or in a container of correct shape to initiate a chain reaction resulting in either a "burst" or a sustained release of radiation.

The Star's story "$500 million Honeywell project gets final OK" (4/7, Business) neglected to mention a crucial detail regarding plans to close the existing government-owned Kansas City plant and construct a $600 million privately developed industrial park to produce parts for nuclear weapons. The General Services and National Nuclear Security Administrations, the two federal agencies involved in the complex $1.2 billion, 20-year lease-back scheme, are being sued by a coalition of regional and national organizations and local citizens because they have pursued this project without first meeting their obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In similar cases, courts have told government agencies they must start all over again because they decided upon a course of action before doing appropriate NEPA review.

"The Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups applauded the Government Accountability Office's recommendation of an indepdendent advisory board to oversee the Dept. of Labor work in carrying out the goverment's sick nuclear work compensation program. But spokespeople within the network of advoacy groups said more needs to be done. Here is a link to the GAO report, "Energy Employees Compensation: Additional Independent Oversight and Transparency Would Improve Program's Credibility." The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program has the subject of contention and controversy from its creation a decade ago. In a statement, Scott Yundt of Tri-Valley CARES, said: "The GAO's call for scientific oversight of Part E is no small matter. It challenges the current program leadership's understanding of the complexity of the issues and highlights their unwillingness to assure the scientific integrity of the decision. GAO's recommendations support ANWAG's contention that program decisions are often arbitrary and capricious, and without scientific basis. Moreover, it supports the advocates' concerns and those of the program's last medical director, who was forced out of his job when he raised these very issues."