8A
Thursday, February 27. 2003
THE BAT1LI0]
Amarillo may produce bomb triggers
By Betsy Blaney
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Pantex nuclear facility in
Amarillo would be the ideal choice
for a new site to develop plutonium
pits that provide trigger material for
nuclear bombs, U.S. Sen John
Co’rnyn said Wednesday.
Several facilities are vying to
become home for the Department of
Energy’s proposed Modern Pit
Facility, which would process, manu
facture and assemble plutonium pits
for use at Pantex.
Pantex is the nation’s primary
assembly and disassembly plant
for nuclear warheads and current
ly repackages old plutonium pits
to meet new safety standards.
Pantex stores more than 12,000
plutonium pits.
“Building the MPF at Pantex
would eliminate the need to transport
the plutonium pits, increasing safety,
and reducing environmental con
cerns,” Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a
news release. “Pantex is the most
cost-effective site in the nuclear
weapons program, and every oper
ation is designed to protect human
health and safety, the
environment, and
against the threat of
theft or accidental
exposure.”
But some people
who live nearby don’t
want Pantex to get the
facility, which would
create about 1,000jobs.
“We do not need to
build those (pits) in an
area that is primarily
agricultural, breadbas
ket to the world, and
over a major aquifer,”
said Jeri Osborne, who lives near
the plant and calls Cornyn's safety
claims “hogwash.”
The environmental group
Greenpeace also has opposed plans to
build the pit facility.
But Cornyn, who serves on the
Senate Anned Services Committee’s
Strategic Forces subcommittee and
the Environment and the Public
Works Committee’s subcommittee
responsible for nuclear safety, says
safety is the key attrac
tion for Pantex.
He met Tuesday
with acting administra
tor of the National
Nuclear Security
Administration, Linton
S. Brooks, and wrote a
letter outlining benefits
of locating the MPF in
the Panhandle.
The facility would
begin initial operations
in 2018, with full pro
duction slated for 2020.
It would have a
production capacity of at least 125
pits annually and the ability to
expand as needed.
The United States’ pit production
operations were shut down in 1989 at
the energy department’s Rocky Flats
facility near Denver in response to
alleged violations of environmental
statutes.
We do not need
to build those
(pits) into an area
that is... bread
basket to the
world.
Jeri Osborne
area resident
NEWS IN BRIEF
Hutchison fights for Gulf War vet
WASHINGTON (AP) — Although she supports the
death penalty, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said a Gulf
War veteran facing federal execution should be allowed
to get a brain scan before President Bush decides
whether the soldier should be put to death.
Decorated Army veteran Louis Jones Jr. is scheduled
to die by lethal injection March 18 at the federal prison
in Terre Haute, Ind. He has exhausted appeals but has
asked Bush to spare his life.
Jones, 52, has admitted to raping and killing Pvt.
Trade McBride after kidnapping her from Goodfellow
Air Force Base in San Angelo in 1995. But in his clemen
cy petition to Bush, he blames brain damage caused by
exposure to nerve gas during the Gulf War.
"He should not be executed until he has the MRI to
determine if there is brain damage," said Hutchison, a
Texas Republican. MRI is an abbreviation for magnetic
resonance imaging, a high-powered brain scan.
Hutchison has been a champion of research on Gulf
War veterans conducted by Dr. Robert Haley, an epidemi
ologist with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical
Center. She has secured Si 1 million in federal money to
support his studies, including $1 million in the 2003
spending bill that Congress passed this month.
Pipe dreams
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