News of the Week times to a total of 13 separate CAS databases. Dialog's suit alleges ACS has used its "monopoly power" over CAS databases to promote its own on-line services and "destroy competition" from Dialog and other vendors. The suit asks for what Dialog claims are actual damages of more than $50 million, plus punitive damages of $100 million, and seeks injunctive relief for its claims. Dialog responded to the ACS countersuit with a press release the same day the countersuit was filed, calling ACS's claims "totally contrived allegations." Dialog's president, Roger K. Summit, charges that "these allegations about royalties are simply a legal tactic to divert attention from the serious antitrust issues raised in our court claim. We have always paid ACS royalties fully and in good faith." The two sides will next see each other in court on Sept. 18. ACS seeks a conference to set up a plan and schedule for "discovery" requests by both sides. ACS and CAS employees already are working intensively to collect a massive amount of information and documents covering the past 25 to 30 years, requested by Dialog on June 11. ACS will file its discovery requests from Dialog in a few days. Dialog has until Sept. 20 to file its initial response to the countersuit, or to request an extension. Richard Seltzer
Big step taken toward global emissions treaty An important step has been taken toward ultimate formulation of a treaty aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. At a meeting in Sundsvall, Sweden, several hundred delegates from 74 countries to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agreed on a draft assessment of the causes of and responses to global warming. IPCC was created under the guidance of the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization. Its draft will form the basis of discussions by a working group drawn from the two organizations, and be featured at the Second World Climate Con6
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ference in Geneva in October. It will be evaluated further in February in Washington, D.C. These and other meetings will determine the wording of the emissions treaty to be presented to ministerial delegates at a 1992 world environment conference in Brazil. The going could be rough, however, if the experience of Sundsvall is any indication. After four days of intensive debate, a consensus of sorts finally was reached at 3:30 AM, after the language interpreters quit. Proceedings were able to continue only by the delegates' agreeing to conduct their deliberations in English. Assessment of two of the IPCC working group reports—one on the science and another on expected impacts of global warming—went forward without any serious holdup.
Deciding what the response strategies to climate change should be, on the other hand, generated the most heated discussions. This was hardly surprising because such strategies could encroach on many and varied vested interests, and are expected to entail the commitment of large sums by the developed countries. "Technology transfer was an issue, the question of financing another," notes Bert Bolin, a Swedish meteorologist and IPCC's chairman. "When it comes to response strategies, that is where there are different views between different countries. If we had had two weeks instead of four days, I think we could have ironed things out better." Nevertheless, he claims "very major progress compared to what we could have imagined happening two years ago." Dermot O'Sullivan
Process removes Sr from nuclear wastes Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory have devised a chemical process for extracting and recovering strontium-90 from liquid nuclear wastes. Argonne chemist E. Philip Horwitz, head of the team, says it could be a significant aid in managing such radioactive wastes. Most strontium-90-containing wastes consist of spent fuel rods from military and commercial reactors that have been dissolved in acid. Proposed regulations call for this liquid waste to be mixed with other ingredients and fused into glass for deep burial. Announcement of this new process follows development of a related process at Argonne for producing yttrium-90 from strontium-90 (C&EN, Aug. 20, page 8). Strontium-90 generates much heat as it decays. The heat buildup complicates the problem of containing and storing the waste. With strontium-90 removed, the remaining wastes can be stored more densely and require less space. Moreover, strontium-90 is a radioactive substance of special concern to public health. Chemically it behaves like calcium and easily can enter the food supply. For example, it regularly showed up in milk and other foods after nuclear tests.
The process, called SREX (pronounced sigh-rex), uses a crown ether of the 18-crown-6 type, dissolved in octanol. With this mixture, and operating in a countercurrent mode, the method is capable of removing more than 99.999% of the strontium-90 from a typical waste stream containing 3M Sr in nitric acid. It's selective for strontium over all other constituents of the stream except barium and technetium. SREX may be used alone or with the TRUEX process—developed earlier by Horwitz and associates at Argonne—which extracts transuranic elements from liquid wastes. In that configuration, the TRUEX raffinate serves as the feed for SREX. Some details of the two processes were presented at the recent American Chemical Society national meeting in Washington, D.C. After extraction, chemically pure strontium-90 can be stripped from the process solvent using water or dilute acid. Some of it, Argonne notes, could find a market in radioisotopic thermal generators, which are used as long-lasting unattended power supplies—on harbor markers, for example. However, its use to simplify nuclear waste management is more important, Horwitz says. Ward Worthy
