***************************************************************** 01/29/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.24 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 [southnews] OpEds- Ka-boom! - Iraq posed no WMD threat 2 [southnews] Kay Cites Evidence of Iraq Disarming in 1990s 3 Bush Appears to Back Down on Arms Claim Against Iraq 4 Bush's WMD Misleading Continues to Escalate 5 US: Las Vegas SUN: Kay Admission Fuels WMD Political Fight 6 Las Vegas SUN: Iraqi Minister: WMD Could Still Be Found 7 US: SF Chronicle: Ex-inspector: Intelligence to blame for claim on I 8 Reuters: Iran says IAEA inspections show its peaceful intent 9 AFP: North Korea unlikely to scrap nuclear weapons drive 10 AFP: Top US official to discuss North Korea, Iraq during China visit 11 Guardian Unlimited: Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Released 12 JoongAng Daily: Nuclear arms ¡®are for keeps' 13 Pakistan News: compromise on nuclear programme - Musharraf 14 SF Chronicle: Pakistan's nuclear salesmen are identified / 15 Xinhuanet: Russian nuclear exports up in 2003 16 Daily Times: Libya surrenders more nuclear materials to US 17 Hi Pakistan: Nuclear questions - 18 ITAR-TASS: Russia views IAEA as main tool of non-proliferation contr 19 STRAITS TIMES Nuke exports: China looks beyond big bucks - NUCLEAR REACTORS 20 US: [EMMAS] Bush to eliminate nuclear plant standards 21 US: NRC: NRC to Hold Two Public Meetings to Discuss Inspections at D 22 US: North County Times: Water leak shuts down San Onofre reactor 23 CBC News: Bruce Power eyeing new nuclear reactor 24 Ananova: Wall of fog plan to protect nuclear plant NUCLEAR SAFETY 25 AFP: Marshall Islanders urge US to face up to nuclear test legacy 26 US: NRC: Knowledge Base for Post-Fire Safe-Shutdown Analysis, 27 UK Independent: Hundreds of cancer cases blamed on dentist x-rays 28 AU ABC: Marshall Islands urges US to remain committed to nuclear tes NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 29 US: Deseret news: House OKs rollbacks of waste fee boosts 30 NRC: NRC Issues Environmental Assessment And Safety Evaluation Repor 31 chillicothe gazette: Initiative gathers input on local plant's futur 32 Bellona: Zheleznogorsk Combine expects 13 spent nuclear fuel trains 33 US: Gloucester County Times: Judge due to rule on future of GEMS pla 34 AU ABC: ALP promises to stop SA nuclear waste dump. 35 AU ABC: IAEA investigates planned Woomera nuclear dump. 36 The Australian: Experts slam moves to fast-track nuclear dump 37 The Australian: Nuclear experts slam dump process NUCLEAR WEAPONS US DEPT. OF ENERGY 38 Tri-City Herald: Bidders protest Hanford contract 39 Tri-City Herald: New DOE agency forms in Richland 40 Tri-City Herald: Officials to review vit plant costs 41 Tri-City Herald: Hanford employment to decline in 2006 42 Las Vegas SUN: Plans delayed for nuclear weapons plant 43 Rocky Mountain News: Plans for 'Rocky Flats II' come screeching to h 44 The State: Nuclear projects face delays 45 Carlsbad Current-Argus: Concerns delay pit facility decision 46 Knox News: Secret shipment at Y-12 47 U.S. Newswire: NNSA Delays Modern Pit Facility EIS 48 Knox News: Better run for cover if you see TV crews on Clinton Highw 49 Times-News: 50 Oak Ridger: Nuke facilities' safety rules are targeted 51 amarillo.com: Selection delayed for pit facility 52 Tri-Valley Herald: Livermore lab plays war games 53 Idaho Statesman: INEEL cleanup plan sparks concerns OTHER NUCLEAR 54 weaponization of space 55 Google News Alert - nuclear 56 Xinhuanet: China supports France in ITER project ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [southnews] OpEds- Ka-boom! - Iraq posed no WMD threat Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:28:29 -0600 (CST) ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/7gSolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> It seems there was a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq after all: David Kay. The recently resigned CIA chief weapons inspector has just blown gaping holes in the Bush administration's fundamental justifications for the war on Iraq. *SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER* http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/158125_kayed.html *Iraq posed no WMD threat* /Tuesday, January 27, 2004/ *SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD* It seems there was a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq after all: David Kay. The recently resigned CIA chief weapons inspector has just blown gaping holes in the Bush administration's fundamental justifications for the war on Iraq. In interviews with National Public Radio and The New York Times, Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector hired last summer by CIA Director George Tenet to lead the search for WMDs in Iraq, said he has concluded that much if not all the intelligence used to justify the war was flawed, if not flat wrong. Kay told The Times the Bush administration was almost certainly wrong in its prewar belief that Iraq had any significant stockpiles of illicit weapons. He found the prewar intelligence so far off the mark that he will recommend the process for intelligence gathering and analysis at the CIA and other intelligence agencies be overhauled. Not only was war unnecessary to disarm an already disarmed Iraq but Kay's findings also show that U.N. weapons inspections had driven Iraq to abandon the production of illicit weapons and get rid of its existing stockpiles in the past decade. "They didn't want to get caught," Kay said. So there was not only no imminent WMD threat but even the potential for such a threat was suppressed by the U.N. weapons inspections. The man whose job it was to find the weapons over which we went to war says the weapons weren't there after all. Ka-boom! _______________________________________________________________ Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *The shadow of Iraq* The Hutton saga is a sideshow. The real issue is who will pay the price for war and occupation *Seumas Milne* *Thursday January 29, 2004* *The Guardian* We have been here before. In April 1972, the former brigadier Lord Widgery published his now notorious report into the killing of 14 unarmed civil rights demonstrators by British paratroopers in Northern Ireland three months earlier on Bloody Sunday. Widgery cleared the soldiers of blame, insisting, in defiance of a mass of evidence, that they had only opened fire after coming under attack. The Widgery report was so widely seen as a flagrant establishment whitewash, and continued to be such a focus of nationalist anger, that a quarter of a century later Tony Blair felt compelled to set up another Bloody Sunday inquiry under Lord Saville, still sitting today. Lord Hutton - a scion of the Northern Irish protestant ascendancy who himself represented British soldiers at the Widgery inquiry - has, if anything, outdone Widgery in his service to the powers that be. Hutton's embrace of any construction of the evidence surrounding David Kelly's death that might be helpful to the government is breathtaking in its sweep. Instead of a prime minister who took the country to war on the basis of discredited dossiers about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, it is the BBC that now finds itself in the dock - and its chairman who was last night forced to resign. Hutton's report could scarcely have been more favourable if it had been drafted, or even sexed up, by Tony Blair's former spinmeister Alastair Campbell himself. The prime minister certainly knew his man when he appointed the one-time Diplock court judge to head the inquiry into Dr Kelly's death. Fortunately, we have the inquiry transcripts to test against Lord Hutton's almost comically tendentious conclusions. We know, for example, that Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell asked the joint intelligence committee's John Scarlett to redraft that part of the September dossier which suggested Saddam Hussein might use chemical and biological weapons "if he believes his regime is under threat" - and Scarlett did so, by taking out the qualifications. We know that Campbell asked Scarlett to change a claim that the Iraqi military "may be able" to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes to "are able". But Lord Hutton is of the view that this is not at all the "sexing up" that the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan quoted Kelly as complaining about. We also know that Blair chaired the meeting at which the strategy for outing Kelly was adopted, even though the prime minister later denied having anything to do with it. But, in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of Lord Hutton, that was entirely consistent and honourable. There are different ways of reading the spectacular one-sidedness of Hutton's conclusions. One is that the Ulster law lord might be a touch naive about the seamier side of 21st century political life; another, that the legalistic defence offered by Blair, Hoon and senior civil servants naturally appealed to a conservative judge far more than the BBC journalists' case that the main thrust of their story was in fact right; a third that, as a lifelong servant of the British crown, he knew where his duty lay when the credibility of the state was at risk. But whatever the mixture of motives, Hutton's unqualified endorsement of the government's behaviour is bound, in the current climate, to be widely regarded in the country as a cover-up. It will have no credibility for millions who opposed the war on Iraq; it will merely add to the sense that the political system is unable to deal with the crisis triggered by Britain's participation in the illegal invasion and occupation. The Hutton saga has in reality been a very British sideshow to that central issue - and the now barely-contested consensus that the reasons given for joining the war were false. Next to the national and global implications of what has been done - and the more than 15,000 people estimated to have died as a result - a loosely worded 6.07am BBC radio broadcast, and even the grim death of Dr Kelly, pale into insignificance. By setting up an inquiry into the Kelly affair, Blair created a partially successful diversion from the far more serious - and more threatening to him personally - questions raised by the war itself. Those are the questions - rather than the BBC's systems of editorial control - that need urgently to be addressed. Armed with Lord Hutton's report, Tony Blair will now try to "draw a line" under the war and "move on", as he likes to say. That will be impossible. The failure to turn up any of the weapons used as the pretext for Britain's unprovoked attack on Iraq last March has been cruelly highlighted by the queue of US officials and politicians now prepared to concede publicly that they didn't actually exist. Last summer, Blair was telling us to wait for the Iraq Survey Group to produce his smoking guns. Now David Kay, who has been in charge of the group, says of the phantasmic Iraqi weapons: "I don't think they existed". His replacement, Charles Duelfer, thinks "they're probably not there". Meanwhile, the misery of the occupation of Iraq grows, as US and British claims to have liberated the country are exposed as a fraud. While the resistance continues to inflict daily casualties on the occupation forces in the centre and north of Iraq - regardless of the capture of Saddam Hussein - the Shia religious leader Ayatollah Ali Sistani has put himself at the head of a mass popular movement for democracy, opposed by the very US occupiers who insisted they were invading to trigger a democratic revolution across the Middle East. There are now around 13,000 Iraqis imprisoned without trial; evidence of torture and brutality by US and British occupation forces is growing; and the CIA has warned that Iraq is at risk of slipping into a three-way civil war. For most Iraqis, life has got worse under the occupation and even on the crudest calculus, many more have been killed since Saddam Hussein was overthrown than in his last period in power: as the US-based Human Rights Watch pointed out this week, Saddam's worst atrocities date from the days when he was backed by the west. This is the legacy of the decision by Tony Blair and George Bush to invade a country that posed no threat either to Britain or to the US. There is no way in which the Iraq war can somehow be put behind us. That is not only because of what is now happening on the ground in Iraq, but because of the increased threat of terror attacks it has brought about, the precedent of pre-emptive war it has created, and the poison released in the British political system by a war launched on a false prospectus. Nor is it enough for the prime minister to say he believed there was a threat at the time. If that is the case, he is guilty of reckless incompetence. The priority must now be to bring the Iraqi occupation to an end and for those who launched the war to be held to account. That process could begin in Britain with the independent inquiry into the war demanded by the opposition parties and anti-war movement. But it needs to go further. The Hutton report is no more likely to lift Iraq's shadow from British public life than Widgery did Bloody Sunday's. Until the prime minister who took the decision to go to war has been brought to account, that shadow will remain. s.milne@guardian.co.uk Guardian Unlimited ) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 The archives of South News can be found at http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/ Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/southnews/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: southnews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 2 [southnews] Kay Cites Evidence of Iraq Disarming in 1990s Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 00:43:47 -0600 (CST) ** U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq found new evidence that Iraq quietly destroyed some stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in the mid-1990s, former chief inspector David Kay said yesterday. The discovery means that inspectors have not only failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but also have found exculpatory information -- contemporaneous documents and confirmations from interviews with Iraqis -- demonstrating that Iraq make efforts to disarm well before President Bush began making the case for war. *Kay Cites Evidence Of Iraq Disarming* Action Taken in '90s, Ex-Inspector Says By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, January 28, 2004; Page A01 U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq found new evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime quietly destroyed some stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in the mid-1990s, former chief inspector David Kay said yesterday. The discovery means that inspectors have not only failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but also have found exculpatory information -- contemporaneous documents and confirmations from interviews with Iraqis -- demonstrating that Hussein did make efforts to disarm well before President Bush began making the case for war. The fact that Iraq disarmed at least partially before 1998 but did not turn over records to U.N. inspectors even when threatened with war has led Kay to conclude that Hussein was bluffing about his weapons capability to maintain an aura of power. Kay, who will testify this morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview yesterday that inspectors recovered only partial records detailing the destruction of some of Iraq's forbidden weapons. But he said that while the full truth may not be known for years, if ever, that ambiguity should not be used to delay an examination of why the allegations about Hussein's weapons were wrong. "If the weapons programs existed on the scale we anticipated," Kay said, "we would have found something that leads to that conclusion. Instead, we found other evidence that points to something else." Kay reiterated his view that 85 percent of the Iraq Survey Group's job has been completed and that "the major pieces of the puzzle" have been covered. "We will be digging up smaller pieces for the next 15 years, but we should not wait for every piece and not be able to begin to reconstruct what happened," he said. Kay added that he is "afraid that ambiguity would be used as a delaying function by some people to delay trying to find out what went wrong." Kay's revelation that Iraq had documented the destruction of its weapons is the most recent of several disclosures he has made since his resignation Friday as special adviser to CIA Director George J. Tenet that have put the White House on the defensive. Kay's statements have also enlivened the Democratic presidential race and caused a wave of recriminations from the CIA and on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are demanding a probe to determine whether the administration or the intelligence services are to blame for what has turned out to be false accusations about Iraq's weapons programs. Bush, fielding numerous questions in the Oval Office based on Kay's earlier assertion that there are no weapons stockpiles in Iraq, said yesterday that it is premature to form judgments. "I think it's very important for us to let the Iraq Survey Group do its work so we can find out the facts and compare the facts to what was thought." Though he did not repeat his earlier statements that forbidden weapons may yet be found in Iraq, Bush said: "I said in the run-up that Saddam was a grave and gathering danger -- that's what I said. And I believed it then, and I know it was true now. And as Mr. Kay said, that Iraq was a dangerous place." In a private meeting between Bush and congressional leaders, Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) told Bush it is important to determine what went wrong to produce the flawed prewar weapons charges. Democratic sources said that prompted a testy exchange between Bush and Daschle. In his interview with The Post, as in his other interviews, Kay put the blame for the flawed weapons charges on the intelligence community, not on the Bush administration. Both the CIA and opposition Democrats -- in Congress and on the campaign trail -- took issue with that position. Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean blamed the White House for the false accusations. "I think the biggest problem with David Kay's resignation is that the vice president evidently went to the CIA and influenced the writing of intelligence reports," he said in a radio interview. "In other words, the administration did cook the books." Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said: "We were told by the administration 'they [the Iraqis] have a 45-minute capacity to deploy weapons of mass destruction.' They didn't. We were told that they had aerial devices that could spread these weapons over our troops. They didn't." Kay's criticism of the quality of prewar intelligence has angered members of the intelligence community. He called U.S. intelligence "inaccurate" Monday on NBC, adding, "We need to understand why that was." Yesterday, Kay broadened his statement: "Everyone was wrong. Outside experts like myself and other intelligence agencies . . . including the Germans and French believed he [Hussein] had weapons." U.S. officials criticized Kay for saying that 85 percent of the work was done. One official noted that on Nov. 2, in criticizing a story in The Washington Post, Kay said: "We have much work left to do before any conclusions can be reached on the state of possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program efforts." Another official familiar with the work of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said that there are millions of pages of documents still to be translated from Arabic, that detainees and scientists need to be questioned, and that the review of weapons sites is ongoing. In the interview yesterday, Kay said the ISG had found some "contemporary documents" that proved Iraq destroyed weapons in the mid-1990s -- steps that were not reported to U.N. inspectors. Senior Iraqi scientists interviewed by Kay admitted hiding their chemical and biological weapons programs in the early 1990s. In 1995, however, Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamal, who directed the illegal weapons programs, defected. At about that time, the scientists said they tried unsuccessfully to convince U.N. inspectors that they had destroyed their weapons and agents. They tried to "come clean, but we wouldn't believe them," Kay said. Kay said the Iraqi scientists did not have complete records to back up their claims because the destruction had taken place under pressure to keep it secret from U.N. inspectors. In addition to documents, Kay said, ISG members interviewed people who confirmed some of the destruction, but far from all of it. "That will be impossible, and there will always be some doubts," Kay said. Kay said he believes Hussein may have been pursuing a course of "constructive ambiguity" before the war, bluffing about having weapons to give the illusion of power and to put up a deterrent. "Saddam wanted to enjoy the benefits of having chemical and biological weapons without having to pay the costs," Kay said. The retired chief weapons inspector said he has been somewhat surprised by the reaction to his conclusions in recent days. "I thought I was not saying anything more than the obvious," he said. In response to the Kay revelations, White House officials and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said yesterday that they never claimed that Hussein represented an "imminent" threat. "I think some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent,' " White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "Those were not words we used. We used 'grave and gathering threat.' " Though Bush did not use the word "imminent," he said in a major speech in October 2002 that waiting to confront Hussein was "the riskiest of all options." The United States, he said, "must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. . . . We have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring." More critical information about the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons program is expected to emerge from a report to be released today in London by a senior British judge who investigated the suicide of a scientist who had leaked information about the Blair government's white paper on Iraq. The report is expected to examine the claim that Iraq could prepare to launch its chemical weapons within 45 minutes, a charge Bush had echoed. ) 2004 The Washington Post Company ______________________________________________________________ Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Last of the believers* Only Blair now insists there were Iraqi WMDs. But even claiming an honest mistake will no longer wash *Jonathan Freedland* *Wednesday January 28, 2004* *The Guardian* It's getting embarrassing. Anybody who's anybody now admits that there are no, and were no, weapons of mass destruction worth the name in Iraq. The roll-call of converts to what used to be the exclusive position of the anti-war camp gets more impressive by the day. David Kay, President Bush's handpicked arms inspector and the former chief weapons monitor of the CIA - hardly a limp-wristed European peacenik - quit his post at the head of the Iraq Survey Group last week, concluding that there are no Iraqi WMD to be found: "I don't think they existed," he said bluntly. Forty eight hours later, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state who a year ago was holding the UN security council rapt with his slide show on Saddam's weapons' concealment, complete with scary satellite shots of secret arms factories, admitted that such weapons may never be found. Even the president himself seems to have got the message. In his state of the union address last week, Bush knew better than to bang the tired drum of 2003. In a phrase so qualified as to be comic, he spoke only of "weapons of mass destruction-related programme activities". This is one verdict we do not need to hear from Lord Hutton at lunchtime today. Everyone gets it already - there were no weapons of mass destruction; everyone, that is, but the British government. Like the Japanese soldier of cliche, still shooting from his cave because no one has told him the war is over, Tony Blair and faithful lieutenant Jack Straw are sticking to the cause long after their commanders have surrendered. Their tenacity in the face of all the evidence is almost touching. Blair still says he has "absolutely no doubt". Straw wobbles a bit on the radio, admitting it's "disappointing" that no weapons have yet been found, but he keeps the faith. Washington may have abandoned the pre-war script, but their loyal retainers in London are staying true. They are like a pair of old Communist cadres defending some appalling Stalinist action, unaware that the party line from Moscow haschanged. It might be a technique. Journalist Peter Stothard, who followed Blair during 30 crucial days in the lead-up to the war, told the excellent Channel 4 documentary, What Hutton Won't Tell You, that Blair deliberately poses as decisive, even when he is uncertain - just to ensure he carries the day. It worked for him then, his eye-blazing conviction of the danger posed by Saddam; it persuaded many Labour waverers that the PM must have known something they didn't. But right now the pose looks silly. So why does Blair not just come clean and admit he got it wrong? One factor could be the Hutton inquiry itself. Downing Street might have calculated that such an admission would have weakened its position, or at least confused things, during the long wait for today. Better to see what his lordship decides, and then concede what has to be conceded. Hutton apart, a recognition that the WMD do not exist would force a painful choice. Blair would have to admit either that he knew they were not there - and that he exaggerated or lied when he said they were - or that he made an honest mistake. The first confession is politically unthinkable: as Blair told Lord Hutton from the witness box, a prime minister proven to have deceived the country into war would have to resign. But the second option is not much easier. For one thing, Tony Blair would have to confess that he has poorer judgment of military and international affairs than the majority of the British public, who told pollsters for months that they did not consider Saddam an immediate threat. He would have to concede that every one of those demonstrators who filled central London last February had a better grasp of Iraqi's military weight than he did. If it stuck in his craw to accept that he had been wrong to predict that Ken Livingstone would be a "disaster" for London, imagine how he would face the entire anti-war movement and say, out loud: "When it came to weapons of mass destruction, you were right and I was wrong." And there are greater difficulties than mere pride. For the honest mistake argument rests on the premise that the PM did not mislead the public into war, but was himself misled. The culprit is obvious. As the former defence minister Lewis Moonie puts it: "Sooner or later we may well have to say, 'Yep, the intelligence was faulty.'" In other words, Blair may have to argue that he made the best call he could, based on the intelligence placed before him. If that material was flawed, that is not his fault but the fault of the intelligence services. Downing Street would have some allies for this approach. In Washington, congressional Republicans are moving fast to brand Iraq a systemic intelligence failure and to dump the blame on the CIA. (Even David Kay has said that since the entire intelligence community reckoned Saddam had weapons, a review is needed of the way such work is done.) But there is a large flaw in the blame-the-spooks argument. For no one believes that the security services were quietly making their own inquiries into the situation in Iraq and then simply presented their best guess as to what was really going on. On the contrary, we now know that on both sides of the Atlantic the intelligence agencies were under two kinds of pressure. First, they were urged to find information that would cast the worst possible light on Baghdad and its intentions. Witness the joint intelligence committee's "last call" to all agencies to come up with some thing juicy to enliven the September 2002 dossier. Witness too the office of special plans set up in Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon. Former official Karen Kwiatowski told Channel 4 that that body was specifically tasked with "cherry-picking" from the raw intelligence data to find items that might harden the case for a pre-emptive war. Second, the intelligence services were pressured to present their findings - themselves the result of pressure - in the strongest form possible. That much we know from Alastair Campbell's now-infamous memo to JIC chairman John Scarlett, "suggesting" no fewer than nine changes to the wording of the dossier, each one proposing a toughening of language. Neither of these actions - sending the spooks in a specific direction, or beefing up the presentation of their research - are crimes. But they do undermine the claim that the government was simply making a cool, disinterested judgment based on the evidence laid before it. Tony Blair needs us to believe that he was confronted with evidence of a threat from Iraq and made a decision, in good faith, to tackle it. But most signs in both the US and Britain point in the opposite direction: that first came a decision to take action and next came pressure on the spooks to hunt down the evidence - even single-sourced, hearsay evidence - that might justify it. It is unlikely that Lord Hutton will draw this conclusion today: it is probably beyond his remit. But long after the detail of memos and dossiers and emails are forgotten, a plain fact will stand out for future historians to see with perfect clarity. In 2002-03, governments in London and Washington stretched every sinew to persuade their publics that war was necessary because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But Iraq did not and so the war was fought on a false basis. For that, surely, there must be a reckoning. j.freedland@guardian.co.uk Guardian Unlimited ) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ________________________________________________________ *Vetting WMD report a farce: Brown* Herald Sun 29jan04 THE vetting of a report on what the Federal Government knew about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction made the inquiry a farce, Greens Senator Bob Brown said today. Senator Brown said the joint parliamentary report should not be vetted by either Australia's intelligence services or the Government before its expected release in March. "This effective censorship of the report simply continues the travesty of Prime Minister (John) Howard's false claims at the time," he said. "That a parliamentary committee should allow itself to be vetted by either the intelligence services or the Government makes it a farce. "Surely the members on that committee have the maturity and the wisdom to know what is in the public interest all the way through." But the committee chairman, Liberal MP David Jull, has defended the need for the report to be vetted. "There is a requirement in the Act that we don't give away any of our secrets or compromise any people who may be involved in the reporting of Australian intelligence," he told ABC Radio. Andrew Wilkie, a former intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessment, told the parliamentary inquiry last year that the Government had deliberately skewed the truth and misled the public over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before sending troops to Iraq. Yesterday in Britain, judge Brian Hutton announced the results of a similar inquiry into the British Government's knowledge of the threat posed by Iraq. His report attacked the BBC for reporting the British Government had "sexed up" a pre-war dossier about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Senator Brown said he supported calls by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War for a proper judicial inquiry to find out if the public had been misled about the Federal Government's knowledge of Iraq's weapons. "It is not up to the security services in this country to be telling parliamentarians what they can or cannot from a committee divulge to the public, that's the responsibility of the parliamentarians," he said. "There ought to be an independent judicial inquiry which can, amongst other things, vet the security services, the personnel and their information either in or out of camera." The archives of South News can be found at http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/ Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/southnews/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: southnews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 3 Bush Appears to Back Down on Arms Claim Against Iraq Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 10:37:16 -0600 (CST) Bush Appears to Back Down on Arms Claim Against Iraq By David E. Sanger The New York Times Wednesday 28 January 2004 WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 President Bush declined Tuesday to repeat his claims that evidence that Saddam Hussein had illicit weapons would eventually be found in Iraq, but he insisted that the war was nonetheless justified because Mr. Hussein posed "a grave and gathering threat to America and the world." Asked by reporters if he would repeat earlier expressions of confidence that the weapons would be found in light of recent statements by the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, David A. Kay, that Mr. Hussein had gotten rid of them well before the war, Mr. Bush did not answer directly. "I think it's very important for us to let the Iraq Survey Group do its work, so we can find out the facts and compare the facts to what was thought," he said at an appearance with the visiting president of Poland. Mr. Bush praised Dr. Kay's work and came to the defense of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose reporting on Iraq's weapons programs Dr. Kay sharply criticized in interviews over the weekend. "These are unbelievably hard-working, dedicated people who are doing a great job for America," Mr. Bush said of the intelligence community. Yet at the White House and on Capitol Hill, many officials said it was obvious that the intelligence reports about Iraq had been deeply flawed. They said they doubted that Mr. Bush would have the luxury of waiting to confront the issue. Democrats demanded that an independent panel examine how the National Intelligence Estimate the 2002 document that Mr. Bush used as the basis of his comments that Iraq posed a direct threat to the United States and its allies could have been so flawed. The White House expressed no interest in the formation of such a panel. "I think it is critical that we follow up and find out what went wrong," the Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, said on Tuesday, before meeting with Mr. Bush with a group of other Congressional leaders from both parties. At the meeting, Mr. Daschle noted that Congressional leaders had depended on sound intelligence in voting on the war. Officials knowledgeable about the exchange said Mr. Bush interrupted Mr. Daschle and argued that the Iraq war was a "worthy" effort and that the administration had not manipulated the evidence. The president also said he had not given up the search for the weapons. Dr. Kay resigned last week as head of the Iraq Survey Group. In an interview with Reuters last week, he said one reason he stepped down was that his team had been diverted to some degree to help battle the insurgency. In private, some administration officials acknowledged Tuesday that Dr. Kay's conclusion that the intelligence was deeply flawed was becoming an unwelcome political problem that the White House would have to confront, either now or when the presidential campaign heats up. Two administration officials reported that a debate has erupted within the administration over whether Mr. Bush should soon call for some kind of reform of the intelligence-gathering process. But the officials said Mr. Bush's aides were searching for a formula that would allow them to acknowledge intelligence-gathering problems without blaming the Central Intelligence Agency or the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, who approved that National Intelligence Estimate. "We spent the summer with the White House and the agency spitting at each other," said one official, recalling the arguments over who was to blame for Mr. Bush's inaccurate accusation in the State of the Union address last year that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy nuclear material in Africa. "We can't afford another of those." Two Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that senior members of the administration continue to exaggerate evidence about unconventional weapons. "Just within the last few days, Vice President Cheney has said that it is clear that a couple of vehicles that were found in Iraq were mobile biological weapons labs, exactly the opposite of what David Kay is reportedly saying," said Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, said the "overwhelming question" surrounding the intelligence issue remained "was this a predetermined war or not?" In a recent interview, Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who won his party's New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, said he had been "repeatedly misled" about the evidence by a number of administration officials. He cited Mr. Cheney, but also noted that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell who had been the most cautious in the administration about the evidence told him that the reason to vote to authorize military action was Mr. Hussein's weapons ability and that other reasons, including bringing democracy to Iraq, were secondary. But in public on Tuesday, Mr. Bush, while careful in his claims, made it clear that he had no regrets. "There is just no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a grave and gathering threat to America and the world," Mr. Bush told reporters as he met with the Polish president, Aleksander Kwasniewski. "There is just no doubt in my mind. And I say that based upon intelligence that I saw prior to the decision to go into Iraq, and I say that based upon what I know today." Yet Mr. Bush's own words on the subject have been a moving target. In the State of the Union address a week ago, he referred to "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" that inspectors had found, drawing the wording from Dr. Kay's interim report last fall. He did not mention Dr. Kay's other conclusions: that those activities were largely in research and development, that most made little progress, and that they were intended to deceive Mr. Hussein into thinking that he was spending money fruitfully. Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, argued Tuesday that Mr. Bush had never said that Iraq posed an "imminent" threat, but only a "grave and growing" one. That may be literally correct, but both Mr. Bush and his aides made it clear many times that they believed Mr. Hussein already had unconventional weapons. For example, on Oct. 7, 2002, during a speech in Cincinnati that laid out how America was threatened by Mr. Hussein, Mr. Bush said: "If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today and we do does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking to the House Armed Services Committee on Sept. 18, 2002, said, "We do know that the Iraqi regime currently has chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction." Such statements were important then because Mr. Bush had to convince the country and his allies that, especially in the post-Sept. 11 world, he could not wait to build a broader coalition against Mr. Hussein. Moreover, international law has been far more forgiving of "pre-emptive war" against a country about to begin a strike of its own than it is of "preventive war" against a country that may, some day, pose a challenge to another state. That is seen more as an act of raw power than of self-defense. ***************************************************************** 4 Bush's WMD Misleading Continues to Escalate Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:47:05 -0600 (CST) =============================== THE DAILY MIS-LEAD < http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=16312 > =============================== Watch MoveOn.org's new video for more on the president's misleading of America on Iraq. --> http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=16313 BUSH'S WMD MISLEADING CONTINUES TO ESCALATE Faced with evidence that no WMD existed in Iraq before the war, President Bush is citing different rationales for going to war. He said this week that the war was justified because "the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein." The president's recent statements, however, are belied by what he's said in the past. A look at the historical record shows President Bush justified an invasion of Iraq by making unequivocal statements that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD that threatened all Americans, even claiming that inspectors had found WMD when they had not. On November 23, 2002, President Bush said a war was justified because there was "an urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands." In early January 2003, President Bush said, "The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. They not only have weapons of mass destruction, they used weapons of mass destruction...That's why I say Iraq is a threat, a real threat." And in his speech announcing the invasion, President Bush said the war was justified because Americans were "living at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." None of these assertions have since been substantiated. The president and his advisers had been warned repeatedly in the fall of 2002 by the intelligence community, including the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, that the WMD case was weak. However, ten days after the war began, Secretary Rumsfeld asserted the U.S had pinpointed the location of WMD, saying, "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." Less than two months later, President Bush went on television to claim that WMD had been found, saying, "we found the weapons of mass destruction" - an assertion that was false. Asked a follow-up question, the president again contended they'd been found, saying, "For those who say we haven't found [them], they're wrong, we found them." The statement has not been repeated since by the Administration or supported by the Iraq Survey Group's months-long search for WMD. Independent observers are speaking out about the administration's pre-war assertions on Iraq versus the reality that's emerging. The respected Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote that the administration "systematically misrepresented the threat" from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The Army War College called the war "unnecessary," and the President's own Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board believes the White House was so desperate "to grab onto something affirmative" to demonstrate Iraq's weapons that it ignored intelligence reports undermining that claim. Watch MoveOn.org's new video for more on the president's misleading of America on Iraq. --> http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=16313 Visit Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion. --> < http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=16314 > =========================================================== Subscribe to the Daily Mislead! Go to http://www.misleader.org and enter your e-mail address in the "Receive the Daily Mislead" box in the top-left corner of the page. To unsubscribe send an email to latest@daily.misleader.org with only the word "remove" in the subject line of your e-mail, or visit http://daily.misleader.org/unsubscribe/ and follow the instructions listed there. ***************************************************************** 5 Las Vegas SUN: Kay Admission Fuels WMD Political Fight Today: January 29, 2004 at 6:35:07 PST By KEN GUGGENHEIM ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - The man who led the CIA's search for banned weapons in Iraq entered the politically charged debate over President Bush's decision to go to war, suggesting an independent inquiry into exaggerated intelligence estimates of Saddam Hussein's fighting capability. Questioned by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., David Kay said he thought an outside inquiry would be important to determine why intelligence failed and how it could be improved. Such an investigation would give Congress and the public more confidence, Kay said. It wasn't immediately clear what entity would undertake such an inquiry, but the Senate Intelligence Committee already has commenced its own effort. The committee's chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., told Kay Wednesday, "I personally take some umbrage at people who for one reason or another think we need to have an outside investigation before our inquiry is even complete." That inquiry is nearing completion. But the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said Kay's testimony showed a need to expand the review. Rockefeller said the inquiry should examine whether the administration manipulated intelligence. Either way, Kay's statements provided ammunition to both Republicans and Democrats as discussion continues here - and on the Campaign 2004 hustings - over whether the administration exaggerated the need to topple Saddam. The White House opposes an outside investigation, noting that the CIA is conducting its own intelligence review and that the hunt for weapons continues. "I think we will want to get the facts. We will want to allow the Iraq Survey Group to do its work," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It will be important to have a comparison of what we found and what we thought we would find, when we have the evidence and the basis on which to do that," she said. "That's going to be very important for the country and for the world. Nobody will want to know more about what we found than this president and this administration." Under questioning by Democrats, Kay acknowledged that he found no evidence that Iraq had chemical or biological stockpiles - even small ones. He offered doubts about administration claims that trailers and aluminum tubes were intended for weapons of mass destruction and he said U.N. inspections, belittled by the administration, "achieved quite a bit." But Kay agreed with Republican senators that there is no doubt that Saddam had ambitions to use such weapons - that in fact he had used such weapons in the past. Kay said Saddam had secret weapons development programs that violated U.N. resolutions, and that the world is much safer without his government in place. "I have said I actually think this may be one of those cases where it was even more dangerous than we thought," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Kay, a former chief U.N. nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq, resigned Friday from his position as the CIA's special adviser for the weapons search, citing a decision to reduce resources for the search. At the hearing and in recent interviews, Kay said he found no evidence that Saddam possessed the banned weapons in recent years. Bush's public rationale for going to war was based mostly on claims that Iraq's stockpile of weapons posed a clear threat to the United States and others. At the hearing, Kay said he does not think analysts were pressured to shape evidence to make the case for war. "I deeply think that is the wrong explanation," Kay said. "You know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that," he said. Kay described a broad intelligence failure on Iraq. "We were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here," he said. He blamed a lack of human spying inside Iraq and inadequate money for U.S. intelligence agencies. He also said he believes analysts have been asked to read too much into limited data and depended too much on data provided by U.N. inspectors. Kay said his team wrestled with the question of why Saddam did not try to save himself by proving he no longer had stockpiles of banned weapons. Kay said Saddam likely did not want to appear to be caving in to the United States and the United Nations. He also wanted to use the threat of chemical weapons as leverage against his domestic enemies. And he agreed with the committee chairman, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., that because Iraq is so large, there's a "theoretical possibility" that banned weapons could still turn up somewhere. But Kay expressed reservations when Warner said, "Maybe we'd better not pronounce, `We're all wrong,' yet." "I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there," Kay said. -- ***************************************************************** 6 Las Vegas SUN: Iraqi Minister: WMD Could Still Be Found Today: January 29, 2004 at 8:55:08 PST By VESELIN ZHELEV ASSOCIATED PRESS SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) - Iraq's foreign minister warned Thursday that weapons of mass destruction could still be found in Iraq, but the search could take time because of the sophistication of Saddam Hussein's regime. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari made his comments only days after the expert who led the CIA's search for banned weapons in Iraq said he found no evidence Saddam possessed such weapons in recent years. That expert, David Kay, said he found no traces of chemical or biological stockpiles. But Zebari said that because Saddam used chemical gas against his own people, he remains certain that stockpiles of such weapons still exist. "We in Iraq have seen Saddam Hussein develop, manufacture and use these weapons against us with impunity," Zebari said. "The system of hiding, of concealment was very sophisticated in Iraq. So I really believe some of those weapons could be found." Zebari, a Kurd and longtime critic of Saddam, has said in the past the Iraqi ruler had such weapons and used them. Saddam's regime used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and killed an estimated 5,000 Kurdish civilians in a chemical attack on the northern city of Halabja in 1988. Zebari also commented on an Iraqi newspaper report that Saddam's regime bribed prominent foreigners with oil money, saying "it was a standard practice of Saddam's regime" to buy the support of foreign officials and business people with oil bribes. The allegations were published this week in Al-Mada, one of several Iraqi newspapers that have sprung up since the fall of Saddam's regime in April. The newspaper offered a list of about 270 former Cabinet officials, legislators, political activists and journalists from more than 46 countries allegedly involved in the scam. The paper said those people were suspected of profiting from Iraqi oil sales that Saddam allegedly offered them in exchange for cultivating political and popular support in their countries. Iraq's Governing Council has asked the Oil Ministry to gather information on allegations, said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the U.S.-appointed council. -- ***************************************************************** 7 SF Chronicle: Ex-inspector: Intelligence to blame for claim on Iraq / Kay says Bush team didn't push analysts Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau Thursday, January 29, 2004 [San Francisco Chronicle] Washington -- Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told a Senate committee Wednesday that the intelligence community had been wrong about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and that now it was vital to find out how such a failure could occur. "It turns out we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing," Kay said, including himself along with U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as those of France and Germany, which opposed the war. But the testimony of Kay, who resigned last week as head of the Iraq Survey Group after nearly seven months of leading an intense, 1,400-agent investigation, did not provide Democrats with the fodder they sought to accuse the Bush administration of exaggerating the weapons' evidence or pressuring intelligence agents to come up with a justification to invade Iraq. "I deeply think that is a wrong explanation," Kay said. "I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed. ... And never, not in a single case, was the explanation, 'I was pressured to do this.' " Prodded by Republicans to speculate that weapons stockpiles still may be found in Iraq, Kay said that remained a "theoretical possibility," but he emphasized that the search had been "sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there." Kay said he would support an independent commission called for by Democrats to investigate the intelligence failure. Republican Sen. John McCain also said he would support the creation of such a panel. But the White House quickly dismissed the suggestion, arguing that the Iraq Survey Group must be given time to complete its work -- a task that could take the rest of the year. Kay's revelations have stirred partisan furor over whether President Bush deliberately misled Congress and the public by insisting that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent threat" to the United States that warranted a pre-emptive invasion. As the alleged stockpiles of anthrax, botulinum toxin, VX nerve agents and mustard gas that Bush warned of before the war have failed to materialize, he has shifted his rationale for the invasion to the removal of a brutal dictator and planting democracy in the Middle East. Democratic presidential candidates have seized on Kay's statements since his resignation last week from the weapons search, pounding the president for leading the nation into war under false pretenses. The front-runner, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, speaking Wednesday as he flew to St. Louis to campaign in the Missouri primary, said Kay's testimony called into question the integrity of American intelligence, and he urged the administration to come clean. "I think the administration owes the entire country the full explanation for this war -- not just their own exaggerations," Kerry said. "... What's astonishing is that after World War II, at Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt himself wanted accountability. This administration has been fighting that accountability, and that runs against the interests of the majority of Americans.'' Kerry was among the Democrats who voted in favor of the October 2002 congressional resolution giving the president permission to use military force in Iraq. The election-year warfare was on full display in Kay's first public testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, where Republicans defended the administration and pointed to Kay's judgment that Iraq posed a threat, while Democrats recited assertions from Bush and all his top officials that Iraq had enormous weapons stockpiles. "Before the war, the administration, in order to support its decision to go to war, made numerous vivid, unqualified statements about Iraq having in its possession weapons of mass destruction -- not 'programs,' not 'program- related activities' and not 'intentions,' but actual weapons," said ranking committee Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan. Levin noted that just last week, Vice President Dick Cheney said two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological weapons laboratories that provided "conclusive evidence" of Hussein's programs for weapons of mass destruction. Kay said, however, that the vans might have been used to produce rocket fuel or hydrogen for weather balloons and that "the consensus opinion is that . .. their actual intended use was not for the production of biological weapons." Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Cheney had gotten his information from the Central Intelligence Agency, which Roberts said still maintained the vans were weapons labs. Kay responded that "it's been an ongoing struggle to understand the two vans" and that opinion on them was divided. He also said Iraq had been in clear violation of United Nations resolutions calling for it to disarm, and that Iraq had had an active program to convert ricin, a deadly chemical, into a weapons material, which was only interrupted by the invasion. The bigger danger, he suggested, may have been that the Hussein regime became so internally corrupt that individuals "out for their own protection" may have been able to sell weapons to outsiders. "I think the world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein," Kay said. Kay also suggested that one reason for the astonishing intelligence failure was that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks made officials at all levels of government much less willing to risk overlooking any evidence. Blamed for not "connecting the dots" before Sept. 11, he said, officials responded by overreacting and seeing connections that didn't really exist. "It is my belief that regardless of political party, after 9/11, the shadowing effects of that horrible tragedy changed, as a nation, the level of risk that all of us are prepared to run," Kay said. Still, he said, the problem with analysts is that "you do not want them to overanalyze the data. If there are only a few dots connected, maybe they don't belong connected." He also blamed a U.S. "addiction" to information from U.N. weapons inspectors, who were ejected from Iraq in 1998, leaving the CIA with no spies on the ground and forcing reliance on foreign intelligence services. Kay said rampant looting and deliberate destruction of evidence of Iraq's weapons programs after the invasion -- which he said was "designed by (Iraq's) security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program" -- meant that many questions would remain unanswered. Kay said he had resigned last week as chief weapons inspector because the administration shifted personnel and resources away from the weapons search to deal with the security crisis in Baghdad. His replacement, Charles A. Duelfer, like Kay, is a former U.N. weapons inspector. Kay said he and other former U.N. weapons inspectors were surprised that their program through 1998 had been so effective at preventing the "break-out" of Hussein's weapons programs. "Inspections accomplished a great deal in holding a program down," he said. "And that's where the surprise is." Chronicle political writer Zachary Coile contributed to this report.E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ ***************************************************************** 8 Reuters: Iran says IAEA inspections show its peaceful intent 29 Jan 2004 13:33:28 GMT By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said on Thursday U.N. inspections should reassure the world of the "absolute peaceful nature" of the Islamic Republic's nuclear activities. But, in a speech to the United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament, he also said Iran would pursue its "inalienable right to nuclear technology" for peaceful purposes, but gave no date for resuming uranium enrichment. Under intense international pressure to prove it was not covertly seeking atomic arms, Iran said in November it had suspended uranium enrichment as a goodwill gesture. Enriched uranium is used to generate electricity, but its highly enriched variety can be used in nuclear warheads. Despite the suspension, Western diplomats say Iran has still been acquiring large amounts of equipment for centrifuges which are used to enrich uranium. Kharrazi told the 65-member forum in Geneva that Iran had voluntarily suspended its uranium enrichment activities "to allay expressed concerns regarding its nuclear objectives". Iran last month signed the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that allows snap inspections of nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a U.N. agency. "A robust verification mechanism is now in place to reassure the IAEA and the international community of the absolute peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear activities," Kharrazi said. "My country will remain loyal and committed to its obligations and promises." IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, speaking after talks with Kharrazi in Davos last week, said he had pressed Iran to suspend more activities related to enrichment. He said Iran faced "serious consequences" if it did not cooperate with inspectors. ElBaradei said IAEA concerns focused on the discovery by agency inspectors in Iran of equipment contaminated with highly enriched uranium, along with continued enrichment-related activities like production of centrifuges. Iran has blamed the contamination on parts imported from elsewhere but has declined to identify their origin. Last week the foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany -- who struck the deal under which Iran agreed to suspend enrichment activities and accept more intrusive IAEA inspections in exchange for a possible exchange of technology -- also made clear they wanted Iran to suspend more activities. Iran is building a nuclear power station at the southern port of Bushehr with Russian assistance and has ordered plans drawn up for a second facility. It insists its nuclear programme is geared towards meeting domestic electricity demand and freeing up its finite fossil fuels for export. ***************************************************************** 9 AFP: North Korea unlikely to scrap nuclear weapons drive : defense ministry SPACE WIRE (AFP) Jan 29, 2004 by Charles Whelan SEOUL, Jan 29 (AFP - South Korea's defense ministry on Thursday urged North Korea to disclose and destroy its nuclear weapons programmes but said there was little hope the Stalinist state would fully comply. Calling for stepped up surveillance of North Korea, the ministry said Pyongyang should follow the Libyan model and abandon its quest for nuclear weapons, but acknowledged that the regime of Kim Jong-Il was unlikely to do so. "Chances are slim that North Korea will completely give up its nuclear weapons given the North Korean regime's characteristics," the ministry said in a policy report on the nuclear crisis. It predicted a bumpy road ahead for efforts to resolve the 15-month-old crisis amid a renewed drive to reconvene six-party talks bringing together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. "Lots of conflicts and difficulties are expected in the course of settling the North Korean nuclear problem," the report said. Security surveillance of North Korea will be heightened as the crisis plays out, the report added. The crisis erupted in October 2002 when Washington confronted North Korea with evidence it was developing an enriched-uranium programme. Pyongyang disputes the US contention that it admitted to pursuing the program, but has since boasted of possessing a nuclear deterrent. The defense ministry said in the report that North Korea's deterrent was based on plutonium from its Yongbyon reactor frozen under the 1994 Agreed Framework but revived last year as the nuclear crisis deepened. Washington says North Korea diverted enough plutonium before the 1994 freeze to make two crude nuclear bombs. Pyongyang has since said it has reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods stored at Yongbyon, yielding enough plutonium for up to six more bombs That claim has not been verified but US and South Korean intelligence sources say some reprocessing appears to have taken place. Following an inconclusive first round of six-way talks in Beijing in August, North Korea recently offered to re-freeze the plutonium producing plant as a first step to resolving the crisis in return for concessions from Washington. The defense ministry report said that any North Korean atomic freeze should include all of its nuclear programmes. "North Korea's nuclear freeze must include all nuclear activities including its enriched uranium programme and must require verification," it said. "It is in North Korea's interests to trustfully and voluntarily disclose and destroy nuclear programmes following Libya." Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi agreed last month to end Tripoli's quest for weapons of mass destruction. The report came amid an upsurge of diplomacy as two top US officials visited the region for nuclear crisis talks. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was due in Beijing from Tokyo later Thursday for talks with Chinese foreign ministry officials and US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs was expected in Seoul on Sunday and Tokyo on Monday. Meanwhile South Korean Unification Ministry Jeong Se-Hyun said Thursday he has detected "good signs of movement" on pushing for a second round of six-way nuclear crisis talks. Jeong, Seoul's chief delegate to cabinet-level talks with North Korea, reaffirmed that the nuclear issue would top the agenda to be discussed at a new round of inter-Korean talks to open next week. "Responsible for persuading North Korea to come to the second round of six-way talks... we should advise and recommend North Korea to respond in a more reasonable way," Jeong said in a regular briefing. SPACE.WIRE ***************************************************************** 10 AFP: Top US official to discuss North Korea, Iraq during China visit WAR.WIRE BEIJING (AFP) Jan 29, 2004 Deputy US Secretary of State Richard Armitage will discuss the year-long North Korean nuclear crisis and Iraq reconstruction during a visit to China this week, a US embassy spokeswoman said Thursday. "They are going to talk about bilateral issues covering a broad range of mutual interests including North Korea and Iraq reconstruction," she said. Armitage is scheduled to arrive in Beijing from Japan Thursday night. He will hold talks with Chinese foreign ministry officials Friday before leaving for Mongolia early Saturday for the third and last leg of his trip, the spokeswoman said. China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said Thursday Armitage will hold discussions with his counterpart, Chinese First Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo, an old North Korea hand, and Vice Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong. China is North Korea's closest ally, and Beijing has been working closely with Washington to try to diffuse tensions over the North Korean nuclear plans. China has been trying to convene a second round of six-nation talks on a 15-month crisis over North Korea's nuclear program, after a first round made little headway in Beijing in August. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang expressed optimism Thursday another round of talks can take place soon. "There is progress being made in preparations and we also hope that the second round of six-party talks can take place as soon as possible," Zhang told a regular briefing. She said she believed Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi would chair the talks, and said she had no specific date for the second round. Armitage's trip follows a "warm" meeting by a Chinese Communist Party official with reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during a trip to Pyongyang, reported by the North's official media this month. The United States revealed last week it had made a rare direct call to North Korea in a bid to convene a second round of the six-party talks, which were expected in December but never happened. North Korea offered recently to freeze its nuclear weapons drive in return for concessions, including an end to US sanctions and a resumption of energy aid. Washington is holding out for a commitment from Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear program. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 11 Guardian Unlimited: Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Released Thursday January 29, 2004 9:01 PM By MUNIR AHMAD Associated Press Writer ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan has released one of several scientists detained amid suspicions its nuclear weapons technology was leaked to Iran and Libya, a senior intelligence official said Thursday. Abdul Majid, director general of health physics at the Khan Research Laboratories, a leading nuclear weapons facility, was picked up for questioning Jan. 7. He was released Wednesday, said the official, who declined to be named. Six other KRL employees - two scientists and four security officials - are still in custody. Majid is an associate of the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, for whom the laboratory was named. Khan has emerged as a prime suspect in the probe but has not been detained. Intelligence officials said Wednesday that Khan and Mohammed Farooq, a former KRL director-general, had black market contacts that supplied sensitive technology to Iran and Libya, and both have failed to account for funds in their bank accounts. Khan and Farooq deny they profited or played any role in supplying technology to either Iran or Libya, the officials said. Pakistan began the investigation in late November based on statements made by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Allegations have since surfaced that Pakistani technology also spread to Libya and North Korea. The government acknowledges that ``one or two people'' acted for personal profit but denies it ever authorized any sharing of information or nuclear technology by its scientists. Officials say the probe should be complete soon. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 Guardian Newspapers Limited ***************************************************************** 12 JoongAng Daily: Nuclear arms ¡®are for keeps' A Defense Ministry official said yesterday he believes it is highly unlikely that North Korea will ever fully abandon its nuclear arms program. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, attended a briefing for editorial writers held by Defense Minister Cho Young-kil. "There is very little possibility given the regime's character that North Korea will ever completely give up its nuclear weapons," the official said. Mr. Cho said that North Korea showed plutonium to an unofficial U.S. delegation this month to prove it has reprocessed fuel rods from a nuclear reactor and to increase pressure on the United States to pursue negotiations. The defense ministry also said it was difficult to predict when a second round of the six-party negotiations will take place because of the intransigence of both the United States and North Korea. by Chae Byung-gun jieho@joongang.co.kr> 2004.01.29 ¨Ï 2003 Joins.com. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 13 Pakistan News: compromise on nuclear programme - Musharraf PakTribune.ComNo ZilHaj 7, 1424 Hijri Debriefing is Pakistan’s internal matter: Jamali Thursday January 29, 2004 (1538 PST) President Gen. Pervez Musharraf presiding over the special meeting of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee in Rawalpindi. RAWALPINDI, January 30 (Online): A special session of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee meeting was held here on Thursday under the supervision of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Sources informed that President Gen. Musharraf however made it clear that Pakistan is and will remain a nuclear power and government will not compromise on the country’s nuclear programme. The meeting was attended by the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Services Chiefs and other senior government and military officials. The committee discussed important matters related to defense and national security. Military sources informed Online that the meeting accorded approval to certain important decisions in the perspective of changes emerging in the region. Several projects and programs for the development and betterment of the armed forces were also discussed. Sources told that the reports presented by the investigation teams into alleged involvement of Pakistani nuclear scientists in transfer of nuclear technology to other countries were also reviewed and some vital decisions were taken in this respect. More steps will be taken to make nuclear technology more effective and improved, the president declared and added that Pakistan nuclear programme is for peaceful purpose and is imperative for the defence of the country and protection of national integrity. President held that action would be taken against the elements who shared nuclear information with other countries to the detriment of national interests. However no person of government of Pakistan or the institution of army is involved in proliferation of weapons or providing nuclear secrets to other countries, he declared in categorical terms. President assured that government will make more effective the command and control of country’s nuclear assets. An effective system is already in place for the protection of nuclear assets and monitoring of these institutions, he stated. President announced that no one will be allowed to use Pakistan territory against national interests. Sources disclosed that meeting took important decisions about the scientists and the persons who are facing debriefing process for their alleged involvement in transfer of nuclear know how to Iran and Libya for their persons gains. The details in this respect are however being kept secret. Pakistan role in war against global terrorism, its cooperation and interaction with international community besides matters concerning the training, development and betterment of armed forces also came under discussion. The president also briefed the meeting about his recently concluded visit to Turkey and Switzerland. The meeting also evolved strategy on the talks to be held with India next month . Debriefing is Pakistan’s internal matter: Jamali Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has said that debriefing of the nuclear scientists is Pakistan internal matter adding that debriefing process will soon be over. BAHAWALPUR: Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali inspecting the Guard of Honor at Sadiq Public School on the eve of Golden Jubilee celebrations of the School at Bahawalpur. Pakistan News Service © PakTribune.com Pvt Ltd 2003-2004 ***************************************************************** 14 SF Chronicle: Pakistan's nuclear salesmen are identified / Two senior scientists may have received millions from Iran Thursday, January 29, 2004 Islamabad, Pakistan -- Pakistani investigators probing leaks of nuclear technology now believe that Abdul Qadeer Khan, known affectionately to his countrymen as "the father of the bomb," and a senior colleague assisted Iran and Libya through an international underworld operating out of the Persian Gulf Emirate of Dubai. An intelligence source said on condition of anonymity that while the identities of the nuclear traffickers are still being uncovered, "it is beyond any doubt that at least two Pakistani scientists constituted a major source of supply for the network." Other Pakistani intelligence officials told the Washington Post that Khan and Mohammad Farooq were the figures involved and that they were paid millions of dollars for peddling nuclear technology. The two worked together for years at Pakistan's leading nuclear weapons facility, A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories. Mohammad Bokhari, a defense analyst in Islamabad, said, "We are looking at what may be one of the worst betrayals of the nation's trust in our history. " Bokhari added that because Khan is a national hero, "he had great leeway in his dealings, more than any other individual, which, in retrospect was a mistake on the part of our leadership." Khan is now confined to his home in Islamabad, and Farooq has been detained since late November. Calls to Khan's house on Wednesday went unanswered. Investigators from Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence agency say middlemen from countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and South Africa also attempted -- without success -- to sell Khan's and Farooq's wares to Syria and to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The intelligence agency has been working with officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the U.N. body that first drew Pakistan's attention to the illicit trade -- to try to break up the nuclear technology trafficking network. "We are cooperating," said the Pakistani intelligence source. "Pakistan is just as determined as everyone else involved to see this criminal undertaking fully uncovered and stopped." Officials say that Iran and Libya, both of which seek improved relations with the West, have in recent months provided key information on the proliferation ring to the U.N. atomic energy agency. The officials add that examinations of bank accounts linked to Khan and Farooq have revealed millions of dollars funneled there by Iran during the late 1980s and 1990s. It is now believed that Khan took advantage of his position as head of Pakistan's nuclear program and an agreement between Pakistan and Iran to share non-weapons-related nuclear technology to offer the Iranians more critical information -- including blueprints for equipment used to enrich uranium. According to investigators, military chiefs and top politicians chose to dismiss complaints coming from scientists and administrators at Khan's research lab beginning in the late 1980s concerning Khan's travels to Iran, business dealings with family members and the risk of proliferation. Khan, who allegedly stole plans from the European energy consortium Urenco in the 1970s to jump-start Pakistan's nuclear program, has amassed vast property holdings in Pakistan and Dubai over the years, and gained notoriety for giving houses and BMW cars to family members as presents. While Khan's escapades were well-known to the Pakistani public, few questioned the sources of his wealth, believing his contribution to the nation by developing a nuclear counterweight to India outweighed any irregularities. Khan's revered status may be about to change, said M.B. Naqvi, an Islamabad analyst. "The people of Pakistan are now bewildered and feel betrayed that the supervision of the government was so lax as to permit such huge scale pilferage," Naqvi said. "That these gentlemen could be so unpatriotic as to amass millions of dollars ... at the cost of the nation is appalling and painful." President Pervez Musharraf faces the difficult decision of how much and how publicly to punish Khan and any others involved after repeatedly stating in the international media that all would be held accountable. Musharraf, who reportedly feels betrayed by Khan, is thought to favor public prosecution. But others say it is more likely that Khan will simply be removed from his present Cabinet position as adviser to the president. That step would not be enough, Naqvi argued. "A high-powered judicial commission should be set up to inquire into the whole affair. All those found guilty need to be punished severely through due process of law." Others, however, note that Pakistan has never signed the nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty and is not legally bound by many of the international restrictions on the export of nuclear technology. Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the army chief of staff from 1988 to'91, said Pakistan had to rely on black market suppliers to develop its nuclear weapons program. As for Khan and Farooq, Beg told the Associated Press: "... The only crime you can say they committed was to tell the Iranians or the Libyans, 'Go to such and such a place and the item is on sale. Buy it from them.' " Shireen Mazari, director of Islamabad's Institute of Strategic Studies, said Pakistan has been unfairly singled out. "The fact of the matter is that European governments have yet to make public and penalize those middlemen and mafias that have been responsible for breaching the Non-Proliferation Treaty ..." she said. "Why should only Pakistani citizens be made scapegoats for a global problem?" ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ ***************************************************************** 15 Xinhuanet: Russian nuclear exports up in 2003 www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2004-01-29 23:13:07 MOSCOW, Jan. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- Russia's exports of nuclear products increased by 400 million US dollars to hit three billion US dollars in 2003, Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said Thursday. Exports of nuclear products include enriched uranium, nuclear fuel, isotope products and the construction of nuclear power-producing units abroad, Interfax news agency cited the minister assaying. He stressed that "this is a serious figure" and attributed the greatest proportion of the growth in nuclear exports to the sale of fresh nuclear fuel for plants abroad. Rumyantsev said his ministry plans to match the 2003 figure in 2004 but exports will depend on market conditions which could change as new members join the European Union, according to Itar-Tass news agency. The minister expressed regret that no contract had been made sofar for importing, storing, or recycling spent nuclear fuel from foreign countries, adding that Russia has good technologies and can implement such projects safely and make good profits. He also noted that Russia and Iran would discuss construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant's first unit on Feb. 15, Interfax reported. Russia is helping Iran build an 800 million dollar nuclear power plant in the coastal city of Bushehr. According to the initial contract, the first unit of the plant should be completed in 2004. But Russia decided last October to put off the launch of the reactor till 2005 due to alleged technical reasons. Rumyantsev stressed that Iran -- suspected of using the atomic power project as a cover to develop nuclear weapons -- has signed the additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that stipulates greater openness in having its atomic energy programs scrutinized by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog and the world community. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 Daily Times: Libya surrenders more nuclear materials to US | Friday, January 30, 2004 By Khalid Hasan WASHINGTON: Libya surrendered 55,000 pounds of nuclear equipment, including “critical materials related to Libya’s nuclear weapons programme and ballistic missile capabilities”, which was put on a US plane that has already flown out of the Jamahariya to the US. According to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, this was a sign of “real progress” since the Libyan leader, Col Moammar Gaddafi, promised on December 19 to abandon efforts to acquire nuclear weapons capability. This is the second planeload of equipment to leave Libya. Allegations that some of the equipment may have been supplied by Pakistan, either officially or because of the “freelance” activities of some of its nuclear personnel, will gain strength in the days to come. The pressure on Pakistan to “come clean” has been intense and is bound to become even more intense, especially after President Musharraf’s statement at Davos and unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials “singing like birds” to Western media outlets. Whether the purpose is to have Pakistan dismantle its programme down the road remains to be seen. What is certain is that a “cordon” has been drawn around the programme. Pakistan’s image is also in tatters, partly due to the inefficiency and lack of confidence of those abroad and at home who are in charge of protecting and upholding it. The Pakistan Embassy in Washington has been absolutely quiet on the issue and while it may have made behind-the-scene efforts to introduce some balance into the onslaught directed at Pakistan, publicly it has taken no position at all. Similarly, Pakistani-American leaders who are known for making tall claims and delivering the entire US government, including the US Congress to Pakistan, have failed to come forward as well. Meanwhile, the media attacks on Pakistan have continued, helped in Pakistan by well-paid stringers working for foreign publications and often promoting their interests and those of their governments, rather than their own country’s. Libya’s nuclear components are to be held at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the Department of Energy’s largest science and energy laboratory. The latest planeload contains centrifuge parts, some of the allegedly of Pakistani origin, used to process uranium hexafluoride. Mr McClellan said the shipment also contained ballistic missile guidance sets for longer-range missiles, which Libya has voluntarily agreed to eliminate. He added that the destruction of Libya’s unfilled chemical munitions had already begun inside the country. “As the Libyan government takes these essential steps and demonstrates its seriousness, its good faith will be returned,” he added. Home | National 6 killed in Baghdad suicide blast BBC chairman resigns after criticism Road accidents kill 46 in China India to open visa office in Karachi in a week PIA to receive first Boeing 777 today Petition against Rizvi’s detention disposed of FC man killed, 5 hurt in mine blast EU stops importing pet birds from Pakistan BEL ex-chief gets 10 years MyDoom virus variant targets Microsoft Jihadis seek Eid donations despite ban LJ forms squad to avenge Azam Tariq murder Tests confirm Punjab bird flu-free Sweet and sour notes for young musicians Scientists not above state’s dignity, says Maqbool Harassment of journalists cause for alarm: HRCP Railways to expand ticketing network Animal prices high, sales slow in Lahore UHS declares MBBS results Against odds, artists play for peace A woman’s work is never done From guttersnipe to royalty on the boards at Esena ‘Govt believes in smooth relations between federation, provinces’ India and Pakistan expected to set roadmap during first talks PHC dismisses plea against Hasba push ‘Pakistan to continue fighting EU anti-dumping duty on its bed linen’ Karo-kari seminar hots up Russian theatre to perform first ever opera in Pakistan Frontier opp to call PA session after Eid MPs told not to travel abroad during sessions Indo-Pak ministers discuss cooperation in science, technology Disqualification: SC admits MPA’s plea, suspends SHC decision Rawalpindi AC rejects Sherpao’s application NRB seeks consensus on water issues Pak-US-Afghan commission to discuss Wana operation, security on 31st Washington Post names Dr Khan and Farooq as those who sold N-technology Libya surrenders more nuclear materials to US Bush assures Erdogan on Kurds in Iraq Britain puts UN child soldier plan on hold Saudi Arabia promises effective crowd control for Haj NASA chief questioned on money for moon and Mars Asian nations forge united front against bird flu US to release two dozen Guantanamo prisoners British soldier killed, others injured in car bomb in Kabul FIA nabs ‘Internet bank’ officials Najam Sethi subject of exchange between author and critic US weapons expert: ‘We were all wrong’ US warns of possible terror threat in Oman LHC summons PPSC secretary ‘Dist boundaries changed to damage PPP’ SC issues notice to SME Bank chief Post office stops salaries of security guards Tajikistan’s FM arrives today MMA wants to restore ties with ARD SC constitutes committee for jail reforms EU praises Musharraf and Vajpayee PML-N to protest debriefings RSF accuses govt of double standards Benazir slams govt over Dhani Barristar Sultan convenes APC Daily Times - All Rights Reserved Site developed and hosted by WorldCALL Internet Solutions ***************************************************************** 17 Hi Pakistan: Nuclear questions - By Farhan Bokhari January 29 2004 The end game surrounding Pakistan’s investigation in to nuclear proliferation by some of its scientists may be near. But in its wake, there are indeed now more questions than answers surrounding the country’s newest challenge. For Pakistan’s usually suspect public opinion which looks upon the US led western world as continuously eager to ‘roll back’ and ultimately quash the Islamic world’s only successful nuclear program, the new clampdown on the country’s nuclear scientific community must be a troubling reality to accept. Even the use of canny jargons such as ‘de-briefing’ must continuously fail to mask the blatant reality that the scientists were questioned to get to the bottom of one of the most profound challenges for Pakistan’s security preparations. While new establishments such as the military’s nuclear command authority have been put in place, entrusted with the task of managing the country’s strategic assets, such entities would always fall short of the political and popular support necessary to maintain a credible deterrence. It would be a mistake for anyone to assume that without Pakistan’s nuclear assets acquired through years of toil and sacrifice, the country’s independence could be assured. Indeed, a closer analysis of cases such as the ‘Kargil’ venture or last years’ eyeball to eyeball military standoff with India which culminated without a broader all out conflict, could easily lead to the conclusion, that prevailed in good measure due to the presence of a nuclear shield protecting Pakistan. As any strategic analyst must know, the scientific side of a nuclear capability though profoundly significant, cannot be detached from the political and economic ability of a country to sustain its program. One important conclusion must be that structures such as the new strategic command need to be backed by a wide-ranging public consensus supporting the country’s nuclear program. As the controversy surrounding the nuclear scientists gathers momentum, its possible that a section of Pakistan’s political factions would be set to exploit the opportunity in launching a barrage of criticism against the regime, irrespective of the need to unite behind a vital national interest. Cries of ‘sell out’ should be expected amid mounting demands for defending Pakistan’s nuclear assets at all costs. While some such excitable demands may appear unreal, denying their significance and the extent to which they could dent national morale would indeed be a mistake. The country’s nationalists, familiar with the continuing security threats to Pakistan’s vital interests, are bound to indulge in sharply escalating calls in favour of Dr Khan and his colleagues, irrespective of the evidence surrounding their culpability or otherwise. Ultimately, it must be appreciated that dissent can come through a variety of channels ranging from street protests to dissidents seeking to rock the national boat through action which inherently threatens security interests. In moving beyond the nuclear controversy, General Musharraf and his ruling team need to set the pace for action on three equally vital fronts: First, taking the political leadership across the board in to confidence must work only as a partial response to the political challenge confronting the government. The official message conveyed to leaders of political parties, reinforcing the view that the nuclear program remains in safe hands, cannot work as a comprehensive response to the entire spectrum of public scepticism. In tandem with the message to high-ranking politicians must come a campaign to strengthen other avenues of disseminating information to the public? Pakistan’s beleaguered parliamentary set up could do well for itself by strengthening allied networks such as parliamentary committees whose role should be important in any stable democracy. Such committees including those dedicated to defence and strategic affairs could work as a viable channel for promoting the debate on the future of Pakistan’s vital weapon systems and a comprehensive appreciation of the threats faced by the country. Similarly, a campaign to vigorously work towards launching a public education campaign to disseminate non-sensitive information on nuclear affairs could work towards blunting part of the public criticism. Rather than the first sight of a replica of a missile for entrants to Islamabad, perhaps the government should similarly working on establishing and promoting new websites and information centres on security affairs including nuclear issues. Second, the government needs to work to promote a fresh debate on the present state and future direction of Pakistan’s nuclear program, driven by newly created think tanks. To date, the track record of the officially funded think tanks that exist across some of Islamabad’s highest income neighbourhoods has remained pitiful in moving their discussion and debate beyond the exclusive elitist circles. A large number of educated, middle modest output by the small community of the country’s so-called think tank based strategic experts including some whose credentials present room for doubt. In contrast to the large numbers of mostly retired former military and civilian officials usually in attendance at the few gatherings on strategic and security affairs, sign of a successful new structure for debate must be independent on indicators such as the attendees at security related events mostly being young and eager to learn Pakistanis. Pakistan’s failure to carry forward the intellectual aspect of the message promises to cause more harm now to the future of its nuclear and strategic interests than at any other time in the country’s history. Faced with adverse sentiment from a number of opponents, Pakistan can ill afford to remain complacent in tackling the intellectual gaps surrounding its security interests. Finally, the future of civil-military ties promise to eventually set the pace for Pakistan’s nuclear programme in more ways than one. The reality of a country ruled and dominated by the military elite is bound to always play in the hands of Pakistan’s many foes within and outside, ready to claim repeatedly that high powered decision making lives in the danger of being subjected to the choices of a small group of decision makers. In sharp contrast, moving the country towards a stable democratic order where the defence forces remain a vital element in decision making rather than the dominant players, must work to promote Pakistan’s interests. Ultimately, resolving the disputes surrounding Pakistan’s democratic handicap must be seen as central to the country’s security interests. In the final analysis, the revelations related to the allegations surrounding some members of the nuclear community may have come as a shock to many across Pakistan who always considered the nuclear program sacrosanct and above reproach. Many Pakistanis have perfectly good reason to be absolutely mind boggled at the possibility of heroes of yesterday becoming villains of today and vice versa. The boggled mind effect is hardly surprising for a country where questioning areas of policy such as the nuclear question remained taboo for long. Ultimately thought, the global pressures on Pakistan may have forced a fundamental shift in official policy. Selling that policy to a sceptical public and other interest groups now remains the profound challenge. Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved. No part ***************************************************************** 18 ITAR-TASS: Russia views IAEA as main tool of non-proliferation control [ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia] 29.01.2004, 15.09 MOSCOW, January 29 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said Moscow recognized the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as the main instrument of control over non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. "The IAEA is a time-proven mechanism of control over proliferation of fission materials which developed in the course of a historical process," Rumyantsev told reporters on Thursday. "Libya’s recent decision to open and make its nuclear programs transparent for IAEA inspectors was another proof of the effectiveness of the IAEA's operation," he said. In the minister's view, the Agency, "over 50 years of its operation, has shown high professionalism and impartiality of its specialists and has done very much to halt the spreading of fission materials and mass destruction weapons over the world." © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 19 STRAITS TIMES Nuke exports: China looks beyond big bucks - JAN 30, 2004 By JING-DONG YUAN CHINA took a significant step last Monday: It applied to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a multilateral body that monitors and restricts the sale of sensitive materials and technologies that could contribute to the development of nuclear weapons. Only a decade ago, China was accused of helping other countries to acquire nuclear weapons. In the past 18 months however, Beijing has got the ball rolling fast with laws and regulations to control nuclear, chemical and biological materials, as well as ballistic missiles and conventional armament. There is now strict administration and control of these exports. China's progress in its non-proliferation policy has been gradual but steady since the Cold War ended. It has acceded to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Chemical Weapons Convention, and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In recent years, Beijing has also been in regular consultation with Washington on non-proliferation cooperation. Last month, China issued its first and comprehensive White Paper on non-proliferation. China's recent non-proliferation moves stand in sharp contrast to the 1980s, during which it was implicated in controversial arms sales to a number of developing countries, including the sale of the Dong Feng 3 (CSS-2) intermediate-range ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia, HY-2 (Silkworm) anti-ship missiles to Iran, the nuclear reactor deal with Algeria, and missile-related transfers to Pakistan. What brought about this change in both perspectives and practice? Three factors stand out: China's concern over its international image, a growing awareness of the danger that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation can pose to its own security, and its interest in maintaining a stable relationship with the United States. China's rise has introduced in it a sense of greater responsibility. For Beijing, the commercial motivations behind many of its earlier arms transfers have been replaced by considerations to promote itself as a responsible great power. Beijing's perspectives on WMD proliferation and the impact on its own security are also changing, affected in no small measure by a series of events in the last few years. The May 1998 nuclear tests in South Asia introduced two new de facto nuclear weapons states on China's periphery. The Sept 11 terrorist attacks against the US drove home the spectre of potential WMD terrorism and highlighted the need for international cooperation in weapons control. Closer to home, the North Korean nuclear crisis demonstrated to China that WMD proliferation can pose serious threats to its own security. The evolution of China's non-proliferation policy since the early 1990s also indicates that Beijing values its relationship with Washington even as it continues to have major differences with the latter. This has enabled the US to sensitise China to its non-proliferation concerns through a mixture of inducement, incentives and sanctions. China's lastest measures - the imposition of export control regulations, the publication of the White Paper, and now the formal application for NSG membership - are significant in several ways. In the past, changes that Beijing adopted were sometimes mere tactics to alleviate US concerns and/or to avoid US sanctions. Words were not always matched by deeds. Today's changes appear more substantial and are driven by Beijing's new perspectives on global security. They also appear to reflect a major effort on China's part to conform to international norms and practices in non-proliferation. Up to a few years ago, Beijing still considered the existing multilateral regimes such as the NSG, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Australia Group, and the Wassenaar Arrangement discriminatory. Now it acknowledges the roles they have played in stemming and slowing down WMD proliferation. China is clearly taking a more active role in tackling WMD proliferation. Its initiatives in facilitating the six-party talks on North Korea are a clear example. Beijing has also become more vocal in expressing disapproval of WMD proliferation activities under the guise of peaceful use. China's application for NSG membership marks a new chapter in its pursuit of becoming a more responsible and active great power. + The writer is director of research in the East Asia Non-Proliferation Programme at the Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies. The Straits Times ***************************************************************** 20 [EMMAS] Bush to eliminate nuclear plant standards Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:50:06 -0600 (CST) http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2376295 Jan. 29, 2004, 8:48AM Bush to eliminate nuclear plant standards Plan to let contractors devise new rules By NANCY ZUCKERBROD Associated Press [WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is moving to replace government safety standards at federal nuclear facilities with requirements written by contractors -- after Congress directed it to start fining the contractors for violations. Long-established government minimum standards at the more than two dozen nuclear weapons plants and research labs around the nation would become unenforceable guidelines under the Energy Department proposal. RESOURCES Graphic: Proposed Nuclear Plant Standards Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., an author of the 2002 legislation ordering the fines, accused the administration of distorting Congress' intent with a plan that "will likely decrease worker protection." John Conway, chairman the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which oversees safety at the Energy Department, agreed that the proposal would weaken safety standards covering more than 100,000 workers at the facilities. "The way it's written, I don't like it at all," hed said.] the rest of the story is at http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2376295 ========= *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.*** ################################################################# " Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass." Emma Goldman To SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE to the emmasdance list send email to with the message subscribe/unsubscribe emmasdance. [No subject is needed.] "If I can not dance, I want no part in your revolution." Emma Goldman ################################################################# ***************************************************************** 21 NRC: NRC to Hold Two Public Meetings to Discuss Inspections at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant Following Earthquake News Release - Region IV - 2004-00 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region IV No. IV-04-006 January 29, 2004 CONTACT: Victor Dricks Phone: 817-860-8128 E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov meetings on February 4 to discuss results of inspections at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant following the December 22 San Simeon earthquake. Diablo Canyon is located near San Luis Obispo, California and is operated by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. The meetings will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Embassy Suites Hotel, 333 Madonna Road, in San Luis Obispo. The first meeting will be a technical session between the NRC staff and officials of PG&E to discuss a special report prepared by the company following the San Simeon earthquake, whose epicenter was 35 miles from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The public is invited to observe the meeting and will have an opportunity to provide comments and ask questions of the NRC staff after the business portion of the meeting, but before the meeting is adjourned. Immediately following the technical meeting, NRC officials will meet with the public to provide interim results of its own inspections at the site. Active public participation, by way of questions and comments, is encouraged throughout this meeting. The NRC issued a letter to PG&E on January 16, summarizing preliminary results of inspections it had performed at Diablo Canyon following the earthquake. Copies of this letter are available from the NRCs Office of Public Affairs in Region IV. NRC will issue a report within the next few days that will cover the first phase of its inspection activities at Diablo Canyon in response to the earthquake, and issue its final report on earthquake-related inspection activities in the spring. These reports will be available on the agencys web site and through its Electronic Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov as an Agencywide Document Access and Management System (ADAMS) document. Help in using ADAMS is available through the NRC Public Document Room at 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737. Last revised Thursday, January 29, 2004 ***************************************************************** 22 North County Times: Water leak shuts down San Onofre reactor January 28, 2004 10:58 PM By: North County Times SAN ONOFRE ---- One of two functioning reactors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has been removed from service this week because of a small leak of radioactive water. Plant-monitoring equipment detected the leak on Saturday night, said Ray Golden, spokesman for Southern California Edison, which operates the facility. "It's one-tenth of one gallon per minute ---- very, very small," he said. The leak was isolated within the reactor. Operators chose to take the reactor off-line to make a repair, even though the action is not required by regulations. "We didn't want to operate with a known leak," Golden said. The reactor is expected to return to use by this weekend. San Onofre's two reactors provide enough power for more than 2.2 million homes each year. webmaster@nctimes.com © 1997-2004 North County Times - Lee Enterprises editor@nctimes.com ***************************************************************** 23 CBC News: Bruce Power eyeing new nuclear reactor Last Updated Thu, 29 Jan 2004 16:02:14 TIVERTON, ONT. - A nuclear power plant operator in Ontario says it's looking into restarting at least two old reactors and building a new one. The Bruce generating station Bruce Power says it will study the feasibility of restarting Bruce A units 1 and 2 at its complex on the shore of Lake Huron. Bruce A1 was shut down in December 1997, while A2 was shut down in October 1995. The study will determine how much it will cost to upgrade them to current standards. The partnership is also looking into refurbishing the four Bruce B reactors to extend their operating life New reactor In addition, the study will look at the feasibility of installing one or more improved Candu reactors now under development. Bruce Power got permission from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to refuel the mothballed Bruce B units 3 and 4 a year ago. Unit 3 was back online last June, while unit 4 was not restored until October. The two B units began producing power in the late 1970s. Ontario Hydro took them out of service in 1998. Written by CBC News Online staff Copyright © CBC 2004 ***************************************************************** 24 Ananova: Wall of fog plan to protect nuclear plant German authorities are planning to use artificial fog to protect a nuclear power plant against terrorist attacks. The idea has been proposed after details from a secret report emerged about severe lacks of security at the Isar 1 plant near Landshut in Bavaria. According to the report, the plant isn't protected from an attack by a small passenger plane. Landshut mayor Josef Deimer is calling for Isar 1 to be switched off. He is citing an incident in which a Mirage fighter jet crashed only seconds away from the plant several years ago. But Bavarian minister of the environment Werner Schnappauf wants to have the plant hidden behind an artificial wall of fog so would-be attackers can't aim for it. "We expect that camouflaging the pant with artificial fog will be an adequate means", Mr Schnappauf told Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. In addition to protests from opposition parties in Bavaria, politicians in neighbouring Austria are also campaigning against the fog wall plans. Green Party MP Peter Pilz is threatening to hand out copies of the confidential report to Bavarian citizens so they will fight the plans, regardless of legal consequences this might bring. Story filed: 12:00 Thursday 29th January 2004 Ananova Ltd. ***************************************************************** 25 AFP: Marshall Islanders urge US to face up to nuclear test legacy WAR.WIRE (AFP) Jan 29, 2004 MAJURO, Jan 29 (AFP - Marshall Islands officials have renewed calls for Washington to take responsibility for the victims of nuclear testing in the tiny Pacific nation, where a health care program is closing this week. "America is a big and rich nation that caused nuclear test problems to our small islands," said Ismael John, senator for the 'ground zero' atoll of Enewetak. Tomaki Juda, a senator from Bikini atoll, drew parallels with the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where US President George W. Bush has acknowledged an obligation to help rebuild the countries after the damage caused by fighting there. "There's no difference between the US responsibility in those countries and in the Marshall Islands for the problems its nuclear tests caused," he said. Health Minister Alvin Jacklick told parliament Wednesday that while the healthcare program will close on January 31, special health services will continue for nuclear test-affected islands. The two million dollar annual funding from the United States ended last year. Members of Congress on a recent visit to Majuro indicated interest in continuing the program although any action is unlikely until the next fiscal year, which starts in October. Since it started in the late 1980s, the health program has grown to provide services for about 14,000 Marshall Islanders, nearly 25 percent of the population. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 26 NRC: Knowledge Base for Post-Fire Safe-Shutdown Analysis, FR Doc 04-1899 [Federal Register: January 29, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 19)] [Notices] [Page 4322-4323] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29ja04-80] Availability of Draft NUREG 1778 AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. [[Page 4323]] ACTION: Notice of availability for public comment. SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is announcing the completion and availability of Draft NUREG-1778, ``Knowledge Base for Post-Fire Safe-Shutdown Analysis,'' January, 2004. The NRC is seeking comment from interested parties on the clarity and utility of the draft NUREG. The NRC will consider comments received in its final issue of NUREG- 1778. DATES: Comment period expires March 29, 2004. Comments submitted after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but assurance of consideration cannot be given except for comments received on or before this date. ADDRESSES: Draft NUREG-1778 is available for inspection and copying for a fee at the NRC Public Document Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. As of January 30, 2004, you may also electronically access NUREG-series publications and other NRC records at NRC's Public Electronic reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm.html. Submit written comments to the Chief, Rules Review and Directive Branch, Mail Stop: T6-D59 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. A free single copy of Draft NUREG-1778, to the extent of supply, may be requested by writing to Office of the Chief Information Officer, Reproduction and Distribution Services Section, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Printing and Graphics Branch, Washington, DC 20555-0001 facsimile: 301-415-2289; e-mail: DISTRIBUTION@nrc.gov. Some publications in NUREG-series that are posted at NRC's Web site address http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/NUREGS/indexnum.html are updated regularly and may differ from the last printed version. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mark H. Salley, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Mail Stop O11 A11, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. E-mail MXS3@nrc.gov. Telephone: 301-415-2840 FAX: 301-415-2300. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: As a result of a major fire that occurred at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in 1975, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) significantly revised its regulatory framework to enhance fire protection programs (FPPs) at operating nuclear power plants (NPPs). The revised criteria used in this framework had three main objectives to (1) prevent significant fires, (2) ensure the capability to shutdown the reactor and maintain it in a safe-shutdown condition, and (3) minimize radioactive releases to the environment in the event of a significant fire. Recent Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) studies have shown that the revised criteria are beneficial to safety. Plant design changes required by the new regulatory framework have been effective in preventing a recurrence of a fire event of the severity experienced at Browns Ferry. In addition, according to a 1989 study performed by SNL plant modifications made in response to the new requirements have reduced the core damage frequencies (CDFs) at some plants by a factor of 10. The NRC's regulatory framework provides several options for ensuring that structures, systems, and components (SSCs) important to safe shutdown are adequately protected from the effects of fire. Because of the potentially unacceptable consequences that an unmitigated fire may have on plant safety, each operating plant must perform a documented evaluation to demonstrate that, in the event a fire were to initiate and continue to burn (in spite of prevention and mitigation features), the performance of essential shutdown functions will be preserved and radioactive releases to the environment will be minimized. The document that describes this evaluation process and its results is commonly referred to as a ``safe-shutdown analysis'' (SSA). Fire protection for NPPs is a complex subject. The purpose of this document is to facilitate understanding of the regulatory framework of the Fire Protection Program by compiling the related knowledge into a single document. This document assumes that the reader has had little or no involvement in the development and/or implementation of fire protection criteria, post-fire safe-shutdown analysis, or any of its related engineering disciplines. The criteria and assumptions described in this document are based on the NRC's regulatory framework for fire protection, as it was in place at the time of this writing. This document only clarifies existing criteria. This document does not contain any new or different staff positions and does not impose any new requirements. The knowledge base documented in this NUREG-series report must be used within the context of the licensing basis of each individual plant and with due consideration for the NRC's Backfit rule, as specified in Title 10, Section 50.109, Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR 50.109). Date at Rockville, Maryland, this 20 day of January, 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. John N. Hannon, Chief, Plant Systems Branch, Division of Systems Safety and Analysis, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. 04-1899 Filed 1-28-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 27 UK Independent: Hundreds of cancer cases blamed on dentist x-rays By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor 30 January 2004 Radiation from X-rays in dentist surgeries and hospitals causes 700 people in Britain to develop cancer each year, researchers say today. Although medical X-rays help diagnose disease, they have long been known to cause a small increase in the risk of cancer because of the radiation they emit. X-rays are the largest man-made source of radiation to which the public is exposed, accounting for 14 per cent. Atomic testing and discharges from nuclear power stations account for a fraction of that figure, and most of the rest is natural radiation such as radon from granite rocks. Researchers from Oxford University and Cancer Research UK estimated the size of the risk based on the number of X-rays carried out in Britain and in 14 other countries. According to their findings, published in the medical journal The Lancet, the results showed that X-rays accounted for six out of every 1,000 cases of cancer up to the age of 75, equivalent to 700 out of the 124,000 cases of cancer diagnosed each year. The calculations were based on the cancer rates among Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War. The UK had a lower risk from medical X-rays than most of the other areas studied including Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and Japan. In Japan 30 of every 1,000 cases of cancer are thought to caused by X-rays. In the UK, the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) has monitored the doses of radiation used in X-ray examinations for more than a decade. Advancing technology has halved the dose used in X-ray examinations since the early 1990s but the board found a 20-fold difference between the doses delivered in different hospitals in its latest review. Concern has focused on the growing use of Computed Tomography (CT) scans which take a series of X-ray pictures through the body and have revolutionised the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases. But according to the NRPB a single CT scan involves a dose of radiation up to 1,000 times that of a chest X-ray. Barry Wall, head of medical dosimetry at the NRPB, said: "CT scanning is expanding so rapidly. The images are so fantastic that not a lot of attention is being paid to the doses used." In a commentary on the findings, two German specialists in radiology said that the authors did not consider the benefits of X-rays in their study and offset those against the risks. "Benefits include the earlier detection of cancers by radiological examinations and the possibility of early treatment," they wrote. But they said up to 30 per cent of chest X-rays might not be necessary. They also said that unnecessary CT examinations could cause radiation exposure. "Those ordering radiological procedures should think carefully about the benefit for and the risk to their patients for each examination." UK Independent Ltd. ***************************************************************** 28 AU ABC: Marshall Islands urges US to remain committed to nuclear test victims Marshall Islands officials have renewed calls for Washington to take responsibility for the victims of nuclear testing in the Pacific nation, where a health care program is closing this week. Political representatives from some of the worst affected areas have drawn parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan, arguing that the US had accepted an obligation to help rebuild those countries and the Marshalls should be no different. The Government says while the healthcare program will close on January 31 special health services will continue for nuclear test-affected islands. The $US2 million in annual funding from the United States ended last year. Since it started in the late 1980s, the health program has grown to provide services for about 14,000 Marshall Islanders - nearly 25 per cent of the population. 29/01/2004 19:06:08 | ABC Radio Australia News Radio AustraliaABC ***************************************************************** 29 Deseret news: House OKs rollbacks of waste fee boosts [deseretnews.com] Thursday, January 29, 2004 A bill that rolls back some of the fee increases levied on the waste industry during the 2003 Legislature sailed through the full House Wednesday. HB13 reinstates a $14-per- ton fee on hazardous waste and removes the 3 percent gross receipts tax charged to hazardous waste facilities like Clean Harbors and East Carbon Development Corp. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Eli Anderson, D-Tremonton, said Clean Harbors would shut down in light of last year's bill that hiked the hazardous waste fees to $28 a ton and imposed a 3 percent gross receipts tax. The bill also hiked fees on radioactive waste disposed at Envirocare but HB13 keeps those fees intact. The Hazardous Waste Regulation and Tax Policy Task Force recommended lawmakers do away with the increase on the hike to hazardous waste facilities after coming to the conclusion that the tax unduly hurts the Utah companies. The state is asking the judge to re-examine and amend his order because there is new information about contamination at the site and a new state law banning the plan has taken effect. The state Department of Environmental Protection is also asking for any groundwater leaving the site to be treated on-site. Simandle has also been reviewing counter-motions filed by the GEMS Phase II Trust, the group charged with the Erial-based site's remediation, who want the plan endorsed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to continue. The hearing will be held at 3 p.m. at the federal courthouse in Camden. For the past two years, members of state and area environmentalist organizations have worked to raise awareness with the public and elected officials. "Involving our elected officials is our best hope at obtaining an acceptable remediation plan at the GEMS Superfund site, a plan that incorporates the best available technology to protect our citizens and natural resources today and for the future of the cleanup," said Sharon Finlayson of the N.J. Environmental Federation. "Frankly, this has been a textbook example of our democracy at work as citizens and bipartisan legislators continue to work together toward a positive environmental outcome for everyone, and for our environment." The judge could also rule on a motion filed by the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority, which has requested to be removed from participating in the plan. The CCMUA would have carried the groundwater through its sewer pipes. In September as public hearings were being held on the proposed plan, Bradley Campbell, commissioner of the DEP, dropped a bombshell by announcing the DEP would no longer support it. Gov. James E. McGreevey in December signed a bill into law that would make it illegal for the flushing plan to occur. Today's ruling could continue to spark the age-old debate of state versus federal laws. A spokeswoman for the EPA has said the EPA will continue to stand by its endorsement of the plan. What continues to concern residents and environmentalists is what has been found in groundwater samples. During the second phase of the cleanup of the site, contaminants known as radionuclides were found in groundwater tests. Also found was uranium, not believed natural to the site since a report indicated that companies that dumped at the site also possessed federal licenses to handle and dispose of uranium, officials said. Ed Knorr, of the environmental watchdog group Green Action Alliance, said there is a lot riding on the outcome today that could change the way Superfund sites are cleaned up. "I am just hoping the judge realizes that you have to make the decision that affects the future, not only for the residents but the entire environment of New Jersey," Knorr said. "Basically, the decision here affects all of New Jersey, not just GEMS." Copyright 2004 Gloucester County Times. Used with permission. ***************************************************************** 34 AU ABC: ALP promises to stop SA nuclear waste dump. 29 January 2004. South Australia News The ALP national conference has committed a future Federal Labor Government to abandon plans for a new nuclear waste dump in South Australia. General business is now underway at the conference after national leader Mark Latham made a rousing speech to delegates, promising a new vision for Australia. South Australian Premier Mike Rann has successfully moved an amendment to the party's environment policy, which condemns Federal Government attempts to compulsorily acquire land in the state for a nuclear waste dump. "The South Australian Government will continue to fight the imposition of a national radioactive waste dump," he said. "In the final analysis, at the end of the legal and the political struggle, I hope the will of the people will prevail." © ?? YearPosted ?? Australian Broadcasting Corporation | ***************************************************************** 35 AU ABC: IAEA investigates planned Woomera nuclear dump. 29/01/2004. ABC News Online Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online"> The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has demanded further evidence to demonstrate the planned nuclear dump at Woomera will be safe. However, the agency has backed the selection process for choosing the site near Woomera. Australia's chief nuclear body, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), has released the controversial draft report compiled by a secret IAEA team. The South Australian Government had accused the Federal Government of keeping it in the dark for not revealing the identities of those on the international assessment team. State Environment Minister John Hill says he is yet to read the draft report. "Our state is very much opposed to this dump going ahead, we don't believe it should happen in South Australia," he said. "We now have the support of the Federal Labor Party, all of the states and Federal Opposition supports our views, so the heat is really now on the Howard Government to do something about what is becoming a very major political issue." © 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 36 The Australian: Experts slam moves to fast-track nuclear dump [January 30, 2004] By Rebecca DiGirolamo GLOBAL nuclear experts have criticised the Howard Government's application to build a radioactive waste dump for failing to meet world's best practice, calling into question the safety of the facility. The International Atomic Energy Agency has spent the past two weeks in Australia reviewing the licence application of the Department of Education Science and Training to site, construct and operate a low-level radioactive repository in South Australia. Designed to slice months off the approval process, the Government took the unprecedented step of applying for three licences in one application to prepare a 6sqkm site on a sheep station in the state's far north to receive radioactive waste by July. The single application was accepted last August by nuclear safety regulator ARPANSA chief executive John Loy, who is expected to make a final decision on the licences by April following final advice from ARPANSA's Nuclear Safety and Radiation Health committees and the IAEA. The five-member international panel yesterday recommended in a draft report to Dr Loy that he install an alternative licensing process more in line with world's best practice. The draft report said the commonwealth's "single-step" application had disregarded the "step-by-step approach that is now considered to be international best practice". Dr Loy yesterday told The Australian he would consider the IAEA's recommendations, but ultimately the final decision resided with him. Dr Loy is expected to address the final IAEA report within a month in a paper outlining the major regulatory issues DEST must resolve. The panel has also requested a more "comprehensive" demonstration of the dump's safe operation, including how waste is to be received from states and territories. While the draft summary also , questioned ARPANSA and DEST's ability to resource and train experts in nuclear waste management. ***************************************************************** 37 The Australian: Nuclear experts slam dump process [January 30, 2004] By Rebecca DiGirolamo GLOBAL nuclear experts have criticised the Howard Government's application to build a radioactive waste dump for failing to meet world's best practice, calling into question the safety of the facility. The International Atomic Energy Agency has spent the past two weeks in Australia reviewing the licence application of the Department of Education Science and Training to site, construct and operate a low-level radioactive repository in South Australia. Designed to slice months off the approval process, the Government took the unprecedented step of applying for three licences in one application to prepare a 6sqkm site on a sheep station in the state's far north to receive radioactive waste by July. The single application was accepted last August by nuclear safety regulator ARPANSA chief executive John Loy, who is expected to make a final decision on the licences by April after final advice from ARPANSA's Nuclear Safety and Radiation Health committees and the IAEA. The five-member international panel yesterday recommended in a draft report to Dr Loy that he install an alternative licensing process more in line with world's best practice. The draft report said the commonwealth's "single-step" application had disregarded the "step-by-step approach that is now considered to be international best practice". Dr Loy told The Australian yesterday he would consider the IAEA's recommendations, but ultimately the decision rested with him. He said the DEST's application was legally permissible but would be revised in light of the IAEA's advice. "It might be a step-by-step process of saying you have enough evidence to at least prepare the site, but you can't do anything in terms of construction and operation until you provide further evidence." Dr Loy is expected to address the final IAEA report within a month in a paper outlining the major regulatory issues DEST must resolve. The panel has requested a more comprehensive demonstration of the dump's safe operation, including how waste is to be received from the states and territories. The draft summary also questioned the ability of ARPANSA and the DEST to resource and train experts in nuclear waste management. Opposition environment spokesman Kelvin Thomson said the Government must re-submit its licence applications in line with world standards. © The Australian ***************************************************************** 38 Tri-City Herald: Bidders protest Hanford contract This story was published Thursday, January 29th, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer Two losing bidders for the contract to provide occupational medicine services at Hanford are protesting a decision to award it to AdvanceMed of Reston, Va. The U.S. Government Accounting Office has up to 100 days to consider the dispute from the filing of the first protest Jan. 16. In the meantime, the award of the contract valued at up to $96 million is in limbo. Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, which has held the contract since 1965, filed the first protest, and Comprehensive Health Services also filed a protest. AdvanceMed was expected to start offering occupational medicine services March 8 for 11,000 workers at the Hanford nuclear site. The Department of Energy is working on an extension of HEHF's contract to provide services until a decision is made on who will have the long-term contract for occupational health services. In addition, time also will be allowed for the transition, unless HEHF is successful in winning back the contract. HEHF is a nonprofit company formed when the Atomic Energy Commission split off several functions of General Electric Co. -- then Hanford's main contractor -- in 1965. Its last contract for a maximum of five years was awarded in 1998, but the contract already has been extended as DOE asked for proposals for the occupational medicine program. Comprehensive Health Services, with corporate headquarters in Vienna, Va., was founded in 1975 and clients include 30 Fortune 200 firms and several large federal agencies, according to its Web site. It has 8,000 affiliated doctors at more than 6,000 locations nationwide. The fourth bidder, which has not filed a protest, has not been named by DOE. All four bidders submitted strong proposals, but their charges for performing the work varied significantly, said Doug Shoop, Hanford's deputy assistant manager for safety and engineering, when DOE's choice for the contract was announced earlier this month. The contract was put up for bid under requirements of federal procurement regulations intended to keep government costs in check. AdvanceMed, which was announced as the winning bidder Jan. 6, has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corp., or CSC, since last March. CSC acquired AdvanceMed's former parent company, Dyncorp. Its proposal included work to be done by HPM Corp., a start-up company in Richland owned by Hollie Mooers. The occupational medicine contract is for three years initially with options for seven more years at an estimated total cost of $96 million. The contractor's responsibilities will range from planning for emergencies to employee counseling to treatment of work-related injuries and illnesses. Workers are at risk of chemical, radiological and construction hazards as they clean up the Hanford site where plutonium was once produced for nuclear weapons. The winning contractor also will help with epidemiological studies of Hanford workers. © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 39 Tri-City Herald: New DOE agency forms in Richland This story was published Thursday, January 29th, 2004 By John Stang Herald staff writer A new Department of Energy office has quietly become the third major DOE operation in Richland. DOE's Office of Science at Hanford is an agency equal to DOE's Office of River Protection and DOE's Richland office. All three report directly to superiors at DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Office of Science is in charge of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which had been under DOE's Richland office. PNNL employs about 3,800 people, mostly engaged in non-Hanford research and development. DOE's Office of Science and DOE's Richland office also share responsibility for the HAMMER training complex, which employs several dozen workers. HAMMER is a regional training center for rescue, emergency and Hanford workers. The Office of Science was quietly formed around Christmas with the transfer of about 40 people from DOE's Richland office, said Julie Erickson, the office's deputy manager. Paul Kruger, formerly the Richland office's associate manager for science and technology, now manages the Office of Science. The Office of Science is quartered in the National Security Building between Q Avenue and George Washington Way on the Battelle campus. DOE nationwide is in the process of forming offices of science at each of its national laboratories. The Office of River Protection is in charge of Hanford's radioactive waste tanks and construction of a complex to convert those wastes into glass. The Richland office is in charge of everything else at Hanford, including general administration of the site. © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 40 Tri-City Herald: Officials to review vit plant costs This story was published Thursday, January 29th, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer Concerned about an increase of more than $1.4 billion in the estimated price tag for Hanford's vitrification plant, Congress has sent the Army Corps of Engineers to Hanford to review costs. A team of 12 to 15 Army Corps officials will be at Hanford through April to prepare an independent assessment of the costs to build and begin operating a mammoth plant that will turn some of the nation's most dangerous nuclear waste into glasslike logs. Highly radioactive waste from processing plutonium has been stored in underground tanks at the site since the 1940s. The review will cost $1.5 million, but that's just a fraction of the cost of building the plant to treat tank wastes at Hanford. The federal government's largest current construction project was estimated to cost $4.35 billion three years ago. But last year the cost of the vitrification plant rose to an estimated $5.78 billion, a 33 percent increase. "This increase reflects a troubling lack of accountability at the Department (of Energy) for prior costs and schedule estimates, and does not inspire congressional confidence in the reliability of the current cost and schedule baseline for this project and for other major cleanup projects," said a House and Senate conference committee report that ordered the Corps review. A House committee report said much of the increase "stems from the dubious quality of the previous estimate." A Senate committee report was harsher. Before Bechtel National was hired as the contractor in late 2000, BNFL was building the vit plant. It was fired in spring 2000 when it announced the cost of the plant had ballooned from $6.9 billion to $15.2 billion. Officials at DOE's Office of River Protection and Bechtel National said Wednesday that an independent review of the project should help build needed congressional support for the project. "I welcome it," said Jim Betts, project manger for Bechtel National. "We need the confidence of Congress to deliver $690 million through 2007," said John Eschenberg, ORP's project manager for the vitrification plant. The $690 million figure is the annual construction cost during the project's initial years. The project already has been given what the federal government considers an independent review through DOE's Office of Engineering and Construction Management. That review concluded the schedule and cost were reasonable and approved the start of construction in March 2003. The design of the plant has changed considerably since the $4.35 billion estimate in 2000, said DOE and Bechtel officials. The earlier design would not have met regulatory requirements under the Tri-Party Agreement for completing vitrification, or glassification, of the waste, Eschenberg said. Under the current plan, the waste would be treated by 2028, rather than 2046. By reducing operating time by 18 years, $20 billion will be saved, Eschenberg said. The new design increases the capacity of a melter used to turn waste into glasslike logs and adds a second melter. That should allow the plant to turn out 6 metric tons of glass a day, rather than the 1 1Ú2 tons in the earlier plan. In addition, the plant will treat low-activity liquid wastes separated from other tank waste. Because of a better design, the low-level waste melter should need to be shut down just half as often for maintenance. Other changes also are included in the budget. When Bechtel took over the project, the design was 10 percent complete. By last spring, when cost estimates went up, the design was 40 percent complete, allowing for better predictions of the quantities of concrete, pipe and other materials needed. "No one has ever built one of these to this scale," Betts pointed out. In addition, the latest budget estimate includes an extra $150 million for unanticipated costs caused by factors such as bad weather. The increased costs will not necessarily mean more money for the contractor. The contractor fee, based on incentives, has dropped from $335 million to $225 million in the latest budget. Bechtel will be allowed to keep a portion of unspent contingency money. In the unlikely event that none of the money for unanticipated costs is spent, Bechtel could be paid a total of $425 million. The Corps' review is due April 30. Results will be used by Congress as it works on the 2005 budget for Hanford. "With projects this large, you need to make sure the taxpayers' money is spent well and effectively," said Jessica Gleason, spokeswoman for Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, said DOE has an obligation to provide an accurate budget for the cleanup of waste at Hanford, according to a written statement. "I hope the Corps review gives us a good forecast for what we can expect," she said. "But, no matter the cost, the federal government must fulfill its commitment to the community and state." © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 41 Tri-City Herald: Hanford employment to decline in 2006 This story was published Thursday, January 29th, 2004 By John Stang Herald staff writer Hanford's long-awaited employment drop will begin in 2006, with about 4,000 jobs expected to disappear by 2008. Then the remaining roughly 7,500 Hanford jobs are predicted to slowly and steadily shrink to just several hundred by 2033. The figures are only for environmental cleanup jobs and do not include non-Hanford research conducted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which employs about 3,500. Hanford's employment future was outlined Wednesday by the Department of Energy at the Tri-Cities Regional Economic Outlook Forum in Pasco sponsored by the Tri-City Industrial Development Council. "What we're asking you to do is to help us speed cleanup. At the same time, we're working the community out of jobs. I know that's tough," Jeanie Schwier, chief financial officer for DOE's Richland office, told the forum. Hanford and the Tri-Cities have lived through boom and bust employment cycles since World War II. On Wednesday, Dean Schau, state labor economist for the Tri-City area, noted that a 1945 study declared that the Mid-Columbia's biggest economic problem was losing Hanford jobs. At that time, the site employed 51,000 people. In 1971, the site had dipped to an all-time low of 6,500 employees. Hanford's early environmental cleanup years beginning in 1989 pushed the site's employment to 18,500 by 1994 amid heavy criticism of a bloated work force. Two years of belt-tightening dropped Hanford's cleanup employees to about 12,500 in 1996. Since then, the site's work force has fluctuated in small spurts and drops. Here is how DOE predicts Hanford's cleanup employment will play out: - 2004: About 11,000 employees overall, with 5,200 working on the radioactive waste tank farms and the waste glassification complex for contractors under DOE's Office of River Protection and about 5,200 working for contractors under DOE's Richland office. - 2006: About 11,500 employees overall, with about 5,700 with ORP and 5,800 with the Richland office. - 2007: About 9,800 employees overall, with about 5,300 with ORP and 4,500 with the Richland office. This is when work on building the glassification complex is to start winding down and the final K Basins work should be done. - 2008: About 7,500 employees overall, with about 3,200 with ORP and 4,300 with the Richland office. Construction of the glassification complex should be done and its testing should begin. - 2011: About 6,300 employees overall, with about 2,700 with ORP and 3,600 with the Richland office. This is when waste glassification should ramp up to full speed. In 2012, all the Columbia River corridor cleanup work is supposed to be done. - 2018: About 5,900 employees overall, with about 2,700 with ORP and 3,200 with the Richland office. Ten percent of the tank wastes should be glassified and the highly radioactive 618-10 and 618-11 burial sites should be cleaned out. - 2028: About 2,400 employees overall, with half with ORP and half with the Richland office. Glassification should be finished. - 2033: About 900, all with the Richland office. This is when the shutdown, decontamination and demolition of the glassification complex is to finish. © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 42 Las Vegas SUN: Plans delayed for nuclear weapons plant Today: January 29, 2004 at 9:53:53 PST By Suzanne Struglinski WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department has temporarily delayed its plans to build a nuclear weapons trigger plant that could end up in Nevada. The Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is one of five sites under consideration for the Modern Pit Facility, the department's plan for a new multibillion-dollar plant that would make plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. Linton Brooks of the National Nuclear Security Administration announced Wednesday that the department will delay work on a final environmental analysis for the project. The final document, scheduled to come out in April, would have named the site where the department would build the new plant. Los Alamos and Carlsbad, N.M., the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., are also under consideration. NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said no specific date has been name for when work might resume, but stressed that the administration was "delaying, not canceling," the project. The administration oversees the country's nuclear weapons stockpile. Wilkes said there are certain issues that need to be addressed in Congress before the project can move forward. The administration had requested $23 million to work on the project this year, but Congress approved only $11 million, saying it was too premature to build a new facility without knowing how many triggers, known as plutonium pits, exist in the existing nuclear stockpile. Several members of Congress offered amendments to delay the program. The administration wants to build new pits to keep current nuclear weapons in working condition. "Restoring our capability to manufacture plutonium pits is an essential element of America's nuclear defense policy," Brooks said in a prepared statement. "While there is widespread support in Congress for this project, I believe we need to pause to respond to concerns that some committees have raised about its timing." Gov. Kenny Guinn objected to the project last year. ***************************************************************** 43 Rocky Mountain News: Plans for 'Rocky Flats II' come screeching to halt Proposal for facility outside Colorado indefinitely shelved By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News January 29, 2004 Plans to build a new Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant outside Colorado were abruptly halted Wednesday after congressional criticism. The Energy Department had already done draft environmental impact studies and held hearings on five potential sites, all of them existing nuclear facilities. The department was scheduled to complete the environmental study by April. Then Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was to choose one of the five for construction of a new bomb factory expected to cost up to $4 billion. The sites under consideration are the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab and the Carlsbad nuclear waste storage facility in New Mexico; the Nevada Test Site; the Pantex nuclear weapons factory in Amarillo, Texas; and the Savannah River nuclear weapons facility in South Carolina. The original Rocky Flats plant, located northwest of Denver, built the plutonium cores of nuclear weapons from 1951 to 1989. Denver just barely escaped contamination during a fire in a plutonium building in 1969. In 1989, after an FBI raid seeking evidence of alleged environmental crimes, Rocky Flats' operations were suspended. It shut down permanently with the end of the Cold War, and the United States is spending $7 billion to dismantle and clean up the site. Wednesday's announcement of an indefinite delay in replacing Rocky Flats comes after a scathing report from Congress. It said the Energy Department was planning a hugely expensive new plant when it didn't know how many new nuclear weapons were needed. Congress also cut the 2004 planning budget for the factory from $23 million to $11 million. Congress did not call for shelving the project, but suggested "more effectively" using Los Alamos, which can build six plutonium bomb cores a year. The proposed facility would have the capacity of 100 to 150 cores a year. Activists hailed the decision to halt "Rocky Flats II." "It's a tremendous victory for the growing national movement of citizens who don't want another Rocky Flats anywhere, because of environmental and nonproliferation implications," said Bob Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. The military has said it wants the new plant to build "bunker- buster" and other new types of nuclear weapons. It also says bomb cores can deteriorate and must be replaced, but Len Ackland, a University of Colorado professor who wrote a book on Rocky Flats, said outside researchers have shown that to be incorrect. ***************************************************************** 44 The State: Nuclear projects face delays Feds plans for trigger, fue By SAMMY FRETWELL 01/29/2 Staff Writer Two proposed nuclear production factories, coveted by South Carolina leaders for the number of jobs they would create, face delays because of opposition in Congress and a U.S. dispute with Russia. The National Nuclear Security Administration announced Wednesday that it wont name the site of a $2 billion to $4 billion nuclear triggers factory in April, as originally scheduled, citing congressional opposition. The Savannah River Site near Aiken is one of the leading contenders for the new plant, which would produce key ingredients for nuclear weapons. The government also may postpone construction at SRS of a $4 billion mixed oxide fuel factory, NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said. That construction had been scheduled to start this year. Wilkes cited a legal disagreement with Russia as the reason for the possible delay. The dispute involves a companion fuel plant thats supposed to be built in Russia as part of a non-proliferation treaty. The Russians have had difficulty funding the plant and they want assurances the U.S. would be liable if the Russian plant failed, anti-nuclear activist Tom Clements said. The plants are to render 68 metric tons of American and Russian plutonium useless for atomic weapons. Collectively the proposed triggers and fuel factories would bring at least 1,500 jobs to the Aiken area and represent major new missions for SRS. The 310-square-mile atomic weapons complex once produced tritium and plutonium for nuclear bombs. At its peak, SRS employed about 25,000 people. But the sites production reactors have been shuttered since the late 1980s, and its work force now is about 12,000. Much of the work at SRS today involves cleaning up nuclear waste, some of it highly radioactive. Aiken and Augusta-area business leaders have enthusiastically backed plans for new missions at SRS. But critics say the new missions could bring new dangers to South Carolina just as SRS is being cleaned up. The National Nuclear Security Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy, remains committed to both missions, despite delays, Wilkes said Wednesday. Fred Humes, director of the Aiken Economic Development Partnership, said the setbacks are disappointing. These are programs that are very well-suited for SRS, Humes said. To have these ups and downs ... is somewhat disconcerting. Gov. Mark Sanford, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, all South Carolina Republicans, also expressed disappointment Wednesday. Of the two facilities, the triggers factory, or pit plant, faces a more uncertain future. Unlike the mixed oxide fuel plant, which received more than $400 million last year from Congress for design and construction, the pit plant is still in the conceptual stages. The DOE says it may need the factory to replace aging triggers, or pits, used in nuclear weapons. But the government also has indicated the plant could be used to produce triggers for new types of nuclear weapons. Plutonium pits trigger nuclear explosions. Anti-nuclear activists, some congressional members and others are questioning the multi-billion dollar cost and the governments need to produce more components for atomic bombs. Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has recently expressed reservations over the triggers plant. Richardson is now the Democratic governor of New Mexico, which also is in the running for the plant. Graham, an SRS plant supporter, said the governments decision to delay picking the location for a pit plant could erode support in Congress. Linton Brooks, director of the NNSA, said in a statement that most members of Congress support the pit plant, but some members clearly have questions. I intend to have further consultations with Congress before we proceed, Brooks said. The mixed oxide fuel plant delay has been rumored for months, but Clements said the governments statements this week make the issue more clear. Former Gov. Jim Hodges said the possible delay in building the mixed oxide fuel plant reinforces concerns he had while in office. Hodges favored the MOX plant but said the government never gave any ironclad agreement that it would actually build the facility. He sued unsuccessfully for such an agreement. At one point, Hodges said he would try to block shipments of plutonium to South Carolina unless there were a better agreement. He expressed concern that the government would leave plutonium, a deadly radioactive metal, at SRS forever. Whats happening is exactly what I feared, Hodges said. Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537 or . TheStateOnline ***************************************************************** 45 Carlsbad Current-Argus: Concerns delay pit facility decision Updated: January 28, 2004 - 10:29:34 By Victoria Parker-Stevens/Current-Argus Staff Writer Jan 28, 2004, 10:28 pm CARLSBAD — The decision on whether a plutonium pit production facility might be sited in Carlsbad was delayed Wednesday. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is one of five sites the federal Energy Department is considering for the manufacture of pits, which trigger nuclear weapons. The Energy Secretary was expected to make a decision this spring. The Energy Department announced it would delay the process after members of Congress expressed concerns about moving forward without more analysis. Of particular concern was how many pits would be needed to maintain the country’s aging nuclear stockpile. In preliminary documents, the Energy Department is planning for a production capacity of anywhere from 80 to 450 pits per year. “We will almost certainly need a new pit facility,” said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., in a press release. “But before we move ahead in this process, it is important to know what the demand for pits will be in the decades to come,” he said. “The delay … will give the agency time to undertake the analysis needed to adequately plan for the modern pit facility.” DOE spokesman Bryan Wilkes said there was no timeline for how long the process would be delayed. “We’re working on those (concerns), and there will be further discussions,” he said. “This is just a bump on the road.” Congressional support was also at issue during the recent budget process, especially in the House. For fiscal year 2004, the project received about $11 million — around half of what the Energy Department had desired. The pit facility process was not delayed because of the funding, Wilkes said. Mayor Bob Forrest said he wasn’t surprised by the delay, which he thought might last until after this year’s national elections. “(DOE) want to move forward on this thing,” he said. “We were delayed almost 30 years for WIPP. We’ve got the patience of Job.” Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., also said he was confident the Energy Department would eventually proceed. “I am not troubled by this delay because DOE and the (National Nuclear Security Administration) both know that the United States eventually needs to construct a modern pit facility to maintain our nuclear stockpile,” he said in a press release. Words of concern about insufficient information were heard earlier from the state of New Mexico. Environment Department Secretary Ron Curry has said the Energy Department should have released the name of a preferred site already so the public could adequately comment during the process. New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation has come out in favor of siting the facility in Carlsbad. Gov. Bill Richardson has not. “I remain committed to this project, and to promoting the Carlsbad site,” Domenici said. “It provides a unique location where the necessary infrastructure is already in place, it has a proven record in handling radioactive materials, and it is a community that supports the presence of DOE,” Bingaman said. Other possible locations chosen for the facility are Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, the Nevada Test Site and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Copyright © 2004 Carlsbad Current-Argus, a Gannett Co., Inc. ***************************************************************** 46 Knox News: Secret shipment at Y-12 Libyan nuclear material airlifted to Oak Ridge as gesture by Gadhafi By FRANK MUNGER AND RICHARD POWELSON, munger@knews.com _powelsonr@shns.com January 28, 2004 Tons of nuclear material and sensitive equipment were airlifted out of Libya Monday night and brought to a government facility in Oak Ridge, officials confirmed Tuesday - hours after the secret shipment had reached its destination. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in a press briefing that a transport plane arrived at 8:37 a.m. Tuesday at McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville. The nuclear cargo then was trucked to the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, where it will be housed at least for the short term. The big shipment, estimated at 55,000 pounds, is part of a rapid U.S. response to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's December promise to abandon his weapons-development program. "This reflects real progress," McClellan said of the nuclear shipment. "On the flight was UF6 - uranium hexafluoride - which is used for feedstock to enrich uranium," he said. "Also included on the flight were centrifuge parts, which are used to enrich uranium (for weapons use). Finally, the shipment contains ballistic missile guidance sets for longer-range missiles, which Libya has voluntarily agreed to eliminate." McClellan said the cargo was sent to a "secure facility" in Tennessee. That facility is Y-12, a warhead-manufacturing facility that also houses the nation's primary stockpile of weapons-grade uranium. The mission plans were first reported over the weekend by Reuters news service, which quoted senior U.S. officials about the effort to whisk nuclear components out of Tripoli. Oak Ridge officials repeatedly refused to comment over the past couple of days, citing classification restrictions. "I try as best I can to never get into 'no comment' situations, but this is one that's classified and I've got to punt it to Washington," Billy Stair, a spokesman at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said. Initial reports had indicated the material was headed to ORNL, not Y-12. The Libyan mission is reminiscent of Project Sapphire in 1994. In that super-secret effort, 600 kilograms of weapons-usable uranium was airlifted from Kazakhstan - a former Soviet state - to reduce the risk of it falling into the hands of terrorists or the nuclear black-market. The material was sent to Y-12 for storage and evaluation before being sent to a Virginia nuclear facility for processing to reduce its weapons capability. The fact that Y-12 was chosen as host for Libya's nuclear materials is ironic because the Oak Ridge plant has been under fire in recent weeks for alleged security problems. A watchdog group, the Project On Government Oversight, suggested Y-12 was vulnerable to terrorist attack. The group, citing government sources, said the plant's guards failed to protect nuclear assets during a security exercise in December. Also, DOE's Inspector General this week released a report that said a Y-12 security exercise last summer was "tainted" because some guards had received advance information on the tests. Wackenhut, the government's security contractor in Oak Ridge, countered those reports and said the protective capabilities at Y-12 had never been better. The Associated Press quoted Bush administration officials as saying Gadhafi could expect some easing of economic pressure if the cooperation continues. However, those officials said Libya had yet to prove it no longer supports terrorism, a key requirement for improved relations. Before the nuclear airlift to Tennessee, another plane left Tripoli last week with sensitive documents associated with the Libyan nuclear weapons program, McClellan said. The White House spokesman also said other efforts were underway to destroy capabilities for chemical munitions. "While these shipments are only the beginning of the elimination of Libya's weapons, these shipments, as well as the close cooperation on the ground in Libya, reflect real progress in Libya meeting its commitments," McClellan said. "Colonel Gadhafi made a courageous decision to give up his weapons, and through this transparent process, the world can see that Colonel Gadhafi is keeping his commitment." U.S. and British officials have been in Libya during the past week, along with representatives from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Both ORNL and Y-12 have experts routinely called upon for missions related to nuclear non-proliferation, but it is not yet clear if any Oak Ridge employees were in Libya to assist with the mission preparations there. Steven Wyatt, a spokesman in DOE's Oak Ridge office, declined to comment, and officials associated with the nuclear programs in Oak Ridge referred calls to Washington. Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-66329. Richard Powelson may be reached at 202-408-2727. 2004, Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 47 U.S. Newswire: NNSA Delays Modern Pit Facility EIS Environmental Impact Statement and Selection of a Preferred Location 1/28/04 2:26:00 PM To: National Desk and Energy Reporter Contact: Bryan Wilkes of the National Nuclear Security Administration, 202-586-7371 WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks has delayed the final environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Modern Pit Facility (MPF) in order to address congressional concerns that it is premature to pursue further decisions on a MPF at this time. The final EIS, which would guide Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's decision about site selection of the MPF, was scheduled for publication by April 2004. The decision to delay the final EIS also delays identification of a preferred site for constructing the MPF. "Restoring our capability to manufacture plutonium pits is an essential element of America's nuclear defense policy," Brooks said. "While there is widespread support in Congress for this project, I believe we need to pause to respond to concerns that some committees have raised about its scope and timing." A pit, made of plutonium, triggers a nuclear explosion in all modern thermonuclear weapons. NNSA will have to manufacture replacement pits to help ensure the safety and reliability of existing warheads and maintain an infrastructure that is responsive to national security needs that may arise in the future. The nation's only pit manufacturing plant, Rocky Flats near Denver, Colorado, was shut down in 1989. In June, NNSA published a draft EIS that evaluated five potential sites for the MPF: Los Alamos and Carlsbad, N.M., the Nevada Test Site, the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, SC. The draft EIS also evaluated alternatives to construction of a new facility, including upgrading a plutonium fabrication facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and not constructing an MPF. The final EIS is expected to identify a preferred site for constructing an MPF. The Administration requested $23 million for conceptual design in FY 2004, but Congress provided only $11 million, saying that committing to an MPF design and siting decision is "premature" until the makeup of the future stockpile is more clearly defined. Regardless of the stockpile size, the nation will ultimately require a pit manufacturing capability to address stockpile aging concerns. "We are taking a conservative, prudent course to develop a capability that will enable the nation to be ready for future contingencies without wasting tax dollars on excessive capacity," Brooks said. "While Congress supports this project, some members clearly have questions about our timing and decision-making process; I intend to have further consultations with Congress before we proceed to a final EIS. In this regard, I have consulted with key officials in the Department of Defense, who have advised me that a temporary delay will not harm the safety or readiness of the current nuclear weapons stockpile. However, DoD is concerned about a significant delay in the MPF, since the availability of such a facility impacts the nuclear stockpile." This decision will in no way affect the W88 pit manufacturing and recertification program, currently underway at Los Alamos, which is reestablishing the technological base to manufacture pits and which thereby will inform many of the technology decisions which will be contained in the eventual MPF design. NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency of the Department of Energy. It enhances U.S. national security through the military application of nuclear energy, maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, promotes international nuclear nonproliferation and safety, reduces global danger from weapons of mass destruction, provides the U.S. Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion, and oversees its national laboratories to maintain U.S. leadership in science and technology. http://www.usnewswire.com/ -0- /© 2004 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ ***************************************************************** 48 Knox News: Better run for cover if you see TV crews on Clinton Highway By FRANK MUNGER, munger@Knews.com January 28, 2004 This may or may not provide comfort to local readers: As part of its emergency-preparedness strategy, the U.S. Department of Energy is opening a Joint Information Center in Knoxville. That means, if there's a nuclear disaster or some other scary event in Oak Ridge, the news media will be asked to gather at the JIC (corner of Emory Road and Clinton Highway) for briefings from federal officials and various contractors. DOE is signing a 10-year lease on the new building. "The building can hold up to 150 people," DOE info chief Steven Wyatt said. "We're exploring the possibility of other uses." It's not clear whether DOE, in dire times, wants to divert reporters to another county for their protection or the government's. The previous JIC, by the way, was in Loudon County. + RED PLANET: I apparently didn't give the University of Tennessee enough credit in a recent column about a NASA-funded initiative to develop future tools for exploring life on Mars. First off, I overlooked the name of Susan Pfiffner, a research assistant professor at UT, who's a co-principal investigator on the astrobiology project and heading the effort by the university and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Also, UT's Center for Environmental Biotechnology played a key role in establishing the research collaboration - with Indiana University, Princeton University and various national labs - and gaining NASA's blessing for the work. Gary Sayler, a noted microbiologist who directs the center of excellence, said UT picked up the tab for salaries and other costs to get the project started and help leverage other funding. "The University of Tennessee is a significant driving force in this effort," the professor said. UT, meanwhile, is involved in other space projects, including development of sensors that will be deployed on the international space station, Sayler said. Those sensors will assess potential air-quality problems with toxic chemicals and problematic microbes, he said. + HEAR YE, HEAR YE: About this time a year ago I cringed while listening to President Bush repeatedly mispronounce "nuclear" in his State of the Union Address. There was nothing new there, of course. It had been noted many times before that the president tended to say "nukular." But, in this speech, devoted largely to the fight against weapons of mass destruction, etc., the repeated use of the word made me uncomfortable. Shouldn't there be some sort of law that prohibits anyone from using a nuclear weapon unless he can pronounce it? That was my thought at the time. Since then, however, I've noted the nukular trend extends far beyond the president. In a presentation to Tennessee's county mayors, Alex Fischer - Oak Ridge National Laboratory's technology-transfer chief - mispronounced nuclear in a way similar to Bush. Maybe, I thought, it's a GOP thing, since Fischer is a former member of the Republican administration of Gov. Don Sundquist. Then I realized nuclear tongue-tying existed way before now and included such Democratic stalwarts at President Jimmy Carter, who - for crying out loud - was trained in the Nuclear Navy. I guess it's just a trend that, unfortunately, seems to be gaining momentum. For instance, I stifled my surprise earlier this week when Carl Kohrt, Battelle's president and chief executive officer, butchered the nuke word during a meeting with local news gatherers. + COLOR CODES: People ask me if I can tell much difference at the government's Oak Ridge facilities when the terrorism alert changes from yellow to orange or vice versa. The short answer is no. There no doubt are subtle changes, but so far I've been unable to detect additional access restrictions or obvious differences in the security presence. DOE, by the way, doesn't use colors to describe alert levels. Instead of orange, the feds call it Security Condition No. 2 (or SECON-2). Yellow is known as SECON-3. Senior Writer Frank Munger covers the Department of Energy for the News Sentinel. He may be reached at 865-342-6329 or at . This column is also available in the opinion section of knoxnews.com. 2004, Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 49 Times-News: Online -- Twin Falls, Idaho www.magicvalley.com Thursday, January 29, 2004 • Twin Falls, Idaho House panel rejects ISAT as '06 graduation requirement ... Vote indicates Legislature could delay State Board of Education plansBOISE -- Students might not have to pass the Idaho Standards Achievement Test to graduate from high school starting in 2006, after all. The first chink appeared Wednesday in the wall the State Board of Education has put up against educators' pleas to postpone the 2006 exit exam requirement. A House education subcommittee voted 6-3 to reject two proposed rules put forth by the state board in November. Click Here For Copyright © 2004, Lee Publications Inc. Magicvalley.com is an on-line division of The Times-News, ***************************************************************** 50 Oak Ridger: Nuke facilities' safety rules are targeted Story last updated at 12:30 p.m. on January 29, 2004 STANCE: Several local officials pointed out that neither DOE nor the contractors want to weaken safety standards. By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com One of Oak Ridge's Department of Energy contractors is suggesting an alternative to a proposed plan to replace safety requirements at federal nuclear facilities with standards written by contractors. UT-Battelle, which manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory, prefers one set of rules - based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines - for all contractors, according to Kelly Beierschmitt, director of Environment, Safety, Health and Quality at ORNL. Beierschmitt pointed out that OSHA has 30 years of experience in enforcing safety standards. Under the DOE proposal, long-established government minimum standards could become unenforceable guidelines. However, the federal government would reportedly retain the authority to approve or reject the contractor-written safety requirements. Several officials pointed out that neither DOE nor the contractors want to weaken safety standards. DOE can now fine contractors who expose workers to hazardous levels of radiation, but it has no authority to levy fines for failing to protect workers from other industrial dangers, such as exposure to toxic chemicals, according to The Associated Press. The proposed rule would change that, allowing the department to assess fines against contractors who violate what would be contractor-written safety plans dealing with industrial hazards. "No matter what the rules are, we will have policies and procedures in place to ensure the highest degree of worker safety," said Dennis Ruddy, president and general manager of BWXT Y-12, which manages the Y-12 National Security Complex for the federal government. Bechtel Jacobs Co. is in the process of putting together a response to DOE regarding the proposal, according to Dennis Hill, a company spokesman. The responses are due by early February, but Hill declined to reveal the stance Bechtel Jacobs would take. "We can't comment beyond that," Hill said. Bechtel Jacobs is responsible for managing cleanup work on DOE's Oak Ridge Reservation. Officials from UT-Battelle have testified at one hearing regarding DOE's proposal. If the proposal is OK'd, it could go into effect by December. ***************************************************************** 51 amarillo.com: Selection delayed for pit facility 01/29/04 [Amarillo Globe News] By JIM McBRIDE jim.mcbride@amarillo.com The Amarillo Globe-News The National Nuclear Security Administration is delaying a final environmental impact statement and site selection for a new plutonium pit production plant, citing congressional concerns about the project's timing and scope. Pantex Plant near Amarillo is one of five potential sites for a Modern Pit Facility that will produce plutonium cores for nuclear weapons. Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M., and Nevada Test Site are other sites vying for the $4 billion facility. NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks announced Wednesday the NNSA will delay picking a preferred site until the agency consults with congressional committees. "Restoring our capability to manufacture plutonium pits is an essential element of America's nuclear defense policy," Brooks said in a statement. "While there is widespread support in Congress for this project, I believe we need to pause to respond to concerns that some committees have raised about its scope and timing." U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, said Wednesday he did not know how long the NNSA will delay decisions about the pit facility, but he said some in Congress want answers about the future U.S. nuclear stockpile. "I think that some people in Congress have really been asking the department questions about how many pits we need, what the size of the stockpile is going to be and some of those overall questions, which need to be answered before you know exactly what sort of facility you want to build," Thornberry said. "I think that's what has caused the delay." U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said Wednesday he was disappointed by the NNSA's announcement and wants to quiz Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham when he appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I understand the position of the NNSA and their need to address concerns raised by a few of my colleagues," Cornyn said in a statement. "However, I disagree with those who say we must continue to put off construction of this crucial component of our strategic national security." The administration had sought $23 million in design funding for fiscal year 2004, but Congress provided only $11 million, citing concerns that committing to a Modern Pit Facility design was "premature." In November, a House-Senate conference committee report said Congress must review revised stockpile plans before decisions are made about the pit facility. "The conferees agree with the House report that until Congress reviews the revised future stockpile plan it is premature to pursue fur- ther decisions regarding the Modern Pit Facility," the report said. Brooks said he will consult with Congress before issuing a final environmental impact statement, which is expected to identify a preferred site for the Modern Pit Facility. The agency, he said, has consulted with Defense Department officials who advised that a temporary delay would not harm the safety or readiness of the current nuclear stockpile. ***************************************************************** 52 Tri-Valley Herald: Livermore lab plays war games 1/29/2004 Series of mock attacks aimed By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER After nightfall Wednesday, a gang of armed security officers attacked Lawrence Livermore lab and its fortress-like plutonium facility, engaging fellow officers in a running battle of gunfire and grenades. They staged another assault just before midnight and a third in the pre-dawn hours this morning. Like clockwork, they'll be back Saturday for three fresh attacks, as they did last Saturday and the Saturday before. Twice a week all January, at hours when most of the weapons lab scientists have gone home, the top-security "protected area" known as The Yard has been treated to explosions, gunfire and armed men in laser war-gaming gear diving for cover. In a week or so, it's final exam time. Outsiders will try stealing an atomic bomb's worth of plutonium or highly enriched uranium. It's not a terrorist assault. Al-Qaeda doesn't warn its targets months ahead of attack. But the U.S. government does. It let Livermore know four months ago to expect test attacks next week by its "composite adversary team" of defenders from other nuclear sites. That's felicitous for Livermore's operator and its security executives: Nowhere else in the nation's complex of bomb labs and factories has drawn as much continuous criticism of its security in the last year, and no other operator of a federal lab is as close to losing the job as the University of California. But critics of the nation's nuclear security and at least some lab security officers say Livermore's cramming risks skewing the test results, by artificially inflating impressions of the lab's day-to-day defenses. "They're providing the public with a false sense of security by using performance testing that isn't realistic, when they're given the unfair advantage of knowing when it's coming and can conduct exercises that they don't ordinarily perform," says Mathew Zipoli, vice president of the lab security officers' union and a proponent of better training and equipment. "I somehow doubt Osama bin Laden is going to give us advance notice," he said. Frontline managers of Livermore's Protective Force Division have let their small army of security officers know that it is expected to win. "We'll lose our jobs if you don't," one senior officer told the lab's Special Response Team, a cadre trained for a full range of combat operations, such as retaking the lab's plutonium facility, Superblock, if it is overrun. Managers have said that officers flagged as dead and injured will lie untended, so as not to distract or delay defenders. And they've ordered overtime, at a taxpayer cost of more than $90,000, for six practice assaults a week, almost 10 times the lab's normal schedule of "force-on-force" exercises. A handful of officers experienced real injuries each week of the exercises. Last Saturday, an instructor broke his sternum. Lab security executives began more rigorous training last fall, but the feverish pace of practice assaults began in early January. Security managers posted a detailed schedule in the officers' roll-call room, headlined "OA-10 Prep Exercises," a reference to the Energy Department's Office of Safeguards and Security Evaluations, known in bureaucratic shorthand as OA-10. Lab and government officials see no problem with the cramming. "If part of the way they do better is by practicing then that's great," said Glenn Podonsky, the Energy Department's director of security and oversight. "We want them to do better." "It's like studying for your final exam. We'd be remiss if we didn't prepare for it," said Livermore spokesman David Schwoegler. "It behooves us as facility managers." Advance notice, hurry-up training and outright cheating have been de rigeur at Energy Department nuclear-weapons facilities for more than 20 years, said Peter Stockton, a former senior adviser on security under Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and now senior investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, a federal watchdog organization. Weapons sites receive advance notice partly so they have sufficient officers on hand to keep the facility secure while undergoing test assaults. The last U.S. weapons site to undergo Energy Department security testing failed to prevent the theft of more than enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. It was a second test for the Y-12 site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which houses 5,000 nuclear secondaries, the thermonuclear stage of an H-bomb. In an earlier test, Y-12 security contractor Wackenhut cheated, according to Energy Department investigators. Wackenhut officers aced all four test assaults, despite computerized combat simulations showing defeat in at least half of the assaults. Wackenhut's success set off alarm bells, and DOE's Office of Inspector General found a pattern of cheating going back years, involving a previous security contractor. More recently, two protective-force officers were allowed to view the combat simulations two days before the actual test assaults, revealing attack timing, use of diversions and walls that attackers would try to breach. Livermore security officers say they used to get such tips, though not in recent years. They say they know no details of next week's test. Nonetheless, Stockton suggests, the advanced notice and cramming exercises still frustrate the purpose of security testing. Livermore's security force came into 2003 understaffed and undertrained. Persistent management problems led to high rate of turnover, and the lab had trouble mustering enough officers to conduct once-a-month practice assaults, mandatory in the University of California's operating contract and DOE regulations. "It's marvelous that they're finally getting the training time now, but that misses the point of these tests," Stockton said. "A force-on-force (test) is supposed to be a slice in time: Can they protect SNM (Special Nuclear Material used in weapons) at that point?" It also could deny the lab and the Energy Department of an indicator for whether the lab needs more officers, heavier firepower or other defensive measures. "All the guys want more realistic testing," said Zipoli of the officer's union. Combat simulations of the attacks often show mortality and casualty rates of 50 percent for a successive defense of nuclear material. Officers would prefer better odds of winning and living. "These exercises are based on these officers knowingly giving up their lives, and in the real world that's not going to happen," he said. Tri-Valley Herald All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 53 Idaho Statesman: INEEL cleanup plan sparks concerns TWIN FALLS — Magic Valley residents living downstream from a nuclear laboratory want to know how clean the water will be 100 years from now under the Department of Energy´s cleanup proposal. But they say the proposal — which would lower the cleanup standard of contaminated soils at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory — focuses mainly on the risk to homes that could be built on the site hundreds of years from now. The public meeting in Twin Falls on Tuesday was one of several to be hosted by the U.S. Energy Department around the state. “I´m impressed with how this ignores the threat to the aquifer,” said Christopher Hormel, a member of a nuclear watchdog group, the Snake River Alliance. The INEEL is near Idaho Falls and sits over the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, the sole source of drinking water for about 200,000 southern Idaho residents. The energy department says its proposal would speed cleanup and save money — how much has not been established — by lowering the cleanup standard to something more appropriate for the laboratory´s new objective of nuclear research and development. Bill Leake, division director of the laboratory´s environmental programs, said the cleanup standard used today is based on the premise that the site would be closed in 100 years and turned back over for public use. Edition Date: 01-29-2004 ***************************************************************** 54 weaponization of space Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:58:42 -0600 (CST) http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040129/1/3hmlg.html Agence France Presse Friday January 30, 3:04 AM Space militarization looms as threat of 21st century: expert The 20th century added a new dimension to warfare with the nuclear bomb, and the 21st could well be remembered for bringing the arms race into space, a French weapons expert said. "Up until now, space has been militarized in the sense that military operations have made a lot of use of satellites ... either for communications, for navigation, for eavesdropping or for surveillance," Therese Delpech, the director for strategic affairs at the Atomic Energy Commission in Paris, told AFP in Stockholm. "What is completely new," she added, "is what I call the weaponization of space, which is much more serious, and concerns the possibility in the (near) future of having weapons in space, or developing weapons that can destroy satellites in space. This would add another dimension to warfare." This could be just a decade away, according to Delpech, in Stockholm for the first meeting of a new Swedish-funded international commission on weapons of mass destruction, which is headed by former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix. The independent commission, made up of 15 weapons experts from 15 countries, will over the next two years attempt to find ways of limiting the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as on ways of disarming countries that already have such weapons. While several commissioners emphasized the importance of addressing the continuing threat of nuclear proliferation, Delpech urged that greater attention be paid to a whole new generation of threats. "I truly believe that the 20th century was the age of physics, while the 21st century will be the age of information technology and life sciences. And that holds the potential for horrifying military applications," she said, adding that developments in biological weapons gave of particular concern. "There are much greater possibilities of dissimulating biological activities than nuclear activities. That's a real problem. ... The military applications are absolutely devastating," she said. ***************************************************************** 55 Google News Alert - nuclear Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:28:25 -0800 (PST) EXPERTS slam moves to fast-track nuclear dump The Australian GLOBAL nuclear experts have criticised the Howard Government's application to build a radioactive waste dump for failing to meet world's best practice, calling ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8529155%25255E30417,00.html FEDERAL safety rules at nuclear facilities may end Seattle Times WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is looking at waiving some government safety standards at federal nuclear facilities if contractors don't like them ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2001846238_nuclear29.html NUCLEAR know-how reportedly traveled via black market Chicago Tribune (subscription) ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and a former aide had black-market contacts that supplied sensitive technology to Iran ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0401290237jan29,1,3166370.story%3Fcoll%3Dchi-newsnationworld-hed RUSSIAN nuclear exports up in 2003 Xinhua 29 (Xinhuanet) -- Russia's exports of nuclear products increased by 400 million US dollars to hit three billion US dollars in 2003, Atomic Energy Minister ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-01/29/content_1291075.htm CHINA backs France in thermo-nuclear project The Hindu 29 (PTI): China today said it will support France rather than Japan as the site of the multi-billion dollar International Thermo-nuclear Experimental Reactor ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/00329210060.htm NEW Japanese Law Pressures N. Korea to Give Up Nuclear Program Voice of America ... North Korea. The legislation is seen as a tool to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. Japanese lawmakers ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm%3FobjectID%3DA2F8C261-594D-4410-BEC063FFC00EDFB9 US downplays Pakistan's nuclear sales Rediff Downplaying concerns that Pakistani scientists were involved in nuclear proliferation, the US has said it welcomed Pakistan's commitment to conduct an ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/jan/29pak.htm NORTH Korea unlikely to scrap nuclear programmes: South's defense ... Channel News Asia : SEOUL, (AFP - South Korea's defense ministry has urged North Korea to disclose and destroy its nuclear weapons programmes but said there was little hope the ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/68537/1/.html UNITED Nations nuclear inspectors staying on in Libya Daily Star UN nuclear inspectors are staying on in Libya to monitor the dismantling of Tripoli’s weapons of mass destruction programs, after tons of sensitive equipment ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.dailystar.com.lb/29_01_04/art27.asp IMRAN Khan Demands end to media Trial of Nuclear Scientists Pakistan Link ISLAMABAD : Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan has demanded an end to the media trial of nuclear scientists saying “investigation is causing ... See all stories on this topic: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.pakistanlink.com/headlines/Jan04/29/12.html This daily-once News Alert is brought to you by Google News (BETA)... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Remove this News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts/remove?s=682e52ddd0720101&hl=en Create another News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en Try Google News: http://news.google.com/ ***************************************************************** 56 Xinhuanet: China supports France in ITER project www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2004-01-29 20:35:28 BEIJING, Jan. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- China will support France as the site of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)project, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue here Thursday. After studying the two proposed sites in France and Japan for the construction of an experimental nuclear fusion reactor, China had decided to support France, Zhang said. France had been competing with Japan as the site of the multi-billion dollar project, but China hoped the issue could be settled according to consultations among all parties, she said. The project is the world's largest-yet nuclear fusion power plant with technology touted as a solution to global energy problems. Once completed in 2050, the ITER will generate clean, safe and inexhaustible electricity. The ITER participants -- the European Union, the United States,Russia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada and China -- are divided into two groups. If successful, the ITER is expected to be the world's first commercially viable fusion reactor and could herald a global energy revolution. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. 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